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Tally Stick
A tally stick (or simply a tally) was an ancient memory aid used to record and document numbers, quantities, and messages. Tally sticks first appear as animal bones carved with notches during the Upper Palaeolithic; a notable example is the Ishango Bone. Historical reference is made by Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) about the best wood to use for tallies, and by Marco Polo (1254–1324) who mentions the use of the tally in China. Tallies have been used for numerous purposes such as messaging and scheduling, and especially in financial and legal transactions, to the point of being currency. Kinds of tallies There are two principal forms of tally sticks: the single tally and the split tally. A comparable example of this primitive counting device can be found in various types of prayer beads. Possible palaeolithic tally sticks A number of anthropological artefacts have been conjectured to be tally sticks: *The Lebombo bone, dated between 44,200 and 43,000 years old, is a baboo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medieval Tally Sticks
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early Middle Ages, Early, High Middle Ages, High, and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralised authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in late antiquity, continued into the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moravia
Moravia ( ; ) is a historical region in the eastern Czech Republic, roughly encompassing its territory within the Danube River's drainage basin. It is one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. The medieval and early modern Margraviate of Moravia was a crown land of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown from 1348 to 1918, an imperial state of the Holy Roman Empire from 1004 to 1806, a crown land of the Austrian Empire from 1804 to 1867, and a part of Austria-Hungary from 1867 to 1918. Moravia was one of the five lands of First Czechoslovak Republic, Czechoslovakia founded in 1918. In 1928 it was merged with Czech Silesia, and then dissolved in 1948 during the abolition of the land system following the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état, communist coup d'état. Its area of 22,623.41 km2 is home to about 3.0 million of the Czech Republic's 10.9 million inhabitants. The people are historically named Moravians, a subgroup of Czechs, the other group being calle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herodotus
Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histories'', a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars, among other subjects such as the rise of the Achaemenid dynasty of Cyrus. He has been described as " The Father of History", a title conferred on him by the ancient Roman orator Cicero, and the " Father of Lies" by others. The ''Histories'' primarily cover the lives of prominent kings and famous battles such as Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. His work deviates from the main topics to provide a cultural, ethnographical, geographical, and historiographical background that forms an essential part of the narrative and provides readers with a wellspring of additional information. Herodotus was criticized in his times for his inclusion of "legends an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inca
The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts (, ), was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The History of the Incas, Inca civilisation rose from the Peruvian highlands sometime in the early 13th century. The Portuguese explorer Aleixo Garcia was the first European to reach the Inca Empire in 1524. Later, in 1532, the Spanish Empire, Spanish began the conquest of the Inca Empire, and by 1572 Neo-Inca State, the last Inca state was fully conquered. From 1438 to 1533, the Incas incorporated a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andes, Andean Mountains, using conquest and peaceful assimilation, among other methods. At its largest, the empire joined modern-day Peru with what are now western Ecuador, western and south-central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, the southwesternmost tip of Colombia and Incas in Central Chile, a large portion of modern- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quipu
''Quipu'' ( ), also spelled ''khipu'', are record keeping devices fashioned from knotted cords. They were historically used by various cultures in the central Andes of South America, most prominently by the Inca Empire. A ''quipu'' usually consists of cotton or camelid fiber cords, and contains categorized information based on dimensions like color, order and number. The Inca, in particular, used knots tied in a decimal positional system to store numbers and other values in ''quipu'' cords. Depending on its use and the amount of information it stored, a given ''quipu'' may have anywhere from a few to several thousand cords. Objects which can unambiguously be identified as ''quipus'' first appear in the archaeological record during 1st millennium CE,Urton, Gary. (2011). "Tying the Archive in Knots, or: Dying to Get into the Archive in Ancient Peru likely attributable to the Wari Empire. ''Quipus'' subsequently played a key part in the administration of the Kingdom of Cusco of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mnemonic
A mnemonic device ( ), memory trick or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember. It makes use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues and imagery as specific tools to encode information in a way that allows for efficient storage and retrieval. It aids original information in becoming associated with something more accessible or meaningful—which in turn provides better retention of the information. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often used for lists and in auditory system, auditory form such as Acrostic, short poems, acronyms, initialisms or memorable phrases. They can also be used for other types of information and in visual or kinesthetic forms. Their use is based on the observation that the human mind more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual, humorous and otherwise "relatable" information rather tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tally Marks
