Originally posted by Blane2012
If you want to believe, on faith alone, that humans rose to reasonably "high" levels at such early dates, then that's simply a belief you want to hold.
Early dates is kind of a loose term, seeing as those early dates are actually very recent in the grand scheme of how long species and subspecies of homo have been walking the Earth. It is reasonable and common sense to think that over a long period of time (when the Earth allows humans to advance), that we start developing and over time we get better and better. It's almost impossible to prove that 160,000 years ago humans had electricity, but given that those humans had the same intelligence and capabilities as us, that it's not out of the realm of possibility. My beliefs are mainly based on common sense and the extremely long time we've been here. I think most people de-value our intelligence and capabilities that we had in our distant past.
Originally posted by Blane2012Maybe I am over-valueing human ingenuity, but I don't believe so. Personally, I think it's a slap in the face of our ancestors to think that we haven't built up great civilizations in the distant past. Hence why I believe we have risen and done great things before and we weren't sitting around picking our noses until the end of the last Ice Age when we started to get the ball rolling in an advanced direction. I could be wrong. Thanks for the response.
With such crude instruments the Maya were able to calculate the length of the year to be 365.242 days (the modern value is 365.242198 days). Two further remarkable calculations are of the length of the lunar month. At Copán (now on the border between Honduras and Guatemala) the Mayan astronomers found that 149 lunar months lasted 4400 days. This gives 29.5302 days as the length of the lunar month. At Palenque in Tabasco they calculated that 81 lunar months lasted 2392 days. This gives 29.5308 days as the length of the lunar month. The modern value is 29.53059 days.
In our recent studies of the solar system, once again, we find that the ancient reckoning system of the maya, the maya long-count, reflects an almost exact representation of the distances traveled by the planets. Let us look a little closer at just how exactly the system represents the solar system's composition.
In previous essays, we have called attention to the possibility of utilizing the Mercury/Sun distance as the astronomical unit (AU), instead of the commonly accepted Earth/Sun distance. The reasoning is obvious, since the Mercury/Sun average mean distance is 36,000,000 miles, while that of Earth/Sun is approximately 93,000,000 miles. One could say that this is cheating; we are accepting an obvious relationship to the maya long-count by choosing the Mercury/Sun distance, since it represents a fractal expression of the 360c day-count. Naturally, all of the distances expressed in the Mercury/Sun distance shall reflect a direct relationship between time and distance because of the sameness of the terms (36c).
But, one has to wonder whether the maya may have chosen the 360c day-count for their long-count precisely based upon this measurement. In other words, such a choice would have multiple meanings, one of which would be that the ancient reckoning system was far more complex than currently imagined by scholars. We have suggested that from the perspective of matter-energy, it is more logical to employ the Mercury/Sun relationship for the concept of astronomical unit (AU), than the Earth/Sun relationship.
Originally posted by Indigo_Child
reply to post by jokei
As a philosophy graduate, I have a huge interest in philosophy. There are basically three major philosophical traditions in the world, they are: Indian, Chinese and Greek. There is of course germs of philosophical thinking in other parts of the world too, expressed in myth, but what we can technically call philosophy as rationally argued propositions does not appear until around 600BCE, according to conservate dating. Before this period in China we have the I-Ching, in India we have the Vedas, and in Greece we have Presocratics, where abstract philosophical ideas are stated but not rationally argued.
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Originally posted by Krazysh0t
reply to post by Hanslune
Did you not read the article? They clearly talk about how the calenders units are based around the distances from the sun of each of the planets in the solar system including pluto. They even have a large gap between the mars diztance and Jupiter's distance to represent the asteroid belt
Originally posted by Krazysh0t
reply to post by Hanslune
Well its tough to say. Many of the Mayan texts were destroyed by the conquistadors when they arrived in the Americas. Its possible that those words were lost at that time. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Originally posted by Harte
Originally posted by Krazysh0t
reply to post by Hanslune
Well its tough to say. Many of the Mayan texts were destroyed by the conquistadors when they arrived in the Americas. Its possible that those words were lost at that time. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
It absolutely is evidence of absence.
After all, if a lack of evidence for the presence of a thing is not evidence of its absence, then what exactly would constitute evidence of that thing's absence?
Please note - "absence of evidence" is certainly not evidence of presence.
Harte
