A proChristian history of the Sasanians

Michael Jackson Bonner, who last decade had posted some good stuff about Sasanian ideological output, in 2020 published a full book: The Last Empire of Iran. I didn't buy it because, frankly, it cost too bloody much: it's a Gorgias joint. Van Bladel has reviewed it and is highlighting another problem with Gorgias - that it is a Syriac imprint, publishing proChristian product.

According to van Bladel, Bonner has treated the Sasanians - and the Muslims - like an East Syrian archbishop might. The former follows the cow faith of "Zoroastrianism" and the latter are camel jockeys - so the review claims of the book. Van Bladel proposes that both religions deserve better, at least from 21st-century scholarship if we cannot check our biases. (G-d knows Van Bladel is no slavish Noeldekist, himself.)

Also missing - which Van Bladel concedes are deliberate omissions - society, economy, material culture, and archaeology. Yes, archaeology is a dry topic; yes, we can handle material-culture in footnotes. But how the F$^* can you talk about an empire without discussing its society? For the Sasanians in particular we really must say something of its economy, especially given Mazdakism.

An actual Parsi or Muslim, at this point, has cause to consider Gorgias as Bombadier priced as Brill. Except that this would insult Bombadier; Gorgias here is rooting around Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited territory.

On topic of Islamic origins (while we're here): available since last July is an essay by Stephen Shoemaker attached to some others, courtesy Cascade (and Amazon, if you own Kindle and want the $10 epub). Unfortunately my introduction to this work is a commentary on footnote 181; which footnote is annoying al-Jallad, van Putten, and even MacDonald. Also lately available is Robert Spencer.

The empress of Mars

Last week I bought and read Lenore Newman and Evan DG Fraser, Dinner On Mars. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars now has competition in the leftwing authoritarian space. And how!

I'll start by slapping the authors silly(-er) for omitting the index. When you don't have an index you are telling your readers to go pirate the PDF. (Disclosure: I was honest. I hold a Barnes and Noble membership and bought this book there.) In a (slightly) happier note I see a partial-bibliography, of the "Further Reading" genre. Here we learn that the authors have read Zubrin's Case for Mars and Robinson's Red Mars; in the main text Fraser cops to The Martian (the movie not the book, but that's fine, and he's surely read that too).

Newman admits to a female "partner", which means she has taken herself out of the running for future humanity. Her causa, instead, is Earth: she wants not directly fewer people, oh no, but poorer people (who will then decide economically not to increase their families). The book admits that Malthus and lately Ehrlich were wrong, but this is to well-detectable chagrin.

You could run a full drinking-game on "we must" comments at this book's conclusion, pp. 202-6. The book here p. 203 touts how wonderful Canadian "policy" worked for getting everyone vaccinated against Covid. "Policy" means force. Yes: Newman - excuse me, "the book" - intends to tax carbon p. 206. Newman should say force. Newman should tell her readers outright that she is a Fury - but for everybody! Fraser, that soyboy - or oatboy as pp. 110-14 would prefer - is not the man to stop her.

Getting past Newman's noxious misanthropy was a chore, for this blogger - also of a misanthropic and authoritarian bent. Hey; I just prefer that people say what they are. Come out come out little girl!

On the other hand: Newman has restrained at least her misandry, enough to work with Fraser, to the extent his Y chromosome works. And the book is pro-labour, or at least purports to be (a directly anti-immigration stance would have been key here, for a book which claims pp. 156-7 to know economics). So maybe there's something in Newman that can be reached.

For another thing Newman is a vegan. On this much I'm more amenable; Mike Cernovich and I think Robert Kennedy have made trenchant comments on how we grow meat in the West - actually on our diets generally, which both this book's authors agree on. The book makes a semidecent case for e/acc legume-and-fruit veganism, although branching to seeds like Oatly (which we won't see @cernovich). The book further recommends fake crab and fake salmon, and fake egg, even the Impossible Burger (which I still doubt is quite ready).

On the other side of the semi is almost-certainly Fraser: the book recommends - and outlines! - artificial trout-runs pp. 183-9. For my part I think Martians will rather enjoy watching koi and catfish swim about in 3.73 ms^-2, and snails and tilapia might help keep the ponds clean. If Fraser had read more Zubrin - How To Live On Mars, say - he's too polite to note that this book recommended bringing chickens and goats too, which Newman would refuse. One does however wonder about guinea-pigs and rabbits.

Overall Newman and Fraser boost ahead of the Weinersmiths if only because Dinner on Mars does argue that we should be getting out there. I remain a Gillilandist, more-inclined to spinning habs, than to Mars proper. Newman (particularly) is so authoritarian and misanthropic that I shouldn't want in on a colony she's queen of. Same as she probably wouldn't want citizenship in the Baghistan.

The first dynasty

This blog has discussed early China before, but not Erlitou much. Besides millet-bread, which most Chinese would rather we ignored, we've had hints at a great flood. Anyway: here's a confirmation from China that a dam burst ~1920 BC. Here begins Erlitou, predecessor to the Shang state.

Erlitou these days is considered Xia. Problem: no written records, until late Shang oracle-bones and occasional bronzes. Another problem, for the Falun Dafa/Gong cult: Xia is remembered as starting long before Erlitou and this flood. Xia was like so many civilisations-remembered-by-later-civilisations, like royal Rome and pre-Flood Nippur / Kish - and our Bible: sus lengths for royal reigns. (Although, long-noted, Augustus actually did reign that long, as did Justinian and - in Egypt - Pepi II.) Anyway given that Yin=Song had called their empire "Shang" in their prime, the name "Xia" needs to be considered a likewise temporal-exonym. I prefer that if modern Chinese must use "Xia" that they do so as a placeholder, like "Shu".

