A China-Sumer connection
phipps...@hotmail.com
Sumer and ancient China. In ancient Sumer it was the basis for the
number system whereas the Chinese invented the ten earthly stems and
twelve celestial stems to keep track of the days and years, creating a
60 year cycle in the process. Both the Sumerians and the Chinese also
created a twelve hour day in analogy with the twelve months of the
year. Both the Sumerians and the Chinese liked to create these
analogies, with the Sumerian creating a 360 degree clock in analogy
with the 365.25 day year and the Chinese creating a 12 month
astrological cycle to corespond to the twelve months of the year.
Sumerian and Chinese astrology are also similar. (See
http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/FAQ.htm and
http://www.astrologycom.com/zodiac2.html ) Both the Chinese and the
Sumerians divided the solar year into twelve months and assigned a
symbol to each month, usually an animal. Both cultures believed that
your future, even your character, could be determined based on when you
were born.
Even the symbols themselves are similar. The Sumerians developed a
writing system that consisted of ideographs that represented both the
meaning and sound of the spoken word. The Sumerians passed this idea
on to the Egyptians, the Cretians and the Greeks, who rejected the idea
in favour of a phonetic alphabet invented around 800 BC. The only
other cultures to develop this kind of writing system were the Mayans
and the Chinese. (See
http://www.pinyin.info/readings/visible_speech.html ) The Chinese use
a similar writing system to this day.
What could account for the similarities between Chinese and Sumerian
cultures? On the website
http://www.mystae.com/streams/ufos/emperor.html , the following claim
is made: "Some scholars have suggested that travelers from Mesopotamia
and from Southeast Asia brought agricultural methods to China, which
stimulated the growth of ancient Chinese civilization. If so, there may
be a direct connection with Sumer." The same website, of course,
claimed that the Yellow Emperor was an "ancient astronaut" because he
was supposed to have come from far away. Personally, I would find it
easier to believe he was Sumerian, although I have already been
chastized on sci.archaeology for basing my ideas on "literature" as
opposed to "real archeological evidence" so I won't go so far as to
seriously suggest that.
Another possibility is that migrants travelling from the Sumer region
to the Chinese region brought knowledge with them along with the goods
they traded. This would appear to be the view of Thor Heyerdahl who
wrote (See
http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/31_folder/31_articles/31_thorazerconn.html
) "We must as scientists get beyond the dogmatic medieval view of
history printed by us in Europe in which we describe our own ancestors
as the discoverers of the rest of the world. There were advanced
civilizations with navigators and script in Asia, Africa and Middle
America before mariners from Crete brought script and civilization from
the Middle East to southern Europe. Before European history began,
mariners from Africa had settled the Canary Island, voyagers from
America had settled the West Indies, and every inhabitable island in
the Indian Ocean and the Pacific had been peopled from Asia and
America. Azerbaijan, and not Europe, was part of the fermenting kettle
of brewing civilization with navigators that spread early trade and
cultural impulses far and wide."
Yet another possibility is that Sumerian and Chinese cultures were both
influenced by a third culture. I found a website that claims that the
Sumerian language is related to the Austric languages of South Asia.
(See http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9845/sumer.htm ). Perhaps
the Sumerian, Indian and Chinese cultures all descended from an ancient
civilization in Southern Asia which has vanished without a trace as a
result of the rising sea levels between 7000 and 11 000 years ago
following the ice age. This ancient civilization would have had no
formal written language but might very well have a number system
(either base 10 or base 60), both solar and lunar calendars, a twelve
hour clock, religion and an agriculture-based society. Possible
evidence of a Sumer-India-China connection could be found if we compare
the number systems in India around the 1st century AD and to those used
in ancient China. (See
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Indian_numerals.html
and http://www.edhelper.com/ChineseNumbersIntro.htm ) In absence of
any hard archeological evidence, however, this kind of speculation may
just lead us to a dead end.
So which of these three possibilities do people think is the most
reasonable? Or do people think that similarities between different
cultures is purely coincidental? Or does it simply reflect
similarities in the way humans in different cultures view the world,
perhaps dating back to ancient tribal times?
Or is the truth likely some combination of all of the above?
Martin
Jacques Guy
> What could account for the similarities between Chinese and Sumerian
> cultures?
The same as between Chinese and Mayan, or Sumerian and Mayan.
In other words: independent invention, followed by convergent
evolution.
> On the website
> http://www.mystae.com/streams/ufos/emperor.html , the following claim
> is made: "Some scholars have suggested that travelers from Mesopotamia
> and from Southeast Asia brought agricultural methods to China, which
> stimulated the growth of ancient Chinese civilization. If so, there may
> be a direct connection with Sumer."
Agricultural methods in Papua New-Guinea have been dated to 9000 years
ago. Perhaps it is the New-Guineans who brought agriculture to Sumer?
> The same website, of course,
> claimed that the Yellow Emperor was an "ancient astronaut" because he
> was supposed to have come from far away.
And cosmic rays turned his skin yellow, I suppose.
> Another possibility is that migrants travelling from the Sumer region
> to the Chinese region brought knowledge with them
Ye olde diffusionist conundrum. Sorry. Just plain common sense
and observation teach you that dropping a seed in a hole and
watering it and looking after it brings you returns. You
don't need Sumerians or eight-legged aliens from outer
space to teach you that. Just observation and experiment.
> So which of these three possibilities do people think is the most
> reasonable?
Independent invention by me.
> Or does it simply reflect
> similarities in the way humans in different cultures view the world,
> perhaps dating back to ancient tribal times?
Strike out "human", strike out "culture", strike out "view" and
we might be getting somewhere: the way animals react to the
world.
Dylan Sung
<phipps...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1108880862....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>I find it interesting that the number 60 is important in both ancient
> Sumer and ancient China.
<snip>
>In absence of
> any hard archeological evidence, however, this kind of speculation may
> just lead us to a dead end.
Just as well, really.
<snip>
Dyl.
phipps...@hotmail.com
> Ye olde diffusionist conundrum. Sorry. Just plain common sense
> and observation teach you that dropping a seed in a hole and
> watering it and looking after it brings you returns. You
> don't need Sumerians or eight-legged aliens from outer
> space to teach you that. Just observation and experiment.
This reminds me of a Chinese legend that one of their benevalent
emperors once took it upon himself to taste all of the wild plants
growing in China so that his people would know which ones were safe to
eat. I don't know if you find that relevant or not. We can only
assume that everything he tasted was safe because he suposedly survived
to pass on his advice to his farmers. Or maybe what he actually did
was pick some "volenteers" and then observe the results.
I have enough common sense to realise that most agriculture started out
in a serendipidous manner with people noticing that the same food would
grow in the same field year after year (because the seeds would drop in
that field and the plants would grow back the next year). I wonder how
long it took people to make the connection between seeds and plants.
Are there hunter gatherer tribes that never made this connection
independently or is it really something that humans seem to catch on to
fairly quickly? I'm not saying that people didn't come up with the
idea of agriculture and religion independently. Calendars, astrology,
a twelve hour day, these are a bit more difficult, however.
Martin
Lee Sau Dan
phippsmartin> I find it interesting that the number 60 is
phippsmartin> important in both ancient Sumer and ancient China.
phippsmartin> In ancient Sumer it was the basis for the number
phippsmartin> system whereas the Chinese invented the ten earthly
phippsmartin> stems and twelve celestial stems to keep track of
phippsmartin> the days and years, creating a 60 year cycle in the
phippsmartin> process.
I see it as mere coincidence.
Did the Summerians ever use a 10 heavenly stem + 12 earthly stem
system? If so, then I'd agree that there could be a link between the
Summerians and Chinese base 60 cycles. Otherwise, I'd see it as a
coincidence. The Chinese 60 arises the least common multiple of 10
and 12, whereas the Summerians for some reasons chose 60.
BTW, there aren't that many small numbers that can divide 1, 2, 3, 4,
5 and 6 evenly. (Exercise for you: find the numbers that can divide 1
to 6 evenly.) It could be mere coincidence. Do you find it
surprising that Europeans found pi to be about 3.1416, and Chinese
mathematicians found this a few centures before the Europeans? Do you
think these mathematical historical events were related, or simply
independent discoveries?
phippsmartin> Both the Sumerians and the Chinese also created a
phippsmartin> twelve hour day in analogy with the twelve months of
phippsmartin> the year. Both the Sumerians and the Chinese liked
phippsmartin> to create these analogies, with the Sumerian
phippsmartin> creating a 360 degree clock in analogy with the
phippsmartin> 365.25 day year
I don't think the Chinese ever invented the idea of dividing a circle
into 360 degrees. What's your point?
phippsmartin> and the Chinese creating a 12 month astrological
phippsmartin> cycle to corespond to the twelve months of the year.
That's more likely an independent creation. Just look up into the sky
for a whole year (from Winter Solstice to the next Winter Solstice)
and count how many full moons you can observe. It's 12 (sometimes
13). And don't you know that the Chinese words for "month" and "moon"
are the same? What can be more natural to invent a calendar system
with 12 months (==moons) to match the observation that there a 12 new
moons in a year?
phippsmartin> Even the symbols themselves are similar.
Any examples?
phippsmartin> The Sumerians developed a writing system that
phippsmartin> consisted of ideographs that represented both the
phippsmartin> meaning and sound of the spoken word. The Sumerians
phippsmartin> passed this idea on to the Egyptians, the Cretians
phippsmartin> and the Greeks, who rejected the idea in favour of a
phippsmartin> phonetic alphabet invented around 800 BC. The only
phippsmartin> other cultures to develop this kind of writing
phippsmartin> system were the Mayans and the Chinese.
Wrong. One other tribe probably invented a logographic writing system
independently: the Yi minority living in South-western China. Their
system is very different from the Chinese one, with perhaps only one
thing in common: they're both logographic.
phippsmartin> So which of these three possibilities do people
phippsmartin> think is the most reasonable? Or do people think
phippsmartin> that similarities between different cultures is
phippsmartin> purely coincidental?
Things like having 12 months (== moons for Chinese) in a year can be
mere coincidence. Much like the (independent) discovery that there
are around 365 days between one Winter Solstice and the next one. Or
the discovery that 60 is the smallest number that can be divided by 1,
2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 evenly.
phippsmartin> Or does it simply reflect similarities in the way
phippsmartin> humans in different cultures view the world, perhaps
phippsmartin> dating back to ancient tribal times? Or is the
phippsmartin> truth likely some combination of all of the above?
I think it's a mixture of these.
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
Jacques Guy
> This reminds me of a Chinese legend that one of their benevalent
> emperors once took it upon himself to taste all of the wild plants
> growing in China so that his people would know which ones were safe to
> eat. I don't know if you find that relevant or not.
Yes, I do. I takes us back to when we were apes. Did not our
ancestors know how to tell poisonous stuff from edible stuff?
Somehow the knowledge just had to be transmitted down the
generations. Otherwise we wouldn't be here to puzzle about
it. And whom from did our great-great-grandfatherly apes
get that knowledge? Wind it back, wind it back, wind it back.
To the precambrian soup.
> We can only
> assume that everything he tasted was safe because he suposedly survived
> to pass on his advice to his farmers.
That is another way of putting it, yes.
> Are there hunter gatherer tribes that never made this connection
> independently
I don't know. It seems, perhaps, that Australian aborigines did not
develop agriculture, whereas New Guineans next door did, thousands of
years ago. But hey, ants did develop their own kind of agriculture
(fungi) and husbandry (aphids), so...?
> is it really something that humans seem to catch on to
> fairly quickly?
