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Talk:Tell (archaeology)

Untitled
The external link tells less than the article itself. Delete? --Yak 16:30, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

I'm rather doubtful about the claim that the Bulgarian word for a tell is 'mogila'. In Russian (closely related) it simply means 'grave'. --Smack 21:55, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If you look in a dictionary, it will tell you that mogila is hill or barrow, and of course it is used for barrows as well. You got archaeological sites that are called Mogila, sometimes differentiated as ????????? ??????, selischtschata mogila, like Karanovo (????????? ?????? ?? ?. ????????). The word tell' is used as well (Tell' Poljanitza), but mainly by archaeologists. Sorry, don't know how to get Bulgarian on this page, you can find examples on http://www.clio.uni-sofia.bg/spec/archeo/arheo_404.html, for example. What is Tell in Russian, by the way? --Yak 19:10, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)

There is no "magura" in Romanian. It's "măgură" - hill, or "măgura" -- the hill. In Albanian, I think it's "magullë", can anyone confirm? [Dan] 23:13, 13 Aug 2005 (UTC)

A different tell
Isn't there a tell (similar to the tell in poker) in martial arts? 128.6.175.60 20:49, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

 * There also is a Wilhelm Tell in literature, maybe there should be a link for disambiguation or something.. --89.51.85.27 14:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I've created Tell (disambiguation) to record other uses of the word. --G Rutter 16:54, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Tel and Tumulus
I added a link to he:תל but all the interwikis there link to Tumulus in various languages. DVD+ R/W 20:26, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It seems like someone on the Hebrew wiki has made a mistake then- as our articles make clear tumuli are grave mounds and tells are settlement remains. --G Rutter 23:06, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Etymology
Both Chambers and the OED give the etymology of the English word as being from the Arabic, and make no suggestion that the English word is derived from the Hebrew. I have added a reference for this, and removed the Hebrew derivation as I could not find a reference to support the English word being derived from Hebrew. DuncanHill (talk) 21:58, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

 * I readily believe it, it would just help to find out more. It probably entered the English language in the context of Middle East exploration and maybe specifically of archaeology (that's the detail I'm missing: when and in what context), not by studying the Bible, so maybe in the 18th or 19th c. Studying Biblical Hebrew had of course a longer tradition, but less impact in geographical terminology, I guess. Also,, the Google Book access is far from irrelevant; there are a) SO many editing mistakes, and b) additional questions, like here, that offering a "black box"-type reference, i.e. "believe me and no need to check it up", is nonsense. So it's far from being an editorial comment. An online source that's always accessible to everyone from everywhere is much, MUCH to be preferred. The OED is fine, if this specific entry is based on more than the already cited source.

 * I don't know if "tel" with one l is used anywhere outside Israel/Palestine-related literature translated from Hebrew or written in English by Israelis. If my hunch is correct, it's not needed at the beginning of the lead, it must be kept, as I/P archaeology is indeed a big point of int'l interest, but should move further down the text, with the other variations.

 * "Tall" is, as far as I can tell, a recent Jordanian peculiarity - in the 2000s they've made what seems to be an intentional move away from British transliteration, they probably perceived this as being an "anti-colonial" step, and swapped all the e's and eh's for a's. Lately the Palestinians have been moving in the same direction, be it less consistently, as they don't have a centralised state authority dealing with transliteration (in Jordan the Antiquities Dept pushed it, and they probably got their orders from higher up). Whatever. Or maybe there are regional variations in Arabic pronunciation re. "tell"? That would be interesting to know, but I don't think it's the case. We still don't have any Arabic-speaking editor around who is interested in such matters, or do we? Arminden (talk) 11:33, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I checked this in the OED, and they transcribe the Arabic as tall a decade before the Jordanians 'innovated'. So their proposal, retrospectively, looks very much like a desire to disentangle the orientalist representation of key terms in Western languages. Of course, best practice would be, as you suggest, to 'run this past' (I hate that bureaucratic idiom since I first heard my cousin use it in the 1980s - he'd just got a job in a bureaucracy) an Arabist. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 12:45, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * OED says "The English spellings with -e- reflect a colloquial Arabic pronunciation". DuncanHill (talk) 12:47, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * And I want to record my objection to describing Chambers 20th Century Dictionary as a "black box" reference. The work is widely available, the very edition I cited can be borrowed on Archive.org. Google Books are not "always accessible to everyone from everywhere" - what someone sees when they click on a Google Book link depends on where they are. Some will see the whole book, some snippets, and some bugger all. A similar problem applies to Hathi Trust. DuncanHill (talk)

Two replies. (1) The transliteration "Tall" was very common in Mandate official sources, much more than "Tell". Both were used for writing Arabic place names in Palestine. There is nothing Jordanian about "Tall". However, if it was an original Hebrew place name, they used "Tel". The reason I believe the dictionaries that the English usage is borrowed from the Arabic is that the Arabic practice is very old (early Ottoman at least) whereas (correct me if I'm wrong) this naming style only occurs in modern Hebrew. Maybe Tel Aviv was the first. (2) It is a basic principle of sourcing that WP:SOURCEACCESS is not a criterion. If you write that you cannot see it online, that is only a statement about you and not about the source. So I stick to my description "editorial comment". Zerotalk 13:32, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Maybe it's that tell made it much more often into the books I came across, even if tall was as common in the Mandate-period maps? Mandate authorities were working in a time when many standards were yet to be established. I don't know. Didn't it stabilise to 'tell' in the 40s? I saw the written instructions in Jordan and drew my own conclusions, maybe a bit too hurriedly, but I'd be surprised. As to "editorial comment": I understand it as "subjective comment", and it was made in the good-faith presumption that it is objective and useful to the user. We've had that longer exchange on my talk-page and I'll stop adding this type of comment, except where Google Books clearly states "no preview", where I still believe it's intrinsic to the title and not regional or temporary. Do we agree on that? Btw, we can check it right away: has posted us two access codes to a book, see "Wendy Matthews" further down this page. My old desk computer can't do anything with the Chinese website, but I've tried the ISBN. Google Books has "no preview" for both editions (2018, 2nd ed.; and 2020). Do you get the same? Arminden (talk) 14:13, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * yeah- Sorry for that link fuckup, but you know me, dodgy at the best of times. I'd reckon you could get her article from some whiz at the wiki ref desk dialing up this to snap off a wiki-user copy?Nishidani (talk) 14:31, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Nishida-san, no problem, I can do well without for now - and the fault is all mine, my desktop PC is on its way out. The hardware is in perfect shape, but it's been cut off from updates and it's closing down, one programme at a time. Chinese characters show up as squares. Not even Google Translate can help out. A wiki-user copy? Never heard of such a thing, that would be the cheapest way to information since the invention of the lockpick. PS: I've tried writing to Ms Matthews, let's see now. Arminden (talk) 18:06, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Translating from the Japanese. At the Wikipedia Reference Desk, if you ask for a source with the link I provided above, anyone of a dozen wonderful chaps will mail you a copy, which they can access thanks to Wikipedia contracts with an extraordinary number of editing houses and journals. Don't worry about computers going off the blink. Your description of yours reminds me of what happens to persons like myself in the 70s. And if I can work my way round all of the incipient dementia, sore tendons, emphysema threats, and dwindling sharpness of sight (my family, younger and bespectacled has long looked on with jealous incredulity), then you can still keep a dinky computer running. Nishidani (talk) 20:35, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

It is not the Reference Desk you want, it is the Resource Exchange. The folks there are pretty good. Anyway, I will look at "Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology" later today. Zerotalk 00:25, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

No, I don't agree to "No Preview" being mentioned. It privileges Google as a source and there is no reason to believe it is a permanent property of a book or even consistent across Google sites or Google users. Remember that different countries have different copyright laws so it is perfectly likely that Google sometimes chooses to provide a preview depending on the IP of the viewer. Hathitrust does that and advertises the fact. Also, this is not a local question but one with wide-ranging implications across Wikipedia. If you will want to proceed, I suggest you try raising the issue at WT:Citing sources. Zerotalk 00:34, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Previews do differ considerably between countries, but I believe at the say-so of the publisher, not google. It's their copyrighted material. Johnbod (talk) 02:06, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I asked you folks to check that one specific case. Is it "no preview" in all of your particular countries? One case does not prove a rule, but it helps, so thanks to those who are willing to check.

Zero, thank you for the resource thing, much appreciated.

