Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 December 28

= December 28 =

Turkey and Xiongnu
I came across this line while reading this page on the official Turkish military website:

The Hun Emperor Mete Khan’s accession to the throne in 209 B.C. is recognized as the foundation of the Army.

Googling Mete Khan got me to this article: Modu Chanyu. Are they actually the same guy?

The Modu Chanyu articles does say "The Turkish Land Forces claims the beginning of his reign in 209 BC as its symbolic founding date" and link back to the page that I started on.

But all the maps on Modu Chanyu and Xiongnu Empire indicate that the empire never extended to Turkey, or anywhere near there. Do the modern Turkish people really trace their lineage back to the Xiongnu? Is there DNA evidence of this?

Turkey doesn't seem to mention anything related to the Xiongnu.731Butai (talk) 04:20, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The answer is long and complicated but, in short, Turkic peoples didn't arrive in Anatolia until around the 11th century AD, most likely having originated somewhere in Central Asia. They brought their languages/culture/religion/etc. but didn't displace the native people. Not long after the Turks became dominant in the region, the Mongols arrived in the 1200s, further enforcing the historical and cultural ties to Central Asia (derivatives of "Genghis" are still popular as names in Turkey today). So, yes, modern Turkish people generally consider themselves to be descendants of the Central Asian peoples, and linguistically and culturally, they are, for the most part. But the Turkic and Mongolian "invasions" brought very little in the way of genetic contributions. The modern Turkish people are much more closely related genetically to people of the Balkans than to Central Asians. See Turkic peoples, Turkish people, Genetic history of the Turkish people, Turkification, Xiongnu, and Timeline of Turkish history and the various references cited in those articles. Also see Metehan, a common modern Turkish name derived from Mete Khan.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 07:42, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * "Mete" is the Turkish spelling of "Modu", and "Khan" is a term that is related to / equivalent to "Chanyu", so "Mete Khan" and "Modu Chanyu" are the same person.
 * You may also be interested to read Göktürks as part of the explanation of why modern Turks feel a connection to the ancient Xiongnu. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:32, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Streets in the desert


Look at 37.4°N, -105.5°W and zoom out with some high-resolution online map (I recommend the Acme Mapper page), whether normal maps, satellite, or USGS topographical maps (or look at the area in the DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteer), and you'll see tons of streets in the desert of the eastern San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. What's the point of all those random streets? Yes, they're all dirt, basically just straight clearings in the brush, but it would still take a good deal amount of effort to clear brush from miles and miles of empty land. Satellite view and USGS topos makes it seem as if these roads are mutually exclusive with circular fields (the result of center pivot irrigation), but there's no immediate way to discern whether they put dirt roads wherever there weren't fields or whether they put fields wherever there weren't dirt roads. Nyttend (talk) 06:13, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Fire roads ? You might think it's desert, so can't burn, but look at the pic and you can see parts are flammable scrubland.  StuRat (talk) 06:25, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * However, lots of these roads are equipped with stop signs and street signs at their intersections (use Google Street View to look north from|37.21611°N, -105.45917°W), and others appear to have been totally abandoned (e.g. east of 37.28333°N, -105.43333°W); I don't see why they'd be good candidates for fire-prevention strips. Nyttend (talk) 07:45, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Looks like something similar to the California City project: buy a large piece of land for cheap, and divide it into smaller pieces, clearly visible and accessible by vehicle, so that you can attract buyers more easily than if it looks just like unmanaged desert. The guy who went ahead with California City made a profit, even though the City population is only 1 percent of the the originally planned size. --Lgriot (talk) 15:53, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

New York Supreme Court - records from late 1700s, early 1800s
Are there any online databases of court records for the New York Supreme Court? In particular, I'm looking for details on a judgment from 1802 (for which a writ was issued). I can't seem to find anything. Thank you for any help. DQHoward (talk) 09:54, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Supreme Court for which county? Remember that the New York Supreme Court is not the highest court of appeal; that's the New York Court of Appeals today, and I get the impression that its current functions were in 1802 divided between two separate bodies, the New York Court of Chancery and the New York Court for the Correction of Errors.  Also, have you tried looking on Google Books?  Court judgements in most US jurisdictions are published in books, many of which are on Google Books; I just found an Ohio court judgement by accident a few days ago.  Finally, you might do well to search WorldCat; it won't have the text, but it provides book titles together with lists of holding libraries, and by entering your location, you'll be able to discover which libraries that own copies of a book are closest to you.  For example, a quick search for  found Indexed digest of the New York Supreme Court and Court of Errors and Appeals reports, which might be useful for you; presumably it won't include the judgement itself, but it may well tell you where to look.  You can look through it at Google Books, for example.  Nyttend (talk) 13:58, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * You asked for online resources, so you can try Westlaw and LexisNexis (and similar). As a general rule, those are paid subscriptions.  But I believe that they both also contain some free content.  Of course, you could also visit the New York State Law Library.  I assume they also have materials online, but I doubt it goes back to 1802.  Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:30, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Common Entrance Examination language requirements
From Common Entrance Examination:

At 13+, Common Entrance consists of examinations in Mathematics (three papers: a (listening) mental mathematics paper, plus written non-calculator and calculator) English (two papers), Latin, Classical Greek, Geography, History, Religious Studies, plus either Physics, Chemistry and Biology OR Science.

Is it a choice between Latin and Classical Greek or are 'both' tested? Learning both ~13 seems a little over the top.731Butai (talk) 13:07, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * If you read our article more carefully, it says:
 * "Most senior schools expect candidates to offer Mathematics, English, Science, Geography, History, Religious Studies and one or two languages, but pupils from schools which do not offer the traditional range of subjects or weaker pupils can offer a reduced number of papers"


 * Having said that, our article seems to be very confusingly worded. implies only English, Mathematics and Science are mandatory. The other papers depend either on the school or the student I presume with consideration of what the school they're planning to apply to requires. I can't say that learning 3 languages by 13 including your native language is really "over the top" although the choice of Latin and Classical Greek (in addition to English) may not necessarily be the best choices. For those's who's native language isn't English, that will mean 4 languages which may be a little hard, but still not exactly uncommon. Nil Einne (talk) 13:52, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * From the commas, I'd say "both". I'd read it as "the seven subjects Mathematics, English, Latin, Classical Greek, Geography, History, and Religious Studies, plus either the three subjects Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, OR the one subject Science". In my day at GCE O Level (1972-74) we did nine subjects, with Physics, Chemistry and Biology taught as three separate subjects (and at O Level we took an additional Human Biology paper which we didn't study for but just adopted what we learned from general Biology and basically got a free O Level!). My comprehensive school never offered Greek, though I did do two years of Latin before dropping it when specialising for GCE's. I'm surprised the CE doesn't have any modern language requirements - I managed to study French for 5 years and got a grade 3 (on a 6-point pass scale, so basically a B in today's system) at O Level, and it wasn't until the first time I went to Paris that I realised that in all that time they'd never actually taught the names of all the letters of the alphabet, so I couldn't spell my own name... -- Arwel Parry (talk) 13:57, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It was after that experience that I came up with "Les français ne parlent pas 'O Level French', et les québécois even less so..." -- Arwel Parry (talk) 14:12, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * In case there's some confusion, the common entrance exam is sat for (and therefore studied for) admission to the low years of secondary school i.e. before the student even begins to properly study for the O-level, or the modern equivalent. BTW, the CE does have modern languages, the OP simply didn't copy that part. Nil Einne (talk) 06:49, 30 December 2015 (UTC)