Olmec-influenced City Found In Mexico

[Skylla]

C.I.,

You are out of line. We have an ignore function on this board. Use it. Charity has the right to express her opinion on any subject like everyone else here. You may express your opinion on any subject but your opinion on another poster's intelligence or posting habits will not be tolerated.

Skylla

[juliann]

beastie' date='Feb 1 2007, 09:27 AM' post=

Back to the link between pottery and smelting and why I assert that if Nephi knew how to smelt metal, he knew how to make pottery:

Continuing from From the Fiery Furnace,

Pottery is an interesting avenue of exploration, not just due to the fact that it is so important in archaeology, but because of its link to metallurgy. Nephi knows how to smelt ores.

You have to make the pot. You have obviously never made pottery. It is an art not just a "technology". Why not just assume they had to make salad forks? They had the technology after all. Nice dodge on the group thing again...but if you are going to talk about Isrealites as your control group you have to explain away the numbers and intact society you are trying to pretend are unmeaningful. Your methodology is one-size-fits-all. If a quote is good for one thing by golly it is good for everything. It is a silly approach.

[beastie]

Juliann,

Did you actually read any of my posts?

[Not quite me]

You have to make the pot. You have obviously never made pottery. It is an art not just a "technology". Why not just assume they had to make salad forks? They had the technology after all. Nice dodge on the group thing again...but if you are going to talk about Isrealites as your control group you have to explain away the numbers and intact society you are trying to pretend are unmeaningful. Your methodology is one-size-fits-all. If a quote is good for one thing by golly it is good for everything. It is a silly approach.

What astounds me here is that you seemed to have missed the entire point of this discussion. Here beastie is talking about pyrotechnology and how the same technology that Nephi used to smelt metals and create weapons coincides fairly uniformly with improved pottery techniques. The point is that metallurgy and pottery are results of improved pyrotechnology. Since there is no evidence of either metal smelting or advanced pottery in Mesoamerica, the options are either that the Nephites adopted the inferior pyrotechnology of the Mesoamericans (despite the text's explicit statement that Nephi taught his people these skills, so your point about insignificant "group" size is irrelevant.) or that the evidence somehow vanished.

[Confidential Informant]

What astounds me here is that you seemed to have missed the entire point of this discussion. Here beastie is talking about pyrotechnology and how the same technology that Nephi used to smelt metals and create weapons coincides fairly uniformly with improved pottery techniques. The point is that metallurgy and pottery are results of improved pyrotechnology. Since there is no evidence of either metal smelting or advanced pottery in Mesoamerica, the options are either that the Nephites adopted the inferior pyrotechnology of the Mesoamericans (despite the text's explicit statement that Nephi taught his people these skills, so your point about insignificant "group" size is irrelevant.) or that the evidence somehow vanished.

And yet, the ancient Mesoamericans have a rich history of having a technology but not expanding its use to other areas that we would consider to be obvioius.

For example, it is very clear that they knew about wheels and axles. We have the small toys/funerary items where the technology was employed. Yet, for some reason, that technology was never applied to create actual carts, wagons, or conveyances of any sort. This despite the fact that they seem to have had a highway system that would have been conducive to such an endeavor.

Those silly, dumb people.

C.I.

[Not quite me]

And yet, the ancient Mesoamericans have a rich history of having a technology but not expanding its use to other areas that we would consider to be obvioius.

For example, it is very clear that they knew about wheels and axles. We have the small toys/funerary items where the technology was employed. Yet, for some reason, that technology was never applied to create actual carts, wagons, or conveyances of any sort. This despite the fact that they seem to have had a highway system that would have been conducive to such an endeavor.

Those silly, dumb people.

C.I.

A couple of problems here:

1. Unlike like the evidence for wheeled toys, there is no evidence that advanced pyrotechnology was in use whatsoever, much less its use having expanded.

2. The text speaks clearly of the technology having been applied to create actual weapons, and yet, there's no evidence.

I see your point, but it's an inapt analogy.

[beastie]

For example, it is very clear that they knew about wheels and axles. We have the small toys/funerary items where the technology was employed. Yet, for some reason, that technology was never applied to create actual carts, wagons, or conveyances of any sort. This despite the fact that they seem to have had a highway system that would have been conducive to such an endeavor.

