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Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

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Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#41

Post by einhverfr »

yk wrote: post #31
hollerith wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vastly less sensitive because humans have become vastly more skilled at getting what they want and need from the planet and the biosphere.

But we also depend on vastly higher yields. [1] IMHO it is not clear, that additional agriculture in currently cold areas could offset all losses in warmer areas. Additionally we are already not very good at the distribution of food on a global scale. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wheat_yields_in_developin...

Indeed, and we are dependent on natural gas (for fertilizer) and petroleum supply (all manner of chemicals, fuels, etc) to grow things now.

Additionally I would point out that famines today are almost never problems of global distribution but rather local breakdowns in distribution. I.e. a small nation falls victim of civil war and consequently famine happens as well.

There are very real and open questions what our current approaches to agriculture can do as oil continues to become more expensive.

Basically, I think the thing is that we humans tend towards as high a population as we can manage and expect famines to control our population. We've been pushing the envelope by utilizing vast amounts of fossil fuels for a while, and GMO's are often sold on the promise of being even more energy intensive (spray more pesticides and your crops will survive).

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#42

Post by einhverfr »

ktizo wrote: post #22
droithomme wrote: post #11

LOL. Before clicking on the link I said out loud, "This will be yet another article blaming the 'collapse' of an 'ancient civilization' on 'climate change'." Clicked the link, wasn't disappointed.

I think you might be conflating the current issue of anthropogenic climate change with the historic fact that many different cultures' success or failure has been almost entirely subject to the whims of climatic variation.

When someone pins climate change as the sole cause of cultures' rise or falls, I tend to wonder what bridge they are selling.

Climate places real constraints on cultures but I am not sure that these are ones which necessarily dictate success or failure. If it did, Roald Amudsen should have suffered the same fate as John Franklin.

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#43

Post by einhverfr »

rprasad wrote: post #28
droithomme wrote: post #11

LOL. Before clicking on the link I said out loud, "This will be yet another article blaming the 'collapse' of an 'ancient civilization' on 'climate change'." Clicked the link, wasn't disappointed.

Before the globalization of the food supply, climate change was the cause of death for many of the great ancient and not-so-ancient civilizations. Getting fresh food from any part of the world is (comparatively) trivial nowadays, but even 150 years ago, most food spoiled on the way to the local market a few miles down the road.

I doubt that most food spoiled on the way to the local market. Also note that a lot of traditional methods of preservation (everything from many forms of cheesemaking to many forms of pickling such as that involved in making sauerkraut) are basically controlled spoilage.

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#44

Post by Mvandenbergh »

naveensundar wrote: post #19
tokenadult wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing Yes. Again, this is a familiar issue to people who are familiar with linguistics, and one of the criticisms of the Rao et al. publication is that none of the authors are familiar with the methodology used in historical linguistics to solve comparable problems in other parts of the world. (I am able to read ancient Chinese and am intimately famili…

Why did you leave out Rao's rebuttal to Farmer and friends' unabashed ad-hominmen laced pieces that you have given? Rao's reply in Computational Linguistics: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/rao/IndusCompLing.pdf Also other articles at: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/rao/IndusResponse.html Edit 1. An aside: Being a logic student who uses probabilistic machine learning, Farmer's use of the words refutation, proo…

It seems to me that at least 50% of this controversy is a culture clash between computational linguists and historical linguists.

It's a little odd to describe the Rao paper as using time-tested logic and math when the idea of conditional entropy as an indicator of whether a given symbol system is linguistic is in no way time-tested. I'm not a professional linguist, and it may well be a valid and interesting technique, but it is not time-tested.

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#45

Post by teyc »

tokenadult wrote: post #2

The interesting submitted article refers to "and as-yet undeciphered writing," but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the…

I wonder if it is possible to tell ornamentation from writing from the degree of entropy present. For instance, if it is easily compressed, then it is probably writing, as opposed to ornamentation - which will like be random.

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#46

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #44
naveensundar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you leave out Rao's rebuttal to Farmer and friends' unabashed ad-hominmen laced pieces that you have given? Rao's reply in Computational Linguistics: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/rao/IndusCompLing.pdf Also other articles at: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/rao/IndusResponse.html Edit 1. An aside: Being a logic student who uses probabilistic machine learning, Farmer's use of the words refutation, proo…

It seems to me that at least 50% of this controversy is a culture clash between computational linguists and historical linguists. It's a little odd to describe the Rao paper as using time-tested logic and math when the idea of conditional entropy as an indicator of whether a given symbol system is linguistic is in no way time-tested. I'm not a professional linguist, and it may well be a valid and interesting techniqu…

How do you time-test models with a strictly limited and static set of test cases? Any scheme would suffer from over-training. Maybe we have to evaluate approaches using logic and math e.g. conditional entropy to attack problems spaces like this.

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#47

Post by Spooky23 »

othello wrote: post #4

"They had cities ordered into grids, with exquisite plumbing, which was not encountered again until the Romans" It's amazing how quite advanced technologies (for a civilization that thrived from 5000 to 3000 years ago) were mastered only to be lost later over the course of history. A mind-blowing example closer to us is the Antikythera mechanism [1]. Found in a Mediterranean wreck in 1900, the artifact was not analyz…

I think these sorts of phenomena are a direct result of the merger & consolidations that seem to be inevitable as technology moves on.

If you think about it, there is a shockingly small number of people who know how to do things critical to society. How do you make a car axle? Sew complex stitching on an industrial scale? Build a CPU?

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#48

Post by randallsquared »

teyc wrote: post #45
tokenadult wrote: post #2

The interesting submitted article refers to "and as-yet undeciphered writing," but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the…

I wonder if it is possible to tell ornamentation from writing from the degree of entropy present. For instance, if it is easily compressed, then it is probably writing, as opposed to ornamentation - which will like be random.

Why would ornamentation be random? Actually, a lot of ornamentation (patterns on rugs, clothing, buildings, etc) one sees is more regular than writing.

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#49

Post by gbog »

einhverfr wrote: post #37
tokenadult wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing Yes. Again, this is a familiar issue to people who are familiar with linguistics, and one of the criticisms of the Rao et al. publication is that none of the authors are familiar with the methodology used in historical linguistics to solve comparable problems in other parts of the world. (I am able to read ancient Chinese and am intimately famili…

The Indus Valley script doesn't look like a mere form of ornamentation to me (knowing something about archaeology and historical linguistics). The problem though is that when we say "writing" we usually mean "encoding otherwise spoken language in durable form" and there is no real evidence that this is what the Indus Valley script does. The problem is that there are plenty of kinds of markings that don't fall under e…

> when we say "writing" we usually mean "encoding otherwise spoken language in durable form"

Isn't Chinese an obvious counterexample? The Bible say in the beginning was the verb but for Chinese characters the main view is that the speech encoding part has been added later.

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#50

Post by einhverfr »

gbog wrote: post #49
einhverfr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Indus Valley script doesn't look like a mere form of ornamentation to me (knowing something about archaeology and historical linguistics). The problem though is that when we say "writing" we usually mean "encoding otherwise spoken language in durable form" and there is no real evidence that this is what the Indus Valley script does. The problem is that there are plenty of kinds of markings that don't fall under e…

> when we say "writing" we usually mean "encoding otherwise spoken language in durable form" Isn't Chinese an obvious counterexample? The Bible say in the beginning was the verb but for Chinese characters the main view is that the speech encoding part has been added later.

But people writing Chinese are still encoding spoken Chinese in an ideographic system. It's not a phonetic system or even close. But it's still a written representation of the spoken language.
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