The ants did it. How many million years did it take them?
How many million years did it take humans, winding the clock
back to before they were "humans"?
Dylan Sung
"Lee Sau Dan" <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message
news:87k6p3v...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de...
> phippsmartin> and the Chinese creating a 12 month astrological
> phippsmartin> cycle to corespond to the twelve months of the year.
>
> That's more likely an independent creation. Just look up into the sky
> for a whole year (from Winter Solstice to the next Winter Solstice)
> and count how many full moons you can observe. It's 12 (sometimes
> 13). And don't you know that the Chinese words for "month" and "moon"
> are the same? What can be more natural to invent a calendar system
> with 12 months (==moons) to match the observation that there a 12 new
> moons in a year?
Chinese astrology divides the sky into 28 mansions. Not really anything to
do with 60, 360 or 365.
> phippsmartin> Even the symbols themselves are similar.
>
> Any examples?
He's making it up as he goes along, perhaps.
>
>
> phippsmartin> The Sumerians developed a writing system that
> phippsmartin> consisted of ideographs that represented both the
> phippsmartin> meaning and sound of the spoken word. The Sumerians
> phippsmartin> passed this idea on to the Egyptians, the Cretians
> phippsmartin> and the Greeks, who rejected the idea in favour of a
> phippsmartin> phonetic alphabet invented around 800 BC. The only
> phippsmartin> other cultures to develop this kind of writing
> phippsmartin> system were the Mayans and the Chinese.
>
> Wrong. One other tribe probably invented a logographic writing system
> independently: the Yi minority living in South-western China. Their
> system is very different from the Chinese one, with perhaps only one
> thing in common: they're both logographic.
You also forget the Nushu or women's script.
> phippsmartin> So which of these three possibilities do people
> phippsmartin> think is the most reasonable? Or do people think
> phippsmartin> that similarities between different cultures is
> phippsmartin> purely coincidental?
>
> Things like having 12 months (== moons for Chinese) in a year can be
> mere coincidence. Much like the (independent) discovery that there
Actually the Chinese lunar year occasionally have leap months, so some years
you have 12 lunar months of 29 or 30 days, and other years there are
thirteen lunar months. So the year lenght varies between 354 and 383 - 384
days long. The 24 agricultural divisions of the year beginning with lichun
(beginning of spring) sometimes falls within the new lunar year, or
sometimes within the old lunar year. These 24 points in the solar calendar
vary 2 - 3 days.
Dyl.
phipps...@hotmail.com
stem
> system? If so, then I'd agree that there could be a link between
the
> Summerians and Chinese base 60 cycles. Otherwise, I'd see it as
a
> coincidence. The Chinese 60 arises the least common multiple of
10
> and 12, whereas the Summerians for some reasons chose 60.
>
> BTW, there aren't that many small numbers that can divide 1, 2, 3,
4,
> 5 and 6 evenly. (Exercise for you: find the numbers that can divide
1
> to 6 evenly.)
Actually, my Ph.D. is in physics, not the social sciences. Yes, I
realise that only multiples of 60 can be divided by the numbers 1, 2,
3, 4, 5 and 6 evenly. In fact, only multiples of 60 can be divided by
4, 5 and 6 evenly.
Again, I suppose 10 is important because we have ten fingers and 12 is
important because there are (at least) twelve months in a year.
> phippsmartin> Both the Sumerians and the Chinese also created
a
> phippsmartin> twelve hour day in analogy with the twelve months
of
> phippsmartin> the year. Both the Sumerians and the Chinese
liked
> phippsmartin> to create these analogies, with the
Sumerian
> phippsmartin> creating a 360 degree clock in analogy with
the
> phippsmartin> 365.25 day year
>
> I don't think the Chinese ever invented the idea of dividing a
circle
> into 360 degrees. What's your point?
Maybe not, but the Chinese had to know how to measure angles in order
to devise a solar calendar. How did the Chinese measure angles? They
could have done it either by creating a unit for measuring degrees or
by geometric construction. Either way, it's an amazing accomplishment
for any culture. Maybe the Chinese developed it first and the
Sumerians learned it from them, perhaps indirectly. Or vice versa.
> phippsmartin> and the Chinese creating a 12 month astrological
> phippsmartin> cycle to corespond to the twelve months of the
year.
>
> Sorry, I meant 12 year.
>
> And don't you know that the Chinese words for "month" and "moon"
> are the same?
Dui. Wo zhidao le. The English word month of course is also related
to the word moon.
> phippsmartin> Even the symbols themselves are similar.
>
> Any examples?
In the sense that they are ideographs, not that they look the same.
The symbol for Aquarius looks like flowing water, for example.
> phippsmartin> The Sumerians developed a writing system
that
> phippsmartin> consisted of ideographs that represented both
the
> phippsmartin> meaning and sound of the spoken word. The
Sumerians
> phippsmartin> passed this idea on to the Egyptians, the
Cretians
> phippsmartin> and the Greeks, who rejected the idea in favour of
a
> phippsmartin> phonetic alphabet invented around 800 BC. The
only
> phippsmartin> other cultures to develop this kind of
writing
> phippsmartin> system were the Mayans and the Chinese.
>
> Wrong. One other tribe probably invented a logographic writing
system
> independently: the Yi minority living in South-western China.
Their
> system is very different from the Chinese one, with perhaps only
one
> thing in common: they're both logographic.
I'm curious. Wouldn't that system of writing have been banned by
Emperor Qin? How do we even know of it today? My understanding was
that there were many forms of writing that existed in Emperor Qin's day
and he banned all but what he considered standard Chinese writing.
Martin
phipps...@hotmail.com
> phipps...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> > This reminds me of a Chinese legend that one of their benevalent
> > emperors once took it upon himself to taste all of the wild plants
> > growing in China so that his people would know which ones were safe
to
> > eat. I don't know if you find that relevant or not.
>
> ancestors know how to tell poisonous stuff from edible stuff?
> Somehow the knowledge just had to be transmitted down the
> generations. Otherwise we wouldn't be here to puzzle about
> it. And whom from did our great-great-grandfatherly apes
> get that knowledge? Wind it back, wind it back, wind it back.
> To the precambrian soup.
Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on instinct
that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal eats an edible
plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but because its
ancester _didn't_ die from eating it. You're right though: people
should have known already what was safe to eat and that it another
argument against this legend being literally true.
(I remember being told as a child that people in Europe thought that
tomatoes were poisonous until somebody tried one and didn't die, so
there's a chance there might be a grain of truth to the Chinese
legend.)
Martin
Alaca
> Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on
> instinct that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal
> eats an edible plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but
> because its ancester _didn't_ die from eating it.
But how does he know his ancestor didn't die,
or how does he know his ancestor did die from
eating another plant?
More important: Is there any sense of ancestors
among animals?
> You're right though: people should have known already what was safe to
> eat and that it another argument against this legend being literally
> true.
What is the difference between man and beast in this?
Did you know when you were born smoking cigarettes
is causing long cancer, or that guns are lethal?
> (I remember being told as a child that people in Europe thought that
> tomatoes were poisonous until somebody tried one and didn't die, so
> there's a chance there might be a grain of truth to the Chinesec> legend.)
Why do you think the tomato was imported from America
in Europe and how dou _you_ know tomatoes are edible?
--
- Peter Alaca -
Martyn Harrison
>Jacques Guy wrote:
>> phipps...@hotmail.com wrote:
>>
>> > This reminds me of a Chinese legend that one of their benevalent
>> > emperors once took it upon himself to taste all of the wild plants
>> > growing in China so that his people would know which ones were safe
>> Yes, I do. I take us back to when we were apes. Did not our
>> ancestors know how to tell poisonous stuff from edible stuff?
>Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on instinct
>that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal eats an edible
>plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but because its
>ancester _didn't_ die from eating it. You're right though: people
>should have known already what was safe to eat and that it another
>argument against this legend being literally true.
Obviously so. When you are a child, you get given food to eat and you trust
your parents to know if it is safe. It's still safe when you are an adult, so
you feed it to your children too.
If a new thing comes along and nobody is sure whether it is safe, you feed it
to someone else, e.g. eager candidates wanting to join your pack or tribe and
see what effect it has on them, first.
Rats do this. Used to be that poisoned food didn't fool them because they let a
young rat eat it first and if it dropped dead they wouldn't touch it either. So
a new poison which took a week to kill was introduced, and that worked for a
while. But the rats now test it on a naive rat and wait a week or two before
deciding that's safe. I think they don't need a Chinese emperor and nor do we,
but I suspect Chinese emperors would like to be seen as benevolent.
>(I remember being told as a child that people in Europe thought that
>tomatoes were poisonous until somebody tried one and didn't die, so
>there's a chance there might be a grain of truth to the Chinese
>legend.)
I dunno about tomatoes. Google says they were brought back as an edible fruit /
vegetable from South America where they were indigenous and used as a food in
Europe from the 1500s onwards. It's difficult to see why they would have
cultivated / imported them if they were perceived as a worthless plant.
A belief in poisonous tomatoes is reported in North America, though, and
apparently persists to this day to some extent:
http://www.tomatoesareevil.com/tomatohealth.htm
AFAICS poisons are usually quite well identified because from very primitive
times people will have used the effective ones to coat hunting spears, secretly
poison their competitors for leadership of the tribe, "off" folk trying to
marry their intended bride, etc.
phipps...@hotmail.com
> phippsmartin in:
1108895048.4...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,
>
> > Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on
> > instinct that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal
> > eats an edible plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but
> > because its ancester _didn't_ die from eating it.
>
> But how does he know his ancestor didn't die,
> or how does he know his ancestor did die from
> eating another plant?
Would you have even been born if your ancestor(s) ate poisonous plants?
Martin
N
volumes by Joseph Needham...Cartography & geometry?
N.
Peter T. Daniels
> phippsmartin> The Sumerians developed a writing system that
> phippsmartin> consisted of ideographs that represented both the
> phippsmartin> meaning and sound of the spoken word. The Sumerians
> phippsmartin> passed this idea on to the Egyptians, the Cretians
> phippsmartin> and the Greeks, who rejected the idea in favour of a
> phippsmartin> phonetic alphabet invented around 800 BC. The only
> phippsmartin> other cultures to develop this kind of writing
> phippsmartin> system were the Mayans and the Chinese.
Oops, I didn't bother reading all the way to the end of the posting. He
seems not to know that Maya arithmetic is also sexagesimal.
> Wrong. One other tribe probably invented a logographic writing system
> independently: the Yi minority living in South-western China. Their
> system is very different from the Chinese one, with perhaps only one
> thing in common: they're both logographic.
Yi writing is not logographic, it's syllabic, and it's a recent
invention.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Peter T. Daniels
Alaca doesn't realize that if someone consumes poison they probably
aren't going to have any descendants.
Aversion to poisonous foods perhaps arose because some critters found
the taste unpleasant and spit out the poison, while those who didn't
have the feeling that "sour" or "bitter" was disagreeable went ahead and
swallowed it.
But, phippsmartin, why have you ignored the pointing out -- at the very
top of your thread -- that Mesoamerican numeracy is also base 60? Do you
posit transoceanic contacts that are otherwise without a trace?
These are also the three civilizations in which we know writing arose
independently. Do you insist on common origin, or have you not
considered my explanation? (See, e.g., the Blackwell Handbook of
Linguistics.)
Brian M. Scott
<dylanwhs....@pacific.net.hk> wrote in
<news:37rtu8F...@individual.net> in
sci.archaeology,sci.lang,sci.anthropology:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:42189D...@worldnet.att.net...
