Newsgroup sci.archaeology 46246

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In article ,
droid  wrote:
>I've long wondered why we represent a circle in 360 degrees.  Is this a
>tradition handed down from the past, or is there some basic mathematical
>truth that I am missing here?
>
>Perhaps related: while I can understand the solar/lunar reasons for
>defining a year as 12 months and 365 days, why do we divide the day into
>24 hours of 60 minutes of 60 seconds each?
It comes from Mesoptamian culture that used a base-60 counting system-
decimal times the perfect number 6.   6, 60 & 360 have lots of integer
divisors.
Some early "years" were 360 days long in Egypt and old Rome.
The Islamic calendar still uses a short year of 12 lunar months or about
355 days.
The Egyptians divided the day and night each into 12 hours,
but day hours were 1/12 the time between sunrise and sunset.
I'll speculate minutes and seconds were borrowed from Babylonian geometry.
A second is also about the length of a fit adult's heartbeat
and perhaps had some relation there.

zirdo@ramhb.co.nz (Pat Zalewski) writes:
>In article ,
>   bstudio@mcs.net wrote:
>>
>>
>>Piri Reis, a new perspective
>>
>>Chapter Four - Atlantis, is that you?
>>
>>All maps are statements of history and the Reis map of 1513 is certainly 
>that. 
>> In other posts I covered the "Columbus Connection" and the "Mercator 
>>Connection."  In this post the focus is on "Ancient History," a major point, 
>>possibly identifying our ancient heritage.
>>
>>Considering the time, 1513, in which the map was introduced, there is little 
>>on and of the map that  identifies this point in history.  When this map was 
>>assembled, the basic map that is, the focus was a completely different earth 
>>time frame.
I have looked at reproductions of a number of maps, including quite a few 
from the 16 century, though a bit later than 1513. 
I recently checked out this one by Piri Reis (on a web site that was 
posted here) that everyone keeps talking about. 
Some of them are amazingly good, and much more accurate in many details 
than the Piri Reis map. It is darn hard to figure how the cartographers 
managed to fill in the details so quickly, and so accurately, considering 
the small number of explorations, and the crudeness of the techniques. 
I didn't see that the Piri Reis one was even one of the better ones. Even 
the inclusion of an inaccurate version of the coast of Antarctica isn't 
anything unusual, there were maps before 1500 that showed the south shore 
of the Indian Ocean. (Which was a way of indicating that it was not 
possible to sail south around Africa, which was a story that some people 
had commercial interests in promoting.)
As far as I can see, some one latched onto this particular one, told some 
fancy stories about it, and others are not original enough to find their 
own map. If Antarctica is so accurately represented, why is the rest of 
it so screwed up? And, it isn't because it was accurate 10,000, 100,000, 
1,000,000 or any other number of years ago, either. 
Someone look at some more maps and make some comparisons before posting more 
speculation about this one. 
Henry Hilbrath

"Michael W. Jackson"  writes:
> It is our belief that Atlantis, the lost continent, is no longer legend,
>no longer myth. Why? For, both historians and archaeologists have found an
>ancient site in the Aegean Sea that is believed to have been part of the
>lost civilization of mighty Atlantis.
> 
> This new evidence reinforces what Plato, the greek philosopher, who was
>born in 428 B.C., said about Atlantis in two of  his dialogues, the Critias
>and the Timaeus, wherein he describes Atlantis as a massively beautiful
>island existing thousands of years ealier between Africa, Asia and Europe.
I agree that there are a lot of parallels between Plato's story and 
Minos/Crete/Thera. 
 > 
> We would like to initiate a discussion group on this most interesting
>subject.  This legend has, in many ways shaped and formed the psyche of
>modern man.  It is part of humanity's collective consciousness.
> 
> Your responses are welcome on this subject matter.
OTOH, I don't think that you are going to have any luck with any rational 
discussion of this subject. For several reasons.
1) For various reasons, probably partly to get it off his doorstep, where 
he knew he couldn't explain it, there are a number of errors in Plato's 
story. It also mixes fact with what Plato (or Solon) considered 
appropriate from other sources. So no single place can explain everything 
about the story. Plato states that Solon invented Greek names for things 
in the story because his readers would not be familiar with the 
originals. If he had not, the "mystery" would have been solved, long ago. 
(Atlantic Ocean for what ever was in the original, for openers.)
2) Mention Atlantis and there are a lot of kooks that crawl out of the
woodwork, eager to put Atlantis in the Bahamas, Turkey, Denmark
Antarctica, Snoopy's water bowl, or on Mars, and to relate it to ESP,
UFOs, LSD, ERA, Zulu legends about the Sphinx, and what ever. They find a
historical Atlantis dull and as offensive as others find a "New Age" one. 
I have read that almost everyone who has gone to Troy is always
disappointed because it is so small and grungy. Interesting that our
building skills have gotten a lot better in 3000 years, but, no one can
write poetry any better (or make superlatives any more super) than Homer. 
And, Plato's description of Atlantis, combined with modern expectations,
creates an impression in some minds that cannot be fulfilled in this solar
system. Even though the place, and the people *are* there. And, are even
more remarkable than Plato's story, but in a different way. 
Henry Hillbrath

