To Jupiter, for free

ToughSF / Matter Beam spent a lot of the last half-year, it seems, composing this post. He proposes, with materials known to us now, to inject a smallsat into Jovian orbit with no propellant at all. Beyond launching it from Earth or maybe Luna, of course (and Luna, we hope, will have railguns).

Now, I do have to quibble that when we talk "lightness" ratios, we would like to attach some, like... cargo to the sail.

For gravity-assist or redirection, ToughSF considers diving his craft near Io. To get to its +17.3 km/s velocity around Jupiter, ToughSF sees a hybrid engine. I'll go further: once we've dove-en that far into the Jovian well, we also get Jupiter's ionic wind. Sailing on ions rather than on photons is where the "Q" drive shows up. (A future post on which, ToughSF has promised/teased in the comments.)

How about sticking around Jupiter? I'd like to have some smallsats around this system over the span Juno, JUICE, and Europa Clipper are all working there. In particular: that first-order Laplacian +12.475 km/s between Europa and Ganymede. To which end, I'd dump the sail once injected close to Jupiter and raise the magnets instead. Mind, that's a thick antenna, for Earth-contact. Could we send multiple sails to the three Laplacian moons, to assemble something bigger once in that general area?

Shirazi

There are a few articles discussing the Shirazi of east-Africa. As with the migration-theory of the Anglo-Saxons, with the Kurgan hypothesis for Indo-European irruptions further into Europe, and with the Aryan hypothesis for same into northwest India: original claim to origins, claim dismissed by 20th century academics, original claim validated by genetics.

Shiraz is in Iran and is famed for a wine they pioneered. Our Shirazis are an East African group who used to rule Kilwa as "sultans", a classic Syro-Arabic term. But Kilwa claimed not to be Arabs, but to be Persian - both in Arabic and in Portuguese, circa AD 1500. The synopsis hints at a native source from AD 1300, possibly Arabic but we really cannot discount Persian. The researchers wanted to test that claim (and its detractors) through DNA-testing. The best-preserved bodily remains as elsewhere are in graves, elite graves at that.

The chart from the paper - so, the burials - would start around AD 1200; the Arabic chronicle would have the sultanate founded around AD 1000. There is also coinage; this starts from the eleventh century (suggesting a sultanate based then, perhaps, from Somalia). In the main burials the "Persian" side also has some Indic. The other half of this ancestry is consistently Makwasinyi. As to drift before the grave thus-far first exhumed, the mixing had started around AD 1000; the chronicle is, thereby, vindicated.

I'll interject that this is well over a century after the Zanj rebellion; these sultans did not supply the 'Abbasids, much less the Sasanids.

The male lineage tells a subtly different story:

Analysing male-transmitted Y chromosome DNA, we find that two out of three non-first-degree related males from Manda carry haplogroup J2, and the third carries G2. Both haplogroups are characteristic of Southwest Asia (plausibly Persia) and are largely absent in sub-Saharan Africans. The Kilwa individual also carries J2. Fourteen out of 19 males from Mtwapa have Y chromosome haplogroups in the J family, and two are of the R1a haplogroup, all considered typically non-African. Only 3 out of 19 Mtwapa males, along with the Faza male, are in the E1 family characteristic of sub-Saharan Africa.

I admit to unfamiliarity with G2. J2, by contrast, I know: it is Semitic, northwest-Semitic at that. Mtwapa's R1a is Aryan...

. . . but uncommon in East Africa. This is telling me of high aristocratic disdain for trade, what Hindus would scorn as a vaisya job. Some Iranian nobles might be grasping enough to do it. But as we see here - not many. Mostly they let G2 and J2 do it, at least J2 being native speakers of Syriac and perhaps picking up some Yemeni and Somali languages.

But I must count out Iraqis, and Arabs and Yemenis, and Somalis. Even Jews seem hard-to-square, unless they are Elamite Jews. The paper is able to tell all these from Persians. In the Y-DNA, instead I'm seeing the Khuzistan and the southern Iranian coast, by now thoroughly Iranian (if not inhabiting palaces), and not (yet?) an "Arabestan". In the timing (and the Indic presence) I'm seeing the Ghaznavis. That aristocracy was Turco-Persian.

G2 and J2 were still not getting palaces in Iran. It looks like these post-Iranians found their palaces further south.

I doubt that all this intercourse was an export of males into Africa. One avenue for future-research, I suggest, would be to check the hither side of this commerce: the southern Baluchestan and maybe Seistan and the Indus delta. Would there be maternal African DNA? preserved African foodstuffs or textiles? pottery?

The paraclete in Luke

Such masses of content! Today, Davila points to Jenkins, on the appearance of Christ to the five hundred. Which, to Jenkins, looks much like Luke 2's depiction of the Holy Ghost upon a good deal more than five hundred.

Jenkins' article convinces me, overall. Jenkins himself implicitly credits N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003). I wonder if I could make Jenkins' argument even more convincing.

Indeed, docetism was a thing in early Christendom. We can deduce this from orthodox antidocetism: already 1 John insisted upon a tactile experience, which epistle / encyclical was in turn already ascribed to the Apostle John later in Luke. Jenkins is surely correct to flag Luke as later (and dependent). Luke is also later than Paul's first scroll of epistles (and dependent).

Another point (I'd add in favour) is that Luke's Ascension posts a limit upon post-Resurrection dialogues, speeches, and general appearances as were already rife in Luke's day, possibly not always orthodox. (That Gospel which Ignatius quoted to Smyrna is a rare orthodox example.) Even Luke cannot rewrite the vision of Paul, so v. 9:5 has Jesus make that cameo, the final cameo. Instead Luke wants the Holy Spirit to make those appearances. This theory isn't really Trinitatian thought, although it will develop into that direction. More, Luke's aim was gatekeeping: if people were seeing Jesus, these visions were fake (if not gay). Only Luke's sect had access to the Spirit.

The displacement of Alba Patera

As long as we're looking into Mars during its Noachian we'd like to see what its crust and mantle were like, back then. Last year Lei Zhang, Jinhai Zhang, and Ross N. Mitchell (pdf) noted that the yuuge Hellas impact-crater is almost-but-not-quite the antipode of the Alba Patera volcano.

The offset is 119 km which wouldn't be much latitude on Earth but on Mars it's a significant 2°. Also Hellas has a daterange, from crater-count, if not a firm date: 4.1 to 3.8 Gya. The crust around Alba Patera will have done its Mercury thing around then. By similar crater-count methods the volcano formed 3.2 Gya, the boundary between Hesperian and Amazonian (it might even define that boundary). It couldn't form in the badlands so it formed 2° off it.

The triad believe these formations are related: the impact causing, Caloris-style, the geologic mess on (again: almost) the other side of the planet. The offset would, then, have summat to tell us about the state of the crust and mantle there and then. The conclusion: the northern-lowlands ~4 Gya were still soft compared to the badlands around what's now Tharsis.

Sergey Brin's zeppelin

Having talked hybrid blimps let's get back to airships, which are awesome. Over any planet.

So now, Pathfinder 1 seems to be about to fly. Indeed: to transport cargo or assist during humanitarian relief missions. Last Tuesday I saw a helicopter moving cargo up that narrow valley on the Boulder-Nederland road. It looked dangerous; for the 'copter, and for all us cars below it. A floating balloon could have done this, nu?

This one is 400 feet long and has a 65 ft diameter; the lifting-gas is helium in thirteen bladders. Advances in carbon and metallurgy make this feasible. It still seems expensive but I suppose Mr Brin can afford it.

I'd prefer hydrogen; recall that the Hindenberg killed by a diesel-explosion, not from the fire in the big balloon above the cabin which being a fire, duhh, burned upward.

Kuiper II?