>> Oops, I didn't bother reading all the way to the end of the posting. He
>> seems not to know that Maya arithmetic is also sexagesimal.
> AFAIK, Maya arithmetic is mainly done in base 20.
Yes, with a small kluge for calendrical purposes.
Brian
a.man...@attbi.com
all the likelihood factors. What is the quantity and complexity of the
items exchanged.
How difficult was transmission, and did the agents have the ability to
accomplish such transmission. Also, is there any other evidence to
support the idea of exchange.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
http://sambali.blogspot.com/
Lee Sau Dan
phippsmartin> This reminds me of a Chinese legend that one of
phippsmartin> their benevalent emperors once took it upon himself
phippsmartin> to taste all of the wild plants growing in China so
phippsmartin> that his people would know which ones were safe to
phippsmartin> eat.
That's Shen2nong2. He's not an emperor. Maybe just a tribal leader.
But I think this word "Shen2nong2" could refer to a whole tribe, not
just one person.
phippsmartin> I don't know if you find that relevant or not. We
phippsmartin> can only assume that everything he tasted was safe
phippsmartin> because he suposedly survived to pass on his advice
phippsmartin> to his farmers. Or maybe what he actually did was
phippsmartin> pick some "volenteers" and then observe the results.
If Shen2nong2 is a tribe, then that tasting of all wild plants should
have been done by the whole tribe working as a team, perhaps through
many many generations. The observed results are then accumulated.
And if they're smart enough, they could have observed the effects of
the plants on animals before they tried them.
phippsmartin> I'm not saying that people didn't come up with the
phippsmartin> idea of agriculture and religion independently.
phippsmartin> Calendars, astrology, a twelve hour day, these are a
phippsmartin> bit more difficult, however.
Calendars can be independently invented. You just need a lot of time
and patience and a systematic way of observing the sky. Or just
observe, measure and record the length of the shadow of a pole to see
if there are patterns. It would be observed that the longest noon
shadow always occurs in mid-summer and mid-winter and the shortest
ones in spring and autumn. It'll then be not difficult to find out
that the 1 year agricultural cycle has about 365 days and 12 months.
It's quite useless to make 1 year = 600 days and 30 months.
Dividing a day into 12 equal intervals is a different matter, though.
We could have 20 hours or 10 hours a day. There is no nothing
instrinsic in our planet that forces us to us divide a day into 12
hours. Maybe, the people simply wanted a number that can be divided
evenly by 1,2,3,4 and 6. Adding 5 to this list of factors would bump
the number up to 60 -- that may be too much for such a short period of
1 day. So, 12 isn't that unnatural as a choice.
Astrology? I'm not familiar with it. But another poster Dylan has
already pointed out that in Chinese astrology, the sky is divided into
28 mansions. This is quite incompatible with the 12 counstellations
in the western astrological system. Given that so many culture
worship the sun and the moon, why would it be any news that some
tribes would independently relate the stars to some supernatural
forces that affect us?
Philip Deitiker
news:1108892641....@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
> Jacques Guy wrote:
>
>> Ye olde diffusionist conundrum. Sorry. Just plain common sense
>> and observation teach you that dropping a seed in a hole and
>> watering it and looking after it brings you returns. You
>> don't need Sumerians or eight-legged aliens from outer
>> space to teach you that. Just observation and experiment.
>
> This reminds me of a Chinese legend that one of their benevalent
> emperors once took it upon himself to taste all of the wild
> plants growing in China so that his people would know which ones
> were safe to eat. I don't know if you find that relevant or
> not. We can only assume that everything he tasted was safe
> because he suposedly survived to pass on his advice to his
> farmers. Or maybe what he actually did was pick some
> "volenteers" and then observe the results.
Most plants that are deadly are not really designed to kill
the eaters but to get them to spit what they just ate out, and not to
eat the same thing again.
There are some exceptions, like the castor bean plant, and of course
certain types of mushrooms. But the emperor may have already known
about these. Then the issue would be which are extremely distasteful
or not (and probably the distasteful ones went on to be used in
natural medicine, which in early china had a low stringency for
affects)
--
Philip
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____Sites_____
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Dylan Sung
> seems not to know that Maya arithmetic is also sexagesimal.
AFAIK, Maya arithmetic is mainly done in base 20.
Dyl.
yky
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:42189D...@worldnet.att.net...
>
>>
>>>Alaca wrote:
>>>
>>>>phippsmartin in:
>>>
>>>1108895048.4...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,
>>>
>>>>>Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on
>>>>>instinct that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal
>>>>>eats an edible plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but
>>>>>because its ancester _didn't_ die from eating it.
>>>>
>>>>But how does he know his ancestor didn't die,
>>>>or how does he know his ancestor did die from
>>>>eating another plant?
>>>
>>>Would you have even been born if your ancestor(s) ate poisonous plants?
>>
>>Alaca doesn't realize that if someone consumes poison they probably
>>aren't going to have any descendants.
>
>
> consumed.
>
> Alan
>
One does not die just by consuming poison. One dies by consuming
lethal dosage (or more) of poison. If it takes 10 grams to kill a
person and you take only 1 gram, you won't die. But you may become
sick and you know you should not eat any more of it.
Peter T. Daniels
> I'm curious. Wouldn't that system of writing [Yi] have been banned by
> Emperor Qin? How do we even know of it today? My understanding was
> that there were many forms of writing that existed in Emperor Qin's day
> and he banned all but what he considered standard Chinese writing.
Please consult recent works on writing systems. I don't think Emperor
Qin was living in the 20th century.
Lee Sau Dan
>> I don't think the Chinese ever invented the idea of dividing a
>> circle into 360 degrees. What's your point?
phippsmartin> Maybe not, but the Chinese had to know how to
phippsmartin> measure angles in order to devise a solar calendar.
Why? They only need to divide the year into even intervals. On the
time axis.
phippsmartin> How did the Chinese measure angles?
No idea. That's why I doubt the Chinese really invented the idea of
angle measurement.
It's not a must to have to measure angles. The concept of angle size
can be equivalently replaced by measuring the arc length of a unit
circle. So, your presumption that "the Chinese had to know how to
measure angles ..." does not hold.
phippsmartin> They could have done it either by creating a unit
phippsmartin> for measuring degrees or by geometric construction.
phippsmartin> Either way, it's an amazing accomplishment for any
phippsmartin> culture. Maybe the Chinese developed it first and
phippsmartin> the Sumerians learned it from them, perhaps
phippsmartin> indirectly. Or vice versa.
So, you don't have evidence? Maybe both cultures learnt it from
aliens. Just a "maybe".
phippsmartin> Even the symbols themselves are similar.
>> Any examples?
phippsmartin> In the sense that they are ideographs,
Many other cultures also invented them (or just a set of marks and
symbols, not a full writing system) at some point of time.
phippsmartin> not that they look the same. The symbol for
phippsmartin> Aquarius looks like flowing water, for example.
And that's so insufficient as an evidence. It may be interesting as a
clue, but definitely doesn't suffice as an evidence for your
postulations.
>> Wrong. One other tribe probably invented a logographic
>> writing system independently: the Yi minority living in
>> South-western China. Their system is very different from the
>> Chinese one, with perhaps only one thing in common: they're
>> both logographic.
phippsmartin> I'm curious. Wouldn't that system of writing have
phippsmartin> been banned by Emperor Qin?
No. Yi is another ethnicity. They're non-Han people.
phippsmartin> How do we even know of it today?
It's not yet lost. There are still some old LIVING people as well as
scholars who know this script. And you can find Unicode encodings for
the Yi ideographs.
phippsmartin> My understanding was that there were many forms of
phippsmartin> writing that existed in Emperor Qin's day and he
phippsmartin> banned all but what he considered standard Chinese
phippsmartin> writing.
I think, that only applies for the Han ethnicity. Further, those are
not completely different scripts. Just variants. Lots of variants.
Emperor Qin actually unified them, creating a standard. I don't know
what this emperor did to the writing systems of other ethnicities.
Maybe, they didn't have their own writing systems at all, or the
emperor didn't consider those "barbaric" scripts to be worth working
on.
Dylan Sung
<phipps...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1108894364....@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>> Lee Saudan
>> I don't think the Chinese ever invented the idea of dividing a
>> circle into 360 degrees. What's your point?
>
> Maybe not, but the Chinese had to know how to measure angles in order
> to devise a solar calendar. How did the Chinese measure angles? They
> could have done it either by creating a unit for measuring degrees or
> by geometric construction. Either way, it's an amazing accomplishment
> for any culture. Maybe the Chinese developed it first and the
> Sumerians learned it from them, perhaps indirectly. Or vice versa.
Angles can be represented as a ratio of lengths in a right angled triangle.
A sixth century work translated from works by Levensita used in Sui-Tang
China had tables of sines with graduations equivalent to 3.75 degrees, or
for each 90 degrees there are 24 divisions. Yi Xing during the early Tang
creates a tables of tangents.
>> phippsmartin> The Sumerians developed a writing system
>> phippsmartin> that consisted of ideographs that represented
>> phippsmartin> both the meaning and sound of the spoken word.
>> phippsmartin> The Sumerians passed this idea on to the
>> phippsmartin> Egyptians, the Cretians and the Greeks, who
>> phippsmartin> rejected the idea in favour of a phonetic
>> phippsmartin> alphabet invented around 800 BC. The only
>> phippsmartin> other cultures to develop this kind of
>> phippsmartin> writing system were the Mayans and the Chinese.
>>
>> Wrong. One other tribe probably invented a logographic writing system
>> independently: the Yi minority living in South-western China. Their
>> system is very different from the Chinese one, with perhaps only one
>> thing in common: they're both logographic.
>
> I'm curious. Wouldn't that system of writing have been banned by
> Emperor Qin? How do we even know of it today? My understanding was
> that there were many forms of writing that existed in Emperor Qin's day
> and he banned all but what he considered standard Chinese writing.
The character forms from the Warring States era of the Zhou Dynasty differed
from region to region in some cases, with certain areas using wholly
different or variant characters for particular things. Qin Shi Huangdi
abolished those variant characters from various regions and replaced them
with those character forms used in his native stronghold, western China of
his day. All those variant writings are believed to derive from shell and
bone characters then jinwen/bronze inscription type characters, and even
shell and bone characters change over the two hundred or so years span of
the Anyang artifacts. There was no systematization of character form. You
need only look at the development of characters used in the gan-zhi dates in
shell and bone inscriptions to see how much variance there are. Even the
thousand or so years of jinwen characters show a great variance in character
form, and from place to place where they are found.
As far as I know, the Yi writing system is a syllabary. The Nushu characters
I mentioned earlier have characters which are based on Chinese characters.
Dyl.
a.man...@attbi.com
zodiac is a mean Jupiter cycle, i.e. the revolution of Jupiter through
the stars divided into twelve parts.
Also the 24 chi are just the 12 solar months divided in half.
Alaca
1108903098.7...@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com,
> Alaca wrote:
>> phippsmartin wrote:
>>
>>> Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on
>>> instinct that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal
>>> eats an edible plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but
>>> because its ancester _didn't_ die from eating it.
>>
>> But how does he know his ancestor didn't die,
>> or how does he know his ancestor did die from
>> eating another plant?
>
> Would you have even been born if your ancestor(s) ate poisonous
> plants?
>
Would you have even been born if your ancestor(s) didn't?
But the point is: there is no knowledge in the genes;
not in animal genes and not in human genes.
