Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 September 27

= September 27 =

How do people know how old a civilization is?
One common saying is that the Chinese civilization has 5000 years of history. When one examines further, one finds that this is based on what the Chinese interprets as history, even if those figures are kind of historical and legendary (sort of like Beowulf or King Arthur). That said, what do people say of the Jewish civilization? Jews track their beginnings 5000+ years back, because that's when their calendar starts. So, does that mean the Jews have been around for 5000+ years or when Jacob begat Isaac? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:45, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * The 5,777 year thing is from Adam and Eve. Well a week before. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:22, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Look at a tombstone. If the tombstone says "died 350 BC" then you know the civilisation exists at 350 BC. 110.22.20.252 (talk) 06:46, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * If the inscription says "died 350 BC" then you know it's a forgery. 81.147.143.77 (talk) 08:25, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... Good theory, but when they were carving their gravestone, would they be likely to know that Jesus Christ would be born 350 years in the future? (The BC/AD system is traditionally ascribed to the Venerable Bede in the 8th century.) Actually it's a lot more difficult than that. Our article, Chronology discusses some of the variables; the exact sequence of Egyptian chronology has reached a kind of consensus, but nobody is really sure. As to how you define when a civilisation started, see our Civilization article. Alansplodge (talk) 09:01, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * 50.4.236.254 -- the Shang dynasty is the first one that had writing, and (according to our article) "the earliest dynasty of traditional Chinese history supported by archaeological evidence", so based on that, the length of Chinese civilization in meaningful terms would probably be closer to 3,500 years than 5,000.
 * As for Jewish civilization, Israelites are not too visible in the archeological record until the rise of the Four room house around 1000 B.C. (though the Merneptah Stele mentions "Israel" as a probably nomadic group two centuries earlier). Again, the Israelites did not likely have any significant use of writing for record-keeping purposes until 1000 B.C. or slightly later, so based on that, Jewish civilization would be roughly 3,000 years old... AnonMoos (talk) 09:43, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Ship of Theseus might be relevant here talking about civilizations lasting a long time. I've no desire for instance to hang my enemies heads inside my house. Dmcq (talk) 11:05, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * They're usually dated several ways, which vary somewhat. Then we try to reconcile these. Bishop Ussher dated the whole Earth to 6,000 years, using a Biblical technique that's not regarded as reliable.
 * Nowadays we have technology, so we use combinations of radiocarbon dating (good for organic material, such as bone and wood) or thermoluminescence dating for pottery. Pottery making is one of the first skills that most civilisations develop, so these techniques can often be applied and may provide a cross-check on each other.
 * Archaeologists also use stratigraphic techniques, similar to geologists. Where sediments are deposited, the oldest are the ones on the bottoms. Deposits in adjacent layers are of similar age. Potsherds are very important: they're widely found in sediments, they last well, they may have distinctive styles of decoration and they can be thermoluminescence dated. If one culture changes its style of decoration for pot making, then seeing a similar change of style on another site indicates that they may be of similar date. If we can date one, then we date the other.
 * Historical events may also be used to cross-connect civilisations, even across the globe. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, eclipses and comets have all been used for this - particular with civilisations which developed an astronomically-inclined priesthood which kept good records. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:43, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * There is a theory that the later-recorded history of the Xia Dynasty repeats entirely from duplication and reassembling of Shang history. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:12, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * See also Phantom time hypothesis Andy Dingley (talk) 21:55, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The creation sequence was: Day 1 (Sunday) - light; Day 2 (Monday) - firmament; Day 3 (Tuesday) - the earth; Day 4 (Wednesday) - sun, moon and stars; Day 5 (Thursday) - life; Day 6 (Friday) - Adam and Eve.  New Year's Day is the date of creation of mankind - Friday - but this is the start of year 2 as creation was already in progress.   The start of year 1 was worked out by linking the time when Adam was ordered not to eat from the Tree of Life (2 P.M. Friday) with the time it takes the new moon to become visible (six hours).   The new moon was therefore set at 8 A.M. Friday and the start of the calendar twelve months before - specifically at 11:11 1/3 P.M. on Sunday, 7 October 3761 BC. 146.198.102.66 (talk) 16:24, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Chronological dating has the answers to the title question. Of all the various techniques, dendrochronology may be of particular appeal to the lay person as it has a common-sense appeal. The related article at Timeline of dendrochronology timestamp events has some interesting stuff as well. Matt Deres (talk) 21:49, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

lunatics
Court of Chancery says: "The Chancery had jurisdiction over all matters of equity, including trusts, land law, the administration of the estates of lunatics and the guardianship of infants."