And also to you, I get it, I'm not a mule. I thought it helps, if it doesn't, I have no other motivation to push anything. Just the "giving preference to Google" thing I don't buy. We indicate the G.B. URL by virtue of a Wiki template because...? Yes, it's the default source for books. De facto, our old "thing". I didn't set Google on that pedestal, nor do I support Google Inc. I leave it to the authorities in Brussels and D.C., or to Don Qixote, to fight that one out. Arminden or Zero won't bring them down. My issue is that editing articles sourced on invisible texts is impossible. And that quite often, by playing around a bit with GB country endings, I can get to everything others have quoted, and get stuck exactly where others have. Except for older edits, where by now one gets consistent "no preview" or "snippet view" announcements. So a change of policy by the (c) holder is the most likely conclusion, especially since certain publishers are involved in many of these cases. Can I prove it? No. Am I allowed to think and extrapolate? Yes. And ask for your opinion, and even more so: for information on whether anyone knows anything for a fact. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 10:47, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

 * I understand that it's frustrating to work with these references if you don't have easy access to a library, though in our defence if you do have that access, it's difficult to ignore good sources that are right in front of you because they might not be on Google Books.
 * Regardless, while it might be difficult to verify information cited to paywalled sources, it's impossible to verify information not cited to anything at all, so it's a little disappointing that this discussion is happening alongside the introduction of unsourced material to an article which previously was not missing any citations. Can we please focus on making sure basic assertions of fact such as when and where tells are found, and how they formed, are sourced at all before we worry about WP:SOURCEACCESS? – Joe (talk) 11:55, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Tel Aviv
Is Tel Aviv a tell, or was it named after one? Stonemason89 (talk) 20:19, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not a real tell, however the very phrase "Tel Aviv", which is derived from the Bible (Ezekiel 3 15), means (in Hebrew): "Tell of spring". 84.228.29.68 (talk) 21:48, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The name Tel Aviv derives from Herzl book "Altneuland" / The Old New Land, that was translated into Hebrew as "Tel Aviv". Tel represents the "Old", Aviv, means "spring", represents the "new". It is also a name of a Jewish community in Babylon on the times of Ezkiel. Indeed, it is not a real Tell, though in its area there are several Tells, such as Tell_Qasile and Tell Kudadi. https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%9C_%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%93%D7%90%D7%93%D7%99 --Noavic (talk) 12:56, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

höyük (Turkey)
I wonder if the turkish term höyük (like in Çatalhöyük, Tille Höyük (-> tell), Alaca Höyük - sometimes also called hüyük in place names) is more similar to Tell or to Kurgan?! It may be a mixture of both because the purpose vary between settlement and burial; Tell comes from southeast (arabic/hebrew) and kurgan is turkic origin but not used in place names... --katpatuka (talk) 16:38, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

List of tells kind of pointless in the article
Having a list of tells in the body of the article is somewhat pointless. Tells are quite numerous. You can't really call it tells of note or noteworthy tells, but as it stands it this doesn't belong here. There could be a Wikipedia category called Tells though. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 11 Shevat 5775 03:31, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Agree. No problem with removing this list.--Zoeperkoe (talk) 07:57, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * All righty, I've started the massive task of creating the Tell category. I expect that it will have several hundred sites when it's done. In the meantime, I think we should keep the list in the article, but only include the best known tells. I think you can't use notable or other such terms according to WP:WTA, so what would be a good way to do this? Examples of tells maybe? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 16 Adar 5775 22:56, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Examples of, major, typical, significant, important. Any of those, but not "list" which implies completeness. Where the name begins with "Tell" you should I think sort on the rest of the name. Johnbod (talk) 23:02, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, list is definitely not the term to use here. As you said, it implies that paltry collection is the whole bunch. I noticed that sorting problem too. How do you make it sort by the second word in the name in some cases if that's possible? Obviously in cases where you have a dash after Al, there's not much you can do. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 16 Adar 5775 23:08, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Like this, with Hot Cat (on Preferences), or not. Johnbod (talk) 23:25, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

 * Saw that and started doing it in a few places. A good place to look for more tells is in Cities of the Ancient Near East and also see what links to the Tells page. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 16 Adar 5775 23:59, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

 * It would be nice to have an annotated list, with the country, approximate date, and anything particularly interesting about the tell. Siuenti (talk) 23:11, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * We could do that, but we'd have to keep it short of course. Most of the sites there are there because they're of archaeological significance (though I do have a bias towards Tel Kabri and Tel Megiddo as I work at those two sites, but they're significant sites). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 16 Adar 5775 23:24, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Why not delete the list, and replace it with a picture gallery showing the diversity of sizes and shapes of tells? Until the text of this article gets expanded significantly, that might give more information than a biased list. BTW someone mentioned that he was looking for a ref to the distribution of tells beyond the NE, I think it's in Wilkinson "Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East", I'll try and see if I can find it and add it to the article.--Zoeperkoe (talk) 11:13, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

 * I kind of like that idea more so long as we can also give them wee descriptions. That was me and I think I've used that book before for something else. It's a ridiculously wide and tall book if I remember correctly. If you could, that would be great! Maybe email it to me as well because I think I need that cite for a nota bene in the Kabri article. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 17 Adar 5775 13:55, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Meaning of the original Arabic word tell
Nowhere in the article there is a mention of the fact that the meaning of the Arabic 'tell' is simply a 'hill'. In English, I think that this word is used strictly for Iraqi archeological mounds and probably adopted by the earlier archeologists like Leonard Woolley (see his book: Sumerians) who worked in Iraq. 5.42.198.210 (talk) 16:13, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * In Hebrew, it exists in the same Archaeological meaning. Israel is full of Tells. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noavic (talk • contribs) 15:43, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, that meaning of the original Arabic word is in the first sentence of the lead... Best, --Zoeperkoe (talk) 17:13, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Tel
Tel has been added to the lead section as a bolded alternative name several times, most recently today by. Saying that tel often appears in placenames transliterated from Hebrew is certainly more accurate than implying the English word tell derives from Hebrew ; the sources are unanimous that it was loaned from Arabic, decades before Modern Hebrew existed. But I'm still not sure tel belongs there. If we're including the Hebrew cognate, why not also khirbet (Arabic), höyük (Turkish), tepe (Persian/Turkish), or chogha (Persian)? They all mean roughly the same thing and are also common in transliterated placenames. Or other variants such as tal or til? Because this article is about the phenomenon of an anthropogenic mound—which is called a tell in English—not placenames. – Joe (talk) 14:51, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
 * There are enough "Tel Foo" names in Category:Tells to justify it, imo, plus "tel" redirects here, via a disam page, hence the bolding. The same is true of "Tepe", so that could be added. Höyük goes to a single place, and khirbet and chogha to their own list/disam articles, which should of course be mentioned here, at the least in See also. Johnbod (talk) 14:57, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've added an etymology section so this doesn't crowd the lead. – Joe (talk) 06:52, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
 * If we can get access to Wendy Matthews,'Tells in Archaeology,' Claire Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, Springer 2014, it would help improve the quality of our sources.   Nishidani (talk) 15:39, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the recent improvements. I've emailed you a copy of that source. – Joe (talk) 15:53, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks Joe. Very good of you. Give me a day or two and I'll add the material there.Nishidani (talk) 21:56, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Can't seem to get a direct link to the pèage numerated article in that book so I'll use the following:
 * Wendy Matthews 'Tells in Archaeology,' in : Smith C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, Springer http://doi-org-443.webvpn.fjmu.edu.cn/10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_1512  ISBN 978-3-030-30016-6 Nishidani (talk) 22:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Copied & expanded from above, at "Etymology", where it might be misplaced: I don't know if "tel" with one l is used anywhere outside Israel/Palestine-related literature translated from Hebrew or written in English by Israelis. If that's correct, it's not needed at the beginning of the lead; it must be kept, as I/P archaeology is indeed a big point of int'l interest, but should move further down the text, with the other variations.