We have a Kuiper Belt of which the first two bodies discovered were Triton (taken by Neptune) and then Pluto (in 2:3 resonance with Neptune). Then "Xena" was found, now Eris; queen of the Belt proper. Our post-Y2k instruments have the circular-orbiting main Belt objects trailing off toward the higher 40s AU.

Some thought was given that there may be a second Kuiper to account for those wacky iceballs like Sedna (in lieu of Planet Nine, which seems not found).

I've worried that we might used to have had these massive masses way out there but that, by the time we get Oort, other stars start interfering.

Anyway Keith Cowing has noted that, after Kuiper trails off, which is about where New Horizons is now at... we've been finding more stuff. But still not much between semimajors 50-60 AU; these objects orbit at 60+ AU. If the clustering holds up, that might be a second Belt. But not the massive second belt as might have perturbed Sedna.

Grey planet

More speculation on the formation of carbon planets: the soot layer.

Bergin et al. seem unaffiliated with Allen-Sutter's al. - to the point the late article doesn't even cite Allen-Sutter. In fact some distance is placed inasmuch as Bergin's proposed planet is 0.1%–1% in mass; so not diamond-dominate.

Bergin's soot layer is the distance between a (here defined) soot line and the ice line which Bergin places (reasonably) at ~170 K. In our solar-system the ice line is, I think, 4 AU; Ceres itself formed outside that, migrating inward and simply keeping most its ice. Earth and Venus and even Mars formed in the rock line; with Earth at least getting much of its water also from outward, and later.

Bergin has carbonaceous chondrites' organics roaming around C₁₀₀H_75–79O_11–17N_3–4S_1–3. This interplanetary coal doesn't dissolve; but inside the soot line, with the rocky worlds, it will decompose. Such organics thrive somewhere around where Ceres is at; past Ceres, such will be mixed with ice. Bergin counts 67P as a comet but I am happy considering it a Cereslike. Most sooty-ice asteroids should lose ice like a comet; Ceres saving its water, by being heavy.

The soot line is ~500 K which is far hotter than Earth gets now. But when the inner planets were forming, with Sol as a T Tauri and with protoplanets crashing into earth other down here, that 500 K line was easily crossed.

The hazy grey planet, effectively a superTitan, is alien to the extent Bergin's crew cannot envision a biocycle. I've considered possibilities such a planet might have formed instead of Mars, in our own system (although it didn't). I must however question if it gets enough insolation/flux.

BACKDATE 5/27. UPDATE 10/20: At terrestrial-planet temperatures and below, Uranus might be Type A and Earth, B. Type C is - you guessed it - carbon-dominant. David Moore ponders K2-18's sulfur in such a matrix.

CLOUDS 1/10/24: I've been pondering carbondioxide as vapour. This liquifies only under high pressure, so lower in the atmosphere than what we'd see from water. The planet would also have to be cold. It also needs an oxygen-source to burn off methane - this much, at least, can happen when water ice is irradiated, as the Jovians from Europa-on-out.

The comedy of Ruth

Pentecost is coming, the Shabuôt of the Jews. TheTorah is commenting on Ruth, as a result of Ruth's own take on Deuteronomy 25 yibbum. Professor Nehama Aschkenasy discusses this book's comedic aspects.

As in: actual comedy. Naomi, the actual protagonist of the story, is an Israelite and widow whose son married Ruth the Moabite but died. Naomi offers that ex-daughter-in-law Ruth try her luck with other Moabites, like her sister does. But Ruth doesn't, sticking with Naomi. These messy interrelations around how we be Supposed-To-Behave make the main stock of Greek (and Latin) comedy, the rites of spring. Also the concern with the lower-levels of society; we're not laughing at their condition, we're watching out for how they get better.

May I ask how Ruth was composed; not as a Biblical Book but as an actual stage-play? The Greeks might have copied their comedies in formal stage-directions but do we get this from (say) the Hittites? Ruth would, then, be a master-text for the mummers to riff from, depending on their audience. I understand that the Improv remains a force among troupes.

- and how about Jonah? That might take more special-effects work.

Unhappy Arabia

Our Stem1-2 East African forebears left Africa - and stalled. This stall now has a span: 80-50kBC, basically MIS 4. That's a long stall!

Basically in Africa if temperatures got a bit cold in the highlands, you could leave the highlands. If you were in the Hijaz or Yemeni uplands, where were you going to move to? Also the south Arabian coast was subject to the monsoon.

After thirty thousand years, those ancestors adapted - making do with less. The authors note similarity with adaptations which the Inuit have inherited. In return, a genetic timebomb was awaiting these people, should they ever settle down again: obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorders. I take it that Masai lionchasers don't get these problems.

COGNITION 5/27: The HR Department won't like this.

Another biosphere experiment

Up in north Yorkshire, they're recolonising a 1100 km mineshaft, under Boulby. The press-release is a bit hype-ey, on account there's already work being done there; and of course there used to be, er, mining "down pit". In fact there still is: salt, potash.

I'm reminded of that "biosphere-2" attempted in the US some decades ago. It's even got the same name, dressed up as the usually-crap acronym (Biomedical Sub-surface Pod for Habitability and Extreme-environments Research in Expeditions, ugh). I mean, the septics failed on account they tried to mimic a sealed habitat as if it were on another planet. One hopes rather we'll be trying our Moon first, which should be able to abort back to Earth. Likewise a mineshaft should be evacuable more-or-less like Antarctica is evacuable.

I take it that the plan here is to build a sort of town next to the real scientific work that's already going on down there: medical to start-with, maybe later hydroponics, certainly waste-reclamation. There are already hints in South Africa concerning a grey economy surrounding the mining work. But that economy was difficult to study, being near-criminal. This Boulby subterranean settlement will be in contact with the above.

Andalus: what went wrong?

As more grist against that Andalusi paradise, today the Turtle linked Islam and human capital in historical Spain. And excerpted it, which is great on account Journal of Economic Growth paywalled the original.

Francesco Cinnirella, Alireza Naghavi and Giovanni Prarolo correlated last January a dataset on Muslim domination between 711-1492 and literacy in 1860 for about 7500 municipalities. The longer the city or large town was Muslim, the less-literate as of 1860.

We could argue the encomienda system, and Spain's general north-upon-south orientation under the later Catholic kings. We might even consider the Inquisition. Both contributed to emigration from Andalucia and Extremadura over to the New World; back home that brain-drain and lack of available husbands assuredly didn't help the southern gene-pool. I understand that el Presidente Alejandro Lerroux argued much of what I've noted. Lieutenant General José Sanjurjo might counterargue how come the southern moriscos had taken to the latifundia system so well.

Cinnirella, Naghavi and Prarolo show that a longer Muslim domination in Spain is negatively related to the share of merchants. Now, this surprises me for two reasons. One comes from Chase Robinson's Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives, a sort of Suetonian take on the history; and as far as I can tell, a fine one (he has good things to say of Algazel but not of Ibn Taymiyya). His comments on Central Asia are absolutely buttressed by the evidence of Central Asian IQ if we take local science as proxy. Robinson offers the missing link, as local trade, which Muslims encouraged...

... in Central Asia. But not in Spain. Why not in Spain?

If you'll allow me to speculate, which I suppose you can't much prevent me, I suggest that Spain had a limited pool of customers. First up, Andalus barely included the northern littoral, whose local Gallegos and Euskara behaved like Tabaris over in Iran. Western Spain geographically would be left trading with the Azores and, oops, the Lishbunatis actually tried crossing the saltwater and failed. The Umayyad amirate lost Barcelona to Louis the Pious by, what, AD 800? so that's out. (The marchlords-later-dukes introduced all the Carolingian reforms, so Barcelona would become a wealthy tradepost for Catholics.)

Okay: so, Sicily. And North Africa. Well, according to Robinson, North Africa was a basket-case of, basically, marginal city-states and Kabyles. The age of Augustine was long, long past.

