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William of Occam (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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[excerpt from The First Dark Age -- seeking to establish that the period c. 1300 BC - 600 BC never existed but is an artefact of historians/archaeologists]

Chapter 9: Don't Cut That Knot!

If there was an ‘afterglow’ of the Hittite Empire down there in Mesopotamia then obviously there had to be a Hittite Empire proper in the original Hittite heartland of Anatolia. And if this Empire had been powerful enough to produce such long-term effects so far away then presumably there must be an even more pronounced afterglow in Anatolia itself. Apparently not

After 1200 BC, the earliest datable finds from central Anatolia belong to the 750 BC Kingdom of the Phrygians, familiar from classical sources, because of King Midas of the Golden Touch and his father Gordius of Gordian Knot fame

Distinctly odd. The Hittites seem to have vanished without trace in Hittite-land just when it was producing neo-Hittiteland elsewhere. As this is all part of Turkey nowadays, it is appropriate to seek guidance from the leading light of Turkish archaeology, Dr Ekrem Akurgaly

it is striking that up to date not only no Phrygian, but no cultural remains of any sort have been found which might belong to the period between 1200 and 800 BC. This could indicate that Central Anatolia at that period was either very thinly populated or occupied by nomad tribes who left no material remains in the dwelling mounds

Or it didn't exist in the first place.

more later
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Mick Harper
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Don't Cut That Knot! (continued)

Or it didn't exist in the first place but Turkish archaeologists are as subject to Egyptian chronology as everyone else so when they started excavating the Hittite capital, Hattusa, now an obscure village called Boghazköy, they were predictably puzzled

It has to be admitted that thus far Boghazköy has contributed little to the illumination of what we call the Dark Age. Not a single find has turned up which can be attributed safely to the centuries immediately following the fall of the Hittite capital

Not wishing to be disrespectful or anything, but this could not safely be left with the Turks. A great deal of European history hinged on the Hittites (not to mention their after-glow) so either this disconcerting gap had to be filled, or it had to be pared down, or it had to be explained away. The president of the German Archaeological Institute, Kurt Bittel, was brought in to bring some order. Which he did not quite manage to do

The earliest constructions were undertaken at a time when Hittite ruins still lay visible above the surface

The Hittites were a mighty empire for sure but could they rewrite the Laws of Physics?

On top of them there is no trace of a sterile stratum as would have been formed by natural sedimentation

Would it not be better to rewrite the Laws of Archaeology?

more later

.
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Mick Harper
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I trust you all spotted the divine Bettany Hughes fell straight into the gap last night on her Bacchus Uncovered on BBC4. She holds ups a wooden sherd with Linear B Greek writing on it, and which mentions Bacchus, and declaims, "Look, the cult goes back nearly a thousand years." This is because she believes the Linear B Greek alphabet was around in c 1200 BC, then disappeared for six hundred years, and then popped up again as the Classical Greek alphabet we all know and love.

She has to believe this because
1. Mycenaean Greece is dated to 1200 BC because
2. it is coeval with Ramasseid Egypt and
3. Egyptologists date the Ramesseids to 1200 BC and
4. Egyptian chronology is accepted as gospel by everyone.
Thus when the Greeks develop their Classical alphabet from their Linear B Alphabet (a process that took a hundred years, tops) the poor old Greek scholars, eg Bettany Hughes, have to stretch this into six hundred years and can only do so by declaring a Greek Dark Age to account for the complete lack of any evidence -- historical or archaeological -- for this non-existing six hundred years.

What is especially ironic is that before our Betts started studying Classical History it really was 'nearly a thousand years' because in the dark days of the mid-twentieth century, scholars were dating Mycenae to 1450 BC and Classical Greece to 450 BC. Since even these halfwits were uneasy about a thousand year Dark Age separating two obviously related alphabets (when nobody was doing any writing!) there's been a push at either end to narrow the gap. Mycenae is now down to c. 1200 BC and 'the Classical Age' has been pushed up to c 600 BC.

Six hundred years ... we can live with that.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
Six hundred years ... we can live with that.


