Polityka

Naturalne wyjasnienia Czyli, że emisja CO2 nie ociepla klimatu tylko? Co go ociepla?
Ja nie wiem co powodowało, ale poniższy wykres podpowiada co nie powodowało.
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Nie wiem kim jest Grajsm Hancock ;-)
Joe Rogana nie oglądasz? No tak upraszczajac: wielki kataklizm 11,9tys (o ile dobrze pamietam) lat temu zmiotl istniejace juz cywilizacje, obecna to wstawanie z kolan. Niuansując - dużo starożytnych ciekawostek, niektóre - jak np. sfinks + erozja + precesja - intrygujące. Taki Däniken naszych czasów. Plus DMT + trawa :)
 
Ja nie wiem co powodowało, ale poniższy wykres podpowiada co nie powodowało.
View attachment 13376


Joe Rogana nie oglądasz? No tak upraszczajac: wielki kataklizm 11,9tys (o ile dobrze pamietam) lat temu zmiotl istniejace juz cywilizacje, obecna to wstawanie z kolan. Niuansując - dużo starożytnych ciekawostek, niektóre - jak np. sfinks i precesja - bardzo. Taki Daniken naszych czasów.
Czytałeś ten temat na reddicie co wysłałem wyżej? Jakiś koleś mocno pojechał po teoriach Hancocka.
 
Czytałeś ten temat na reddicie co wysłałem wyżej? Jakiś koleś mocno pojechał po teoriach Hancocka.
Nie bywam na reddicie, lukne moze kiedys na to. Jakis skrot? Wiadomo, Hancock dorabia duzo interpretacji do "autentycznych faktów" :) Ale akurat to z precesja, erozją piramid mnie urzekło. To wlasnie to szargają? Świnie, takie to romantyczne bylo, ze jesteśmy w postapo :(
 
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  • Pyramids in Mesoamerica and Egypt/Sudan are profoundly different in form and function. Moreover, the earliest Olmec site, San Lorenzo, does not even have a pyramid. This feature does not show up until later sites like La Venta and even then they are piled earthen mounds not resembling Egyptian pyramids at all. There certainly aren't a cluster of "3 pyramids to chart planets/stars" at any Olmec site.
  • 9 Olmec deities is a number completely pulled from nowhere. Because of the antiquity and preservation of the Olmec sites, coupled with a lack of writing system, we actually know very little about their religous system.

  • Ditto with their calendric/astronomical systems. This is again a completely unsupported claim.

  • Another completely unsupported claim.

  • The Olmec had no writing. Some of the earliest writing in Mesoamerica shows up in the Epi-Olmec period, which, as the name implies, post-dates the main Olmec civilization by several centuries.

  • We don't know the Olmec creation myth.

  • Olmec and Egyptian monumental architecture are distinct from one another. Both also have antecedents found in the archaeological record and do not require any sort of "advanced" technologies.


I responded point-by-point to each bullet, and to the final bullet about "appeared out of nowhere" in my opening paragraph. If you made a 10th point it was lost on me, since rambling about Maya calendrics had nothing to do with what I assume is your actual point. As for that point, if I understand you correctly, you are espousing the view that both the Olmecs and the Egyptians "appeared out of nowhere" and therefore they have some connection, and this connection can be seen through similarities in their writing, architecture, and religion. Have I understood you correctly? Is this your claim?

Also, this isn't debate club; I don't lose points if I fail to rebut every claim in your pseudoscientific gish gallop. It's also a bit cheeky for you to regurgitate bullshit from a known confabulist like Graham Hancock, and then act shocked and offended when someone calls you out for it. It's beyond cheeky to then demand sources when you yourself have not provided any beyond Hancock's pre-history fan-fiction. A mature person does not enter a conversation to spew baseless garbage and, if they make that mistake, they certainly don't get their panties in a twist when called out on it.

But if you want to have a discussion with sources, we can have a discussion with sources. I'll provide some information and citations about Olmec development in the Archaic and Formative periods, what is known about religion, and touch on evidence for writing using academic, peer-reviewed sources. Then you can provide your own academic, peer-reviewed sources to support your claim as summed up above.

Writing

Shockingly, I am aware of the Cascajal Block and its glyphs. It's a very exciting find and I recommend you read the original paper on the artifact1* . The authors note that the CB is far and away a better argument for an Olmec writing system than the previous claims of writing based on "roller-seal iconography and isolated, discontinuous incisions, neither sure to be script." Yet even the authors of that paper acknowledge the limitations of what is a singular artifact, whose iconography they link to other artifacts, but whose presentation is unique among artifacts for the time period. Though they propose an view where similar artifacts with abundant examples of script have been lost over time, they still acknowledge that the CB might represent an idiosyncratic curiosity, "an isolate, with no known successors."

In part, they must acknowledge this limitation because, as they note:

The position of the Cascajal block in the development of New World writing, and particularly in Mesoamerica, is difficult to establish. The Cascajal script bears no secure links to later Isthmian writing, which has a quite distinct signary although also from Veracruz, nor to other writing systems of Middle Preclassic Mesoamerica.

In other words, the writing on the CB, if it is indeed writing, does not appear to be a clear antecedent to any of the writing systems that blossomed centuries later in Mesoamerica. It does not appear, for one example, to even share the common vertical reading order of later writing systems.The lack of other similar artifacts and difficulties in linking the CB to later scripts means the authors are forced to leave open the possibility of the CB representing a "shamanic" script "devised by religious specialists, with tightly restricted, revelatory functions and limited use-span" which was never widespread and died out almost as quickly as it was devised.

And this is leaving out the question of whether we should be looking at the CB as representing a fully developed script, or more of a proto-script. Carrasco and Englehardt2 take an agnostic approach to this question acknowledging “fluidity and openness, as it were, between signs in writing (visual words) and iconography.” In drawing a connection between the symbols on the CB and “diphrastic kenning” (also known as difrasismo) used in much later Postclassic proto-writing they posit the CB symbols “represent what appears to be an incipient or intermediate step in script development, one that spans the nebulous grey area between ‘art’ and ‘writing’, as these are traditionally conceived,” but ultimate decline to take on the debate over what constitutes “true” writing.