N.B.: there is a practice in I/P tell archaeology to use the Arabic toponym, usually from the SWP or alike, with Tell in the beginning, and only change to Tel-Something if the site is positively identified with a biblical or otherwise historically known city, like Dan, Megiddo, Gezer. So Tell el-Qadi to Tel Dan, Tell el-Mutesellim to Tel Megiddo, Tell el-Jezari to Tel Gezer. This is the rule with Israeli archaeologists, but not all non-Israeli ones go along with it, for either practical or ideological reasons. There are enough exceptions, I guess where the Government Naming Committee was in a hurry and came up with other sources of inspiration, usually the Arabic name, before any identification was possible. See for instance Khirbet el-Muqanna to Tel Miqne and not Tel Ekron, and Tell es-Safi to Tel Zafit, but not (yet) to Tel Gath. In this category, there is a tendency toward re-renaming the mounds, either step by step ("Tel Miqne-Ekron"), or in one go, like Tel Gath, which is gaining traction. If you find my conclusions worth being included in the article, please try to find some quotable sources – I'm sorry, but I won't be able to invest more time in this. Arminden (talk) 13:51, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * If you look at Category:Tells (archaeology) (as a rough measure), Tel is the second most common spelling variant after Tell. But I think we should be pragmatic here, since the compromise reached above (tell and tel in the lead, with a detailed explanation of etymology and related terms in its own section) seems to have stopped the I/P-motivated edit warring over the lead which had been going on for years before. – Joe (talk) 11:14, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This sounds reasonable to me. Edit peace in an article is a great thing to have... Btw, given that tel is only used in Israel whereas tell is used in Syria, Iraq and Jordan, which are all much larger countries, we can be pretty sure that there are way more tells than tels... ;) -- Zoeperkoe (talk) 11:30, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No good. At least there should be
 * some source using "tel" quoted in the lead if we were to accept it (as of now, all sources - Shaw, Negev & Gibson, and Chapmam - use tell, none uses the Hebrew-inspired tel, not even Negev; Kirkpatrick and Matthews are not online), and
 * it must be clarified that "tel" is strictly used by Israeli authors, and if used rigurously, only for positively identified biblical sites where the Hebrew "tel" is justified, and only in conjunction with the biblical Hebrew name, not the modern Arabic one.
 * It's not about avoiding edit-warring, it's about being correct. "Tel" is justified and widely used, but - only in the context indicated above, and this must be clearly stated. An academic approach is required, not a Solomonic one. Even if it means formulating a bit longer. Brevity isn't all. Arminden (talk) 15:38, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Done. Prof. Oded Borowski is RS, as is BAS. If someone wants to integrate it higher up in the lead, it's fine with me.
 * The change of name practice, from Arabic place name "Tell + XY" to Hebrew "Tel + biblical name", once identified, should be sourced and added too (for instance Tell el-Mutesellim to Tel Megiddo, Tell el-Qadi to Tel Dan, etc.). Arminden (talk) 16:38, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Tells occupied today
You placed a cn template on the statement about tells being occupied today. No problem with that, but I've got no idea how to source that to a single publication. I know it to be true (for the areas with which I am familiar) from the many reports I read and sites I visited, but how to translate that to a citation... I'll look in some of the books I've got lying around, maybe it is actually mentioned somewhere... Zoeperkoe (talk) 08:02, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This ASOR blog might actually be a very interesting source for modern use of tells. Somewhere deeper in the article is a reference to modern occupation at archaeological sites. Zoeperkoe (talk) 08:15, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. There is still the apparent contradiction between this statement and what Arminden added though – that tells went out of use in the Hellenistic period (also uncited). I suspect both are true in the sense that the "continuing occupation" you refer to is actually usually people building modern structures on top of long-abandoned sites, which is what the ASOR blog also suggests. I'm struggling to think of an example of a tell that was truly occupied continuously, as a settlement, since prehistory, because usually people in later eras didn't find giant hills with no water appealing unless they were building a castle. But that's also based on personal experience. It is difficult to square this kind of thing when you have to work backwards from assertions to sources. – Joe (talk) 08:29, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It might be that "occupation" is the wrong word and we should phrase it like "continue to be in use". I think that what Arminden mentions is something that has been shown by the research of Tony Wilkinson (and those that followed after him). I might have a source on that. But problem again is that this is not generally true for the entire area where tells are attested. On the other hand, tells being unoccupied for long periods of time and then being reoccupied is something that happened in the past as well, so this is not a reason to leave out modern occupation/use. Similarly, tells in the past were also not exclusively used for occupation; there's plenty evidence that tells were used as burial grounds, as a source for mud bricks, camping ground for pastoralists, and so forth, interspersed between the periods where there was permanent occupation (or at the same time at different parts of the tell). We might end up with something like saying that tells are loci of human activity in the landscape where occupation was an important, but not the only, part of that activity. Zoeperkoe (talk) 08:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Just to give an example; is it that different if a site was occupied in the Parthian period, abandoned, re-occupied in the Ottoman period until today (so a gap of ~1600 years) versus a site that was occupied in the Ubaid period and then re-occupied in the Akkadian period (a ~2000 yr gap)? I agree that the ASOR blog is not the best source, as it only focuses on really recent activity. I guess you really have to dig into survey reports to get an idea of how many modern villages are still on top of tells. Zoeperkoe (talk) 08:58, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Folks, tell settlements have a certain definition. It normally implies a specific kind of society and settlement pattern: restricted settlement area over longer periods, rebuilding if needed, often with fortifications marking the built-up area. You can always pitch a tent or build a condo, or fifty, on a tell and move in with your extended family & friends, enjoying the view: that doesn't make yours a tell settlement. Times when isolated houses are the only findings on a tell are considered gaps in tell habitation. Tell-type settlements appear in certain periods, and disappear in region-specific periods (Hellenism in ancient Palestine, apparently Roman period around Homs, much earlier in some regions of Romania and Bulgaria). If nowadays or, say, in the Middle Ages you have sprawling villages and towns also stretching over tells, this doesn't create tell settlements, although it might either add or remove (truncate) authentic tell layers from the mound. There was a period-specific way of re-inhabiting only a small, specific area and sometimes protecting it with walls that made a tell a tell. We still have churches and mosques on hilltops, or even fortified monasteries, sometimes dominating a city, but that doesn't make such a hilltop an acropolis either: that's also a period-specific, culture-specific term.
 * I don't find anywhere the 'tell' definition mentioning any of this, but read enough dig reports and it becomes obvious: a proper tell layer implies dense habitation, often ramparts limiting the built-up area and giving the tell its shape. Which is limited to the periods between Neolithic and Iron Age or whatever other region-specific period. In the case of large ancient tell-creating cities, there is a lower city and an upper city, which leave a higher small mound within the larger, lower mound. After destruction of cities in the period X, archaeologists might speak of meager findings or habitation remains from the period X+1, but not of a stratum per se.
 * In ancient Palestine, Hellenism brings a new type of city-building, which "descends" from the easier-to-protect mound, although the tell might still be used as an acropolis or for other types of construction, but the term tell ceases to be used. See Hippodamian grid plan for Greek and Roman new settlements, which come along with new economic, fiscal, and transportation concepts, which can move the focus on new hubs, or make settlements within the realm open up their boundaries.
 * Yes, the definition is incomplete w/o touching on this, but I guess tell archaeology, being mainly a Middle East affair, was contaminated by Middle Eastern attitudes of pragmatism: you know what a tell is if you have eyes in your head, the rest is hair-splitting. Now I see there are attempts at including large parts of Europe and the world into tell archaeology (Hungary & Transylvania! Plus at least "parallels" on every other continent), so they'll need to get more detail into the definition, otherwise every type of man-generated heap of ruins will claim to be called a tell, and that will water down the concept to a point where it becomes useless. If you find something quotable confirming or contradicting me, please let me know, but I couldn't find any concise quotable sources for this.
 * Useful material:

 * Blanco-González & Kienlin (is in the References), pp. 1, 135. Gives a good idea of why the focus should be on socio-economic aspects, which are decisive in the creation or abandonment of a tell.
 * Graham Philip & Jennie Bradbury. "Settlement in the Upper Orontes Valley from the Neolithic to the Islamic Period: an Instance of Punctuated Equilibrium". Syria IV (2016). Search words: tell; Hellenism; Roman. Around Homs, tells remain inhabited throughout the Hellenistic period, but are abandoned under the very active Roman rule, when the central admin. patterns change dramatically. Neolithic findings are sometimes treated simply as "material at future tells", not as part of these, if the Neolithic settlement type is not tell-specific.
 * S. Bréhard & A. Bălăşescu. "What's behind the tell phenomenon? An archaeozoological approach of Eneolithic sites in Romania": "In southeastern Europe, the appearance and abandonment of the tell sites varies by areas. The fifth millennium BC is characterized by the appearance of the tell sites in southeastern Romania (and in northeastern Bulgaria....), while in the Carpathian Basin, there is the abandonment of this type of settlement." So radical regional variations just across one mountain range (S Carpathians). Arminden (talk) 11:46, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I haven't encountered that narrow a definition of tells, either in the dictionaries and encyclopaedias I have access to, or in my own work on tells in the Middle East and Europe. The way we use it, it means basically a mound created by human settlement. I don't think it's so new to recognise that they are found in Europe either (there are apparently 161 in Hungary). That's not to say that other definitions aren't out there, but I don't think we should be too restrictive in this article. The socioeconomic changes you talk about are very interesting and sound like the precisely the sort of thing an expanded version of this article could cover, though I would say they are factors that explain the variable distribution of tells, rather than define it. – Joe (talk) 14:07, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Agree with Joe here. What Arminden describes is more about the biography of specific (groups of) tells than applicable to every tell. When and why tells were (re)occupied is different throughout the Near East and surrounding areas and such details, as well as details like "must have had city walls" have no place in the lead, I think. But these details are perfectly fine in a more specific section on tell formation or regional differences. Zoeperkoe (talk) 07:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Changes to the layout of the end matter
I object to the changes made to the headings and layout of the end matter by, and have reverted them per "bold, revert, discuss". This is covered by WP:REFVAR: users should not change referencing styles based solely on their own personal preferences, but must get consensus on the talk page. Anybody support these changes? NSH001, you are welcome to get a third opinion or start an RFC if you think this matter of style is truly important in the larger scheme of things. Skyerise (talk) 11:00, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

 * Just to be clear, you're talking about this revert? Which changed the headings over the footnotes? – Joe (talk) 11:32, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

 * Exactly. I prefer how it was and the change was not necessary. If others think it's an improvement, that's fine too, but the editor seems to be working to conform multiple articles to some essay which is not binding and such unneeded changes are generally discouraged if there are objections. Skyerise (talk) 11:36, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it makes absolutely no difference either way. – Joe (talk) 11:42, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, it's a distraction from more useful work. I too support the way it was - firstly because I'm against neurotic drive-by changes, 2ndly this is the most common style, & 3rdly because it's the style I prefer. Johnbod (talk) 12:36, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Tell (archaeology)


text:
Mestwin I, Duke of Pomerania

Mestwin I (Mściwoj I gdański or Mszczuj I, Mscëwòj I; c. 1160 – 1/2 May 1219 or 1220) was Prince of Pomerelia (styled himself as princeps Pomoranorum) from about 1205 until his death.

Mestwin was a member of the Samborides dynasty, the son of Duke Sobiesław of Gdańsk and younger brother of Sambor I, whom he succeeded in Pomerelia. In the tables of Oliwa Abbey, outside Gdańsk, he is recorded as pacificus ("the Peaceful").