But not I.
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Mick Harper
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I sense your impatience but I promise you this is relevant to Occamism. The book sets out the academics' reasons for the lack of evidence of anything anywhere 1200 - 600 BC (myriad) as compared to the alternative (one reason -- it didn't exist). In this chapter, the Asia Minor section, it is how they set about trying to separate the Hittites (who officially ended in 1200 BC) with the Phrygians (who started in 800 BC)

Don't Cut That Knot! (continued)

This stratigraphical observation as such does not give a measure of time, but it tends to limit the interval

The idea of something that does not give a measure of time but limits the time all the same could prove very useful. In fact it turned out to be absolutely indispensable because the Hittites had to be there and not there simultaneously. The Hittite Empire of 1400 to 1200 BC had been wished into existence to solve one set of problems but had to disappear into an afterglow during the period 1200 - 800 BC to solve another set of problems. Declaring a Dark Age was perfectly respectable but what you really could not have is the Hittites dealing directly with the much later states about which we know all too much from history proper. In Anatolia, this means the Phrygians. Here is an account of the archaeology found at their capital, the famous Gordion

No archaeological relationship between the Hittites and Phrygians had therefore been envisaged. At Gordion, however, there was no such break. Instead, the two cultures appear to have co-existed for a considerable time

This is bordering on the ridiculous. It is one thing narrowing a four hundred year gap with sterile layers or dark ages or whatnot but for Hittites and Phrygians to actually 'co-exist' is going to need something special. This was the extent of the problem

The topmost contained mainly Phrygian pottery but with 'a large admixture of late Hittite'. The next produced ... ‘pottery about half Hittite, half Phrygian’ ...The third layer ‘produced again about half Hittite and half Phrygian pottery’; the fourth level contained ‘Hittite pottery with a minimal representation of Phrygian’ ... the fifth level and ‘all the ones below were of pre-1250 Hittite’


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Mick Harper
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Don't Cut That Knot! (cont)

To a layman this sounds unarguable but that is to vastly underestimate the powers of archaeology. Here is G. K. Sams, the resident Phrygian expert at the Pennsylvania University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Another possibility is that the controversial levels at Gordion were somehow ‘telescoped’, creating the false impression of an overlap.

Mr Sams got few supporters because there were four distinct levels that would need telescoping. That might solve the immediate problem but it would throw out the whole basis of archaeology. No, there was nothing for it but use the old nudge-nudge technique of laboriously closing the gap, little by little, from both ends. After all, the original thousand year chasm had already been got down to four hundred, surely just one last heave would get history reading properly as one damned thing after another. Kurt Bittel started the ball rolling by easing up Phrygia. Everybody had been proceeding from the assumption, based on historical evidence, that Phrygia was around 800 BC but Kurt decided that a much earlier date could be considered, albeit by circular reasoning

How much earlier the occupation may have been is as yet difficult to determine, but we should emphasize again that the stratigraphic situation does not suggest too long a gap after 1200 BC


more later
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mind the Gap

Midas (/ˈmaɪdəs/; Greek: Μίδας) is the name of at least three members of the royal house of Phrygia.

eh?


The most famous King Midas is popularly remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold. This came to be called the golden touch, or the Midas touch.[1] The Phrygian city Midaeum was presumably named after this Midas, and this is probably also the Midas that according to Pausanias founded Ancyra.[2] According to Aristotle, legend held that Midas died of starvation as a result of his "vain prayer" for the gold touch.[3] The legends told about this Midas and his father Gordias, credited with founding the Phrygian capital city Gordium and tying the Gordian Knot, indicate that they were believed to have lived sometime in the 2nd millennium BC, well before the Trojan War. However, Homer does not mention Midas or Gordias, while instead mentioning two other Phrygian kings, Mygdon and Otreus.


Minds the gap


Another King Midas ruled Phrygia in the late 8th century BC, up until the sacking of Gordium by the Cimmerians, when he is said to have committed suicide. Most historians believe this Midas is the same person as the Mita, called king of the Mushki in Assyrian texts, who warred with Assyria and its Anatolian provinces during the same period.[4]


Mindas the gap


A third Midas is said by Herodotus to have been a member of the royal house of Phrygia and the grandfather of an Adrastus who fled Phrygia after accidentally killing his brother and took asylum in Lydia during the reign of Croesus. Phrygia was by that time a Lydian subject. Herodotus says that Croesus regarded the Phrygian royal house as "friends" but does not mention whether the Phrygian royal house still ruled as (vassal) kings of Phrygia.[5]


Midas the gap
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Mick Harper
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Don't Cut That Knot! (continued)

How much earlier the occupation may have been is as yet difficult to determine, but we should emphasize again that the stratigraphic situation does not suggest too long a gap after 1200 BC

The stratigraphic situation does not suggest anything; it plainly demonstrates there was no gap at all. The British Anatolian expert, James Mellaart, thought it better to start stretching the Hittites down. He begins with what he believes to be historical fact, that the Hittites came to a sticky end around 1250 BC

the capital Hattusa was burnt and deserted [with] the disintegration of the Hittite New Kingdom

