Humanities desk
< June 8	<< May \| June \| Jul >>	June 10 >

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.

June 9

Implication of solutrean hypothesis

What would be the implications of the solutrean hypothesis if it turned out to be true? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Soul trainer (talk • contribs) 00:43, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

According to the user's contributions: "Created page with 'Hello, I just registered a new account so that I can edit Wikipedia anonymously. Thanks'". μηδείς (talk) 01:24, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That'll be the brains of the outfit...

_Muffled ^Pocketed 06:29, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It would mean that people from Europe may have been among the earliest settlers of the Americas. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:34, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It would also mean that a great many anthropologists, geneticists, and others, had got it completely wrong. Wymspen (talk) 17:11, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

More charitably, it would mean that based on the incomplete evidence available to them, they came to the conclusions best supported by that evidence, which were later shown to be wrong when additional evidence became available. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 14:03, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What about the implications for Native American people in relation to European people in North America? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Soul trainer (talk • contribs) 23:51, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It probably makes little practical difference whether you were invaded by your 130th cousins or your 300th. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:55, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily so: various legal judgements are influenced by the assumption, based on archeological evidence, that the Native American peoples' ancestors who migrated from North-East Asia were the exclusive original settlers of the Americas. If the Solutrean hypothesis were shown to be true, and settlers from Western Europe were shown to be contemporaneous or previous to this (thus either contributing to that ancestry or proving non-exclusivity), it might alter such judgements. (Being myself a European with no American interests, I have no dog in the fight.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.1230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 14:17, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So in other words, if the solutrean hypothesis were true, it would mean that European people would be the real native people of North America, not the people descended from those who migrated from Siberia through the Bering land bridge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Soul trainer (talk • contribs) 19:04, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Speculation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:30, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Solutrean Hypothesis is consistent with the proposition that in 1491 all humans in the Americas were descendants of migrants from Asia: this would be the case if the Solutrean people in North America had died out before having any contact with the people whose ancestors crossed the Bering land bridge. Mathew5000 (talk) 05:51, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Past occurrences of major-party United States opposing presidential candidates being from the same state?

2016 United States presidential election major party presumptive nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both officially resident in the state of New York at the time of the election. Has this ever happened before in the history of the United States, major-party candidates in the same presidential election being officially resident in the same state at the time of the election? (I'm not asking about unofficial cases, wherein candidates had a secondary/past/historical/familial/etc. residence in the same state.) —SeekingAnswers (reply) 01:54, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

According to List of United States presidential candidates, it's happened several times before—and in two of those earlier cases the state was New York!

1860 — Abraham Lincoln vs. Stephen Douglas (both Illinois). But this one is problematic: the Democratic Party was divided into regional factions at the time and arguably Douglas should not count; he finished fourth in the electoral vote, not second.
1904 — Theodore Roosevelt vs. Alton Parker (both New York)
1920 — Warren Harding vs. James Cox (both Ohio)
1944 — Franklin D. Roosevelt vs. Thomas Dewey (both New York)

In each of these cases the winning candidate also won the shared home state.

But the article does not include home-state information for elections before 1856, so maybe it happened earlier as well. Indeed, as there were fewer states back then, it would seem more likely than it does today. --69.159.60.83 (talk) 03:32, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A review of the elections prior to 1856, each one linkable from that list article, shows that there weren't any among the major candidates. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:16, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

bees in ancient civilizations

Is there a website that shows bees in the ancient civilizations like Olmec, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, and etc and their characteristics, their roles, and what can we understand from there? for example, in ancient Egypt, the bees represented the lower Egypt.Donmust90 (talk) 15:19, 9 June 2016 (UTC)Donmust90Donmust90 (talk) 15:19, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Ancient Honey Bee. Wikipedia has an article on Bee (mythology). AllBestFaith (talk) 15:37, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There are a number of books on this subject, some have previews on Google Books: The Tears of Re: Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt by Gene Kritsky, The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting by Ethel Eva Crane, The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore by Hilda M. Ransome and A Short History of the Honey Bee: Humans, Flowers, and Bees in the Eternal Chase for Honey by E. Readicker-Henderson. Alansplodge (talk) 16:55, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note that their critical role as pollinators may have gone completely unnoticed by some ancient civilizations. Sure, they would have seen them visiting flowers, but it's a big jump from that to understanding that they are an important part of the plant's reproductive cycle. StuRat (talk) 05:13, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Page xiii here [1] has some relevant info on that. Also a good-looking book in general, not specific to the ancient civilizations, but does have a lot of good info on pollinator services in a broader societal context. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:09, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]