Yet, that question remains open about the CB. Most everyone would agree the Aztecs did not have a writing system, but I can look at this page from the Codex Mendoza and even without the Spanish glosses “read” that the towns in the Xoconochco region (which include one called Mazatlan) owed tribute of 800 bundles of red feathers, 160 tropical bird skins, and 40 jaguar pelts. I can similarly “read” this Aztec codex to know the left side represents a genealogy, and know this guy is an important ancestor to the lineage named 11-Cozcuauhtli. Or really 11-Cozcuauhtzin, because his iconography tells me he was a ruler.

But is this writing or artistic convention? Does the use of rebuses and other phonetic elements in Postclassic Nahuatl pictorials actually represent a logosyllabic writing system,3 rather than logographic or semasiographic? These are all interesting questions to ask about the Postclassic Nahuatl system, but when we ask them about Olmec writing we come back to CB and its uniqueness. It gives us tantalizing hints about the possibilities of a Formative era script, but ultimately leaves us with no definitive conclusions.

Well, except for the fact that it shows not a single trace of Egyptian influence, so I’m interested to see how you spin a connection there.

Religion

This should be a quicker section since we basically know fuck-all about Olmec religion. Or, as Diehl4 puts it in a more scholarly way

Much has been written about Olmec religion in recent years; most of it is speculative and almost none can be proven beyond a reasonable shadow of doubt. (p. 98)

He does present a good summary of the general consensus of the interpretation of Olmec religion though, noting that such an interpretation of course focuses on the surviving iconography of Olmec artifacts, but also necessarily draws in Contact-period accounts of religious practices, as well as modern-era ethnographies of Native American religious practices. In other words, there is a lot of backwards inference from cultures.

Such an endeavor may not actually be fruitless though. Miguel Covarrubias, a contemporary and colleague of Stirling, first sketched out the notion of a broad, general religious continuity in Mesoamerica by examining the evolution of iconography of seemingly ubiquitous deities. These were gods associated with some of the most fundamental aspects of the agricultural civilizations of Mesoamerica, namely rain/water and maize. Covarrubias saw a continuity of depicting these primordial supernaturals across time and cultures. I’ll spare you the hunt for his 70 year old manuscript and note that gorgeous reproductions of his “genealogies” can be found online.5

Building on this notion of a cross-temporal and cross-cultural connection, Joralemon proposed his “Continuity Hypothesis” that “there is a basic religious system common to all Mesoamerican peoples” (quoted in Diehl 2004), and that therefore we could more confidently project back what we know about contact-era practices into the past. It’s not the strongest foundation, but it’s at least been a guiding principle in trying to meld 2000 year old statuary and carvings into some sort of coherent religious system.

Coincidentally, Joralemon’s paper is also where we get the “Eight Gods” concept, though Taube 2004 notes an earlier paper proposed ten deities. Regardless, these “gods” are based purely on iconographic styles. We have no way of accessing, with currently available techniques and data, an emic view of Olmec religion, so we must instead rely on our etic approach rooted in iconography and backwards inference.

From these methodological constrictions have come a general consensus on the importance of nahualism, or a practice of having a, for lack of a better term, spirit-animal. More specifically an animal body that a shaman could inhabit or transform into. In addition to this shamanistic practice, all of the scholars I’ve cited above have a basic agreement that a cosmological arrangement of the heavens, the earth, and the underworld, with religious significance assigned to the cardinal directions and an emphasis on caves as portals to the underworld/supernatural stem from the Olmecs.

Beyond some generally agreed upon broad principles though, there is an abundance of fun, wacky speculation. Matthew Stirling was a proponent of Olmec religion having a supreme deity who was a “were-jaguar” born from a human woman who had sex with a male jaguar, and that the Olmecs saw themselves as a people born from this coupling (note this would contradict a more commonly held Mesoamerican belief that humanity was “born” from maize). Miller and Taube7 note, however, that the (admittedly badly damaged) monuments Stirling based his hypothesis on were later found, on closer inspection, to more likely depict a ballplayer with a defeated opponent/captive and a jaguar attacking a person in a non-sexual manner.

As for the were-jaguar/jaguar babies which are commonly cited in Olmec iconography and which so much of past interpretation of Olmec religion has rested upon? Well, not everyone agrees they are “were-jaguars.” Furst8 and Kennedy9 see the images depicting toads instead, specifically those of Bufo spp. with hallucinogenic toxins on their skins, pointing to a widespread and well-attested archaeological and contemporary record of Mesoamerican religious rituals utilizing psychoactive compounds.

To return to Diehl, he notes that:

Olmec supernaturals have generated more controversy than any other aspect of their religion. Some scholars even argue that Olmecs did not worship gods with with recognizably distinct personalities. Others accept their existence but disagree on their specific identifications. For example, the deity known as the Olmec Dragon has been variously identified as a were-jaguar combining human and feline traits, a caiman, a toad, and a manatee!

So the field is wide open for you to shoehorn something about Egypt or whatever into this morass, as well as somehow pull “an all powerful system of nine deities” out of it.


Architecture and Development

Just to briefly touch on the ridiculous notion of the Olmec coming from nowhere, let’s take a moment to focus on one thing: maize. The domestication of teosinte into maize is botanical and genetic fact.10 Some details about the mechanics and specifics are still fuzzy, but we know it happened. We also know that we see evidence of domestication in Mesoamerica starting possibly as far back as 4200 BCE in Oaxaca11 and perhaps even earlier in the Las Balsas river valley12. Archaeological work on the other side of the Olmec Heartland in the Maya Lowlands points to agriculture, primarily maize and manioc, taking hold there by 3000 BCE,13 suggesting an agricultural belt stretching from the Oaxacan highlands down across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec into the Peten region.

