More photos of the Third Palace, Knossos, Late Minoan III (ca. 1450 BCE), general views from the net

More photos of the Third Palace, Knossos, Late Minoan III (ca. 1450 BCE), general views from the net:

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versus photos of ancient Chinese architecture:

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Third Palace, Knossos, Late Minoan III (ca. 1450 BCE), general views from the net

Third Palace, Knossos, Late Minoan III (ca. 1450 BCE), general views from the net:

In this post and the next two, you can see several illustrations and paintings of the ancient palace and city of Knossos in its full glory in the Late Minoan III period (ca. 1450 BCE).

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Notice in this beautiful painting of ancient Knossos (population ca. 55,000, a huge city for the ancient world) the arches beneath the causeway leading to the city. And we thought arches were a Roman invention!

What is so remarkable about Middle and Late Minoan architecture is that it looks so modern, even to us in the twenty-first century. The architecture is simple and streamlined, no extravagant frills. This sets Knossos in stark contrast to practically every other ancient civilization, except Classical Athenian (the acropolis and Parthenon, ca. 430-400 BCE). Almost all other ancient civilizations went in for the extravagant and the excessive, much like Baroque architecture in the seventeenth century AD, all of which I cannot abide. In order to set the stark contrast between Minoan and Mycenaean architecture and that of Persepolis and ancient China, for instance, I am also including photos from the latter civilizations. The architecture of Persepolis is particularly gaudy and distasteful to me.

Persepolis:

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Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication 2: Relevant Photography and Images

Here we see some photographs and images relevant to our translation of Richard Saint-Gelais' brilliant article,Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication 2 research... and some not so relevant! First off, we have here a chart illustrating thee extreme geometric simplicity or more to the point, the Geometric Economy of Mycenaean Greek, which may indeed make it susceptible or even suitable to extraterrestrial communication with other intelligent beings, if we accept the “fact” that we ourselves are “intelligent”... a point which is open to serious debate!

The Geometric Economy of Mycenaean Linear B:

Moreover, Linear B's closest cousin, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, which followed closely on the heels of Linear B, once it fell out of use with the fall of Mycenae ca. 1200 BCE, and which lasted continually from ca. 1100-400 BCE (!), is just as remarkable for its Geometric Economy as Linear B, and could equally serve the same capacity as a vehicle for extraterrestrial communication.

The Geometric Economy of Arcado-Cypriot Linear C:

On the other hand, nothing could be more ridiculous than the Voyager 1 satellite, launched on Sept. 5 1977, and now hurtling God knows where just outside the confines of our Solar System. Apart from the fact that a mechanical contraption such as this would (and will!) take hundreds of thousands of years to get anywhere at all, what is the point? Moreover, the premises upon which its means of communication with so-called extraterrestrials are based are so absurdly unsound as to beg credence. For instance, what extraterrestrial beings in their right minds (assuming they have minds like us) could conceivably recognize those ridiculous images of a naked man and woman?... unless they were even remotely similar to us physiologically... a likelihood that is about as realistic as winning a lottery of a trillion dollars. And that is just scratching the surface, as we shall discover to our great amusement when I eventually publish my article on Prof. Saint-Gelais' own research. There follow here a few images relative to the Voyager 1 probe which are liable to make you LOL.

The beginning of my translation of, Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication 2, by Richard Saint-Gelais, Université Laval, Québec, Québec

The beginning of my translation of, Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication 2, by Richard Saint-Gelais, Université Laval, Québec, Québec  

Before I get to the beginning of my translation of Richard Saint-Gelais' astonishing article on the practical and theoretical application of Mycenaean Linear B (I kid you not!) to interstellar communication between ourselves and other intelligent extraterrestrial beings, allow me to point out that the notion is not so far-fetched as it might seem at first sight. Certainly, it is not in the same “category” as Ufology or Ufologists chasing kooky dreams in “Area 51”. In fact, NASA itself sponsored this brilliant and insightful investigation which Prof. Sain-Gelais recently undertook under the auspices of NASA.

So this is serious business.. . which is why I am translating it in the first place. But I intend to take the project even further than that. Not only am I translating Prof. Saint-Gelais' in depth study, but I intend to follow my translation and his subsequent original text in French with a lengthy commentary on the feasibility of such interstellar communication, however remote. And remote it is. It is likely that I will need at least another month even to effect the translation, let alone to write the article, which I shall eventually be posting on my academia.edu account. Hopefully, I can then submit it to a scientific journal such as Science

Science

or Astronomy 



Only time will tell. But I am quite sure some scientific publication will certainly be interested in this highly original research I have to offer. 

