There's something about Figure 4 that reminds me of the Codex Seraphinianus, or the Voynich Manuscript.
Humans 40k yrs ago developed a system of conventional signs
71–74 of 74 posts
Re: Humans 40k yrs ago developed a system of conventional signs
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try it and see. I seriously doubt twine would be a good carrier of vibrations over 75 feet. The fibers would dampen it out. Then there's the mass of the gourds, I doubt the faint vibrations left would vibrate them to a point you could hear anything. I also suspect that the reason nobody tries it is because then the theory that it is a Fred Flintstone telephone falls apart.
The onus isn't really on me, it's not my device, I'm not even the organisation/article author claiming it is functional. You claim it can't work, have you tried it and seen? (Although admittedly you can't really show by practical experiment that it can't possibly be done.) I do think it's more likely it was for use as a rope, with gourd weights to ease throwing.
The burden of proof should be on the people writing academic papers asserting it is a telephone.
Just like if someone claims they found a way to use water as an automobile fuel. I don't need to prove it doesn't work. They need to prove it does.
Re: Humans 40k yrs ago developed a system of conventional signs
#73The X's on the animal forms (Fig. 1B) ... isn't that likely to be "hit here" type markings, for hunting reference? Shoulder, side, stomach... surprised this wasn't really touched on in the paper, since it seems really likely. Though, the paper doesn't seem to care so much about the actual meanings, seemingly just narrowing down the number of possible interpretations /shrug
Some of the marks on it, particularly the head marks, are right over areas of the thickest bones. It's not impossible, but always worth being self-critical of "obvious" meanings with things like this. Things that are straightforward even to us as non-expert megafaunal hunters would probably be completely obvious to actual experts (if it's not wrong), and people usually don't want to record the obvious stuff.
Yeah I was wondering about that too (the shoulder area for example), conversely maybe striking there is the most likely to cripple the animal, thus making it easier to catch? But I was thinking that as well, "maybe these are the least desirable areas to strike". Either way I was just surprised they really skimmed over the "meaning", when I expected the paper would have delved a bit further into that.
Re: Humans 40k yrs ago developed a system of conventional signs
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a theory that song used to communicate emotional states precedes and probably evolved into language as we think of it.
I like to think that bird song, evolved over millions of years going back to their dinosaur ancestors, is a language that encodes vast amounts of information that our brains can't even begin to understand the complexities of
The old story of the 'language of the birds' suggests that we can make headway. No one's ever complained of time they wasted listening to birdsong.