Hamacher, Duane, Patrick Nunn, Michelle Gantevoort, Rebe Taylor, Greg Lehman, Ka Hei Andrew Law, and Mel Miles. “The Archaeology of Orality: Dating Tasmanian Aboriginal Oral Traditions to the Late Pleistocene.” Journal of Archaeological Science, August 10, 2023, 45pp.

Pre-print.

See also: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440323000997

Annotation url: urn:x-pdf:d4ccd0952073ac59932f4638381e6b69

Popular press coverage: https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/august/tasmanian-aboriginal-oral-traditions-among-the-oldest-recorded-narratives

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armillary_sphere

No new physics and no new mathematics was discovered by the AI. The AI did however deduce something from the existing math and physics, that no one else had yet seen. Skynet is not coming for us yet.

The close connection between

This is a great story, but interestingly, without the appropriate art to explicitly map the idea onto, it's much harder to remember or to help those unaccustomed to these ideas. Presumably the audience of this book doesn't/wouldn't.

A simple drawing here or an overlay onto an existing image would be immensely helpful. Perhaps the Robinson reference has one? (it doesn't)

Notice how in the story of Garnkiny, the Moon Man, and Dawool, that the power of emotion is used as a means of strengthening not only the story, but the memory of the other associated elements.

This idea is closely related to "talking rocks" and seems a very apt parallel.

understated quote of the day

Hamacher, Duane W. “The Art of Star Knowledge.” In 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art, edited by Judith Ryan and Marcia Langton. Melbourne, Australia: University of Melbourne Press, 2023. https://www.academia.edu/96537139/The_Art_of_Star_Knowledge.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/06/world/jupiter-new-moons-scn/index.html

How painfully true this may have been in 1899, it's now much worse in 2023!

Specialization of knowledge tends to fit the lifeways of the people who hold and maintain it. Changing lifeways means one must lose one or more domains and begin using or curating different domains of knowledge.

In a global world of specialization, humans who specialize are forced to rely more heavily on the experience and veracity of those around them who have also specialized. One may be able to have a Ph.D. in astrophysics, but their knowledge of the state of the art in anthropology or economic policy may be therefore utterly undeveloped. As a result they will need to rely on the knowledge and help of others in maintaining those domains.

This knowledge specialization means that politicians will need to be more open about what they think and say, yet instead politicians seem to be some of the least knowledge about almost anything.

This is just the start of a somewhat well-formed thesis I've developed elsewhere, but not previously written out... more to come...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/18/1139783203/what-makes-songs-swing-physicists-unravel-jazz-mystery

Spaces in both language, text, and music help to create the texture of what is being communicated (and/or not).

Link to Edward Tufte's latest book in section entitled "Spacing enhances complex meaning, encourages slow, thoughtful reading":

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>KevinMarks</span> in #meta 2023-01-19 (<time class='dt-published'>01/19/2023 11:32:19</time>)</cite></small>

Link to Indigenous astronomy example of negative spaces (like the Great Emu)

Thanks to its shortest orbit time, Mercury is the "mostest" closest planet to all the planets that orbits the sun

https://500ish.com/mastodon-brought-a-protocol-to-a-product-fight-ba9fda767c6a

Architecture can make UX suck.

.

Sounds like this shares many of the potential features of Stonehenge, stone and timber circles, and menhirs that fit into Lynne Kelly's thesis on mnemonic devices.

!- example : simplicity - astronomy example is perfect - paradigm shift to go to slightly more complex fundamental building block that CAN scale

https://johnedchristensen.github.io/WebbCompare/

Cool web slider to compare the Hubble Space Telescope with the James Webb Telescope

This feels like an underlying and underpinning principle of how the IndieWeb which focuses on working real world examples which are able to build up more complex systems instead of theoretical architecture astronomy which goes no where.

Reference: John Gall (1975) Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail p. 71

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q6DTouuLX0

Last night while watching a video related to The First Astronomers, I came across a clip in which Australian elder Uncle Ghillar Michael Anderson indicates that indigenous dendroglyphs (markings on trees) or petroglyphs (markings on stone in the stony territories) are the libraries of the Indigenous peoples who always relate (associate) their stories from the markings back up to the sky (stars, constellations).

These markings remind me of some of those found on carved stone balls in neolithic European contexts described by Dr. @LynneKelly in The Memory Code and Memory Craft and carvings on coolamon in Knowledge and Power.