Philip Deitiker
news:1108910699.2...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
> How difficult was transmission, and did the agents have the
> ability to accomplish such transmission. Also, is there any
> other evidence to support the idea of exchange.
You like the Picts being responsible for red-hair color in the
solomon islanders?
Alan Crozier
> >
> > Alaca wrote:
> > > phippsmartin in:
> > 1108895048.4...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,
> > >
> > > > Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on
> > > > instinct that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal
> > > > eats an edible plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but
> > > > because its ancester _didn't_ die from eating it.
> > >
> > > But how does he know his ancestor didn't die,
> > > or how does he know his ancestor did die from
> > > eating another plant?
> >
> > Would you have even been born if your ancestor(s) ate poisonous plants?
>
> Alaca doesn't realize that if someone consumes poison they probably
> aren't going to have any descendants.
Except of course the ones engendered or borne before the poison was
consumed.
Alan
--
Alan Crozier
Lund
Sweden
Dylan Sung
"yky" <y...@yky.com> wrote in message
news:bH3Sd.9519$Go4.1...@twister.southeast.rr.com...
I think ancient man would have better sense to take small dosages of
something new and wait for its consequences than to take a whole lot of
something new, and not live to tell the tale.
Dyl.
a.man...@attbi.com
the Picts?
Alaca
> phipps...@hotmail.com wrote:
>>
>> Alaca wrote:
>>> phippsmartin in:
>> 1108895048.4...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,
>>>
>>>> Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on
>>>> instinct that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal
>>>> eats an edible plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe
>>>> but because its ancester _didn't_ die from eating it.
>>>
>>> But how does he know his ancestor didn't die,
>>> or how does he know his ancestor did die from
>>> eating another plant?
>>
>> Would you have even been born if your ancestor(s) ate poisonous
>> plants?
>
> Alaca doesn't realize that if someone consumes poison they probably
> aren't going to have any descendants.
> [...]
But how do you know why your mother survived,
unless she told or showed you.
There is no way of knowing otherwise.
And even she can't tell you from personal experience
a certain plant is deadly.
Harlan Messinger
> phippsmartin in: 1108895048.4...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,
>
>> Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on
>> instinct that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal
>> eats an edible plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but
>> because its ancester _didn't_ die from eating it.
>
>
> But how does he know his ancestor didn't die,
> or how does he know his ancestor did die from
> eating another plant?
> More important: Is there any sense of ancestors
> among animals?
That was the point of mentioning instinct--that for animals it has
nothing to do with knowledge. The earlier animals in a species that had
an instinct to eat--or lacked an instinct to avoid--certain things that
were poisonous died out. Later generations represented the earlier ones
that *did* have an instinct to avoid the poisonous foods, and they
carried on that instinct.
>
>> You're right though: people should have known already what was safe to
>> eat and that it another argument against this legend being literally
>> true.
>
> What is the difference between man and beast in this?
I repeat: knowledge versus instinct. Are you not familiar with these
concepts?
[snipping more indications of the poster's missing the point]
Peter T. Daniels
>
> "yky" <y...@yky.com> wrote in message
> news:bH3Sd.9519$Go4.1...@twister.southeast.rr.com...
> > Alan Crozier wrote:
> >> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> >> news:42189D...@worldnet.att.net...
> >>
> >>>phipps...@hotmail.com wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>Alaca wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>phippsmartin in:
> >>>>
> >>>>1108895048.4...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,
> >>>>
> >>>>>>Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on
> >>>>>>instinct that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal
> >>>>>>eats an edible plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but
> >>>>>>because its ancester _didn't_ die from eating it.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>But how does he know his ancestor didn't die,
> >>>>>or how does he know his ancestor did die from
> >>>>>eating another plant?
> >>>>
> >>>>Would you have even been born if your ancestor(s) ate poisonous plants?
> >>>
> >>>Alaca doesn't realize that if someone consumes poison they probably
> >>>aren't going to have any descendants.
> >>
> >>
> >> Except of course the ones engendered or borne before the poison was
> >> consumed.
Which comes first, putting any available stuff into one's mouth, or
reproducing?
> > One does not die just by consuming poison. One dies by consuming
> > lethal dosage (or more) of poison. If it takes 10 grams to kill a
> > person and you take only 1 gram, you won't die. But you may become
> > sick and you know you should not eat any more of it.
>
> I think ancient man would have better sense to take small dosages of
> something new and wait for its consequences than to take a whole lot of
> something new, and not live to tell the tale.
We're not talking about "man." We're talking about (what I called)
"critters," because poisons didn't suddenly come into being with the
advent of human consciousness. Do fish choose their food by taste? Do
arthropods? Do crustaceans? Etc. etc., how far back do sense organs for
discriminating chemicals go in the evolutionary tree?
Peter T. Daniels
You're thinking humans. The senses evolved long before humans did.
Precisely because the critters that ate the poison didn't get to
reproduce (as much as the ones that didn't did).
Eric Stevens
Yes - as long as the plants weren't fatally poisonous.
Consider rhubarb, potatoes etc. There are many more.
Eric Stevens
Eric Stevens
>Jacques Guy wrote:
>> phipps...@hotmail.com wrote:
>>
>> > This reminds me of a Chinese legend that one of their benevalent
>> > emperors once took it upon himself to taste all of the wild plants
>> > growing in China so that his people would know which ones were safe
>to
>> > eat. I don't know if you find that relevant or not.
>>
>> Yes, I do. I take us back to when we were apes. Did not our
>> ancestors know how to tell poisonous stuff from edible stuff?
>> Somehow the knowledge just had to be transmitted down the
>> generations. Otherwise we wouldn't be here to puzzle about
>> it. And whom from did our great-great-grandfatherly apes
>> get that knowledge? Wind it back, wind it back, wind it back.
>> To the precambrian soup.
>
>Well, except that animals, so the argument goes, rely more on instinct
>that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal eats an edible
>plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but because its
>ancester _didn't_ die from eating it.
A few days ago, in the town of Nelson (New Zealand), an exercise was
carried out to exterminate an invasion of Argentine Fire Ants which
had populated an area of several hundred houses. Poisoned bait was
laid for the ants who were filmed carrying the bait into their nests.
The significant point is that all of the sites had to be baited more
or less simultaneously. Apparently, if a single colony of ants on one
side of the infestation were poisoned a period of only 3 or 4 hours
would elapse before the rest of the ants on the site knew not to touch
the bait.
This implies the ants don't rely merely on inherited knowledge but
possess an inherent adaptive behaviour which is capable of quickly
learning and communicating the dangers of new foods.
>You're right though: people
>should have known already what was safe to eat and that it another
>argument against this legend being literally true.
>(I remember being told as a child that people in Europe thought that
>tomatoes were poisonous until somebody tried one and didn't die, so
>there's a chance there might be a grain of truth to the Chinese
>legend.)
>
>Martin
>
Eric Stevens
Philip Deitiker
news:nvph11luq0c8cekhk...@4ax.com:
> A few days ago, in the town of Nelson (New Zealand), an exercise
> was carried out to exterminate an invasion of Argentine Fire
> Ants which had populated an area of several hundred houses.
> Poisoned bait was laid for the ants who were filmed carrying the
> bait into their nests.
It will not work, the best way to get rid of fire ants is by biannual
treatment with parasitic nematodes.
You can only fight the adaptive response of one animal with the
adaptive response of another.
Alaca
> Alaca wrote:
>> phippsmartin in:
>>> instinct that is passed down by artificial selection. An animal
>>> eats an edible plant not because the animal _knows_ it is safe but
>>> because its ancester _didn't_ die from eating it.
>>
>> But how does he know his ancestor didn't die,
>> or how does he know his ancestor did die from
>> eating another plant?
>> More important: Is there any sense of ancestors
>> among animals?
>
> That was the point of mentioning instinct--that for animals it has
> nothing to do with knowledge. The earlier animals in a species that
> had an instinct to eat--or lacked an instinct to avoid--certain
> things that were poisonous died out. Later generations represented
> the earlier ones that *did* have an instinct to avoid the poisonous
> foods, and they carried on that instinct.
>
>>> You're right though: people should have known already what was
>>> safe to eat and that it another argument against this legend
>>> being literally true.
>>
>> What is the difference between man and beast in this?
>
> I repeat: knowledge versus instinct. Are you not familiar with these
> concepts?
Yes I am, but it seems I'm not able to express myself adequate.
Another attempt in a difficult matter and a foreign language:
Of course there is selection through e.g. poisoning, but I don't
think the resulting "knowledge" is stored in the genes.
I think your view on "instinct" makes such storage necessary.
If that was the case there must be a gene for every possible
plant, berrie etc. Is there any?
That means the experience is only transferred to the next
generation by example, teaching/learning and/or "oral history".
Apart from the latter option, there is in my opinion no difference
in selection mechanism between (early) man and animal.
"One agrees that it is his behaviour that makes man unique.
If one would this carry back to structural properties, then it is
the brain which is function in an unique manner."
Niko Tinbergen, 1964
(with excuses for my cripple translation)
Lee Sau Dan
>> Wrong. One other tribe probably invented a logographic writing
>> system independently: the Yi minority living in South-western
>> China. Their system is very different from the Chinese one,
>> with perhaps only one thing in common: they're both
>> logographic.
Peter> Yi writing is not logographic, it's syllabic, and it's a
Peter> recent invention.
How about the Naxi script?
Lee Sau Dan
>> Wrong. One other tribe probably invented a logographic writing
>> system independently: the Yi minority living in South-western
>> China. Their system is very different from the Chinese one,
>> with perhaps only one thing in common: they're both
>> logographic.
Peter> Yi writing is not logographic, it's syllabic, and it's a
Peter> recent invention.
1) How recent?
2) Was it an independent invention?
Tedd Jacobs
"Philip Deitiker" wrote...
false. adaptive response is conditioned by environment. change the
environment and the response is no longer adaptive.
phipps...@hotmail.com
> > >>>>> "phippsmartin" == phippsmartin <phipps...@hotmail.com>
>
> > phippsmartin> The Sumerians developed a writing system
> > phippsmartin> consisted of ideographs that represented both
the
> > phippsmartin> meaning and sound of the spoken word. The
Sumerians
> > phippsmartin> passed this idea on to the Egyptians, the
Cretians
> > phippsmartin> and the Greeks, who rejected the idea in favour
of a
> > phippsmartin> phonetic alphabet invented around 800 BC. The
only
> > phippsmartin> other cultures to develop this kind of
> > phippsmartin> system were the Mayans and the Chinese.
>
> Oops, I didn't bother reading all the way to the end of the posting.
He
> seems not to know that Maya arithmetic is also sexagesimal.
I looked it up. The Mayan number system is base 20. If it had been
base 60 I would have mentioned it.
Martin
phipps...@hotmail.com
> But, phippsmartin, why have you ignored the pointing out -- at the
very
> top of your thread -- that Mesoamerican numeracy is also base 60? Do
you
> posit transoceanic contacts that are otherwise without a trace?
>
> These are also the three civilizations in which we know writing arose
> independently. Do you insist on common origin, or have you not
> considered my explanation? (See, e.g., the Blackwell Handbook of
> Linguistics.)
I'm not ignoring anything. The internet was slow and I went to bed.
Different time zone.
http://www.michielb.nl/maya/math.html
The Mayan number system is base 20.
Martin
phipps...@hotmail.com
I was responding to the poster who claimed that Yi was created
independently of traditional Chinese.
Martin
phipps...@hotmail.com
> >>>>> "phippsmartin" == phippsmartin <phipps...@hotmail.com>
writes:
>
> >> I don't think the Chinese ever invented the idea of dividing
a
> >> circle into 360 degrees. What's your point?