Even Erlitou had antecedent: Longshan, 2500–1900 BC. This paper is from last December, concerning graves in Shanxi. Apparently the females there were imported. The local lord will have been something like a king; in late Chalcolithic China, other realms had kings too - like Shimao. The Empire, Long Divided, Must Unite; Long United, Must Divide and all that.

Hothouse flowers

The next book on the list is Lenore Newman and Evan DG Fraser, Dinner On Mars. Here you learn of a maximum temperature for the plants we rely upon. Above that temperature, plants hold their breath - they stop transpiration. They outlast the Nubian summers that way.

I say "you" because we, who read Centauri Dreams last week, already knew: "Substantial extension of the lifetime of the terrestrial biosphere". The plants might not in fact die off in the great heating our Sun will give them. Some - like Dichanthelium lanuginosum - might last until 1.6-1.86 Gy from now (6.17-6.427 Gy from main-sequence). Good news for us; good news for other aging systems. (Although absent losing our Moon in a Newtonian event, Aldiss' particular vision won't happen.)

As for carbon-reduction events, we still must beware coming Pangaea continent-gatherings. The amalgamation should raise mountains. Monsoons will weather the rock... until those mountains wear down. The question moves from low-atmo CO₂ to surface phosphour - always limited (some say the Amazon's long fertility only happened because of the Chicxulub accident). Can Earth count on more accidents? volcanoes in a frustrated Venerean surface?

Aaaand there's our segue for Newman (vegan) and Fraser to start farms up off this doomed planet. They were talking outer Mars at half irradiance; this post aims at the 1.35-1.91 range, or even 1 for our Lagranges, heliosynchs, and that fortnight-daylit Moon. Given hotter arboreta, Venus colonists don't need to worry - as much - keeping their floating farms cool. It still might worry human technicians but then, they're probably not getting into the greenhouse too often either, given the carbon-dioxide and always-on-illumination in there. It also means farms in space-stations might not demand a priority for those radiators.

Plutarch in his time

In more news of dogs not barking, Inger Kuin is reviewing the late Frederick Brenk. Brenk's thing was Plutarch, right to the end of a 93-year life. Amazing man; almost as amazing as his subject.

If you think you don't know Plutarch you probably actually do - through Shakespeare.

Plutarch was a Delphist, Brenk tells us - and a Platonist, suggesting that he figured that Delphi was where to listen to the words of the One God. I've heard elsewhere (and Brenk probably notes it in his text) that the man was quite the patriot as well, excoriating Herodotus for his solicitude to the Persian. Plutarch didn't think much of Egyptian religion; but was willing to accept the Hellenised and Platonised bastardisation which his compatriots made thereof. One wonders what Plutarch would have made of Philo even of Josephus.

Plutarch is said to have died after AD 119 therefore after the Diaspora Revolt under Trajan. Our man would have been an old man then. But as Brenk proves, entering one's eighth decade doesn't necessarily stop a man, or even tenth.

Plutarch would have written in the times of younger Pliny, before Lucian then Celsus; he was assuredly a contemporary of all four Gospels and related "satyrica". As such Plutarch should have had some interest in Christianity. But we own nothing of whatever he said. This silence has attracted the notice of minimalists such as Vridar. Brenk doesn't explain why so quiet; his aim is to lay out the evidence, so others can argue the point.

Tracking the dogstars

The "Dog Days" of Sirius are usually associated with the Greeks. Among the eastern reaches of Greek-dom was the Pamphylia, from Attalia on-east. This shares a longitude with lower Nile. OldEuropeanCulture is here to inform us that Sirius used to herald the Nile Flood, July/August (sign of Leo).

In Egypt, Sirius was female: Sopdet. (Note that -t, common to "Afroasiatic".) Instead of Orion/Sah's dog, she was Orion's mate... but still connected. Venus meanwhile was their child, genderswapped again this time male: Sopdu. For Egypt, Sopdu ruled the east in his morning-star capacity.

Among Sopdu's domains will be Arabia. Back to his mother, Nathaniel Miller doesn't talk about Shi'ré in Arabia; but he has much to say on Canopus. Orion's second dog rises in September in the Hijaz (p. 189) and October even November from Najd to Kuwait (pp. 171-2).

The first dog Sopdet/Sirius shared the same latitude, anyway, with Kuwait and Basra. You'd think this, in the Hijaz, should rise more late-Augustish, sign of Virgo.

I do wonder why Sirius didn't attract the poets as did Canopus.

Greater Tartessos

Tartessos attracted the admiration of the Hellenes for being a culture as ancient as Egypt. I always thought that was Tartessos in Spain south of the Lusitanians, those latter being paraCelts like Italians so not particularly civilised. We just had some work done which noted that Lusitanian barbarism petered out toward Gades, which became a famed port with the Punici. So: how about Tartessos?

Tartessos might, in fact, not just be Spain. h/t Reynolds: Oued Beht. Morocco didn't just share their U5b women across that Strait; they also shared ostrich eggs and ivory. And customs.

If we accept that the Greeks were several days away by ship so not always clear on the cultures on the Atlantic edge; Tartessos might actually be as ancient as the Greeks thought it was. One must consider if the thirteenth-century BC upheavals hit the Maghreb too.

