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vyelkin posted:The Ottomans developed a very good method of mass inoculating for smallpox, and Europeans took it and made it significantly worse and more dangerous because they couldn't believe the perfidious Turk had invented something better than them. Here's a portion of an LRB article discussing it: lol
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Sep 5, 2021 18:08
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Tulip posted:Lol amazing lol at this bit religious objectors believed that it belonged to God alone to inflict disease;
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Sep 5, 2021 22:55
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Don't lose sight of the fact that variolation was extremely dangerous and would only work out to be safer if you caught in the middle of a epidemic. The cowpox vaccine was safe enough to mass-inoculate as a preventative.
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Sep 5, 2021 23:23
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vyelkin posted:The Ottomans developed a very good method of mass inoculating for smallpox, and Europeans took it and made it significantly worse and more dangerous because they couldn't believe the perfidious Turk had invented something better than them. Here's a portion of an LRB article discussing it: quote:How could it be, one asked, ‘that an experiment practised only by a few Ignorant Women amongst an illiterate and unthinking People, should of a sudden, and upon slender experience, so far obtain in one of the Politest Nations in the World? one of the Politest Nations in the World I don't know what to say, this is breaking new grounds in racist scoffing zetamind2000 has issued a correction as of 23:32 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 23:27
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exmachina posted:Don't lose sight of the fact that variolation was extremely dangerous and would only work out to be safer if you caught in the middle of a epidemic. The cowpox vaccine was safe enough to mass-inoculate as a preventative. Variolation with Variola major (i.e. classic smallpox) turns out to have been more dangerous than just getting infected with Variola minor (i.e. alastrim), which was the dominant strain in the U.S. and Western Europe for a couple centuries before eradication. The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 is worse than Variola minor in both capability to kill and to spread, but we’ll just have to live with that.
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Sep 5, 2021 23:40
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overmind2000 posted:one of the Politest Nations in the World
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Sep 6, 2021 04:39
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https://mobile.twitter.com/ArtifactsHub/status/1435045672558874624
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Sep 7, 2021 12:54
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https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1434803410902167552 great thread
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Sep 10, 2021 18:52
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https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1434805469441318917 this claim strikes me as questionable my understanding of the origin of the chinese alphabet is that the timing is such that they might have come up with the idea independently by some merchant describing the abstract concept of a european alphabet but that theres no evidence for this and the alphabets themselves have completely different structures so this would be akin to claiming that there would be no european movable type without korean movable type a claim that not even korean nationalists make unless im just misunderstanding what is meant here by alphabet and the chinese alphabet isnt the second alphabet still in use thats being referred to https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1434806112780439552 furthering my confusion on this point i straight up dont get what this is supposed to mean at all why is the phoenician alphabet critical to the invention of movable type rather than woodblock type when woodblock type also types out alphabets even if alphabet is defined as not meaning chinese characters why then would anyone in korea bother inventing movable type at all or is this person just not aware of the fact that movable type appeared in east asia before it appeared in europe
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Sep 13, 2021 02:22
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I think what she's saying is that there are four discrete inventions of writing; the Sumerians, the Chinese, the Mayans and the Egyptians. At some point the Phoenicians invented the alphabet and it took over the writing systems of the western world, while the Chinese & Mayan systems remained pictograms where symbols represented words instead of sounds. There are advantages and disadvantages to each system; the Mayan system didn't fail due to any inherent problem with it, just that its users were insufficiently fireproof or bulletproof.
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Sep 13, 2021 02:38
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ok i think i see how i misread it the phrasing suggests that all also includes the other three alphabets with phonecian itself being one of them which in the case of the mayan alphabet is explicitly impossible obviously that couldnt derive from the phonecian but then again all is also bad phrasing because thats simply not true that all current alphabets derive from the phonecian you could only claim thats true of the japanese and korean alphabets if you also claim the chinese alphabet is derived from the phonecian
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Sep 13, 2021 02:52
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It's being cute with the definition of alphabet; and and it's not even correct as Phoenician was an abjad whereas to technically be a "true alphabet" the script has to indicate both vowels and consonants (like many scripts in the region it omitted vowels). Its significant innovation over earlier alphabets is what we get the term phonetic from: each character only represented a single sound.