>
> phippsmartin> Maybe not, but the Chinese had to know how to
> phippsmartin> measure angles in order to devise a solar calendar.
>
> Why? They only need to divide the year into even intervals. On
the
> time axis.
I was under the impression that they needed to be able to measure
angles in order to determine the sun's position in the sky. Maybe not.
In Western astrology, the zodiac is represented by a circle with 12
segments with a symbol in each segment. I've seen the Chinese zodiac
represented similarly but that might not have been a traditional
representation.
Martin
phipps...@hotmail.com
As someone else pointed out, we might instinctively know what tastes
bad and this might be an evolutionary advantage to prevent us from
eating poison.
Martin
Philip Deitiker
news:cvb03...@enews2.newsguy.com:
Try that logic on fire ants, these argentinian fire ants have been in
Texas since before I could cut grass. Every chemical has been tried,
people tried Amdro, the fire ants responded by creating multiple
queens and as soon as queens started dying they would take the live
queens and move.
I tell you how clever these fire ants are, you probably wont
believe this, I treate my yard with nematodes and this got rid of all
of the mounds. I have a strand of Japanese Timber Bamboo (Bambusia
Oldhamii). Each time the bamboo shoot up they creat sheeths to
protect the growing tip which the slit and dry. I leave the sheeths
on as it keeps the lower segments from spouting branches.
The nematods kill by attacking the eggs. The fire ants, being
stalked by these nematods put their colonies close to the base of the
bamboo but transported the eggs rapidly to the sheets, where the
nematodes could not stalk them. They also did the same by moving
colonies to elevated pots and all kinds a places that you would never
expect to find a fire ant mound. So now when I spread nematodes I
target the places where they move eggs to and from with higher
concentrations.
Fire ants love to build mounds inside of the 4160 Volt transformers
that are placed on the ground in newer neighborhoods, the residence
avoid treating because of higher voltages.
Fire ants are incredibly adaptive, the best you can ask for is
detent between the nematode on the ground and the small number of
places they learn to hide their eggs at. One other thing, the worm
snakes, which ordinarily could not attack a mound have found it
convienient to get the eggs in these pots and sheets and I have found
many gorged worm snakes in the bottom of a were these eggs have been
transported to. The ants typically bury hundreds between oak leaves
but because they are above the main colony they only guard them with
a few ants, which the snakes can tolerate. As a result we have seen a
blossoming of the worm snake population since the nematodes were
introduced.
Evolution at work.
Jacques Guy
[...]
> Evolution at work.
I doubt that is evolution. I rather tend to think
it is intelligence. Not intelligence within the
individual ants, but intelligence as the ant-hill
being a single intelligent entity. "El espíritu de
la columena" if you like to word it that way.
Dylan Sung
Reproducing, if you're going as far back as the earliest life forms. Single
cell or microscopic organisms are able to absorb nutrients through their
cell walls.
>
>> > One does not die just by consuming poison. One dies by consuming
>> > lethal dosage (or more) of poison. If it takes 10 grams to kill a
>> > person and you take only 1 gram, you won't die. But you may become
>> > sick and you know you should not eat any more of it.
>>
>> I think ancient man would have better sense to take small dosages of
>> something new and wait for its consequences than to take a whole lot of
>> something new, and not live to tell the tale.
>
> We're not talking about "man." We're talking about (what I called)
> "critters," because poisons didn't suddenly come into being with the
> advent of human consciousness. Do fish choose their food by taste? Do
> arthropods? Do crustaceans? Etc. etc., how far back do sense organs for
> discriminating chemicals go in the evolutionary tree?
I didn't realise from the above that they weren't talking about 'man'. Fish
are ancient ancestors, but more recent land animals with taste buds can I
would have though distinguish between something sweet or something bitter.
Most poisons tend to be bitter alkaloids, and I would guess that the early
animals able to distinguish between different tastes would avoid alkaloid
laden vegetation.
Today, predators such as frogs who taste animals which are unpleasent don't
necessary die, but they will tend to avoid those animals next time around.
Like someone else said, this is taste testing on a small quantity.
Dyl.
Dylan Sung
"Lee Sau Dan" <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message
news:873bvru...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de...
> How about the Naxi script?
I would call it more pictographic, with the interpretation left to the
person who has learned the stories behind the images recorded.
Dyl.
Dylan Sung
"Philip Deitiker" <Donev...@worlnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:hUbSd.60760$Th1....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> "Tedd Jacobs" <Jac...@mail.boisestate.edu> says in
> news:cvb03...@enews2.newsguy.com:
>
>>
>> "Philip Deitiker" wrote...
>>> Eric Stevens <eric.s...@sum.co.nz> says in
>>> news:nvph11luq0c8cekhk...@4ax.com:
>>>
>>>> A few days ago, in the town of Nelson (New Zealand), an
>>>> exercise was carried out to exterminate an invasion of
>>>> Argentine Fire Ants which had populated an area of several
>>>> hundred houses. Poisoned bait was laid for the ants who were
>>>> filmed carrying the bait into their nests.
>>>
>>> It will not work, the best way to get rid of fire ants is by
>>> biannual treatment with parasitic nematodes.
>>>
>>> You can only fight the adaptive response of one animal with the
>>> adaptive response of another.
>>
>> false. adaptive response is conditioned by environment. change
>> the environment and the response is no longer adaptive.
>
> Try that logic on fire ants, these argentinian fire ants have been in
> Texas since before I could cut grass. Every chemical has been tried,
> people tried Amdro, the fire ants responded by creating multiple
> queens and as soon as queens started dying they would take the live
> queens and move.
I was in HK for the last month, and there has been a discovery of fire ants
there. From one intial discovery, over two hundred such colonies were found
across HK.
For the New Years, the local tradition is to buy tangerine bushes (about 4
or 5 feet tall) and it's thought that the infestation was brought via China
to HK in such pots. There was a slump in sales after the media produced a
lot of scary images of what fire ant bites looked like, and there was the
warning of not to provoke the beasties. One piece of advice I heard on tv
there was that soapy water would kill them. Seems incredible to me....
Dyl,
Lee Sau Dan
phippsmartin> Maybe not, but the Chinese had to know how to
phippsmartin> measure angles in order to devise a solar calendar.
>> Why? They only need to divide the year into even intervals.
>> On the time axis.
phippsmartin> I was under the impression that they needed to be
phippsmartin> able to measure angles in order to determine the
phippsmartin> sun's position in the sky. Maybe not.
As I mentioned before, one can easily draw a circle centred at a pole
and then measure along the circumference of the circle. It's a length
measurement, equivalent to and replacing an angle measurement.
John Atkinson
"Philip Deitiker" <Donev...@worlnet.att.net> wrote...
> Eric Stevens <eric.s...@sum.co.nz> says:
>
> > A few days ago, in the town of Nelson (New Zealand), an exercise
> > was carried out to exterminate an invasion of Argentine Fire
> > Ants which had populated an area of several hundred houses.
> > Poisoned bait was laid for the ants who were filmed carrying the
> > bait into their nests.
>
> It will not work, the best way to get rid of fire ants is by biannual
> treatment with parasitic nematodes.
This may well be an appropriate method to *control* an infestation, in a
country where the ants are already well established. But in this case, I
suspect we have a pest which has just been detected in a very restricted
area in a country where it's never been before. Obviously, they want to
kill every one of them at once, within days, before they can spread.
> You can only fight the adaptive response of one animal with the
> adaptive response of another.
An introduced species can never be eliminated by biological means, that is
by introducing its natural enemy. This approach is however sometimes very
successful in reducing its numbers so it is no longer a significant pest.
John.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> >>>>> "Peter" == Peter T Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>
> >> Wrong. One other tribe probably invented a logographic writing
> >> system independently: the Yi minority living in South-western
> >> China. Their system is very different from the Chinese one,
> >> with perhaps only one thing in common: they're both
> >> logographic.
>
> Peter> Yi writing is not logographic, it's syllabic, and it's a
> Peter> recent invention.
>
> How about the Naxi script?
It's not writing.
Peter T. Daniels
Indeed it was. Quite recently.
Martyn Harrison
<dylanwhs....@pacific.net.hk> said:
>
>warning of not to provoke the beasties. One piece of advice I heard on tv
>there was that soapy water would kill them. Seems incredible to me....
Seems to work here, although I'll admit this may be coincidence.
I've tended to accept the theory that you can't drown insects as surface
tension prevents water from entering their spiracles (or whatever it is they
breath through). But soap breaks down the surface tension and allows the water
into their cavities, whereupon they drown. But I tend to put down chemical
stuff now.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> >>>>> "Peter" == Peter T Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>
> >> Wrong. One other tribe probably invented a logographic writing
> >> system independently: the Yi minority living in South-western
> >> China. Their system is very different from the Chinese one,
> >> with perhaps only one thing in common: they're both
> >> logographic.
>
> Peter> Yi writing is not logographic, it's syllabic, and it's a
> Peter> recent invention.
>
> 1) How recent?
According to Dingxu Shi in WWS 239-43, "1970s."
> 2) Was it an independent invention?
In what sense?
phipps...@hotmail.com
> Sumerian and Chinese astrology are also similar. (See
> http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/FAQ.htm and
> http://www.astrologycom.com/zodiac2.html ) Both the Chinese and the
> Sumerians divided the solar year into twelve months and assigned a
> symbol to each month, usually an animal. Both cultures believed that
> your future, even your character, could be determined based on when
you
> were born.
>
> Even the symbols themselves are similar. The Sumerians developed a
> writing system that consisted of ideographs that represented both the
> meaning and sound of the spoken word. The Sumerians passed this idea
> on to the Egyptians, the Cretians and the Greeks, who rejected the
idea
> in favour of a phonetic alphabet invented around 800 BC. The only
> other cultures to develop this kind of writing system were the Mayans
> and the Chinese. (See
> http://www.pinyin.info/readings/visible_speech.html ) The Chinese
use
> a similar writing system to this day.
Okay, this is really creepy. The webpage
http://www.art-poster-online.com/mayan_zodiac_animals.html claims that
the Mayans also had a zodiac with the following animals: Bat, Scorpion,
Deer, Owl, Peacock, Lizard, Monkey, Hawk, Jaguar, Dog, Serpent, Rabbit
and Turle. The Mayan culture seems to have eerie similarities to both
the Sumer and Chinese cultures. The diffusionist or trade-route
explanations don't seem good enough to explain a Sumer-China-Mayan
link, not unless we're willing to believe that the Chinese had sea
trade with ancient Mayans.
What was it somebody said about the Mayans believing in a sixty year
cycle? (Vaguely) similar writing systems, similar astrological
beliefs, a strange obsession with the number 60, that's all a bit odd.
Martin
Peter T. Daniels
There is a "gene" (if you want to put it that way) that makes the brain
interpret stimulation of the "bitter" taste bud as 'unpleasant', and
that "gene" came into being because critters that spit out
bitter-tasting things had more progeny than ones that didn't. They
presumably represented a mutation with, among its effects, a correlation
of "bitter" with "unpleasant."
Of course chefs and cuisines incorporate stimulation of "bitter" into
their repertoire -- chocolate, for instance.
> That means the experience is only transferred to the next
> generation by example, teaching/learning and/or "oral history".
> Apart from the latter option, there is in my opinion no difference
> in selection mechanism between (early) man and animal.
>
> "One agrees that it is his behaviour that makes man unique.
> If one would this carry back to structural properties, then it is
> the brain which is function in an unique manner."