"Tartessos" in the early Classical age may have been reduced to a rump state in Spain; desperately learning Punic, Greek, and/or Celtic to survive. Tartessians would remember they were once more than this.

How MAGA will lose

I hadn't caught this one last year, but here's Hanania explaining to idiots why THE VAXX was good. I believe a lot of us - still alive - understand this at a deep level.

Hanging around the postRFK Right, I've found that they honestly - deeply - believe that Pfizer is evil; evil on par with the Sacklers / Perdue. It's not just annoying sideswipes at the CLOT SHOT. (Which is itself stupid; there were several shots, the Pfizer I had, the Moderna others in my family had, Johnson and Johnson, SinoVac, AstroZeneca, and so many others I can't even name right now. J&J by the way wasn't RNA.)

How does one argue against a group which thinks you have colluded with evil? Well... Trump didn't argue, Trump caved.

I think when people look at Kamala Harris now they see someone who is comfortingly centrist. "Well she - she's LYING! It's media bias! She's stealing our jerrrb positions!!" If they are good positions it's nice that a candidate is running on them whoever s/he is. All Harris has to do about THE VAXX is... say nothing. MAGA on the other hand might have a point on Left nonsense and hypocrisy, but they ruin it by talking about THE VAXX all the time.

THE VAXX saved lives, most Americans are grateful, and those who are grateful have good cause to worry about apocalyptic extremism on the Right.

Coming to Tollense

A paper just came in about Tollense: we are looking at visitors from the Alps, marching north to hit this region. We'd already sussed as much from the genetics (where researchers let us see 'em): some I2 from south Europe others R1a-b from Da Steppe.

This study is looking at the (thousands) of arrows fired. 3/4 of them are of type 4A and 5A/B which are "Period III" in graves of Mecklenburg and Pòmòrskô... close to the valley. The paper argues that 5A/B are indeed indigenous. But 4A are foreign - nasty barbed bastids, from the south (if they had northern ancestry, they'd forgotten it). The paper presents Behringersdorf Bronze Age D burial #5 as a snapshot in how such a (Bavarian Celtic) invader was equipped.

Someone had impressed some porters: their employers are probably the invaders. Someone was assuredly rich enough, with silk and your classic LBA Phoenician glass-beads (proper glasswork won't happen until Rome). This battle was a bid for the Baltic amber-trade.

As for the locals I assume they were protoLusatian. It may be that the locals were the rich folk, taking the trade from the sea and not overland.

So... who won? Given that no Celtic was spoken here when the Historical Record opens up, which was a German Futhark record alongside lots o' West Prussian: the locals won. They appear not to have treated the porters with mercy; which is telling me, the porters were hoping to displace the locals and colonise the place. The Germans would try the same trick later.

The preMuḥammadan Qurân

Mehdy Shaddel came to this blog's attention awhile ago; cited in 2019 for an incomplete thesis. I did not necessarily think Shaddel was all wrong however. I find today he's announced the publication of a dissertation. We are provided the contents, introduction, conclusion, two appendices and a bibliography.

Overall it looks... we'll say, worthy of continued attention. We must pay heed at least to its reviewers, at least three of four being class A scholars: Wood, Sijpesteijn, and al-Jallad (the remnant is Himmelfarb; if I don't know her I'm assuming that's my fault). I can find some fault with the project's assumptions - but that might not be fatal. On the one hand this manuscript holds that the Qurân was had in full as of the Dome of the Rock, and certainly of 'Umar II's rescript (which he translates; this is not the shurut). Also Shaddel thinks that this 2022 paper has "refuted" Shoemaker 2012 that Muhammad might have lived to see the first exArabian conquests. I don't read a refutation; I just read that Shoemaker went too far.

On the other hand, Shaddel accepts that the Qurân owns a preMuḥammadan core: The short, rhyming suras of the Quran which are placed towards the end of the Uthmanic muṣḥaf are very likely remnants of the liturgical hymns used by the congregation from which the Quran’s messenger and his earliest followers broke away and thus constitute an even earlier stratum. That is... quite revisionist. Sadly this thesis does not wish to deal with that issue here.

The book in general is arguing that the Qurân is supercessionist against the Jews but not against the Christians. Shaddel is aware that Reliance of the Traveller and basic Maliki literature (thanks to Aisha Bewley, widely spread in the Anglo West) - and that shurut - be supercessionist. I assume that Shaddel knows Awzâ'î too, and he's accepted the 'Umarid rescript as supercessionist and authentic. But his book argues that jihad-state Muslims could torture dogmata off their own texts as well as any modern counterjihad blogger can. That's actually part of why Shaddel thinks the Qurân was already fixed in the second 'Umar's time at least: caliphs like him had to play eisegesis games, because nobody would accept a new fake sura from them.

I'd probably have to, like, read the actual MS and not just the intro and conclusion. As to Q. 9:33 I actually do think it develops supercessionist rhetoric, namely the Marwânid plaque at the Dome. I would argue (have argued) the reason the Qurân doesn't talk much about superceding the Christian Bible is that too many of its suwar are trying to supercede the Qurân, over a long period of internal strife. Like that second civil war, and I'd add the Ashâ'itha.

But Shaddel cannot simply be dismissed. It seems like I'd be most-interested in those "liturgical hymns". I should buy his second book.

BACKDATE 9/24

Chlorophyll f

In present attempts to rehabilitate M and K systems, we brought aquifers to M. I might still not be able to connect liquid water with direct sunlight, in a pessimistic HZ. We may however do that with the nontidally locked outer planets of a M, if we allow for greenhouse. Now we have to figure out how to depurple these - how to work chlorophyll.