In article <511v9g$jpa@epx.cis.umn.edu>, "Marcia Brott (Medicine)"
 writes
>Kathy McIntosh (kathy@vineries.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>
>: >eh?  Is this a typo, or are you really asserting that the Norman term for
>: >"Saxons" was "Welsh"?  Seems bizarre to me.
>: >
>: >What did they call the ancestors of today's Welsh?  (or "unassimilated 
>: >Britons", if you prefer)
>: The Normans did call them Welsh.  It means forigner.  The Celtic and
>: Saxon inhabitants of Wales called themselves Cymric or Cymry, meaning
>: comrades.
>
>OK, now wait a minute, here.  Isn't "Welsh" the _Germanic_ term for
>"foreigner" (referring to the Celts)?  Webster's says the origin is Old
>English, which would predate use of Norman French in Britain.
>
>-------------
>Marcia Brott
>marcia@lenti.med.umn.edu
>
Marcia, I,m going to reply to both you and Steve in one post, hope you
don't mind.
-Also, when I first posted this, someone asked for cites, and I'm going
to reply to that here as well.
I've checked my books, and must admit that I can't find any written
confirmation for what I said.  I got this bit of info from my Welsh
History lecturer at university.  He was/is [don't know if he's still at
it!] welsh, and also a prof. in the History faculty, so I assume he
knows what he is talking about.
As I recall, and I will admit it was a long while ago, he also said that
the Normans got the term Welsh from a Saxon word - something like welisc
or walisc.
Well that's my excuse, anyway.  Anyone able to throw more light on the
subject?
-- 
Kathy McIntosh

In <323740CD.44CF@iceonline.com> Baron Szabo 
writes: 
Peter, congratulations on another promotion to baron.
>And sometimes they are still dismissed even when it IS an expert in
>the field.
>
>A good example of this, and of the failure of science, the arrogance
>of the specialists, and the absence of obvious logic, would be the
>difficulty the Canadian researcher had in proving his Yucatan impact
>theory that explained the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Were the Alvarezes Canadian?  I didn't know that.  With regard to the
impact in the Yucatan, you've got the cart a bit before the horse. An
iridium layer was persistently found in strata worldwide at the K/T
boundary, first.  This was noted and led to the impact hypothesis in
1980.  However, it wasn't until 11 years later that the Chicxulub
impact site was suggested as an impact site at the proper time frame
(this too was the subject of debate: was the time right, is it an
astrobleme, etc.).  In the mean time there were alternate hypotheses
that the iridium had been the result of flood basalts in India or the
impact was at the Manson site in Iowa.  There is also some evidence
that the dinosaurs were already gone when the impact occurred.  
>I mean, there is a clear sulphurous layer seperating the relevant
>strata that mark the dissapearance of most saurian species!  And it
>took him almost ten years to convert the stiffies!
Sulphurous layer or iridium?  Sulphur could be from the Indian
volcanism.  
>So!  What is it gonna take to get the establishment stiffies to
>postitively prove or disprove the cocaine/nicotine evidence and all of
>its implications?
They're still writing papers on the K/T boundary event seeking to fully
understand what happened.  If you want some references, let me know.
Regards,
August Matthusen

Baron Szabo wrote:
> 
> OK.  I don't understand how the Canaanite cuneiform became an *alphabet*
> that was adopted by the Greeks.  I understand cuneiform is syllablary
> (is that a word?) in nature.  Was the transferred alphabet a written
> one, or just oral?
Let me rephrase that since noone answered.
I think cuneiform is used for writing a glutinate syllablary language.
	(please say so if I'm wrong)
Do they ever only write single letters of the alphabet7
How do we know the Greeks used a Canaanite alphabet?
-- 
zoomQuake....220+ of the best ancient history related links on the net.
http://www.iceonline.com/home/peters5/index.html