So to suggest that societies in these regions, like the Olmec, came from nowhere, sprung up from nothing, is ridiculous. We see a clear trend of a feedback loop of increasing domestication and productivity of maize fueling increasingly settled societies which increasing relied on agriculture. This trend is quite clear in the Olmec Heartland and gives us a view into early state development.

Arnold,14 in an exhaustively cited paper, lays out the early theories of Olmec development, which focused primarily on abundant maize agriculture. Utilizing phytolith, pollen, and animal remains at San Lorenzo and the surrounding area, he instead lays out a syncretic approach which relies instead on early exploitation of riverine resources forming a nascent early state-level society, with more widespread use of increasing productive maize actually leading to upland sites more suited for maize agriculture overtaking the first Olmec city. It’s a good, dense read, and if you’re going to read any of the citations here, it should be this one.

Exploitation of riverine resources is also explored as a cause for early settlement patterns at San Lorenzo by Symonds and Lunagomez.15 They note that natural rises along river shores, protected from seasonal flooding, were key settlement sites, and that San Lorenzo sits on a plateau between to waterways. The location and design mound and terrace landscaping also points to the creation of new, or expansion of existing, raised areas for stable exploitation of aquatic resources.

Cyphers16 brings another aspect by proposing that control of waterways and their trade was an important aspect of gaining and maintaining elite status. The paucity of good stone in the region meant basalt shipped in from the nearby Tuxtla mountains acted as a prestige good, and she notes an area of San Lorenzo which appears to have been dedicated to shaping the stone and recycling old monuments. The colossal heads and altars associated with the Olmecs were not simply some stones laying around to be whismically ground down into art, but the manifestation of elite power in organizing their procurement and shaping.

There’s a plethora of ways to continue unpacking the myriad routes that growing populations, inter-connection, plant domestication, and control of resources all formed a feedback loop in the Olmec Heartland (ceramic horizons and connections to the Pacific coast, for instance), but since you’re stuck on Egypt let’s talk about the fucking pyramid.

There are no pyramids at San Lorenzo. So, right from the start that’s a problem for any purported Egypt connection involving pyramids, as the oldest Olmec site has none.

There is the “Great” Pyramid at La Venta, the Olmec site in Tabasco which has an archaeological record of sustained settlement just about as long as San Lorenzo, but which reached its peak later, in the Middle Formative (800-500 BCE).17 The site also has the raised terrace/mounds that were so central to San Lorenzo, including a large irregular shaped plateau termed the “Stirling Acropolis.” Notably the site was part of a growing architectural trend across the broader region of a central plaza flanked by platforms and a pyramid.18

The Pyramid is basically unexcavated, in large part because to nature of structure (i.e., it’s dirt) and its already eroded state would mean any large scale excavation would likely cause serious irreversible damage. Archaeology is, after all, a destructive process and the Great Pyramid is so infamously worn down that it was thought to be a representation of of a mountain, perhaps symbolically part of the Tuxtla range which supplied so much valuable basalt to San Lorenzo,19 when in fact it actually had the stepped, terraced form so familiar in Mesoamerican pyramids.20

The pattern we see with the La Venta Pyramid brings up a set of problems with connecting the Olmecs and Egyptians via pyramids though, for as I previously noted, they are actually nothing alike. For one, different shape, with the step-pyramids of Mesoamerica not even remotely trying to be like the smooth triangular sides of Egyptian pyramids. Second, different location, with Mesoamerican pyramids forming the center of cities. This is because, thirdly, their function was different as those pyramids acting primarily as active temples, and only secondarily, if that, as tombs. You can say “forget the form and function” all you want, but take those away and what do have left? The “principle” that pyramidal shapes are naturally stable and therefore the shape is easy to adapt to monumental architecture? You might as well say squid and chickens both make good farm animals because they both lay eggs. It’s easy to claim a connection between to things when you glom onto a similarity so broad as to be meaningless and ignore all differences.

But hey, I’ve blathered enough. These are just my idle thoughts and few sources for you to read into. Looking forward to your response and some sources from you to dig into!

*If you do not have access to any of the articles I cite here, let me know and I will PM you links where possible.



1 Rodriguez et al. 2006 "Oldest Writing in the New World" Science 313[5793]

2 Carrasco and Englehardt 2012 “Diphrastic Kennings on the Cascajal Block and the Emergence of Mesoamerican Writing” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 25[3]

3 Lacadena 2008 “Regional Scribal Traditions: Methodological Implications for the Decipherment of Nahuatl Writing” The PARI Journal8[4]

4 Diehl 2004 The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization Thames & Hudson, London

5 Taube 2004 Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC. pp. 31-33

6 Joralemon 1976 “The Olmec Dragon: a study in Olmec iconography” in Origins of Religious Art and Iconography in Preclassic Mesoamerica ed. Nicholson. UCLA Latin American Center Publications, Los Angeles

7 Miller and Taube 1993 An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya Thames & Hudson, London

8 Furst 1981 “Jaguar baby or toad mother: a new look at an old problem in Olmec iconography” in The Olmec & Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling ed. Coe. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC

9 Kennedy 1982 “Ecce Bufo: The Toad in Nature and in Olmec Iconography” Current Anthropology 23[3]

10 Doebly 2004 “The Genetics of Maize Evolution” Annual Review of Genetics 38

11 Benz 2001 “Archaeological evidence of teosinte domestication from Guilá Naquitz, Oaxaca” PNAS 98[4]

12 Piperno et al. 2009 “Starch grain and phytolith evidence for early ninth millennium B.P. maize from the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexico“ PNAS 106[13].