To that end, ToughSf x.com brings Chlorophyll f. This can photosynthesise in the 900 nm's. I don't know how well it does with chloroplasts. I assume it can happen slower than over here; but M and K stars have all the time in the galaxy.

BACKDATE 9/24

Lusitanha

That Atlantic strip of Iberia between Galicia and Cadiz is mapped. The authors approached it on the assumption that an ocean-facing and mountainous coastline might preserve its own independent genetics as, in historical memory, "Portugal" has kept itself from being West Spain.

Skipping over to "Results", which I'm pretty much going to repackage here because I don't like how they compiled it, the story starts with "Cova_das_Lapas_N". This population was I2a1-a1a1a of men, apparently the elder pre-Carthage lineage; and for women, U5b and K1a. Both the latter are actually U*, Ice Age Europeans of longstanding; K1a, though, is usually more Raetic where U5b flitted between the Algarve and Morocco. So already here was some patrilocality and woman-swapping. Someone gotta wash the clothes amirite? Culturally these were Magdalenians.

The next incomers were Cardial Culture: Near Eastern farmers of the G2a men, bringing their own K1a's. Still, the locals survived here for some time, to copper-age ceramic "Cova_das_Lapas_C". Next came them Bell-Beakers - we can call them Lusitanians; although, despite displacing the menfolk in the north as they'd done in Aquitania (and eventually Raetia / Etruria), they didn't take the south. That'll be approaching Tartessus, on the coast southeast of scope.

The Romans, if not Carthage, occasioned some African introgression beyond U5b seawives, getting more serious with Islam. In the latter era is a Q1b1a3a1 man. Positively Siberian; I might even suspect American Indian. But nah: they're saying overall he's a Jew. An Ashkenaz Jew. (Oy!)

It doesn't tell a lot that's new; but it is good to have Portugal finetuned, if you're Portuguese / Brasileiro.

Earth as a ringed planet

Among the temperature-history is the Hirnantian cold snap. This is now-constrained 445.21 to 443.07 Mya at the end of the Ordivician, occasioning a famous mass-extinction and now, perhaps, defining that terminus. Among theories on Why, came an orbital ring.

The asteroid would have been captured 466 Mya; it broke up and rained down some big craters then. These didn't hurt anything because, hey, Ordovician: land life was just lichen and worms. But enough rock stayed up there - they claim - it could have formed a ring.

I am unsure how they work the physics. We are now 104.2% the temperature we were in the Ordovician. Our moon has also drifted from Earth since then (were the tides measurable?). A closer moon should disrupt pseudosatellites - you'd think it would just yeet them out.

BACKDATE 9.21

Heliosynchronous

Today I learnt that a satellite can be positioned over a planet such that it always faces its sun, almost but not quite polar. This is used for always-illuminated satellites such as are observing, in fact, the Sun -

- or, we just didn't add batteries for cargo. It's being planned for data-centres.

This is possible where the planet is oblate. Earth is oblate; so is Mars. The wider middle perturbs the orbit. Oblate geoids happen, also, when the planet spins; so, where G*O sats are possible, so are heliosynchronics and vice-a-verse-a. (Slowly-rotating Venus is too global, so has no heliosynchronous altitude. So this is not joining my many many Venuspoasts.)

Earth's altitudes for that, for easy access and low Van Allen, trend 600–800 km and 98° (so a bit retrograde, like Uranus' actual orbit). Cockamamie data-centre ideas aside, such orbit is a thing. That's actually a problem with the ideas: satellites are already using these bands. Also with always-on solar, cometh solar panels (inbound) and heat-radiators (outbound). It's getting crowded up there. The energy demands will force wide panels and wide radiators, increasing the likelihood of Kessler-messler.

I think this might be best for between the two Van Allen belts. Where incoming solar energy doesn't need to be radiated out as bad, could also be a fine use. That'll be Mars.

Or just ship some batteries bro.

That inheritance trouble again

Jared Diamond cannot stop from taking L's. In lieu of WestHunter telling everyone he (and Harpending - and Nicholas Wade) told us so, David Reich's lab is telling us so: northwest European genes are under selection for IQ (summary).

But his heart's in the right place. This is a thesis in need of testing. Diamond's published output aligns with the goals of a globalist slaver caste. See also Yuval Harari. I do not think Diamond is on the level. Also not on the level is Scientific American... since 1995.

The paper fingers the Neolithic, best it can (it goes only as far as 7000 BC - more on that below). I expect similar to be found for east Asia, and for central Asia up to our Middle Ages. Add also: Mesoamerica, and the Andes - and Iron Age Africa. Maybe also for New Guinea but the farming may be so much easier there that the selection-pressure plateaued early.

Also here is negative-selection for schizophrenia, which @MuseZack Stentz is relating to Julian Jaymes' "bicameral mind". Vridar would pipe-in that Prophets lingered in farm-society although, yeah, they didn't breed (for one who did marry, read Hosea).

GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy delivers an array of assertions, which overlap here. I still haven't read through all of it. Chesterton considers madness a form of autism, the mathematician's need for certainty. Epistemic closure, as an earlier meme went. On this much his instinct might be right. Neander genes trend these ways - we observe, even their settled enclaves never entered the Neolithic.

