91–100 of 140 posts
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I was under the impression - not having studied much about Jaynes' theory - that it is a well-regarded but falsified theory. That being said, what you describe sounds like an amazing premise for a novel.
The excellent novel "Snow Crash" was directly inspired by "The Origin of Consciousness": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
In "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", Julian Jaynes argues that before human intelligence was experienced as reflective, self-conscious internal monologue, early humans would routinely experience "command hallucinations" which they ascribed to gods[0]. In a setting that was designed to induce awe, reverence and altered states of consciousness, an idol could prompt believers to hallu…
I was under the impression - not having studied much about Jaynes' theory - that it is a well-regarded but falsified theory. That being said, what you describe sounds like an amazing premise for a novel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe the take-away is that in different eras statues were broken in different ways for different purposes. Various Egyptian groups broke each other's statues, which they fully understood, for instance breaking the left hand of gods understood to be giving things, and the right hand of those receiving things, to prevent them from performing their function. And often digging out the inscription of the name of the king…
...shave?
It's a shame that there don't seem to be any primary sources from Christians of that time explaining that practice. I would imagine that the Desert Fathers would have mentioned it at some point (if it happened in their time), but perhaps they weren't aware. Since this practice doesn't seem to be a part of Christianity elsewhere, it seems like it could something unique to a coptic interpretation of scripture. I'm not…
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>This is no different than Ancient Aliens where all of history is changed to be full of Aliens. Further thought: the trope that ancient constructions were built by aliens is also in general rarely applied to ancient white civilisations.
Probably because Europeans either made little worth attributing to aliens OR in cases where they did (Rome, Greece, later cathedrals, etc) lots of contemporary documentation exists today. In cases where an impressive structure in Europe was created but for which no contemporary documentation survives, aliens are indeed given credit. Stonehenge comes to mind.
In "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", Julian Jaynes argues that before human intelligence was experienced as reflective, self-conscious internal monologue, early humans would routinely experience "command hallucinations" which they ascribed to gods[0]. In a setting that was designed to induce awe, reverence and altered states of consciousness, an idol could prompt believers to hallu…
I was under the impression - not having studied much about Jaynes' theory - that it is a well-regarded but falsified theory. That being said, what you describe sounds like an amazing premise for a novel.
The other more phenomenological aspects are not easily falsifiable, nor indeed verifiable. But the arguments he provides at least itch the scratch of explaining strange behaviors and characteristics of our ancestors and the relics they left behind in a way that approaches Occam's razor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was under the impression - not having studied much about Jaynes' theory - that it is a well-regarded but falsified theory. That being said, what you describe sounds like an amazing premise for a novel.
The excellent novel "Snow Crash" was directly inspired by "The Origin of Consciousness": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
The noses are broken off in order to deprive the statues of their power. It's the same reason the the Muslims scratched out the eyes of Jesus in all of the mosaics in the Hagia Sophia.
I once took an Africana Studies course at UMass Boston and the professor taught us that the noses were broken off the statues due to the hatred of black peoples by white explorers over millennia. She also taught us that the ancient Egyptians were black and that it was black people that built the pyramids. When I innocently asked her why the slides she showed us seemed to show Egyptians as having more middle eastern a…
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Good question. Here's an article that answers it: https://hyperallergic.com/591628/why-are-the-noses-broken-on...
As far as I can tell the original article doesn't actually answer this. It assumes that the breakages are man-made (or restricts itself to only talking about those that are man-made) and then goes on to explain the breakages through that lens. Of course the explanations of those breakages are in turn at least some evidence that those breakages are indeed man-made, but the article doesn't go into explaining what propo…
The author probably did that because those are the only breakages which are interesting. Erosion is interesting in its own way, but the reasons why people do things have a much wider audience.