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posted by martyb on Friday January 19 2018, @07:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the knotty-problem dept.

He made graphs and compared the knots on the khipu to an old Spanish census document from the region when something clicked.

"Something looked out of the ordinary in that moment," Medrano said. "It seemed there was a coincidence that was too strong to be random."

He realized that, like a kind of textile abacus, the number of unique colors on the strings nearly matched with the number of first names on the Spanish census.

Source: Harvard student helps crack mystery of Inca code


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 19 2018, @09:43PM (18 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 19 2018, @09:43PM (#624928) Journal

    Ignoring your acid tongue, for the moment -

    So, we can agree that the Aztec and the Maya were also savages, but the Iroquois nations were not? Nor were the Seminole?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @09:56PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @09:56PM (#624942)

    I'm reading this exchange, and I feel I am missing something here.

    Would anybody mind letting me in on the secret? What is Runaway trying to say? What is the other AC trying to say?

    I don't go to InfoWars or whatnot. Hell, I don't even read WaPo any more. It's all shit. So it seems like I'm missing some kind of meme here.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @11:43PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @11:43PM (#624982)

      everything was fine in america before eurepeans showed up sadly this also remains true until today

      • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @01:20AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @01:20AM (#624998)

        So, no. Not everything was fine.

        In fact, everything is about a billion times better for people now on just about every measurement.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:35PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:35PM (#625321) Journal

        Everything was not fine. Nations in the Americas fought. There were natural disasters. People were enslaved, sacrificed, slain in warfare. But they also traded widely with each other, built great works, developed cultural refinements in art, engineering, science, and the like. We know this because we can look at the architectural record. Unfortunately, how they felt about it was not widely recorded, and the few civilizations in the Americas who did develop writing and record their history lost huge chunks of it to the Spanish. There are only a few Mayan codices that survived the mass burnings, and a greater, though far from extensive, collection of work from the Aztecs.

        In other words they did the same things human civilizations did elsewhere in the world, but most of that depth was lost to the advent of Europeans in the Americas. The best current consensus is that pathogens unwittingly brought by the Europeans wiped out millions of Americans before the first conquistadors ever stepped foot on land. We don't yet know, though, if those pathogens were introduced by the tentative first contacts with the Spanish, the Basque fisherman who had discovered and voyaged to the Grand Banks before them, or the Vikings who we know for sure were at L'Anse aux Meadows and interacting with the Beothuks far earlier. But the Americas the conquistadors eventually arrived at were already extensively de-populated and broken.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday January 19 2018, @09:59PM (8 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Friday January 19 2018, @09:59PM (#624944)

    While we're at it, why don't we throw the Mongols, the Philistines, the Carthaginians, and the Bavarians into your comparison? Since we've already abandoned any semblance of geographic or temporal similarity, let alone cultural similarity.

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 20 2018, @02:43AM (5 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 20 2018, @02:43AM (#625010) Journal

      All of those mentioned were native to the Americas, at about the same time. All of those mentioned suffered devastating diseases soon after the the European arrived on the continent. All of those mentioned suffered exploitation, warfare, and even enslavement at the hands of the white man. If you can't see the semblance between the Inca, the Aztec, and the Iroquois, it's because you're not even trying.

      • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Saturday January 20 2018, @03:43PM (4 children)

        by meustrus (4961) on Saturday January 20 2018, @03:43PM (#625173)

        North, South, and Central America are very different places, and the Maya, Aztecs, and Iroquois all existed centuries apart from each other. I thought everybody knew that.

        --
        If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 20 2018, @04:50PM (2 children)

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 20 2018, @04:50PM (#625191) Journal

          I very strongly disagree. In fact, you can make a moderately long journey on your next vacation, and meet full blooded Iroquois, Aztec, AND Mayan people. If you're satisfied with half breeds, it won't even take a moderately long journey - you can find them all over the United States, today.

          Oh, the Mayan EMPIRE, and the Aztec EMPIRE were both destroyed, just as surely as the Iroquois nation. But, the people are still there.

          Nor are the three nations separated by as much time as you seem to think.
          Iroquois, 200 BC to present - that is, the nation still exists, on paper, if not in fact.
          Mayan, 2000 BC to 900 - officially, but the people survive today.
          Aztec, 1325 to the arrival of the Spanish - and again, the people survive today.

          https://mayaazteccomparecontrast.weebly.com/ [weebly.com]

          I'm not finding a decent timeline of the Iroquois nation, because they all start with the arrival of the English. Like - there weren't any Iroquois in America, until the English arrived. This page, for instance, gives a little lip service to the existence of the Iroquois prior to the white man's arrival - https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/environmental_center/sunbury/website/HistoryofIroquoisIndians.shtml [bucknell.edu]

          • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:22PM

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:22PM (#625312) Journal

            That's right. I'd also mention that they had high achievement in culture, too. The Aztecs had their own form of poetry, Flower Songs, in Nahuatl, their language, some of which survive today [gutenberg.org]. An elegy, written about the fall of Tenochtitlan, is heart-wrenching:

            Broken spears lie in the roads;
            We have torn our hair in our grief
            The houses are roofless now, and their walls
            Are red with blood.

            Worms are swarming in the streets and plazas,
            And the walks are spattered with gore
            The water has turned red, as if it were dyed
            And when we drink it,
            It has the taste of brine

            We have pounded our hands in despair
            Against the adobe walls,
            For our inheritance, our city, is lost and dead
            The shields of our warriors were its defense.
            But they could not save it.