In article <515geb$6u4@sjx-ixn3.ix.netcom.com> S.NEMETH@IX.NETCOM.COM (Stella Nemeth) writes:
>From: S.NEMETH@IX.NETCOM.COM (Stella Nemeth)
>Subject: Re: 200 ton Blocks
>Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 04:42:05 GMT
>mablake@indyvax.iupui.edu (MAJ) wrote:
>>Radioactive sand was discovered in a chamber behind the queens chamber.
>>This accounts for the top of the pyramid being older then the bottom.
>>The radioactive sand has been kept quiet.  I know the source but its
>>a foreign name and I am not good at spelling.   Radioactive sand alone
>>doesnt prove aliens built the pyramids.  There are a number of other things.
>>For instance, the stones above the kings chamber radiate enery.  This
>>energy expands in an apex as you go higher.  Some think it was used as a
>>communications device by aliens.  
>Let's put the radioactive sand on the side for a second and just
>tackle your statement that the news about this sand has been kept
>quiet.  Why would that happen?  For that matter, how would it happen?
>How do you keep the western press from mouthing off on any subject at
>all?
>There is also the little problem about just how long the pyramids have
>been open to intruders.  Certainly centuries.  Possibly millennia.
>Even if something like radioactive sand was found there, there is no
>reason to believe it was put there at the time the pyramid was built
>and every reason to doubt it.
>I have no comment about the energy source you reference.  In fact,
>I've decided to leave you in possession of your delusion.
Stella, you couldn't rip away his delusion with a 10-ton winch.
>Stella Nemeth
>s.nemeth@ix.netcom.com
Bob C.
"No one's life, liberty or property is safe while
 the legislature is in session." - Mark Twain

stgprao@sugarland.unocal.COM (Richard Ottolini) writes:
>In article ,
>droid  wrote:
>>I've long wondered why we represent a circle in 360 degrees.  Is this a
>>tradition handed down from the past, or is there some basic mathematical
>>truth that I am missing here?
>>
>>Perhaps related: while I can understand the solar/lunar reasons for
>>defining a year as 12 months and 365 days, why do we divide the day into
>>24 hours of 60 minutes of 60 seconds each?
>It comes from Mesoptamian culture that used a base-60 counting system-
>decimal times the perfect number 6.   6, 60 & 360 have lots of integer
>divisors.
I think that 360 is 2*2*2*3*3*5 if I did it right. That means that 360 
can be split into halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, eights, 
ninths, tenths, and twelths with no fractions involved. (but not sevenths 
or elvenths.) That was very handy from a mathmatical standpoint. 
Especially for those that were not very hot on fractions. 
OTHO, once trignometric calculations got involved, 360 was a millstone 
around the neck of budding math whizzes for a couple of thousand years. 
Ptolmey knew how to calculate the trig functions for 30, 45, 60 and 
ninety degrees, and half of any angle, and the sum of any two angles. (I 
think he may have given a table for every 7.5 degrees, but certainly for 
every 15, and he clearly know how to do it for any binary fraction of a 
circle.)
So, if there had been, say 256 degrees in a circle, so that each one was  
1.40625 of a Babylonian degree (or 512 or 1024 or whatever) it would have 
been a snap to calculate trig tables with any increment one liked. 
But a degree of 1/360 is a pain in the rear, and there is no way to do it 
exactly in binary fractions. And that caused a lot of pain and fretting. 
The Greeks, and those that followed, hated approximations, no matter how 
good they were. 
As I recall it was in the late 1800s when someone found a way, using trig 
identities, and about four or five angles, including some really strage 
ones, that someone finaly found an exact experession for sine(1 degree) 
and by that time, no one cared, and the method strickly a trivia question 
(that I don't remember the answer to.)
[snip]
Henry Hillbrath