The primary reason is that they did not have access to an animal to pull any wheeled device. Of course, they could have developed a wheelbarrow that could have been pushed by a human, but since the highway system mainly connected primary ceremonial centers to their secondary satellite sites, there probably wasn't much of a need. In addition, the agricultural system in ancient Mesoamerica resulted in communities that were fairly self sufficient. The main items that would be traded over long distances were luxury items related to religious ceremonies, like small mirrors, feathers, exotic shells. These items were probably satisfactorily transported, anyway.

To expand on NQM's point, we can see when advanced pyro-technology did reach mesoamerica, because they did begin to use it. It's just that occurred hundreds of years past the BoM time period.

[Brant Gardner]

we can see when advanced pyro-technology did reach mesoamerica, because they did begin to use it. It's just that occurred hundreds of years past the BoM time period.

I know I said I was going to retire from the thread, but I can't help myself. According to your theory, the arrival of the advanced pyro-technology was obviously accompanied by a revolutionary change in the concommitant pottery techniques. I am unaware of that change. Would you point me in the right direction so I can confirm your theory that advanced pyro-technology means that pottery techniques will change?

[beastie]

Brant,

You can start by reading the long section I typed from The Fiery Furnace, which makes the connection quite clear.

[juliann]

No, it is absolutely not. You have brutally ignored the entire point. To smelt metals, one must have an understanding of advanced pyro-technology, which is what pottery is built on. But since it's a more advanced understanding of pyro-technology, it doesn't work in reverse. Ie, someone who knows how to control fire well enough to smelt metals already knows how to control fire well enough to make advanced pottery, but someone who knows how to make pottery without the controlled heat required for ceramics isn't going to be able to smelt metal. Did you read the citations? They made that clear.

You read a book or two and you are a pontificating expert. It is as tiresome as it is transparent.

http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/~GEL115/115CH3.html

There are two plausible pathways for the discovery of smelting, both of them involving pottery kilns. For most of the classic Stone Age, sites are without pottery. The discovery of pottery for beakers and bowls was made in Western Asia perhaps around 9000 BC, and it is probably not a coincidence that pottery-making was followed relatively quickly by the use of metals. Firing clay into useful pottery demands the careful production of high temperatures inside a kiln. Pottery kilns can reach much higher temperatures than open fires, and they operate somewhere near the boundary between sufficient oxygen and oxygen starvation. Loaded properly, kilns can maintain temperatures above 1000

[beastie]

Juliann,

Now I'm not sure you read even your own posts. Why do you think that citation disproves my point?

The discovery of pottery for beakers and bowls was made in Western Asia perhaps around 9000 BC, and it is probably not a coincidence that pottery-making was followed relatively quickly by the use of metals.

Good grief, that was the entire point of my posts. (the ones I now suspect even more strongly you haven't read)

You quote this from me:

No, it is absolutely not. You have brutally ignored the entire point. To smelt metals, one must have an understanding of advanced pyro-technology, which is what pottery is built on. But since it's a more advanced understanding of pyro-technology, it doesn't work in reverse. Ie, someone who knows how to control fire well enough to smelt metals already knows how to control fire well enough to make advanced pottery, but someone who knows how to make pottery without the controlled heat required for ceramics isn't going to be able to smelt metal. Did you read the citations? They made that clear.

As if it contradicts your google quote.

What the heck are you talking about???

I just said that smelting requires advanced pyrotechnology, which is why YOUR quote said

and it is probably not a coincidence that pottery-making was followed relatively quickly by the use of metals. Firing clay into useful pottery demands the careful production of high temperatures inside a kiln.

Honest to goodness, I have no idea how you are interpreting my posts, if you are reading them.

Your quote supported my previous posts.

[juliann]

LOL. You got caught making a stupid claim about the pottery chicken and egg. If you carry on and pretend not to see the part that makes that real clear maybe everybody else will. Dodge and weave...dodge and weave...

[juliann]

From Brant. Again.

According to your theory, the arrival of the advanced pyro-technology was obviously accompanied by a revolutionary change in the concommitant pottery techniques. I am unaware of that change. Would you point me in the right direction so I can confirm your theory that advanced pyro-technology means that pottery techniques will change?

Will you be responding anytime soon? Let me emphasize the important word here, pottery techniques. Understand yet?

Then explain to us how a pot is made. Not fired. Understand?

[juliann]

Would the Nephites have used wheels, Beastie? Coils? Paddles? Come on...don't stop with kilns. We want to know everything. Have you ever made a pot? From what? What temperature did you fire it at? Who taught you? What did you modify? What did you have trouble with? What parts did you purchase and what parts did you buy?

