Humanities desk
< January 16	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	January 18 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 17

Potter's wheel in Pre-Columbian America?

Article Potter's wheel does not say anything regarding whether the potter's wheel was or wasn't known in Pre-Columbian America. Hard to believe the pot in the picture could have been made in any other way. So was the potter's wheel known or not? Thanks. Basemetal 06:39, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Basemetal. Please read Coiling for a description of an ancient pottery technique that can create such a bowl without a potter's wheel. Please also read Ceramics of indigenous peoples of the Americas (and its references) which states that the potter's wheel was unknown in the Americas before Columbus's voyages. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:16, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Circle tools can also be used to produce near perfect discs or bowls without a potter's wheel. Regarding the historic sources there seems to be a dispute about if Inca and Mayan civilisations even knew the wheel. Some sources claim that some pre-columbian children pull-toys actually had working wheels. Given their advanced knownledge in astronomy and architecture it would be very odd if they didnt know wheels at all. But according to Inca_road_system#Transportation they atleast never used wheels in transportation. --Kharon (talk) 19:34, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Kharon -- this has been debated by scholars. The basic answer seems to be that without suitable domesticated draft animals (which didn't exist in the Western Hemisphere at that time), the wheel would have had little practical usefulness in transportation (except maybe in the form of a wheelbarrow)... AnonMoos (talk) 20:56, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is not to question what has been said here, but I've ran into this. In particular there's there mention of a device called a "kabal" I've never heard of, used in Yucatan, which is described as "a disc of wood caused to turn on a slippery board by the bare feet of the (present) Maya potter, while the clay sticking to the disc and revolving with it is thus made to mould itself symmetrically against the stationary fingers of the worker". The author of the letter seemed to have concluded it was likely that the "kabal" may have had indigenous origins but was not absolutely certain of that. Now that was in 1897. Maybe we know more now. I'm not given access to the whole thing, so I couldn't read the whole discussion and I couldn't see the name of the author of the letter, but you might. Clearly the "kabal" is not a real potter's wheel, but the basic idea is not so very different. Basemetal 23:50, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The letter Basemetal mentions refers to the work Hill Caves of Yucatan, which is by Henry C. Mercer, and which can be read at Archive.org. DuncanHill (talk) 23:56, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See pages 163 (with a picture of a kabal in use), and 165. DuncanHill (talk) 23:58, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

California Assembly District 39 elections (June 5, 2018)

If I'm not mistaken, on June the 5th this year voters in Assembly District 39 will vote simultaneously for a replacement legislator in a special general election AND for a full-term legislator in a general primary election, which is somewhat strange. 1) Has no reliable source except this one covered this phenomenon yet at least in a paragraph, or is it me bad at googling? 2) Does California law preclude candidates from running in a special and a general election for the same office at the same time? --185.79.102.92 (talk) 10:35, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

By "this phenomenon", do you mean simultaneous special-and-general elections in California, or anywhere in the US? If the latter, see David Curson of Michigan, who simultaneously won a special election and lost a general election for the same position, despite facing the same opponent in both races. I can't offer any information for California. Nyttend (talk) 19:29, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nyttend -- according to the article you linked to, David Curson faced off against Kerry Bentivolio in the special, while Syed Taj faced off against Kerry Bentivolio in the General... AnonMoos (talk) 20:49, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Uh...oops, you're right. So much for that being a bizarre outcome — still odd, but not bizarre. The point partially remains, however, in that California's not the only part of the country in which certain circumstances permit simultaneous special and general elections for the same position. Nyttend (talk) 20:57, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Mark Kirk was elected simultaneously both for the remnant of Obama's senatorial term and for a term in his own right in 2010. This was much more common before the 17th Amendment, for example both Mark Hanna and his successor, Charles Dick were elected (by the legislature) to an unexpired term and to a full term.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:25, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

