Miguel:
>Look for instance at the fact that we cannot
>even identify the numeral 40. I think it's 60 (because of Hyttenia).
Yes, Tetrapolis. I have to do some reviewing but I
remember the name to have been Ytteria, not Hyttenia.
Anyone know for sure?
Now, I've been thinking more about those pair of dice that
supposedly prove that four=/s'a/ and six=/huth/. If I were a
half-assed dice-maker, a certain layman without mathematical
knowledge, it wouldn't seem altogether self-evident to
me that I must place the numbers opposite to each other
in order to add up seven. I'm no mathematician, so perhaps
Piotr can help me, but I can see no manner in which
"numerical symmetry" on a die terribly affects the odds.
Rather, I, the layman dice-maker, would be more interested
in attaining geometrical symmetry. A more intuitive
method of placing numbers on a dice might be to
start with one side, writing "one", giving the dice a
quarter-turn, and writing "two", then another quarter-turn,
"three", another quarter-turn, etc. until I had marked all
sides of the dice. If the person had done "zigzagging"
quarter-turns (turn right, then up, then right like a
winding snake...), the pattern from this would end up being
one where each face with number N is adjacent to the
faces with N-1 and N+1 by single quarter-turns.
In other words, the dice do not illuminate on whether
the mathematical method or the more intuitive "zigzagging quarter-turn"
method was used, however the latter would allow
the sides to not be equal to seven in total and would allow
four to be /huth/ (agreeing with the Tetrapolis arguement
and IE *kWetwores) and six to be /s'a/ (agreeing with an
early Semitoid borrowing arguement). While it might have
been common for the sides of these die to equal seven
elsewhere, it would appear to me that this trivial
mathematical symmetry would first have to be explained to
all Etruscan dice-makers. Surely, there were some
dice-makers who knew nothing of these number games.
Perhaps I've missed something? Well, I'm sleepy. Must
sleep and get up early 2morrow. Konban wa, yo'll.
- gLeN
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