[beastie]

Ok, I'm going to parse the meaning of each sentence and compare to either help Juliann or myself see the problem.

Brant's assertion

Your suggestion that Nephi had to know how to make pots because he knew about metals is unsupportable for the same reason that you cannot suggest that because someone knows how to make pots that they necessarily know how to work metals.

IOW, Brant is claiming that saying someone with the knowledge of advanced pyrotechnology for smelting would also have the advanced pyrotechnology required for making certain forms of pottery is the equivalent of saying someone who can make pots can smelt metals.

My response, that Juliann then cited:

No, it is absolutely not. You have brutally ignored the entire point. To smelt metals, one must have an understanding of advanced pyro-technology, which is what pottery is built on. But since it's a more advanced understanding of pyro-technology, it doesn't work in reverse. Ie, someone who knows how to control fire well enough to smelt metals already knows how to control fire well enough to make advanced pottery, but someone who knows how to make pottery without the controlled heat required for ceramics isn't going to be able to smelt metal. Did you read the citations? They made that clear.

Parse:

"No it is absolutely not".

No, it is not correct to state that the simple ability to make pots means that one can smelt metals.

"You have brutally ignore the entire point."

Brant ignore the point, which was that one can detect an advanced pyrotechnology in past cultures by an analysis of their pottery to see if it reached the more advanced form. See my earlier quote from Matheny, referring to Bruhn's study of Mesaomerican pottery:

Specifically they lacked the technological prowess to attain and maintain the necessary temperatures to smelt metal. The ceramics from the area were fired in poorly controlled open fires, which often resulted in fire-clouding and incompletely oxidized areas. Only by the Late Classic and Early Postclassic periods does evidence exist that the Maya had begun producing ceramic vessels in controlled firing situations, including kilns. The adoption of the Central American metallurgical technology occurred in the Maya area soon after the production of Plumbate pottery began. Plumbate pottery has a vitrified surface and, according to Bruhns, the â??temperatures which produce the characteristic vitrification of Tohil Plumbate are precisely those which are appropriate for smelting.â?

"To smelt metals, one must have an understanding of advanced pyro-technology, which is what pottery is built on."

IOW, the basic pottery technology precedes the more advanced pyro technology which allows metals to be smelted.

"But since it's a more advanced understanding of pyro-technology, it doesn't work in reverse."

There are different forms of pottery making. Civilizations make pottery long before they are able to smelt metals. They must learn to control the heat of the fire before they can reach the temperatures required to smelt metals. So someone who has learned to control the heat of fire to the extent that they can smelt metals has most likely learned this art through experimenting with pottery and and learning to control heat for pottery.

But someone making pottery at the more simpler level has not yet mastered advanced pyrotechnology required to smelt metals.

"Ie, someone who knows how to control fire well enough to smelt metals already knows how to control fire well enough to make advanced pottery, but someone who knows how to make pottery without the controlled heat required for ceramics isn't going to be able to smelt metal. Did you read the citations? They made that clear."

See above.

Now Juliann's googled quote, which she proudly proclaims proves I made a "chicken and the egg" error.

There are two plausible pathways for the discovery of smelting, both of them involving pottery kilns. For most of the classic Stone Age, sites are without pottery. The discovery of pottery for beakers and bowls was made in Western Asia perhaps around 9000 BC, and it is probably not a coincidence that pottery-making was followed relatively quickly by the use of metals. Firing clay into useful pottery demands the careful production of high temperatures inside a kiln. Pottery kilns can reach much higher temperatures than open fires, and they operate somewhere near the boundary between sufficient oxygen and oxygen starvation. Loaded properly, kilns can maintain temperatures above 1000

[juliann]

Answer the questions, Beastie.

[beastie]

Answer the questions, Beastie.

I am NOT going to answer a question that has already been addressed. I will consider repeating myself for you if, and only if, you respond to my last post. Just how does your citation disprove my point? I have to go pick up my daughter right now so you'll have a couple of hours to figure it out.

[juliann]

It's not that important. Why can't you ever say you misspoke or didn't say what you really meant?

It is Brant's questions you need to answer, you have not answered them, and this is how threads always end with you.

hint: If you are going to try to apply authors like Dever to another culture and continent you are going to have to provide the bridge. And it is obvious you have never made pottery if you think that anyone can pick up some dirt and do it. I did spend a few years tinkering with pottery and kilns and your insistence that any small group of people should be able to magically make usable pieces is laughable.