13 Pohl et al. Early Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands” Latin American Antiquity 7[4]

14 Arnold 2009 “Settlement and Subsistence among the Early Formative Gulf Olmec” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28

15 Symonds and Lunagomez 1997 “Settlement System and Population Development at San Lorenzo” in Olmec to Aztec: Settlement Patterns in the Ancient Gulf Lowlands ed. Stark and Arnold. University of Arizona Press

16 Cyphers 1996 “Reconstructing Olmec Life at San Lorenzo” in Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico ed. Benson and de la Fuente. National Gallery of Art

17 Rust and Sharer 1988 “Olmec Settlement Data from La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico” Science 242

18 Evans 2008 Ancient Mexico and Central America: Archaeology and Culture History Thames & Hudson, London

19 Diehl 1981 “Olmec Architecture: A Comparison of San Lorenzo and La Venta” in The Olmec & Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling ed. Coe. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC

20 Gonzalez-Lauck 1996 “La Venta: An Olmec Capital” in Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico ed. Benson and de la Fuente. National Gallery of Art
 
  • Pyramids in Mesoamerica and Egypt/Sudan are profoundly different in form and function. Moreover, the earliest Olmec site, San Lorenzo, does not even have a pyramid. This feature does not show up until later sites like La Venta and even then they are piled earthen mounds not resembling Egyptian pyramids at all. There certainly aren't a cluster of "3 pyramids to chart planets/stars" at any Olmec site.

  • 9 Olmec deities is a number completely pulled from nowhere. Because of the antiquity and preservation of the Olmec sites, coupled with a lack of writing system, we actually know very little about their religous system.

  • Ditto with their calendric/astronomical systems. This is again a completely unsupported claim.

  • Another completely unsupported claim.

  • The Olmec had no writing. Some of the earliest writing in Mesoamerica shows up in the Epi-Olmec period, which, as the name implies, post-dates the main Olmec civilization by several centuries.

  • We don't know the Olmec creation myth.

  • Olmec and Egyptian monumental architecture are distinct from one another. Both also have antecedents found in the archaeological record and do not require any sort of "advanced" technologies.

I responded point-by-point to each bullet, and to the final bullet about "appeared out of nowhere" in my opening paragraph. If you made a 10th point it was lost on me, since rambling about Maya calendrics had nothing to do with what I assume is your actual point. As for that point, if I understand you correctly, you are espousing the view that both the Olmecs and the Egyptians "appeared out of nowhere" and therefore they have some connection, and this connection can be seen through similarities in their writing, architecture, and religion. Have I understood you correctly? Is this your claim?

Also, this isn't debate club; I don't lose points if I fail to rebut every claim in your pseudoscientific gish gallop. It's also a bit cheeky for you to regurgitate bullshit from a known confabulist like Graham Hancock, and then act shocked and offended when someone calls you out for it. It's beyond cheeky to then demand sources when you yourself have not provided any beyond Hancock's pre-history fan-fiction. A mature person does not enter a conversation to spew baseless garbage and, if they make that mistake, they certainly don't get their panties in a twist when called out on it.

But if you want to have a discussion with sources, we can have a discussion with sources. I'll provide some information and citations about Olmec development in the Archaic and Formative periods, what is known about religion, and touch on evidence for writing using academic, peer-reviewed sources. Then you can provide your own academic, peer-reviewed sources to support your claim as summed up above.

Writing

Shockingly, I am aware of the Cascajal Block and its glyphs. It's a very exciting find and I recommend you read the original paper on the artifact1* . The authors note that the CB is far and away a better argument for an Olmec writing system than the previous claims of writing based on "roller-seal iconography and isolated, discontinuous incisions, neither sure to be script." Yet even the authors of that paper acknowledge the limitations of what is a singular artifact, whose iconography they link to other artifacts, but whose presentation is unique among artifacts for the time period. Though they propose an view where similar artifacts with abundant examples of script have been lost over time, they still acknowledge that the CB might represent an idiosyncratic curiosity, "an isolate, with no known successors."

In part, they must acknowledge this limitation because, as they note:

The position of the Cascajal block in the development of New World writing, and particularly in Mesoamerica, is difficult to establish. The Cascajal script bears no secure links to later Isthmian writing, which has a quite distinct signary although also from Veracruz, nor to other writing systems of Middle Preclassic Mesoamerica.

In other words, the writing on the CB, if it is indeed writing, does not appear to be a clear antecedent to any of the writing systems that blossomed centuries later in Mesoamerica. It does not appear, for one example, to even share the common vertical reading order of later writing systems.The lack of other similar artifacts and difficulties in linking the CB to later scripts means the authors are forced to leave open the possibility of the CB representing a "shamanic" script "devised by religious specialists, with tightly restricted, revelatory functions and limited use-span" which was never widespread and died out almost as quickly as it was devised.

And this is leaving out the question of whether we should be looking at the CB as representing a fully developed script, or more of a proto-script. Carrasco and Englehardt2 take an agnostic approach to this question acknowledging “fluidity and openness, as it were, between signs in writing (visual words) and iconography.” In drawing a connection between the symbols on the CB and “diphrastic kenning” (also known as difrasismo) used in much later Postclassic proto-writing they posit the CB symbols “represent what appears to be an incipient or intermediate step in script development, one that spans the nebulous grey area between ‘art’ and ‘writing’, as these are traditionally conceived,” but ultimate decline to take on the debate over what constitutes “true” writing.

Yet, that question remains open about the CB. Most everyone would agree the Aztecs did not have a writing system, but I can look at this page from the Codex Mendoza and even without the Spanish glosses “read” that the towns in the Xoconochco region (which include one called Mazatlan) owed tribute of 800 bundles of red feathers, 160 tropical bird skins, and 40 jaguar pelts. I can similarly “read” this Aztec codex to know the left side represents a genealogy, and know this guy is an important ancestor to the lineage named 11-Cozcuauhtli. Or really 11-Cozcuauhtzin, because his iconography tells me he was a ruler.

But is this writing or artistic convention? Does the use of rebuses and other phonetic elements in Postclassic Nahuatl pictorials actually represent a logosyllabic writing system,3 rather than logographic or semasiographic? These are all interesting questions to ask about the Postclassic Nahuatl system, but when we ask them about Olmec writing we come back to CB and its uniqueness. It gives us tantalizing hints about the possibilities of a Formative era script, but ultimately leaves us with no definitive conclusions.