As Mestwin I, dei gracia princeps in Gdanzk, he had founded a convent of nuns (probably the Premonstratensian abbey of Żukowo), the castellany of Białogarda at the border with the Pomeranian Lands of Schlawe and Stolp on the Łeba river, and several villages between the rivers Radunia and Słupia. After King Valdemar II of Denmark had conquered the southern coast of the Baltic Sea with Gdanzk during a crusade against the Old Prussians, Duke Mestwin in 1210 had to accept Danish overlordship, but was able to free himself again the next year.

He was married to Swinisława (d. 1240), formerly referred to as a daughter of Duke Ratibor I of Pomerania. They had eight children:
 * 1) Hedwig, married Duke Władysław Odonic of Greater Poland
 * 2) Swietopelk II, Duke of Pomerania, succeeded his father as Duke of Pomerelia, from 1227 of Pomerelia-Gdańsk
 * 3)  Mirosława, married Bogislaw II, Duke of Pomerania at Stettin
 * 4) Witosława, prioress of Żukowo Abbey
 * 5) Warcisław, Duke at Świecie from 1227
 * 6) Sambor II, Duke at Lubiszewo from 1233
 * 7) Ratibor, Duke at Białogard from 1233
 * 8) Milosława, nun at Żukowo Abbey

Literature

 * Theodor Hirsch, Max Töppen, Ernst Gottfried Wilhelm Strehlke: Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum: Die Geschichtsquellen der preussischen Vorzeit

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Mestwin I, Duke of Pomerania


text:
Talk:International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist)

.
I put back some information which the person who removed it claimed was slander (even though in written form it would actually be "libel"). I know these claims to be true and the Sparts' reputation is pretty well known on the Left.

SonofRage 04:00, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Alex Cockburn, who is famously thin skinned, may not like the comparison of his writing style to that of the Sparts. If so, he should stop being witty and sarcastic and adopt instead the New York Times' put everyone to sleep style. 1-6-05

The sentence(s) about the Sparts engaging in violence with other leftist groups isn't worth including. We are talking about shoving and shouting matches, guys, not some Operation Mop Up. Enough to say that they sometimes seize the microphone and go on too long at other folks' meetings, which indeed is something they have long been known for on the left. I am leaving the sentence(s) but I think the editor should consider dropping them unless somebody remembers some really horrific event. 1-ll-04

I have restored the phrase about Worker's Vanguard's fine obituaries that was removed by someone shortly after I included it. Let me cite as my examples the obits on Bill Epton, Robert F. Williams and Dick Fraser. There have been many others. The phrase giving Workers' Vanguard its due for playing the role of newspaper of record (re obituaries) that no one else on the left is willing to play should not be removed again simply because someone from the BT doesn't like it. But supporters of the Sparts have also been playing games with this article. I put considerable effort last month into making it as fair as possible to the Sparts--and indeed I think it is not in its present form hostile to them. Thus it annoys me that their supporters have injected phrases like "falsely claims" or "mischaracterizes" in respect to their opponents' allegations. Hey, guys, a claim is just a claim, but to say something is a "false" claim is a factoid--and one that the writer fails to offer any proof for. If we are talking about shoving matches 15 years ago, or even five years ago, who can remember which claims were false or not? Supporters of the Sparts claim that their group has "documented" the attacks on it by other groups. But as a matter of principle the Sparts don't file police reports against other groups and don't sue them in a court of capitalist law, so there is no paper trail for these incidents. Nor to my knowledge has Workers' Vanguard ever provided hospital records of treatment received for injuries, photographs of wounds or bruises, photographs of an attack in progress, or sworn statements from victims or eyewitnesses. In the absence of such, it is not accurate to say that the Spartacists have "documented" such attacks and thus I am removing the phrase in which such documentation is implied. -- Feb. 17, 2005

WarofDreams was correct to revert the doc from the polemical phrases that were added. However, the sentence about the Sparts believing that there can be an equal sexual relationship between an adult and prepubescent child is of sufficient importance that it should be retained IF the person who added it can provide a quote from Spart publications that proves the statement is accurate.--July 23, 2005

 * There is too much in this article which is the retailing of claim and counterclaim - much of which seems to originate from disaffected members of the Sparts (the IBT). If people are interested they can visit websites, buy press etc. The serious discussion of the 'cult' claim is just too ridiculous.--Jack Upland 03:44, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Youth Group of the ICL
This section of the article seems very POV. It's good to mark it with Fact but why not just cut it if we get no references? --Duncan 20:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Here is fact:

About 10 years ago, the Sparts showed up at an ISO event in Chicago and provoked a fight with several ISO members. During the course of the fight, one longtime ISO member, Joe Allen, had his leg broken in two places. The Sparts were do pleased about this they plastered flyers about it all over Roger's Park, a neighborhood on Chicago's far North Side. The above comment was unsigned

 * "About" ten years ago? An unsigned comment? A "fact"???--Jack Upland (talk) 09:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Polemic against "Here is fact" slander
Perhaps you should supply evidents before making such baseless allegations. I have worked with the ICL's Canadian section for a year and a half and have never witnessed such things. In fact the ISO has a attacked people in the ICL(FI) in Chicago as well as in Toronto. And if the ICL is "open" about "provoking fights" why would I not have heard of this? To speak from experience, I myself have been attacked by groups that have made similar slanders against the ICL(FI).

Leon Trotsky 14:31, 1 February 2007

CIA funded
I've heard consistent allegations that the Sparts were CIA funded. This was as a result of their idiosyncratic postitions on many left issues eg MIGs for Managua which was widely seen as been designed to undermine the work of the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign position that the Sandinistas were independent revolutionaries seeking national self-determination. There was also the fact that most of those (at least in Ireland in the 80s) selling the paper seem to have been Americans. Probably prejudice but does anyone have evidence to support or shed other light on this?

--Gramscis cousin 21:27, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

 * I've never heard this story, in more than 20 years. They certainly do have funds, but nothing out of the ordinary, of the type we have seen with the Healy movement. The Spart's lines doesn't really reflect that of the CIA; that's really the role of the labour aristocracy. Nor do they act as disruptors and provocatuers of the left today, in the way they did in the later 70ss and early 80s. The dispute over MIGs is a little more complex: the Sandinistas bought MIGs against the wished of the USSR. Under Soviet pressure, the Cubas impounded those planes to prevent the FSLN deepending the military conflict. In this instance, the NSC was covering up for Stalinism, and undermining the real wishes of the FSLN. Most Americans are not agents of the CIA, so the fact that many Sparts are from the US really doesn't mean anything.--Duncan 10:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

That's an interesting explanation. However the Sparts were known as the SpartaCIAist League by many at the time mentioned. This however was probably black propaganda by local "Tankies". --Gramscis cousin (talk) 17:25, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I doubt you can find a reference to support that. If the CIA really wanted to undermine the Sandinists, they could have funded people who were much harsher critics - people who were more Stalinophobic. But they would not have sent in CIA operatives to staff these groups, any more than they staffed the British Labour party in the 1960s. They fund people who really believe in whatever the say. --Duncan (talk) 22:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's total bullshit, in fact to their credit they took the FSP to task for circulating anti-communist lies about the Sandanistas during that period.

I agree Duncan I'm just observing that this was a view that was current in the place and period mentioned. I never said I believed it myself I just felt it was interesting and was curious as to whether anyone else had heard it. As I said it was probably just "slagging" and has no substance. --Gramscis cousin (talk) 12:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

 * Yes, the Spartacist's strongest section is in America. Yes, they irritate many of their opponents.  Does that make them CIA???--Jack Upland (talk) 09:52, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The Spartacist League as Disruptors
In response to the claims that the Spartacist League are disrupters and provocateurs. The groups that I have come across that have made these accusations think any form of political dissent or criticism is disruptive. One such group is the Vancouver-civic Tendency Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice which has gone as far to accuse one of their former cadre of disruptive behavior because he came out about Fire This Time attacking him.

Leon Trotsky 14:45, 1 February 2007

Splits
I've removed the NPOV label from the section on splits, since there's no comment on this page to suggest why that section might be POV. --Duncan 21:27, 4 February 2007 (UTC )

What Proof
Proof do you have that Jim Robertson "purged" people from the ICL(FI) or that he holds undisputed power? What group has put forward these arguments? Leon Trotsky 15:07 24 February 2007 Are you making the point that the SL purched these people, rather than Robertson alone? --Duncan 12:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Death Agony

 * In a book entitled Death Agony of the Fourth International, Workers Power and the Irish Workers Group claim the iSt's strategy was/is based on, and they quote from an iSt document, "destroying" other left wing groups. They claim this involves occupying rooms where other left groups are due to have meetings as well as other methods. Furthermore, they argue that the Spartacists, while developing a correct position that the SWP were centrist, did not recognise that the Fourth International had degenerated before it split, and therefore were more critical of one section than of the other.

This paragraph is quite incoherent, its complaints (room bookings) petty, its analysis (more one section than the other) vague.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:45, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, "centrist" being sectarian gibberish referring to people who are tainted with heresy.