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## CrossPoint v3.02 ##

Jon (jon@skcldv.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: In article <32367e68.6579856@pubnews.demon.co.uk>, Gonzo
:  writes
: >jrdavis@netcom.com (John Davis) wrote:
: >
: >
: >
: >>I wonder if you are as amazed as I am with those ancient traveler's
: >>ability to ignore all those useless things like rubber, maise, potatos,
: >>tomatos, beans, and chocolate and get right to the good stuff, tobacco and
: >>coca.  Why they didn't even waste space taking home a few useless tobacco
: >>seeds. 
: >
: >In the case of tobacco, maybe they didn't need too, if the suspicion
: >about their being ( a now extinct) old world type plant available. In
: >the case of the coca, that's the whole point, where did the traces
: >come from in the egyptian mummies (assuming said mummies weren't
: >fake). 
: >The program also mentioned that sweet potatoes were found in China
: >supporting cross-pacific trade (don't know enogh of that to know how
: >wide spread it was) . 
: >
: >Maybe, they were crappy businessmen in the end....... 
: >
: >Maybe the long sea voyage didn't make it possible to transport too
: >much perishable stuff - even sea-water will kancker seeds. But then if
: >you use that argument, *no* stuff would have got across :-)
: >
: >
: >
: Just curious, but how many of the plants you mention could have been
: grown in China given the climatic conditions at the time.  If the
: trade route was from the Americas through China and on to Egypt, then
All of them except rubber and cocoa(chocolate) are grown in China today,
as is tobacco.  Rubber is grown in Burma and Indonesia, so I suppose cocoa
would grow there as well. 
: a) The Chinese would be unlikely to offer seed, only a finished (?)
: product, and 
: b) If they couldn't grow these things themselves, they would have had
: to continue importing
: One thing that I am very unsure about is the dating of the bodies used 
: the drug tests.  Do they come from a very narrow or broad band of dates,
: and can any of the dates be tied in with any known major or minor
: civilisations in either China or South America?
I have heard it said that the DEA doesn't test money for cocaine residue
anymore.  Cocaine contamination is so prevalent that all the money has
traces on it.  Tobacco residue has been a part of the common enviornment
for several hundred years.  It is going to take some real scientific work
to show that cocaine contamination or tobacco residue isn't a secondary
result being exposted to the normal modern atmosphere.  This is especially
true when you consider that cocaine wasn't refined from coca leaves until
the nineteeth century.  Chewing the leaves themselves doesn't give much of
a high.  It just makes it easier to breath at high altitudes and masks
hunger pangs.  Two things that were not high on the want lists of Egyptian
pharaohs.  As far as tobacco is concerned.  The Egyptians made a habit of
including anything the deceased might want in the after life in the
burial.  When an Egyptian grave is found with a humador of cigars or a
nice meerschaum included with the funeral goods we can start wondering
where they got the tobacco. 
--
              A_A    No combat ready unit has ever passed inspection.
John Davis   (o o)    
----------oOO-(^)-OOo----------------------------------------------------
               ~      		Murphy's Laws of Combat