Well, except for the fact that it shows not a single trace of Egyptian influence, so I’m interested to see how you spin a connection there.

Religion

This should be a quicker section since we basically know fuck-all about Olmec religion. Or, as Diehl4 puts it in a more scholarly way

Much has been written about Olmec religion in recent years; most of it is speculative and almost none can be proven beyond a reasonable shadow of doubt. (p. 98)

He does present a good summary of the general consensus of the interpretation of Olmec religion though, noting that such an interpretation of course focuses on the surviving iconography of Olmec artifacts, but also necessarily draws in Contact-period accounts of religious practices, as well as modern-era ethnographies of Native American religious practices. In other words, there is a lot of backwards inference from cultures.

Such an endeavor may not actually be fruitless though. Miguel Covarrubias, a contemporary and colleague of Stirling, first sketched out the notion of a broad, general religious continuity in Mesoamerica by examining the evolution of iconography of seemingly ubiquitous deities. These were gods associated with some of the most fundamental aspects of the agricultural civilizations of Mesoamerica, namely rain/water and maize. Covarrubias saw a continuity of depicting these primordial supernaturals across time and cultures. I’ll spare you the hunt for his 70 year old manuscript and note that gorgeous reproductions of his “genealogies” can be found online.5

Building on this notion of a cross-temporal and cross-cultural connection, Joralemon proposed his “Continuity Hypothesis” that “there is a basic religious system common to all Mesoamerican peoples” (quoted in Diehl 2004), and that therefore we could more confidently project back what we know about contact-era practices into the past. It’s not the strongest foundation, but it’s at least been a guiding principle in trying to meld 2000 year old statuary and carvings into some sort of coherent religious system.

Coincidentally, Joralemon’s paper is also where we get the “Eight Gods” concept, though Taube 2004 notes an earlier paper proposed ten deities. Regardless, these “gods” are based purely on iconographic styles. We have no way of accessing, with currently available techniques and data, an emic view of Olmec religion, so we must instead rely on our etic approach rooted in iconography and backwards inference.

From these methodological constrictions have come a general consensus on the importance of nahualism, or a practice of having a, for lack of a better term, spirit-animal. More specifically an animal body that a shaman could inhabit or transform into. In addition to this shamanistic practice, all of the scholars I’ve cited above have a basic agreement that a cosmological arrangement of the heavens, the earth, and the underworld, with religious significance assigned to the cardinal directions and an emphasis on caves as portals to the underworld/supernatural stem from the Olmecs.

Beyond some generally agreed upon broad principles though, there is an abundance of fun, wacky speculation. Matthew Stirling was a proponent of Olmec religion having a supreme deity who was a “were-jaguar” born from a human woman who had sex with a male jaguar, and that the Olmecs saw themselves as a people born from this coupling (note this would contradict a more commonly held Mesoamerican belief that humanity was “born” from maize). Miller and Taube7 note, however, that the (admittedly badly damaged) monuments Stirling based his hypothesis on were later found, on closer inspection, to more likely depict a ballplayer with a defeated opponent/captive and a jaguar attacking a person in a non-sexual manner.

As for the were-jaguar/jaguar babies which are commonly cited in Olmec iconography and which so much of past interpretation of Olmec religion has rested upon? Well, not everyone agrees they are “were-jaguars.” Furst8 and Kennedy9 see the images depicting toads instead, specifically those of Bufo spp. with hallucinogenic toxins on their skins, pointing to a widespread and well-attested archaeological and contemporary record of Mesoamerican religious rituals utilizing psychoactive compounds.

To return to Diehl, he notes that:

Olmec supernaturals have generated more controversy than any other aspect of their religion. Some scholars even argue that Olmecs did not worship gods with with recognizably distinct personalities. Others accept their existence but disagree on their specific identifications. For example, the deity known as the Olmec Dragon has been variously identified as a were-jaguar combining human and feline traits, a caiman, a toad, and a manatee!

So the field is wide open for you to shoehorn something about Egypt or whatever into this morass, as well as somehow pull “an all powerful system of nine deities” out of it.


Architecture and Development

Just to briefly touch on the ridiculous notion of the Olmec coming from nowhere, let’s take a moment to focus on one thing: maize. The domestication of teosinte into maize is botanical and genetic fact.10 Some details about the mechanics and specifics are still fuzzy, but we know it happened. We also know that we see evidence of domestication in Mesoamerica starting possibly as far back as 4200 BCE in Oaxaca11 and perhaps even earlier in the Las Balsas river valley12. Archaeological work on the other side of the Olmec Heartland in the Maya Lowlands points to agriculture, primarily maize and manioc, taking hold there by 3000 BCE,13 suggesting an agricultural belt stretching from the Oaxacan highlands down across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec into the Peten region.

So to suggest that societies in these regions, like the Olmec, came from nowhere, sprung up from nothing, is ridiculous. We see a clear trend of a feedback loop of increasing domestication and productivity of maize fueling increasingly settled societies which increasing relied on agriculture. This trend is quite clear in the Olmec Heartland and gives us a view into early state development.

Arnold,14 in an exhaustively cited paper, lays out the early theories of Olmec development, which focused primarily on abundant maize agriculture. Utilizing phytolith, pollen, and animal remains at San Lorenzo and the surrounding area, he instead lays out a syncretic approach which relies instead on early exploitation of riverine resources forming a nascent early state-level society, with more widespread use of increasing productive maize actually leading to upland sites more suited for maize agriculture overtaking the first Olmec city. It’s a good, dense read, and if you’re going to read any of the citations here, it should be this one.