My translation: introduction:

Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication 2

Chapter 5: Semiotic Outlook on SETI

As everyone knows, communication is a sensitive human venture. So there are reasons to doubt that this would be an easy thing to carry off across the universe. In this essay, I shall endeavour to explain a set of theoretical problems which might beset communication between us and extraterrestrial intelligent beings. I shall also attempt to map out the primary difficulties which we may encounter when we come face to face with the phenomenon (or to be more precise the hypothesis) underlying communication, by all appearances, with beings so profoundly unlike ourselves. Such difficulties are often articulated in epistemological terms or of sensorial incompatibility between interstellar beings belonging to such dissimilar species and cultural milieus communicating with one another that that grounds for mutual understanding proper to such communication will very likely be extremely weak. We are not even aware whether or not extraterrestrial beings are likely to perceive and conceive of their own reality in any way similar to the way we do, or if they are subject to the same sorts of cognitive categories as ours, or even if they are able to communicate by sight or sound.



Right off the top, I have to say that my position runs along the lines of epistemological skepticism as I have just outlined it. Still, my point of view differs somewhat, without however being incompatible with the epistemological approach. I intend to apply semiotic theories and methodologies to the problem of interstellar communication, all the while placing an emphasis on signs, language, meaning and interpretation. An easy but simplistic approach to the conception of such communication as this can be defined in terms of synchronization of a message received with its prior transmission, with message decoding at target pursuant to its coding at source, in the sense of meaning conveyed through the medium of the message itself considered as vehicle for its own context (Marshall McLuhan, The medium is the message). Still, understanding a message does not necessarily mean extracting something actually present in its own signs. On the contrary, it is implied that such signs can effectively integrated in an interpretational framework allowing the being targeted to confer meaning on them, in the sense that he or she can profit from elaborating on them, rather than extracting them from the source. For instance, let's take the example of a very basic repetitive sign consisting of two equilateral triangles with their bases flush, all the while pointing in opposite directions, one to the left and the other to the right. Occasionally, these two triangles are separated by a vertical line. A experiments re-writing “this” sign on a blackboard conducted with first year students have repeatedly shown me, they are met with looks of astonishment until I can provide them with a hint along the lines of, “Suppose that this is something you have spotted in an elevator”, by furnishing them with a context for interpretation allowing them to recognize the triangles as a conventional symbol opening up portals.

By Richard Saint-Gelais, Université Laval, Québec, Québec 

 
Archéologie, Anthropologie et Communication Interstellaire 2

Introduction:

Chapitre 5: Perspectives sémiotiques sur SETI



La Communication, comme nous le savons tous, est une entreprise délicate entre les êtres humains. Donc, il y a des raisons de douter que ce serait une chose facile à travers l'univers. Dans cet essai, je vais essayer de décrire un ensemble de problèmes théoriques qui pourraient affecter la communication avec des intelligences extraterrestres. Je vais aussi essayer de cartographier les principales difficultés qui se posent lorsque l'on regarde le phénomène (ou plus exactement l'hypothèse) de communication entre ce qui sera, selon toute vraisemblance, des espèces profondément différentes. Ces difficultés sont souvent exprimées en termes d'épistémique et d'incompatibilité sensorielle entre des interlocuteurs interstellaires qui appartiennent à des espèces et des cultures si différentes que le terrain d'entente nécessaire à la communication pourrait être vraiment très faible. Nous ne savons pas si les extraterrestres vont percevoir et concevoir leur réalité de façon similaire à la nôtre, en utilisant les mêmes catégories cognitives, ou même si ils vont communiquer par les voies visuelles et acoustiques.



Je dois dire d'emblée que ma position est similaire au scepticisme épistémique que je viens de mentionner. Mais mon point de vue sera légèrement différent de ça, mais pas incompatible avec la perspective épistémique. Je vais appliquer les théories et les méthodes d'analyses sémiotiques au problème de la communication interstellaire, en mettant l'accent sur ??les signes, le langage, le sens et l'interprétation. Une facile mais simpliste conception de la communication se définit comme la production d'une émission suivie d'une phase de réception, un codage puis un décodage d'un sens donné à travers un message qui est considéré comme un véhicule pour ce contenu. Mais la compréhension d'un message n'est pas d'extraire quelque chose de physiquement présent dans les signes. Elle implique, au contraire, l'intégration de ces signes dans un cadre d'interprétation qui permet au destinataire de leur donner des significations, un sens que le bénéficiaire doit élaborer, pas extraire. Prenez, par exemple, un signe très simple et fréquent qui consiste en deux triangles équilatéraux placés la base à la base et pointant dans des directions opposées, l'une à gauche, l'autre à droite; Ces deux triangles sont parfois séparés par une ligne verticale. Comme des expériences répétées avec les étudiants de premier cycle me l'ont montré, une reproduction de ce signe sur le tableau noir ne rencontre que perplexité jusqu'à ce que je leur offre l'indice "suppose que c'est quelque chose que vous voyez dans un ascenseur", fournissant une interprétation du contexte, qui leur permet de reconnaître les triangles comme le symbole conventionnel pour ouvrir les portes.