> Niko Tinbergen, 1964
> (with excuses for my cripple translation)
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Philip Deitiker
news:140k11t5l9gj1sjor...@4ax.com:
> Apparently on date 21 Feb 2005 06:11:14 -0800,
> That's a new age art site trying to sell artistic stuff, not a
> good reference site. And do you get Peacocks in South America?
>
>>and Turle. The Mayan culture seems to have eerie similarities
>>to both the Sumer and Chinese cultures. The diffusionist or
>>trade-route explanations don't seem good enough to explain a
>>Sumer-China-Mayan link, not unless we're willing to believe that
>>the Chinese had sea trade with ancient Mayans.
>
> It's obvious that ancient people, wherever you find them, are
> surrounded by various indigenous animals. There is nothing too
> hard about using them to associate with seasons. On a simple
> level the rabbits start getting numerous at some point in the
> year, e.g. the fourth moon since midwinter. It would be pretty
> natural to call the fourth moon, the moon of the rabbit, if that
> was happening.
>
> It's also inevitable that you get 13 moons in a year. That's due
> to the lunar cycle of 28 days and the solar cycle of 365 :
> 365/28 = 13
364/28 = 13 There is 1.25 days per year to account for. Its better
than 5 days per year.
> To end up with 13 months of 28 days, each named after an animal
> is hardly a shockingly bizarre notion that can only have come
> from a different culture.
> But actually, the Maya were a lot more sophisticated than that
> and I doubt they had a sort of new age astrology similar to the
> American one but with different names. Much like Mesopotamia
> wasn't the way some like to think.
There calender was 394 years in length, they would need alot of
animals to have a calander like the chinese. In fact the Mayan cheif
would probably need a team of biologist on hand to classify new
animlas for the calender.
YOu would have the year of the black headed stanged toothed soil
nematode, the year of the fire ant, the year of the bicolor gobi, the
year of the red crested woodpecker.
> Similarly, Chinese astrology has animals, but they're not
> monthly, they're annual (year of the rabbit, etc) and I rather
> think that's a gross simplification on my part too.
See above.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote in: 4219ED...@worldnet.att.net,
> Roe deer e.g. are thriving on a diet with a high content of
> bitter tannines. Animals with unpleasant smelling of tasting
> secretions like shrews, bugs and many beetles, are never-
> theless edible and eaten. And the danger of collecting
> mushrooms is that some tasty ones are very poisonous
> or deadly /and/ are look-alikes of harmless species.
Spitting out bitter things was evolutionarily advantageous over eating
bitter things.
Another ecological niche thus opened up for critters that could eat
bitter things that might be disagreeable for others.
And you don't know that roe deer find "bitter tannines"
unpleasant-tasting; indeed, they probably don't.
And who is evaluating the flavor of shrews, bugs, and beetles -- you, or
the critters that like to eat them?
Why, I'm told that some human critters even find broccoli unpleasant!
For speculation on why tasty mushrooms resemble poisonous ones, see the
voluminous literature on monarch butterflies and their imitators (or
vice versa).
Alaca
> Alaca wrote:
Not all poison is bitter en not all bitter food is poisonous!
Roe deer e.g. are thriving on a diet with a high content of
bitter tannines. Animals with unpleasant smelling of tasting
secretions like shrews, bugs and many beetles, are never-
theless edible and eaten. And the danger of collecting
mushrooms is that some tasty ones are very poisonous
or deadly /and/ are look-alikes of harmless species.
--
- Peter Alaca -
Philip Deitiker
news:1108995074....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
There are no peacocks in central america.
>, Lizard, Monkey,
> Hawk, Jaguar, Dog, Serpent, Rabbit and Turtle. The Mayan culture
> seems to have eerie similarities to both the Sumer and Chinese
> cultures. The diffusionist or trade-route explanations don't
> seem good enough to explain a Sumer-China-Mayan link, not unless
> we're willing to believe that the Chinese had sea trade with
> ancient Mayans.
>
> What was it somebody said about the Mayans believing in a sixty
> year cycle? (Vaguely) similar writing systems, similar
> astrological beliefs, a strange obsession with the number 60,
> that's all a bit odd.
The mayan cycle was:
kin = day
uinal (1 uinal = 20 kin = 20 days)
tun (1 tun = 18 uinal = 360 days = approx. 1 year)
katun (1 katun = 20 tun = 7,200 days = approx. 20 years)
baktun (1 baktun = 20 katun = 144,000 days = approx. 394 years
Base system = 20 x 18 = 360 x 20 = 7200 x 20 = 144,000
There are all kinds of kooks born everyday, one shouldn't be
surprised if one uncovers one more.
Martyn Harrison
That's a new age art site trying to sell artistic stuff, not a good reference
site. And do you get Peacocks in South America?
>and Turle. The Mayan culture seems to have eerie similarities to both
>the Sumer and Chinese cultures. The diffusionist or trade-route
>explanations don't seem good enough to explain a Sumer-China-Mayan
>link, not unless we're willing to believe that the Chinese had sea
>trade with ancient Mayans.
It's obvious that ancient people, wherever you find them, are surrounded by
various indigenous animals. There is nothing too hard about using them to
associate with seasons. On a simple level the rabbits start getting numerous at
some point in the year, e.g. the fourth moon since midwinter. It would be
pretty natural to call the fourth moon, the moon of the rabbit, if that was
happening.
It's also inevitable that you get 13 moons in a year. That's due to the lunar
cycle of 28 days and the solar cycle of 365 : 365/28 = 13
To end up with 13 months of 28 days, each named after an animal is hardly a
shockingly bizarre notion that can only have come from a different culture.
But actually, the Maya were a lot more sophisticated than that and I doubt they
had a sort of new age astrology similar to the American one but with different
names. Much like Mesopotamia wasn't the way some like to think.
Similarly, Chinese astrology has animals, but they're not monthly, they're
Martyn Harrison
>>
>As I mentioned before, one can easily draw a circle centred at a pole
>and then measure along the circumference of the circle. It's a length
>measurement, equivalent to and replacing an angle measurement.
>>
>
>The Chinese did measure the circle in degrees.:
>
>Ming Yun Ta Kuan: Divided circle into 365.25 degrees
This would be to do with the number of days in a year, and the fact that the
stars move around the sky relative to a fixed solar time, in 1 / 365.25ths per
day. Accessible to any culture, of course, but shows a good grasp of astronomy.
>Huai Nan Tzu (2nd cent. BC): Division into 100 k'o
Sounds reasonable as a decimal system, but less useful than 360 when
considering fractions of a circle. 60 would be good too.
>I Shu Tien (14th cent.): Division into 360 degrees in Chinese
>horoscopes.
Tempting to see this as an approximation of days / motion like in arabic
astronomy. Much easier and almost as accurate, to see motion of celestial
lights in terms of parts of 360, e.g. in one hour, you move fifteen degrees
round the sky. Two hours, you move 30 degrees.
In the northern hemisphere you can look at the big dipper, find north from
Polaris, and use the dipper as an hour hand. It rotates around Polaris once per
day, roughly (actually, it's about one degree out each complete day due to the
fact that the earth rotates less often than once a day. This fact can be used
to get the month, as when the sun rises, the dipper will be in a position that
tells you the day of the year, as it fades in the dawn light.)
It's easily workable on a nightly clock and a daily clock using the sun or a
blue sky moon, but isn't quite right when considering the motion of the annual
cycle (would be helpful if the year was 360 days long). Similarly, the moon, it
would be nice if it went around the earth in exactly 30 days, then we could
have a calendar of 12 months, each of thirty days, and a choice between 24, 36,
12 or maybe 360 hours in the day.
But since the time taken for the rotation of the earth, the time taken for an
orbit of the moon around the earth, and the time taken for both bodies to orbit
around the sun are all unrelated they don't evenly divide with each other.
Hence a variety of calendars that sort of approximate and compromise the
figures so they fit in a workable way.
(Call me Mr Simplification, but I'm kind of glad we don't have 36.025 hours in
a day.)
Lee Sau Dan
Martyn> Similarly, Chinese astrology has animals, but they're not
Martyn> monthly, they're annual (year of the rabbit, etc) and I
Martyn> rather think that's a gross simplification on my part too.
You're confusing the Chinese zodiac with Chinese astrology. The
Chinese zodiac is a cycle of 12 animals assigned to each year. I
don't think that has anything related to the sky. Chinese astrology
talks about stars, and has its own system of counstellations.
BTW, do you know why the cat does not belong to that set of 12
animals?
Peter T. Daniels
> > But actually, the Maya were a lot more sophisticated than that
> > and I doubt they had a sort of new age astrology similar to the
> > American one but with different names. Much like Mesopotamia
> > wasn't the way some like to think.
>
> There calender was 394 years in length, they would need alot of
> animals to have a calander like the chinese. In fact the Mayan cheif
> would probably need a team of biologist on hand to classify new
> animlas for the calender.
> YOu would have the year of the black headed stanged toothed soil
> nematode, the year of the fire ant, the year of the bicolor gobi, the
> year of the red crested woodpecker.
Descriptions of the Maya calendar are readily available. It has 20
day-names and 18 month-names. It does not have year names; it has
multi-digit year numbers.
a.man...@attbi.com
As I mentioned before, one can easily draw a circle centred at a pole
and then measure along the circumference of the circle. It's a length
measurement, equivalent to and replacing an angle measurement.
>
The Chinese did measure the circle in degrees.:
Ming Yun Ta Kuan: Divided circle into 365.25 degrees
Huai Nan Tzu (2nd cent. BC): Division into 100 k'o
I Shu Tien (14th cent.): Division into 360 degrees in Chinese
horoscopes.
According to tradition, the Emperor Shun (2255-2205 BCE) invented an
armillary sphere known as the "Pearl Geared Jade Rail" although there
is not archaeological data to back up such an early date.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
http://sambali.blogspot.com/
Jacques Guy
> What was it somebody said about the Mayans believing in a sixty year
> cycle?
Fifty-two.
>(Vaguely) similar writing systems
Not even vaguely. The direction of writing (twin vertical
columns) is nothing like Sumerian or Chinese. The glyphs
are nothing like Sumerian or Chinese. So what similarities
are left?
> similar astrological
> beliefs
None of my books on the Maya mentions astrology.
There appears to be a zodiac, in the Paris Codex,
but it comprises 13 constellations/signs, not 12
> a strange obsession with the number 60
52
Martyn Harrison
<dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> said:
>>>>>> "Martyn" == Martyn Harrison <nos...@spammers.of.the.world.unite> writes:
>
> Martyn> Similarly, Chinese astrology has animals, but they're not
> Martyn> monthly, they're annual (year of the rabbit, etc) and I
> Martyn> rather think that's a gross simplification on my part too.
>
>You're confusing the Chinese zodiac with Chinese astrology. The
>Chinese zodiac is a cycle of 12 animals assigned to each year. I
>don't think that has anything related to the sky. Chinese astrology
>talks about stars, and has its own system of counstellations.
I'm not sure I understand the distinction here.
Western astronomy (with an "m") is about stars, and groups of stars make up
constellations, some of which are associated with the signs of the Zodiac, e.g.
Pisces is a Zodiacal constellation, while most aren't (AFAIK) e.g. Pegasus. The
Zodiac has twelve signs - constellations - that are arranged around the
ecliptic so that they progress round daily and annually.
The Zodiac, while using constellations used also in astronomy, is central to
astrology (with a "g"). Astrology is of course fortune telling in the west,
e.g. everyone is assigned to a constellation such as Pisces and in its simplest
form, they can look up "Pisces" and learn they will come into money today.
