California 3250 BC

Now that the Chumash are in the news, causing trouble in Kansas City; the grown-ups amongst us might consider the Chumash heritage. That's the Channel Islands in California; more of them survive in Santa Ynez.

The Chumash language-family is extinct except for what Spanish and Americans taught their ancestors to write in Latin-script. Enough of that survives to affirm that Chumash is an isolate. It may well be a survivor of the great fires and migrations. As to the migrations...

Elsewhere in California, we hear that "5200 years ago" (that is, before all those 1950 nukes) a lot of Mesoamericans spread through the Sonora over there. The Chumash, I venture, fended them off that particular coast. The interest in this migration comes from the 3200s BC date: this predates maize agriculture in California by nine centuries. We learn elsewhere today that this approaches the age of maize itself.

One theory is that the maize growers spoke languages similar to those of the new hunter-gatherers. Looking at the map, Serrano and Tongva are on the Uto- side of Uto-Aztecan. Northeast of them are Shoshone/Comanche peoples, also Uto-. That north/south divide in Uto-Aztecan is basically the Colorado River watershed, which lower basin is a nasty desert. And, later, subject to depredations of Navajo-Apache and later-still the Comanche.

On-topic: Uto-Aztecan, like old teosinte, seems a feature of the western side of the Divide. Only the Comanche and the Aztecs got out into the Atlantic (and how!). And now the Chumash apparently have followed them [UPDATE 12/1 without license]. As for maize, 20% of that genome is from the highlands. Proto-Otomí? Maybe the first maize-growers pushed the Uto-Aztecans northwest, after which the Uto-Aztecans finally learnt the recipe.

Even after getting proper maize, the researchers don't see this agriculture along the Cinnabar Sea affording an expedition potent enough to crush the former wave of Uto-Aztecans. More likely, they think, is trade across the desert. The language-barrier should be not-awful with only nine centuries apart; that's like, what, English and Frisian.

It'd be interesting to dive back into loanwords between Serrano, Shoshone, and Chumash. Words for local fish and brush, maybe?

HD 110067's six hellworlds

Last night a few science-alerts got loose about HD 110067. That Henry Draper catalogue-number means it was among 225300 stars which Annie Jump Cannon catalogued as of 1905 and published up to 1924. So: it's nearby and bright, as these things go: about a hundred light years off and a K type. It is now in the news for having six (6) planets.

You'll not want to visit any of them. They were found not by radial-velocity of the star but by transit. Indeed, they are close to the star: the outermost orbits just under 55 days, which is near exact 5/8 Mercury. These will be superheated by their sun.

And they orbit in mutual resonance - close resonances, to the tunes (heh) of 3:2 for bcde and then 4:3 for efg. (Opposite from what I proposed between Europa and Ganymede; that was 4:3 then 3:2 within E:G's 2:1.) We need to consider tides. Somehow the innermost planet has managed not to get pulled inward by its sun. That energy is probably getting eaten up by tides internal to the planets. Yikes!

The good news about transits is that they deliver the radii (as a ratio of their sun) for all the occultations. They also have the mass-ratios of the inner planets b, c, d against their sun - hooray for Kepler. The three inner worlds seem puffy, which is impressive for such hot planets, as 4 Gy old as the system is. Further: the resonance is assumed to be a holdover from formation. Chaos doesn't normally resolve into 3:2 and 4:3 resonances. Without chaos in the system these close-in planets, further, aren't getting Theia - they aren't getting moons.

Much of the research was done by the CHEOPS 'scope down here. We all know the unfortunate rules; the longer the period between transits, the less well we know the parameters. They want to target the 31-day "e" planet, to constrain that one's mass. And maybe Webb can hit the system for infrared.

We are lucky to have this one in transit. I expect K or G stars exist, closer than 100 ly, as own resonant inner planets not in transit. That's a matter for closer inspection of spectral time-series.

Evangelical marginalia

A (Christian) Minister by name of James Snapp the Younger piped in, last year, at the ongoing Distigmai kerfuffle. I'm not here pretending to know anything about that; apparently I didn't miss much, anyway.

I am here to consider evangelical in-line tafsir by the evangelist himself. In Islam, there exists a tradition by which Muhammad commented upon the Qurân which Allâh revealed upon him. How about Christianity with its scriptures?

Snapp suggests similar for John 5:3b-4. Namely: someone whom Snapp assumes (for shorthand if nothing else) is the apostle John composed the first part of what we call "John 5:3", so v. 3a. But then people kept badgering the owner-of-the-text, as Snapp muses: why were these sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed people waiting near the pool instead of swimming in its water?. Snapp sees John 5:3b-4 as an interpolation, yes; but as an interpolation by the final editor of the Gospel. For Snapp that means: by John.

Evan Powell had in the 1990s actually argued for John as the author of John 1-20 at least. Powell went harder into the Johannine Gospel as multilayered. Powell figured that John 21 wasn't even John's, but Mark's. Maybe there was a "John Jr." (Polycarp?) who added that coda at around the same time that one added vv. 3b-4 to John 5. Problem: we don't own much external evidence for any John explicitly without ch. 21. I do recall Tertullian claiming ch. 20 as the terminus, once; although he was aware of a John with ch. 21, also. Snapp is big on Mark 16's longer version, against Powell; if he accepts that, he's hardly about to abandon John 21. Snapp might instead count John 21 as the Evangelist's marginalium, after the thought, appended to his own text.

