Understanding the world (1 Viewer)

[egg_]

It sometimes amazes me how poorly people understand the world around them. Here's a line from the riverdance website (which I'm doing some work on)

When Ptolomy's cartographers mapped Ireland in 150AD they indicated the location of the Avoca River, then spelt Oboka

'Then spelt Oboka'? What? Oboka I would guess is a transliteration of the Greek letters which were used to represent the sound 'Avoca' by Ptolemy & co. We didn't even have writing in Ireland back then, so to say is was spelt in a certain way back then is just meaningless

 

[sarah]

What, just out of curiosity, brought you to the shores of the riverdance site
for long enough to find that?

 

[egg_]

What, just out of curiosity, brought you to the shores of the riverdance site for long enough to find that?

Read my post again dude!
I'm working on their database

 

[sarah]

Read my post again dude!
I'm working on their database

Whooops.

 

[jane]

It sometimes amazes me how poorly people understand the world around them. Here's a line from the riverdance website (which I'm doing some work on)

When Ptolomy's cartographers mapped Ireland in 150AD they indicated the location of the Avoca River, then spelt Oboka

'Then spelt Oboka'? What? Oboka I would guess is a transliteration of the Greek letters which were used to represent the sound 'Avoca' by Ptolemy & co. We didn't even have writing in Ireland back then, so to say is was spelt in a certain way back then is just meaningless

Ugh, just as I was about to force myself off of Thumped for the day, you gotta go bring up maps. Damn you!

What's the source for this information? Thing is, not a single map of Ptolemy's actually survives; Ptolemaic chorography was not translated into visual form until the early Renaissance, by which time the Avoca river would probably already have been named. Those responsible for drawing up the map of Ptolemy's Ireland were known to have thrown in a few extra mountains and rivers (I am looking at it right now).

Those who mapped Ireland during the Renaissance often cited Roman precedents, and modelled their 'conquest' on Classical models, seeing themselves as the inheritors of the Roman Empire (well, when it suited them, they did). To exaggerate the antiquity of things was common, and to do it on maps -- which are still today seen as images of scientific (and thus infallible) authority -- was often to justify their territorial claims.

But seeing as Riverdance seems to want to celebrate an ossified notion of Irish identity, it doesn't surprise me that they'd make this claim.

Does that make any sense?

 

[Latex lizzie]

hey.

 

[jane]

hey.

Yup. It says right on there, Oboka Flu, or Oboka River. But that map was compiled from information written in Ptolemy's works a millennium and a half after the fact (if not longer), and contains a good bit of extra stuff that was never in the Classical writings.

Even the names contained in Ptolemy's work may have already been obsolete by the time they were written down. Lots of IRish placenames may go back to prehistory (and we have references to lots of them from the earliest documents), but just because the Avoca river is on the map there doesn't prove anything.

 

[Latex lizzie]

just for fun you understand.

 

[jane]

It's anecdotal and tangential, but mapmakers in the Renaissance were known to use lots of information received from a variety of sources, including hearsay and myth. Several cartographers and engravers gave themselves non-existent islands off the Antrim coast, and some of them survived as late as the 19th century, on British admiralty charts. John Speed, a well-known and celebrated mapmaker, included Hy Brasil on his map of the Atlantic, which, by the time he was working, was known to be mythological. He also drew in 'Brendan's Isle', or the part of the New World that the mythical Brendan was supposed to have discovered and described. Science and fact are not necessarily bedfellows, especially when it comes to maps.

 

[egg_]

But seeing as Riverdance seems to want to celebrate an ossified notion of Irish identity, it doesn't surprise me that they'd make this claim.

Doesn't surprise me either
Neither does it surprise me that they don't understand that to say something was spelt differently in the Ireland of 150 AD is meaningless
But I do wish it wasn't so

 

[jane]

Doesn't surprise me either
Neither does it surprise me that they don't understand that to say something was spelt differently in the Ireland of 150 AD is meaningless
But I do wish it wasn't so

I know. I know...but it's Riverdance.

It's like I was saying on the Da Vinci Code thread: to focus on creating hype about the past is to miss the truly fascinating things about it. Or to miss what's still really interesting about the world today, and about the ways in which we convey our understandings about it. That's actually what makes Riverdance both infuriating and fascinating. It is an interesting anthropological novelty, but also a stupid pile of bollocks that just encourages misunderstandings about what constitutes 'culture' in Ireland.

 

[MDR]

I think that by including an irrelevant, and you tell me wrong, point about the origins of the spelling of Avoca, the riverdance people are probably just trying to add to the sense of ancientness that the dance is trying to capture, probably figuring that most foreigners who are interested in Riverdance, like that kind of thing.

It's a perfectly understandable thing to do.

Seriously though Egg_, you shouldn't really be discussing your client's affairs online until they've paid your invoice.

 

[Richie]

hey.

Wow. We were an awfully geometric country back then, weren't we? Must've made it easier to find your way from Eblana to Magnata, anyway.

 

[Latex lizzie]

as I said just for fun like.

 

[jane]

as I said just for fun like.

This is fun?

Or, perhaps: This is fun.

Wherever you want your emphasis.

Hm, yeah, that road system was much more geometric -- and you thought Prosperous had something to boast about! Ha!

Dead-straight bog roads me hole.