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Instead of jumping right to the conclusions people draw from it, the article should start with what it is. A book? Found where, when? What's it about?
It's quite likely this information is in the article somewhere, but it needs to be very near the beginning for dense people like myself. NickelShoe 23:16, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't know...it seems like the article is kind of crowded with pictures...is there any way we can trim it down without stripping out too much information? Could we provide an exernal link for people interested in more pics, something like that? On a small screen, this article must be difficult to read. NickelShoe 21:38, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Currently this is one of the best illustrations of using the web to compare shapes of objects, particularly comets and yes asteroids that were observed in ancient times. I have collected many triangle stones made by Native Americans and even stones carved in the shape of Ida, Gaspra, Eros, and most importantly Apophis or as the Japanese call it "Itokawa".
The triangle shaped comet is proably a multi-bodied comet with several large chunks in the tail. I recognise Eros on the Native American carving with the bird. Eros shows up in the Bear Claw.
I recently found a painting of Apophis and it was acknowleged by Apollo 9 astronaut Russel Schwigart. I therefore have found this to be an exmemplary use of images on the web.
There are some articles on Wikipedia talking about the same "book".
Book of Silk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawangdui#Books
Please see the discussion as well.
Mawangdui Silk Texts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawangdui_Silk_Texts
It looks like this could use some of the references put inline, find some stuff for the fact tags, and maybe some copyedit work as well. Maybe make this a bit more general of an article? the swastika motif in nature? or tightly focused on comets? Just a few thoughts. -- Rocksanddirt 17:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
A huge portion of this article infringed on http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/bronze.html so I deleted the infringing portions. I'm going to replace some of the images as stuff that old is out of copyright. ← Ben B4 19:06, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
For the symbols that represent owl tracks, what exactly does that have to do with comets? ← Ben B4 19:12, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
This article is being discussed at WP:COIN#Comets_and_the_swastika_motif. The following is from a posting that Bob Kobres made there. EdJohnston 16:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
The main theme of Comets and the swastika motif is predicated on the fact that the artifact mentioned has a drawing that most people would now describe as a swastika, labeled as a long tailed pheasant star (di-xing). Clearly there was an association between this particular view of a comet and a fowl! All that I have added (and published many years ago) to what is obvious from the Chinese artifact is the supposition that the association of swastika like drawing with a bird is due to the bird foot-print like aspect of the comet depiction. I learned recently that this relationship between the swastika or fyl-fot motif and a fowls foot was actually suggested over one hundred years ago:
As for my published speculation of a connection between the swastika motif and the Astika parva in the Mahabharata--this too has been supposed earlier:
Garuda, which is the main focus of the Astika parva, is not a terrestrial bird:
Postulating recent prior encounters with extraterrestrial debris is now well within the scope of contemporary scientific inquiry:
I discussed how this particular paper came to be published by SIS here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Swastika#Comets
I do not think that it is fair to casually label a publication that has been active since 1974 unacceptable simply because you are not familiar with the subject matter that group is interested in. As for the WP article under discussion, I think that there is certainly more evidence to support the notion that the swastika motif as an important religious symbol had more to do with its frequent appearance in the ancient sky than with basket weaving, which is suggested without support in the main swastika article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika Bkobres 22:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
The swastika drawing on the Chinese silk is labeled Di-Xing. Di (as Sagan published) is the name of a long tailed pheasant: dí 'di' (ancient name for long-tailed pheasant)翟鸡 see: Reeves's pheasant White-crowned long-tailed pheasant. Also, who and when were the ideas mentioned above debunked? The Chinese silk was found in 1978. Bkobres 17:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you Dieter, you finally got me aggravated enough to look for the late paleolithic bird that is carved from mammoth tusk and sports a swastika right where the foot of a bird should be placed on such a carving. I recalled seeing this years ago but could not remember where--It was Joseph Campbell's The Flight of the Wild Gander, pp. 147, 1969 edition. The book was republished in 2004 and Google Book Search happens to make that section with a drawing of the artifact available for preview. The carving is on page 117 of this edition. Bkobres 21:08, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I do have the 1969 edition at the library, Ed, but the link still works for me at home. It will open to page 116--you will need to scroll down or use the navigation arrows to get to the next page. Bkobres 23:46, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I