Odds and Ends III
Aug 21, 2021
How Many Times Was Writing Invented?
There is still debate on this question, but between two and four times. Going with four, it was
invented in Mesopotamia (ca. 3400 BCE), Egypt (ca. 3250 BCE), China (1200 BCE), and Mesoamerica (ca 500 BCE). It
is difficult to put a precise date on any of these because writing develops gradually and there is no clear dividing
line between "real writing" and "proto writing".
The Mesopotamian and Egyptian sources may have a common origin. Also, scholars assume China invented
writing on its own because there is no known contact between China and the Near East at this time, but given how little
we know of history during this period this may be an unfounded assumption. The independent origin of Mesoamerican writing is
more certain because of the difficulty (probably impossibility) of traveling between the Near East and Mesoamerica at that
time.
Links
- Why is every empire fated to fall?
- You are likely breathing formaldyhede at
home and at work.
- "During all his life Max had a devasting dislike of the superficial and an incredible capacity to penetrate with
lightning speed to the significant core of any problem." The National Academy of Sciences has an
excellent biographical
memoir of Max Mason.
- "Lyman never married; he was the last representative of a mode of life that will not be seen again in this country,
an aristocrat in the best sense. Brought up in great wealth, and always possessed of ample means himself, he looked the part and
impressed all who met him[.]"
- Some decent information on
the future we're headed into.
- How to think about
software design via the design of a logging library. This guy's entire site is full of wisdom acquired from
years of doing software development.
- Very impressive 3D renderer showing a variety of modern
techniques. It was things like this that made me want to learn programming, but it took me about 10 years of doing it before I
was capable of making something like this.
- "How did Temujin unify the roughly 1 million tribal Mongols spread out across a vast steppe under a single ruler
after centuries of non-stop stealing, murdering, kidnapping, raping, and blood feuding?"