From the results at United States House of Representatives elections in Michigan, 2012#District 11 and Michigan's 11th congressional district special election, 2012#General election, it appears that David Curson received a similar number of votes to Syed Taj while Kerry Bentivolio received far fewer in the special election. There wasn't a big difference for the other candidates. I.E. Significantly fewer voted in the special election than in the general election. It's possible these people didn't understand or simply didn't care even if they were voting in one so could have voted in the other without much more effort. I don't think either would be particularly uncommon or surprising. It's probably not unreasonable for there to be some degree of bias in who these people voted for. Our article also mentions how the special election was largely ignored. So I assume there were few attack ads etc telling people how the eventual special election winner eats kids (or whatever). Our article on the failed general election candidate mentions how he was accused of "having ties to Islamic extremism" and his ethnicity and religion raises the possibility some people would refuse to vote for him even without such accusations (probably also some who would vote for him primarily due to his ethnicity and/or religion). Or to put it a different way, even from a cursory look and with only limited understanding of US politics, I wouldn't even say what happened was really that odd. These factors also mean we have no real way of knowing what would have happened if for example Curson faced Bentivolio in the general election. For all we know he could have fared far worse than Syed Taj.Nil Einne (talk) 03:51, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, from my POV the biggest question is which also perhaps relates to the above, is it unusual that David Curson didn't run in the general election and Syed Taj didn't run in the special election especially since the final part at least was simultaneous? This part does seem a little odd to me, but maybe there are reasons why it happens. I'm not sure why Syed Taj didn't run in the special election but it sounds like David Curson possibly didn't really want a significant political career and just wanted to serve for that short time for whatever reason. (This may of course have improved his chances in the election.) Nil Einne (talk) 11:00, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If I remember right, that's how Carole Migden entered the Assembly in 1996; her posters had two checkmarks to remind the Democratic machine's fans to vote for her in both places. —Tamfang (talk) 04:55, 21 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Did Early Users of Double-Entry Bookkeeping Use Negative Numbers?

The article on Negative_numbers only mentions modern financial uses, and also notes that bookkeepers often use parenthesis, or the color red, to denote debits. From the article on the double-entry_bookkeeping_system, it looks like debits are listed in one column, and credits in another. Does this mean that (for example) an accountant in the 15th century would consider an entry like "-100" to be an error, instead of a debit of 100? OldTimeNESter (talk) 13:05, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As you see at the articles you linked, double-entry bookkeeping was developed in Europe, where the concept of negative numbers did not gain acceptance until about the 18th century. So your 15th-century accountant would not have been able to write "-100" in the first place. --70.29.13.251 (talk) 10:07, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I do see that now. I didn't quite put the two articles together on my own.OldTimeNESter (talk) 16:33, 20 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You don't really need negative numbers in bookkeeping except if you want to report overall results. And even then one can say things like debt or profit. There's not much difference between that and what the Egyptians could do with distances or heights on plans, they could say something was a certain distance before or after a point or how deep for instance a canal was. Dmcq (talk) 17:16, 20 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sedgwick's Chief of Staff at Spotsylvania - McMahon

Was the Martin McMahon mentioned in John Sedgwick#Death the same person as the Martin McMahon on whom we have an article? DuncanHill (talk) 21:48, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Very likely. Same Army and time and he was a higher ranked officer, which made him the eyewitness of choice in that time. --Kharon (talk) 21:14, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Almost certainly. It's unlikely that there would be two guys of that name at that level in that army at that time. Further, the army career and qualifications described on McMahon's page match up very well with being assigned as a staff officer to Sedgwick. Not sure how to verify this, though. -Arch dude (talk) 02:00, 20 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Futhermore, two of the references in the McMahon article say that he served with the Army of the Potomac for the entire war, and that is the army that fought in that battle. -Arch dude (talk) 02:11, 20 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- OK, look here: [1]. It was Martin T. McMahon, so I think we can declare that it's the same guy. -Arch dude (talk) 02:16, 20 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - I found the original and linked it, and linked to McMahon. -Arch dude (talk) 03:11, 20 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Great work, thank you Arch dude. DuncanHill (talk) 09:46, 20 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]