I can assuredly lay some blame upon "Islamic institutions" as Andalusis (and Nafris) expressed them. The first century of Islamic occupation in Iberia, in particular, was little more than an Awza'ite plunder-state; they left a bad stench in the nostrils of all western Europeans, which the Umayyad caliphate could scarcely live down (much less the bigoted Almoravids and even-worse Almohads). Of course this goes two ways; the imams didn't approve trade with the infidel in return, which trade might have saved them. But given that the Islamic institutions of Rayy, Samarkand, Herat, and Delhi(!) all seemed to be working just great during this era; I am reluctant to blame Islam as such.

BACKDATE 5/24

Evaluating lunar orbits

Greg Autry notes that Low Lunar Orbits although they seem safe (from 20-30m up!) are usually not. I mean, even leaving aside that "30m up" has to clear all the craters and other ridges.

The Moon's mass, being so much lighter than Earth's, is poorly distributed around the Moon's surface. Autry finds four really stable low lunar orbits, at 27°, 50°, 76°, and 86° inclinations from the lunar equator. Those stand to get crowded since, at LLO, the "surface" of that globe is so much less than our LEO over here. Especially 86° which is near-enough polar, going over the water-reservoirs.

"Eager Space" offers a chart on various orbits. It turns out that LLO needs stationkeeping, at least at "polar" (=86°); so he goes ahead and includes TLL2 halo too, which also needs stationkeeping but (I gather) less of it. Also LLO, so close to more-reflective parts of the Moon, has trouble radiating heat away.

Before we worry about cluttering LLO we should figure how to get to the moon in the first place, LLO not being a "feasible" orbit from Earth, at least directly. If we're just using the Moon as a gravity-anchor, en route to (say) STL1 and Venus, then TLL2 halo is better; this is the one Hop David really likes.

Gateway is on the list to the extent it's doing Near [Halo] Rectilinear Orbit (NRO here) with comparable stationkeeping cost as TLL2. This one can inject to LLO-polar. Phil Metzger likes NRO inasmuch as it works for "Mars" as well (meaning Deimos to some of us).

Rounding out the rest: "Frozen Lunar Orbit", which I guess is a high orbit; Prograde Circular Orbit; Elliptical Lunar Orbit; Distant Retrograde Orbit. I don't really... know what ELO is for. Kicking off for off-ecliptic bodies like near-Earth asteroids? DRO might work as a shuttle between TLL2 and TLL1 (the gravitational halfway to Earth); I guess retrograde on the figure-eight plan.

Cyclocrane

ToughSF directs us to this blimp which, like Oregon, didn't make it out of the 1980s: the Crimmins-Doolittle Cyclocrane. The notion is to get off the ground with its lighter-than-air gas and "red wings". Then it could move forward using "blue wings".

"Chris" commented in the YT that it hoped to compete against heavy-lift helicopters before loads got very heavy.

Maybe there was a niche for this in 1980-82, when oil prices were high. But then Reagan's oil prices ... weren't so high. Helium prices stayed as high as ever. Perhaps for something that might float higher and move for longer...

As for other planets, this all looks like something for where metals are expensive, gravity is low, and air is dense. With the moving parts I'd not want it for dust-storms. So, the usual suspects: Venus or Titan.

RECHARGE 5/28/23: these things do more than just float; they need turbines. ToughSf points to: solar-and-batteries. I'd add that if the buoyancy was hydrogen we might leech off some of that . . .

African helix

Last week I saw Ragsdale et al. about the deep-structure of African humanity before the great outmigration from the Horn. Here the NYT summary.

I have to notice that what this blog has been terming the Eemian is, here, "Marine Isotope Stage 5" aka MIS 5e. MIS 6 is the glacial before that, 195-123kBC. MIS 5 was nice for Neanders in Iran. Outside the tropics, warm periods, like Eemian and now, are nice for humans. Glacials are nasty; only sheltered "refugia" could outlast the long winters.

In the tropics, that depended on where you lived. Bad weather for the Sahara and, indeed, for Iran; means cooler so temperate weather for South Africa and Australia. These formed refugia for MIS 6 humans in Africa. Such had also held for MIS 3 and 2, which is our LGM I believe. The record starts from 280kBC.

Throughout all this time, Africa seems to have held two populations which mixed, but didn't mix much. These are termed "Stem1" and "Stem2" and both predate Neander-Denisovans; I'd say within the last million years. Stem1 in fact birthed those Neander-Denisovans. But then Stem1 stayed in (East?) Africa. Stem1's descendents here mingled with Stem2, at different levels in different times and (African) sites. We the East Africans are products of one such mingle, finally meeting up again with our Stem1 kin.

This accounts for the strange African genetic diversity which, earlier, had been ascribed to a "ghost population" of wildly divergent hominins; think, Neanders but black. I take it that the "ghost population" couldn't be constrained as well as the Denisovans were. "Stem2" is now to be considered the "ghost" population - no longer a ghost.

During MIS / Eemian, the populations in South Africa jostled enough that Stem1+Stem2 created the Nama, who speak Khoi-San. (Okay: the basal Nama. They have some Indian-Ocean ancestry and, lately, Europeans now.)

Of course Neander DNA itself will show up after the Cushites backwash into the Horn, with the Semites following. On the other side of Africa, Stem2 remained aloof from Stem1 until 23kBC; then, they created the Mende. This implies to the researchers that Stem2 was western. To me that means Stem1 was eastern and, further, that Neander-Denisovans had taken the same trip through the Horn that we did.

Weak mush, or brittle steel

Andrea[s] Matranga is discussing Slavic serfdom. If I am reading this thread right, Ivan III and - more so - IV rediscovered the Byzantine Theme.

The Empire requires a stable border. The Empire needs to supply the border-marches. So: force the peasants to stay there, to supply the marcher boyars, or dynatoi if you're Greek. Then keep those dynatoi under your own feet.

Meanwhile - I'll continue - the Tsar must offer to those peasants, hope. Suppressing dynatoi will do that; but - more so - promising the serfs that you, the Tsar, are best suited to support them. The Altar supports the Throne, always. This society cannot (easily) support a Church as might correct the Tsar. Disunity doesn't just mean bouts of internal strife; it can mean Turks. (Or Mongols, or Arabs.) Maybe a Comnenid can live with Seljuqs. Paleologoi cannot survive Ottomans.

Suppose lawless tribes vanish. Does Byzantine-Slavic "Orthodoxy", crypto-Monothelete as it is, have the flexibility to adapt? The events of AD 1917 rather lead us elsewhere.

But once upon a time Catholicism, crypto-Nestorian as it is, had to deal with lawless tribes, in North Africa. Where was our defence over the 600s in Africa? - how did it go for the Oriental Church in Iran...?

Should we treat religions as genders?

whyevolutionistrue, who might be the last secularist in biology, reacts to ScAm magazine. Under the helminth Laura, this journal no place for scientody - although, I'd say the rot had set in at least by the middle 1990s.

Zonotrichia albicollis, a sparrow species, holds two "morphs". These are white and tan, which mate amongst white+tan... usually. At least 4% of the time they go white+white or tan+tan. Somehow the helmith Laura sees four genders here. That statement is a cultural one, as WEiT points out; not a biologic statement, on account that these four "genders" still divide by sex. White males shun white males; and so on.

Perhaps we be using Semitic genders for binary heterosexual males and females, and leave the IndoEuropean genders for the alphabet-soup.

The habitable lavaworld

Meet LP 791-18, 90 lightyears from us in the Crater constellation. South.

This was known to be a system with superEarths b (1.2 Earths) on the inside and c (2.5) on the outside. These were found by transits. Old Spitzer data has found, in the data, another signal between them.

As such this "d" planet is in the habitable zone; but it is probably tidally-locked. This time the locking and the radiation might not kill the atmosphere as TRAPPIST-1 has killed its innermost planet's atmosphere; because d looks to be a Europalike in terms of tidal flexing. It seems eccentric. So gas might replenish it.

