Language of ancient Indus found?

The Indus valley civilisation in what is now eastern Pakistan is one of the most ancient known civilisations dating back over 4,500 years but there is no historical information about the civilisation or it's people. That may change if the claims by researchers that they have found the written language of these people are true.

Many artifacts have been found inscribed with symbols which researchers claim are a written language, although others say they are just pictograms. 500 distinct symbols have been found and scientists have used computers to analyse the symbols to try and work out what exactly they are. Statistical regularities have been found in the sequences of symbols which indicates it could be a written language. Work is now ongoing to try and discover syntax and grammar rules. Deciphering the script though, if that is what it is, will be much harder in lieu of anything like the Rosetta Stone.

Revolution!

My next assignment will be on the subject of revolution, it asks if the revolutions in Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary at the end of World War 1 were because of that war or would they have happened anyway. It is an interesting subject and i think the key question to ask first is what do you mean by "revolution", a word now rather overused.

Relevant to my subject there are two kinds of revolution : political and social. In the three countries/empires in question political revolutions do apply though social revolution, a revolution in how a society operates and grows from top to bottom, applies mainly to Russia and in some ways to Austria-Hungary. It doesn't really apply to Germany even if The Kaiser was deposed. The aristocracy remained in place along with rich businessmen (indeed it is because of the political power and influence of these groups largely that Hitler was able to gain power, but that is a subject for another day).

Political revolution, on the other hand, applies to all. Germany became a republic with a socialist government, Austria-Hungary broke up, and Russia of course became the USSR. There is little doubt that the pressures of war, especially the effect of shortages and restrictions on the civilian population, helped build up the pressure for change. However it is simplistic to say the working class were equally oppressed and impoverished. Indeed many workers did well in the war and saw their wages rise, especially those in vital industries. It was the middle class who suffered, falling incomes, those on fixed incomes especially. However everyone saw their spending power erode in the end as raging inflation and shortages bit in later in the war.

One could argue, however, that there were revolutionary pressures in all three states before the war. Russia had had problems for years, the 1905 revolution for example which saw the Tsar give up some powers before snatching them back and leaving the Duma impotent. Germany had seen the rise of socialism and even from the early 1900s The Kaiser had to use political guile to get his armaments programmes through the Reichstag. Austria-Hungary was a basket case empire which uses the tension between various ethnic groups to maintain cohesion, a policy that was probably bound to fail sooner or later.

It can be no co-incidence that all three states suffered their revolutions within a couple of years of each other. Pressures already existed and the war causes these pressures to keep on building up. Without the war it may have been all three states saw revolution in any case but perhaps of a different (and less violent) kind. That of course is something we will never know for sure.

TMA03 back

TMA03 was returned to me yesterday and i was very pleased with the result. My mark for TMA02 was average and knocked my confidence a bit but my essay on total war was well received so i am back and rocking!

Tutorial tomorrow then i shall commence TMA04 which is due in early June. I am still about 4 weeks ahead of schedule study wise so i may just concentrate on the assignment next week. This week's study was on cinema and radio in the interwar period which i found very interesting indeed.

The ghost of Dr Edward Jenner?

This photograph purports to be of the ghost of Dr Edward Jenner, the pioneer of smallpox vaccination. It was taken in his former home and appears to show a mysterious figure sitting in a chair.



Of especial interest to me because my Nan always said she was related to Dr Jenner, i have found though that her ancestors were called Genner but they do appear to have been from Gloucestershire (like Dr Jenner) and its of course possible there was a relationship somewhere in the mists of time, name spellings did vary until fairly recently.

Resistance

As mentioned here already i believe the final TMA on my course this year is a double one, it's subject will be how useful resistance and partisan warfare was in fighting fascism. I am currently reading Resistance in Western Europe which contains a number of essays on various countries in Western Europe and their resistance movements.

So far i have only read on Belgium and France (in another book) but one thing does seem to have sprung to mind at least from these 2 countries. Resistance was more against fascist collaborators than against the German Army at least until the war had turned for the worse for the Axis (after Stalingrad) and operations against the Germans seemed to require more assistance by the Allies (especially the SOE).

That is not to say there were not any operations against the army but the focus seemed to be to fight homegrown fascists. A reason for this may be that in the early years of the war the effect on the population of the German occupation was not as marked. Fascist collaborators in the occupied countries were given rein to rule for the Germans in return for satisfying the German's requirements. Its easy to see how a "wait and see" attitude would have arisen among the majority. However when those requirements got more onerous, especially when the Germans started to round up Jews, then resistance became more widespread but in a non-combat sense.

The popular image of resistance is of a civilian with a Tommy Gun shooting at some German soldiers but most resistance effort was in non-combat roles, such as producing newspapers with uncensored and anti-German news, hiding Jews and other people wanted by the authorities, supporting clandestine operations such as copying identity papers and intelligence. It is going to be interesting to try and work out how effective this was in combating Nazism but there must have been an effect, especially when 1000s of young people hid instead of be press ganged into working in German factories. The loss of that labour must have had an interesting degrading effect on the German war effort.

Anyway my reading continues...

Past music piracy

A couple of interesting snippets of previous examples of copyright infringements of intellectual property i.e. piracy. Music piracy dates back to at least 1897 according to this scan from the NY Times. Canadian pirates flooded the US market with cheap copies of the latest popular songs, well copies of sheet music that is. It does not say if anyone pirated wax cylinders too.

An interesting comment on a Slashdot article on this mentions even earlier piracy of material :

"In ancient Rome, it was completely ordinary for an audience member to transcribe a poetry recital, hand it over to amanuenses to massively copy, and then sell it in the marketplace with no money going back to the creator. Even poets didn't have a problem with it. The only protest I'm aware of in the literature is Martial's unhappiness that some talentless fellow was putting his own name on the transcription of Martial, and plagiarism is rather separate from copying without authorization."

Of course in both cases it did not kill off the entertainment industries of the time. Just as home taping didn't kill music in the 1980s.