Unit Two Report

In our Ancient World Unit the section cave drawings really caught my attention. The fact that thousands of years ago people had no written language and used carvings as a way to communicate amazes me. Even better, these drawings are available to anyone on the Internet via digital images. It’s funny that one of the main arguments I’ve heard on moving from paper to digital means of communication is that it will always be preserved. To think that the messages of 4000 years ago have been preserved on cave walls, fossils, and khipu is incredible. Look at the picture below, how incredible is that? And I thought hand drawings were just for kindergarten. :)

It’s true that paper does yellow and ink fades, but is digital information really going stand the test of time? Servers, after all, don’t last forever and information does get lost. What will our next method of communicating information become? Will we all have touch screens for walls and be able to access anything, at any time?

Also, I think that in a lot of the aboriginal drawings people were trying to communicate the necessities: where to find food and where not to find danger. How do we communicate this type of information today? My guess would be mostly on mobile phones. If I need bread from the grocery store, I call my fiancée and ask him to pick it up; likewise, if I see a really bad accident I will call him and tell him to take a different route home. And it seems to be increasingly important to transmit this type of information quickly. Look at text messaging – it appears to be the new ‘it’ technology. Apparently, teenagers are text messaging each other instead of calling each other – or they can log onto AIM via their cell phones (this, I admit, is just not for me). That was a bit of a tangent, but my point is that looking at the aboriginal drawings made me wonder what people one hundred years from now will think about our ways of transmitting information.

Now, more about the Cave of Chauvet and the Australian discovery – the information on the two caves was distributed in tremendously different ways. At first glance, you seem to think that the Cave of Chauvet is the better site – fancy pictures, a map, etc. However, one big thing I noticed was that I had no “real” information. I wanted historical context! I want to know as much information as possible about the people who created those drawings. Even though the Australian findings were not posted in such a visually appealing fashion, they give you one very important thing – background information! Maybe I am too much of a history geek but I want more than just nice pictures – give me a context! However, the people doing the PR for the Australian cave could learn from the Cave of Chauvet’s website – if you had a nice website with great drawings and helpful information things would be perfect!

The other topic that peaked my interest this unit were the theories around the khipu. While I disagree with Dr. Urton’s theory of three dimensional binary code, I do believe that khipu could represent something other than numbers. Although Urton’s binary code may be in the same direction I’m thinking of; binary works in either on or off positions, so perhaps the knots could represent boolean values. This seems simple enough to make sense. Either way – numbers or letters – the khipu represent information. Although I still can’t imagine the Incas taking the time to invent a way of recording numbers and not language, it is interesting to think about what the cryptic knots mean.

Finally, I would like to discuss the calendaring and time keeping systems. Stonehenge is incredible – PBS’s video was quite informative and watching their diagram change over time made me wonder what it was that attracted so many people to this same spot. Even today, Stonehenge attracts people from all over the world. Thinking of how people’s needs changed over the years is astounding – some needed burial grounds, some altars, some a place to rest.

Note: Some of my discussions are repeated in previous postings – I combined them all here into one fluid document. The postings below contain some information differing from the information presented here; however, the general ideas are the same. I used the postings below to think my way through each section of the lecture.