I held off on poasting this one; today, h/t Nyrath, I figure we can talk stability. I don't give d long to live before b and c around d, chew d up (it's probably already happening as Zim notes). Still a nice thought tho'.

As to how Spitzer is doing nowadays: sadly it is a goner. Like Arecibo. But also like Arecibo plans exist to revival.

Brahui

I ran across David McAlpin's "Modern Colloquial Eastern Elamite" today. This keeps the flame alive from the 1990s on Elamo-Dravidian.

McAlpin's contribution to the debate is to carve Brahui away from North Dravidian, which gets to keep Kurux and Malto. Brahui is instead reclassified as a second member of that group which (presently) contains Hatamti as an isolate of classical Elymais. Brahui is, then, the survivor of an "Eastern Elamitic" and thereby the last survivor of any Elamitic language. The Dravidian languages, now lacking Brahui, meanwhile descend from a deeper split from Elamo-Dravidian, to align with the ReichLab.

McAlpin disassociates his hypothesis from the Indus Valley, thereby disassociating himself from 1990s-era speculation. That alone commends his thesis to be taken seriously.

As a bolster to McAlpin, I must ask after western Indian-Ocean trade languages. We know they were all speaking Persian under Islam, maybe under the Sasanians. But Persian is a newcomer. I don't hear of any Iranian languages in what we now call "south Iran" until the Achaemenids. When Iranians - Persians - did take Elam, they crowned themselves kings of Anshan and adopted Elamite for their administration. This implies that Iron-Age Elam owned the trade to the southeastern coast around that Mede-infested plateau.

One problem as might be had is that Brahui - I'd thought - had migrated up to the Baluchistan over our Middle Ages, not so different from the Roma Gypsies. Although, sure, pots aren't people and maybe these south-Indians had adopted Brahui upon arrival. Dravidians abroad might have chosen Brahui exactly because they found it an easier tongue than, say, Baluch.

Although I am not taking a side for mine own part. I admit these languages are obscure to me as to most my readers. Unless you are an actual Tamil studying Elamite, and... why would your average Tamil even bother with that, enjoying such a rich literature in his own idiom and even the occasional musical.

The sadiqatayn of ʿAmr bin Shuʿayb

Amazingly, and possibly accidentally, Google Scholar yielded up Petra Sijpesteijn (and Camilla Adang)'s collection, Islam at 250 in memory of Gautier Juynboll. I found here, Scott Lucas on ʿAmr b. Shuʿayb. Which article Lucas might be expanding to a full book.

ʿAmr was named after his paternal ancestor ʿAmr bin al-ʿĀṣ. Lucas counts, from Ibn Hanbal in his musnad of this one's son ʿAbd Allāh, 195 ahadith by way of ʿAmr b. Shuʿayb. Lucas then evaluates their isnad-chains.

Some asanid claimed to be by way of Ḥajjāj b. Arṭāh (you may not have heard of him; d. 145/762) and others, from Muḥammad bin Isḥāq (I assume you know him). Lucas finds that these bundles share overlap with certain other tradents in this musnad, but not with each other. Lucas suspects that Ḥajjāj has relayed from one Muḥammad al-ʿArzamī whose reputation in Islam is rotten.

Ibn Isḥāq has his own problems. There's a chapter right before this one all about how Ibn Isḥāq massaged his own hadiths depending on his audience. Imam Malik famously hated the man. Ibn Hanbal has the (common) attitude that one must apply different rules to an historian than to a legalist; as a legalist himself, Ibn Hanbal will accept Ibn Isḥāq.

Lucas sees Ibn Isḥāq in parallel with Ibn Jurayj as ʿAbd al-Razzāq has related him. Even nonMuslims like Harald Motzki love Ibn Jurayj. Lucas concludes at least the Ibn Isḥāq / Ibn Jurayj synopsis as presenting a "real" ʿAmr collection, available to mid-late second/eighth century Meccans and Madinans.

The ʿArzamī collection, by contrast, seems a pseudepigraph. Lucas notes that much of its content is traceable to other transmitters, to the point of "witnessing" to the Constitution Of The Madina. Juynboll would deride this forged isnad as a "spider".

- but even forgeries, rather especially forgeries, are inspired by contemporary collections. A ṣadiqa of ʿAmr did exist.

As for what was in this book: ʿAmr related legal content and ascribed it all to the Prophet. ʿAmr was himself of al-Ṭāʾif. Now: was this actually Muḥammadan Jurisprudence? I am inclined to doubt this; I don't think Mecca was real. But it could well represent the jurisprudence of al-Ṭāʾif up to 118/736, Hishām's caliphate. Assign it alongside Muḥammad bin Abī Muḥammad in tafsīr. Or Motzki's work on ʿAtā bin Abī Rabaḥ. Or al-Hakam from Shuʿayb from Zuhrī.

The first postIslamic gospel in Arabic

The Miaphysite antipatriarch of Antioch was John III who came from the monastery of Eusebona. This was Syriac territory and John would communicate with his metropolitan at Takrit in that language. The Syrians knew John as "Sedra", the composer of prayers. As an Antiochene he was also a student of Greek; and soon enough he needed to find his way into Arabic.

Mar John is famed among Islamicists mainly for his interview with an amir who knows only one Scripture... Torah. Dionysius of Tel Mahre further records a Gospel (singular!) which Mar John ordered translated into, er, "ʿAqulic" (Kufic?) Arabic. The specifics are in my opinion best transcribed by the 1234 Chronicle either from Dionysius or else directly, from this gospel's introduction and dedication to ʿAmr bin Saʿd (actual name ʿUmayr - Palmer, 169-71). Authentic or not.

Last year I wondered if here be the Arabic harmony which most ascribe to Diatesseron; but which follows also Dura-Europos. John would dismiss Diatesseron proper, as associated with the Orient and even with Marcionists; but one might allow a "corrected" edition. Miaphysites in Syriac were never the strongest partisans of the Peshitta, either. Sean Anthony pondered instead Palaestina. To that, I ask which Miaphysite translators would start from a Melkite and Jewish form of Aramaic. I further wonder what Imam Qâsim's gospel-Aramaic looked like.

The state of Arabic interface with the Aramaics in Christian use is, admittedly, difficult; mostly known (if that) from the Hadith. Zuhri and Ibn Ishaq dealt with Palaestinian texts, lections anyway. Other Muslims dealt with Syriac.

If Miaphysites could commission an Arabic Gospel, could not - also - the Melkites? I would even ask if the Melkites got out there first, having taken to Arabic first as Christians (although their translation of the Bible was sporadic at first). The had-qnoma would then be reacting to their Melkite neighbours as they accumulated a Christian Arabic library. So the Gospel translation might be John's - but, more-likely, not. Whoever did it, Miaphysites using an Arabic Gospel composed this legend, to ascribe it to the saint.

Izrador listens

Judy Blume's Are You There God made an impression on me, reading it as a ten year old, and as a son of a Margaret Simon in mirror image. I saw the movie, in the wake of Blume's flipflopping over Gender. I understand that not many others saw this one; I admit, adult males going alone to watch it might not feel comfortable. It looks like the studio hasn't finished failing yet.

I read Margaret Simon as Judy Blume's avatar. Blume prays to the Judaeo-Christian God, through Simon. Saint Jerome is again proven right that when one is both Jewish and Christian that one is neither. Beware being neither. In Blume's own flailing and now Lionsgate's, we now see the results for Margaret.

A priest is sketched in the world of Midnight who prays to gods as will not answer him. Finally a god answers him; one with many names, none good. That god is Lionsgate's god and, perhaps, always has been. He's Blume's god now, too. Pray for her deliverance.

Red dwarfs have radiation-belts

Melodie Kao et al. have something on LSR J1835+3259's magnetic-field.