Suggest Split
I strongly feel this page should be renamed/re-oriented. I do not know if this has been discussed before but this page is really about the Spartacist League of the United States, with only a few tibits about the other sections of this "International". I think it would be more accurate to split this page into one for the original Spartacist League in the US and one for the ICL(FI), and then create pages for the other spartacist leagues in other countries. I do not wish to do this "unilaterally" however and would like the input of others who have participated on the articles discussion page to respond on the discussion page before I take this step.--Dudeman5685 (talk) 18:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
 * There is not much to say about the leagues in other countries. None of them are notable enough to justify separate entries. Rather than produce a series of stubs, we should keep it as one article. --Duncan (talk) 00:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Then I suggest a smaller page dealing with the international Spartacist tendency / ICL, and another one on the Spartacist League proper. As it is this is basically a page about the US org, and not much on the other groups, or the "international" itself.--Dudeman5685 (talk) 23:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * What would be a benefit of producing a stub about the ICL? Why not just name this page SL-US and then redirect ICL to a section of this article? I just don't see why we need more articles. --Duncan (talk) 14:42, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * We do already have articles on the Spartacist League (US), Spartacist League of Britain and Lega trotskista d'Italia. This page deals with the international.  I can't see anything in it specifically about the U.S. group, other than in relation to how the international originated but, if there is anything, it should be moved to the specific article. Warofdreams talk 14:59, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Check the history. Until a few days ago this was just about Spatacist League US. I moved that over to the new page on SL/US and created an entirely new history section just on the "international". I also just wrote the Italian page yesterday.--Dudeman5685 (talk) 16:10, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, I missed that, thanks. Your split makes perfect sense to me. Warofdreams talk 17:45, 13 March 2011 (UTC)


text:
Timex Group USA

Timex Group USA, Inc. (formerly known as Timex Corporation) is an American global watch manufacturing company founded in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1944, the company became insolvent but was reformed into Timex Corporation. In 2008, the company was acquired by Timex Group B.V. and was renamed Timex Group USA.

Thomas Olsen purchased the Waterbury Clock Company in New York in 1941 and renamed it Timex, a portmanteau of the names of Time magazine and Kleenex.

Waterbury Clock Company (1854–1944)
Brass manufacturer Benedict & Burnham created Waterbury Clock Company in 1854 to manufacture clocks using brass wheels and gears. Waterbury Clock Company was legally incorporated on March 27, 1857, as an independent business with $60,000 in capital. The American clock industry was producing millions of clocks with scores of companies located in Connecticut's Naugatuck River Valley, earning the region the nickname "Switzerland of America". The Waterbury Clock Company was one of the largest producers for both domestic sales and export, primarily to Europe.

Ingersoll Watch Company

The company originally produced clocks as less expensive alternatives to the high-end European counterparts of the time. In 1887, they introduced the large Jumbo pocket watch, invented by Archibald Bannatyne and named after the famous P. T. Barnum elephant. The Jumbo was put on the market in New York City on a trial basis, catching the attention of Robert H. Ingersoll, a salesman and eventual marketing pioneer. During the turn of the century, Waterbury Clock Company produced millions of pocket watches for the Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. watch company, in which Robert partnered with his brother Charles. In 1896, Ingersoll introduced the Ingersoll Yankee, a dollar pocket watch supplied by Waterbury Clock Company. These watches gained such great popularity that they became known as "the watch that made the dollar famous."

Waterbury Watch Company
In 1877, a new prototype was introduced to Benedict and Burnham for an inexpensive pocket watch made of 58 parts, mostly punched sheet brass. They immediately set aside an unused portion of their machine shop and began producing the Long Wind at a rate of 200 per day by 1878. The department quickly outgrew its space in the plant, so Benedict & Burnham incorporated Waterbury Clock's sister company Waterbury Watch Company in 1880 with a capital of $400,000 to manufacture and sell inexpensive watches and other timepieces. Waterbury Watch started out very successfully in its early days, employing hundreds of women for their "slender fingers" and "delicate manipulation", and it became the largest-volume producer of watches in the world by 1888.

Waterbury Watch quickly fell into bankruptcy, however, due to poor sales techniques where jobbers and salesmen gave away much of the product as loss leaders with little regard to the company's future, thereby cheapening the products' perceived value. In a last attempt to salvage the company, Waterbury Watch began to produce higher-end watch models which only created more demand on a workforce unable to keep up with the complexity of the new watches using several hundred parts. The company was finally reorganized as the New England Watch Company in 1898, as its London sales office was placed into liquidation. The company continued to focus on high-priced watch models and eventually fell into receivership, discontinuing business in July 1912. Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. bought the Waterbury plant and began manufacturing Ingersoll Watches there in 1914.

Advent of the wristwatch
World War I brought new demands for timepiece design; artillery gunners, for example, needed an easy way to calculate and read time while still being able to work the guns. The Waterbury Clock Company met this need by modifying their small Ingersoll ladies' Midget pocket watch. They added lugs for a canvas strap, repositioned the crown to 3 o'clock, and made the hands and numbers luminescent for nighttime readability, thus producing one of the first wristwatches.

In 1922, Waterbury Clock Company purchased the Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. company for $1.5 million. The firm had gone bankrupt the previous year due to the post-war recession. However, Waterbury Clock was unable to deliver on Ingersoll's guarantee of quality in Europe due to the Great Depression, so they sold the London-based Ingersoll, Ltd. to its board of directors in 1930, making it a wholly British-owned enterprise. The Ingersoll brand name was continued in the United States by Waterbury Clock into the 1950s, while Ingersoll Ltd. produced the Ingersoll watch brand independently for the European and other markets.

Waterbury Clock Company regained its identity in the consumer market after the Great Depression and a period of hardship. They reached a license agreement with Walt Disney in 1930 to produce the famous Mickey Mouse watches and clocks under the Ingersoll brand name. They introduced the Mickey Mouse timepieces to the public at the Chicago World's Fair in June 1933, and they quickly became the company's first million-dollar line, saving it from financial disaster.

Thomas Olsen was the owner of Fred. Olsen Shipping Co., and he fled Norway in 1940 together with Joakim Lehmkuhl and their families because of the Nazi invasion. They eventually came to the United States seeking investments to assist in the war effort. Olsen and Lehmkuhl purchased controlling interest in Waterbury Clock Company in 1941, and Olsen became chairman. Olson appointed Lehmkuhl president, who had studied business and engineering at Harvard and MIT, and the company became the largest producer of fuse timers for precision defense products in the United States under his direction. They built a new concrete plant in nearby Middlebury, Connecticut in 88 days in 1942 for the high-volume production of precision timers. In August 1943, the Under-Secretary of War awarded the Waterbury Clock Company the Army-Navy "E" Award for excellence for their "Anglo-American fuse", and shareholders voted the following December to rename the company United States Time Corporation.

United States Time Corporation (1944–1969 )
Sales declined after the Korean War in the 1950s because of diminishing defense orders, and United States Time president Lehmkuhl was convinced that an inexpensive watch would be a market success if it was both accurate and durable. He felt that low cost could be accomplished through the combination of automation, the precision tooling techniques used in making fuse timers, and a simpler design than that of higher-priced Swiss watches. Durability was accomplished through a new hard alloy called Armalloy, developed through wartime research. Armalloy was used to produce longwearing bearings, replacing the expensive jewels traditionally used in a watch's movement. These innovations led to the debut of the Timex brand in 1950, though the name was first used on a small trial shipment of nurses' watches in 1945.

US Time Corporation bought Lacher & Co. AG in Pforzheim, Germany (the Laco brand), on February 1, 1959, in order to acquire the electric watch technology which that company had developed. They also purchased the DUROWE (Deutsche Uhrenrohwerke) brand. Timex sold Durowe to the Swiss movement manufacturer ETA SA on September 1, 1965.

Slogan: World's largest manufacturer of watches and mechanical time fuses

The company manufactured mechanical components for missiles during the boom of American missile development in the late 1950s, including fuses, gyroscope, accelerometers, guidance sub-system, and various other miniature precision items. The company promoted its products under the claim of being the "world's largest manufacturer of watches and mechanical time fuses."

The company also produced ammunition components, and repaired, installed, and reactivated government-owned production equipment. The height of the company's ordnance and ammunition business lasted through the Vietnam era in the 1960s and 1970s, during which it operated Joliet Army Ammunition Plant as well as privately owned plants and storage facilities.

Slogan: It takes a licking and keeps on ticking
John Cameron Swayze was widely viewed as the most credible newsman in the United States, so Lehmkuhl decided to hire him as a company spokesman for live "torture tests" on television using Russ Alben's slogan "Timex – Takes a Licking and keeps on Ticking". Hirshon Garfield developed these commercials as elaborations on tests suggested by United States Time Corporation salesmen. The commercials included high-divers, water skiers, a dolphin, dishwashers, jackhammers, paint mixers, and the propeller of an outboard motor, each torturing a Timex watch.

Consumer demand increased for the watches, despite resistance from jewelers because of the low 50% markup, and Timex opened new distribution channels including department stores, cigar stands, drug stores, and other mass-market outlets. By 1962, the Timex brand held the number one market share position in the United States, where one out of every three watches sold was a Timex. Foreign markets were added with company sales offices in Canada, Mexico, France, Great Britain, Germany, and Portugal, as well as distributors in about 20 other countries. Plants were built in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Edwin H. Land, co-founder of Polaroid Corporation, contacted United States Time Corporation in 1948 in search of a manufacturer for his cameras. A strong relationship was forged between the companies in 1950 resulting in United States Time becoming the exclusive manufacturer of all Polaroid cameras worldwide through the 1970s, totaling more than 44 million cameras. United States Time Corporation was renamed Timex Corporation on July 1, 1969.

