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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (314100)	12/5/2006 5:06:58 PM
From: Taro	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573211

In history counting has been done modulo 12 and 20 besides 10 and as far as I recall other crazy ways were common in the old ME. Still some leftovers in "dozen" (and Swedish "tjog" for 20 when counting eggs) as well as with the previous UK money system based on both 12 (pence) and 20 (shillings) :). Taro

To: combjelly who wrote (314100)	12/6/2006 12:29:39 PM
From: Taro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573211

Here some interesting stuff to read: The onset of the Little Ice Age in about 1300, which followed the so-called Medieval Warm Period of the eighth through tenth centuries, may represent the most recent time that such a switchover occurred. The contrast in the North Atlantic is apparent if we consider that in the tenth century, Erik the Red and his band of Vikings colonized the lands surrounding the fjords in southwestern Greenland. Not only did the Vikings navigate their wooden vessels back and forth between Scandinavia and Greenland without being thwarted by sea ice, but they were also able to grow enough grass to support sizable flocks of sheep. As time went on, however, conditions deteriorated. The last recorded communication from the colonists occurred in the early fourteenth centuryjust at the onset of the Little Ice Age in the Alpsand eventually the colony died out (see “The Vikings’ Silent Saga,” Natural History, November 2000). Further evidence of the impact of the Little Ice Age comes from records kept by Icelanders, whose writings indicate that between 1650 and 1850, their island was icebound for several months each yeara great hardship, since fishing was a main source of sustenance. They reported with pleasure that the ice began to wane in 1880, permitting them to extend the fishing season. Readings from their thermometers (which they began to use in about 1870) also suggest that the mean annual temperature was rising. Could it be that these ocean oscillations, because of their effect on air temperature, also explain the snowline fluctuations seen in the Swiss Alps? So far, none of the wood or peat fragments sluiced from beneath the ice have yielded carbon 14 dates from the eighth through the thirteenth centuries, which would correspond to the Medieval Warm Period and the interval leading up to the Little Ice Age. But another source of evidence demonstrates that Alpine glaciers were smaller during this time. Medieval farmers living below the huge Aletsch Glacier, in what is now south-central Switzerland, constructed a crude aqueduct of hollowed-out larch tree trunks to carry water from a small mountain lake down to a village. We know from written records that parts of this aqueduct had to be rebuilt after being overrun by the 1350 advance of the Aletsch Glacier. naturalhistorymag.com