Travels in Spain; In Archaeology: Ancient Peruvian Sports & Babylonian Trigonometry

From my Fantasy Writing Desk

I wasn’t actually at my desk for a couple weeks. My husband and I took a traveling vacation in Spain. We did explore some intriguing archaeology and museum collections, but this wasn’t a research trip. Before leaving, I sent off the next Tesha manuscript to editorial readers–a manuscript in which the mythic beasts, griffins, appear. And what did I see everywhere in Spain? Griffins. I can’t say as I’ve ever noticed them with nearly this regularity before. Hmmm… Is the universe telling me something?

A selection of photos from the trip.

Mythical Beasts

Griffins and other mythic creatures cropped up in modern art, Romanesque and Gothic. I had fun finding them.

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And spectacular buildings, some only in ruins

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Archaeology I enjoyed

An Ancient Sport or Ritual Restored

“It isn’t as though this was everything the Moche did, but when they are portrayed, it’s sex, drugs, and violence.” So a key archaeologist, Christopher Donnan, sums things up about the Moche. However, he wanted to show a less wild side to this culture, perhaps an odd concern for an archaeologist. Donnan, who had studied this Peruvian people for a long time, was feeling disheartened by their growing tough reputation.

What else did these people do between AD 200 and 850? While this culture practiced human sacrifice and used hallucinogenic drugs (along with some intensive irrigation agriculture), it was the athletic competition (or maybe ritual) depicted on their pottery that grabbed Donnan’s attention.

Dubbed “ceremonial badminton,” the activity didn’t seem physically possible to him. However, with some help from experimental archaeology and some atlatl (spear thrower) enthusiasts, this ancient sport is now a favorite, dubbed Moche Toss.

This is a fun article in Archaeology about the reconstruction of this activity and about the Moche in general. Personally, I find the violence and hallucinogens rather intriguing from this far distance, not that I’d want to participate. But to write about it, now there’s something fun. Click here for Archaeology “Bringing Back Moche Badminton”

Bumping the Greeks from Mathematical Glory

A new study of a 3,700-year-old clay tablet indicates that the Babylonians developed trigonometry 1,500 years before the Greeks and were using a sophisticated method of mathematics which could change how we calculate today. Scholars had attributed trigonometry to the Greek Hipparchus 1,000 years after this tablet. Move over Greeks, fit a Babylonian into the honored spot, I guess.

The American archaeologist and diplomat Edgar Banks discovered the tablet, known as Plimpton 332, in the early 1900s in Southern Iraq. Banks was the inspiration for Indiana Jones. Now there’s some fluffy romance in the archaeology.

Having a non-mathematical mind, I will leave it to those interested to read the article and understand how the Babylonian approach differs from our current understanding. Any summary I generated would be more likely to cause laughter than illumination.

Two interesting conclusions from the researcher who studied the tablet:

 “It opens up new possibilities not just for modern mathematics research, but also for mathematics education. With Plimpton 322 we see a simpler, more accurate trigonometry that has clear advantages over our own.

“A treasure-trove of Babylonian tablets exists, but only a fraction of them have been studied yet. The mathematical world is only waking up to the fact that this ancient but very sophisticated mathematical culture has much to teach us.”

Click here for The Telegraph “3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet rewrites the history of maths – and shows the Greeks did not develop trigonometry”