Is the "lunatics" part the result of a vandalized WP article? Or is "estates of lunatics" an actual term of art in equity law? Mũeller (talk) 11:36, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * No. See further down. Court_of_Chancery 196.213.35.146 (talk) 12:04, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * May I suggest that when answering questions of the form "Is it this or is it that?", starting with "No" is apt to be confusing? --69.159.60.147 (talk) 19:34, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Doesn't look like vandalism (although the reference isn't accessible). I don't think "estates of lunatics" an term of art, but Lunatic used to be the standard and perfectly acceptable term in law and medicine for a person of unsound mind mentally ill person.  Iapetus (talk) 12:17, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * See Insanity in English law: 'The early law [of England] used various words, including "idiot", "fool" and "sot" to refer to those who had been insane since birth, and "lunatic" for those who had later become insane, or were insane with some lucid intervals'. Alansplodge (talk) 12:47, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * That article is about a historic court, which ceased to operate in 1875. The term lunatic remained the standard term in English law until 1930, when it was replaced by "person of unsound mind" (mainly because it was recognised that the moon had nothing to do with it). Wymspen (talk) 14:54, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * The Chancery Lunatics Property Act 1828 (9 Geo. IV c.68) mentions "the sale of mortgages of estates of persons found lunatics by inquisition".  There were further Chancery Lunatics Acts in 1833 (3&4 Will. IV c.36), 1842 (5&6 Vict. c.84), 1853 (16&17 Vict. c.70) and 1862 (25&26 Vict. c.86).   These were consolidated in the Lunacy Act 1890 which remained in force until it was replaced by the Mental Health Act 1959. 146.198.102.66 (talk) 15:14, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * According to this 2001 BBC article or this 2015 newspaper article, you are still not allowed to vote if you are an idiot or a lunatic. However, my brief search for the actual legislation found the Representation of the People Act 1983 which says that "detained and informal psychiatric in-patients are entitled to vote. However, under s3A Representation of the People Act 1983, certain offenders detained in mental hospitals are disenfranchised, so perhaps those articles have not caught up with the current law. Alansplodge (talk) 17:03, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I think that from roughly 1928 to 1963 there was a quasi-standard phrase used in British newspapers to describe those ineligible to vote in parliamentary elections -- something like "lords, lunatics, and felons" (though maybe in a different order, and possibly using synonyms instead of those exact three words). I'm not having much luck finding it in Google... AnonMoos (talk) 17:52, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Apparently Paul Nuttall of UKIP used the phrase on BBC Question Time in 2012. It seems to be party policy never to miss an opportunity to offend somebody.  Alansplodge (talk) 17:05, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, "peers, felons, and lunatics" does get some hits. It was basically true at one time... AnonMoos (talk) 22:06, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

2 Questions on global statistics
1. What percent of the world lives without a roof over their head and barley any food? 2. What percent of the world would not know what a cell phone is? Kinda like the situation in the old movie The_Gods_Must_Be_Crazy. 184.71.183.70 (talk) 19:52, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

According to the most recent estimates, in 2013, 10.7 percent of the world's population lived on less than US$1.90 a day, compared to 12.4 percent in 2012. That's down from 35 percent in 1990. Nearly 1.1 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty since 1990. :140.254.70.33 (talk) 21:06, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Tackling your other questions:
 * No roof: List of countries by homeless population says about 100 million people worldwide.
 * No phone: If you really want people who haven't heard of phones, you'll need to explore Uncontacted peoples. Not surprisingly, their numbers are not known, but it is almost certainly just a fraction of a per cent of the total world populationi.
 * For just people who don't have mobiles, start with List of countries by number of mobile phones in use and scroll to its source, them compare against population figures. Looks like the countries with the lowest percentage of mobile use (in 2011 per the source were) Myanmar, North Korea, American Samoa, Somalia and Eritrea, all with approx. less than one mobile subscription per 20 people. 70.67.222.124 (talk) 22:44, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * 184.71.183.70 -- a number of developing countries have gone straight to widespread cellphone use without ever going through a phase of wide landline phone use, due to the corrupt and inefficient nature of old-style "PTT" monopolies in those countries... AnonMoos (talk) 02:05, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Skipping the middle man and going straight to wireless monopolies. Progress! ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:16, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * For those who are wondering, "PTT" is a reference to "posts, telegraphs and telephones" (or telecommunications). 92.8.220.234 (talk) 12:57, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * That is, to postal, telegraph and telephone service agencies. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 19:35, 28 September 2017 (UTC)