[Brant Gardner]

"To smelt metals, one must have an understanding of advanced pyro-technology, which is what pottery is built on."

beastie:

My problem with this thread is that you began by asserting that we had to be able to see a Lehite immigration because of a pottery change. Now it has become "Nephites couldn't make metal because they didn't have the right pots."

Those are two very different arguments and very different kinds of answers. I am still trying to understand the very first issue. You asserted that (based on your reading of Dever) the Lehites must have altered pot technology. I am saying that it doesn't fit with the context of the particular immigration.

Your response has never had anything to do with that issue. You have returned to your metals hobby horse, which may be fun to rock, but isn't what the original question was about at all.

[beastie]

It's not that important. Why can't you ever say you misspoke or didn't say what you really meant?

Oh, I think it's important. You shared your googled quote and proclaimed that it directly contradicted my entire point, and that I had been "caught", and had put the chicken before the egg. You need to support that assertion, because, as far as I can see, you are the one who had a little "oopsie" here.

Otherwise -

This thread has become comical. Brant has read Dever's book, and I believe Juliann has, as well, yet neither seem to have grasped the entire point of his book.

Dever was exploring the origin of the ancient Israelites. He was comparing the data from the ground to the Biblical text. His entire book was based on a very simple idea - if the real origin of the ancient Israelites was that they had migrated from one country (Egypt, in the exodus) to another (Canaan), then one would be able to archaeologically detect their new presence in Canaan. Archaeologists would be able to detect their presence because when people migrate from one location to another, in real life, they don't completely abandon their former material traditions. They keep doing things in the way they know how to do things, in the way their fathers and mothers taught them to do things. This is such an obvious observation of human behavior that it seems odd it should have to be demonstrated to be true. So when Dever made the statement that caused the "pot" controversy, it was a statement about how archaeologists can detect the presence of strangers in a land because the strangers bring their strange ways with them.

So when Dever says:

I would argue that such direct, long-term continuities between earlier Canannite pottery and later Iron I Israelite pottery, readily documented now, cannot be the result of coincidence. Nor can they be explained by continuing to regard the early Israelites as foreigners, newcomers to Canaan from Transjordan and ultimately from Egypt. To defend the latter view, one would have to argue that (1) these intruders brought with them no pottery traditions whatsoever, and (2) that upon arriving they immediately adopted the local pottery repertoire and replicated it exactly. That would be astounding, and also unprecedented in my experience.

He's not just talking pottery - he's talking about how they built houses, the tools they used, the food they ate, etc.

Let me simply substitute a few words in Dever's quote:

I would argue that such direct, long-term continuities between native Mesoamerican material artifacts in Kaminaljuyu pre-King Nephi and later post-King Nephi, readily documented now, cannot be the result of coincidence. Nor can they be explained by continuing to regard the Nephites as foreigners, newcomers to Kaminaljuyu from the Old World . To defend the latter view, one would have to argue that (1)these intruders brought with them no material traditions whatsoever, and (2) that upon arriving they immediately adopted the local material traditions and replicated it exactly. That would be astounding, and also unprecedented in my experience.

Of course, the comparison doesn't entirely work because Nephi is fiction, while the early Israelites were not fiction, just their origin was fictionalized. But perhaps you get the point.

Brant and Juliann want to focus on pottery alone, insisting that either Nephi was too rich to know how to make pots or making pots was an artistic specialty he would know nothing about, but "pots" are just symbolic of the greater issue, just like they were in Dever's citation. If Brant or Juliann want to prove that it's all about just "pots", they're going to have to explain large sections of Dever's book that had nothing to do with pots, and more to do with housing construction, tools, and food items.

Both have also tried to argue that I must define "group", as if, since Nephi's group consisted of a few families, they are exempt from this expectation. That argument may work if the few families moved into the new culture and faded from view as insignificant players. But Nephi and his family were the elite leaders of a powerful polity. Brant, you recognized that when you postulated that perhaps Kaminaljuyu increased in wealth and influence due to some new skill Nephi taught the people.

Lest people are taken in by the argument that Nephi could not possible have known to make a pot - which, again, is symbolic of the symbolic of the larger issue, look again at what Nephi taught his people â?? ie, the citizens of Kaminaljuyu, who had made him their king.

2 Nephi 5

13 And it came to pass that we began to prosper exceedingly, and to multiply in the land.

14 And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people.

15 And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance.

16 And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomonâ??s temple. But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine.