Which is too bad for Hattusans but how to explain that Hittites in general are co-existing with Phyrgians? Time for some misdirection. Since Hittites are Bronze Age and Phyrgians are Iron Age all you have to do is change the Bronze Age and the Iron Age

the idea that the Early Iron Age started c 1200 BC must be repudiated as unrealistic. A date of c. 1000 BC plus or minus 50 years seems a fairer estimate for the transition from the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age

This is not as radical as it sounds, just an application of that academic standby for solving intractable paradigm problems: start subdividing. Although it is conceded by everyone there is no evidence whatsoever for the period 1200 BC to 800 BC (that's why it's called the Dark Age) it is possible to discern four entire epochs, Pre-Late Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age, Early Iron Age, Post Early Iron Age. Blimey, how many Ages would they have come up with if there had been any evidence!

ends
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Wile E. Coyote


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What interests Wiley is that our Middle Guardian Fella was in a log coffin resting on purple and gold textiles.

No doubt the gold could be seen to reference the Midas myth but the purple?
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Mick Harper
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An interesting 'careful ignoral' is likely to be present here. Whenever a stupendous find like this happens, nobody ever asks, "And what did you find underneath it?" It's tantamount to, "And what about the first act, Mrs Lincoln?" Since they would find Hittite material and not a 400-year Dark Age, this is highly convenient.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
What interests Wiley is that our Middle Guardian Fella was in a log coffin resting on purple and gold textiles.

No doubt the gold could be seen to reference the Midas myth but the purple?


The answer is Heracles dog and snails.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Just joking.

Hats has already told us the answer......

Mick Harper wrote:
How many snails died?


Apparently as many as 10,000 animals are required to produce 1 gram of the dye.

Nobody really knows exact figures as the actual process was "lost". The orthodox position is that the ancients could not have understood the process chemically, and so by trial and error etc etc passed down the "secret method" within families. The process then gets lost around the Fall of Constantinople 1453. The explanation is that the dyers ‘disappeared’ and they took their secret method with them. There are no factual historical descriptions, the only records of the dyeing process are either incomplete or ambiguous.

It seems that what occured by chance when Heracles' dog ate a few mollusks has proven incredibly difficult for modern science to recreate. In fact they are still unsure now exactly how this was done in times of yore. Huge giant vats around Tyre are proposed with locals keeling over at the stench.

Tragically thousands of modern mollusks have died in vain to produce a historically authentic process. Worse, the whole species is now threatened with rises in sea temperatures....

Such is the power of myth. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_hond_van_Hercules_ontdekt_het_purper

Strangely other alternatives for purple dyes existed.
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Mick Harper
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Strangely other alternatives for purple dyes existed.

Oh, good egg! Pun intended. Let's be having them. This could be a smoking gun -- 'Tyrian purple' is considered the Imperial colour because of the cost of the raw ingredients (Tyrian snails). Now first off, there are always barrel loads of people around who are as rich as emperors and second off, 'sumptuary laws' (making it illegal for others to ape their superiors' appearance) never work. So we are probably looking at a super-secret process i.e. a Megalithic one.
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Hatty
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It could be that snails' shells were crushed to produce lime as part of the dye-making process. This study proposes snail shells be used as a coagulant aid together with alum

Both alum and SS were used, differently, for dye precipitation. The use of alum alone showed no precipitating effect on the AB [aniline blue] dye molecules, whereas SS [snail shells] alone was able to reduce the dye concentration considerably. When the SS was used as a coagulant aid in alum precipitation, the percentage of the AB dye molecule removed increased..... the problem of redispersion and restabilization encountered in alum precipitation could be overcome using an alum–SS combination. The settling characteristics of the sludge obtained from the use of SS alone and an alum–SS combination were studied by measuring the sludge volume index (SVI, mg/g) over time. The value of the SVI showed that the sludge produced from the alum–SS combination had better settling characteristics than the sludge from the use of SS alone.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09593330.2010.509868?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=tent20

There is often a grain of truth in myths.

You had better have a look at the mysterious emperor Caracalla then who
a) was raised to the purple at York

In Spanish caracol = snail (cal = lime). Provençal caragol.
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Mick Harper
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It may not be relevant but if you are collecting snails by the bucketload for their shells, you will be left with bucketloads of snail meat. There must be some reason why the French think this a delicacy and we think it disgusting. But contrariwise if you are collecting snails by the bucketload for meat you will be left with bucketloads of shell and wondering what on earth this irritating by-product might be useful for.

Which brings us to the bucketloads. Now I'm no gardener, didn't have the Latin, but I don't think you can find snails by the bucketload. Certainly not enough bucketloads for a sustainable industry. Which means they were bred. Which brings us back to the Megalithics once more.
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