Less happily, Chesterton sneers at "Evolutionists" and "Darwinists", on account evolution doesn't have a direction. He also sneers at "Progress", on account their direction never ends. To that: we find here that Europeans have intelligently-designed themselves. Most meritocrats would have seen this and argued for this in the 1900s. Chesterton has a point with Progress(iv)ism; but his "Evolutionism" is straw. Overall Chesterton was a 34 year old sophist.

As to the arxiv preprint, we're hearing from @jonatanpallesen that Reich is ungenerous. That uncited paper by Piffer and Kirkegaard digs earlier than 7000 BC. Having read Who We Are And How We Got Here, on Watson; I share that doubt that Reich will be citing Piffer-Kirkegaard - unless Reich be shamed into it.

"Abû Qays Sirma" did not exist

In continuing with Prof. Lindstedt's ongoing project to (re?)habilitate Abû Qays Sirma, once again I must demur.

At this point I cannot take seriously Prof. Lindstedt on the topic of early Arabic verse. He hasn't the mental tools to evaluate one text in relation to another; either that, or he's lazy (it took me, what, two days to find a Sirma/Hassân parallel, earlier, and I'd never even read Hassân before looking). If Lindstedt's aim were to bolster the historicity of Sîra by the personalities mentioned in it (and I don't know why any infidel would so aim), he is accomplishing the opposite.

He can regain that respect but he'll need to work on it.

Neṣḥānā redated

Last week, Corinne Jouanno reviewed Muriel Dubié's Alexandre le Grand en syriaque. It starts with a romantic novel in Greek ascribed to Callisthenes. The delta version - now lost so "*δ" - is what got translated into Edessene Syriac, probably AD sixth-century / AG ninth-. This (also-lost) translation spawned a wide literature of not!Alexander, retroactively converted to Oriental Orthodoxy, all over that Christendom. The same version entered Miaphysite Sinjar, which "Pseudo-Methodius" apocalypse subsequently conquered the West.

Kevin van Bladel will be interested in the "Mimro" (which as oriental should be Memrā) ascribed to Jacob of Serugh, and in the "Exploit" which is the Neṣḥānā (or plural Neṣḥānë if syame). These contributed to sura 18 and enjoyed Arabic translations of their own. He'd assumed that the Neṣḥānā was Heraclius' propaganda and perhaps that Memrā was a reaction against that. This wouldn't leave much time for sura 18 to react to either; hence why van Bladel's thesis got so much notoriety. Keeping in mind: Pseudo-Methodius' own ink won't get much drying-time before getting out into Armenian, Greek, and Latin.

If I am reading the review correctly - it is in French - Dubié is arguing that both belong to an Iran under that Hunnish threat. So they're sixth-century, not seventh. The outremer Christians hope for an Alexander to rescue them - Justinian or Maurice, perhaps. That this rescue did in fact come (sort of) is an irony of history, one of the few vaticini which came true.

Roman India

A few days ago - I'd missed this - Vridar pointed to "India" as economically tied with Rome at its coin-productive peak. Maybe Antonius Pius, the boring one of the Five Good Ones. (I'd prepend Vespasian, Titus, and the underrated Domitian; GK Chesterton - whom I'm now reading - would subtract Marcus Aurelius.)

The map with the orange dots is quite illuminating: Ireland's coast and deep Pictland are economic dependents, as are all Germans and (for the amber) Balts, even Slavs. We don't get hoards at the Fezzan; these might have been uprooted in antiquity by fleeing Garamantes. There's a bit of Saba' and the Ge'ez part of Ethiopia. Before running into the Indian Ocean.

Ireland and Yemen hosted Roman embassies, as (more seriously) the Crimea. What's most-interesting here is south India.

I cannot but be reminded of differing definitions of "India" in the postHellenistic era. Iranians and, I think, Greeks defined "India" as, basically, the Sanskrit Sindh - that is, the Indus river. This was a land definition. I understand from Arabian studies that west-Arabians and Romans had a sea definition. They even considered their own Yemen-Oman strip in "India".

With that in mind, we can talk of a Roman India: Dravidian rather than Indic, Krishna and even Buddha rather than the Vedas (famously "Indo-Iranian"). Sanskrit civilisation might not yet be Persianate but it is at least paraIranian.

I don't know if the Romans had an embassy at Sri Lanka but Rome was certainly sending (a lot) more money over there than to, say, Ireland. The coins don't lie. Hence why Pius needed a post in Yemen.

As Vridar goes: the peak of Dravidian-Roman interconnexion will be that second century AD. When Christianity is really getting started. The language of this commerce although Roman won't be Latin; it will be Greek and Aramaic.

Rapa Nui 1, Jared Diamond 0

Saraceni is linking a study about Rapa Nui genetics. It's really a replication-paper; not-all-that-modern geneticists were already saying that "Easter" Islanders have some American-coast genes. Like... years ago. Honestly Thor Heyerdahl had got this (one) thing right generations before.

Aaron Ragdale points out that, yes, we already knew. But replication is in crisis: so confirming 2020-era genetics from modern samples, with 2024-era ancient samples, means we can trust the 2020s methods elsewhere, where ancient samples aren't so easy to find. Like elsewhere in the preColombian Americas. Like in Africa, or India.

One amusing finding is that Rapa Nui did not "collapse" because of environmental failure, contra Jared Diamond; it did not collapse at all. Well... until the Peruvians conquered and enslaved everybody, like Maori, or for that matter Huari.

