Did The Dark Ages Exist? (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

Or you could have his baby.

[aurelius]

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Ishmael]

Very interesting video from a guy who should probably be part of our gang. He's got some odd ideas but he also regularly strikes gold. About the same as any of us, really.

I'm posting the following video because, though he doesn't know it, he's uncovered evidence that the coins of 300AD were actually minted in the 13th Century. A perfect match with Fomenko's 1000 years of phony history. Also interesting; He forges the same link I do between the Romans and the Normans.

OOPS! "Tower of London" REALLY built in 300 AD

What's very odd is that this guy has managed to escape knowledge of Fomenko's work. He;s exactly the sort of guy one would expect to have come across this stuff.

[N R Scott]

Interesting video!

[Mick Harper]

I found him a bit all over the place and his evidence miles too far-fetched. I mean .... hey, look, people's faces on two continents staring down at you. Proves there was contact. His use of maps was, shall we say, creative. I liked the Romanesque stuff though. I'd invite him to join us but I can't find an email address. Anyone who can, should.

[N R Scott]

I've been reading a book about the history of maths and I was once again struck by how odd roman numerals are. I don't know if I'm going over old ground here, but to me it would make more sense if roman numerals came about after the invention of the printing press.

Printers would have the alphabet at their disposal to publish the written word. However, occasionally they would have to render numbers in print. Rather than go to the trouble of producing extra printing blocks for a few numbers, or spelling out the entire number in words, they simply used a system of shorthand using the printing blocks already at their disposal.

I, V and X were probably just a variation on the normal shorthand system we all use for tallying numbers - drawing four straight lines then drawing a line straight through the four to symbolise five. The X is just two crosses symbolising ten.

C and M, like everyone already agrees, were just the first letters for centum and mille. (Not sure about L and D, but they probably came a little later to render the numbers in between more easily. Maybe they just chose letters sufficiently different to the ones already in use).

[Mick Harper]

I've often wondered why the Romans used such a clumsy system. Weren't there be better ones around thy could have nicked? What did everyone else use?

[N R Scott]

[N R Scott]

[N R Scott]

The Greeks also had a similar number system to the Romans - though it seems a little more sophisticated. The first 9 letters of the alphabet represented the nine digits (alpha, beta, gamma, etc), then the next 9 letters represented the tens (10, 20, 30, etc), then the hundreds and so on. These are called Greek numerals.

However they also had Attic numerals. Which were very similar to Roman numerals. With symbols for 1, 5, 10, 100 and 1000. The symbol for each was the first letter of the word of the number (just as M in Roman numerals is the first letter of mille).

[Hatty]

Roman numerals are clearly no good for arithmetic but they are well suited for writing being less likely to get confused with letters (X wasn't in the alphabet anyway)

Roman numerals are presumably just for writing purposes, not for counting or for speech at all.

[Mick Harper]

Good point. How did a Roman say, say, twenty?

[Hatty]

Venti.

[Ishmael]

Been bin-watching the Versaille miniseries with my wife.

As some of you may recall, I have long been suspicious of the French "Sun King", Louise XIV---that he may be in fact yet another duplicate of the Henry VIII figure. In fact, the program has revealed dozens of details already that closely match with the Henry VIII template---including a harlot mistress and a pious and unjustly set-aside, foreign queen (unfortunately, we made the mistake of watching the second season of the program first, so I've not yet got a big picture impression of everything that's going on).

Having been struck by these and other similarities I gave some thought to the central premise of the program: That the Palace of Versaille was built to be the envy of the world, in terms of beauty and architecture. The problem is that the actual Palace is anything but inspiring. It's basically a gilded apartment block---public housing with a garden pool. Hardly the world's most beautiful palace.

Considering the problem, I turned to my wife and posed this question; "Assuming the 'Sun King' wasn't Louise XIV, but assuming that the real 'Sun King' did indeed build the most beautiful palace in all the world; what building actually fits that description?"

Before I finished asking the question, the answer had already appeared in my mind. It was precisely the same answer that my wife gave.

What answer is that?