Tuesday May 7th 2024 "How many Europeans does it take to change a lightbulb?"

We Europeans think we're so smart today, don't we. But there was a time when we weren't the exactly the sharpest tools in the tool-box, to put it mildly. 

I thought of this early this morning as I was working on my so-called "presentation" that I've got to make to the local U3A "History of English" group. And I realised one or two things as I started to delve back 6000 years to our linguistic ancestors, the Indo-Europeans, who, at the time, were living in the Caucasus Mountains area between Europe and Asia.

the 6000 BC homeland (coloured blue) of our linguistic 

ancestors, the Indo-Europeans, before they started 

migrating all over Europe and parts of Asia

not even dressed yet, I find myself already sitting at the laptop

in the kitchen, working on another of my incredibly obscure 

so-called "presentations" on the history of the English language

Those early Europeans in many ways weren't too bright, as I'm finding out doing my research this morning, but luckily some of their neighbours were a bit more "on the ball", like the Proto-Semites to the south in today's Middle East. And over the millennia our ancestors picked up quite a few things from their southern neighbours the Semites, useful little "gems" of knowledge and all sorts of handy hints and tips, which helped them get through their week.

I knew already, for instance, that we Europeans eventually learnt to write using an alphabet that the Ancient Greeks spotted in use by the Phoenicians, who lived in an area roughly corresponding to today's Lebanon.

This old Phoenician alphabet went through many changes, but basically it's the source of the alphabet that you and I use today when we're writing English.

But "how were those early Europeans doing in the maths department?", I hear you cry. 

"Could have done better" is the comment I'd have been tempted to make on those early Europeans' 4000 BC report cards, if I'd been their maths teacher. The Babylonians, for instance, were streets ahead of them, developing such concepts as fractions, algebra, quadratic equations, not to mention Pythagoras' theorem (ironically centuries before it was allegedly "discovered", and named, by the Greek mathematician Pythagoras haha!).

And I hear about a new humiliation today. Language historians think that those proto-Semites must at some stage have realised that we Europeans could only count up to 5, probably based on the fingers of one of their hands, just like little children still do.

a toddler learns how to count up to five,

using the fingers of one hand

And experts believe that the proto-Semites must have had a good laugh at those early Europeans, before finally taking pity on them, gently teaching them the numbers 6 and 7, to see whether they could master them. That's believed to be the explanation for the fact that the words for 'six' and 'seven' in all of today's European languages derived originally from the Semitic words for them: in today's Hebrew, for instance, these words are "shesh" and "sheva". 

Why didn't those proto-Semites carry the process further and teach our mentally struggling European ancestors the words for "eight", "nine" and "ten", while they were about it? 

Well, we don't really know, but my guess - only speculation - is that the proto-Semites could see that the Europeans were struggling already with the concepts of "six" and "seven", and decided not to "push it" - perhaps some of the Europeans were already in tears, and showing signs of distress, and so the proto-Semites thought, "Let's just leave them to work the other numbers out for themselves!"

We'll probably never know now, will we, which is a pity to put it mildly!

11:00 And I'm still thinking about this "counting" issue later today, when Lois and I nip over to Clive's Fruit Farm, just outside Upton-upon-Severn, to indulge ourselves in a naughty "brunch" of bacon with pancakes and maple syrup in Clive's café, in the company of a few other local "old codger" couples.

we settle down in the café courtyard today with 2 other 

local old-codger couples, and eat our pancakes and bacon

We came here just 3 days ago, on Saturday, when it was more crowded, and when, unexpectedly, we were also able to enjoy the bonus of a "live sex show" put on by Clive's rooster, whom we watched mounting 3 of his 30-strong harem of hens, one after the other, to the delight of the small cheering crowd of café customers.

flashback to last Saturday: an amused Lois showcases the activities

of Clive's rooster, seen here with one of his 30-strong "hen harem" giving 

her a good "seeing-to", as other harem members queue up

to take their turn (left)

Today, however, disappointingly Clive's rooster isn't putting on a  sex show, and we're not sure why. Does he only do it at weekends? Is Tuesday his day off? I think we should be told - eventually at least. No real hurry haha!

the Fruit Farm's hen coop: no live sex shows today - oh dear!

Whatever the explanation for the rooster's lack of interest today, the shiny new sign that Lois and I designed for the Fruit Farm will need to have its wording changed - that's for sure!