Timex Corporation (1969–2008)
In the 1970s and early 1980s, the American watch and clock industry was devastated by the arrival of cheap mechanical watches from the Far East, as well as the development of digital quartz watches pioneered by Japanese companies. Lehmkuhl retired in 1973 with no clear successor, and Polaroid ended its contract with Timex in 1975, resulting in a layoff of 2,000 employees. New technology was developing rapidly in the form of electronic digital watches and quartz analog watches, making Timex's mechanical watchmaking production facilities obsolete. Timex closed and consolidated worldwide operations, cutting the 30,000 employee workforce to 6,000. New competitors were aggressively entering the business, including Japanese companies, low-cost Hong Kong producers, and large American companies such as Gillette, Texas Instruments, and National Semi-Conductor. The Disney license had expired and John Cameron Swayze retired from his role as spokesman. The sub-contracting business was rebuilt with new customers such as IBM, Hugin-Sweda, and General Electric. The company entered the home computer business in a joint venture with Sinclair Research Ltd. named Timex Sinclair, selling computers as the Timex Sinclair 1000 and succeeding machines, modeled on the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum. They faced declining sales amid a price war with Commodore Business Machines in 1984 and decided not to compete in that market any longer.

In the mid-1980s, Timex abandoned its development of various consumer products and refocused efforts specifically on timepieces. Product quality and fashionable design became essential to success in the mass market. Timex had a solid reputation for durable products, and the company put increased efforts behind quality improvement. Longer battery life, more durable gold plating, greater accuracy, and more water-resistant styles were some of the many improvements that they implemented. They created new quartz analog movements using fewer components, reducing overall production time and costs. Top athletes assisted in the design of sports watches for specific sports, which led to the introduction of the Ironman Triathlon in 1986 which was named for the Hawaiian triathlon that the company had sponsored since 1984, and it became the most successful Timex watch in the post-mechanical watch era. Within its first year, Timex Ironman became the best-selling watch in the United States, and the world's largest selling sport watch for the next decade.

Timex introduced the Indiglo night light during the Christmas shopping season in 1992. Indiglo made headlines as a result of the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing, in which an office worker wearing a Timex with an Indiglo night light used its light to guide a group of evacuees down 40 dark flights of stairs. This caused sales to immediately take off and led to an increase in Timex's American market share.

Timex Corporation acquired Callanen International in 1991, the producer of Guess Watches, as part of its "multi-brand strategy". Timex and Disney reunited in 1993 to produce a new line of character watches called Disney Classics Collection. Also in 1993, the Timex Factory at Dundee in the UK, was the site of a major industrial strike. In 1994, Timex acquired the Nautica Watches license and introduced Timex Data Link. The Data Link PDA-type watch could receive contact and scheduling information from a sequence in a computer monitor's light using software developed with Microsoft. They introduced the Timex Expedition brand in 1997, designed for rugged outdoor sports. Timex and Motorola introduced Beepwear in 1998, a watch with an integrated pager.

The new millennium led to further growth of Timex Corporation and its parent Timex Group B.V., by way of brand acquisition, brand introduction, and licensing partnerships. In 2000, Timex Corporation purchased the French fashion watch brand Opex. Under its Callanen subsidiary, Timex acquired the watch license for urban fashion designer Marc Eckō in 2002. The company entered the luxury market in 2005 when Timex's parent company acquired Swiss-based Vertime SA. Vertime is responsible for the design, manufacturing, and distribution of Swiss-made watches and jewelry for the Versace and Versus brands. Timex USA's international holding company the Timex Group launched the TX Watch Company in late 2006. In 2007, Timex Group B.V. established Sequel AG as a separate company devoted to the design, manufacture, and distribution of the Guess and the Swiss-made Gc watch brands. Timex Group B.V. purchased the Italian design studio Giorgio Galli Design Lab in 2007.

Timex Group USA, Inc. (2008–present)
The company was restructured in early 2008, establishing the Timex Business Unit as a separate business function for the Timex brand with its own president. Previous Timex Group CEOs had managed the Timex Group and brand, which had contributed to the brand's lower earnings in the previous five years. Timex Group's Sequel division houses the Guess collections and had grown tremendously to rival Timex as the firm's top earner, but the signature brand had been flat as of August 2008. Since this change, Timex has introduced GPS enabled watches, heart rate monitor exercise watches, and similar devices.

In 2008, Timex Group USA signed a four-year agreement making Timex the first official timekeeper of the New York City Marathon. Meanwhile, parent company Timex Group B.V. launched Swiss-made luxury watch brands Salvatore Ferragamo Timepieces and Valentino Timeless under the Timex Group Luxury Watches business. That same year, they began construction on the second-largest ground-mounted solar array in the United States at Timex Group USA's headquarters in Middlebury, Connecticut. They inaugurated the 800-panel solar array on February 5, 2009 during a press event held at the headquarters. A few months later, Timex Group USA purchased the Marc Eckō watch trademark which it had licensed since 2002. The Callanen International business unit merged with the Timex Business Unit in 2009, bringing the Timex, Opex, TX, Nautica, and Marc Eckō brands under one company.

Timex Group B.V.
Timex Group B.V., a Dutch holding company, is the corporate parent of several watchmaking companies around the globe including Timex Group USA, Inc. Businesses and exclusive worldwide licenses include the Timex Business Unit (Timex, Timex Ironman, Opex, Nautica, Marc Eckō), Sequel (Guess, Gc), Timex Group Luxury Division (Versace, Versus, Salvatore Ferragamo, Vincent Bérard, CT Scuderia and Teslar) and Giorgio Galli Design Lab.

Today, Timex Group B.V.'s products are manufactured in the Far East, and in Switzerland, often based on technology that continues to be developed in the United States and in Germany. The group has operations in a number of countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Many Timex Far East operation wristwatches are manufactured by TMX Philippines Inc. in Lapu-Lapu, Philippines. Timex Group B.V.'s export from the factory in the Philippines is made through their own company. Tmx Limited N.V., based in Curaçao.

title: Timex Group USA


text:
Talk:European archaeology

There seem to be far too much lists of archaeological sites around. There is a list of famous archaeological sites by country and a list of archaeological sites by continent and period, which I inandvertedly started. Is there any agreement on nesting (or deleting) lists? --Yak 16:35, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

 * Two kinds of lists are useful: complete lists or weighted lists. (The rest are road-show David Letterman.) So go for it Yak! But better list titles are Most influential European archaeological sites with a one-sentence "why." Or-- dang what's the archaeologists' word for it?-- the Defining European archaeological sites i.e. Halstatt, or La Tene.

eponymous. But the eponymous sites are often not really important or even typical ones, Hallstatt being a notable exception. --Yak 17:03, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:European archaeology


text:
Lindholm Høje

Lindholm Høje (Lindholm Hills, from Old Norse haugr, hill or mound) is a major Viking burial site and former settlement situated to the north of and overlooking the city of Aalborg in Denmark.

About the area
The southern (lower) part of Lindholm Høje dates to 1000 – 1050 AD, the Viking Age, while the northern (higher) part is significantly earlier, dating back to the 5th century AD in the Nordic Iron Age. An unknown number of rocks have been removed from the site over the centuries, many, for example, being broken up in the 19th century for use in road constructions. The Viking Age part of the burial ground has suffered more from this than the older parts. The first major archaeological excavation, which ultimately included 589 of the approximately 700 graves, began in 1952, although excavations had been conducted as early as 1889.

Remains of villages has been found. The settlement is at an important crossing over the Limfjord, a stretch of water which divides the Jutland peninsula. During the Viking Age, it was only possible to make the crossing at this point or much further west along the fjord at Aggersund, because of the swamps which then edged the fjord on either side.

The settlement was abandoned in approximately 1200 AD, probably due to sand drifting from the western coast, which was a consequence of extensive deforestation and the exposed sand then being blown inland by the rough westerly winds. The sand which covered the site served to protect it in large part over the intervening centuries.

Because of its location and transportation links, the settlement was obviously a significant centre for trade at the time, and this is borne out by glassware, gems and Arab coins found at the site. An 11th-century silver Urnes style brooch found in one grave is the model for bronze copies that were being cast in a Lund jeweler's workshop in the early 12th century.

The majority of the burials discovered were cremations, although a number of inhumations were also discovered, and it appeared that the tendency towards cremation or burial depended upon the period, cremation supplanting inhumation in the Viking Age. The pre-Viking Age burials were under mounds. Of the later graves, some women's graves appear to be distinguished by placement of rocks in a circle or oval, but most of the graves are marked with rocks either in a triangle or in the traditional shape of a boat (stone ship), indicating the importance that the Vikings placed upon water. The ship settings constitute the largest assemblage of well-preserved examples extant. The shape and size of the grave outline apparently indicate the status of the person – all of which is reminiscent of the ship burials of the Anglo-Saxons, Norwegian and Swedish Vikings and other ancient Germanic societies.

A museum adjacent to the site donated by Aalborg Portland A/S cement company to commemorate their centennial was opened in 1992. In 2008 the museum was enlarged, and a new exhibition of pre-history in the area of the Limfjord opened.

title: Lindholm Høje


text:
Lithuanian orthography

Lithuanian orthography employs a Latin-script alphabet of 32 letters, two of which denote sounds not native to the Lithuanian language. Additionally, it uses five digraphs.

