Some thoughts on new technologies in archaeology

[Minimalist]

Much damage to the find?

[E.P. Grondine]

Much damage to the find?

No, no damage to the foundation remains, but it was a real set back for everyone.

I do not know who funded the original covering structure, but I suspect it may have been DuPont heirs.
I also do not know what has happened since then with the site.

[Minimalist]

No, no damage to the foundation remains, but it was a real set back for everyone.

That's something to be thankful for. As the saying goes, 'the best laid plans of mice and men usually work out about the same.'

[E.P. Grondine]

Another application is lidar, and one of the most important areas for this is the lower Colorado River:

http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/salton/AncientLakeCahuilla.html

One of the large questions is whether irrigation agriculture had spread into this area, and when.

Lidar surveys may provide pointers to answers for these questions.

According to their histories, the Aztec immigrated into Mexico with 3.2 million people, and this area may well have been their ancient homeland.

http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/aztec.html

[E.P. Grondine]

The Codex Selden hyperspectrally imaged:

http://www.livescience.com/55823-hidden ... ealed.html

It appears that the blank pages that were scraped many years back were recovered with this imaging.
Peerhpas one could use laser a laser to remove the blank gesso from the blank pages, instead of trying to scrape it away.
These lasers have been used for quite a while to clean old paintings.

A quick glance at the imaging shows war bonnets, indicative of a northern people.
The chert of the points seems to be of different types.

Perhaps what we have here is a Mixtec version of Aztec history, one of those which the Mexica ordered destroyed when they ascended to power.

In general, I want to note here that the usual method of conquest in Meso-America appears to have been to attack the outlying towns of a state before attacking its central capitol.

[E.P. Grondine]

I wonder if this technique will be applied to the papyri from Herculaneum:

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/fa ... -unwrapped

[Minimalist]

"This virtual unlocking of the Ein Gedi scroll paves the way for further scholarly analysis of this and other text buried in delicate, damaged materials. "


They are holding out that hope.

[E.P. Grondine]

While I have been trying to recover impact events, other work has gone on in understanding long term solar variations and climate cycles:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 130004.htm
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep15689

When I assembled my book I was trying to at least gain data on these cycles in North America,
but my stroke intervened, and I can not do this type of work now.

At that time there were only the models of Timo Niroma and a South African team to work with.

What needs to be done is to run these cycles backwards and then to tie them into such tree ring data as exists for the Americas.
That series will form a base line from which both volcanic effects and impact effects will be able to be determined with more precision.

Keep in mind that catastrophes are not mutually exclusive.

[E.P. Grondine]

This is really off topic, but I want to note that Dilly Knox's breaking of the Italian C 38m cipher machine led to so great shipping losses in 1941,
that Hitler transferred Kesselring and Luftfote 2 to Sicily,
which led to the under equipment of the armies before Moscow and their lack of air support,
which in turn allowed Zhukov to turn the German armies there,
which in turn led to Germany's eventual defeat in World War 2,
which war marked the beginning of the end of racism, colonialism, and empire.

Right now, there are two major text systems to be better broken, Mixtec and "Hittite" Hieroglyphic, with Etruscan of some interest.

Knox's key was when a WREN realized that instead of "perx" ["for" stop],
"personale" [personal] would work as a crib.

Caso's breaking of Mixtec occurred when he spotted toponyms in a glossed text.

What are needed are more good cribs into these systems, and focused excavation has a better chance of obtaining them
than random chance.

While Carcamesh remains tantilizingly out of reach, as it has for a century, Cholula is within grasp, and should be a piece of cake.

[E.P. Grondine]

"This virtual unlocking of the Ein Gedi scroll paves the way for further scholarly analysis of this and other text buried in delicate, damaged materials. "


They are holding out that hope.

Hi min -

This work reminds me of an old acquaintance's algorithms.
Packard has been hoping for new excavations at the villa for years.
Oh well.

Before you go one again about oral sources for the Bible, I want to share with you this Blackfoot view:
"Many have read the Bible, and of Moses when he went to the mountain and received the Ten Commandments as it was written.
He spoke with the true Creator of life.
This was one of the times Creator Sun tried to set Moses straight on who was the true Creator.
Moses couldn't look into the brightness of the speaker there,
he had to hide behind a growth of thick bushes.
The heat, as he stood there, was too intense,
he had to get behind those bushes to get away from the heat of the Creator." - Percy Bullchild

[E.P. Grondine]

Given the extensive experience with bi-graph systems, and the known phonetic loadings for I.E. (Mycenaean Greek), P.I.E. (Linear A, Brown's values), and N.W. Semetic (Ugarit), Cyrpo Miinoan should be breakable now using a reduction in sign counts, by limiting the sign counts to those found in utterances. A very rough identification of language family should be enough to guide a detailed breaking.

Using Zipf's Law,
the numbers for the most prominent consonent-vowel or vowel initial series should have a significant number to four or five in length,
which should give one a start.

Perhaps proto-historical accounts may provide another confirmation of any the results of any analysis.


I am very disappointed to see that CASO is not recognized for his "breaking' of the Mixtec glyph system.

Remember that the "Mississipians" had a glyph system, of which no long inscriptions have survived, and that this was of Huastecan in origin, which was likely adopted from that of Teotihuancan, which in turn was likely Mixtec related, and that their system led to the northern (Algonquin) script systems, and western desert signage petroglyphs.

CASO's breaking was extremely significant.

[Minimalist]

I want to share with you this Blackfoot view:

And when and from whom did the Blackfeet hear about "moses?"

[E.P. Grondine]

I want to share with you this Blackfoot view:

And when and from whom did the Blackfeet hear about "moses?"

Hi min -

From the "whites", as Percy puts it.
He was literate and read the Bible.

Percy also thought the "whites" made up their "God" to excuse their sins.
He made a pretty good argument for that.

Perhaps I'll give you some exact quotes, time permitting,
or the next time you bring up the topic of Biblical sources in any discussion of Native American oral traditions and history..

Remember, from Percy's point of view both Christians and Jews are "whites", so that is not any out for any "white".

By the way, Blackfoot beliefs were only those of one nation, and there were many nations here.

[Minimalist]

From the "whites", as Percy puts it.

Cultural contamination.

[E.P. Grondine]

From the "whites", as Percy puts it.

Cultural contamination.

Percy was acutely aware of that problem, and did his best to avoid it.