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Sep 13, 2021 03:05
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I’ve seen that particular “one alphabet” claim more than once over the years, probably first in an excerpt of Guns Germs and Steel I had to read way back when that book was still pretty new and better regarded I don’t know how true it is but yeah the claim I think is that the idea of separating vowels and consonants was only stumbled upon once and all future systems that do this ultimately derived from it
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Sep 13, 2021 03:13
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Not quite; most languages in the area did that. They just didn't write the vowels down, nor did the Phonecians. Vowels were first added by Greeks when adapting Phoencian. Also found a better (and more modest) attribution: quote:Writing emerged in many different cultures in the Bronze Age. Examples are the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Cretan hieroglyphs, Chinese logographs, Indus script, and the Olmec script of Mesoamerica. The Chinese script likely developed independently of the Middle Eastern scripts around 1600 BC. The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including Olmec and Maya scripts) are also generally believed to have had independent origins. It is thought that the first true alphabetic writing was developed around 2000 BC for Semitic workers in the Sinai by giving mostly Egyptian hieratic glyphs Semitic values (see History of the alphabet and Proto-Sinaitic alphabet). The Ge'ez writing system of Ethiopia is considered Semitic. It is likely to be of semi-independent origin, having roots in the Meroitic Sudanese ideogram system.[32] Most other alphabets in the world today either descended from this one innovation, many via the Phoenician alphabet, or were directly inspired by its design. However, writing (usually called "proto-writing") goes back to 7000 BC that we know of. (Despite this calling the early Semitic script a true language, it was also an abjad; in fact Hebrew remains an abjad today (although vowels are indicated, just not written with a character). Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 03:26 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 03:20
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I thought it was rather hazy whether writing got independently invented in multiple locations in eurasia or not
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Sep 13, 2021 03:25
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Stairmaster posted:I thought it was rather hazy whether writing got independently invented in multiple locations in eurasia or not As I recall, it was invented independently and then abandoned as it was not considered useful enough at least once in the Mediterranean alone.
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Sep 13, 2021 03:28
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Hodgepodge posted:It's being cute with the definition of alphabet; and and it's not even correct as Phoenician was an abjad whereas to technically be a "true alphabet" the script has to indicate both vowels and consonants (like many scripts in the region it omitted vowels). Its significant innovation over earlier alphabets is what we get the term phonetic from: each character only represented a single sound. Abjads and Abugidas are both alphabets, before 1980 Abjads would previously have been called “consonantal alphabets”. It’s a rectangle and a square kind of thing. All abjads are alphabets, but not all alphabets are abjads. Some Guy TT posted:ok i think i see how i misread it the phrasing suggests that all also includes the other three alphabets with phonecian itself being one of them which in the case of the mayan alphabet is explicitly impossible obviously that couldnt derive from the phonecian none of those are alphabets besides the Korean alphabet, and that is descended from the Tibetian ʼPhags-pa script, which is descended from Aramaic.
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Sep 13, 2021 03:41
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PawParole posted:none of those are alphabets besides the Korean alphabet, and that is descended from the Tibetian ʼPhags-pa script, which is descended from Aramaic. i tried reading up on this and as far as i can tell not only is the argument that the korean alphabet clearly derives from the phags pa script on shaky ground the argument that aramaic derives from the phonecian script is also on shaky ground even if a person were to charitably assume that both of these assertions are more likely than not correct implying that this is settled research that no reputable scholar on the subject would dispute is at best intellectually lazy and at worst intellectually dishonest
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Sep 13, 2021 04:08
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PawParole posted:Abjads and Abugidas are both alphabets, before 1980 Abjads would previously have been called “consonantal alphabets”. Yeah, I'm not sure why that definition was even on Wikipedia when I don't think anyone is that interested in defining a "true" alphabet as one which has an essentially arbitrary feature of Greek and English anymore. I was more trying to point out that even if you go by that distinction it doesn't fit.
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Sep 13, 2021 04:17
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lol when did your avatar get updated from photographic Nate to Valley Nate?
