Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 July 17

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 17

G. O. Number: 85

Resolved

Any idea what the above means? (From here), relating to Hiroshi H. Miyamura. Presumably, it is US military related. "General Order" seems to be a red herring. For some reason, search engine query points to: Service number (United States Army), but I can't find anything directly relevant there. Any ideas? ... Also, I can't find what his middle name is ("H."). Thanks in advance, —107.15.157.44 (talk) 03:47, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

It's "General Order". This is Miyamura's. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 04:29, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! —107.15.157.44 (talk) 14:51, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Significant Pre-Columbian structures in US/Canada?

Are the Mississippian mounds (largest being Cahokia) the most significant structures to still exist in the US(Non-Hawaii)/Canada constructed prior to 1492? Is there a belief that there were more significant constructed which have been destroyed in between 1492 and now? Does the answer change at all if the part of Mexico north of an East-West line through the southern tip of Texas is considered instead? Does Hawaii change this?

If Cahokia is the most significant, are there other similarly sided areas of the world (>5% of the world area) equally lacking similar historical surviving structures (and were similar not constructed or not survive?)Naraht (talk) 18:55, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

In Northern America, there are the pueblos and the cliff-dwellings in the southwest and the mounds in the mid-west. If you want something architecturally bigger or more impressive, then you're pretty much out of luck. Part of the reason, is that along the anthropological typology of band–tribe-chiefdom-state, pre-Columbian Northern American peoples didn't advance much beyond the incipient state level. The reason why well-consolidated states, true cities, and multinational empires didn't develop could be due to ecological reasons -- the Southwest has somewhat limited and dispersed agricultural land, while the eastern half of the U.S. didn't have a good staple agricultural crop until maize (corn) was adapted to the climate there around 900 A.D. (with probably too little time left for populations to become denser and centralized political traditions to form). AnonMoos (talk) 19:07, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Per AnonMoos, the ancestral Puebloan people's that inhabited what was once the Four Corners region of the U.S. built extensive urban dwellings. The most famous are the cliff dwellings of places like Mesa Verde, but their flat-ground settlements, while leaving less impressive ruins, were much larger (see for example Chaco Canyon, and Aztec Ruins National Monument, which was not Aztec despite the name, but ancestral Puebloan). It has been estimated that the population of the region peaked in the 12th-13th century CE, and was much higher than even today. --Jayron32 19:32, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

History of the tallest structures in the world (before Giza)

History of the world's tallest buildings and List of tallest structures built before the 20th century don't really have what I am looking for. What were the tallest structures before Giza was built? What was the oldest structures in the world that can be hypothesized to the world's tallest structure at the time of its construction? I realize this is a hard to prove given the spottiness of the archaeological record but I assume it can be estimated at least. KAVEBEAR (talk) 20:55, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

What about List of tallest buildings and structures#Tallest freestanding structures on land? These articles are a bit of a jumbled mess and need a good reorganizing. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 21:57, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

That would be the Pyramid of Djoser the prototype of subsequent pyramids; "The pyramid of Djoser was the tallest structure in the world for 38 years". [1]

From our ziggurat article: "The Sialk ziggurat, in Kashan, Iran, is the oldest known ziggurat, dating to the early 3rd millennium BCE". There doesn't seem to be a more precise date, but it may or may not be older than Djoser.

Before that, it's going to be a bit tricky, as tall buildings were not really a thing. Alansplodge (talk) 12:00, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, but it's also going to be tricky because "history" wasn't really a thing (or was just starting to be). When you're back this far, you start mixing historical with prehistorical and the dates are going to be based on something else (dendrochronology, radiometric dating, etc.) and the question of which came first really becomes a toss up unless the values are grossly different. Matt Deres (talk) 19:19, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

After a bit more Googling, it seems that the generally accepted date of the Sialk ziggurat is c. 2900 BC (The Neolithisation of Iran p. 189), Djoser's pyramid is thought to have been completed by 2648 BC. Alansplodge (talk) 22:03, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Tower of Babel? Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 13:28, 18 July 2019 (UTC)