Social Network Analysis of The Iliad and The Odyssey Indicates that They Were Likely Based on Real Events
Today, P J Miranda at the Federal Technological University of Paraná in Brazil and a couple of pals study the social network between characters in Homer’s ancient Greek poem, the Odyssey.
Their conclusion is that this social network bears remarkable similarities to Facebook, Twitter and the like and that this may offer an important clue about the origin of this ancient story.
Miranda and co think of each character in the Odyssey as a node in the network. They say a link exists between two characters when they meet in the story, when they speak directly to each other, cite one another to a third character or when it is otherwise clear that they know each other.
In analysing the Odyssey, they identified 342 unique characters and over 1700 relations between them. Having constructed the social network, Miranda and co then examined its structure.
“Odyssey’s social network is small world, highly clustered, slightly hierarchical and resilient to random attacks,” they say. What’s interesting about this conclusion is that these same characteristics all crop up in social networks in the real world. Miranda and co say this is good evidence that the Odyssey is based, at least in part, on a real social network and so must be a mixture of myth and fact.
(via The Remarkable Properties of Mythological Social Networks | MIT Technology Review)
Historians Using Semantic Analysis To Improve Dating of Ancient Manuscripts
Their approach is to use a subset of some 10,000 charters that are dated and to look for changes in language over time that could be used to date other documents.
For example, Tilahun and co say that the phrase “amicorum meorum vivorum et mortuorum”, which means “of my friends living and dead”, was popular between the years 1150 and 1240 but not at other times. And the phrase “Francis et Anglicis”, which is a form of address meaning “to French and English”, was phased out when England lost Normandy to the French in 1204.
However, the statistical approach is much more rigorous than simply looking for common phrases. Tilahun and co’s computer search looks for patterns in the distribution of words occurring once, twice, three times and so on. “Our goal is to develop algorithms to help automate the process of estimating the dates of undated charters through purely computational means,” they say. This approach reveals various patterns which they then test by attempting to date individual documents in this set.
They say the best approach is one known as the maximum prevalence technique. This is a statistical technique that gives a most probable date by comparing the set of words in the document with the distribution in the training set. Tilahun and co say their approach also has other applications. For example, the same technique could be used to work out authorship and to weed out forgeries, of which there are known to be a substantial number.
(via The Algorithms That Automatically Date Medieval Manuscripts | MIT Technology Review)
A computer, it turns out, is just a particular kind of machine that works by pretending to be another machine.
Celebrating 50 Years of Satellite Communication on the Telstar 1 Launch Anniversary
Launched on the morning of 10 July 1962 aboard a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, the 77-kilogram, solar-cell-covered sphere carried the first live transatlantic TV feed—a test signal sent between the ground stations at Andover, Maine, and Pleumeur-Bodou, France.
On 23 July, TV viewers got their first glimpse of Telstar’s capabilities when networks in North America and Europe broadcast part of a major league baseball game, followed by remarks from President John F. Kennedy. Among Telstar 1’s other firsts: the first telephone call to be relayed through space, as well as the first fax.
Robots take the lead in hunt for Amelia Earhart’s plane
A new expedition will use undersea robots to explore the former Gardner Island and its coral reefs to find evidence of the long-missing aviator.
(ht mothernaturenetwork)
Smithsonian to Digitally Archive Physical Objects:
The Smithsonian Institution… is building a new archive of 3-D digital models for key pieces in its collection. It starts with a statue of Thomas Jefferson and ends, we sincerely hope, with full-scale replicas of every item in the National Air and Space Museum…
CNET reports that that some 3-D scanned items will become 3-D printouts, and others will remain digital models (which could also conceivably be printed, or used to help restoration efforts). Replicas would probably go to schools or other museums, but it would be fairly simple to put the plans online somewhere and let people hook up their own laser sintering devices.
(via Smithsonian Is 3-D Scanning and Printing Part of Museum Collection | Popular Science)
Computer Model Developed to Explain European History:
Some 15 years ago, the American political scientist Robert Axelrod put forward a remarkable model of the way cultural diversity persists in society. His idea was that people are more likely to interact with others like them. The more similar two people are, the more likely they are to adopt each other’s traits. That’s how traits spread but it is also why diversity persists.
Since then, the power and simplicity of Axelrod’s approach has led complexity theorists to study numerous variations on the original theme. The model lends itself to computer simulation because people can be modelled as nodes on a grid influenced by those closest to them. Whatever the starting conditions, a computer can go through through millions of iterations to see how traits spread. Consequently, Axelrod’s approach has been used to simulate behaviours ranging from the spread of language to voting behaviour.
Today, Bartlomiej Dybiec and pals at the Center for Models of Life in Copenhagen use an Axelrod-like model to examine the way cultures might have spread throughout Europe…
(via Computer Model Replays Europe’s Cultural History - Technology Review)