Tally marks, also called hash marks, are a form of numeral used for counting. They can be thought of as a unary numeral system. They are most useful in counting or tallying ongoing results, such as the score in a game or sport, as no intermediate results need to be erased or discarded. However, because of the length of large numbers, tallies are not commonly used for static text. Notched sticks, known as tally sticks, were also historically used for this purpose. Early history Counting aids other than body parts appear in the Upper Paleolithic. The oldest tally sticks date to between 35,000 and 25,000 years ago, in the form of notched bones found in the context of the European Aurignacian to Gravettian and in Africa's Late Stone Age. The so-called '' Wolf bone'' is a prehistoric artifact discovered in 1937 in Czechoslovakia during excavations at Dolní Věstonice, Moravia, led by Karl Absolon. Dated to the Aurignacian, approximately 30,000 years ago, the bone is m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo (, ; ) was a Belgian colonial empire, Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville). The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colonization of the Congo Basin, Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. Leopold II of the Belgians, King Leopold II of the Belgians attempted to persuade the Federal Government of Belgium, Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexploited Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold establishing a colony himself. With support from a number of Berlin Conference, Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition of the Congo Free State in 1885. By the turn of the century, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ishango
Ishango is a Congolese lakeshore site located in the north-eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa, previously known as Zaire. This present day village is known as a "fishermen settlement" as it lies on the shores of the Semliki River, flowing out of Lake Edward, serving as one of the sources of the Nile River.Pletser, Vladimir & Huylebrouck, Dirk. (1999). The Ishango artefact: the missing base 12 link. Forma. 14. 339-346. This site is known best for its rich biodiversity and archaeological significance, indicating previous human occupation. Virunga National Park Ishango is a sub-station of the Virunga National Park, covering more than 13% of the North-Kivu province with about 790,000 hectares of extended landscape. Located at the mouth of Lake Edward, the Virunga National Park was established in 1925 in an effort to protect mountain gorilla species from threats of poaching and deforestation, making it the "oldest protected park in Africa". Virunga National ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bone Tool
In archaeology, bone tools have been documented from the advent of ''Homo sapiens'' and are also known from ''Homo neanderthalensis'' contexts or even earlier. Bone has been used for making tools by virtually all hunter-gatherer societies, even when other materials were readily available. Any part of the skeleton can potentially be utilized; however, antlers and long bones provide some of the best working material. Long bone fragments can be shaped, by scraping against an abrasive stone, into such items as arrow and spear points, needles, awls, and fish hooks. Other bone tools include spoons, knives, pins, needles, flakers, hide scrapers and reamers. They made musical rasps, flutes and whistles as well as toys have also been made of bone. Decoratively carved articles were also made of bone such as hair combs, hair pins and pendants. Even the teeth and hooves did not go to waste. The teeth were drilled and used for decoration on clothing and necklaces. The hooves were also dril ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ishango Bone
The Ishango bone, discovered at the "Fisherman Settlement" of Ishango in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a bone tool and possible mathematical device that dates to the Upper Paleolithic era. The curved bone is dark brown in color, about 10 centimeters in length, and features a sharp piece of quartz affixed to one end, perhaps for engraving. Because the bone has been narrowed, scraped, polished, and engraved to a certain extent, it is no longer possible to determine what animal the bone belonged to, although it is assumed to have been a mammal.Association pour la diffusion de l'information archéologique/Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels (n.d.). "Have You Heard of Ishango?" (PDF). ''Natural Sciences''. The ordered engravings have led many to speculate the meaning behind these marks, including interpretations like mathematical significance or astrological relevance. It is thought by some to be a tally stick, as it features a series of what has been in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venus Figurine
A Venus figurine is any Upper Palaeolithic statue portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.Fagan, Brian M., Beck, Charlotte, "Venus Figurines", beliefs '' The Oxford Companion to Archaeology'', 1996, Oxford University Press, pp. 740–741 Most have been unearthed in Europe, but others have been found as far away as Siberia and distributed across much of Eurasia. Most date from the Gravettian period (26,000–21,000 years ago). However, findings are not limited to this period; for example, the Venus of Hohle Fels dates back at least 35,000 years to the Aurignacian era, and the Venus of Monruz dates back about 11,000 years to the Magdalenian. Such figurines were carved from soft stone (such as steatite, calcite or limestone), bone or ivory, or formed of clay and fired. The latter are among the oldest ceramics known to historians. In total, over 200 such figurines are known; virtually all of modest size, between about in height.Fagan, 740 These figurines are recognised a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