This star is in Lyra at 18.55 lightyears away; probably better viewed from Vega than from here, whence we found it in 2003. There was some dispute about whether to class it as a brown dwarf but, eventually, we figured: star. Its auroras were noted July 2015 so we've long figured it had a magnetic field. Now we've looked for the radiation belt proper, which Kao's crew have found.

LSR J1835+3259's belt is scary: 10 million times brighter than Jupiter’s. This, I think, should remove any atmosphere from a planet in this star's HZ.

It takes material to make a radiation-belt from a magnetic-field. Wikipedia suggests either some melted Io down there, or else the surface of this star itself.

As stars go, the fluid generating this field would be ionized hydrogen. Earth has iron; Ganymede induces its field from saltwater.

I have to wonder about the Proxima Centauri system, b and d (c being nonexistent). d is the inner one. I wonder if it is still spewing lava. If so, we can once more bet against d being habitable as it is lashed by d's ions. Same with TRAPPIST-1.

Neutrino mass

I usually leave standard-model physics to other Coloradans, but as long as I'm just dumping mindthoughts without much original content, I stumbled into the question of neutrino mass.

By the Standard Model, neutrini have no mass; just momentum, like light. But light can be absorbed and detected. Neutrinos demand more effort for their detection. More effort than was initially thought: the Sun's neutrini weren't detected in amounts which the detectors liked. This formed the plot behind Clarke's very-own Currents of Space, namely Songs of Distant Earth.

It turns out that neutrini can shift after their output. That means they experience time. Remember Einstein? Yeah, if they experience time, they're not going at light speed so some of that momentum must be mass.

But what is that mass? Most particles like the lepton and baryons, electrons and neutrons and such, interact with the Higgs field. Apparently the neutrinos... don't. That is a massive (as it were) problem with the standard-model.

As to how to upgrade the standard-model, that's faaar beyond me, but for those interested here's a site. Also last year the KATRIN experiment at Karlsruhe had at least bounded the mass. They made tritium and let it decay. I suppose they could recoup some of the money by selling the Helium-3.

Bicameral

In 1976, Jaynes wrote about the "bicameral mind" as something that emerged in the Iron Age. This was difficult to prove, at the least.

Since then we've seen a few books explaining how humans handle abstractions. "Platonic" abstractions, as a post-Axial-Age writer might term them. Harpending and Cochran. The Great Divide over in the New World. Kugel, The God of Old and The Great Shift.

Raptor 3

Raptor 2 had 300 bar in the chamber. SpaceX are now pondering 350.

Reddit is calculating 1.77 thrust to weight ratio if the 33 Raptors in the Superheavy are all upgraded to v. 3, for 8877 ton[ne]s total. (Those would be French units; 19.57 million pounds in Freedom units. Elon rounded down for those.)

Musk admits: we did not expect the engine to survive a full duration run at that pressure. It is uncharted territory. and Raptor chamber wall might have the highest heat flux of anything ever made

As noted, Boca are really going to need to upgrade Stage Zero, to take that heat and pressure.

Mars and Saturn

The planets Mars and Saturn share a synodic period of two Earth years and a week. As visible from Earth the two come into conjunction under the same zodiacal sign, every thirty years and fifteen weeks - a bit longer than Saturn's sidereal year. I missed this event last year 4-5 April 2022; if you don't mind the SSL-error here's a schedule.

Indians consider this unlucky. Apparently so did certain Near Easterners; AD 622 which is, of course, AH 1 was such a conjunction. This may explain Nergal's appearance in the Mandaean ginza book XVIII . . .

Kindi and Abu Ma'shar share an interest in these events. We can start with the murder of the Persian king and the appearance of the Arabs. Next up: the murder of 'Uthman (p. 538-9#25 "31" at the end of 53 months, cf. p. 601) and the move of the "rulership" to Syria or "west", respectively. Then the "riot" of Ibn al-Zubayr (p. 539#26 "61"); then that of Ibn al-Muhallab after ten years (#27 "91"). Then "121" / AD 742 featuring the murder of al-Walid II and you know what that meant. AD 772 is vague for Abu Ma'shar but for Kindi #29 "151" A comet rose in the east for 17 nights, then disappeared, then rose in the west for two days (and the Hasani revolt). I'm scarequoting the years because I suspect they're solar, based on the Saturnine year as Kindi did.

Kindi at least found difficult to shoehorn these events into those conjunctions. Ibn al-Muhallab was hardly a problem in AD 712; it would take until Yazid II's accession before his mutiny. Although one might ponder the grumbling against 'Uthman to start around AD 651, he'd not be murdered for some years yet - and the kingdom wouldn't shift to Jerusalem and Damascus until, what, AD 660. Plenty of Persian kings got murdered but not in AD 622; Khusro II was doing just fine then thank you very much. On the other side the Hasani had revolted a full decade prior to AD 772. I'll grant Ibn al-Zubayr whose agitations would erupt into a fitna for everybody; I might also grant the comet.

In its present state the chronicle looks like it becomes Islamic. It focuses on fitna. And it's Oriental: for AD 712, you'd think a Syrian might prefer the disasters (as it were) we read in Andrew Palmer's text #7. A western Muslim might have summat to say about Sulayman's debacle against the Romans, rather than about the Muhallabihullabaloo which (I submit) didn't matter as much to Umayyad-era Islam as had, say, the Asha'itha.

For the Mars / Saturn chronicle I can't help but see a Magian basis. They'd ponder the Higri era as starting under baleful stars, and then they'd mourn the loss of runaway shah Yazdegerd III which, indeed, came not long after the second conjunction. The Syrians or even Mandaeans may have taken the series first; for the 'Abbasis to adopt it late in the eighth century.

Between Europa and Ganymede

Remember last December, when I was figuring out Laplace? Now it's a project: "A station between Europa and Ganymede".

At some point over the colder months I cobbled those pages into a Word document. That document was... bad. I hardly knew what to do with the orbit, on account - still - only the science-fiction aspect of "the Jovian internet" came to mind. The project didn't exceed three pages and there it stuck. Last Sunday I organised that mess into a more-formal project on that JOVINet, more like five pages. Still wasn't worthy of poasting anywhere.

But then on Wednesday, I stumbled onto pressreleases about the Europa Clipper scheduled 2024. It sunk in that... the Laplacian could be useful now, as alternative to the long flyby orbit which JPL/NASA have chosen. Upon rearranging the project I exiled the core of the old JOVINet introduction into the coda. (No I'm not using the word "JOVINet" in the paper.)

Early Thursday morning before work I wrote that software to deliver a visual chart. I also needed how to inject something like this from Earth, not from Ganymede. So I found Alvidres' early-1990s proposal. Today I considered line-of-sight and possibly multiple probes on Europa's and Ganymede's surfaces.

The Dragonfly shouldn't fly

NASA want a Saturn followup to Cassini, focused upon moon Titan. The Dragonfly is slated for takeoff 2027. It's going to cost us. 'Twould be excellent if, then, they had something to boost thrust thither and, then, to decelerate. The former can take advantage of Sol-based accelerants (like the pebbles) but the latter must involve the Rocket Equation. Such high-ISP solutions are nuclear. These are tailor-made to deliver large mass to Saturn - and points beyond.

Popular Mechanics are touting Princeton's Direct Fusion, thermonuclear 'erva. I hadn't known this was in the running anytime soon. Has Princeton come ahead of schedule? That implies PM know something I don't.

It turns out that PM is, to use the scientific term: wrong. As wrong as it may be possible to be wrong.

The Princeton paper they link admits in the early experimental stage; earlier an outside team took it at least seriously-enough to review it. PFRC-3 is the next machine which has five years to go. Only then would they recommend planning for space propulsion which is anticipated 10-15 years out.

Overall Princeton are sending the message that Dragonfly as presently proposed is a massive boondoggle in dollars-per-watt. They would postpone the whole mission until the fusion engine is ready. They point out that at least the fusion science has applications on Earth and perhaps elsewhere in the near-space economy so can beg funding from private actors, thus not requiring a full taxpayer soak. I would add that the Starship might be operational by then, allowing for more tonnage off Earth.

