Historical probability

Very weird

What do you mean with this post?

You can work out the probabilty of this yourself if you know the math.

Somehow I don't think you're asking us to do the math for you.

In an infinite universe there are infinite possibilites and what seems to be a pattern to us who cannot perceive the infinite is most often random happenstance.

A young man walking down an alley way in Brooklyn hears something that makes him look upwards. What he sees is a baby falling to the ground, but he catches it an saves it.

20 years later this same young man's baby falls out of his apartment window and a passerbye below catches and saves it.

True story.

A pattern or random coincidence?

These sorts of random happenstances have a significant impact upon us because they defy the patterns with which we are hard-wired to detect,

Thousands, if not millions, of babies fall out of windows each year and die ---whether or not someone was in a position to or tried to catch them. The pattern is that babies falling out of windows die.

Now comes a series of events which to our limited perception seems providential. Two babies fell out of window, both were caught and saved, and the first one was caught by the father of the second.

This can't be coincidence right?

I am asking 2-thinks - for someone to verify my probability math and confidence level without knowing my conclusion. And then there is the second issue - thoughts on random coincidence or pattern. This second issue is complicated by the fact that there may be certain patterns in human symbology that transcend time and, while not a coincidence, neither is it a pattern with a direct linkage between the two. These symbols do exist and are contained in the time periods mentioned.

In order for anyone to attempt to verify your probability calculation, they would need to know something more specific about it than you've provided.

There are not an infinite number of symbols fashionable by man, and it is entirely possible that a certain recurring set of stimuli produced roughly the same human reaction, in terms of symbolism, no matter how temporally far apart the sets presented themselves.

A lion growls in the bush not more than 10 yards from a man living one thousand years ago and he craps himself. The very same thing happens 1,000 years later, again, a man soils his pants. Coincidence or a sign of a unifying external influence?

Try giving us a lot more detail on whatever it is you are talking about and you might get some useful or at least interesting responses.

Strictly speaking, zero because you can only choose an even number of "identical" symbols when selecting from each group.

As the number of all possible symbols gets large, the probability approaches zero. I get a maximum probability of 0.21 when the total number of possible symbols is 179 or 180. At 1000 symbols, I get 0.0013. At 10000 symbols, I get 2.29E-8. At 100000 symbols, I get 2.42E-13.

This assumes that exactly 5 from a group of 30 match exactly 5 from another group of 30 where each group of 30 was taken from the set of all possible symbols. The other facts (170 sites, 40000 BC, 150 sites, 1860) were ignored. Of course, it doesn't take into account the fact that certain symbols would be expected to be used by any civilization at any time (circle, rectangle, triangle, etc.).

At last, mathematicians have entered the discussion.

Have at it boys and girls

This is something obvious which suggested itself to me immediately. Thanks for pointing out to the OP something which, at least, ought to have been obvious. I haven't entered the discussion because . . .



Statements such as this cannot be considered to be facts. Forty thousand years ago, early modern man, or the Neanderthals, were not making monumental inscriptions. What we have of them which remains are burials, or campsites, the latter often found under shelter bluffs or in caves (exterior campsites don't survive the ages well). In such locales, the symbols to which you refer which can be considered universal would likely be about all one would find. I'd be interested to know upon what basis the OP alleges these symbols to have been found in sites of such an antiquity.

He also needs the facts that separate the inclusion and "fixing" of such symbols in the overall culture.
If one of the symbols was pressure flaking without fluting that has a "path" of incorporation into a culture. Its really not a subject of probability.
This fellow may be presenting us with implied statistical comparisons among apples , pears, and saddle blankets.

Good and insightful comments.

I am gathering the additional information that could lead to further refinement.

One of the books i've been reading lately is Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age by Richard Rudgley. In particular, i've just finished the chapter on symbols, "pre-writing" and writing.

Ooops, something calls me away, more shortly.

First, as already noted, 40,000 years is out of the ball park. The outside figure is about 30,000 years, and 20,000 to 25,000 is nearer the mark. Next, comparisons of early symbol systems shows the recurrence of symbols from Spain to China, from 25,000 ybp (perhaps) to a few thousand years ago. However, as Marija Gimbutas and others have pointed out, the symbols are created from a core of just five symbols in eight configurations. Staight lines (horizontal or verticle), intersecting straight lines (crosses, "Xs"), straight lines intersecting at the end ("Vs" or chevrons), dots and curved lines. So i think this member has made assumptions which ignore that symbology is both more complex and less complicated than the question implies. Other considerations seem to have escaped him. The types of symbols which can be created are limited by the materials one is working with. Various combinations of straight lines are relatively simple in incise on bone, antler and stone. Curved lines are going to be the most difficult to accomplish with precision. There are a variety or reasons why the five symbols recur, and the last--the materials worked with--is the most compelling.

At one point, Rudgley has a figure which compares "Old European" (i.e., pre-Indo European) symbols with Linear A and Linear B from Crete, the Greek and Roman alphabets, the Chinese symbol system from about 4000 to 5000 years ago, Sumerian symbols which were "pre-cunieform" and the "pre-hieroglyph" symbold system used in Egypt, as well as several others. It's really a fascinating bit of study.

One problem is the powerful academic bias of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The earliest European archaeologists of the modern age were the French and then their Spanish colleagues. They were making a systematic catalogue and study of the symbols found in the Upper Paeleolithic, when the Lascaux cave complex was found, with its paintings. Like a bunch of stoners out for a walk, they dropped what they were doing and developed a "Wow, man, check this out" attitude. The study of pre-historic symbols systems was abandoned until very recently.

While the French and Spanish wandered around caves with their mouths hanging open, the other significant archaeological investigations were being undertaken in the middle east by the English and the Germans. Bringing the biases of their Judeo-Christian world view with them, they decided a priori that all civilization--including and in particular writing--began in Sumeria 5000 years ago. I've ranted about this many times in the past, and it is gratifying to see Rudgley make the same complaint, albeit with more restraint than that to which i usually subject my own screeds.

So, the traditional academic disciplines of archaeology, paleontology, ethnology and anthropology have been dragged kicking and screaming out of the "middle east first" camp, and most of them are still there. It was all blown wide open behind the Iron Curtain in the 1950s and -60s when radio carbon 14 dating showed dates for artefacts with these symbols at far older dates than the traditional academic studies were willing to acknowledge. When artefacts for the Vinca (in the Balkans, anywhere from 15,000 to 5,000 ybp) culture were turned up, the archaeological traditionalist dismissed them as "monkey see monkey do" imitations of what Sumerian merchants would have had with them. Not that there is any evidence that the Sumerians ever traded in Transylvania--but when you've got academic turf to protect, you don't let little things like that bother you. But radio carbon dating put one set of artefacts at 6,000 ybp, and another set at 7,500 ybp, which blows the Sumerian merchant hypothesis right out of the water.

At one point, western academics stooped so low as to accuse the Serb, Bulgarian and Romanian archaeologists of fudging the data because commies always want to prove that they're on top of all dicsciplines. But evidence has a habit of accumulating, and burying in landslides those not nimble enough to get out of the way.

All in all, this is proving to be a most informative and enjoyable book. (Most of the foregoing is from Mr. Rudgley's book, but a lot of it is from my other reading.)