Higher-bandwidth LEO

It is perhaps a paradox of profitable space - mostly low-orbit space - that technology makes it obsolete. Noted just here recently is that we can have more ruthenium - from nuclear waste and stray neutrons - without mining it off asteroids. So here is an attempt to convince regulators we don't need the Starlink constellation.

I assume they're right. Simpler, smaller, and better satellites would be nice for telescopes down here.

I still want my asteroid mines tho'.

BACKDATE 9/14.

Mousterian misanthropes

The news from postEemian Mousterian Europe is that, of those who saw the warm period end 105Mya / 103kBC, a population in France hunkered and... didn't interact with anyone else. That's Mandrin Cave, on the Riviera (hence Italianish grotte, not cro).

I guess these are the coastal folk who kicked one group of our kin upriver. Where 52kBC that group up and left again.

Kuiper's Kirkwood

The second Kuiper is confirmed. There's a gap spanning the 60s AU; New Horizons is presently at the hither edge of this boundary. Around 70-75 AU the iceballs reäppear before tapering-off with the Subaru's decreasing ability to see 'em.

I'm interested in the gap itself. This is not the obvious Neptunian (164.8-year) Kirkwood which should be 47.7 AU - with plenty of KBOs. The year out at 64 AU = √(64*64*64) = 512 Earth years. This would be in 2:1 resonance, instead, with something 1024 years; 32768 AU.

That is... a lot. Other resonances are of course possible, but Hilda's 3:2 should be fine as long as they're offset by eccentricity and angle.

So they're not talking about some "Planet Nine" at least not here. The nebula just formed like this; like other T Tauri's do.

Can we stop talking about Darryl Cooper now?

I am not averse to a little bit of historical revisionism, even WW2 revision. But when you've lost the grand master of revisionism, David Cole\Stein...

Those interested in the @martyrmade / Buchanan thesis might also check out Victor Hanson. Or, you know... McMeekin (who has another book out). At least Cooper and Carlson still have, er, Kevin MacDonald. And Vox Day to the extent they're even different people.

One comment, if by Thomas Dalton one of the Kampf translators, is worth raising to some of the mob: that @martyrmade's most-commented excerpt dealt with POWs (which included Jews) and not Osteuropan Jewry en banc. But. To this, given that Himmler was still in the cabinet, we have to add the word "yet".

Tucker Carlson took a big L by hosting this crank.

The crooked path of Arius

Castalia House is serialising the old Cambridge Medieval History. This series was envisioned by that genius JB Bury before the Wars; the first volume came out after several years in 1911. Archive.org for all their caterwauling still has it; you can start the "Arianism" chapter by Henry M. Gwatkin. (I prefer Eunomian or Anomoean.)

I have looked into Ephrem the Syrian, active in the decades most-involved, AD 330-70. I can verify that whatever "Mar" Ephrem was preaching, it was Eunomian and - also - lies.

Theodore Beale has a take. It is likely the correct take. Excepting that the Creed actually posted at Nicaea is what allowed this voodoo-Christianity, Aurelianism under the shell, to take over the Empire. And that's the creed which Beale supports; not the Theodosian creed affirmed at Chalcedon.

We Christians must keep a watch out for such online "Orthodox" as don't fulfil Orthodoxy. I can but quote Master Cernovich on this one:

A lot of men who couldn’t cut it as political commentators have rebranded as “Orthodox Christians.” Their timelines are full of poison. Jew hate. Repeal the 19th. Holocaust denial. They don’t do charity. Nothing productive. Toxic waste. Fakers.

Some women too I reckon.

TOI-1408

Don’t get attached to this system; it’s a F8V, already 2.7 Gy. It’ll redgiant before anything good evolves here. The paper announces a c, inbound of already-hot b. They are almost but not quite 2:1 resonance – they librate. Like that HD. Luminosity is 2.96, so a comfy (91% Earth) insolation could be had at 1.8 AU. It would have been cooler earlier but, as noted, the star is on the outs.

And there’s an outer:

?2530/365.256
6.9266487066605347
?Math.Pow(6.9266487066605347*6.9266487066605347*1.31, 1.0/3.0)
3.9759343688051021

Which we could round to 3.976 AU. 0.35 eccentricity means perihelion 2.584 AU. The 14.6 jove mass is a lower bound. But I do not know its inclination. It is hard to see how it could have got there naturally.

Overall this couple is the interesting part of the system – for its dynamics. I don’t know that these two could have migrated together. This suggests they formed here. Which has implications for other hot Jupiters. In particular if a hot Jupiter could form, and have a smaller planet beneath it; there could exist smaller planets still in-situ above it, as far as HZ, especially given the width of the HZ band.

But here the (probable) superplanet “d” could be sweeping the HZ of livable matter if an even bigger von Zeipel perturbator is out at “e”.

Honduras is not your playpen

X hosted a fairly good, if slanted, take on what's happening to that ancap utopia on one of those Mosquito Coasts: @GarrisonLovely re Próspera. Someone been readin' the Bard of Avon.

Back in 2009 Honduras had a Leftist President, Zelaya, who was consolidating power to himself in violation against some Forever-Clauses in Honduras' own Constitution. The Honduran Supreme Court and Army - without any help from the American government which itself was one-party Left at the time - threw out Zelaya.

Aside: this is where I quit paying attention to an important Latin American country. I allow this as an oversight on my part. I take solace in how @GarrisonLovely has - also mistakenly, one hopes - omitted any of that.