Alphabet
Today, the Lithuanian alphabet consists of 32 letters. It features an unusual collation order in that "Y" occurs between I nosinė (Į) and J. While absent from the alphabet, letters Q, W and X have their place in collation order: Q is located between P and R, and W with X are preceded by letter V. Those letters may be used in spelling of foreign names. The distinctive Lithuanian letter Ė was used for the first time in Daniel Klein's Grammatica Litvanica, and has been firmly established in the Lithuanian language since then. However, linguist August Schleicher used Ë (with two points above it) instead of Ė for expressing the same. In the Grammatica Litvanica Klein also established the letter W for marking the sound V, the use of which was later abolished in the Lithuanian language (it was replaced with letter V, notably by authors of the Varpas newspaper). The usage of letter V instead of W especially increased since the early 20th century, likely considerably influenced by Lithuanian press and schools.

Due to the Polish influence, the Lithuanian alphabet included sz, cz and the Polish Ł for the sound [] and regular L (without a following i) for the sound []: łupa, lutas. During the Lithuanian National Revival in the 19th century the Polish Ł was abolished, while digraphs sz, cz (that are also common in the Polish orthography) were replaced with letters š and č from the Czech orthography because they formally were shorter. Nevertheless, another argument to abolish digraphs sz, cz was to distinguish the Lithuanian language from the Polish language. The new letters š and č were cautiously used in publications intended for more educated readers (e.g. Varpas, Tėvynės sargas, Ūkininkas), however digraphs sz, cz continued to be in use in publications intended for less educated readers as š and č caused tension in society; š and č have prevailed only since 1906.

The Lithuanians also adopted letter ž from the Czechs.

The letters ą and ę were taken from the Polish spelling for what at the time were nasal vowels. They were first used by Renaissance Lithuanian writers. Later the letters į and ų were introduced for the remaining nasal vowels, which have since denasalized. Letter ū is the latest addition by linguist Jonas Jablonskis.

Acute, grave, and macron/tilde accents can mark stress and vowel length. However, these are generally not used, except in dictionaries and where needed for clarity. In addition, Lithuanian orthography uses five digraphs (Ch Dz Dž Ie Uo); these function as sequences of two letters for collation purposes. The "Ch" digraph represents a voiceless velar fricative, while the others are straightforward compositions of their component letters. The letters F and H, as well as the digraph CH, denote sounds only appearing in loanwords.

Spelling of foreign names
Although the Lithuanian alphabet lacks the letters Q (kū), W (vė dviguboji) and X (iks), these letters may be used in foreign personal names.

For foreign names, two spelling variants are used: original spelling (e. g. George Walker Bush as a title of an encyclopedic article or as a name of an author of a book, or George'as Walkeris Bushas in a sentence, conforming to the Lithuanian morphology) and phonetic spelling adapted to the Lithuanian phonology (e. g. Džordžas Volkeris Bušas). In Soviet times, phonetic spelling was the only standard way to write foreign names in Lithuanian (original spelling could be shown in parentheses if needed), but in post-Soviet times the original spelling came to be widely used. The Lithuanian Wikipedia uses original spelling in article titles, but phonetic spelling in article texts.

Sound–spelling correspondences
$⟨o⟩$ is short only in loanwords. $⟨a e⟩$ are always short without accent and under accent in endings -a, -e, -es, in comparative, in pronouns, and in loanwords; otherwise, they are usually long.

Consonants are always palatalized before $⟨e ę ė i į y⟩$; before $⟨a ą o u ų ū⟩$, palatalization is denoted by inserting an $⟨i⟩$ between the consonant and the vowel.

Unicode
The majority of the Lithuanian alphabet is in the Unicode block C0 controls and basic Latin (non-accented symbols), and the rest of the Lithuanian alphabet (Ą ą Č č Ę ę Ė ė Į į Š š Ų ų Ū ū Ž ž) is in the Latin Extended-A.

title: Lithuanian orthography


text:
Sambor I, Duke of Pomerania

Sambor I, princeps Pomoranorum (Sambór I) (c. 1150 – c. 1207) was regent of Pomerelia from 1180 until his death.

He was the elder son of Duke Sobiesław I and an early scion of the Samborides dynasty, which is named after him. According to the Chronica seu originale regum et principum Poloniae by Wincenty Kadłubek, Sambor I between 1177 and 1180 was recognized as Duke of Pomerelia and successor of his father by the Polish High Duke Casimir II the Just. He resided at Gdańsk, where he promoted the immigration of German settlers in the course of the Ostsiedlung and founded the St. Nicholas' Church about 1190. He is also mentioned in an 1186 deed as the founder of the Cistercian abbey at Oliwa, a filial monastery of Kołbacz.

Sambor was married and had two sons who died at a young age. The 14th-century obituary of Oliwa Abbey denotes the date of his death as 7 February 1207, however, Sambor probably died under the reign of High Duke Władysław III Spindleshanks (1202–1206). He was succeeded by his younger brother Mestwin I.

title: Sambor I, Duke of Pomerania


text:
Mallard Song

The Mallard Song is an ancient tradition of All Souls' College, Oxford. It is sung every year at the Bursar's Dinner in March and the college's Gaudy in November and also sung in a separate special ceremony once a century.

The ceremony
In the ceremony, Fellows parade around the college with flaming torches, led by a "Lord Mallard" who is carried in a chair, in search of a giant mallard that supposedly flew out of the foundations of the college when it was being built in 1437. The procession is led by an individual carrying a duck — originally dead, now just wooden — tied to the end of a vertical pole. The ceremony was last held in 2001, with Martin Litchfield West acting as Lord Mallard. His predecessor as Lord Mallard was Cosmo Lang, who presided over the centenary ceremony in 1901.

The song
The words of the song are as follows:

 * The Griffine, Bustard, Turkey & Capon
 * Lett other hungry Mortalls gape on
 * And on theire bones with Stomacks fall hard,
 * But lett All Souls' Men have ye Mallard.

 * CHORUS:
 * Hough the bloud of King Edward,
 * By ye bloud of King Edward,
 * It was a swapping, swapping mallard!

 * Some storys strange are told I trow
 * By Baker, Holinshead & Stow
 * Of Cocks & Bulls, & other queire things
 * That happen'd in ye Reignes of theire Kings.

 * CHORUS

 * The Romans once admir'd a gander
 * More than they did theire best Commander,
 * Because hee saved, if some don't foolle us,
 * The place named from ye Scull of Tolus.

 * CHORUS

 * The Poets fain'd Jove turn'd a Swan,
 * But lett them prove it if they can.
 * To mak't appeare it's not att all hard:
 * Hee was a swapping, swapping mallard.

 * CHORUS

 * Hee was swapping all from bill to eye,
 * Hee was swapping all from wing to thigh;
 * His swapping tool of generation
 * Oute swapped all ye wingged Nation.

 * CHORUS

 * Then lett us drink and dance a Galliard
 * in ye Remembrance of ye Mallard,
 * And as ye Mallard doth in Poole,
 * Let's dabble, dive & duck in Boule.

 * CHORUS

Folk song
A folksong (Roud 1517) found in southern England is an accumulative song about the body of the mallard.

title: Mallard Song


text:
Talk:Hanko (stamp)

I am very sorry, I created the Inkan article without knowing about the existence of the Hanko (stamp) article. Please anyone more knowledgeable than me merge the two articles together, since they contain fairly different kind of information. Thank you, Mikkalai 16:41, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Hanko (stamp)


text:
Talk:Inkan

I am very sorry, I created the Inkan article without knowing about the existence of the Hanko (stamp) article. Please anyone more knowledgeable than me merge the two articles together, since they contain fairly different kind of information. Thank you, Mikkalai 16:42, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I dared to merge the two articles myself, turning the second one into a redirect. The history of the abandoned article is at

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Hanko_(stamp)&action=history

Mikkalai 05:53, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Middle Ages"

 * In this article, there is a reference to the Middle Ages. I think it would be helpful to have the appropriate period in the History of Japan instead of or in addition to that. What period would that be, though? Josh 22:08, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Inkan


text:
User:Sedan

my name is Sedan, i am born in 1984 and i live in Germany near Dusseldorf.

About me
i am interested in pretty much everything, mostly Music, History and Cannabis. I am pissed of about George H. W. Bush, and his idiot son, for this reason I attended the February 15 protests in Amsterdam

i just finished my a-levels ("Abitur" in Germany) and i'm going to attend university sometime this or next year.

feel free to write me: daniel (at) higrow (dot) net

My Name
..is derived from the French town of Sedan, France. I do __not__ celebrate Germany's victories over france in 1871 and 1940 with this name.

title: User:Sedan


text:
Talk:Argentavis

Language of references
I don't know the policy regarding the language of references, and since the only reference I found regarding physics of this species is in Spanish, I just included it. I understand that it won't be useful to everyone, but I feel it's better than nothing. Tjunier 16:43, 2004 Mar 16 (UTC)
 * There's no policy against it. Tomer TALK July 1, 2005 00:41 (UTC)

I made a separate page for Teratornithidae and linked pages 'Teratorn' and 'Teratorns' there. --Mikoyan21 22:23, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

is anyone watching this page?

