Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey?
& in P.N.A.S. - Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey?
Plutarch and Heraclitus believed a certain passage in the 20th book of the Odyssey ("Theoclymenus's prophecy") to be a poetic description of a total solar eclipse. In the late 1920s, Schoch and Neugebauer computed that the solar eclipse of 16 April 1178 B.C.E. was total over the Ionian Islands and was the only suitable eclipse in more than a century to agree with classical estimates of the decade-earlier sack of Troy around 1192–1184 B.C.E.
However, much skepticism remains about whether the verses refer to this, or any, eclipse. To contribute to the issue independently of the disputed eclipse reference, we analyze other astronomical references in the Epic, without assuming the existence of an eclipse, and search for dates matching the astronomical phenomena we believe they describe.
We use three overt astronomical references in the epic: to Boötes and the Pleiades, Venus, and the New Moon; we supplement them with a conjectural identification of Hermes's trip to Ogygia as relating to the motion of planet Mercury. Performing an exhaustive search of all possible dates in the span 1250–1115 B.C., we looked to match these phenomena in the order and manner that the text describes. In that period, a single date closely matches our references: 16 April 1178 B.C.E. We speculate that these references, plus the disputed eclipse reference, may refer to that specific eclipse.
Darwin was ’smashed’
Robin McKee in The Guardian talks about "How Darwin won the evolution race":
In early 1858, on Ternate in Malaysia, a young specimen collector was tracking the island's elusive birds of paradise when he was struck by malaria. 'Every day, during the cold and succeeding hot fits, I had to lie down during which time I had nothing to do but to think over any subjects then particularly interesting me,' he later recalled.
Thoughts of money or women might have filled lesser heads. Alfred Russel Wallace was made of different stuff, however. He began thinking about disease and famine; about how they kept human populations in check; and about recent discoveries indicating that the earth's age was vast. How might these waves of death, repeated over aeons, influence the make-up of different species, he wondered?
Then the fever subsided - and inspiration struck. Fittest variations will survive longest and will eventually evolve into new species, he realised. Thus the theory of natural selection appeared, fever-like, in the mind of one of our greatest naturalists. Wallace wrote up his ideas and sent them to Charles Darwin, already a naturalist of some reputation. His paper arrived on 18 June, 1858 - 150 years ago last week - at Darwin's estate in Downe, in Kent.
Could Nim do this?
Back in the 1970s, a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky took part in a Columbia University research study called "Project Nim."
Project Nim was led by Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia who was attempting to find out if a chimpanzee could learn to communicate using American Sign Language.
"Everyone knows that words are learned one at a time," but something happens when children begin to combine words and create true language, Terrace says.
Boskops – a figment of anthropologists’ imaginations
No doubt you've all seen some of the hype surrounding the new book, Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence by Gary Lynch and Richard Granger. The book argues that a long-extinct hominin species, the "Boskops", were much smarter then we are:
Our big brains, our language ability, and our intelligence make us uniquely human. But barely 10,000 years ago--a mere blip in evolutionary time--human-like creatures called "Boskops" flourished in South Africa. They possessed extraordinary features: forebrains roughly 50% larger than ours, and estimated IQs to match--far surpassing our own. Many of these huge fossil skulls have been discovered over the last century, but most of us have never heard of this scientific marvel.
Prominent neuroscientists Gary Lynch and Richard Granger compare the contents of the Boskop brain and our own brains today, and arrive at startling conclusions about our intelligence and creativity. Connecting cutting-edge theories of genetics, evolution, language, memory, learning, and intelligence, Lynch and Granger show the implications of large brains on a broad array of fields, from the current state of the art in Alzheimer's and other brain disorders, to new advances in brain-based robots that see and converse with us, and the means by which neural prosthetics-- replacement parts for the brain--are being designed and tested. The authors demystify the complexities of our brains in this fascinating and accessible book, and give us tantalizing insights into our humanity--its past, and its future.
It seems to be getting glowing reviews all over the place - Cognitive Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga says it's "like mixing gas with fire. In this book there are big, explosive ideas by two ingenious brain scientists". William Calvin reviews it in New Scientist ("I've been waiting for someone to write this book for years"). Discover Magazine tells us that the Boskops probably had "an internal mental life literally beyond anything we can imagine".
....and unsurprisingly it's all crap. John Hawks discusses the anthropological evidence for these Boskops and, well, it ain't that good:
This category became untenable as further information about the archaeology of South Africa came to light. Ronald Singer (1958) reviewed the "Boskop race" evidence as it existed by the 1950's. He concluded that there was no reason to maintain that any "big-headed, small-faced group" had existed in prehistory, separate from the current biological variability of "Bushman, Hottentot and Negro." But that view is unsupportable -- in fact, what happened is that a small set of large crania were taken from a much larger sample of varied crania, and given the name, "Boskopoid." This selection was initially done almost without any regard for archaeological or cultural associations -- any old, large skull was a "Boskop". Later, when a more systematic inventory of archaeological associations was entered into evidence, it became clear that the "Boskop race" was entirely a figment of anthropologists' imaginations.
On deep history and the brain by Daniel Lord Smail
Alexander Small reviews On Deep History and the Brain by Daniel Lord Smail in the New York Times:
Taking Paleolithic man seriously, Smail argues, requires us to understand that history and biology always shape each other — there is no ascent from the tyranny of brute instinct to the freedoms of civilization. Some evolutionary theorists stress that cultural innovation allows human beings to overcome the blind stumblings of natural selection: we deliberately solve a problem and pass on that solution to our descendants, who improve on it in turn. Smail takes a different tack. The imperfect copying of past behavior and small, often unconscious preferences can push a society in a new direction, even without anyone aiming toward a particular goal. It’s possible, for instance, that early men decided to make sharper spear points with the intent of drawing more blood from their prey; Smail would rather suppose that these spear points were created by accident, and then spread because the hunters who used them proved to be better hunters, even if they didn’t know why. Cultural evolution can be rapid and it can help human beings adapt to their environment, but it needn’t be intended or progressive.
A bad case of sudden-onset musicophilia
Colin McGinn reviews Oliver Sack's new book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Sacks opens his book with a striking case, rather literally striking. Tony Cicoria, a forty-two-year-old orthopedic surgeon, was making a phone call to his mother when he was struck in the face by lightning. He thought he was dead immediately following the event but sustained no serious injuries and went back to work a few weeks later. But then, quite unexpectedly, he experienced an intense craving to listen to piano music—something he had never felt before. He started listening to piano music all the time, couldn't get enough of it. Then, a little later, he started hearing piano music in his head, insistently and powerfully; he felt the need to write it down, though he had no training in musical notation. Soon he was teaching himself to play the piano, playing the tunes that came to him unbidden at all moments. He played the piano at every opportunity, driving his wife to distraction. He had a bad case of sudden-onset musicophilia, somehow triggered by the brain alterations wrought by the lightning. He had become, in effect, a completely new person, evidently because of having had his brain electrically rewired.