I don't even know I care about Saturn at present. Let's instead consider Uranus. King George's Planet just keeps looking better and better. Also whilst we wait we should be collecting Helium-3, maybe from decayed tritium.

Apollo 20

We all saw Apollo 18. Right? Right? I mean, I didn't, but... Anyway here's the plan for #20. Apparently they were pondering NTP "NERVA" for the second-stage.

Well, talk is cheap, and some would ascribe the cheapness of talk as a motive such that it was all fake (or maybe just #11?). Me, I trust the science.

America got as far as #17 when there was a budget for it. The cash ran out, as has been documented, by people who hated the Space Program, but nonetheless knew it was happening.

As to the merits of the NERVA second-stage: that far up, in the days before the LEO satellite ecosystem, maybe it could work. But I'd worry about the radiative effects on those satellites. Where would the stage separate, now - MEO? And would we get to see that NERVA chassis again back on Earth?

That's why we all tried to go for reusable boosters, and the Shuttle which was a reusable last-stage. It didn't work but, hey, we got some knowledge out of it. Now we have the Superheavy and the Starship. One hopes.

Outreach

Barack Hussein Obama (mm mm mm) did a strayvoltage thing a decade or so back when he suggested that NASA do "Muslim outreach". His frame of that statement was designed to provoke a reaction among antiIslamic Conservatives; which Conservatives - as usual - obliged.

Well - yeah, Obama was and is a troll. Doesn't mean he was always wrong. The Islamic world had lagged the West for some centuries and, when they made a bid to catch up with the West, they produced a lot of engineers. This proved an expression less of Islam than of the cargo-cult. No Arab state at the time could support such an economy as to hire those engineers so many, to their damnation, joined the Qaeda and finally the Caliphate. Spergs gotta sperg, of whatever culture. Obama - correctly - figured if some autist is going to bomb something, best they (pronouns matter) bomb something into someplace useful and nonharmful to us, like into space.

The United Arab Emirates had allied with the Qaeda in support of the Taliban. Perhaps not to their damnation however. h/t Instapundit (and despite its commenters): seven asteroids. Maybe six asteroids proper; this culminates in a tholin-encrusted outer-system intruder, 269 Justitia. ("The mountain comes to Muhammad", to quote a book which quote sadly didn't make the movie.)

I'll take it. Good for the UAE.

Moloch hates abortion

Shawna Dolansky last week came down from the mountain of TheTorah and delivered to all of us, Semitic Law. I'll leave aside how this might affect the Christian tradition; I'll also leave aside "Natural Law" or "The Tao", for the Randians amongst us. I'm here to consider the Bronze Age. Yea even unto the Neolithic.

I assume that my-body-my-choice has deep roots in the human condition. The village, of course, exists to suppress the individual who is - by him/her self - a savage. The Near East, villagers for millennia before we Orientalists received their legends in [clay] print, had a consistent ideology on the Sanctity Of Human Life. This sanctity was subject to the Sanctifiers. Human life exists, in Near Eastern thought, to feed sacrifice to the gods. This is the whole reason the gods repented of the Flood which they sent upon us.

I have deliberately not picked upon the Semites in the preceding paragraph. The Flood might be a memory of the Black Sea which was not Semitic, but... I still don't know. Hattic? Kartveli? Hurrian? ... "Euphratic"? Even the proto-Indo-Europeans were here. And downstream, floods happened to the Sumerians as well. I'll assume a common Neolithic experience where peoples had to live near the waters in order to live.

On topic of abortion, a Bronze Age girl in Trouble could probably find a solution. It was unlikely to be a safe solution. I must wonder if the Biblical take upon this practice - which, as Dolansky points out, deals with "accidental" violence - is a roundabout way to express how unsafe this solution was, through legal-fiction.

Near Eastern societies, seeing too many dead (fertile) girls, banned the practice. I expect that Moloch's devotees banned it too. ... at first.

The ideology that the gods like to eat and that humans are providing the food, a misanthrope might propose, could be corrupted. The mother of her unexpected child lives; her child, also, lives. The mother tells herself she loves her god. Then... the mother feeds her god - directly.

2 Colossians

This afternoon, having a bit more time than I did last week, I tracked down Theodor Zahn, may our Lord bless him forever. Before his (admittedly-bad) argument for the extra "Colos" origin, he had transcribed the Latin. It's a quick read:

1 Fratres, qui sub potestate domini sumus, mandatum dei custodire debemus.
2 Qui custodiunt precepta domini, abent vitam aeternam; et qui negant mandata eius, adquirunt ruinam et in hoc secunda morte.
3 Preceptum domini hoc est: Non periuraberis; non furtum faciis; non adulterabis; non falsum testimonium dices; non accipies munera contra veritatem nec per potestatem.
4 Qui habet potestatem et abnegat veritatem, abnegabitur illi regnum dei et conculcabitur in infernum. Ibi non egreditur bis.
5 Quomodo sumus fragiles et praevaricatores agentes peccatum!
6 Non per singolus dies penetemus, sed per singolus dies peccatum super peccatum facemus.
7 Ut sciates hoc, carissimi fratres, quia opera nostra ... scriptum est in hoc libro: in cummemoracione erit nobis in die iudicio.
8 Ibi nec testes, ibi nec pares, ibi nec per munera iudicabitur, quia non est melior, quam fides, veritas, castitas, ieiunius et elimosina, qui extingit omni peccata.
9 Et quod tibi non vis, alio non facias.
10 Stipola rignum dei et accepit Corona, quod est in Christo Jesu domino.

And now, Google's translation:

1 Brothers, who are under the authority of the Lord: we must keep the mandate of God.
2 Those who keep the precepts of the Lord have eternal life; and those who deny his mandate acquire ruin and by this the second death.
3 The Precept of the Lord is this: Thou shalt not swear; nor commit theft; nor commit adultery; nor bear false witness; nor accept gifts contrary to the truth nor by authority.
4 He who has power and denies the truth will be denied the kingdom of God and will be trampled into hell. He will not exit there again.
5 How fragile we are, transgressors doing sin!
6 We do not repent every day, but do sin upon sin every day.
7 That you may know this, dearest brothers, because our works ... are written in this book: they will be remembered for us on the day of judgment.
8 There are no witnesses, there are no equals, there will not be judged by gifts; because there is nothing better than faith, truth, chastity, fasting and almsgiving, which extinguishes all sins.
9 And what you do not want for yourself, do not do to another.
10 Stipola received the kingdom of God and the crown, which is in Christ Jesus the Lord.

Here we are back in the wonderful world of Christian paraenesis. Smells like... Laodiceans. I admit not quite figuring out vv. 5-6.

So: on to Zahn's notes. The first verses riff Romans 6:15-23. Paul there had argued that one must become God's slaves, to attain "eternal life"; those who don't, stay in sin to attain only death. Sub potestate nods to the centurion in Luke 7:8 (also Matthew 8:9); v. 4 reads like Luke's threat against Dives on account of his neglect of Lazarus. We are all assuming the Vulgate in supplying the Latin.

The next question, for Christians, is how to serve the Lord. This letter has the answer: to follow the Lord's "precepts" or "mandates". The NT Vulgate actually doesn't speak of precepts, but repeatedly notes mandates (John 13:34; 1 John 2:3, 5:3). These particular precepts, rather mandates, show up Romans 13:9.

[INTERJECT 9/15: This list of sin-expiating content resembles 2 Clement 16, more than 1 Peter 4:8.]

This homily addresses Christian potentates, to use another Latinate term, who had been taking bribes. The mention of adultery suggests the oldest treasure of womanhood. All this rules out Paul himself, whose followers were in little position to take such liberties, not even in Colossus. Rather: the author of the epistle sure thought that Paul spoke from Divine authority, and he didn't ascribe his parallels to Paul's pen. Did the author intend a pseudepigraph in Paul's name? We might never know this for certain; but recall that the ten lines here got into a lectionary.