Exploitation of riverine resources is also explored as a cause for early settlement patterns at San Lorenzo by Symonds and Lunagomez.15 They note that natural rises along river shores, protected from seasonal flooding, were key settlement sites, and that San Lorenzo sits on a plateau between to waterways. The location and design mound and terrace landscaping also points to the creation of new, or expansion of existing, raised areas for stable exploitation of aquatic resources.

Cyphers16 brings another aspect by proposing that control of waterways and their trade was an important aspect of gaining and maintaining elite status. The paucity of good stone in the region meant basalt shipped in from the nearby Tuxtla mountains acted as a prestige good, and she notes an area of San Lorenzo which appears to have been dedicated to shaping the stone and recycling old monuments. The colossal heads and altars associated with the Olmecs were not simply some stones laying around to be whismically ground down into art, but the manifestation of elite power in organizing their procurement and shaping.

There’s a plethora of ways to continue unpacking the myriad routes that growing populations, inter-connection, plant domestication, and control of resources all formed a feedback loop in the Olmec Heartland (ceramic horizons and connections to the Pacific coast, for instance), but since you’re stuck on Egypt let’s talk about the fucking pyramid.

There are no pyramids at San Lorenzo. So, right from the start that’s a problem for any purported Egypt connection involving pyramids, as the oldest Olmec site has none.

There is the “Great” Pyramid at La Venta, the Olmec site in Tabasco which has an archaeological record of sustained settlement just about as long as San Lorenzo, but which reached its peak later, in the Middle Formative (800-500 BCE).17 The site also has the raised terrace/mounds that were so central to San Lorenzo, including a large irregular shaped plateau termed the “Stirling Acropolis.” Notably the site was part of a growing architectural trend across the broader region of a central plaza flanked by platforms and a pyramid.18

The Pyramid is basically unexcavated, in large part because to nature of structure (i.e., it’s dirt) and its already eroded state would mean any large scale excavation would likely cause serious irreversible damage. Archaeology is, after all, a destructive process and the Great Pyramid is so infamously worn down that it was thought to be a representation of of a mountain, perhaps symbolically part of the Tuxtla range which supplied so much valuable basalt to San Lorenzo,19 when in fact it actually had the stepped, terraced form so familiar in Mesoamerican pyramids.20

The pattern we see with the La Venta Pyramid brings up a set of problems with connecting the Olmecs and Egyptians via pyramids though, for as I previously noted, they are actually nothing alike. For one, different shape, with the step-pyramids of Mesoamerica not even remotely trying to be like the smooth triangular sides of Egyptian pyramids. Second, different location, with Mesoamerican pyramids forming the center of cities. This is because, thirdly, their function was different as those pyramids acting primarily as active temples, and only secondarily, if that, as tombs. You can say “forget the form and function” all you want, but take those away and what do have left? The “principle” that pyramidal shapes are naturally stable and therefore the shape is easy to adapt to monumental architecture? You might as well say squid and chickens both make good farm animals because they both lay eggs. It’s easy to claim a connection between to things when you glom onto a similarity so broad as to be meaningless and ignore all differences.

But hey, I’ve blathered enough. These are just my idle thoughts and few sources for you to read into. Looking forward to your response and some sources from you to dig into!

*If you do not have access to any of the articles I cite here, let me know and I will PM you links where possible.



1 Rodriguez et al. 2006 "Oldest Writing in the New World" Science 313[5793]

2 Carrasco and Englehardt 2012 “Diphrastic Kennings on the Cascajal Block and the Emergence of Mesoamerican Writing” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 25[3]

3 Lacadena 2008 “Regional Scribal Traditions: Methodological Implications for the Decipherment of Nahuatl Writing” The PARI Journal8[4]

4 Diehl 2004 The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization Thames & Hudson, London

5 Taube 2004 Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC. pp. 31-33

6 Joralemon 1976 “The Olmec Dragon: a study in Olmec iconography” in Origins of Religious Art and Iconography in Preclassic Mesoamerica ed. Nicholson. UCLA Latin American Center Publications, Los Angeles

7 Miller and Taube 1993 An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya Thames & Hudson, London

8 Furst 1981 “Jaguar baby or toad mother: a new look at an old problem in Olmec iconography” in The Olmec & Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling ed. Coe. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC

9 Kennedy 1982 “Ecce Bufo: The Toad in Nature and in Olmec Iconography” Current Anthropology 23[3]

10 Doebly 2004 “The Genetics of Maize Evolution” Annual Review of Genetics 38

11 Benz 2001 “Archaeological evidence of teosinte domestication from Guilá Naquitz, Oaxaca” PNAS 98[4]

12 Piperno et al. 2009 “Starch grain and phytolith evidence for early ninth millennium B.P. maize from the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexico“ PNAS 106[13].

13 Pohl et al. Early Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands” Latin American Antiquity 7[4]

14 Arnold 2009 “Settlement and Subsistence among the Early Formative Gulf Olmec” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28

15 Symonds and Lunagomez 1997 “Settlement System and Population Development at San Lorenzo” in Olmec to Aztec: Settlement Patterns in the Ancient Gulf Lowlands ed. Stark and Arnold. University of Arizona Press

16 Cyphers 1996 “Reconstructing Olmec Life at San Lorenzo” in Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico ed. Benson and de la Fuente. National Gallery of Art

17 Rust and Sharer 1988 “Olmec Settlement Data from La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico” Science 242

18 Evans 2008 Ancient Mexico and Central America: Archaeology and Culture History Thames & Hudson, London

19 Diehl 1981 “Olmec Architecture: A Comparison of San Lorenzo and La Venta” in The Olmec & Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling ed. Coe. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC

20 Gonzalez-Lauck 1996 “La Venta: An Olmec Capital” in Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico ed. Benson and de la Fuente. National Gallery of Art
Aaa czyli ten główny motyw u niego z podobieństwami kultur na calym globie. To sobie mogą szargać, to są właśnie te nadinterpretacje w mitach, w architekturze, itp.