share the concern of Dbachmann that the connection between swastikas and comets is not well enough attested by mainstream authorities. I'm fine with the reference to Joseph Campbell. But his page (which I did manage to open, finally) is not much evidence for the comet theory. It would be worth considering DB's idea for a Swastika origin theories article, but unless I'm missing something I don't know where that article would get its sources for the 'comet' section. EdJohnston 09:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Let me reiterate: (A) The Chinese silk that had been buried for over 2000 years and was unearthed in 1978 depicts 29 comets. (B) The 29th comet, that is swastika like, is labeled on that silk: Di-Xing, which in Chinese means long-tailed pheasant bird star. (C) The part of a bird's anatomy that the drawing most resembles is its foot. (D) Schaafsma (Morphy, H., 1989) states on page on page 261: "The tracks of animals are not a general feature of Pueblo art. Rather a selected few are chosen for graphic depiction because of the special roles the animals in question played in religious ideology and ritual. The whole animal may be signified by a track, although in certain cases the track (or paw in the case of bears) is imbued with specific ritual powers." She elaborates further on the next page (262): "Whereas in many cases the representation of an animal of bird track may be an abbreviated statement for the whole creature, and as well, an attempt to secure its supernatural aid, investigation shows that in Pueblo ritual the roadrunner track itself as well as the bird alone are both items of importance." (E) I have further pointed out a ~10,000 year old carving of a bird that has a swastika like carving where one would expect the foot of that bird to be located. There is thus a direct proven relationship between a swastika like motif and a comet called Di-Xing (long-tailed pheasant star) by the Chinese (A+B). The question then becomes: Is there published information that will allow that a bird could be represented by the form of its foot and has a swastika like motif been used to represent a bird's foot? (C+D+E) Make a strong case for that.
And Dieter you need to inform Dover that Ball's information on page 226 about the swastika has been "debunked." Actually the direction a jetting comet would appear to spin, as viewed from Earth while within or nearly within the comet's orbit, would reverse as it came within Earth's orbit and then again as it moved outside of Earth's orbit. If Earth was way outside the comet's orbit (on the opposite side of the sun) when the comet came to perihelion, the comet would remain small and there would be no reversal of rotation. Thus the direction of spin and whether the comet was getting bigger or smaller would be important to observe for a comet that returned to perihelion at around a 3.3 year interval. Since the orbit of Earth and Taurid objects are not coplanar, whether the comet appeared north or south of the sun's path would also be significant to people trying to predict what degree of grief from encountering comet debris (meteor storms) might be headed their way. There would also be a head-first tail-first view of the comet at sunrise and sunset that can explain why some cultures gave the same entity both a male and female persona.
This seems most pertinent to the current discussion:
An encyclopedia torn apart
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 11/10/2007
Tireless volunteer effort has turned Wikipedia into the world's most popular information source. But increasingly acrimonious arguments about what it should include threaten to split the online encyclopedia in two. Ian Douglas reports
There's a war going on behind the pages of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written and edited by its readers.
Submission of new articles is slowing to a trickle where in previous years it was flood, and the discussion pages are increasingly filled with arguments and cryptic references to policy documents. The rise of the deletionists is threatening the hitherto peaceful growth of the world's most popular information source.
. . . Bkobres 19:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
you still fail to point out how any of this is at all relevant. There are valid discussions of what may or may not belong on Wikipedia. original synthesis most definitely does not. The fact that your article was not nuked on sight is ample proof that deletionism is nothing like rampant on Wikipedia yet. dab (𒁳) 11:09, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Earlier in this discussion Dieter said:
The paper was written 15 years ago. Has it been endorsed by anyone? Has anyone ever refered to the idea in print since? Or has this hypothesis been buried as soon as the "Chronology and Catastrophism Workshop" closed its gates? If we can cite some mainstream publication endorsing, or even mentioning the idea, the case might look different. dab (𒁳) 16:33, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
- hallelujah, I found a lone reference to the article: R. Schoch, Voices of the Rocks : A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes and Ancient Civilizations, Harmony (1999), mentions a connection of birds and comets on p. 177f. (but no swastikas), and lists Kobres' website under "back matter" without further comment. This seems to more or less sum up the reception of the idea over the past 15 years. -- dab (𒁳) 16:52, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
The paper is also cited on several online publications including a NASA sponsored article: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/deepimpact/science/comets-cultures.cfm Bkobres ( talk) 22:46, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.
Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. |
Reporting errors |
Instead of jumping right to the conclusions people draw from it, the article should start with what it is. A book? Found where, when? What's it about?
It's quite likely this information is in the article somewhere, but it needs to be very near the beginning for dense people like myself. NickelShoe 23:16, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't know...it seems like the article is kind of crowded with pictures...is there any way we can trim it down without stripping out too much information? Could we provide an exernal link for people interested in more pics, something like that? On a small screen, this article must be difficult to read. NickelShoe 21:38, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Currently this is one of the best illustrations of using the web to compare shapes of objects, particularly comets and yes asteroids that were observed in ancient times. I have collected many triangle stones made by Native Americans and even stones carved in the shape of Ida, Gaspra, Eros, and most importantly Apophis or as the Japanese call it "Itokawa".
The triangle shaped comet is proably a multi-bodied comet with several large chunks in the tail. I recognise Eros on the Native American carving with the bird. Eros shows up in the Bear Claw.
I recently found a painting of Apophis and it was acknowleged by Apollo 9 astronaut Russel Schwigart. I therefore have found this to be an exmemplary use of images on the web.
There are some articles on Wikipedia talking about the same "book".
Book of Silk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawangdui#Books
Please see the discussion as well.
Mawangdui Silk Texts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawangdui_Silk_Texts
It looks like this could use some of the references put inline, find some stuff for the fact tags, and maybe some copyedit work as well. Maybe make this a bit more general of an article? the swastika motif in nature? or tightly focused on comets? Just a few thoughts. -- Rocksanddirt 17:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
A huge portion of this article infringed on http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/bronze.html so I deleted the infringing portions. I'm going to replace some of the images as stuff that old is out of copyright. ← Ben B4 19:06, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
For the symbols that represent owl tracks, what exactly does that have to do with comets? ← Ben B4 19:12, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
This article is being discussed at WP:COIN#Comets_and_the_swastika_motif. The following is from a posting that Bob Kobres made there. EdJohnston 16:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
The main theme of Comets and the swastika motif is predicated on the fact that the artifact mentioned has a drawing that most people would now describe as a swastika, labeled as a long tailed pheasant star (di-xing). Clearly there was an association between this particular view of a comet and a fowl! All that I have added (and published many years ago) to what is obvious from the Chinese artifact is the supposition that the association of swastika like drawing with a bird is due to the bird foot-print like aspect of the comet depiction. I learned recently that this relationship between the swastika or fyl-fot motif and a fowls foot was actually suggested over one hundred years ago:
As for my published speculation of a connection between the swastika motif and the Astika parva in the Mahabharata--this too has been supposed earlier:
Garuda, which is the main focus of the Astika parva, is not a terrestrial bird:
Postulating recent prior encounters with extraterrestrial debris is now well within the scope of contemporary scientific inquiry:
I discussed how this particular paper came to be published by SIS here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Swastika#Comets
I do not think that it is fair to casually label a publication that has been active since 1974 unacceptable simply because you are not familiar with the subject matter that group is interested in. As for the WP article under discussion, I think that there is certainly more evidence to support the notion that the swastika motif as an important religious symbol had more to do with its frequent appearance in the ancient sky than with basket weaving, which is suggested without support in the main swastika article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika Bkobres 22:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
The swastika drawing on the Chinese silk is labeled Di-Xing. Di (as Sagan published) is the name of a long tailed pheasant: dí 'di' (ancient name for long-tailed pheasant)翟鸡 see: Reeves's pheasant White-crowned long-tailed pheasant. Also, who and when were the ideas mentioned above debunked? The Chinese silk was found in 1978. Bkobres 17:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you Dieter, you finally got me aggravated enough to look for the late paleolithic bird that is carved from mammoth tusk and sports a swastika right where the foot of a bird should be placed on such a carving. I recalled seeing this years ago but could not remember where--It was Joseph Campbell's The Flight of the Wild Gander, pp. 147, 1969 edition. The book was republished in 2004 and Google Book Search happens to make that section with a drawing of the artifact available for preview. The carving is on page 117 of this edition. Bkobres 21:08, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I do have the 1969 edition at the library, Ed, but the link still works for me at home. It will open to page 116--you will need to scroll down or use the navigation arrows to get to the next page. Bkobres 