The new government, Constitutional in origin if not much supported by Hondurans, then did some extraConstitutional activities of its own. Namely, they gave up some territory to "Próspera", headed by Andreessen Horowitz among others. (Razib Khan's X is telling me that Andreessen Horowitz recently took another L at Miami; they're closing that two-year-old office.) We're talking potentially a third of the land. Honduras' new President Xiomara Castro, who is Leftist but pretends not to be Zelaya, wants this land back.

I say "pretends" because X.C. is using blood-and-soil demagoguery... like a Chavez or Maduro. This is clearly an emotive appeal to populism. On the other hand... Texans might not like an "ancap" colony at, oh, Freeport which just-so-happened to be entirely led by Chinese nationals. Certainly one could "ask a Mexican" about how it works when thousands of yanquis move in and take over the economy; they had a whole revolución about it.

Próspera is suing for 2/3 of Honduras' budget. The court is obviously not Honduran; a takeback would be post facto but you know how LatAm courts are. Nah; this is going to the CAFTA-DR treaty court and, we hear, on trade issues the Biden Administration sits to the Obama Administration's Right (and - credit is due - to Trump's Right). In this court, Próspera might win - the judgement would bankrupt Honduras. Why might they win? I suspect because they've sunk a lot of money in infrastructure, and also because X.C.'s rhetoric is annoying the courts. Zelaya had done that at home and look what happened to him.

Much as I distrust X.C., I cannot affirm any more trust in this Próspera adventure. Marc Andreessen and his boys should take the L at Honduras as they have at Miami, and bug out. Honduras is not your lab for "effective altruism" experiments. Improving Honduras has to be done by Hondurans, like El Salvador is best-improved by a Salvadorean.

Durak

David Sacks has X'ed a tantrum; Mike Cernovich has relayed this to his followers, such as we are. Overall it appears that Gizmodo's hit has hit the target. TENET Media is Russian-funded, as Sacks has conceded.

I am not a TENET subscriber; but one can hardly avoid Tim Pool and Lauren Southern, neither violets being precisely shrinking.

TENET is not a Trump outlet; but yes, it is Russian, and it is appealing to an audience as might be Trump-inclined. Overall, Sacks' take is that the Russians don't want the audience to vote Trump. One strategy, perhaps an effective strategy, has been to amplify extreme anti-abortion voices like Lauren Chen's. Mike Pence is out there too as is the Catholic University of America, donors to Pence and to Harris too. (Please do not contribute to CUA's second-collections after Mass.)

Gizmodo avers: The indictment made clear that Pool, Rubin, Johnson, and the rest didn’t know that they were being sponsored by the Russians. And so they say for themselves: they're just durak. Still: their commentary has attracted the Russians. Gizmodo could not keep itself from reviewing Benny Johnson's commentary against the Harris ticket: a "low-effort rant". If the money ain't in it, your heart ain't in it.

Jack Posobiec is defending Pool (and Johnson, whoever he is). Other X's are whaddaboudding China and Qatar. Elsewhere we might inquire into the motives - and funding - of Tucker Carlson and @martyrmade.

To disclose, this here blog the Baghestan is funded by nobody but its proprietor... and by Google/Alphabet, inasmuch as they run Blogspot now. Alphabet is #neverTrump. Alphabet might want to consider if they want to stay on the Russians' side.

Overall I'm going with Sacks as an admission-against-interest. And I tend to agree that China's investment, being that it's going to (effectively) the Shadow Vice President, is more dangerous than Russia's, being that that's going ... also toward that Sh.V.P.'s interests. But we're going to hear only "Russia!" and "Trump's audience!", meaning: yet another impeachment in 2027 after the Swamp scuppers Congress again. With Putin's gleeful endorsement.

The Internet Archive does not deserve support

Recently-published books as are not in public-domain used to be available on the Internet Archive. The publisher Hachette - whose name I'd first heard, in a tiff with Amazon - has taken 500k of these books off this platform.

You can read the Archive's case, on the petition they want us to sign. I'm interested in #2; my underlines:

Equity and Accessibility: The Internet Archive democratizes access to knowledge. By restricting access to these books, you have made it harder for the most vulnerable people in our society to read and learn. Not everyone has a local library, can afford to travel to one, feels safe accessing the information they need in public, or can ignore the potentially life-altering repercussions when tech platforms collect data on their reading habits. Your removal of more than 500,000 books from public access is a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others.

It is a "tell" that this petition is on change.org; which has an editorial bias of its own. Would it host a petition on Hachette's side?

I suspect that "tech platforms" will, exactly, be "collecting data" anyway - where in service to Equity, in alliance with the Internet Archive. If you trust the Internet Archive otherwise, good luck to you. One might observe that the Internet Archive's position is to facilitate the next Audrey Hales. That way, such atomised souls lacking supervision would be finding this stuff on their 'phones.

Since change.org and Internet Archive won't tell you, I will: Hachette would say it is protecting publishers and authors. As well as, you know... kids.

In sum, I won't join this latest change.org SIGN NOW OR YOU'RE WEIRD! bandwagon. Furthermore, this blog and any other online content associated had not, up to now, taken a side on Hachette's disputes; now I have to assume Hachette are the Good Guys, unless and until I'm shown otherwise.

Ganymede, stricken

The Galileian moon Ganymede got hit, barely 500 My after forming. This rolled it around and changed its spin; said spin has since changed to tidal lock, like most moons.

The grand-tacking of Jupiter would indeed have brought its system in contact with the outer asteroids. They say the impactor was twenty times Chicxulub although I know not how they're calculating its velocity. If the 300 km diameter holds up, that's larger than 3 Juno (admittedly small for its time of discovery).