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Sep 13, 2021 04:43
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when someone posted valley nate in the politoons thread and i jokingly requested it on the negative side it makes me seem more hideous but on the positive side its a more beautiful kind of hideousness than the old one
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Sep 13, 2021 04:46
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Can you post what you're reading? I've never seen any source indicate even a shred of doubt that Aramaic was developed from Phoenician.
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Sep 13, 2021 04:50
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Ghostlight posted:Can you post what you're reading? I've never seen any source indicate even a shred of doubt that Aramaic was developed from Phoenician. It's just wikipedia in my case?  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet#Consonantal_alphabets
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Sep 13, 2021 05:45
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I'm not sure which part you're reading because quote:Two variants of the Phoenician alphabet had major impacts on the history of writing: the Aramaic alphabet and the Greek alphabet.
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Sep 13, 2021 06:41
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Aramaic is a semitic language, not the only one?
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Sep 13, 2021 10:06
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Correct  The Wikipedia section you linked to is explicitly about the development of the Phoenician alphabet by the adaptation of Egyptian logograms, then specifically states that the Aramaic alphabet was developed from the Phoenician. There's no reference there to any lack of a solid consensus on those facts.
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Sep 13, 2021 11:49
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Ghostlight posted:Correct I'm saying that however successful it was, Phoencian was just the most popular variant of a trend towards doing exactly what they did but not quite as well that lasted a good thousand years. Look at Proto-Sinaiatic/Caanite script. Phoenician was the most successful and widespread derivative of this. It's like claiming that Microsoft invested to the computer! Okay that's an insult to the user-friendly Phoenician script. But you get the idea. e: based on a doctorate in loving around on wikipedia, it looks like you could argue that the Semitic project of adapting writing systems to add vowels (but not as much as the Greeks would later) went back to the Akkadian Empire: quote:The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the Akkadian Empire from the 23rd century BC (short chronology). The Akkadian language being Semitic, its structure was completely different from Sumerian.[38] There was no way to use the Sumerian writing system as such, and the Akkadians found a practical solution in writing their language phonetically, using the corresponding Sumerian phonetic signs.[38] Still, some of the Sumerian characters were retained for their pictorial value as well: for example the character for "sheep" was retained, but was now pronounced immerū, rather than the Sumerian "udu-meš".[38] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform#Akkadian_cuneiform Since Phoencian caught on starting around 9 BC, that's a long-rear end search for a way to adequately represent your language. Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 12:46 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 12:23
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bring back the claudian letters
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Sep 13, 2021 13:48
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Yeah, I'm aware of Proto-Sinaitic script - the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet, developed by Canaanites in Egypt by syncretising their language with logograms which was then exported out of Egypt back to North Canaan - commonly attributed to the Phoenician trade network from which its eponym derives - where it spread rapidly to their neighbours quickly giving rise to regional variations. We don't even need to quibble over whether this script can be referred to as the Phoenician alphabet as it sometimes is or should be more accurately described as Proto-Canaanite due to it not being uniquely Phoenician until diverging a hundred or so years later into other alphabets, because Aramaic isn't based on Proto-Sinaitic or even Proto-Canaanite. There's widespread consensus on the fact that the Aramaic alphabet derives directly from the Phoenician alphabet because the earliest inscriptions we have of Aramaic are written in the Phoenician alphabet, and visually diverge from that alphabet over time. It's very hard for that to be ambiguous, and I don't think it is in any of the articles you have linked. Akkadian is not an alphabet, it is a syllabary, which - again - is information in the Wikipedia article you're linking to. That's a completely different form of writing and as such completely irrelevant to the history of the alphabet. Also I believe your dating of the Phoenician alphabet to 9 BC is slightly wrong.