In article <515s57$h9p@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com>, m.levi@ix.netcom.co 
says...
>
>In <5154pc$fb9@shore.shore.net> whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
>writes: 
>>
>>In article , piotrm@umich.edu says...
>>>
>>>PS While we are on the subkect of rudeness.  You began much of this 
>>>discussion with a wild claim, make in very strong terms, that I was
>wrong 
>>>and wood was imported from Arabia to Mari, as evidenced by the Mari
>letters.
>>
>>Ok, I found the reference. One hopes this will cause you no
>>embarassment, but simply make clear that the discussion
>>is most improved by doing ones homework before voicing
>>
>> D. Potts "Dilmun's Further Relations"
>>
>>"The Mari Correspondence
>>
>>ARM I 17
>>
>>1. To Yasmah-Adad
>>2. say this
>>3. thus (speaks) Samsi-Adad
>>4. your father
>>5. The second day after (the receipt)
>>6. of my tablet the messengers
>>7. Dilmunite, from Subat-Enlil
>>8. will depart. Ten laborours...
>>
>>14.but as soon as the caravan will be moved recieve no more nobels
>>15 30 sheep
>>16 30 qa of excellent oil, 60 qa of sesame which are to be pored into
>the 
>>grease jars
>>17 3 qa of berries of juniper, and *boxwood*
>>...
>>
>>The gist of the article being that there were regular caravans
>>which left passed through Mari from Ugarit and Ebla 
>>Syria and Lebanon en route to Dilmun.
>________________________________
>
>Steve,
>
>I can't resist adding my two cents to your discussion with Piotr.  
>
>You are awfully sure of yourself, aren't you?  So is Potts, by the way.
All through 93 I kept finding shards of a very reckognizable unbaked red 
pottery throughout the Eastern District as I visited my job sites.
Along with it I found some fairly substantial infrastructure. My area
of expertise is architecture. 
It is amazing to say this but you can find ruins still standing 
today with very much the same construction details 
(including the wood joists in the roofs) 
as what you find associated with the pottery. 
Moving west and south you find a different type of architecture.
The earlier buildings have truly monolithic foundations. 
many later buildings use one of several datably different 
coursing schemes.
Flying over the sites you can see how they work with the wadis
to form complexes of cairns and kites that might have been used
to trap herd animals at a time when the desert was savannah.
When Piotr tells me there was no human occupation in southern
Mesopotamia before the Ubaid he is telling me to doubt the
evidence of my own eyes. When he tells me there was no wood,
sorry but I have seen places where trees still grow today
in lush oasis hundreds of miles across such as al Kharg.
>I've spent much of the summer studying Potts' work and have concluded
>that his work is flawed because he always forces evidence into the
>framework of his pet Dilmun theory.
I have seen Dilmun. It stretched from Faikala down through Jubail
to a complex stretching from Safaniyah south to Tarut, Al Khobar
and Bahrain, Hofuf and Al Hasa controlled territory as far inland
as Ain Dar, and as far South as Yabrin and Quatar.
South of Dilmun was Makkan (Ras al Kayahmah), to its west was Hawtah
and Al Kharg. Only if you have driven the Layla road south to Wadi 
ad Dawsir would you realise how green that desert really was.
The west coast of Saudi, anciently known as Midian is a paradise,
its mountains are still lush and full of wild game. its terraced 
fields remind you of China or Peru with roads winding along the
face of 9000 meter cliffs.
>
>The letter you quote is not unambiguous evidence that wood was imported
>from the Gulf to Mari.  Here's the problem.  Are you aware that the
>term "Dilmunites" in line 7 is the same word translated in line 14 as
>"nobles"?  Check the original; the word in both is "dilmun."  What
>Potts skips over all too lightly is that Dilmun is multivalent.  It's
>attested on four bilingual lexical lists as an adjective that simply
>means "noble."  
I have traveled the routes myself both on the ground and in the air.
There is no question that people lived there in the Ubaid and I would
strongly support the idea that the Crystal Plateau was a major source 
of the sealstones used throughout Mesopotamia and the rest of the 
Near East.
Depending on the lexical evidence alone proves nothing. When you
go take a look at the kind of stone you find west of Abquaig it
becomes difficult to argue that the crystal plateau was the 
principle source of sealstone as far south as the Indus and
as far north as Ugarit.
>
>So the problem becomes, how can you tell whether dilmun means "person
>from Dilmun" or "member of the nobility"? 
What difference does it make? 
Suppose the people from Dilmun ruled Mesopotamia? 
Wouldn't they all then have been considered "nobels" 
as a part of the elite ruling class?
I see the term "lugal" used frequently which I think 
means "governor", in association with words like
"gis" which seems to mean wood or tree in Sumerian and "Eme"
which seems to mean "beam". 
Despite the fact that it would have been a good idea, 
does that mean that the government was in the hands of carpenters? 
I am skeptical. This level of sophistication is 
generally uncharacteristic of political systems.
I choose to think it means they were ordering wood to build something.
> We have translators relying on intuition, saying to 
>themselves that "Dilmunite" works here so we
>will use it, but it doesn't work there so we 
>will translate it in the next line as something else.
This provides an interesting insight into the art of the linguist.
>
>And mountains of theories about caravan trade and so forth are resting
>on those types of conjectures.
My theories about trade are based purely on the presence or
absence of settlements in positions where their subsistence
must have been based on something other than agriculture.
If people are building towns and cities in the middle of a 
desert, hundreds of miles from arable land it makes some sense
to ask whether or not they had any visible means of support.
A source of raw materials which can be traded provides half
of the answer, all that remains is to show a trade route
to go with it. The Layla road was such a route. When you
look at where Wadi ad Dawasir and Yabrin are on a map
it is clear that the connection was between what is
modern Yemen and Kuwait.
>  When it comes to Dilmun, you may have majority opinion 
>on your side at this point, Steve, but my bet is that
>the theory will eventually crash and burn.
I tend to avoid majority opinions like the plauge...:)
> We can only go on deluding ourselves for so long about 
>what the Gulf excavations are turning up. 
>So far, it's zilch. 
....that has not been my experience....
>
>Kate
steve