Using the broad idea of the lukasa and abstract designs, I recently bought a small scale version of the Aberlemno Pictish Cross as a small manual/portable memory palace, which is also an artwork that I can hang on the wall, to use to associate memories to the designs and animals which are delineated in 18 broad areas on the sculpture. (Part of me wonders if the communities around these crosses used them for mnemonic purposes as well?)

Is anyone else using abstract designs or artwork like this for their memory practice?

Anyone know of other clever decorative artworks one could use and display in their homes/offices for these purposes?

For those interested in the archeological research on dendroglyphs in Australia: - The Western Yalanji dendroglyph: The life and death of an Aboriginal carved tree - Review: The Dendroglyphs or ‘Carved Trees’ of New South Wales by Robert Etheridge (Content warning: historical erasure of Indigenous culture)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2zq_R1uBc

The dendroglyphs (markings on trees) or the petroglyphs (markings on stone in the stony territories) are the libraries of the indigenous peoples who always relate their stories from the markings back up to the sky.

via Uncle Ghillar Michael Anderson

Can this be linked to the practices of the Druids who may have had similar methods? How about linking the petroglyphs in the Celtic (English) countryside?

There's a light side (East) and a dark side (West) of the Milky Way (seen as a river) which is mirrored into the moieties of the people. Dark people must go across the river to marry those on the light side. The elders kept track of all the genealogy in the totemic system of every family and every child and made their promises such that there were at least five generations removed from their family to maintain the purity (in the sense of genetic soundness, not genetic purity from a "racial" perspective) of the people.

via Uncle Ghillar Michael Anderson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkjf0hCKOCE

The sky is a textbook. The sky is a lawbook. The sky is a science book. —Duane Hamacher, (1:24)

Hamacher uses the Western description "method of loci" rather than an Indigenous word or translated word.

The words "myth", "legend", "magic", "ritual", and "religion" in both colloquial English and even anthropology are highly loaded terms.

Words like "narrative" and "story" are better used instead for describing portions of the Indigenous cultures which we have long ignored and written off for their seeming simplicity.

Many cultures in the world face their windows, balconies, and other architecture to take advantage of the sun (for light and warmth). Because the ecliptic is tilted towards the north in the southern hemisphere and towards the south in the northern hemisphere, people in the north of the equator prefer south-facing properties and people south of the equator prefer north-facing properties.

The movements of the sun throughout the year function as a timepiece at various scales to indicate days, seasons, and years.

What is the term for the appearance of motion from east to west of celestial objects? :: diurnal motion

Just before sunrise or just after sunset, in the direction of the Sun on the horizon one will see the constellations of the zodiac.

What is the path of the sun called? :: the ecliptic

Eclipses occur on the path of which heavenly body? :: the sun

Hidden in the phrase that "everything on Earth is reflected in the sky" or the idea of "reading the stars to understand one's environment" is the idea of associative memory. If you know one thing, you necessarily know another. Don't let this subtle idea of the words 'reflect' or 'read' hide what is going on.

here.’ This philosophical standpoint is understood in the Lakota/Dakota language with one word: Kapemni—‘As is above, so is below: What is in the stars is on Earth; and what is on Earth is in the stars.’

The Lakota/Dakota language word Kapemni captures the idea that what is in the stars mirrors what is on Earth.

Given the predominantly non-literate civilizations that comprised the ancient Near East, I've been wondering about how they may have actually been closer to Indigenous cultures than they are to more modern, literate Western culture.

Perhaps he shouldn't dismiss them so readily here, but rather tie them more directly into his broader thesis.

contained over a thousand star names. Rāwairi passed the manuscript to his grandson, Timi Rāwairi. In 1995, Timi’s own grandson asked him about Matariki, a celebration that kicks off the Māori new year, heralded by the dawn rising of the Pleiades star cluster. Timi went to a cupboard, pulled out the manuscript and handed it to his grandson, Rangi Mātāmua.

Was it partially coincidence that this knowledge was written down and passed on within the family or because of the primacy of the knowledge within the culture that helped to save in spanning from orality into literacy?

What other examples might exist along these lines to provide evidence for the passing of knowledge at the border of orality and literacy?

Link this to ideas about the border of orality and literacy in Welsh and Irish.

Star knowledge can be some of the most important social knowledge with respect to Indigenous peoples and as a result astronomers are some of the most prestigious and sacred roles in these societies.

Star knowledge is guarded by family lineages in the Lakota cultures with the name Lúta.

Are these graphic and memorable stories strikingly similar because of the underlying packages of orality and memory used in these cultures?

This is one of my primary motivations for reading this text.

The Big Dipper, part of Ursa Major, appears upside down in the southern Hemisphere and is associated with the shape of a shark in the Torres Strait. When its "nose" touches the horizon at sunset, it's associated with breeding of nearby sharks who swim in shallow waters.