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Sep 13, 2021 14:53
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Some Guy TT posted:i tried reading up on this and as far as i can tell not only is the argument that the korean alphabet clearly derives from the phags pa script on shaky ground the argument that aramaic derives from the phonecian script is also on shaky ground This theory is based off of an excerpt from the Annals of Sejong (Dec. 30th of the 25th Year & Sept. 29th of the 28th Year) which says Hangeul was "moulded from an older script." or Měnggǔ Zhuānzě, Menggu also means mongol in korean, and some of Hangeul's letters look like the mongol version of the phags pa script
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Sep 13, 2021 18:08
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Ghostlight posted:Yeah, I'm aware of Proto-Sinaitic script - the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet, developed by Canaanites in Egypt by syncretising their language with logograms which was then exported out of Egypt back to North Canaan - commonly attributed to the Phoenician trade network from which its eponym derives - where it spread rapidly to their neighbours quickly giving rise to regional variations. We don't even need to quibble over whether this script can be referred to as the Phoenician alphabet as it sometimes is or should be more accurately described as Proto-Canaanite due to it not being uniquely Phoenician until diverging a hundred or so years later into other alphabets, because Aramaic isn't based on Proto-Sinaitic or even Proto-Canaanite. We aren't just talking about "what language is the immediate predecessor of Aramaic" and you're really fixated on this, which only you are talking about. You cant even parse what I'm saying because you're only interested in "does make Aramaic?"
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Sep 13, 2021 18:14
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Hodgepodge posted:We aren't just talking about "what language is the immediate predecessor of Aramaic" and you're really fixated on this, which only you are talking about. You cant even parse what I'm saying because you're only interested in "does make Aramaic?" you seem to be confusing the aramaic script with the Aramaic language
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Sep 13, 2021 20:26
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neither one of which is the aramaic alphabet i presume
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Sep 13, 2021 20:31
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PawParole posted:you seem to be confusing the aramaic script with the Aramaic language I don't think so? There seem to be multiple semetic scripts which preceded Phoenecian. These seem to have in common their origin in the fact that cuneiform and hieroglyphs were poorly suited to adaptation to semetic (and other) languages. I assume these were languages closely related to Aramaic, but the term semetic languages is presumably used because Aramaic does not apply every case over thousands of years.
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Sep 13, 2021 20:44
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this is potato erasure, its introduction ended famines in europe until, well, that one everyone's heard about the noble potato has been maligned because of wretched british monocrop agriculture also on that subject, Andean Quechua quipus ought to be considered a kind of an independent written language, although its all cotton string that we can't really understand anymore because of the goddamn spanish Dreylad has issued a correction as of 21:53 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 21:49
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Hodgepodge posted:We aren't just talking about "what language is the immediate predecessor of Aramaic" and you're really fixated on this, which only you are talking about. You cant even parse what I'm saying because you're only interested in "does make Aramaic?" I am fixated on that one aspect because that's what I wanted proof of, because I felt it was an extraordinary claim. So when you quoted me responding that that was what you're reading on Wikipedia that's what I went in there looking for, not any of the other stuff you seemed to have been confused by. Your seeming inability to parse the articles for the information I was wanting makes a lot more sense now that I understand you weren't trying to provide me the only information I asked for.
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Sep 13, 2021 23:25
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Dreylad posted:also on that subject, Andean Quechua quipus ought to be considered a kind of an independent written language, although its all cotton string that we can't really understand anymore because of the goddamn spanish Weren't these more of a mnemonic device than anything? Or did they actually codify language 1:1? e: a quick glance at the wikipedia makes me think its more like written numbers and calculations, not words
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Sep 14, 2021 07:32
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Chewbaccanator posted:Weren't these more of a mnemonic device than anything? Or did they actually codify language 1:1? i believe there's two kinds of quipu, the ones number storage and statistics/census data, and ones that served a narrative purpose. maybe I'm wrong about the latter now if the research has progressed on them andean people were submitting them to spanish colonial court up until the 1570s as part of land claims against spaniards who seized land arbitrarily iirc, and a lot of them won their cases, so the spanish church burned most of them Dreylad has issued a correction as of 18:42 on Sep 15, 2021 |
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Sep 15, 2021 01:13
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There's also rongorongo from Rapa Nui. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rongorongo
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Sep 15, 2021 09:45
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Weka posted:There's also rongorongo from Rapa Nui. Love these little guys, it always looks to me like they're dancing.
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Sep 16, 2021 09:21
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