In article <323740CD.44CF@iceonline.com> Baron Szabo  writes:
[deletions]
>And sometimes they are still dismissed even when it IS an expert in the
>field.
Hey, what a surprise, scientists don't always jump on a bandwagon every
time someone proposes a new theory.  They actually make the person
proposing the theory demonstrate with real data, that the theory is in
accordance with other data, and it is superior to other theories.  Boy, what
a bunch of arrogant snobs.  BTW - read above with sarcasm.
>A good example of this, and of the failure of science, the arrogance of
>the specialists, and the absence of obvious logic, would be the
>difficulty the Canadian researcher had in proving his Yucatan impact
>theory that explained the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Mighty judgemental aren't we now.  And what, pray tell, have you contributed
to our understanding of the world to put in such a superior position?
>I mean, there is a clear sulphurous layer seperating the relevant strata
>that mark the dissapearance of most saurian species!  And it took him
>almost ten years to convert the stiffies!
Duh, that's how science works - read above.
>So!  What is it gonna take to get the establishment stiffies to
>postitively prove or disprove the cocaine/nicotine evidence and all of
>its implications?
For starters, how about proof that it could not be due to contamination, and 
that nolocally available plants could give similar results when the same test 
is applied.  Golly shucks, that just might take a little bit of research before
there's enough evidence to make the theory solid, or disprove it.  But if it 
is disproved, no doubt the hyperdiffusionist/Altantis crowd will claim that 
the truth is being hidden.  Judging from the drivel that gets spouted out 
here, that seems to be the usual tact.
>zoomQuake....220+ of the best ancient history related links on the net.
>http://www.iceonline.com/home/peters5/index.html
Peter van Rossum
PMV100@PSU.EDU

"Wayne R. Foote"  wrote:
>Was Khufu mispelled in the heiroglyphic or in some translation?
>Are you suggesting that the aliens put the crew and mason markings
>in to mislead us before revealing themselves, or that the persons
>purporting to be crewmembers and masons slipped in and engraved graffiti
>forgeries?
No misspelled.
Mason markings are cuts made before the stone would even draw
near to the the construction site.  
I believe Stella said there were 'workers' name inside?
That is not the case.
Vyse with the last week left in his expensive, yet unprofitable
search for 'treasure', I believe really had no choice but to forge
the designer, architect, supposed name inside the pyramid.
I mean that is some finding.  Where are the other names in the other
pyramids? (it _is_ an odd custom for these folk to go to all the
trouble and not mention they did this)
Vyse also decided to take dynamite, twice to the shoulders
of the Sphinx.  The guy was an idiot.
Ancient Egyptian writting though, I would like to know how many
other misspelling occur in the writtings.  I bet very very few, if not
none at all.  The writting was an art, much like the complexities of
Oriental writtings, leaving little room for error.
And KHUFU should not have been misspelled.
--
UFO Video Analysis - Ovni Chapterhouse
Nellis Air Force Base Stills!!!!!!
http://www.netwrx.net/users/degrafx/ufovideo.htm
all video all the time

Doug Weller  wrote:
>'Gilgamesh' doesn't realise that there is more than 1 way to spell
>Khufu, and is just slavishly quoting Z Sitchin. 
Great, it's weller again.
So much has happened since last we spoke.
I hope you have been keeping track of the most recent
of scientific findings.
--
UFO Video Analysis - Ovni Chapterhouse
Nellis Air Force Base Stills!!!!!!
http://www.netwrx.net/users/degrafx/ufovideo.htm
all video all the time

petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich) writes:
>In article <3237347B.146D@iceonline.com>,
>Baron Szabo   wrote:
[snip]
>>Do they ever only write single letters of the alphabet7
>	It was all syllables.
In most systems, but not in all. And, that from Gordon, who, no matter 
what else he did, "wrote the book"  on  Ugaritic, which was alphabetic.
>>How 
do we know the Greeks used a Canaanite alphabet?
>	The names and appearances of the letters. 
>-- 
>Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
>petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
>My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
>Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html