Notice the variety of associations of time (both of year, sunset, and breeding) with an animal (in both the water and in the sky) along with a specific location (Torres Strait).

Hamacher, Duane. The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars. Allen & Unwin, 2022, https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/academic-professional/cultural-studies/The-First-Astronomers-Duane-Hamacher-with-Elders-and-Knowledge-Holders-9781760877200.

archaeoastronomy : the study of ancient or traditional astronomies in their cultural context, utilizing archaeological and anthropological evidence.

sometimes also spelled archeoastronomy

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-the-pagan-gods-that-still-exist-in-israeli-city-names-1.8924898?v=1647845941967

Cities in Israel named after Semitic gods of the ancient Near East.

Jerusalem was likely originally Ir Shalem ('The City of Shalem') because the central shrine was dedicated to the Canaanite god Shalem, aka Salem, the personification of the Evening Star.

Shahar, the twin brother of Shalem, was the personification of the Morning Star and was presumably the tutelary god of Zareth-Shahar. This town is in modern day central Jordan and was mentioned in Joshua 13:19.

While the original Zareth-Shahar didn't survive into modernity, another town dedicated to the same god may have existed on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee at a site known by the Arabic name for the morning star. A kibbutz named Ayelet HaShachar was built there after 1915. Ayelet HaShachar is a poetic biblical term for the Morning Star (Psalms 22:1).

Jericho may have taken it's name from the tutelary god Yareakh, the moon god.

Similarly the site Beit Yarekh may attest to that moon god being worshiped there as well.

The sun god Shemesh may have created the eponymous names for cities Beth-Shemesh ('House of Shemesh', Joshua 15:10), En-Shemesh ('Spring of Shemesh", Joshua 15:7), and Ir-Shemesh ('City of Shemesh", Joshua 19:41). The modern day city Beit Shemesh was established in 1950 at a site with the Arabic place name 'Ain Shems which was believed to be the site of the ancient city Beth-Shemesh.

The storm god Baal is the root of cities including Kiryat Baal (Joshua 18:14), Baal Perazim (II Samuel 5:17), Gur Baal (II Chronicles 26:7), Baal-Gad (Joshua 11:17), Baal-Hermon (Judges 3:3), and Baal-Hazor (II Samuel 13:23). There are also cities Baal-Peor (Numbers 23:28) and Ball Shalishah (II Kings 4:42).

Canaanite god El was the tutelary god of the town Bethel mentioned frequently in the Old Testament including in Genesis 12:8. The Palestinian town Beitin is thought to be the site of the ancient Bethel. Beit El, an Israeli settlement, was created near it in 1977.

Dagon was the namesake of Beth Dagon (Joshua 15:41). It continued until 1948 when the Palestinian town Bayt Dajan was depopulated leading up to the Israeli War of Independence. The site is now an Israeli town called Beit Dagan.

Reshef, an ancient Semitic god from Elba and later identified with Apollo lent his name to the todays Arsuf, which is also known as Apollonia. During the Persian period, the Phoenicians had named a town there for Reshef.

Horon, possibly a desert god with power over animals and snakes, is the inspiration of Beth Horon (I Chronicles 7:24). A modern settlement Beit Horon was founded in 1977.

Dark constellations are dark patches amidst brighter portions of the Milky Way in the night sky which are visible to the naked eye.

Historically they were viewed by Indigenous peoples of Australia as well as Incans.

The emu in the sky is an example from the southern hemisphere. Its 'body' is outlined by Scorpius and Sagittarius and its 'head' is known as as the Coalsack Nebula.

Another example is the Great Rift.

Christie Taylor (2019). ‘Relearning the star stories of Indigenous peoples’. Science Friday. 6 September 2019. www.sciencefriday.com/articles/indigenous-peoples-astronomy/

Referenced in chapter 1 notes from Hamacher, Duane. The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars. Allen & Unwin, 2022. https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/academic-professional/cultural-studies/The-First-Astronomers-Duane-Hamacher-with-Elders-and-Knowledge-Holders-9781760877200.

Phoenicians use of steles and local environment in conjunction with their astronomy fits the pattern of other uses of Indigenous orality and memory.

Link this example to other examples delineated by Lynne Kelly and others I've found in the ancient Near East.

How does this example potentially fit into the broader framework provided by Lynne Kelly? Are there differences?

Her thesis fits into a few particular cultural time periods, but what sorts of evidence should we expect to see culturally, socially, and economically when the initial conditions she set forth evolve beyond their original context? What should we expect to see in these cases and how to they relate to examples I've been finding in the ancient Near East?