 * To answer the OP's questions visually, try Gapminder. Created by the late great Hans Rosling, the Gapminder Foundation aims to increase understanding by "Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact-based worldview". Based on UN data, their "Wealth and health of nations" chart suggests that only a tiny proportion of the world is living on less than $1000 / year. NB they use ICP, which means "a worldwide statistical partnership to collect comparative price data and compile detailed expenditure values of countries' gross domestic products (GDP), and to estimate purchasing power parities (PPPs) of the world's economies". In other words, a dollar is not always a dollar. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 16:32, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Are there countries where Colin Kaepernick is white?
With all the news about Colin Kaepernick I was surprised to notice that (as our article confirms) he was the child of a white woman, raised by a white adoptive couple. If you had the same situation with a Jewish mother and adoptive parents, as I understand it the baby would be unequivocally Jewish. Now I understand that the apparent recessive nature of the "white race" is an example of hypodescent. I feel as if the "octoroon" standard, though not law in the U.S. in a very long time, seems unrepealable and unalterable. But is it? Are there countries where hypodescent never developed or no longer applies and Kaepernick would be regarded as a white man, or at least equally of either race? Wnt (talk) 23:58, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Your question is maybe not very directly answerable in that form, but there has been a traditional contrast between the United States and Brazil etc. -- in the United States, the "One-drop rule" was generally applied, while in Brazil (and some other societies) there was a whole range of gradations based on skin-color and appearance, so that a simplistic binary categorization between "black" and "white" was lacking. That doesn't mean that the people at the bottom of the hierarchy in Brazil were better off than people at the bottom in the U.S., though... AnonMoos (talk) 02:14, 28 September 2017 (UTC)


 * The opposite of hypodescent is Hyperdescent. This was that standard in Australia - and resulted in white children of Aboriginal parents being forcibly adopted, because is was deemed inappropriate for white children to grow up in Aboriginal communities.  Going further back in time (Ancient/Classical, and possibly Medieval) hypo hyperdescent seems to have been the standard way of thinking about race, which was usually defined in terms of descent from a famous ancestor or clan (e.g. the Scots and Irish tracing their descent to a Greek or Scythian prince and an Egyptian princess and their followers). Iapetus (talk) 09:06, 28 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Do you mean "hyperdescent" about the famous ancestors? Also, are you saying Kaepernick would be viewed as white in Australia?  (Indeed, they had a race-specific immigration policy until fairly late -- would he have passed that?) Wnt (talk) 10:31, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did mean hyper. Corrected now.  I don't know how Australia would consider Kaepernick specifically, then or now, just that thay have thought about things in the opposite way to how Americans did/do.  (Although not consistently - I read an accounts of all sorts of "Catch-22" type nonsense regarding racial classification of mixed-race people, e.g. (back during WW2) someone being refused permission to leave his reservation on account of being Aborigine, then (after sneaking out to try to enlist in the army) being refused permission to return on account of him being not being an Aborigine). Iapetus (talk) 16:13, 30 September 2017 (UTC)


 * He's black in Canada, because he looks like he does. Same rule generally applies to whites. Doesn't matter like it does in America, but if he finds his white adoptive parents were raised by Métis descended from Scots brought up by untitled Black Nova Scotians, he could still be a controversial regional figure. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:16, 28 September 2017 (UTC)


 * In South Africa, he would not be considered to be black or white. The apartheid government recognized four official racial categories: black, coloured, white and Asian/Indian, and in the case of whites, made a distinctions between English and Afrikaners. SA has officially abandoned the old categories, but they are still in common use. There is a very interesting paper related to this subject at [ at http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_nbn_fi_uef-20141453/urn_nbn_fi_uef-20141453.pdf ]. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:47, 28 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, I got a claim that there was "malware" in that pdf... I haven't accessed it as of yet. Wnt (talk) 10:31, 29 September 2017 (UTC)


 * WHAAOE: Coloureds, the official racial category of apartheid South Africa. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 12:34, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Not 100% sure the label 'Coloured' would be applied in contemporary SA for people not from SA. 'Coloured' in SA isn't just a racial category, it also denotes a community with shared language, history and culture. --Soman (talk) 08:27, 30 September 2017 (UTC)


 * The answer is, quite likely, no, because the very concept of race is an invention by the white power structure to maintain their own power over those they have labeled "inferior", either explicitly or implicitly. That's why the one drop rule exists; to be white is to essentially be "raceless", and the existence of other races in one's genetic background makes one "tainted".  Race is a way of measuring purity, and under no modern society is race defined as anything except in opposition to pure whiteness; there are other racial frameworks that societies use outside of America's "White-Black-Brown-Yellow-Red" one, but they all pretty much work the same way; as a way to rank people by degrees from whiteness.  -- Jayron 32 16:39, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, that's the cynical view. At a more practical and objective level, the obvious visual difference between Caucasians, Africans, Asians, Polynesians etc is used by police forces as the primary identifying criterion when describing people they want to "assist them with their enquiries".  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:51, 29 September 2017 (UTC)