My point being, if the Zodiac wasn't concerned with stars, it would *only* have
relevance to fortune tellers, i.e. astrologers.
On a similar comparison, western astronomy (with an "m") has constellations
that are *only* about stars and there are lots of these, coming on for a
hundred as I recall, although it doesn't matter too much as they're essentially
arbitrary. In astronomy, these constellations are used to identify particular
stars due to the way they seem to be grouped to an observer on earth, they have
no other significance.
Hence my confusion, astrology here wouldn't have much use for other
constellations, whereas astronomy definitely does, but doesn't need the Zodiac
for anything.
Does Chinese astrology really not have "the year of the xyz" then? That's the
only context I've actually seen it in... Fascinating if it is a myth :)
>BTW, do you know why the cat does not belong to that set of 12
>animals?
Vague memory prompts that the compilers didn't see a difference between the cat
and the rabbit, and used them interchangeably..?
Tak To
> The Chinese sky was divided into twelve double hours. Also, the lunar
> zodiac is a mean Jupiter cycle, i.e. the revolution of Jupiter through
> the stars divided into twelve parts.
So it is a "Jovian" zodiac rather than a "lunar" one.
> Also the 24 chi are just the 12 solar months divided in half.
It depends on how a "solar" month is defined. Presumably a "solar"
month is defined as 1/12 of 365.25 days? Well, the 24 qi's are defined
by the angle rather than the duration. The "solar" orbit being
elliptical, these two do not match exactly.
Tak
--
----------------------------------------------------------------+-----
Tak To ta...@alum.mit.eduxx
--------------------------------------------------------------------^^
[taode takto ~{LU5B~}] NB: trim the xx to get my real email addr
Tak To
> But the point is: there is no knowledge in the genes;
> not in animal genes and not in human genes.
This is tied to the question whether evolution proceeds by purely
_random_ gene mutation or not. The fact is that the (lack of) variety
of genetic variants does not match the theory of purely random mutation
very well.
Tak To
> That's Shen2nong2. He's not an emperor. Maybe just a tribal leader.
> But I think this word "Shen2nong2" could refer to a whole tribe, not
> just one person.
>
> If Shen2nong2 is a tribe, then that tasting of all wild plants should
> have been done by the whole tribe working as a team, perhaps through
> many many generations. The observed results are then accumulated.
> And if they're smart enough, they could have observed the effects of
> the plants on animals before they tried them.
Well, the legend has Shen2nong2 determined not only whether plants are
poisonous or not, but down to what diseases each of them is good for.
Even for a whole tribe, this is very, very unlikely.
Geoff
> Philip Deitiker wrote:
> [...]
>
>> Evolution at work.
>
>
> I doubt that is evolution. I rather tend to think
> it is intelligence. Not intelligence within the
> individual ants, but intelligence as the ant-hill
> being a single intelligent entity. "El espíritu de
> la columena" if you like to word it that way.
I recall a science experiment when I was in High School (early 1960s)
where flatworms were trained to swim toward a light to be fed. Then they
were ground up and fed to other flatworms who hadn't seen the light box
apparatus, and the incidence of the new ones swimming to the light was
far higher than random. The theory was that some of the cells of the
food worms incorporated themselves into the new worms and "shared" the
info about food being at the light. IIRC, of course.
Lee Sau Dan
Martyn> Does Chinese astrology really not have "the year of the
Martyn> xyz" then?
I'm not sure what you mean by "astrology" here, then. i.e. bad
question. In the West, "astrology" is something bringing stars and
fortune telling together. We do have something similar in Chinese
culture, but that's not related to those 12 animals in the "Chinese
zodiac".
"The year of rooster" does have something to do with fortune telling
in Chinese. But it isn't related to anything in the sky. So, I don't
like to call it astrology (doesn't "astro" have something to do with
the sky?). I even find the term "Chinese zodiac" awkward and
misleading. Other than have 12 members and having some relation to
fortune telling, what's in common enough to call it "Chinese zodiac"?
Martyn> That's the only context I've actually seen it
Martyn> in... Fascinating if it is a myth :)
The only thing I want to say is that that 12 animal cycle associated
with the Chinese years does not have anything to do with the stars
(other than the sun, which let's us define "year").
>> BTW, do you know why the cat does not belong to that set of 12
>> animals?
Martyn> Vague memory prompts that the compilers didn't see a
Martyn> difference between the cat and the rabbit, and used them
Martyn> interchangeably..?
Some scholars postulate that cats didn't exist in ancient China.
Tak To
> Chinese astrology divides the sky into 28 mansions.
Or Chinese astronomy. See
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/stellar/scenes/china28/index.html
Jacques Guy
> I recall a science experiment when I was in High School (early 1960s)
> where flatworms were trained to swim toward a light to be fed. Then they
> were ground up and fed to other flatworms who hadn't seen the light box
> apparatus, and the incidence of the new ones swimming to the light was
> far higher than random. The theory was that some of the cells of the
> food worms incorporated themselves into the new worms and "shared" the
> info about food being at the light. IIRC, of course.
Yes, I remember having read such reports, although long after I was
in high school. It's distinctively Lamarckian, though--but I personally
don't hold anything against Lamarck. If we try and explain any behaviour
away as "instinct" then we are forced to admit that knowledge can be
transmitted genetically, and so can be acquired knowledge.
Tak To
> It's obvious that ancient people, wherever you find them, are surrounded by
> various indigenous animals. There is nothing too hard about using them to
> associate with seasons. On a simple level the rabbits start getting numerous at
> some point in the year, e.g. the fourth moon since midwinter. It would be
> pretty natural to call the fourth moon, the moon of the rabbit, if that was
> happening.
> Similarly, Chinese astrology has animals, but they're not monthly, they're
> annual (year of the rabbit, etc) and I rather think that's a gross
> simplification on my part too.
As Paul Kekai Manansala pointed out, the "Chinese zodiac" is a Jovian
one, a complete cycle of which lasts 12 years. The association between
animal and year seems to be derived from association between animal
and the constellation. (The animal of the constellation in which
Jupitor appears on the Vernal Equinox at noon would be the animal of
the year.)
Tak To
> You're confusing the Chinese zodiac with Chinese astrology. The
> Chinese zodiac is a cycle of 12 animals assigned to each year. I
> don't think that has anything related to the sky. Chinese astrology
> talks about stars, and has its own system of counstellations.
Each of the 28 constellations is associated with an animal. The animal
of the constellation in which Jupitor appears on the Vernal Equinox at
noon would be the animal of the year.
However, it is not clear which of the following association is the
"base" one: animal-constellation, animal-year, animal-earthly stems.
> BTW, do you know why the cat does not belong to that set of 12
> animals?
As every kid in China knows, it was because the mouse tricked that
cat so that the latter was late for the roll call before the Jade
Emperor at the time the years were assigned. And that's why cats
would forever chase after mice... :-)
Dylan Sung
"Jacques Guy" <jg...@alphalink.com.au> wrote in message
news:421A35...@alphalink.com.au...
> phipps...@hotmail.com wrote:
>> What was it somebody said about the Mayans believing in a sixty year
>> cycle?
>
> Fifty-two.
Well approximately fifty two solar years. The 365 day Haab which running for
52 complete Haab cycles gives a total of 18980 days. This period of 18980
days is also 73 cycles of 260 days, where the 260 day period is a tzolkin in
Aztec(can't recall what it is in Mayan offhand). Within the 18980 days known
as the Calendar Round, each Haab and tzolkin date combination is unique
within the approximately 52 solar years.
The Maya calendar of the Haab has nineteen months, 18 of which are 20 days
long, and the last having 5 days is unlucky. (The egyptians story of
Thoth(?) playing chess against the moon won enough of its brightness to
create five new days so that Horus could be born, prior to which the
egyptian calendar was said to be 360 days long, I recall from my school
days...,)
The 260 day ceromonial calendar consists of 20 days repeated in 13 cycles.
>
>>(Vaguely) similar writing systems
>
> Not even vaguely. The direction of writing (twin vertical
> columns) is nothing like Sumerian or Chinese. The glyphs
> are nothing like Sumerian or Chinese. So what similarities
> are left?
This discussion about Maya and Chinese come up some time ago in sci.lang I
recall.
>
>> similar astrological
>> beliefs
>
> None of my books on the Maya mentions astrology.
> There appears to be a zodiac, in the Paris Codex,
> but it comprises 13 constellations/signs, not 12
Thirteen sound right, as in the thirteen lords of the night, used in
inscriptions on stelae.
>
>> a strange obsession with the number 60
>
> 52
which is 13 x 4, an obsession with 13, perhaps?
Dyl.
Dylan Sung
"Philip Deitiker" <Donev...@worlnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:A2oSd.62626$Th1....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>> http://www.art-poster-online.com/mayan_zodiac_animals.html
>> claims that the Mayans also had a zodiac with the following
>> animals: Bat, Scorpion, Deer, Owl, Peacock
>
> There are no peacocks in central america.
>
Perhaps he means the quetzal bird?
Dyl.
Dylan Sung
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:421A1E...@worldnet.att.net...
> Philip Deitiker wrote:
>
>> > But actually, the Maya were a lot more sophisticated than that
>> > and I doubt they had a sort of new age astrology similar to the
>> > American one but with different names. Much like Mesopotamia
>> > wasn't the way some like to think.
> Descriptions of the Maya calendar are readily available. It has 20
> day-names and 18 month-names. It does not have year names; it has
> multi-digit year numbers.
There are nineteen month names, the last being of only 5 days long. The
counting of days is the basic method of dating, but the Katun cycle of 7200
days (approximately 20 solar years long) is usually used to count periods in
Maya dates.
Dyl.
Alaca
> Alaca wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote
>>> Alaca wrote:
>>>> Harlan Messinger wrote
>>>>> Alaca wrote:
>>>>>> phippsmartin wrote
You are right, but it was not /me/ who made the connection
between bitter and poison. I was reasoning against it and
against the assumption that 'knowledge' of poisonous food
is inherited and in my view 'instinct' implies just that.
You don't know whitch berry is save to eat, unless someone
told you.
Definition of /instinct/ according to Britannica Online
"Instinct: Involuntary response by an animal to an external stimulus.
The concept has come to refer to complex unlearned behaviour that
is recognizable and predictable in at least one sex of a species.
Instinctive behaviour is an inherited mechanism that serves to promote
the survival of an animal or species. Among mammals, learned behaviour
often prevails over instinctive behaviour."
Tak To
> I Shu Tien (14th cent.): Division into 360 degrees in Chinese
> horoscopes.
That's probably imported from India or Arabic traders.
Philip Deitiker
news:421A1E...@worldnet.att.net:
> Descriptions of the Maya calendar are readily available. It has
> 20 day-names and 18 month-names. It does not have year names; it
> has multi-digit year numbers.
So it is not a replication of the chinese calender.
Philip Deitiker
news:3NqSd.2768$873...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net:
But for argentinian ants living in Texas, being subjected to Amdro or
the pesticide of the month, they have evolved to be more adaptive to
their new circumstances. This is something that one sees when species
move into new territories, and the fast evolvers, for a period have
advantages over the slow evolvers.
It is evolution, if not evolution for more rapid adaptation.
a.man...@attbi.com
Tak To wrote:
> a.man...@attbi.com wrote:
> > The Chinese sky was divided into twelve double hours. Also, the
lunar
> > zodiac is a mean Jupiter cycle, i.e. the revolution of Jupiter
through
> > the stars divided into twelve parts.
