161–170 of 301 posts
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But language itself and pronunciation of that language shifts over time. Probably better than hand transcription, but 7000 years is a long time.
“A dog walks into a bar and says, ‘I cannot see a thing. I’ll open this one.’”
I love reading the posited explanations for that joke in academia and when it’s posted randomly people usually have a stab at it too.
Kinda sad that the ritual was a way to curse somebody. 12,000 years of hurting each other. Side Node: computer programing is kinda cool. It is a set of incantations which actually does work. EDIT: Hello, all you down-voters and people who say I should read the article before commenting :-) I to, don't like it when people just start commenting without reading the article. I also don't like it when people take what a p…
Computer programs do nothing . It’s computers , i.e. actual hardware, which work. We forget this at our peril.
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Play is a semi-structured way of learning important skills! Evolution really just has to make it engaging enough for you to learn the skills, not much of a reason for it to persist after that.
> not much of a reason for it to persist after that for working out and keeping fit!... oh, hmmm, I guess that's glaring evidence that working out and keeping fit are not beneficial after all
It's not the first time that I read hypothesis of Aboriginal oral traditions that stayed for much longer than anywhere else in the world. I wonder why it would be the case there and not elsewhere
The article mentions that because we have invented writing, passing down oral traditions became much less important to us, and hence our societies have "lost" some of the old tales, paradoxically. That's because while people write down things they think is important, they couldn't have known that unlike oral information (which adapts as language evolves, imperfectly but enough to keep the basic structure of the original), the means on which they write decay rapidly, and due to the speed at which language evolves (without modern technology, a few hundred years is enough for isolated regions to develop their own language branches), much of what was written in the distant past would become unintelligible even to people living in the area, even if it managed to survive (though modern techniques using computers seem to have made it easier to do so). Not to mention that in much of the world, civilizations were constantly being replaced by newer ones or migrating to different areas as their neighbors expanded and faded. Much of the ancient texts in any given area would make no sense to the new inhabitants, who would have no qualms about destroying everything (in fact, they probably burned everything down as soon as they conquered a new area).
Basically, the written word turned out to be much less resilient than people probably believed it would be. I think we are making the same mistake with digital information. It may look "eternal" but try to find websites from the early internet, for example. Almost everything is disappearing quickly.
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It says nothing about cursing. Please read article first before commenting.
I read the original Nature article, not the one written by an underpaid and overworked english major who wrote the popular article.
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The similarity between the EoG and Genesis flood stories can probably be laid to the fact that the first major human societies were built around flood plains of rivers in regions that have otherwise stable climates. When your society spends centuries in that situation, floods are the single most important natural event that happens to you. If would be shocking if they didn't feature prominently in your stories.
But if the floods are a yearly phenomenon, why would you necessarily write about a single big flood?
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Yup. The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 18th century BC) caused quite a lot of controversy when it was translated in 1870 due to its striking similarity to many parts of the Hebrew Bible (which was written MUCH later). Similar controversies erupted over the stories of Osiris (c. 25th century BC). By the 10th century BC, almost all of the story themes that we ascribe to more modern authorship had already been written.
The similarity between the EoG and Genesis flood stories can probably be laid to the fact that the first major human societies were built around flood plains of rivers in regions that have otherwise stable climates. When your society spends centuries in that situation, floods are the single most important natural event that happens to you. If would be shocking if they didn't feature prominently in your stories.
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I know we're supposed to ascribe the most benevolent motive to a comment. So the above is both rather absurd and also rather patronising.
In India, there is a custom of passing ancient knowledge through poetic verses. Every poetic verses is sung in a specific 'meter'. If there is a discrepancy in recitation then remembering and passing knowledge 'letter by letter' can not succeed. Many of the verses are thousands of years old. I read some describing an ancient extinct river ~7000 years ago, later rediscovered through satellite imagery (don't know the r…
Isn't that how ancient Greek texts (that are attributed to mythical Homer) have been passed down too?