Sfinks jeszcze stoi, ufff :) Ino mi go nie ruszać! ;) #postapoforever
 
Aaa czyli ten główny motyw u niego z podobieństwami kultur na calym globie. To sobie mogą szargać, to są właśnie te nadinterpretacje w mitach, w architekturze, itp.

Sfinks jeszcze stoi, ufff :) Ino mi go nie ruszać! ;) #postapoforever
Pamiętam kilka debat Hancocka, w których strasznie się unosił i dlatego za nim nie przepadam.
 
Pamiętam kilka debat Hancocka, w których strasznie się unosił i dlatego za nim nie przepadam.
Dokładnie, bardzo emocjonalny kolo.

Dla mnie to takie przypomnienie dzieciństwa. Pamiętam czytałem to w świetlicy szkolnej, ech kiedyś to było:
47e74069c52ddc3618252808020de569--comics.jpg
 
@ninja @cRe
no Francja się chwieje, tak to trochę wygląda...

@Karateka@
Oglądałeś tę rozmowę Petersona z Lomborgiem? Myślę, że jako obietywiście (tak się chyba nazwałeś kiedyś?) może ci się spodobać...

Ciekawa wizualizacja
 
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Oglądałeś tę rozmowę Petersona z Lomborgiem? Myślę, że jako obietywiście (tak się chyba nazwałeś kiedyś?) może ci się spodobać...

Jeśli chodzi o obiektywizm to dostrzegam pewne luki, a już z pewnością nie wierze w ideę Państwa bez podatków (nie żeby idea nie była piękna, ale nie wiem jak to mogłoby działać - ludzie płacą dobrowolnie - jaaaaaasne). Także nie określiłbym się teraz obiektywistą.

Co do Petersona to z tego co czytałem jest sceptykiem odnośnie globalnego ocieplenia wywołanego przez człowieka. Jako argument podaje - upolitycznienie nauki. Duży minus dla niego za to. Nie obiecuję, że znajdę czas przesłuchać, chociaż nie wykluczam tego.
 
Jeśli chodzi o obiektywizm to dostrzegam pewne luki, a już z pewnością nie wierze w ideę Państwa bez podatków (nie żeby idea nie była piękna, ale nie wiem jak to mogłoby działać - ludzie płacą dobrowolnie - jaaaaaasne). Także nie określiłbym się teraz obiektywistą.
Państwo z pewnościa nie może istniec bez podatkow. Pytanie chyba jest inne - czy czlowiek jest w stanie zyc bez Panstwa (w takiej czy innej formie).
Wydaje mi sie, ze kazda utopie ogranicza wlasnie natura swiata i natura czlowieka. I jest to jakis problem, bo kazdy ma swoja utopie...

Jako argument podaje - upolitycznienie nauki
Ja takiego czegos nigdy nie slyszalem w kontekscie globalnego ocieplenia - a przesluchalem sporo z tego co jest na yt. Choć nawet gdyby - nie miałbym mu za złe. Ty wierzysz ze nie ma styku polityki i nauki? To tak jakby powiedzieć, że człowiek nie wpływa na Naturę :)

W tym wywiadzie powiedzial, ze jest problem z pomiarem rezultatow naszych ewentualnych dzialan, tzn margines bledu w czasie rosnie szybciej niz nasz wplyw. Drugą rzecz o której mowil to precyzja konkretnych pomiarow jaka jest potrzebna by cokolwiek weryfikowac. W kontekscie ataków lewicy na matematyczny, merytokratyczny pomysł Lomborga na szacowanie priorytetow wydatkow, skupiający się na pomocy jak największej liczbie ludzi (stworzyli modele pokazujące zwrot inwestycyjny w dany obszar życia człowieka), starał się zrozumieć sprzeczność w rozumowaniu tych działaczy.
 
Państwo z pewnościa nie może istniec bez podatkow
Dziesięcina dla każdego wedle zaleceń Kościoła i jakże byłoby inaczej.

Dla spokoju byłoby płacone 10% zamiast kombinować jak nie płacić 23, 40 lub więcej %.

A świnie przy korycie musiałyby dokonać optymalizacji kosztów zamiast myśleć komu i ile ukraść w majestacie prawa.
 
Państwo z pewnościa nie może istniec bez podatkow. Pytanie chyba jest inne - czy czlowiek jest w stanie zyc bez Panstwa (w takiej czy innej formie).
Wydaje mi sie, ze kazda utopie ogranicza wlasnie natura swiata i natura czlowieka. I jest to jakis problem, bo kazdy ma swoja utopie...

Czkowiek jest w stanie żyć bez państwa, tylko czy takie życie byłoby lepsze? Moim zdaniem nie.

Ty wierzysz ze nie ma styku polityki i nauki? To tak jakby powiedzieć, że człowiek nie wpływa na Naturę :)

Jest styk polityki i nauki, również duzego biznesu i nauki, ale sama nauka ma mechanizmy, które ją chronia przed tymi wplywami. Metodologia naukowa.

W tym wywiadzie powiedzial, ze jest problem z pomiarem rezultatow naszych ewentualnych dzialan, tzn margines bledu w czasie rosnie szybciej niz nasz wplyw

Nie rozumiem tego zdania.
 
Metodologia naukowa.
Dlatego krocząc ku spersnalizowanej medycynie nie można zrobić kroku pośredniego i mówić że grupy ludzi, w jakimś kluczu (etnicznie np., albo płciowo) się różnią. O naukach humanistycznych - które też mogłby by trzymać się takiej metodologii - nie wspomnę.

Nie rozumiem tego zdania.
W tym wywiadzie powiedzial, ze jest problem z pomiarem rezultatow naszych ewentualnych dzialan, tzn prognozowany margines bledu w czasie rosnie szybciej niz nasz prognozowany wplyw.
 