>
> So it is a "Jovian" zodiac rather than a "lunar" one.
>
Jovian rather than solar.
> > Also the 24 chi are just the 12 solar months divided in half.
>
> It depends on how a "solar" month is defined. Presumably a "solar"
> month is defined as 1/12 of 365.25 days? Well, the 24 qi's are
defined
> by the angle rather than the duration. The "solar" orbit being
> elliptical, these two do not match exactly.
>
The solar year of the Western zodiac is the tropical one, originally
from solstice to solstice or equinox to equinox.
The "qi" or "solar fortnight" is based on the 15 degrees of longitude
of the Sun's revolution along the ecliptic. You are right in that the
tropical year is slightly shorter than sidereal one, giving rise to
what is known as the precession of the equinoxes.
John Wilkins
It turned out that planarians (flatworms) follow each other's trails.
When they washed the apparatus between trials, the effect went away.
--
John S. Wilkins jo...@wilkins.id.au AA#2207
web: www.wilkins.id.au blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
Fiat lunch!
phipps...@hotmail.com
> a.man...@attbi.com wrote:
> > The Chinese sky was divided into twelve double hours. Also, the
lunar
> > zodiac is a mean Jupiter cycle, i.e. the revolution of Jupiter
through
> > the stars divided into twelve parts.
>
> So it is a "Jovian" zodiac rather than a "lunar" one.
>
> > Also the 24 chi are just the 12 solar months divided in half.
>
> It depends on how a "solar" month is defined. Presumably a "solar"
> month is defined as 1/12 of 365.25 days? Well, the 24 qi's are
defined
> by the angle rather than the duration. The "solar" orbit being
> elliptical, these two do not match exactly.
Which is what I was saying before: the Chinese had to have developed
very sophisticated mathematics in order to create their calendar. One
might imagine that mathematics is something that the Chinese had long
before they developed the abilitity to write actual words but, as far
as I know, the Chinese never developed a mathematical notation and
would write out 1+1=2 as "one plus one equals two" in their own
language. It would have been extremely difficult for them to do
complex mathematics, let alone develop it and pass it on. It is
obvious, however, that they were able to accomplish it though. The
Sumers and the Mayans must have had similar difficulty.
Martin
David Johnson
news:37v1u2F...@individual.net:
> There are nineteen month names, the last being of only 5 days long.
> The counting of days is the basic method of dating, but the Katun
> cycle of 7200 days (approximately 20 solar years long) is usually used
> to count periods in Maya dates.
Current date (2/21/05) is 4 Ahau (Flower), "Long Count" 12.19.12.1.0*
(thanks to http://www.resonateview.org/places/toybox/mayan/index.htm).
David
* Read "12 Baktun, 19 Katun, 12 Tun, 1 Winal, 0 Kin"
--
_______________________________________________________________________
David Johnson home.earthlink.net/~trolleyfan
"You're a loony, you are!"
"They said that about Galileo, they said that about Einstein..."
"Yeah, and they said it about a good few loonies, too!"
David Johnson
news:3NqSd.2768$873...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net:
This idea got used in SF a lot (most noticeably in some of Larry Niven's
work) and quickly worked its way into "common knowledge."
But it didn't take too long before they discovered that there was a
small flaw in their research. What was _actually_ being passed on was
not "ground knowledge" but the scent trails the earlier trained worms
had left behind in the maze. Clean the maze between batches of worms and
- oops! - the new ones suddenly became "untrained" again.
Insert embarrassed retractions all 'round, retractions which - unlike
the original research results - never made it back out to that body of
"common knowledge" (though at least Larry knows about it...;)).
David
phipps...@hotmail.com
Martin
Geoff
Such disillusionment after all these years! Now you're going to tell me
that Archaic Chinese didn't come from Korea!
P.Comm
Altaic people - and they have MUCH contact with China already. China didn't
get anything from western peoples - that's a Eurocentric myth.
That the two knew of each other is proven by the fact that Chinese silk was
found in very ancient Sumeria.
--
http://innsmouth.rules.it
or http://www.geocities.com/trip_to_innsmouth
http://lovecraft.shows.it
or http://www.geocities.com/lovecraft_was_here
<phipps...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1108880862....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>I find it interesting that the number 60 is important in both ancient
> Sumer and ancient China. In ancient Sumer it was the basis for the
> number system whereas the Chinese invented the ten earthly stems and
> twelve celestial stems to keep track of the days and years, creating a
> 60 year cycle in the process. Both the Sumerians and the Chinese also
> created a twelve hour day in analogy with the twelve months of the
> year. Both the Sumerians and the Chinese liked to create these
> analogies, with the Sumerian creating a 360 degree clock in analogy
> with the 365.25 day year and the Chinese creating a 12 month
> astrological cycle to corespond to the twelve months of the year.
>
> Sumerian and Chinese astrology are also similar. (See
> http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/FAQ.htm and
> http://www.astrologycom.com/zodiac2.html ) Both the Chinese and the
> Sumerians divided the solar year into twelve months and assigned a
> symbol to each month, usually an animal. Both cultures believed that
> your future, even your character, could be determined based on when you
> were born.
>
> Even the symbols themselves are similar. The Sumerians developed a
> writing system that consisted of ideographs that represented both the
> meaning and sound of the spoken word. The Sumerians passed this idea
> on to the Egyptians, the Cretians and the Greeks, who rejected the idea
> in favour of a phonetic alphabet invented around 800 BC. The only
> other cultures to develop this kind of writing system were the Mayans
> and the Chinese. (See
> http://www.pinyin.info/readings/visible_speech.html ) The Chinese use
> a similar writing system to this day.
>
> What could account for the similarities between Chinese and Sumerian
> cultures? On the website
> http://www.mystae.com/streams/ufos/emperor.html , the following claim
> is made: "Some scholars have suggested that travelers from Mesopotamia
> and from Southeast Asia brought agricultural methods to China, which
> stimulated the growth of ancient Chinese civilization. If so, there may
> be a direct connection with Sumer." The same website, of course,
> claimed that the Yellow Emperor was an "ancient astronaut" because he
> was supposed to have come from far away. Personally, I would find it
> easier to believe he was Sumerian, although I have already been
> chastized on sci.archaeology for basing my ideas on "literature" as
> opposed to "real archeological evidence" so I won't go so far as to
> seriously suggest that.
>
> Another possibility is that migrants travelling from the Sumer region
> to the Chinese region brought knowledge with them along with the goods
> they traded. This would appear to be the view of Thor Heyerdahl who
> wrote (See
> http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/31_folder/31_articles/31_thorazerconn.html
> ) "We must as scientists get beyond the dogmatic medieval view of
> history printed by us in Europe in which we describe our own ancestors
> as the discoverers of the rest of the world. There were advanced
> civilizations with navigators and script in Asia, Africa and Middle
> America before mariners from Crete brought script and civilization from
> the Middle East to southern Europe. Before European history began,
> mariners from Africa had settled the Canary Island, voyagers from
> America had settled the West Indies, and every inhabitable island in
> the Indian Ocean and the Pacific had been peopled from Asia and
> America. Azerbaijan, and not Europe, was part of the fermenting kettle
> of brewing civilization with navigators that spread early trade and
> cultural impulses far and wide."
>
> Yet another possibility is that Sumerian and Chinese cultures were both
> influenced by a third culture. I found a website that claims that the
> Sumerian language is related to the Austric languages of South Asia.
> (See http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9845/sumer.htm ). Perhaps
> the Sumerian, Indian and Chinese cultures all descended from an ancient
> civilization in Southern Asia which has vanished without a trace as a
> result of the rising sea levels between 7000 and 11 000 years ago
> following the ice age. This ancient civilization would have had no
> formal written language but might very well have a number system
> (either base 10 or base 60), both solar and lunar calendars, a twelve
> hour clock, religion and an agriculture-based society. Possible
> evidence of a Sumer-India-China connection could be found if we compare
> the number systems in India around the 1st century AD and to those used
> in ancient China. (See
> http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Indian_numerals.html
> and http://www.edhelper.com/ChineseNumbersIntro.htm ) In absence of
> any hard archeological evidence, however, this kind of speculation may
> just lead us to a dead end.
>
> So which of these three possibilities do people think is the most
> reasonable? Or do people think that similarities between different
> cultures is purely coincidental? Or does it simply reflect
> similarities in the way humans in different cultures view the world,
> perhaps dating back to ancient tribal times?
> Or is the truth likely some combination of all of the above?
>
> Martin
>
Jacques Guy
> But it didn't take too long before they discovered that there was a
> small flaw in their research. What was _actually_ being passed on was
> not "ground knowledge" but the scent trails the earlier trained worms
> had left behind in the maze. Clean the maze between batches of worms and
> - oops! - the new ones suddenly became "untrained" again.
A huge OOPS! indeed.
> Insert embarrassed retractions all 'round, retractions which - unlike
> the original research results - never made it back out to that body of
> "common knowledge" (though at least Larry knows about it...;)).
///*/*////+//*/ <--- not my words... the kitten's (Piou-Piou)
Now, Piou-Piou, if you don't mind...
It _is_ a worry. You no longer know what to believe. So much for
peer review and all that stuff. I have oftentimes here (sci.lang)
bitched about the crass stupidities you see published in
Scientific American and in New Scientist in the field of
linguistics. It makes you wonder what their _other_ articles are
worth. Why, Nature is not any better.
Tak To
> The "qi" or "solar fortnight" is based on the 15 degrees of longitude
> of the Sun's revolution along the ecliptic. You are right in that the
> tropical year is slightly shorter than sidereal one, giving rise to
> what is known as the precession of the equinoxes.
I wasn't referring to the difference between the sidereal and the
tropical, but the fact that the sun does not have constant angular
velocity along the ecliptic. The sun "moves" fastest at the perigee,
which is around Jan 2. This explains why the qi's are packed
closer together during winter (in Northern hemisphere) than during
summer.
Tak To
> Which is what I was saying before: the Chinese had to have developed
> very sophisticated mathematics in order to create their calendar.
Yes, but the current form of the Chinese calendar is devised
in part by Jesuits who travelled to China. So the current
calendar is not a particularly good example of how advanced
science and mathematics was in ancient China.
> One
> might imagine that mathematics is something that the Chinese had long
> before they developed the abilitity to write actual words but,
I found that hard to believe.
> as far
> as I know, the Chinese never developed a mathematical notation and
> would write out 1+1=2 as "one plus one equals two" in their own
> language.
What exactly do you mean by mathematical notation?
> It would have been extremely difficult for them to do
> complex mathematics, let alone develop it and pass it on. It is
> obvious, however, that they were able to accomplish it though. The
> Sumers and the Mayans must have had similar difficulty.
Tak
Philip Deitiker
news:Xns9604A736B97A9tr...@207.217.125.201:
> * Read "12 Baktun, 19 Katun, 12 Tun, 1 Winal, 0 Kin"
Sounds like klingon to me. BTW what are the pronunciation of the
mayan numbers ;^). Lets be authentic little mayans.
Get it right and I'll send you a tamaleleguacalote.
Philip Deitiker
news:wAvSd.3000$873....@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net:
> Such disillusionment after all these years! Now you're going to
> tell me that Archaic Chinese didn't come from Korea!
Archaic chinese came from even more archaic chinese which came from
very archaic chinese, which came from paleochinese which came from
very paleochinese which came from the _Picts_ ;^).
Jacques Guy
> Lets be authentic little mayans.
> Get it right and I'll send you a tamaleleguacalote.
That is (mangled) Nahuatl, not Maya.