Jiri Mruzek  wrote:
>Stella Nemeth wrote:
>> OK.  What do they use for evidence of this?
>> 
>> I'd like to make what I am really asking clear.  I'm not talking about
>> negative evidence.  That would be the kind of thing where we talk
>> about how heavy the stones were, which we have been doing here,
>Sorry to interrupt, but you have been disseminating wrong data
>about the weight of the granite blocks above the King's Chamber,
>and you haven't yet admitted it.
I haven't disseminated any evidence about the weight of any blocks
anywhere.  I, personally, don't have the figures or the ability to
calculate them.  I have repeated evidence provided by others about
what the weight of the blocks are.  If you have objections to that
evidence, you will have to take it up with the persons providing it.
>> and
>> deciding that ordinary people with low level technology couldn't
>> possibly have moved them without knowing much about what such people
>> are capable of.  
>> Positive evidence would be evidence that there have
>> been alien visitors who were in the right place and at the right time
>> to have built the pyramids, an explanation of why they would want to
>> do that in the middle of a cemetary, and proof that they were the ones
>> that built the buildings.
>Aren't you a little too demanding? 
Not at all.  There have to be two kinds of evidence for me to believe
that "little green men" built all of the ancient large building
projects that we find all over the world.  First of all you have to
have some proof that alien visitors have been here and an explantion
of why they aren't still around visiting.  And second, you have to
prove that human beings couldn't possible have built the monuments
attributed to ancient cultures.
>Given evidence "there have
> been alien visitors who were in the right place and at the right time
> to have built the pyramids, and an explanation of why they would want 
>to  do that in the middle of a cemetary," - you would still insist
>on more proof that they did it?
Of course I would.  Just because Americans have visited London doesn't
mean that Americans built the Tower of London.  We weren't there at
the right time for starters.  And the English were perfectly capable
of building it for themselves, thank you.
>As usual, you are forgeful of my proof of advanced mathematics from
>the Stone-Age: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jiri_mruzek/
I haven't looked at your home page.  If it is about math, I am not
qualified to make a decision about it, so my reading your "article" is
pretty useless all around.  So it isn't that I am "forgetful" of your
prood, it is that I don't consider anything you've written here
interesting enough to make me surf the Web and locate your home page.
And that includes the current bunch of insulting posts.
Stella Nemeth
s.nemeth@ix.netcom.com

LCanon@msn.com (Laura Canon) wrote:
>Does everybody on this board spend their time watching cable 
>television specials?  Just because the channel has the word 
>"Discovery," or "Learning" in it doesn't mean that what you're 
>watching is not junk food for the mind.  These people want to 
>entertain...they want to sell advertising...they figure people who 
>want to buy Ginsu knives also enjoy spooky shows about the Pyramids 
>and lost continents.  They have no commitment to "responsible" or 
>"worthwhile" programming the way a PBS or even BBC, for instance, 
>would.  Use your intelligence when watching these programs.  So what 
>if there's a room below the Sphinx?  Maybe the Egyptians stored their 
>garbage there.
Hey, i think that the fact that people (like myself) are posting
articles here asking for more details and opinions about something
that they saw on a TV show means that we are taking what they say with
a grain of salt.
Judging by the number of people discussing the Sphinx chamber on this
news group, i would have to conclude that what was said was at least
BASED on some hard facts.
Its not always easy find the time to get  current information about
topics like this, especially when your not working or studying in this
field. TV shows can provide a lot of information in a short time, to a
lot of people. The more people that know about the type of work being
done in this  field, the more support, both morally and finically,
archaeologists are likely to receive
Elmo

In article <516bef$hu7@bertrand.ccs.carleton.ca>
          dfoisy@chat.carleton.ca (Deborah Foisy) wrote:
> Deb writes,
> 	Well, given how wrong I was the first time I tried to answer this
> I should keep quiet.  But, my understanding is that the Mac, Mc and O'
> whatever signfy "son of", not affiliation with a clan i.e. Gregor.  Is it
> not the phrase "of that ilk" that does that?
No. 'Balwhidder of that ilk' means Balwhidder of Balwhidder, ie it
connects the names of Scottish landed families to their property.
-- 
Doug Weller  Moderator,  sci.archaeology.moderated
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list:  email me for details

In article <3237347B.146D@iceonline.com>,
Baron Szabo   wrote:
>I think cuneiform is used for writing a glutinate syllablary language.
>	(please say so if I'm wrong)
	What do you mean? Agglutinative? Sumerian, in fact, did have that
structure (superabundance of different affixes); the borrowers of that
script tended to have less agglutinative languages. 
>Do they ever only write single letters of the alphabet7
	It was all syllables.
>How do we know the Greeks used a Canaanite alphabet?
	The names and appearances of the letters. 
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html

On Wed, 11 Sep 1996 12:19:24 GMT, degrafx@netwrx.net (Gilgamesh) wrote:
>And i'm afraid that even you could not pull a 10 ton block up
>a slight incline.
Au contraire - even you could.  The leverage makes it easy.  Is this the
best you can do?  Proof by lack of imagination?
--
#include 
 _
Kevin D Quitt  USA 91351-4454           96.37% of all statistics are made up
Per the FCA, this email address may not be added to any commercial mail list