Dla zobrazowania:


Tam jak wojska szly do wioski po 10% to albo stawali do walki, albo z dobytkie do lasu. Albo przybywał Robin :)

Mówię o obecnych czasach :) całkiem inaczej by ludzie patrzyli zostawiając sobie 90% zysku, do tego mając pewność i komfort, że w nocy nie uchwalą ustawy zobowiązującej ich do oddania kolejnej części zysku. Wg Ciebie 20/30% załatwi sprawę? I tak urzędasy powiedzą - mało
 
Mówię o obecnych czasach :) całkiem inaczej by ludzie patrzyli zostawiając sobie 90% zysku, do tego mając pewność i komfort, że w nocy nie uchwalą ustawy zobowiązującej ich do oddania kolejnej części zysku. Wg Ciebie 20/30% załatwi sprawę? I tak urzędasy powiedzą - mało
Hehehe, nie no ja tego Robin Hooda - jak i komiksy Danikena - dalem dla beki, skojarzyl mi sie z dziesięciną :)

Urzędasy mówią "mało" i nie przestaną. Urzędasy jak urzędasy, to zwykli oportunisci bez ideii, takie średniackie korpoludki na rządowym etacie, gorsi sa ci aktywisci, ideowcy, co dla "naszego" dobra...
W tej chwili placimy ok 60-70% dla normalnego obywatela (suma wszelki opłat, podatków, akcyz, ceł), a jedynym ich pomysłem są nowe podatki. Nie na coś, tylko od czegoś.

Moim marzeniem jest rząd minimum, tyle ze niewiele ludzi na tej planecie potrafi to dobrze okreslic, nie jestem wyjatkiem. Ile on by nas kosztowal? Mysle ze 30% jest znacznie bardziej uczciwe niz 60% :) Czy to realne?

Nie widze mozliwosci, jestem pesymista.
 
Hehehe, nie no ja tego Robin Hooda - jak i komiksy Danikena - dalem dla beki, skojarzyl mi sie z dziesięciną :)

Urzędasy mówią "mało" i nie przestaną. Urzędasy jak urzędasy, to zwykli oportunisci bez ideii, takie średniackie korpoludki na rządowym etacie, gorsi sa ci aktywisci, ideowcy, co dla "naszego" dobra...
W tej chwili placimy ok 60-70% dla normalnego obywatela (suma wszelki opłat, podatków, akcyz, ceł), a jedynym ich pomysłem są nowe podatki. Nie na coś, tylko od czegoś.

Moim marzeniem jest rząd minimum, tyle ze niewiele ludzi na tej planecie potrafi to dobrze okreslic, nie jestem wyjatkiem. Ile on by nas kosztowal? Mysle ze 30% jest znacznie bardziej uczciwe niz 60% :) Czy to realne?

Nie widze mozliwosci, jestem pesymista.
Dziesięcina :bleed:

Cała Września płaci Ci myto/haracz 10% i powiesz, że mało kwotowo? Czy zoptymalizujesz koszty = mniej urzędasów, muszą zasuwac jak nie, to zwolnienie = większa efektywność = większe i bardziej logiczne / przyziemne gospodarowanie wydatkami?

Bo jasno określone ile @Dzihados wziął i musi jasno wykazać co z tym hajsem zrobił.
 
Dziesięcina :bleed:

Cała Września płaci Ci myto/haracz 10% i powiesz, że mało kwotowo? Czy zoptymalizujesz koszty = mniej urzędasów, muszą zasuwac jak nie, to zwolnienie = większa efektywność = większe i bardziej logiczne / przyziemne gospodarowanie wydatkami?

Bo jasno określone ile @Dzihados wziął i musi jasno wykazać co z tym hajsem zrobił.
Transparentosc to podstawa, nawet w prywatnym, ociekajacym miesem i kaptializmem mmarocks ;) o instytucjach wladzy nawet nie wspominam

Za realne uwazam pare hasel trumposkich, czyli upraszczajac "no more taxes", "one new regulation, two down". To jest realne, to mogloby chwycic.
Na pewno nie szedlbym do wyborow z obietnica zmiany in/out, tylko ze zmiana proporcji w in, lub out.

Podstawowa kwestia to delegacja obowiazkow pokrywanych (teoretycznie albo i praktycznie) przez panstwo w rece obywateli, bo tylko rozproszona decyzyjnosc ustrzeze przez patologiami centalizmu, w tej czy innej skali.
Dam ci 10% ale radz sobie tu sam. Dam ci kolejne 10%, ale to juz nie moj problem.

Ech, takie tam nocne gdybanie...
 
Dlatego krocząc ku spersnalizowanej medycynie nie można zrobić kroku pośredniego i mówić że grupy ludzi, w jakimś kluczu (etnicznie np., albo płciowo) się różnią

W medycynie z tego co wiem to nic się nie zmienilo pod wpływem gender studies ;-)

W tym wywiadzie powiedzial, ze jest problem z pomiarem rezultatow naszych ewentualnych dzialan, tzn prognozowany margines bledu w czasie rosnie szybciej niz nasz prognozowany wplyw.

W skomplikowanych modelach pewnie tak, natomiast gdy wiemy że będzie powodz to warto zacząć budować waly ;-)



Artyści biorą się ostro za walkę ze smogiem. Nie ma żartów :mamed:
https://kultura.onet.pl/film/wiadom...te-powietrze-mamy-prawo-do-oddychania/50830kq

Z góry przegrane sprawy w sądzie. Tylko marnuja czas sędziów, tak jakby sądy nie były przeładowane sprawami. Natomiast sama walka ze smogiem jest słuszna, no chyba że ktoś jak Korwin wierzy, że dlugosc życia Krakusów dowodzi prozdrowotnych wlasciwosci smogu ;-)
 

Jak nic nie zrobimy z globalnym ociepleniem. Mamy wybór:
1. Walczyć z przyczynami
2. Walczyć ze skutkami
a) gdy już nastąpią
b) zanim nastąpią

Rozumiem, że Twoje rozwiązanie to 2a?

Za chwilę zobaczę artykuł o neurobiologii [ edit ] mam dostęp tylko do wstępu
 
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