The idea that a list of kings from 4000 years ago would encodé global climate events for over 240.000 years is completely ludicrous. Astrology has a better grounding on reality than this idea.
And the fact that all lengths are multiple of 600, is even more telling knowing that they counted in base 60
While they were at it they should have explored whether those kings were actually the cause of those global climate events. You never know, with enough slicing, dicing and p-hacking you can get interesting conclusions :)
> And the fact that all lengths are multiple of 600
I know this must somehow explain the giant numbers but I'm still not sure how precisely.
Counting in base 60 would make for much smaller numbers, no ?
For example, the number 16 in base 2 is 1111. but in base 10 it is 16. Ergo smaller base, larger number, and vice versa.
So did you mean to say they counted in units that are made of 1/600 of our solar years?
I think that would make more sense, putting their reigns between 31-72 years of our counting.
Interesting breakdown. The author clearly put in the work to test this theory. I like that he's not trying to force the data to fit the result but instead explains why even apparent matches could just be coincidental.
> I wish there was a no tech version of hackers news for this type of content only
I used to think the same thing, but I've come to appreciate exposure to highly-technical content (outside my wheelhouse) that also "gratifies ones intellectual curiosity." I don't necessarily deeply care about the merits of GUIs and TUIs, but once it's pointed out, I can see the importance of being keyboard driven (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479837). And I find it valuable fairly often to have a passing familiarity with the fact that something like this is being discussed by intellectuals in the tech space.
For smart, curious people, exposure is valuable even if you don't have the time to understand something very well.
To be more specific, I think most of us would like to have a "not the current tech thing" page. So a front page that isn't 50-90% LLM content in 2026. In 2020 that would be crypto. Etc
https://www.unslop.news/ has been a breeze of fresh air to avoid all the LLM news. I don't care so much about them but there's so much LLM-adjacent content that it requires actual effort to find the non-LLM stuff.
From what I've observed (from the complaints people make about what is and isn't "HN worthy") most people who voice an opinion would prefer HN only have technical stories. It's common enough that it's explicitly called out in the guidelines: (On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups.)
This is a forum run by a Silicon Valley startup incubator. Unfortunately tech stories and whatever the current tech thing is will always dominate. And HN's design ethos of "no silos" means everyone has to see all of that content, and it will always push everything else down, especially anything non-technical (unless the mods force it up, which they can and sometimes do.)
The only way to get what you want (I do think it's an interesting idea and I'd like to see it) would be to start another forum entirely or else build a third party client to filter out all of the AI slop. Such stories will always be diamonds in the rough here.
Which means, surely, "no tech" and "no current impactful world". You would lose that sight from a community largely trained on hard facts ("works/doesnotwork") and creation, invention, management, on real grounds.
"Intellectual curiosity" as a "bubble", as an escape into a closed reality, is not a good thing. "Oh, the colours of nature in its taxologies!". And meanwhile maybe the world that is allowing you that intellectual growth is eroded.
Just skim through the submissions and pick your thing, obviously.
There's no shortage of sources seeking to deliver the most important news as quickly as possible. It's the niche stuff that few people care about that requires effort to seek out.
1. The Literature of Ancient Sumer - Jeremy Black. It is a quite substantial anthology, has myths, hymns, laments, royal praise poetry, proverbs, literary debates, etc.
2. Myths from Mesopotamia - Stephanie Dalley. I bought this for Gilgamesh, loved the rest of it too. One of my most treasured books.
3. Weavers, Scribes, and Kings - Amanda Podany. Not Sumerian literature, but my favorite comprehensive history book covering all of Mesopotamian history. I mention this particularly because all the literature we do have came to us through scribes, and this book gets into whatever we can know about their internal lives really well. Reading about their tutoring and how they learnt to write, what we can deduce about how their lessons were structured - fascinating stuff.
For such an ancient civilization, it is astounding how much we do have and how closely we can meet them.
> One speculative interpretation treats these numbers as a distorted memory of prehistory. Under this hypothesis, the reign boundaries encode real climate shifts...
"One theory" implies that someone somewhere has ever claimed this. But has anyone? TFA gives no source for the claim, AFAICT (although I skimmed a bit).
I wonder why the Sumerians deviated on the last two lengths from the rule they had on the first six. The first six reign lengths (and the total sum of all eight reign lengths) are all n * 60 * 60, where n is an integer. The last two are not, but they could’ve been. If instead you use 18000 years and 21600 years instead of 18600 and 21000, they fit the same formula as the other numbers and the sum remains the same. They used base 60, and apparently got a kick out of multiplying 60 by itself and another integer.
I noticed the deviation because there are mechanical watch movements that run at 18000 and 21600 beats per hour.
The next 28 kings after the flood all have unfeasibly long reigns too. Then there's some believable ones, but even much later on there's Hadanish (360 years, 6*60) and Lugal-kinishe-dudu (120 years, 2*60).
They seem to be accompanied by commentary like "son of" or "the fisherman", or nicknames that apply to individuals. Dumuzid "the shepherd", 36,000 years. Kug-Bau, "the woman tavern-keeper, who made firm the foundations of Kish" reigned for 100 years, which is just possible but pretty good going. You have to wonder at what point in her ~120 year life she did her tavern-keeping. Perhaps while ruling?
So, OK, maybe it really means "Kug-Bau, the woman tavern-keeper, and her descendents, not mentioned here".
The Sumerians used a sexagesimal notation system; the two lengths would be 5.10.0 and 5.50.0 (which together add up to 11.0.0, FWIW), while all of the other king lengths are 8.0.0, 10.0.0, or 12.0.0.