Par Richard Saint-Gelais, Université Laval, Québec, Québec

Photo series of the Second Palace of Knossos (ca. 1700-1600 BCE) # 2

Photo series of the Second Palace of Knossos (ca. 1700-1600 BCE) # 2

Here again you see a set of three photos of the rear stairwells of the Second Palace, which are very well preserved... indeed, so well preserved that even the ruins of Pompeii cannot boast of such restoration. The third photo shows that the interior wall structure of the Second Palace was pretty much identical with the Third, with door jambs in the same style and of the same colour. Unquestionably, the columns of the Second Palace must have looked pretty much identical to those of the Third. You can clearly see from the third and fourth photos that much of the structure of the retaining walls of the Second Palace was left intact by the Minoan engineers when they constructed the Third.    The retaining walls of the Second Palace are distinct, insofar as they are rounded at the corners.

Photo series of the Palaces of Knossos, first (1900 BCE), second (1700 BCE) & late Minoan III (1500 BCE)

Photo series of the Palaces of Knossos, first (1900 BCE), second (1700 BCE) & late Minoan III (1500 BCE)

For the next few months, at least twice a week, I shall be posting scores of the wonderful photos I took of the Palaces of Knossos, which I took the day I visited the site, May 1 2012.  Today, I am starting with 2 photos of the First Palace (ca. 1900 BCE), which was destroyed by earthquake.

The First Palace





Over its ruins the Second Palace( ca. 1700 BCE), of which you can also see a couple of photos here, was built. While the second palace also succumbed to major earthquakes, much of it still remains intact, as you will see in the next post as well.

The Second Palace





Some of the Third Palace, late Minoan II (ca. 1500-1425 BCE) was added onto the second. The rest of it was built over it. Even from the wasted ruins of the First Palace, you can see it was an advanced complex. Apparently, the population of Knossos was already around 18,000 by the time of the first palace, and had risen to at least 55,000 in the late Minoan III period. For antiquity, that is an extremely large city.

The Master Seal of Khania and a sealing from Haghia Triada

The Master Seal of Khania and a sealing from Haghia Triada:

Master seal Khania and sealing Haghia Triada

These beautiful seals may date from Middle or early Late Minoan times, and if this is so, they were fashioned when Minoan Linear A was still in use. Otherwise, if they date from Late Minoan III, the script in use would have been Linear B.

And NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! Sheep humour LOL!

And NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! Sheep humour LOL!

Yes, that’s right, folks!  Sheep humour and plenty of it. We need a break from all that academic hoopla on our blog. So have fun! LOL! Here goes nuttin’.

Fresco of a lovely woman from Phaistos with the outer edge of the Phaistos Disk surrounding it

Fresco of a lovely woman from Phaistos with the outer edge of the Phaistos Disk surrounding it:



I recently discovered this lovely image on the internet, and I just have to share it with you. PS, regardless of what anyone claims, the Phaistos disk has not been deciphered to anyone else’s satisfaction.

Our Twitter account, KO NO SO, now has over 1,200 followers!

Our Twitter account, KO NO SO, now has over 1,200 followers!
Click on its banner to go there:




and if you are not already following us, why not now?

NEW CATEGORY = TEXTILES at Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae!

NEW CATEGORY = TEXTILES at Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae!



Click on the new category title, TEXTILES, to view all posts on our research blog on Mycenaean Linear B, Minoan Linear A & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C related to textiles:

Since this category is in CAPS, it is a MAJOR category.

We shall soon be adding another new MAJOR category = VESSELS (i.e. Pottery).

In passing, I would like to draw to your attention that the best way to search our research site is to search by category. This way, you can zero in on the posts on the subject which interests you at the moment. For instance, if you click on Linear A, you will be taken to the pages where all posts on Minoan Linear A appear; if you click on Decipherment, you will be routed to the pages on which all posts dealing with decipherment of any tablet in any script, Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B or Arcado-Cypriot Linear B appear. And so on.