17 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did cause my people to be industrious, and to labor with their hands.

Another example of what Nephi might have taught his people:

1 Nephi 17

10 And it came to pass that the Lord told me whither I should go to find ore, that I might make tools.

11 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did make a bellows wherewith to blow the fire, of the skins of beasts; and after I had made a bellows, that I might have wherewith to blow the fire, I did smite two stones together that I might make fire.

Nephi knew how to: use bellows to control a fire in order to intensify the heat so that he could melt ore and make metal tools, make many swords, build buildings, work with wood as well as the many metals, and even build a temple. All of these things are part of the material culture that archaeologists can find in the ground. These things are very similar to what Dever said he looked for. What kind of houses did the early Israelites live in? What kind of tools did they use? What kind of food did they eat? All these things were the data that helped him construct the theory that states, overall, the early Israelites were, in fact, Canaan natives, and not transplants from Egypt.

The application to the BoM in Mesoamerica should be obvious, although it seems to escape a few.

So, you know, it doesn't matter whether or not Nephi knew how to make a pot, although I think that, given the other things he taught his people, it strains imagination to insist he would not. What matters is that Nephi taught his people skills, and these would have been Old World skills. He taught these skills to the citizens of an important polity, one that became the MOST powerful polity in the entire region. It is quite reasonable to expect to be able to detect the presence of that Old World influence through archaeology.

If, on the other hand, it is quite reasonable to insist that immigrants can move to a new location and completely abandon their former material traditions, someone ought to notify Dever.

[beastie]

My problem with this thread is that you began by asserting that we had to be able to see a Lehite immigration because of a pottery change. Now it has become "Nephites couldn't make metal because they didn't have the right pots."

Those are two very different arguments and very different kinds of answers. I am still trying to understand the very first issue. You asserted that (based on your reading of Dever) the Lehites must have altered pot technology. I am saying that it doesn't fit with the context of the particular immigration.

Your response has never had anything to do with that issue. You have returned to your metals hobby horse, which may be fun to rock, but isn't what the original question was about at all.

You can't neatly separate out these issues, brant. Hopefully my previous post helped to clarify my point, in regards to Dever. It's not just about pots. When apologists say "what would a Nephite pot look like?", you're not just talking about pots, you're talking about your assertion that the material artifacts of the Nephites are indistinguishable from the material artifacts of the "others". So you ought to understand that it's not just about pots.

While that was my main point, of course I'm going to point out that the pyrotechnology required to smelt metals wasn't available in Mesoamerica during BoM time periods, and we know that not just due to the absence of evidence of metallurgy, but due to the type of pottery being created. The connection between pottery and metallurgy, via pyrotechnology, cannot be avoided.

[juliann]

You can't neatly separate out these issues, brant. Hopefully my previous post helped to clarify my point, in regards to Dever. It's not just about pots. When apologists say "what would a Nephite pot look like?", you're not just talking about pots, you're talking about your assertion that the material artifacts of the Nephites are indistinguishable from the material artifacts of the "others". So you ought to understand that it's not just about pots.

Well, there ya go, Brant. You ought to understand there will be no clarifications and no questions allowed. And this is how it always ends....

[beastie]

Well, there ya go, Brant. You ought to understand there will be no clarifications and no questions allowed. And this is how it always ends...

You have got to be kidding me.

Once again, Juliann. Do you actually read any of my posts? My impression is that you likely only skim them, and this leads to your misunderstandings as well as your inability to see what has been clarified and answered.

BTW, I'm still waiting to see how your googled citation contradicted my statements.

Or will this also end predictably?

[juliann]

BTW, I'm still waiting to see how your googled citation contradicted my statements.

Or will this also end predictably?

Yup. With you refusing to build the foundation necessary for your huge leaps of logic and lack of methodology by claiming you-already answered-go-back-and-read what your scholar of the day said. So I already answered and go back and read what my scholar of the day said. If you don't get it you don't get it. It's not that important, it just shows how you jump around so much that you trip over your own words while lecturing everyone else about theirs. But you need something unimportant right now to divert attention from those questons you can't answer. Have at it...you obviously are not going to deal with anything else. Excuse me while I adjust my pillow.

[beastie]

Your scholar of the day said the same thing that I've been saying.

It amazes me that you do not see that. Well, it would amaze me except our past interactions have prepared me for the shock.

And the answer to my question:

Or will this also end predictably?

was an absolute, deafening, resounding YES, of course it will end as it always does.