Snapp brings in 1 Corinthians 1:16 as a Pauline marginalium as got inlined into the text without editing, and nobody ever came along to smooth all that over. This would be a stronger case in my opinion.

Another stronger case might, in fact, be Mark 13:14. The whole chapter is Mark's summary of Jesus' mission as the Christ of God. This v. 14 refers to an abomination that desecrates at the Temple; the text herein interjects let him that readeth understand. That author cannot be Christ; Christ is speaking, and we don't read an audition. Then the text in some codices says this comes from "Daniel the prophet". Everyone is fine assuming that the former gnomic invitation comes from Mark's first edition and presentation of Christ's word. The questions cluster around the subsequent asterisk; saying basically, "you goyische n00bz out there are to understand that this means the Book of Daniel, go read it if you haven't".

Was that asterisk by Mark? Well... Mark is said to have spread his gospel to Rome and to Alexandria. He is also known to be a follower of Paul, who was famously big on preaching to goys.

I find plausible that Mark himself had permitted copies of his gospel to go out, to gentiles, with additional annotations.

Gunung Padang

The usual crew of Hancockians and QAnon theorists are making a thing of this pyramid in Gunung Padang, Java. On principle, note, I am not ruling out a Neolithic society in the old Sundaland. I mean, if Anatolia could do it . . .

But on principle I need the evidence to come from someone more credible than Daniel Natawidjaja. Natural processes can create geometric structures, without human input. Colavito points to the "giants' causeway"; I might consider those pyramids, faces, and smileys over on Mars we'd seen in the 1980s.

Nature is today calling shens on Natawi - Natadi - Nottabepublishinpapersforawhile.

As a sidenote, Avi Loeb is now looking for derro. Maybe he can do what Carl Sargent did and write Dungeons & Dragons content, I might actually read him then.

You stood with Sheol

If anyone is still wondering when/if Kiev will be erecting statues to Boris Johnson, as the Kosovars have honoured Clinton or the Israelis and Indians Trump; the answer to that is probably never.

Putin upon observing the Kiev régime's attitude toward the Russian-speakers of the Donbass concluded that Kiev commanded too many people who hated Russia. Putin's response was to occupy the Donbass and to provoke a limited war. In a war of attrition the larger army wins. Russia had the larger army. Russia invited Kiev to expend its men in a meatgrinder.

Russia will exit this conflict with the only army. Now the Ukraine simply is short 1.1 million Russia-haters as it used to have; Russia-non-haters having found ways to slip out of the conflict. 1.1 million is a lot of dead haters; but consider the number of Israel-haters as existed in the Gaza Strip as of 7 October.

1.1 million didn't have to die. They simply had to not hate, and not fight. And not listen to faraway Westerners, "Standing With Ukraine".

DOCSIS 4

Having recently spent a lot of $ on a new modem, it's coming onto holiday-season so I must ponder when I'll need to do that again. The next version promises 6 Gb/s upstream. (Same 10 downstream.)

Comcast, for its part, started a 4.0 rollout last month - over the high hills south of here, where's aerospace. It's phased per-city, if only to ensure the punters get the new modems.

This suggests 4.0 around the Denver-Boulder corridor next year. But maybe early next year. I expect the modems to be priced for the universities and space companies, who need the upload bandwidth most. 3D uploads might care for Gaussians.

I just hope these uploads won't strangle the rest of us.

Sulaym revisited

I've lately been redirected to Sulaym bin Qays, rather to the Shī'ī tract (kitāb) ascribed to him. Today I found Tamima Bayhom-Daou, "Kitāb Sulaym ibn Qays revisited", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 78 (2015), 105-19. (That DOI is 10.1017/s0041977x14001062.) The title refers to what happened to the text before our version got loose.

TBD assumes Patricia Crone that the kitāb is composite, compiling earlier content. Building from that, TDB goes into the second section. This deals with the tract's Qur'ānic epistemology. In fact here are two -ologies: in one, the Aimmāt (without hamza) own perfect knowledge of God's Word and transmit that to their sons, each an Imām upon adulthood. The problems for Sulaym's Imāmate start with 'Alī the Ridā, "Reza" to Iranians. When Reza died 203 AH (AD 818, AG ~1130) his oldest son was a child. Bring on the second -ology: a secret tafsīr in written form existed, available to the Prophetic Family - which we plebs didn't get to read. Problem solved: the son can be Imām without direct Imāmic instruction. TBD believes that the second -ology is, indeed, secondary; tacked onto the original take.

(Note how this neatly explains how come Shī'ī qirāāt cluster in Ibn Mas'ûd codices far more than in codices ascribed to 'Alī or to his family directly. It just hadn't occurred to the Family that a written codex existed. That's the problem with an apocalyptic movement . . .)

Crone had figured upon a basic tract in which the 'Alids still approved the 'Abbāsite dawla. This tract had forged some documents of its own, like a letter from amir Mu'āwiya to his walī Ziyād (pt 4 hadith 23). But this was an early forgery! Such a forgery would not be possible after the Hasanid failure 145/762.

The whole sect, Hasanites and Husaynites alike, might allow for the secret-teaching doctrine. That much isn't easily datable. Only the replacement of secret-teaching to a secret-writing would be constrained; for the Imāmīs who gave us Sulaym, to the third century.

NAHJ 11/28: Amina Inloes found, not long after TBD, that the Nahj is antiwoman by contrast to Sulaym, so probably shouldn't be cited as canon.