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Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

bbc.com

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Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#61

Post by wanderlust123 »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #48
kristopolous wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lovely script. Really quite mysterious. Reminds me of graph theory and topology. I wonder if you can do some kind of weird frequency distribution analysis to classify what the extent specimens may be referring to. I mean given some old civilization, is there a guassian like distribution of say X% documents being financial, Y% religious and so on? And if there is, can you somehow classify these samples into c…

The problem is with some cultures, we know that this approach does not work. There was.. is a tendency for example among pious muslims to burn all books except the quoran at the end of life, to express ones devotion. So this approach would dig up only one book. Now imagine a budhistic precursor, which shuns world possesions and clingyness to status, scribbling notes of debt on papyrus. And you simply get nothing, but…

I’m highly sceptical about the claims around muslims burning non islamic books. They had their own golden age while Europe was in the dark ages.

We know from various sources that Islamic scholars made quiet a contribution to science back in the day. A cursory glance on google provided this compact guide https://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resourc...

In particular the bit around medicine. I’m sure there are more in depth references available.

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#64

Post by N1H1L »

kristopolous wrote: post #44
quadrifoliate wrote: post #3

The article focuses a bit too much on the city and not enough on the civilization that it was a part of. I guess the fact that it's in the Lost Civilizations series is an indicator? Anyway, for those not in the know – the city at Mohenjodaro is part of the rather extensive Indus Valley/Harappan Civilization that was contemporary with the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations (~3000BC onwards). The reasons for its d…

That's a lovely script. Really quite mysterious. Reminds me of graph theory and topology. I wonder if you can do some kind of weird frequency distribution analysis to classify what the extent specimens may be referring to. I mean given some old civilization, is there a guassian like distribution of say X% documents being financial, Y% religious and so on? And if there is, can you somehow classify these samples into c…

Have a look at this by Rajesh Rao of Washington: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_-obTZO6pY

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#65

Post by rrwo »

omeysalvi wrote: post #17

All Indian students below the age of 13 have heard of Mohenjo-Daro. I don't remember what year's textbooks it was in for us but the author assertion that it is a place that "most people have never heard of" has almost a billion rebuttals.

If most of the roughly 7-billion other people on the planet have never heard of it, then yes, most people have never heard of it.

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#66

Post by kristopolous »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #48
kristopolous wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lovely script. Really quite mysterious. Reminds me of graph theory and topology. I wonder if you can do some kind of weird frequency distribution analysis to classify what the extent specimens may be referring to. I mean given some old civilization, is there a guassian like distribution of say X% documents being financial, Y% religious and so on? And if there is, can you somehow classify these samples into c…

The problem is with some cultures, we know that this approach does not work. There was.. is a tendency for example among pious muslims to burn all books except the quoran at the end of life, to express ones devotion. So this approach would dig up only one book. Now imagine a budhistic precursor, which shuns world possesions and clingyness to status, scribbling notes of debt on papyrus. And you simply get nothing, but…

Let's take that as true for the conversation

There's likely not countless deviations. Religious zealotry can yield a different distribution, ok now we have 2.

There's a lot of antiquarian languages and civilizations. Even if there's a third possibility, it's worth seeing if the documents can be clustered in various fairly predictable proportions.

I can't be the first to think of this, it's just too obvious

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#67

Post by quadrifoliate »

shever73 wrote: post #32

I'm confused by the dating in the article. It refers to an ancient Buddhist stupa towering over the streets, but later says the city was abandoned by 1700 BCE. This would be over 1,000 years before the founding of Buddhism. Or am I missing something?

Apparently there is a later built Buddhist stupa on the same site [1]. Props to 'ojbyrne for pointing this out to me in a discussion.

----------------------------------------

[1] https://www.harappa.com/blog/buddhist-stupa-mohenjo-daro

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#68

Post by erklik »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #60
erklik wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was.. is a tendency for example among pious muslims to burn all books except the quoran at the end of life, to express ones devotion. Do you have an example of notable examples of this in history? or a source of such events? I've never heard of such a case before, so it's quite interesting.

Most of my information is from a book on the issue called "Sealed time". Regarding the book as holy property, special item: https://sureshemre.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/on-the-late-adop... One such example is the delay of book printing in the osman cultural sphere. Rest is on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran_desecration#Respectful_d... And in various scholar articles. Notice that its also a attempt to ha…

I am somewhat confused...

Your point was that pious people, even today, would burn all owned books except the Quran as a show of their faith.

> Sealed time

I can't seem to find this book. Do you have the author for it?

> Regarding the book as holy property, special item: https://sureshemre.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/on-the-late-adop...

This is more about scribes being attached to their jobs so preventing the use of printing-press. That's nothing holy or religion related. Good old protectionism.

> Rest is on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran_desecration#Respectful_d...

I am also confused what this has to do with the original statement. Quran as a book has a form of disposal, yes, and it's by burning, sure. Your point was about non-Quranic books.

> And in various scholar articles. Notice that its also a attempt to have cohension and prevent the forming of sects and cults.

Similarly, again, that is about religious texts and religious books.

Honestly, I am not sure where you got your claim from. As far as I can research, there isn't some widespread practice of "tendency for example among pious muslims to burn all books except the quoran at the end of life" ...

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#69

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

erklik wrote: post #68
qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my information is from a book on the issue called "Sealed time". Regarding the book as holy property, special item: https://sureshemre.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/on-the-late-adop... One such example is the delay of book printing in the osman cultural sphere. Rest is on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran_desecration#Respectful_d... And in various scholar articles. Notice that its also a attempt to ha…

I am somewhat confused... Your point was that pious people, even today, would burn all owned books except the Quran as a show of their faith. > Sealed time I can't seem to find this book. Do you have the author for it? > Regarding the book as holy property, special item: https://sureshemre.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/on-the-late-adop ... This is more about scribes being attached to their jobs so preventing the use of pr…

Dan Diner Sealed Time or German "Versiegelte Zeit".

I also said "pious" and i think being deeply religous and a scholar of other sciences sort of exclude one another in modern times.

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