Thermographic Survey at Hagia Sophia: Main Arches,Pendentives and Tympana

Hagia Sophia is one of the oldest and most complex existing monuments. Many unanswered questions are still open on the historical and constructive evolution of this monument. The boundaries between the different construction phases and the details of the masonry and materials used in the various phases are still not defined with precision.

The thermographic survey, carried out inside the monument, made ??it possible to answer some of these questions by specifying the exact location of the past interventions and the variability of the materials employed allowing a better understanding of the constructive history of the monument. The technique was applied at a great distance and in normal environmental conditions, taking advantage of the high thermal sensitivity of the instrumentation. The results achieved confirm the validity of the technique in the study of ancient buildings.     

Race,polygenesis and equality: John Crawfurd and nineteenth-century resistance to evolution

The nineteenth-century Orientalist and ethnologist, John Crawfurd, publicly rejected Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in 1868. Crawfurd was a leading advocate of polygenesis but also a supporter of racial equality. In 1820 he published his History of the Indian Archipelago, where he advocated granting household suffrage to all races in the British colonies. After finishing a career in the East India Company in 1828 he became the foremost expert on South-East Asia in Britain. Crawfurd became a regular writer on ethnology and Asian affairs for the Examiner newspaper and in the 1860s he was President of the Ethnological Society of London. Accounts of nineteenth-century anthropology in Britain characterise debate around race as falling into two camps: advocates of monogenesis and advocates of polygenesis. In the United States of America, advocates of polygenesis were often associated with advocates of slavery and racial inequality. Recent research has demonstrated that Charles Darwin’s hatred of slavery drove him to write Origin of the Species to demonstrate the unity of the human species and reject the polygenesis position. This paper explores Crawfurd’s ideas and demonstrates that a belief in polygenesis in the nineteenth century did not necessarily equate with a belief in racial inequality.     

Assessing Disciplinary Integration in New Anthropological Studies of Music

Four recent books offer an opportunity to review new and continuing approaches to the study of music, not as an artistic product, but as an essential practice in human society and as a capacity that defines humankind. Two books examine musical capacity and music making from the framework of biological anthropology, drawing on new research in neurophysiology to connect biological and archaeological anthropology. The other two locate the study largely within cultural anthropology, drawing on ethnomusicology. Taken as a set the volumes invite disciplinary integration in anthropological studies of music.     

Reconstructing Prehistoric Population Movements: Seeking Congruence in Genetics,Linguistics, and Archaeology

Books discussed here focus upon the initial peopling of the Americas and the worldwide development of food production. They examine postulated historical instances in which genes, languages, and cultural elements appear to correlate, indicating major population movements in prehistory. Recognized experts in historical linguistics, archaeology, and molecular genetics review current methodology, available data, and models of global and regional population history. A more holistic approach and a greater understanding of human population dynamics are called for to improve our reconstruction of these past events.     

The Cognitive Function of Music. Part II

Abstract

Ancient and contemporary theories of the cognitive functions of music are reviewed and compared with the hypothesis (advanced in Part I) that music performs a fundamental cognitive function, helping to maintain psychic balance in the face of the diversity of the world. Considering historical evidence of the evolution of cultures and consciousness, a parallel evolution of music as a powerful and unifying emotional mechanism is demonstrated and recent cognitive experiments that have confirmed this hypothesis are summarized. The neural mechanisms of music include mental representations which unify the entire life experience. It follows that music is fundamental in making human evolution possible. The human mind and our human cultures would not exist as they do today without music. Future theoretical and experimental research directions are outlined.     

Relationship of brines in the Kinnarot Basin,Jordan‐Dead Sea Rift Valley

Element ratios and water stable isotopes reveal the presence of only two independent deep brines in the Kinnarot Basin, Israel: the evaporite dissolution brine of Zemah‐1 and the inferred Ha’on mother brine (HMB) with low and high Br/Cl ratios, respectively. HMB is considered to be a representative of the Late Pliocene evaporated Sedom Sea. The freshwater‐diluted evaporation brine emerges as Ha’on brine on the eastern shore of Lake Tiberias and is also identified in the pore water of lake sediments. HMB is converted into Tiberias mother brine (TMB) by dolomitization of limestones and alteration of abundant volcanic rocks occurring along the western side of the lake. The Ha’on and Tiberias brines, both characterized by high δD and δ¹⁸O values, are similar in Na/Cl and Br/Cl ratios but are dissimilar in Br/K ratios because these brines were subjected to different degrees of interactions with rocks and sediments. Excepting the brine from KIN 8, all brines from the Tabigha area including the nearby off‐shore Barbutim brine are related to the TMB. The brine KIN 8 and all brines from the Fuliya and Hammat Gader areas are related to the HMB. The brine encountered in wildcat borehole Zemah‐1 is generated by halite‐anhydrite/gypsum dissolution and is independent from the HMB system.     

