Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.lsi,comp.parallel.pvm,comp.parallel.mpi,comp.org.acm,comp.org.ieee,comp.protocols.misc,comp.realtime,comp.arch,comp.software-eng,comp.sys.super,comp.theory,comp.dsp,sci.math
From: David Kastrup <dak@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
Subject: Re: Publishing Scholarly Work on the Web -- opinions?
Organization: Institut fuer Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, Germany
Date: 08 Oct 1996 10:17:11 +0200
Message-ID: <m2ohidq394.fsf@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>

handleym@apple.com (Maynard Handley) writes:

> In article <hrd8yvv25u.fsf@branagh.lanl.gov>, John Turner
> <turner@branagh.lanl.gov> wrote:
> 
> > ecale@cray.com (David Ecale) writes:
> > 
> > > (PS.  The only media that I know about that has survived
> > > 1000s of years is stone (the Rosetta Stone is an example) and clay (baked
> > > in the case of Babylonian Cuniform and unbaked in the case of Minoan
> > > Linear B).
> 
> And it's pure luck that we can read these (and Mayan). Other inscribed
> media (most obviously Hittite script) we can't read.
>
> My point is simply to point out that obsessing about your physical medium
> is silly if you don't have the rest of the infra-structure in place to
> understand whet you actually wrote.

Well, reading Minoan Linear B is not quite pure luck: there was never
a Rosetta stone or similar found with it (though the finding of it
was, as the tablets with clay were only temporarily used in the temple
discovered, and wiped afterwards. Only because the temple burnt down
the clay got baked...).  The deciphering was done with lots of work,
finding out that it resembled Greek if you associated certain short
syllables (not especially well suited to Greek, however) with the
glyphs of the script.  It certainly was a grand puzzle game not to be
compared with the finding of the Rosetta stone.  Similar things hold
for Mayan, I believe.  The state of Hethitian I don't know anything
special about, but at least some symbols I have seen in comparisons
with various script types, so I guess that some of it might be
known...

Overall, this does not make the prospect of inscribing for information
endurance too bad...

-- 
David Kastrup     Institut fuer Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum
Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de  Telephon: +49-234-700-5570


