[HN Gopher] Independent researcher claims to find writing in pre...
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       Independent researcher claims to find writing in prehistoric cave
       paintings
        
       Author : JoshTriplett
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2023-01-06 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
        
       | bell-cot wrote:
       | A kinda interesting - but _massively_ over-hyped -  "discovery"
       | about a long-known feature of prehistoric European cave
       | paintings.
        
         | jjtheblunt wrote:
         | because Vice essentially sells eyeball-attention?
        
         | dang wrote:
         | We've replaced the title with something less linkbaity, in
         | keeping with the HN guidelines (" _Please use the original
         | title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't
         | editorialize._" -
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
         | 
         | Maybe there's some interesting stuff to discuss here? Hopefully
         | we can focus on the content now.
        
       | ghostly_s wrote:
       | I fail to see how counting months rather than kills makes this
       | writing and not simply counting.
        
         | ggm wrote:
         | A sequence is not the same as a sum. Counting is not the same
         | as denoting a sequence in a set.
         | 
         | A sequence implies communicating at least two and probably more
         | concepts. Counting at best communicates two things, the amount
         | and the aggregate type. A sequence communicates an order and
         | the ordinal instances present and the type classifier and
         | arguably the terminals of the sequence (both its length and
         | denoted start and end or re-start) and for a cyclical sequence
         | the fact it is a cycle.
         | 
         | Counting is not the same as marking "which"
         | 
         | These are quite complex abstractions. They go to order in time
         | and "best" months to hunt in.
         | 
         | It's language.
        
       | pelasaco wrote:
       | "In short, if the new hypothesis is accurate, it shows that our
       | Paleolithic ancestors "were almost certainly as cognitively
       | advanced as we are" and "that they are fully modern humans,"
       | Bacon told Motherboard. It also means "that their society
       | achieved great art, use of numbers, and writing" and "that
       | reading more of their writing system may allow us to gain an
       | insight into their beliefs and cultural values," he concluded."
       | 
       | It remembers me the first chapter from "The Everlasting Man",
       | Chesterton:
       | https://www.worldinvisible.com/library/chesterton/everlastin...
       | 
       | "In fact, people have been interested in everything about the
       | cave-man except what he did in the cave. Now there does happen to
       | be some real evidence of what be did in the cave. It is little
       | enough, like all the prehistoric evidence, but it is concerned
       | with the real cave-man and his cave and not the literary cave-man
       | and his club."
       | 
       | I remember first time that I read it, I thought "and if the cave
       | was just their kindergarden, where the cave-kids just spent their
       | time drawing in the cave-wall"
        
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       (page generated 2023-01-06 23:00 UTC)