Was Luke himself this homily's author? - Marcion?

Sijzi's astrologic tarikh

Antoine Borrut in 2014 suggested that, for Islamic historiography "as others saw it", we consult the stars. Specifically: astrology. We may get a book out of this since, well, we taxpayers are paying for it. Borrut shooed off a squirrel on Theophilus; as alternative for an astrologic historian he promises to ponder Khwarizmi.

(I've caught up with the current day. Woot!)

As to what it means to be astrologic, rather than based upon some calendar, that means you based your chronology upon conjunctions of planets. If you do that, assuming your tradents don't betray you, you're transcendent over all calendars political and religious. Also the horoscope might have been inscribed close to the date to which it applies, as such a precious contemporary account.

For one example of the genre - al-Sijzi - Borrut cites David Pingree, "Historical Horoscopes", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 82.4 (1962), 487f. doi:10.2307/597519: this pinpointed PARIS BN ARABE 2581 (Suppl. arabe 1131) as a copy, misascribed to one of Sijzi's sources Abu Ma'shar (used for the Sasanians). Sijzi did not for his own part use Khwarizmi.

Sijzi's chronography is terse. But it's also interestingly variant. It recognises "al-Zubayr" (sic!) as equally important as his rival Marwan; also 'Ali, and Husayn (for AH 40!). This blog must point out: "al-Zubayr" as not "Abd Allah Ibn al-Zubayr" matches John bar Penkaye. Also Mu'awiya alone is noted for when he "became caliph". This hints at an interregnum before him, as we see in Syrian chronography, which does not recognise 'Ali (or "Abu Turab" or "'Abbas") at all, but only the time of no-caliph. This also assumes the application of the title "caliph" to an Umayyad who did not accept that title at his accession.

Borrut warns that astrologers maintain their own biases. Recall how the Maronite Chronicler juggled natural disasters around Muawiya's career, and how Thomas the [Jacobite] Presbyter did the same around Heraclius' religious policy AD 628-32 (Shahriyar's reign if we believe Sijzi 'an Abu Ma'shar; mostly queen Boran's out West). An astrologer will face this same temptation to juggle main events around auspicious or inauspicious planetary events. The sign of the Crab as associated with water became a locus intowhich to assign floods, starting with the flood of Judi/Ararat. Also the earliest astrologers seem to have been Zubayrites against the 'Abbasids; although the Shi'a (despite hating both) will maintain the astrologic tradition, for at least one more century.

Theophilus against his own chronicle

In his 2014 article on Islamic astrologic-chronography, Antoine Borrut footnoted a promise to review Hoyland's Theophilus, "forthcoming" in The Medieval Review. For the review Borrut offered a URL: scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3631. It is not a good URL and I do not find Borrut in the good URL. Well anyway; at least we still have Maria Conterno. Meanwhile, as per my usual practice, I'll run here the argument I'd make, toward someone else's conclusion, here Borrut's.

Theophilus Edessene was an astrologer by trade. Hoyland as he has exposited the "Syriac Common Source" synopsis further assumes EW Brooks, that the synopsis lifts from an earlier Syriac source shared with other chronicles, up to AG 1037; "ad AD 730", per Brooks. If Hoyland is right that the later synopsis presents Theophilus' chronicle, where the synopsis is not tracking ad-AG-1037, should come the astrology. You'd further think that Theophilus would be drawing from James Edessene: who had much interest in the heavens, spoke all Theophilus' languages, and came from the same town. Hoyland (at least) cannot invoke confessional boundaries; Dionysius Telmahrensis the Jacobite will be using the synopsis which Hoyland assumes was Melkite at most, possibly Monothelete-Maronite.

Maybe Theophilus did write an "Edessenus Continuatus". But the Christian chronographers seem not to have used this. Instead they used... what they used, basically a fleshed-out mostly-saecular Syrian chronology up to the AG 1080s "AD 767". Several of its comments on comets and eclipses (and windstorms) survive but not, say, conjunctions of Saturn. Eclipses are, yes, subject to astrological prediction; but, by the science of the day, comets were not so predictable. Such are portents. Only the Lord Of The Highest Heaven could reveal these. An astrologer would have to deal with these, retroactively.

Same goes double for aurorae. Miyake's aurora was discussed, I believe, in apocalyptic that is, among the plebs. Personally I'd love to read what the astrologers had made of that. According to the records we got, Theophilus himself would have been in his late 80s by then, if even alive.

There now exists a translation and commentary on Ḥamza ibn al-Ḥasan's section on the Romans. Edward Zychowicz-Coghill, "The Byzantinist of Isfahan: Ḥamza ibn al-Ḥasan on Greek and Roman history" ed. Booth and Whitby, Travaux et Mémoires 26 (2022), 759-75. Ḥamza read his sources as "Roman" and EZC confirms them independent of Islamic lore or, I must assume, Nestorian. Is Ḥamza independent of Theophanes' lore? Agapius'?

The Solo-man islanders

IF you have thirty minutes to spare this video is a worthwhile investment of that time. It concerns twelve skulls from the Solo River which, like Piltdown, have a confusion of modern and Erectus-level archaic features. Unlike Piltdown they're not fakes. But they're absent DNA, having been found in a humid tropic from 100kBC and not stored with 21st-century tech.

João Teixeira looks at the history of migrations, instead. 100kBC precedes out-of-Africa at least this far and this hard. But... it is also on the level of a million years after Erectus. By 2010 the best shot anyone had (since no Neanders lived here) was some sort of Erectus mutant. But a month later the Denisova caveman was identified and associated with deep Pacific Islanders and Aborigines/-als. The video ponders the what-if, the papers had been aware of each other.

Modern humans did not meet Erectus unless we're counting the Luzon and Flores dwarfs as, somehow, lost holdouts. They certainly did not intermarry. But Denisovans did intermarry with Erectus, at least their cousins southeast; some incredibly faint record of Erectus survives in those islands, through that event. The speculation we are asked to entertain is that these skulls represent the Erectus-[para]Denisovan hybrid, predominate Denisovan; on analogy of modern islanders being a Denisovan-African hybrid, predominant African.

A failure, then a murder

Modern humans split from the Denisovan-Neander clade 600kBC and, over the Eemian, mostly failed to follow their long-estranged cousins. After the Eemian, the north got colder, and in the south our ancestors became more and more warm-adapted and never adopted tech for cold. The Horn of Africa was, I think, also drier.

Those Neanders (now oh-so-slightly mixed with old Africans) in Europe continued their pre-Eemain adaptations for the post-Eemian forests, I'm thinking near-taiga. This culture is called Mousterian.

Around 60kBC, our ancestors tried again from the Horn of Africa. This time they got at least to the Indian Ocean, a climate not too far off that of the Horn. Once widely dispersed through Asia they tried Europe again, with arrows. One Asian group settled Bacho Kiro 43kBC... to die. That has canonically been the earliest modern-human incursion, a failure. All these tribes were tiny, hence the famous inbreeding among at least the Neanders; one bad flu-season or a cold-snap and the tribe was doomed.

The latest news is that the Neronian culture 52kBC up the Rhône, although decidedly in the Neander Age and among Mousterian artifacts, is not by Neanders itself. Neronian came from a "Levantine Initial Upper Paleolithic" culture and settled, here, something of a colony. These wildly different races held an intercourse in trade. We can suspect the "intimate" sort of intercourse... but it's not detectable; interbreeding might not bred true in most cases.

After forty years these Neronian colony simply vanished, leaving the Mousterian-Neanders alone. The site has no real evidence of violence so I assume the Neanders simply quit trading with the modern humans. The humans, themselves in no great number, had no real choice but to float back downriver.