            We have chewed dry twigs and salt grasses:
            We have filled our mouths with dust and bits of adobe.
            We have eaten lizards, rats and worms
            When we had meat, we ate it almost raw.

            Imagine if the reverse had happened and we knew very little about the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans. That's about the scale of what humanity lost in the empires of the Americas.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
          • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday January 22 2018, @02:52PM

            by meustrus (4961) on Monday January 22 2018, @02:52PM (#626079)

            Apparently the gaps between years 900 - 1325 does not count as "centuries" to you.

            And I thought we were talking about societies, not some frankly offensive 19th century racial concept. You can find plenty of "full blooded" and "half breed" people of the Mongol, Philistine, Carthaginian, and Bavarian races now too. They wouldn't call themselves that any more than someone indigenous to the Yucatan would call themselves Mayan.

            --
            If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
        • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:11PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:11PM (#625301) Journal

          They are very different places, but we know from the archaeological record that they had contact with each other. They have found copper from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan all over the place, obsidian from Yellowstone all over the place, and jade from Meso-America all over the place. Moreover, the pervasive presence of maize as a staple says they did. In short, they had extensive trade networks.

          It wasn't all land-bound, either. The Inca had ocean-going craft and traded up and down the Pacific Coast. The Caribbean peoples sailed and traded from Florida to South America.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @03:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @03:12AM (#625015)

      Don't forget the Greeks. Beyond the philosophers they tended to be barbaric, war loving, baby eating bastards.

    • (Score: 2) by Bobs on Saturday January 20 2018, @05:10PM

      by Bobs (1462) on Saturday January 20 2018, @05:10PM (#625205)

      And you can't leave out the Romans.

      Reg: "All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"

      Xerxes: Brought peace!

      Via: http://www.epicure.demon.co.uk/whattheromans.html [demon.co.uk]

      Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ [youtube.com]

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:06PM (4 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:06PM (#625298) Journal

    Were the Aztecs and Maya savages, though? The Romans massacred lots of people in the arena and on lots of other occasions, but we call them civilized. The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice for religious reasons, but somehow that makes them savages, despite their other accomplishments in architecture, literature, mathematics, engineering, and in every other measure of civilization.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:48PM (3 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:48PM (#625370) Journal

      Yes, the Romans were savage. They sat in their arenas, watching people fight for their lives, for no better reason than entertainment. The OP to whom I originally responded phrased his own post to indicate that the Spanish were savages, and that the Native Americas were pretty savage as well.

      Fact is, we live in a pretty unique time in history, in which most of the western world enjoys especially civilized conditions. Almost all of our children live to adulthood - that is enough to make us stand out, all by itself.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @02:47AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @02:47AM (#625486)

        Dying as a gladiator was a way to fix before death a dishonorable situation, such as being captured on the battle field.

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 21 2018, @06:55AM (1 child)

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 21 2018, @06:55AM (#625544) Journal

          That may be true for some of those who died in the stadiums. It doesn't explain any of those who were tossed into the ring with lions, or wolves, such as the Christians, for example. People were dragged back from Africa, Asia, northern Europe, the British Isles, and fed to the entertainment machine. As for warriors, they may have observed any of dozens of religions, or no religion at all. Being fed to the entertainment machine was of no religious value to them. I'm afraid you're looking for a simple explanation for a complex situation.

          A bloodthirsty audience demanded entertainment and distraction, so people and animals alike were fed to them, lest they find time and motivation to revolt.

          Doesn't that sound a lot like America today, and "reality" television?

          • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @03:50AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @03:50AM (#625939)

            Let's be clear about past civilizations. Life was brutal and short and the people of that age were born to it.
            My Grandfather was Ojibwa Indian, his mother ran from the tribe up in Michigan.
            The American Indian way of life was brutal and extreme to us modern types.
            Their favorite pastime was torture. Every tribe did it. It was considered a great honor to not scream out as you were tortured to death.
            An just about all tribes would eat the person that did not scream out, to absorb some of his strength. Some tribes only ate strips of human flesh but most were cannibals.
            They tortured and brutalized anyone they got a hold of. On raids they typically killed everyone except for young boys, who were indoctrinated into the tribe. They kept slaves and brutalized Them. Women were second class citizens and basically slaves to the men and performed most of the labor.
            It was their way. And the way of many human tribes and cultures. The Romans were civilized by comparison. But were still a brutal culture compared to what we have today.
            The American Indian never invented the wheel, they didn't have draft animals and for most of their entire culture never had horses. They would run entire herds of buffalo over a cliff and harvest the best parts.
            They were a brutal people as were so many other civilizations at the time. Life was short and hard and they survived by taking what they needed and never looking back. Just like every other group of humans.
            We are in a Much better place these days. And, more and more, we're thinking globally in regards to the environment and other cultures. We are growing and getting better all the time. As group the graph is spiraling upward.
            As I learned from my Grandfather: Do the best you can when you can. It is all that is asked of you. Hopefully you've left it a little better than when you showed up.
            We kinda seem to be headed that way.

            As an aside this also explains how you can have American Indians with blond hair and blue eyes. My Grandfather always insisted that they had to be captured Viking children. He grew up around a tribe of Indians and they had a few things to say about the past. One of them was that those Norseman were never able to grab a foothold. The Indians wouldn't allow it.

            Interesting if true. I believe it, though.

            Apologies for the Long post.