And this morning Lois and I are soon talking about the logistics of running a 30-strong "hen harem" - it must be an administrative nightmare for the poor rooster. Does he know all his hens personally, does he have names for them all, and is he careful to give them each a fair share of "seeing to's"? And how does he even know they're all present and correct, and that there isn't one missing? 

for a busy rooster, the nightmare logistics of 

"managing" a harem of 30-plus hens

Can roosters count, in other words? This particular rooster would need to be able to count up to about 30 to be really sure that none of his harem has wandered off. And, just like we human beings have a decimal system, that corresponds to our having 10 fingers, has the rooster's number system evolved to be base-3 or base-6 perhaps, as a result of them having two cute little 3-toed feet? 

I wonder..... !

And again, I think we should be told, don't you?

a typical rooster's feet - did it lead to

early concepts of base 3 mathematics?

Fingers and toes are pretty basic to human maths, aren't they, and that's still true today. And again, as far as we humans are concerned, we've got to thank the Semites - the Sumerians, the Egyptians and Babylonians etc for the base-60 maths behind some of our concepts like 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour. That too was based on counting fingers, each divided into 3 to match the joints in all our digits.

Fascinating subject, isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]

13:00 Going out for a brunch is great, isn't it - and it seems like years since Lois and I have done them. We must start them up again, as a matter of priority! One unexpected advantage is that when we get home we can get straight into bed for our afternoon nap time, without having to make lunch or wash up first. 

Nice one!

Also, an advantage of writing a blog or diary online is that I can easily search back to find out the last time Lois and I did something or other. And in this case I can see that we last did it in August 2021 in  honour of our daughter Alison's 46th birthday, in Ali and Ed's house in Headley, Hampshire, that they had recently bought and were renovating. 

flashback to August 2021: our daughter Alison's birthday brunch:

(left to right) husband Ed, Rosalind, Alison, Isaac and Josie

Ali and Ed's house was in quite a state at the time, still being

renovated by builders, and with scaffolding in the kitchen, for example

Happy times !!!!!

21:00 We wind down with the second and final part of an interesting documentary on the Sky History channel about what was probably the world's first ever large-scale and extremely violent pitched battle between two massive armies, each heavily armed with the latest state-of-the-art bronze weapons. 

This, the world's first-ever really big battle apparently took place in or around 1300 BC in the Tollense Valley in a supposedly "quiet" part of North Germany. The two armies were obviously determined to beat the s*** out of each other, inflict as many horrendous injuries as possible on each other, and slaughter the maximum number of the "enemy", who then died the most horrible deaths. 

the state of some poor guy's skull - his "reward"

for agreeing to take part in this horrendous battle

It's nice to know that the human race's bellicosity and bloodthirstiness has a long an honourable tradition going back 3,300 years.... I don't think!

Lois and I are a bit disappointed tonight, however, when we find that this second programme in Sky History Channel's two-part study of the battle, in practice doesn't add a lot to what had already been said in Part One - another case of a one-hour documentary padded out to a two-hour, just to fill the schedules. What madness!

It doesn't help that we're late joining the programme, thanks to technical problems with our TV Roku Stick - still not resolved - forcing Lois and me to bring the laptop in and watch it on that. What a crazy world we live in!

It's interesting, however, to hear that the so-called "state of the art" new bronze weapons, that in 1300 BC people were obviously keen to start wielding and get one-up on their friends, and perhaps threaten them with - "That's a nice spear!" "Thanks, yes, it's one of the new 'bronze' sort - I picked it up cheap at the market last week, you know!", were in some cases less effective than their earlier flint ones. The new bronze arrowheads, for example, are shown tonight to be much less deadly than their predecessors, the flint arrowheads. At this battle the flint arrowheads were killing hundreds more than the shiny new prestigious high-status-associated bronze ones, and were doing so much more painfully - yikes!

Researchers tested both arrowhead types by firing them into the body of a dead pig suspended on a tree, starting first with the prestigious "bronze" version:

Then, next, for comparison purposes, the researchers tried the "old-fashioned", "so yesterday", flint arrowheads:

Yikes !!!!!

However, it just goes to show what Lois and I often remark - just because what you've got is the latest thing, it's not necessarily better! If the old one works, don't ditch it too soon - that's what we say!

Historians say we'll probably never know for sure what this horrendous battle was all about, in those far-off days in Tollense, but it was almost certainly caused by a Europe-wide crisis involving disruption of trading routes. This particular battle took place at what's now believed to have been a major trading route from North Germany to the Mediterranean - a very elaborate causeway and bridge system has now been unearthed there, with a massive 20 feet (6m) wide road, designed to take traders safely through a boggy area that would otherwise have been impassable.

And the crisis, whatever it was, is believed to have been Europe-wide. At the same time as the Tollense battle, defences were being beefed up in the Greek stronghold of Mycenae, probably related to the slaughter that was going on in today's Germany, as Steve, our knowledgeable American brother-in-law, has already pointed out to me.

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!