Vorkosigan

Heliocentricity was known to the Arabs as well. The Chinese never developed the idea. The problem, as Bede pointed out, is what constitutes a civilization's "knowing" a particular fact? Everyone knowing it? The intellectual classes knowing it? Several people knowing it?

Columbus was no visionary. In fact, he would have died at sea had it not been for the Americas. His estimates for the size of the earth was too small and his estimate for Marco Polo’s trip was too large. If the Americas did not exist, Columbus would have died at sea.

That is precisely why many historians believe Columbus knew perfectly well where he was going. At that time there were already European fishermen off of N. American fishing, and of course Columbus was probably aware that the Norse had gone to there, having visited Iceland. One source I have says there is good evidence to suggest the Portugese had seen Brazil as early as 1444, but I do not know what that evidence is. Another argument is that the Basques had run a brisk trade in furs during the 14th-15th century, but nobody knows the source of their furs, and it might have been N. America. <a href="http://www.hum.gu.se/arkiv/ONN/2000/II/msg00206.html" target="_blank">Here is a post on the Basques with discussion & URLs</a>. It's worth a gander. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kurlansky-cod.html" target="_blank">link at the bottom</a> also has a fascinating article:

• Thirty-seven years later, Jacques Cartier arrived, was credited with "discovering" the mouth of the St. Lawrence, planted a cross on the Gaspe Peninsula, and claimed it all for France. He also noted the presence of 1,000 Basque fishing vessels. But the Basques, wanting to keep a good secret, had never claimed it for anyone.

I think that anyone with the ear to the ground -- and Columbus was a canny bastard with wide connections -- could have put all the pieces together. Since much of what was known then was deemed a national secret and is now lost, I suspect that there is even more information out there somewhere.

Other indications that Columbus knew what he would find -- he did not take expensive trade goods.

Vorkosigan

[ May 26, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

Kosh

And of course, let's not forget some other
interesting mysteries:

- The "cocaine" mummies of Egypt (Cocaine only
grew in the Americas)

- The Chineses stories of a large ship/trip
across the pacific, coupled with chinese anchor
stones off the coast of California

- Stone heads in Mexico with strong African
features

- Similarity between the inca (maya?) serpent
god and the Chinese Dragon.

Vorkosigan

- The "cocaine" mummies of Egypt (Cocaine only
grew in the Americas)

No one has ever replicated this, and the mummies she worked with appear to have been 19th century forgeries.

The Chineses stories of a large ship/trip
across the pacific, coupled with chinese anchor
stones off the coast of California

This is an old myth. The "anchor stones" are from modern fishermen. See <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9971950863/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">Transpacific Echoes and Resonances: Listening Again</a> by Joseph Needham.

Stone heads in Mexico with strong African
features

Explainable in terms of locals who have those features...

Similarity between the inca (maya?) serpent
god and the Chinese Dragon.

Of these, this is the only one that is a possibility. You must read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9971950863/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">Transpacific Echoes and Resonances: Listening Again</a>, you'll love it.

Vorkosigan

davidH

In Babylonia the seal generally took the form of a cylinder cut in crystal or some hard stone, which was bored through from end to end and a cord passed through it. The design, often accompanied by the owner's name, was engraved on the curved part. The signet was then suspended by the cord round the neck or waist.

True - u could look at the analogy like that but you can also look at it from the view that it is the earth that turns as on an axis (as the seal does) and as the earth turns the dawn and the sky form their patterns until the earth turns so much that the sun eventually disappears.

The analogy that you gave could be what it means but unless you move the clay the sun stays in the same place - which is true to life but it would mean the earth would still have to be rotating on its axis to make it look like it was travelling across the sky.........wo - confusing me now! lol

I've constently been switching between the seal (the roller as it were) and it's likeness to the earth - hope you get the jist !!
But that's beside the point.

Yeah but I still can't see the whole problem with the Bible containing passages about the beliefs of the universe of the Jews in that time. - Could someone explain this to me?

As I said earlier I can't see the problem of the Bible recording people praising God about the earth and the universe in the terms that they understood it to be like at that time. - Is there a problem with the Bible recording this praise of people in the ancient times?

As I said earlier;

fwh

In a sense, IMHO we on this thread are making the same mistakes fundamentalist christians make when reading the bible or any other ancient texts. We interpret these texts in a manner common to our 21st century collective conciousness. We look at our world 'tabula rasa', blank slate, without any sense of actually participating in the phenomena around us. The ancients participated in their world in ways anthropologists today are just beginning to discover. I am raising "evolution of conciousness" issues here which probably should be discussed on another thread. In closing, I would say, ancients saw with eyes like ours but did not perceive with the same minds. So our comments regarding them is hardly accurate unless a concerted methodology is applied. A fascinating insight methinks.

Bede

Michael,

This is interesting. I've just read a book about Arab science and there was no mention of this. Do you have a reference and could you clarify? Do you mean they had heard of Aristarchus's hypothesis but rejected it like the Greeks?

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

Kosh

Thanks Michael! Amazing that DSC, THC, etc
continue to run those programs without presenting
the latest research/debunking...

Vorkosigan

No. How old was your book? This bit of info I garnered from Science in a Multicultural World by David Hess, a prof of mine. Hess got it from an article, but I don't know where, there may be a cite in that book. It turns out Copernicus had a copy of an arab treatise on a heliocentric universe sitting on his bookshelf, at least according to the info Hess had. An arab specialist in my department told me once that the discoveries about arab science in the near future are simply going to revolutionize our understanding of the development of science in Europe. Wish I knew some of those discoveries.

Vorkosigan

Happy Wonderer

Hi Bede, here are some links if I can get them to work. (URLS + UBB = Frustration!)

The most elegant argument I found concerned the Babylonians.
<a href="http://www.spirasolaris.ca/sbb2c.html" target="_blank">Argument that the Babylonians had a heliocentric model by 250 BCE</a>

It is a bit more difficult for the Mayans, since the Spaniarids were pretty ruthless about eliminating what they saw as works of the devil. The
<a href="http://serendipity.magnet.ch/hermetic/cal_stud/maya/boehm/boehm51.htm" target="_blank">Dresden Codex</a>
is one of the few manuscripts that survived, and it happens to be a book of astronomy! The predictions (of eclipses, solar position, Venus visibility & Mars visibility) are extremely exact for well into the future (ourfuture.) Unfortunately, we only have the constants and not how they were derived. It doesn't seem too likely that you could get these constants correct without a heliocentric model, but perhaps some lurking astrophysics person can tell me I'm full of it.

Other than that, on the Mayans (once one wades through reams of new-age cruft) I see merely bald assertions that they either had a heliocentric model <a href="http://www.millersville.edu/~deidam/m301/myast.htm" target="_blank">(here) </a>or that they didn't and "isn't it amazing that they could come up with such precise predictions without a heliocentric model?"

I think it is pretty safe to say that they understood planetary rotation at least...

Of course, the Muslims figured it out (independently?) before we Euros rediscovered it. (
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/zahidtg2/Science/Muslim_Contributions_Science.htm#TheSolarSystem" target="_blank">here</a>)

HW

Happy Wonderer

There is no problem with the Bible containing passages about the beliefs of ancient peoples if it is looked at as a historical document. Unless you believe that every word in the Bible is literally true, then these passages don't even affect how divinly inspired you think the Bible is.

The problem is when people take one of these pretty turns of phrase and attempt to use it to prove that the Bible has modern science hidden in it. That is really galling to a freethinker, because followers of the Bible did a great deal to hinder scientific knowledge. However, it can lead to some pretty entertaining discussions!

HW