The Europa Clipper won't be visiting this one, and if it owns a 'scope to see Ganymede that'll only be his Jove-face. The Juno orbiter is more an Amalthea visitant. (My proposal of some 4:3:2 Laplacian would also only ever see the Jove-face.) The JUICE is the one that's supposed to be looking at Ganymede all over.

Sintashta eclipse?

Here I am breaking mine own rule about affixing questionmarks to a title. But: Rig Veda Samahita mentions some eclipses, which are now taken semiseriously. One reference describes the vernal equinox as occurring in Orion, and another has it occurring in the Pleiades. That's 4500 BC and 2230 BC respectively.

The eclipse in the vernal age of Orion is that exciting these astrohistorians. The eclipse occurred three days before the autumnal equinox; the compiler, it seems, marked the year from the vernal.

The ex silentio is evoked inasmuch as the eclipses are not related to such Vedic-era Indian mythology as Rahu and Ketu. So this mythology is either preHindu or paraHindu. Historically Hindu nationalists tend to consider the Indus as the home of the Vedas (which it is; excepting Samahita), and they don't place mythical river Sarasvati at Arachosia as they should. Thus also, the dissimilarity principle.

Given the language and recent genetics, the most-likely origin of outside influence would be Central Asia. The paper makes the maths work out there 22 October 4202 BC and 19 October 3811 BC.

This is made possible I think by recent acceptance of indigenous lore in Australia, the Pacific Northwest, and Crater Lake.

I am unsure what we do with this lore, if it be lore.

The origins and fate of the Tang

h/t turtle: an ethnography of the Tang as seen through its diehards out in Dunhuang (pdf).

The Tang are about my favourite of the regimes ruling the Middle Kingdom. Many such rulers have been foreign: the Yuan of course (Mongol) and Qiang (Manchu). I'd thought the Tang were indigenous. Sanping Chen here is looking into Dunhuang's history after that An Loshan / An Shi mess.

As "An Lushan", this rebel attracted a bit of attention a decade back when John Derbyshire, whose wife is Han, transmitted Pinker's musings that he was the worst rebel in human history. In recent years it seems the bodycount was revised downward. It was still a mess for the Tang: the Tibetans rallied the Tangs' enemies, which included the Qiang interestingly and also the Tanggut, to encircle and extort Dunhuang, Comanche-style. Then they simply took it.

"Simply" rather oversimplifies the matter given that a pro-Tang revolt broke out, throwing off the Tibetan yoke. Sanping Chen notes that the faction proudly proclaimed the Tang lineage as "Tuoba" - even Tabγač. That is a Turkic name. This would be like an inner-mongolian outpost of Chinese waving a Manchu flag. I mean, at least they're not Mongols, right?

I find an irony in that the Tang are most famed, for Central-Asian / Iranian historians, for smashing, in fact, the Turks. This is what opened the (northern) Silk Road and led to Dunhuang's seventh-century prosperity. Admittedly making it a plum target for Tangguts and Tibetans later.

BACKDATE 9/4

Jeru/Zalem

Alita, which was not a bad movie, is based off an anime. I hadn't looked at the worldbuilding. Apparently there is some.

What this place offers is an orbital ring, which can use the high-tensile compound of your choice; in Paul Birch's day that was just kevlar. We've been talking about that here for years. Nah: the fun part is how to get from the ring into space. Because the ring orbits. It is a moving platform.

So here on 4chan (sorry) is a hopefully-fair-use screencap (jpg). Tiphares is 3 km above... the equator, I assume; so hop on over from the Andes bro. Keep in mind that Tiphares is hanging from the magnetic field generated from the ring, not attached to its orbiting components.

You then take the lift to the sky hook - that is, to the ring - for 600 km, a reasonable LEO without too much exosphere interference. 120 km/hour would take five hours which is a little boring but no problem for a Texan driver. Personally I'd ponder more that 600 km is thermopause; Skylab at 440ish km died because our atmo had an unscheduled bump out there. There's 2000 km to play with before the Van Allens start messing with the superconductors from the upper side.

Anyway Jeru seems to be on Tiphares. I'd be reluctant to host a full city there; tensile strength will be an engineering nightmare. And its mass will drag the orbital ring.

The fun really starts above the ring. Ketheres is out at, yes, 1200 km. Best I can tell Ketheres is not in its own orbit, but also hanging from the ring... aaaand here the diagram makes less sense. "Centrifugal force" is keeping Ketheres in its higher state: so, Ketheres is physically tethered, to the moving parts of the ring, therefore should not line up with the levitating lower cord... excepting when the orbit allows. The diagram must assume timetables so that anyone wanting a direct Tiphares-Ketheres trip can have one. That's fine with me. Less fine with me: shouldn't Ketheres be trailing diagonally...?

Ketheres further hosts the city Jeru. Wild. I wonder if this force is enough to keep a pseudogravity on the space-facing side. Again: tensile, and dragging the orbit of the ring.

I am despite-this liking that this spinning cable is not a GEO-to-Earth solution, with "nanocarbon" handwavium. Because those don't exist and probably never will.

All this will be much easier if above thermopause and using adequate radiators. In fact the temperature-differential between earth and space is a major source of energy for Tiphares. So not only would the ring be keeping sunlight off of Earth but what warmth is left on Earth is being radiated to space. Brrr!

Next question: we can't drop a cable from GEO right to Earth's atmo. But can we drop one just as far as Ketheres?