“西南”区域地理概念及范围的历史演变

"西南"区域地理概念及范围经历了长期的发展演变历程。先秦时期的"西南"主要包括巴和蜀。汉晋时期,"西南"区域概念正式确立,包括巴蜀和西南夷地区。唐宋时期,狭义的西南是指唐、宋王朝疆域内的西南地区,即唐代的剑南道、山南西道、黔中道,宋代的川峡四路;广义的西南还包括疆域外的南诏(大理)以及其它一些民族和王国。明清时期疆域内的"西南"出现了三种主要观点,较之前代范围有所扩大。近现代的"西南"概念发生了重大变化,只包括国家疆域内的西南各地。"西南"概念及范围受地理方位、地理环境、行政区划等因素的影响,具有动态性、模糊性、相对稳定性等特征,还有民族、边疆、政区、经济等多重含义。     

Generic demarcation of Permo-Triassic Claraia-like species and their biogeographic significance

Three types of byssal notch are present in Permo-Triassic Claraia-like species, i.e. Claraia-type, Pseudoclaraia-type and Claraioides-type. At present, there is no consensus in the use of the generic names. The preferred classification should be both useful in practice and compatible with the rules of taxonomy. For the genera in question, details of the byssal notch are important in assessing relationships because the morphology of this structure may closely reflect phylogenetic affinities. However, a particular feature of the notch may have great significance in one taxon but low significance in a related taxon. In order to seek the best taxonomic characters for classification of Permo-Triassic Claraia-like species, we should follow empirical evidence rather than preconceived opinions. Pseudoclaraia Zhang, 1980 should be considered a junior synonym of Claraia Bittner, 1901 Bittner, A. 1901. Über Pseudomonotis telleri und verwandte Arten der unteren Trias. Jahrbuch der geologischen Reichsanstalt Wien, 50: 559–592.  [Google Scholar] because the Pseudoclaraia-type and Claraia-type byssal notches form a continuum within populations. In contrast, all known Claraioides species possess the Claraioides-type byssal notch, which is their synapomorphy, indicating monophyly. The notch is characterized by ventral enlargement due to ventral dissolution and by its contracted anterodorsal outlet due to the accretion of shell material. This is a unique character in Palaeozoic bivalves. It implies that the Claraioides byssal notch must have had a different mode of development than the other two types of byssal notch. It is thus unreasonable to place Claraioides in synonymy with Claraia. A review of the biogeographic patterns of Permo-Triassic Claraia-like species indicates that trans-oceanic dispersal of Claraia from the Boreal Realm to the rest of the world may have occurred during the latest Permian. It is possible that volcanic-winter effects triggered the trans-oceanic dispersal and the tremendous change in Permian–Triassic global biogeographical patterns.     

Reply to Flesher–Rick Rylance

Walter Moxon, MD, FRCP lived, practiced medicine, taught and wrote in the mid- to late- nineteenth-century Victorian England, mostly at Guy's Hospital, London. He was widely informed in the “Art of Physic,” writing on a range of issues from cerebral lateralization of articulate speech to angina pectoris. The present paper will trace briefly his contributions to the newly discovered asymmetry of articulate speech in the left frontal lobe (1866) and will in more detail trace and analyze his 1881 Croonian Lectures at the Royal College of Physicians on a medical shibboleth referred to as “congestion of the brain.” In a series of ingenious and rhetorically creative arguments with imaginative tropes, demonstrations, evolutionary accounts of cognition and blood metabolism for human/biped cognition, and cogent citations from the medical literature of the day, Moxon skillfully instructs his medical audience against the misleading notion of cerebral “congestion” as an underlying pathology for cognitive, motor, and sensory deficits seen in the clinic. In so doing, he provides the medical community with an in-depth glimpse at the circulatory system, its flow dynamics, and how they serve to meet the cognitive, motor, and sensory demands of upright bipedal man.     

中国边境入境旅游的客流演化态势及其动因分析——新疆内蒙云南三省区的比较研究

边境旅游是在具有特殊区位和文化环境的边境地区开展的旅游活动,是国际旅游的重要形式之一。本文选取2000-2009年中国陆地边境省州市相关统计数据,采用入境旅游市场占有率、旅游资源丰度、旅游开放度、边境贸易比重和距离指数5个重要指标,应用矩阵分析方法,在对我国三个省区边境旅游发展及客流演化态势进行比较的基础上,对边境入境旅游及其影响因素进行深入分析,结果发现:旅游资源丰度、区位条件、经贸发展水平、开放度、可进入性等因素是影响边境旅游规模和类型的主要影响因素,现阶段我国边境省区各州市的边境旅游发展受贸易驱动明显,旅游资源丰度对边境旅游中的观光入境旅游者有较大影响,边境旅游也遵循距离衰减规律。在此基础上提出对我国边境旅游发展的启示,以期为沿边省区发展边境入境旅游提供科学依据和参考。