Loy:
I really should just file something in WordPerfect or something for 
copying over to mail it to the newsgroups (I should take that lead from 
Paul Heinrich!). I've addressed this issue a several times since last 
spring, but here goes again.
Yes, Mystery Hill, American Stonehenge or Patee's  Caves (its original 
name) is a Celtic ruin - however, it was built by A.D. 18th or 19th 
century Celts - it is a form of vernacular architecture that is still used 
in rural areas of Ireland. Take a look at a recent (this summer) National 
Geo on Ireland - many of the ruins of the islands that were resettled 
during World War II appear identifical to Mystery Hill. Anyone that has 
lived in New England or Ireland can attest to the fact of the large number 
of stones in the soil - just right for building various structures (see 
Gradie 1981). Additionally, there are absolutely no archaeological 
artifacts that date this site to any earlier time period. Excavations done 
by a Yale graduate student (Gary Vescelius) in 1954, yielded absolutely no 
materials except prehistoric Native American artifacts and 19th century 
European artifacts (bricks, nails ceramics, etc.). Regional surveys in 
Massachusetts and Vermont clearly show that other sites similar to Mystery 
Hill were part of the historic, colonial period patterns of land use and 
construction (see Cole 1982, Neudorfer 1980).
Gradie, R.F. 1981. Irish immigration to 18th century New England and the 
stone chamber controversy. Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of 
Connecticut 44:30-39.
Cole, J.R. 1982. Western Massachusetts "Monk's caves": 1979 University of 
Massachusetts field research. Man in the Northeast 17:27-53.
Neudorfer, G. 1980. Vermont Stone Chambers: an Inquiry into Their Past. 
Vermont Historical Society. Montpelier.
Vescelius, G. 1956. Excavations at Patee's Caves. Bulletin of the Eastern 
States Archaeological Federation 15:13-14.

Jim Rogers  wrote:
>> How the hell is that "racist"?  I think the argument has to do with
>> the civilization's technological capacities, not their "race". It's
>> people who casually toss around accusations of racism that minimize the
>> real meaning of the word, which is to apply arbitrarily varying standards
>> of treatment and perception to those of a different race based *solely*
>> upon their race.
>Unbelievable. No, I take it back; with your limited grasp of nuance
>and the English language, I can believe perfectly well how you'd 
>overlook the potential racism inherent in such attitudes. 
I don't find the attitudes inherently racist.  I generally find them
inherently uneducated, which isn't always the same thing.
>It's not a question merely of technological capacity; we have a 
>pretty good handle on the technology available in the neolithic. 
>It's a question of cleverness and industriousness-- whether they 
>could figure out how to make the most of their available technology, 
>and whether they'd be motivated to make the personal sacrifices to 
>do so. We know there's no technological roadblock to neolithic 
>megalith projects, it's just a matter of cleverness and industry. 
Unfortunately for your thesis at least one of the people I've been
arguing with has no clue as to what the available technology was.  He
truly didn't understand that the Neolithic is NOT an era of "cave
people".  (At one point he actually used that term for the builders of
both the pyramids and Stonehenge.)  If you don't understand the
available technology, the subject of "cleverness and industriousness"
never comes into it.
And anyway, the people who believe the "alien theory" ALSO think that
Neolithic EUROPEANS weren't capable of building Stonehenge and the
like. 
Therefore their theory isn't racist in any reasonable definition of
the term.  Just dumb.
Stella Nemeth
s.nemeth@ix.netcom.com

degrafx@netwrx.net (Gilgamesh) wrote:
>No misspelled.
>Mason markings are cuts made before the stone would even draw
>near to the the construction site.  
>I believe Stella said there were 'workers' name inside?
>That is not the case.
No.  I didn't.  I get into enough trouble without people putting words
in my mouth.  I didn't discuss inscriptions or markings of any kind.
I've even stayed out of the linguistics threads for the most part.
Stella Nemeth
s.nemeth@ix.netcom.com

Please send any information about Clovis Projectile Points found in The 
Camchatka Peninsula.

On Sun, 08 Sep 1996 03:50:35 -0700, Jiri Mruzek 
wrote:
>I have been asking, nay, challenging the skeptics to explain this one
>for years (2) - and they never answer!!!
Give me the dimensions & weight of the block, I'll tell you how many people
it would have taken to move it.
--
#include 
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Kevin D Quitt  USA 91351-4454           96.37% of all statistics are made up
Per the FCA, this email address may not be added to any commercial mail list