The Weld-Blundell Prism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weld-Blundell_Prism doesn't use positional notation, so 5.50.0 is expressed as 𒐧𒐢 (five 3600, five 600) and 5.10.0 is expressed as 𒐧𒐞 (five 3600, one 600). (Lines 27-35, each number appearing twice separated by a line with 𒁹𒈗 (one king), if you want to follow along.)
Yeah. I had Fable run through every version of it I could think of and it explained the numbering system was the root of everything being divisible by 60.
I did find a pattern though. If you look at ALL the kings, rather than just those 8 it becomes obvious. The recent numbers are realistic and drift further apart, becoming less and less accurate, the further back you go.
Interestingly it also compared some other clay tablets and they were close. So it seems that they were probably written down based on a verbal history that had already drifted wildly well before it was written down .
You can’t discuss kings without discussing the rich history of Europe with thousands of years of oral and written history long predating the Sumerians and even the ancient Proto Indo-European peoples to which European language and culture is often erroneously attributed.
The dark ages were anything but dark.
Ancient Europe was anything but primitive.
And yet it’s so rarely discussed in the mainstream.
It's clear by the number of symbols it's a writing system of sorts (proto-writing). It could definitely be pictograms (probably IMO), but then again, cuneiform, hieroglyphics and Chinese writing all started as pictograms as well.
And the fact that all lengths are multiple of 600, is even more telling knowing that they counted in base 60
I know this must somehow explain the giant numbers but I'm still not sure how precisely.
Counting in base 60 would make for much smaller numbers, no ?
For example, the number 16 in base 2 is 1111. but in base 10 it is 16. Ergo smaller base, larger number, and vice versa.
So did you mean to say they counted in units that are made of 1/600 of our solar years? I think that would make more sense, putting their reigns between 31-72 years of our counting.
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
I used to think the same thing, but I've come to appreciate exposure to highly-technical content (outside my wheelhouse) that also "gratifies ones intellectual curiosity." I don't necessarily deeply care about the merits of GUIs and TUIs, but once it's pointed out, I can see the importance of being keyboard driven (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479837). And I find it valuable fairly often to have a passing familiarity with the fact that something like this is being discussed by intellectuals in the tech space.
For smart, curious people, exposure is valuable even if you don't have the time to understand something very well.
This is a forum run by a Silicon Valley startup incubator. Unfortunately tech stories and whatever the current tech thing is will always dominate. And HN's design ethos of "no silos" means everyone has to see all of that content, and it will always push everything else down, especially anything non-technical (unless the mods force it up, which they can and sometimes do.)
The only way to get what you want (I do think it's an interesting idea and I'd like to see it) would be to start another forum entirely or else build a third party client to filter out all of the AI slop. Such stories will always be diamonds in the rough here.
Not to burst your bubble but registrations are open to the public here on HN.
Which means, surely, "no tech" and "no current impactful world". You would lose that sight from a community largely trained on hard facts ("works/doesnotwork") and creation, invention, management, on real grounds.
"Intellectual curiosity" as a "bubble", as an escape into a closed reality, is not a good thing. "Oh, the colours of nature in its taxologies!". And meanwhile maybe the world that is allowing you that intellectual growth is eroded.
Just skim through the submissions and pick your thing, obviously.
Interesting nevertheless.
1. The Literature of Ancient Sumer - Jeremy Black. It is a quite substantial anthology, has myths, hymns, laments, royal praise poetry, proverbs, literary debates, etc.
2. Myths from Mesopotamia - Stephanie Dalley. I bought this for Gilgamesh, loved the rest of it too. One of my most treasured books.
3. Weavers, Scribes, and Kings - Amanda Podany. Not Sumerian literature, but my favorite comprehensive history book covering all of Mesopotamian history. I mention this particularly because all the literature we do have came to us through scribes, and this book gets into whatever we can know about their internal lives really well. Reading about their tutoring and how they learnt to write, what we can deduce about how their lessons were structured - fascinating stuff.
For such an ancient civilization, it is astounding how much we do have and how closely we can meet them.
[1] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-literature-of-an...
[2] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/myths-from-mesopotam...
[3] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/weavers-scribes-and-...
Feedback welcome
"One theory" implies that someone somewhere has ever claimed this. But has anyone? TFA gives no source for the claim, AFAICT (although I skimmed a bit).
I noticed the deviation because there are mechanical watch movements that run at 18000 and 21600 beats per hour.
Are these individual human kings, or dynastic reigns, such as the Tudors, Windsors, etc.
So, OK, maybe it really means "Kug-Bau, the woman tavern-keeper, and her descendents, not mentioned here".
I did find a pattern though. If you look at ALL the kings, rather than just those 8 it becomes obvious. The recent numbers are realistic and drift further apart, becoming less and less accurate, the further back you go.
Interestingly it also compared some other clay tablets and they were close. So it seems that they were probably written down based on a verbal history that had already drifted wildly well before it was written down .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Babylonian_mathema...
"For example, the symbols for 1 and 60 are identical."
The dark ages were anything but dark.
Ancient Europe was anything but primitive.
And yet it’s so rarely discussed in the mainstream.
The period is only called dark age in English for what it’s worth, that should make it pretty obvious it’s not a universal understanding of that era
So you're not really filling me with confidence about your idea here. Perhaps you can provide some sort of evidence?
Some people also interpret some symbols on mammoth tusks going back 50k years as writing but that's a stretch IMO.
It's clear by the number of symbols it's a writing system of sorts (proto-writing). It could definitely be pictograms (probably IMO), but then again, cuneiform, hieroglyphics and Chinese writing all started as pictograms as well.
Would you mind being a little clearer about what it is you’re saying here?