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Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?

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Re: Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?

#51

Post by yorwba »

mdp2021 wrote: post #38
animan wrote: post #7

This was fun to read! I wish there was a no tech version of hackers news for this type of content only

> fun ... a no tech version Which means, surely, "no tech" and "no current impactful world". You would lose that sight from a community largely trained on hard facts ("works/doesnotwork") and creation, invention, management, on real grounds. "Intellectual curiosity" as a "bubble", as an escape into a closed reality, is not a good thing. "Oh, the colours of nature in its taxologies!". And meanwhile maybe the world tha…

There's no shortage of sources seeking to deliver the most important news as quickly as possible. It's the niche stuff that few people care about that requires effort to seek out.

Re: Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?

#52

Post by dgellow »

poulpy123 wrote: post #30

The idea that a list of kings from 4000 years ago would encodé global climate events for over 240.000 years is completely ludicrous. Astrology has a better grounding on reality than this idea. And the fact that all lengths are multiple of 600, is even more telling knowing that they counted in base 60

[dead]

Re: Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?

#53

Post by dgellow »

SurviveTheJive wrote: post #15

You can’t discuss kings without discussing the rich history of Europe with thousands of years of oral and written history long predating the Sumerians and even the ancient Proto Indo-European peoples to which European language and culture is often erroneously attributed. The dark ages were anything but dark. Ancient Europe was anything but primitive. And yet it’s so rarely discussed in the mainstream.

> The dark ages were anything but dark

The period is only called dark age in English for what it’s worth, that should make it pretty obvious it’s not a universal understanding of that era

Re: Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?

#54

Post by shiandow »

yorwba wrote: post #47
jcranmer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sumerians used a sexagesimal notation system; the two lengths would be 5.10.0 and 5.50.0 (which together add up to 11.0.0, FWIW), while all of the other king lengths are 8.0.0, 10.0.0, or 12.0.0.

The Weld-Blundell Prism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weld-Blundell_Prism doesn't use positional notation, so 5.50.0 is expressed as 𒐧𒐢 (five 3600, five 600) and 5.10.0 is expressed as 𒐧𒐞 (five 3600, one 600). (Lines 27-35, each number appearing twice separated by a line with 𒁹𒈗 (one king), if you want to follow along.)

This is besides the point, but you do have to marvel at the technology it took to make this comment render just fine in HN.

Re: Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?

#55

Post by shevy-java »

> One speculative interpretation treats these numbers as a distorted memory of prehistory.

Well ... some factors are recurring, e. g. energy coming from the sun. So downwards pattern will be created due to that. But many things are rather hard to predict, magnetic changes, eruptions on the sun and even local climate. Antarctica was not always covered in ice, that started at around 34 million years ago, give or take - as one example. Or, as a much more profound case: dinosaurs ruling the lands, then a meteorite induced climate change and dinosaurs went extinct. That would be hard to predict (you can of course calculate trajectories, but what I mean is if you look at Earth as an isolated system only, then it is hard to predict).

I think the "xyz human list" aligns with "paleoclimate events" does not work that well. You don't need a human list to help "align" anything with recurring patterns. Geology isn't based on fantasy events but on specific factors that can be calculated with some extent of certainty; perhaps not 100% (weather remains hard to predict today for some n days in the future) but to a high percentage degree.

To use that human list to then predict the future, makes little to no sense. It makes no real sense. Measuring current data points is much better than some random human-made list ages ago. It seems the author is desperate in wanting to make such an analogy.

Re: Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?

#56

Post by bell-cot »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #39
poulpy123 wrote: post #30

The idea that a list of kings from 4000 years ago would encodé global climate events for over 240.000 years is completely ludicrous. Astrology has a better grounding on reality than this idea. And the fact that all lengths are multiple of 600, is even more telling knowing that they counted in base 60

> And the fact that all lengths are multiple of 600 I know this must somehow explain the giant numbers but I'm still not sure how precisely. Counting in base 60 would make for much smaller numbers, no ? For example, the number 16 in base 2 is 1111. but in base 10 it is 16. Ergo smaller base, larger number, and vice versa. So did you mean to say they counted in units that are made of 1/600 of our solar years? I think…

Not to nibble at your point, but 16 is 10000 in base 2. 1111 is 15.

Re: Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?

#58

Post by huurtehoog »

poulpy123 wrote: post #30

The idea that a list of kings from 4000 years ago would encodé global climate events for over 240.000 years is completely ludicrous. Astrology has a better grounding on reality than this idea. And the fact that all lengths are multiple of 600, is even more telling knowing that they counted in base 60

Most likely explanation is we're misreading some antique number system. Our interpretation of Sumerian numbering is tentative at best. The major indicator for accuracy was that early on a few different scholars converged on the same translation for the same tablets so we trust we got it right.

The mathematical and astronomical tablet texts we have of Mesopotamia, where we understand the numbering very well, are much later, in Babylonian Akkadian from the 5th century BCE.

Could be a simple misunderstanding as interpreting something that was intended to be metaphorically read as "quite a long time". Like myriad - literal translations might yield Chinese historical texts claiming unlikely numbers in multiples of 10.000 when the author might have intended to say just "very, very large number, beyond what we have seen around here in living memory".

Re: Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?

#60

Post by dotancohen »

mdp2021 wrote: post #38
animan wrote: post #7

This was fun to read! I wish there was a no tech version of hackers news for this type of content only

> fun ... a no tech version Which means, surely, "no tech" and "no current impactful world". You would lose that sight from a community largely trained on hard facts ("works/doesnotwork") and creation, invention, management, on real grounds. "Intellectual curiosity" as a "bubble", as an escape into a closed reality, is not a good thing. "Oh, the colours of nature in its taxologies!". And meanwhile maybe the world tha…

The community, not the articles, is where I feel /. had value, and where HN has value. Another site with more-relevant-to-me articles but a different community would provide me far less value.

It is precisely the hard tech articles and focus that keeps the valuable community on HN.

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