23:46, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I share the concern of Dbachmann that the connection between swastikas and comets is not well enough attested by mainstream authorities. I'm fine with the reference to Joseph Campbell. But his page (which I did manage to open, finally) is not much evidence for the comet theory. It would be worth considering DB's idea for a Swastika origin theories article, but unless I'm missing something I don't know where that article would get its sources for the 'comet' section. EdJohnston 09:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Let me reiterate: (A) The Chinese silk that had been buried for over 2000 years and was unearthed in 1978 depicts 29 comets. (B) The 29th comet, that is swastika like, is labeled on that silk: Di-Xing, which in Chinese means long-tailed pheasant bird star. (C) The part of a bird's anatomy that the drawing most resembles is its foot. (D) Schaafsma (Morphy, H., 1989) states on page on page 261: "The tracks of animals are not a general feature of Pueblo art. Rather a selected few are chosen for graphic depiction because of the special roles the animals in question played in religious ideology and ritual. The whole animal may be signified by a track, although in certain cases the track (or paw in the case of bears) is imbued with specific ritual powers." She elaborates further on the next page (262): "Whereas in many cases the representation of an animal of bird track may be an abbreviated statement for the whole creature, and as well, an attempt to secure its supernatural aid, investigation shows that in Pueblo ritual the roadrunner track itself as well as the bird alone are both items of importance." (E) I have further pointed out a ~10,000 year old carving of a bird that has a swastika like carving where one would expect the foot of that bird to be located. There is thus a direct proven relationship between a swastika like motif and a comet called Di-Xing (long-tailed pheasant star) by the Chinese (A+B). The question then becomes: Is there published information that will allow that a bird could be represented by the form of its foot and has a swastika like motif been used to represent a bird's foot? (C+D+E) Make a strong case for that.
And Dieter you need to inform Dover that Ball's information on page 226 about the swastika has been "debunked." Actually the direction a jetting comet would appear to spin, as viewed from Earth while within or nearly within the comet's orbit, would reverse as it came within Earth's orbit and then again as it moved outside of Earth's orbit. If Earth was way outside the comet's orbit (on the opposite side of the sun) when the comet came to perihelion, the comet would remain small and there would be no reversal of rotation. Thus the direction of spin and whether the comet was getting bigger or smaller would be important to observe for a comet that returned to perihelion at around a 3.3 year interval. Since the orbit of Earth and Taurid objects are not coplanar, whether the comet appeared north or south of the sun's path would also be significant to people trying to predict what degree of grief from encountering comet debris (meteor storms) might be headed their way. There would also be a head-first tail-first view of the comet at sunrise and sunset that can explain why some cultures gave the same entity both a male and female persona.
This seems most pertinent to the current discussion:
An encyclopedia torn apart
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 11/10/2007
Tireless volunteer effort has turned Wikipedia into the world's most popular information source. But increasingly acrimonious arguments about what it should include threaten to split the online encyclopedia in two. Ian Douglas reports
There's a war going on behind the pages of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written and edited by its readers.
Submission of new articles is slowing to a trickle where in previous years it was flood, and the discussion pages are increasingly filled with arguments and cryptic references to policy documents. The rise of the deletionists is threatening the hitherto peaceful growth of the world's most popular information source.
. . . Bkobres 19:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
you still fail to point out how any of this is at all relevant. There are valid discussions of what may or may not belong on Wikipedia. original synthesis most definitely does not. The fact that your article was not nuked on sight is ample proof that deletionism is nothing like rampant on Wikipedia yet. dab (𒁳) 11:09, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Earlier in this discussion Dieter said:
The paper was written 15 years ago. Has it been endorsed by anyone? Has anyone ever refered to the idea in print since? Or has this hypothesis been buried as soon as the "Chronology and Catastrophism Workshop" closed its gates? If we can cite some mainstream publication endorsing, or even mentioning the idea, the case might look different. dab (𒁳) 16:33, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
- hallelujah, I found a lone reference to the article: R. Schoch, Voices of the Rocks : A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes and Ancient Civilizations, Harmony (1999), mentions a connection of birds and comets on p. 177f. (but no swastikas), and lists Kobres' website under "back matter" without further comment. This seems to more or less sum up the reception of the idea over the past 15 years. -- dab (𒁳) 16:52, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
The paper is also cited on several online publications including a NASA sponsored article: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/deepimpact/science/comets-cultures.cfm Bkobres ( talk) 22:46, 20 November 2007 (UTC)