I am always amazed when I read about archaeologists’, anthropologists’, and historians’ discoveries about people long gone. And a recent story keeps me amazed. Oh! Not at the discovery as much as at the discoverers. Why? Because just as teenagers seem to think that the world didn’t exist before their rise to consciousness, so, too, many who study the past seem to think that only their contemporaries or people they consider to be “modern” could live sophisticated existences. Maybe “primitive” is a term that needs to be qualified, and maybe the haughty learned of a high-tech world need some old fashioned learnin’.
The recent story that caught my eye in this regard centered on studies of the Pueblo peoples. Apparently, sans written language and mathematics, they structured the Chaco great house to within one percent of a “Golden rectangle.”* An online article in Sci-News for January 24, 2017, reports that Arizona State University Professor Sherry Towers “found evidence that” Mesa Verde National Park’s Pueblo archaeological site “was laid out with a Golden rectangle, equilateral and Pythagorean 3:4:5 triangles.” The Sun Temple appears to have been built on the basis of a “common unit of measurement.” Professor Towers reports the “base unit is either L = 30.5 cm, or one third of that.” She then points out that the imperial foot, the Greek common foot, the Roman foot, and the Germanic “northern foot” were all similar (30.48, 31,5, 29.59, and 33.53 cm respectively).
So, the surprising thing is that, let me see, a civilization had agreed on a common unit of measure? The surprising thing was they had such a measure but didn’t leave a clearly written message about it? The surprising thing was that these people weren’t without intellects?
I can hear the Pueblo concerned saying to the architect, “I Hopi you know what you are doing. How are you going to lay out this temple?”
To which the architect of the site in question responded, “I won’t even Anasazi that.”
Then, realizing she was abrupt (Why wasn’t the architect a man?), she said, “I have it covered. I’m using my uncle’s arm as a measure. Time to get back to work, Uncle Joe; stand beside this wall and stretch out your arms.”
Bad jokes aside, think about how we have a tendency to minimize the intellects of others simply because they do not communicate the way we do. Human communication is a complex matter. Humans are complex. They have always been complex. There’s no real primitivism in “primitives.” Put two people together and you get a society, and societies continue under complex spoken and unspoken rules, orders, and perspectives.
One doesn’t have to be Euclid to have discovered a ratio that enables the “Golden Rectangle.” Aren’t there examples throughout nature? Maybe an astute observer thought that a human structure should mimic a natural one on the basis of the “Golden Ratio of 1:1.618.” I don’t want to make up something about ancient intelligence and knowledge, but at the same time, I think we need not to tell ourselves Fibonaccis about the intellects of those who came before us, such as that they couldn’t have been as “smart” as we are. They obviously did pretty well. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here to be amazed that they actually had the tools to continue the species.
And so the same goes for those in different cultures and subcultures. They appear to get along without us. So, there are groups of musket shooters, Bridge players, orchid aficionados, and sports fans of many kinds. All different, but maybe all bearing the mark of a Golden Similarity, members of a species that can perceive a world and imitate its many natural forms.
http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/ancient-pueblo-people-advanced-geometry-04559.html
The recent story that caught my eye in this regard centered on studies of the Pueblo peoples. Apparently, sans written language and mathematics, they structured the Chaco great house to within one percent of a “Golden rectangle.”* An online article in Sci-News for January 24, 2017, reports that Arizona State University Professor Sherry Towers “found evidence that” Mesa Verde National Park’s Pueblo archaeological site “was laid out with a Golden rectangle, equilateral and Pythagorean 3:4:5 triangles.” The Sun Temple appears to have been built on the basis of a “common unit of measurement.” Professor Towers reports the “base unit is either L = 30.5 cm, or one third of that.” She then points out that the imperial foot, the Greek common foot, the Roman foot, and the Germanic “northern foot” were all similar (30.48, 31,5, 29.59, and 33.53 cm respectively).
So, the surprising thing is that, let me see, a civilization had agreed on a common unit of measure? The surprising thing was they had such a measure but didn’t leave a clearly written message about it? The surprising thing was that these people weren’t without intellects?
I can hear the Pueblo concerned saying to the architect, “I Hopi you know what you are doing. How are you going to lay out this temple?”
To which the architect of the site in question responded, “I won’t even Anasazi that.”
Then, realizing she was abrupt (Why wasn’t the architect a man?), she said, “I have it covered. I’m using my uncle’s arm as a measure. Time to get back to work, Uncle Joe; stand beside this wall and stretch out your arms.”
Bad jokes aside, think about how we have a tendency to minimize the intellects of others simply because they do not communicate the way we do. Human communication is a complex matter. Humans are complex. They have always been complex. There’s no real primitivism in “primitives.” Put two people together and you get a society, and societies continue under complex spoken and unspoken rules, orders, and perspectives.
One doesn’t have to be Euclid to have discovered a ratio that enables the “Golden Rectangle.” Aren’t there examples throughout nature? Maybe an astute observer thought that a human structure should mimic a natural one on the basis of the “Golden Ratio of 1:1.618.” I don’t want to make up something about ancient intelligence and knowledge, but at the same time, I think we need not to tell ourselves Fibonaccis about the intellects of those who came before us, such as that they couldn’t have been as “smart” as we are. They obviously did pretty well. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here to be amazed that they actually had the tools to continue the species.
And so the same goes for those in different cultures and subcultures. They appear to get along without us. So, there are groups of musket shooters, Bridge players, orchid aficionados, and sports fans of many kinds. All different, but maybe all bearing the mark of a Golden Similarity, members of a species that can perceive a world and imitate its many natural forms.
http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/ancient-pueblo-people-advanced-geometry-04559.html
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