Lorenzo Nigro indicates that the "kothon" of Motya in southern Sicily was a pool of Baal whose surface may have been used to observe and map the stars. He also indicates that the Phoenicians adored the stars potentially as gods or deceased ancestors. This is an example of a potentially false assumption often seen in archaeology of Western practitioners misconstruing Indigenous practices based on modern ideas of religion and culture.

I might posit that this sort of practice is more akin to that of the science of Indigenous peoples who used oral and mnemonic methods in combination with remembering their histories and ancestors.

Cross reference this with coming reading in The First Astronomers (to come) which may treat this in more depth.

Leonardo da Vinci documented the attributes of standing water for studying the night sky.

Where was this and what did it actually entail?

https://amzn.to/3wapIZt

The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders read the stars by Duane Hamacher, with Elders and Knowledge Holders

https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/academic-professional/cultural-studies/The-First-Astronomers-Duane-Hamacher-with-Elders-and-Knowledge-Holders-9781760877200

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>LynneKelly</span> in Un-Stupiding Myself - a Memory Training Journal - Memory Training Journals - Art of Memory Forum (<time class='dt-published'>03/14/2022 18:43:38</time>)</cite></small>

Gravitational microlensing

• gravitational wave approaching the earth is interrupted by blackhole, signal gets modified

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-ancient-greek-astronomical-calculation-machine-reveals-new-secrets/

Overview and history of the Antikythera mechanism and the current state of research surrounding it.

Antikythera mechanism found in diving expedition in 1900 by Elias Stadiatis. It was later dated between 60 and 70 BCE, but evidence suggests it may have been made around 205 BCE.

Functions

One of the primary purposes of the device was to predict the positions of the planets along the ecliptic, the plane of the solar system.

The device was also used to track the positions of the sun and moon. This included the moon's phase, position and age (the number of days from a new moon). It also included the predictions of eclipses.

Used to track the motions of the 5 known planets including 289 synodic cycles in 462 years for Venus and 427 synodic cycles in 442 years for Saturn.

Risings and settings of stars indexed to a zodiac dial

Definitions

metonic cycle, a 19-year period over which 235 moon phases recur; named after Greek astronomer Meton, but discovered much earlier by the Babylonians. The Greeks refined it to a 76 year period.

saros cycle, the 223 month lunar cycle which was used by the Babylonians to predict eclipses. A dial on the Antikythera mechanism was used to predict the dates of the solar and lunar eclipses using this cycle.

synodic events: conjunctions with the sun and its stationary points

People

Archimedes - potentially the designer of an early version of the Antikythera mechanism

Elias Stadiatis - diver who discovered the Antikythera mechanism

Albert Rehm - German philologist who the numbers 19, 76 and 223 inscribed on fragments of the device in the early 1900s

Derek J. de Solla Price, published Gears from the Greeks in 1974. Identified the gear train and developed a complete model of the gearing.

Michael Wright - 3D x-ray study in 1990 using linear tomography; identified tooth counts of the gears and understood the upper dial on the back of the device

Tony Freeth - author of article and researcher whose made recent discoveries.

The first sophisticated astronomical clocks were not created until the 14th century.

Link to https://hyp.is/_N6Fjo0SEeyu8o-ym2lrLg/www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-ancient-greek-astronomical-calculation-machine-reveals-new-secrets/

The first known precision-geared mechanism is a sundial and calendar of Byzantine origin dating to circa 600 C.E.

The nodes of the moon are the points at which the moon's orbit cuts through the plane of the ecliptic. These nodes make an eclipse possible and they happen only when the sun is close to one of these nodes during either a full or a new moon.

Medieval and renaissance astronomers called a double-ended pointer for the nodes of the moon a "dragon hand".

In antiquity, the customary cosmological order of the celestial bodies was: moon, Mercury, Venus, sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Parmenides of Elea developed a process reported by Plato for combining the known period relations of planets to get better ones.

The another spherical image in the poem

Each eye, which is able to be interpreted as each hemisphere, is really a perfect world because, though they are not combined into one, when facing each other, contains both lovers (the one who is reflected and one who reflects is in unity in the eye).

Source: The Visual Paradigm of 'The Good-Morrow': Donne's Cosmographical Glasse (1986)

The one world either wants to possess is the world of the other and the possession makes them one.

Due to the harmonious internal rhymes and confident tone of conviction, we might not sense the disturbance of the line at first. Nevertheless, as we look closely analyze the line, it is not as straightforward as it first seemed.

