A Roman Alphabet and Arabic Numerals

Sorry to break the trend, but I am going to step away from the idea of mediums ... and into the realm of numbers.

The Evolution of Numbers

I don't know if I have said this previously, but I love the etymology of words, and knowing the origins of things and what that can teach us about the thing itself, whether it is whole words or letters or numerical symbols.  That's partly why I was so happy I got the Phoenician civilization, because it had the first alphabet (basically).  But as I have continued to study the alphabet and where ours came from (if you can't find "Letter Perfect" at the library, it is because I have it :-),  the thought occurred to me: if we use the Roman alphabet, why don't we use Roman numerals too?  Where did the Arabic ones come from?

Scraping Metal

This golden disk found in Peru is an contains
an inscription of a calendar system.

A few months ago they played a special on the Discovery channel about  discoveries of America before Columbus.  After talking about various theories about who were actually the first people to travel to the New World, they came to the conclusion that pretty much everyone discovered America at one point in time.  They finally changed their question from "Who discovered America?" to "Who didn't discover America?".  Well today I am not going to talk about the discovery of America but the making of metal books.  To those of us who are LDS (such as members of our Reinventing Knowledge class here at BYU) metal plate writings might be of special interest because the Book of Mormon was translated from an ancient record engraved on golden plates.  Although engravings on metal plates were at one point thought of as a rare occurrence, recent discoveries have shown more and more examples of this form of information storage.  As you will see in this post, we might pose ourselves a similar question:

"Who didn't write on metal plates?"

Etruscan Knowledge Institutions

During our unit on oral knowledge, I discussed knowledge institutions within the Etruscan civilization here. Last week, I talked about Etruscan writing and language here. This week, my assignment is to talk about knowledge institutions within the Etruscan civilization, as a part of our unit on written knowledge.

Etruscan Writing and Language

The writing system of the Etruscans is highly correlated with other Indo-European systems (particularly Greek), but the language of the Etruscans is quite the opposite. Linguists have a hard time placing it within a language family, and it seems fairly isolated.

Oral Education and the Etruscan World, part 2

Last week, I posted about education in the Etruscan world, based on my reading on the topic. Earlier today, I posted a bit about the process it has been to try and contact someone for an oral interview this week. It was really a lot more work than I planned to put into this class. However, something finally came through! 

Stay Tuned. Here's Why.

This week, our assignment was to conduct an oral interview with someone who knew something about the civilization to which we were assigned and the aspect of it to which our group was assigned. For me, this meant conducting an oral interview with someone who is an expert on education within the Etruscan Civilization. How do you do such a thing? That is a very good question. Let me tell you.

Oral Education in the Etruscan World

The Etruscan Civilization flourished in what is now Central Italy from about 800 to 264 BC. While evidence would suggest that the Etruscans were highly educated and productive in their scholarship, almost no evidence remains of that scholarship in the form of texts or records. However, there is some evidence that the Etruscans employed such practices as haruspicy and taught and learned in special institutes, kind of like universities.