David Lubman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Katherine Reece Wrote:
>
> > Wayne, David Lubman is not a mesoamericanist,
> he's
> > an acoustical engineer. May I ask, is there
> a
> > mesoamericanist who agrees with you?
> >
> > Kat
>
> How about INAH's own Dr. Peter Schmid?
>
> Roughly ten or twelve years ago I happened upon a
> TV program that filmed Dr. Schmid and another INAH
> official demonstrating the chirped echo at Chichen
> Itza's temple of Kukulkan. Schmid claimed they
> knew about the chirped echo all along. I think
> Schmid also opined that it was intentional, but a
> fresh viewing is needed for certainty. It would be
> decisive if someone on this list has copied that
> video or can get it from INAH.
It would be helpful if you had more details of the film in question, as a Google search is throwing up nothing at the moment.
I take it that, by Dr. Schmid, you mean Dr. Peter Schmidt? I found some mentions of his work
here, but nothing about chirping.
> Why was the film made? At that time, INAH
> officials may have felt embarrassed or threatened
> that a potentially major discovery was made right
> under their noses by a novice and outsider (me).
> Perhaps this film was an institutional response.
>
> Aztlan discussion list officials had better reason
> to be embarrassed. As Wayne Van Kirk has
> explained, Aztlan moderators were hostile to
> archaeoacoustics, cutting off discussions despite
> sympathetic posts from Mesoamericanist listeros.
Can you please note that discussion of moderation on other boards is not allowed on Ma'at.
> What’s happened since then?
>
> In 2006, Cambridge University’s McDonald Institute
> for Archaeological Research published a monograph
> "Archaeoacoustics", edited by respected British
> archaeologists Chris Scarre and Graeme Lawson. I
> reviewed it for J. Acoustical Society of America
> (ASA), arguably the world's foremost learned
> journal for scientific acoustics.
>
> Mesoamericanists presented papers on the acoustics
> of pre-Columbian buildings at the Second
> Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics in
> Cancun, Mexico (October, 2010.)
That would be
this conference, presumably. To which papers there, from which Mesoamerican specialists in particular, are you referring? All I could find were papers from you yourself, and Sergio Beristain (President of the Mexican Institute of Acoustics).
> Institutions represented include Mexico's UNAM,
> INAH, and USA's Stanford Univ.
>
> Several universities have started archaeoacoustics
> programs.
>
> The annual meeting of the AAAS (American
> Association for the Advancement of science) in
> Vancouver, Canada includes an archaeoacoustics
> symposium jointly sponsored by AAAS Sections on
> Anthropology and Engineering.
>
> A prominent archaeologist learning acoustics for a
> multidisciplinary study at Chavin de Huantar
> (Peru) is Stanford University's John Rick.
Archaeology meets DSP: CCRMA at Chavín de Huántar (Blog post, with links).
(Cross reference to a previous post on John Rick and conch shells).
> He said
> something important for archaeologists to
> recognize: The most surprising thing he learned is
> that acoustics is a "hard science" (i.e.,
> acoustics has authority to make statements based
> on irrefutable physical laws.)
What citation do you have for this, please? I can't find anything online.
> Certain dismissive statements made about chirped
> echo acoustics by dissenting Mesoamericanists are
> at odds with those laws, or with accepted beliefs
> in the scientific acoustical community. But
> archaeologists and acousticians working together
> may reconcile archaeological belief with
> acoustical science to produce new understandings.
However, as Karl Taube, speaking of the alleged quetzal echo, says in this
National Geographic article:
Quote
"It's an interesting phenomenon ... The question is whether it was intentional or not.
Hermione
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