Donne is exploiting the ambiguity of the word world to confuse the readers. The world can either mean the whole planet, earth, or the hemispheres that need to be combined from the spherical earth. Each of the lovers belongs (or themselves are) to each hemisphere, and they can possess a more wholesome world by uniting together. However, there is a dilemma in constructing full spherical earth: each hemisphere should face the opposite direction to form a sphere seamlessly. Though they are now one, they cannot meet each other anymore.

However, this dilemma is somewhat resolved in the following stanza.

Source

1. Book: Redpath, The Songs and Sonnets of John Donne (1956)
2. Book: John Donne, The Complete English Poet (1971)

chart of the heavens

In addition to sea and land exploration, astronomy was another interest of the intellectual of Donne's Era.

Source: Redpath, The Songs and Sonnets of John Donne (1956)

Anaximander practiced speculative astronomy instead of just observational astronomy and in so doing, he dramatically changed the cosmological outlook of Western culture.

Perhaps you could memorize all the constellations and potentially see if they could serve as double duty?

I've found The Stars: A New Way to See Them by H.A Rey (yes, the creator of Curious George) to be a comprehensive list with a tremendous number of pictures, charts, useful stories, mythology, etc. for memorizing all the major constellations and many of the common star names and related data. It's ostensibly aimed at a novice audience, but one might also think he was targeting the mnemonists among us as well.

Should it help in your researching image formation, the phenomenon you mentioned is called pareidolia.

In 1931, a radio engineer in Bell Laboratories Karl Jansky discovered the radio source at the center of our galaxy, bu could pursue it further cause he was just an engineer!

After World War II ended, others eventually did pursue radio astronomy.

Fight for the Commons(in specturm) against commercialization.

I'm not an expert in biology or anything, but perhaps the moral there is we should rethink this 'cell' idea? IIRC astronomers continue to talk about 'planets' even though the longer you examine the concept the more incoherent it becomes. (For an extended example, see the infamous Discourse about whether "Pluto is a planet", which led to hilarious goal post stretching where people kept trying to find a definition of 'planet' that exactly fit the traditional celestial objects we classify as planets without having to include any new ones or exclude existing ones)

There is obviously no rule that says the categorizations we come up with for stuff when a field is young should be expected to have infinite inferential reach as that field of knowledge expands.

yall know the drill by now

Sollux rather transparently divides into "sol-lux", the Latin words for "sun" and "light", respectively. As such, his name would literally mean 'Sunlight Catcher'.

If one would switch the S and P in his name it becomes "Pollux Castor." Pollux and Castor are the two brightest stars in the constellation of Gemini. It is also worth noting that Pollux is a red giant, while Castor is bluish white, complementing the red/blue duality theme. Castor and Pollux were famous mythological twins, which is where Gemini - Latin for "twins" - gets its name. Pollux and Castor were also the names of two characters in the movie Face/Off, a Nicolas Cage flick that came out the same year as Con Air and one that John Egbert has a poster of in his room.

http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Sollux_Captor

This excerpt is very interesting as the reservation of land for the specific purpose of constructing an observatory seems to be very peculiar when considering the primary plans for the University. However, its inclusion is very relevant, as such reservations lead to the construction of the Leander McCormick Observatory, which currently sits on the summit of Mount Jefferson, commonly referred to as Observatory Hill. Though it took nearly 70 years for such plans to be carried out, the implementation of the McCormick Observatory has proved to be a prominent addition to the University, as it has helped enhance the education and has also served as a platform for astronomical research within the Astronomy Department.

Link: http://astronomy.as.virginia.edu/research/observatories/mccormick

You have probably heard about the hunt for dark matter, a mysterious substance thought to permeate the universe, the effects of which we can see through its gravitational pull. But our models of the universe also say there should be about twice as much ordinary matter out there, compared with what we have observed so far.

Two separate teams found the missing matter – made of particles called baryons rather than dark matter – linking galaxies together through filaments of hot, diffuse gas.

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160211<br> http://www.ligo.org/

Site on pre-Renaissance Muslim contributions to knowledge. https://twitter.com/HeritageMuslim

Blender

Does the term "manuscript" still work for born digital and fully digital documents? Remember, there are no print editions of AAS journals as of 2015!

I'm doing a collaborative annotation of this page to see if a) people want to give feedback on the utility of these instructions and b) to see if anyone wants to collaboratively annotate a document.

This entire section has to be re-written because

1. everything is an "online-only"figure.
2. there is no printing.
3. we now use "quanta" not "page charges"

There is no printed version...