Around 43kBC came Châtelperronians. Like the Neronian, the Châtelperronian culture had come from the Levant in this case "Northern Early Ahmarian". Otherwise these had no cultural link with the Neronians, meaning: a different language. Châtelperronian mostly skirted the Catalan coast even unto the Atlantic. Note: contemporary with the Romanians, but wholly different. Châtelperronian did not attempt the Rhône, which remained Mousterian. The Grauniad claims this wave also "failed" although by contrast with the spectacular Neronian exodus, I'm unclear of the nature of that Châtelperronian failure.

It took until the (proto)Aurignacians for modern humans to "unite" the subcontinent. These are associated with a southern Ahmarian. It may be that they outhustled the Châtelperronian holdouts, Romanians, and Neanders alike. That Campanian volcano was also a thing.

It's nothing

In The Core, the Unobtanium Ship detects a blob ahead and must figure out - it's nothing. The crew figure it a... bubble, a vast hot underground geode. It turns out that mu-leptons, in their brief existence, if they travel fast enough, can be used to pinpoint Nothing right now. Such has been used to detect a tomb in Naples, the new-city which some Greeks had refounded upon old Cumae.

Muons are made in the particle-accelerators which are ancient quasars and supernovae, running cosmic rays at relativistic speeds (so their internal-age is still young) and banging into our ionosphere (spawning their own relativistic particles). They're used for instance in polar regions outside GPS and tilted-Molniya. I'm most-interested in the mechanics. 28 days at 18 meters underground, they caught about 10 million of these muons. That was more than they expected from the direction of the Nothing; they were even able to map out the dimensions, a 2 x 3.5 m rectangle in this case (but how high up?).

As for these specific findings, I'm unsure I care until/unless someone digs over there. Which would probably undermine some poor grandma's foundations. They figure it's about the right depth and dimensions for a hypogeum, of which the old Neapolis had many, some available to tourists.

The method seems, by contrast, an excellent means to sus out hidden lavatubes on rather, in our Moon and also Mars. Should we be settling either.

BACKDATED 5/6

Some letters Paul may or may not have written

Saint Paul of Tarsus is credited, spuriously, for a "3 Corinthians" and, more-seriously, for a lost Lachrymose Letter. So this day I was pondering Paul's epistles outside Corinth: to the Laodiceans, the Alexandrians, and Second Colossians. Laodiceans and Alexandrians got cited in the Murator Canon as what some Marcionites were using. Second Colossians is found in a sort of lectionary-handbook, in the Meroving Francia.

Mostly Marcion's sect claimed our "Ephesians" as "Laodiceans". But even our orthodox sects haven't always shared the same canon - witness the receptions of 2 Peter and the Revelation. This held true for the Marcionites as well, sometimes holding to Luke alone and sometimes to "the" Diatesseron (perhaps in grabar Armenian). It happens we have inherited a "Laodiceans" whose content is wholly not that in "Ephesians". This epistle / sermon in modern-times hasn't been taken seriously outside maybe the Quakers. Awhile ago we did get Philip L. Tite, The Apocryphal Epistle to the Laodiceans: An Epistolary and Rhetorical Analysis; its conclusion (all I skimmed) argued for a Pauline paraenesis. James would head up antiPauline paraenesis; and we also have 2 Clement out there and some others. So the Baghestan is still not about to consider it as Pauline but we may profitably compare it to other bogus Christian-lit... like James.

Alexandrians, er, doesn't exist. Paul in his lifetime isn't known to have bothered with the Greeks in Egypt or Africa; and in turn he would have found few over there willing to read him. To me this reference looks like gnostic forgery. Marcion's thought was easily mistaken for gnostic thought, and in antiquity usually was. I don't know all what the Canon knew but I do know its knowledge was often from Papias so, not at first hand.

Second Colossians is entirely new to me. UPDATE 5/8 - but not anymore!

Apparently a Latin sacramentary, whatever that means, survives in "Paris Bib cat., Lat. 13246" associated with Bobbio in Meroving territory. Wiki considers it a handbook for traveling priests of the Galician rite, a rite and a handbook no longer in Catholic use. The booklet excerpts a second letter to Colossos which isn't found anywhere else and, also, doesn't address Colossian concerns of Paul's time. In our day "first Colossians" is generally considered sus, itself. Theodor Zahn thought "2 Col" was the missing letter to Alexandria but, personally, I'm not seeing it.

Where to find Palaestinian Aramaic

This blog has relayed Joosten's 1990s claims that the Syriac Gospels relay Westernisms which the Syriac Old Testament usually doesn't, even if we overrule Joosten on the OT as a Christian document. I'll propose here an opportunity to test both Audlin and Joosten.

Joosten would bring Aphrahat's Demonstrations I 145, hy' for being "saved". Aphrahat probably used Diatesseron but this parallel is John 10:9, lingering in the Peshitta and Old-Syriac. Joosten flags hy' as a Westernism where east of the Euphrates they should be using frq, like in the Old Testament. Indeed: in Audlin's Lectionary, who entered, was saved (man d-'alal, hy') (pace Audlin this isn't plural).

On to Agnes' Climaci Rescriptus, on John 1. "Abba" for "the Father"; although I am unsure this counts. By contrast Matthew 23:16, 28:6's lyt for negation would count (also the infamous Q. 38:2...) albeit we don't have these particular parallels in Syriac (and 2:6 has a lacuna from the lection). Matthew's sliba is here, tho'.

That Jesus is still (Greek) "Jesus" in the Palaestinian lections points to Luke (at least) being translated to Palaestinian, with no input from the Eastern Syrians.

However, if we add that Luke 24 is standard, I'm seeing this Palaestinian translation as late and as offering little advice to the East Syrians, in reverse.

The pen's gate

We Catholics yesterday had the Johannine analogy, not-quite-parable, of the sheepfold with a gate wherein the good shepherd enters in to call his sheep by name (like in late-Enoch and Qumran). It occurred to me that James David Audlin, The Gospel of John Restored and Translated dealt exactly with this, still just with the "The Gospel of John in the Palestinian Lectionaries: A Mere Caesarean Anomaly or the Closest Text We Have to the Original?" extract. I know, I know; I couldn't finish this poast, then . . .

The Palaestinian text behind at least the Luke 23-4 lections, to me, looked like boring B/03 expy. Audlin went more closely into John 9-10. He has been arguing this Gospel overall far too wild for Alexandria, even for a "Western" type. He implies it's not even in the standard lectionary Palaestinian language. Some scholars say "Caesarea"; he says "Galilean". Audlin cannot reconstruct John's Gospel Greek-mainline from Lewis-Gibson, as those two hoped to do.

Our lections in Latin do sometimes truncate Gospel readings but we never run as far agley from the basis as do these "Galilean" texts of John. It may be that we're dealing here in a qeryono tradition from memro so not from a literal Gospel. Against that: it doesn't rhyme.

Luke 24 in Christian Palaestina

It's time to look at Christian Palaestinian Aramaic, in the lectionary tradition.

The basic Gospel readings are had from the twins Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson. That tradition, if not the Four Books themselves, survived among the 19th-century Melkite Arabs, preserving most of the lection-divisions; the Aramaic language, by contrast (and by contrast with Coptic), ceased liturgic use. The twins called the language "Syriac" (as did Margoliouth and Mingana) but the dialectic subgroup is not the Edessene they and we know.

Lewis and Gibson, and Rendel Harris, all assumed the main MSS to relate a translation of that Greek behind Vaticanus B/03 so - Alexandrine. I figured - correctly - that the Holy Week would be important. So I checked the lectionaries for Luke 24, known to be different in Bezae and in Syria. (These lectionaries didn't help for Luke 23:50f, annoyingly.)

Lewis-Gibson can verify: Luke 24:12 is here and here. Luke 24:40 is here.

The Melkites' Luke in Palaestina was mostly-standard. "Alexandrine" will do.