The stuff they keep finding with lidar in Central and South America is fascinating. The common understanding of what the pre-Columbian Americas were like is so completely wrong.
In what way? Iâll confess I donât know much about this subject at all.
They might be justifiably terrified of retaliatory violence if they stand up for themselves. Hooray for toxic masculinity! BE A REAL MAN!
They were much larger, more populated, densely settled, and technologically advanced than most people realize. The book 1491 : New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus is a good overview.
Wrong is an overstatement. There are things we donât know and will be surprised by but itâs very unlikely the broad strokes of what we know of Mayan society is wrong.
Iâm not talking about what you, a person who majored in this stuff in college, knows. I mean what the average schmuck on the street thinks the Americas were like before Columbus landed the Mayflower in New York and wrote the constitution with Jesus.
Thatâs true for sure.
I think it depends on what you consider the âcommon understandingâ. I read the âcommon understandingâ as broad cultural attitudes about indigenous groups (SAVAGES!) vs. colonizing Europeans. So much of the âcommon understandingâ of indigenous societies and culture is raw uncut white supremacy. I take your point that the âcommon understandingâ among people that actually know what theyâre talking about might be pretty well developed, but itâs not the median conception of the public.
Iâm with this guy:
https://twitter.com/zachsilberberg/status/1606108805829386240
I feel the same way about microchips. How did someone figure out how to combine metal and electricity to save information and then somehow read it back?
The modulation cut into vinyl induces an electrical current via the stylus tracking the record, proportional to its size, which is then amplified and reproduced via a transducers (speakers/'phones).
grooves in a record are extremely straightforward. You can make your own extremely crude record player by rolling up some stiff paper into a cone and taping a fine sewing needle to the tip. The needle vibrates as it bumps along the pattern etched into the record and those vibrations directly result in the noise. Once youâve seen that in action it is extremely tangible and easy to grasp.
microchips are way more difficult to understand. more layers of abstractions. Transistors are not really very intuitive.
The really amazing part isnât that sound is reproduced, but that itâs of such a high quality when you consider the size of the smallest cut on a record is of the order of the red end of the wavelength of light, ie tiny, and that this needs to be tracked highly accurately by a stone on the end of a piece of metal.
Canât wait for him to discover CDs.
you tellin me itâs turnin a buncha ohs and ones into the beatles?
Sound is waves. They can be shown visually. This is what âWar, childrenâ from Gimme Shelter looks like:
There is part of the surface of the record that has bumps that match this pattern.
The needle goes up and down those bumps and sends that pattern to your speakers.
The speaker cone vibrates in and out along that center line in the same pattern.
This creates that waveform in the air around you, and your ears hear âWar, childrenâ