Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Still more history

I've gone through the classical and medieval periods of history, linking another nation to each period, and expanding a bit on histories of associated peoples in the process. I've also done the same for most of modern history up to the 1960s.
This time, I've also taken a look at the biography pages associated with each period. I noted that there were a few that I hadn't touched since I created them four years ago. That's an excessively long time to be waiting to get around to it, and I don't yet have a great deal to add to each person, but I'm getting closer.
A reader sent me a link to information to the Archimedes Palimpsest which was recovered and is being examined by scholars. If I were interested in the detailed parsing of Greek mathematical text (a fantasy which has occured to me at various times), I would love to follow it up more closely. For now, I'm just going to have to file it under "Interesting. Someday, maybe, if I live long enough, I might get around to that". But, seeing how long it's taken to get back around to Thomas Edison who has been in the Knowledge Base almost from the beginning, I'm not promising anything.

Friday, February 08, 2008

Another round of history

I'm really, really going to sit down and start going through other areas more carefully.

For now, I'm back to prehistory and antiquity. Although there is some slow but steady progress at broadening the connections to various nations, there haven't been any really enlightening developments: Just more detailing of what I don't know. I have been making more connections to social structure and to families. The next time through I should have a little more to say about religions, government, and culture.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Lstest

I've been meaning to make a progress report, but haven't managed it yet. I ran into a wall again when I moved beyond history, so I starded something a little different. When I got partway through history, I swiched to so a summary of what I was doing in particular other areas, which helped quite a bit.
Within Early prehistory, I added a link to Pakistan. Since Brazil wasn't inhabited yet, it pushes Indonesia into Asia and India to South Asia. I now have connections to all the areas of social structure and change, and, somewhat reluctantly, families. I'm considering customs, language and speech, and (since I've already linked foodstuffs) tools and technology. I could probably make more progress here if I considered human geography, human ecology, and physical anthropology, but there hasn't been quite the demand for those areas.
Within middle prehistory, I added a link to Bangladesh, which pushed Pakistan into Asia and Indonesia into Southeast Asia. Indonesia has to have been at least partly inhabited, since Austrialia was peopled during this period, but I haven't yet found any details.
Within Late prehistory, I added a link to Russia, which pushed Bangladesh into Asia and Pakistan into South Asia. I haven't specifically named Megarh as the neolithic site, but that's the earliest one that has come up. I know that there were earlier and larger settlements in the Middle East, but I haven't gone that far back in their history.

In antiquity, there are more nations listed than I have properly integrated into particular periods of history
To the 5th millennium BC, I added Nigeria, which pushes Russia into Western Civilization, which now has a minimal presence to the beginning of antiquity.
To the 4th millennium BC, I added Japan, which pushes Nigeria into African peoples, which now have at least a minimal presence here.
To the 3rd millennium BC, I added Mexico, which pushes Japan into Asiatic peoples, and Bangladesh into South Asian peoples. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about that country or region in the Bronze age.
To the 2nd millennium BC, I added the Philippines. This pushes Mexico into the American Indians, and Brazil gives me reason to add to South American Indians.
To the early first millennium, I added Vietnam, which pushes the Philippines into Asia, and Japan into Oriental peoples.

Classical and medieval history has peoples and communities connected more than they have been integrated into the subdivisions.
To early classical history, I added Germany, which pushes Vietnam into Asia and the Philippines to Southeast Asia.
To late classicl history, I added Egypt, which pushed Germany into Western civilization, and aallowed Russia to prompt the addition of Northeast European peoples to it for that period.
To early medieval history, I added Ethiopia, which pushes Egypt into Asia, and Vietnam to Southeast Asia. A little more useful was the addition of Dacca, which seems to have been founded about this time.
To late medieval history, I added Turkey, which pushes Ethiopia into Africa, and Nigeria into Western Africa, which was now linked.
At this point, I turned from adding more nations to history into more detailed consideration of particular peoples. I finally searched for, and found a site which gives information on American Indian cultures and languages, which will be useful as I do more development of this area. I also did a little bit of long-overdue linking of cities to particular peoples and a few nations.
I've begun making links from social change, social types, and social structure pages to particular nations, so that should have something to work with.
I didn't make much notworthy progress among the social isntitutions, but in the material culture area, I have at least subdivisions sketches out for all its areas except one, and that should be coming soon. I've also reordered the topics within that subject.