 * http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070702/sc_afp/ussciencebirds. Ling.Nut 23:45, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Basically a rehash of Campbell & Tonni (1983). Dysmorodrepanis 04:34, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Reference for 18 m wingspan
It's http://discovermagazine.com/2005/dec/largest-pterosaurs. I would add it but I don't know how to do a citation. 122.105.220.129 (talk) 08:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Contradictory Mass
"Mass: 70 kg (140–240 lb)" doesn't make sense. David Bofinger (talk) 10:48, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

pterosaurs
I rewrote the section on pterosaurs as the largest flyers ever, changing it from a reference to Questzalcoatlus, to a reference of the entire azhdarchid group, naming a two of the bigger ones. I removed the remark about Pteranodon being the largest before their discovery, as I think it is of no interest to the readers of this specific page. I also removed the reference to Peter Wellnhofer (sp?) work, as the linked items on azhdarchids and species already contain many references. Jalwikip (talk) 14:09, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Why is the mention of pterosaurs even in this article. It is rather pointless. The person who created the article probably just used it as an excuse to write about pterosaurs.

predator or scavenger?
The article seems to be a bit self-contradictory on this: it says that the bird was not suited for active hunting and probably preferred scavenging, and in the very next sentence it says the contrary. This should be clarified. Kolorado (talk) 11:39, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

If it was suited for hunting, yikes! You'd better watch out for this guy. Perhaps it COULD hunt by lifting animals off of the ground, carrying them to a place and kill it and eat it. With wings the size on this bird, it could hunt like this for small HORSES!Dinotitan (talk) 19:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

In response to the first question: I think it means others of the family.

Next: Reminds me of the Haast's eagle, in a way.

Weight Ratios
Entirely unrelated whatsoever: Does anyone recognize "a simple question of weight ratios" from Monty Python? Crimsonraptor | (Contact me) Dumpster dive if you must 19:44, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

"It's not a question of where he grips it!" Steamboat28 (talk) 04:06, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup Description
The Description section of this article is messy, inadequate, and just doesn't make much sense. It's just starts with a description of a damage humerus, which probably belongs in the "Size" section, and then has 2 sentences describing the shape of the bird. The rest of the article seems to have decent information, it just needs to be compiled together to make a clean, concise, and readable description section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.17.110.197 (talk) 07:29, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

New Bird discovered that's larger
Just saw this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-newly-declared-seabird-species-may-be-the-largest-to-ever-live/2014/07/07/0940783c-05e4-11e4-8a6a-19355c7e870a_story.html

Not sure how to edit these pages, or validate the info.

But was Pelagornis really larger? wingspan for Argentavis estimated 7m according to this Wiki, pelagornis 6.4 according to paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/07/02/1320297111.abstract — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hypnotosov (talk • contribs) 00:10, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

 * The size of Argentavis is disputed the wingspan is estimated from one wing bone, from one specimen. If appears that P. sandersi only has one specimen as well, and the size is also not exactly known. To say that one species is definitely larger than the other based upon what is known of them is a step too far. I think the most we can say is that they are of comparable sizes. Also wing span is not everything, if they had different habitats, diets etc., they may have been different shapes. Martin 4 5 1  08:10, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

 * Good points, probably best to edit this article to reflect the uncertainty about the size (now it says a 7 meter bird has a smaller wingspan than one with a 6,4 meter wingspan :-) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hypnotosov (talk • contribs) 11:49, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * P. sandersi ' s page mentions the wingspan being "from 6.4 meters to 7.3 meters." I rewrote that sentence in the article to better reflect that it's an estimation, and not a magic varying wingspan.  I also rewrote the sentence in Argentavis ' article about it being largest flyer #2 to reflect the uncertainty of P. sandersi ' s wingspan.--Mr Fink (talk) 15:30, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Mayr et al. (2010) originally put forth the argument of Ksepka (2014) that Argentavis at 7m+ is overestimated, and did so with greater detail, the crux of the matter is that Pelagornis sandersi has a humerus almost twice as long as that of Argentavis and based on Teratornis merriami the skeletal length of each wing of the known Argentavis specimen would not be greater than ~1.8m for a total skeletal wingspan of ~4m, compare that with ~4.5m (2.1m each wing) in the reasonably more complete Pelagornis chilensis and ~5.2m (almost 2.5m each wing) in Pelagornis sandersi, Ksepka (2014) 6.1-7.4m range reflects the difference in the estimated length of the primary feathers, the upper range being the only one based on what could be considered the closest living analogues (Procellariiformes) and a conservative one at that. The only way Argentavis could beat Pelagornis in wingspan is if it had longer primaries, and I mean way longer primaries, each almost as long as the whole skeletal wing. Ksepka (2014) estimate of 5-6m for Argentavis seems more reasonable than the old estimates. Mike.BRZ (talk) 07:39, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In the original article (Campbell & Tonni, 1983) Argentavis wing span estimates calculations ranged from 5.7 to 8.3 metres. Latter value seemed like an overestimation and later estimations have been in 6 to 7 metres. However, Teratorns had relatively shorter humeri than modern seabirds. [ www.prehistoriclife.xyz/extinct-giants/images/6705_246_96-argentavis-magnificens.jpg This picture] compares humerus of Argentavis (a) with skeletal wings of Californian Condor (b), Merriami's Teratorn (c) and Wandering Albatross (d). As one can see, Teratorn humerus is much shorter than Albatross humerus, even though skeletal wing span is nearly the same - and most likely, Teratorn had longer primary feathers. As I understand, raptors have longer primaries than seabirds like albatross. Argentavis primaries were estimated as 1.5 to 1.8 metres long, likely Pelagornis didn't have as long primary feathers. Given that Merriami's Teratorn likely had wingspan of about 3.5 metres, 5 metre wingspan for Argentavis seems very puny given how enormously massive it was compared to Merriami's Teratorn. Even Aiolornis probably had wingspan of 5 metres and it was much smaller than Argentavis! Anyway, wing span debate aside, it is clear that Argentavis was much heavier than P. sanders, so 'largest flying bird' is somewhat of a misnomer even if it did have longer wing span. --Mikoyan21 (talk) 17:06, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

 * The estimate of 1.8m for the skeletal wing is already based on Teratornis merriami, I recommend you to read Ksepka (2014) if possible, he used some equations to get 5m but he does look at the relative length of the primaries in vultures, and at 33-36% of wing length, those of Argentavis would be up to 1m, resulting in his upper end estimate of 6.1m, much longer primaries are just not realistic, specially since they grow with negative allometry. I agree on the weight though. Mike.BRZ (talk) 06:01, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

When?
I read this article twice to figure out when this bird lived, without success. The info may be in there somewhere, but should be put in the first section. --Bep (talk) 00:40, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Did you bother trying to look at the top of the taxobox at the upper righthand corner of the page, where it says "Temporal range: Late Miocene, 8–6Ma"? Or even bother trying to read the second sentence of the article, which is, as follows: "A. magnificens, sometimes called the giant teratorn, is an extinct species known from three sites from the late Miocene of central and northwestern Argentina, where a good sample of fossils have been obtained."?--Mr Fink (talk) 01:24, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Please do not remove my questions only because *you* feel it is stupid. OK, I see the temporal range mentioned in the taxo box. I would probably also noticed the reference to Miocene in the lead text if I had not mistaken it for a geographical location in Argentina (making this more clear could be something to consider). --Bep (talk) 08:13, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * "Miocene" is the name of the time period. Anyone remotely interested in paleontology ought to be already intimately familiar with all the names of the major time periods.  How clearer do you want it to be?--Mr Fink (talk) 15:13, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm remotely interested in palentology, but know nothing about these time period terms. You could prefix it with "time period" - saying it is from Miocene of central and northwestern Argentina may mislead us not intimimately familiar with these terms to believe this bird is from a place in Argentina called Miocene. Not a big thing now that I know that the info I asked for is actually threre; my main point about my second posting was to point out the bad form of deleting other people's questions. --Bep (talk) 18:40, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * "Miocene" is already linked, and the temporal range is already stated in the taxobox: unless we're putting in the specific radiodating age, any further clarification is redundant. As for my deletion, it's a habit I developed after having to deal with other editors who routinely misuse and abuse talkpages for use as forum threads, free advertising, and promotion of gossip and inanity.--Mr Fink (talk) 19:58, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Merge
There is a another version of this article in other languages but is not connected with this one and I don't know how to merge it. I leave the link here in case someone can merge them. | Here the wikidata Clunhair (talk) 15:47, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 14:22, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Argentavis-Magnificens.jpg

Recent Appearance in Popular Media
PRIMAL S2E6, Argentavis is depicted centrally for about 6 minutes of the 22m episode. They are drawn to be more condor- or vulture-like in appearance even than in the article photo. Drsruli (talk) 01:10, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Argentavis


text:
The Astonishing Hypothesis

The Astonishing Hypothesis is a 1994 book by scientist Francis Crick about consciousness. Crick, one of the co-discoverers of the molecular structure of DNA, later became a theorist for neurobiology and the study of the brain. The Astonishing Hypothesis is mostly concerned with establishing a basis for scientific study of consciousness; however, Crick places the study of consciousness within a larger social context. Human consciousness according to Crick is central to human existence and so scientists find themselves approaching topics traditionally left to philosophy and religion.

Synopsis
The Astonishing Hypothesis posits that "a person's mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influence them." Crick claims that scientific study of the brain during the 20th century led to acceptance of consciousness, free will, and the human soul as subjects for scientific investigation.

Rather than attempting to cover all the aspects of consciousness (self-awareness, thought, imagination, perception, etc.), Crick focuses on the primate visual system and breaks down the prerequisites for conscious experience into several broad subconditions, including some sort of short-term memory and attention mechanism. The book then delves into a brief overview of many neuroscientific topics, ranging from a survey of how neurons function to a description of basic neural circuits and their artificial equivalents. Throughout, Crick cites various experiments which illustrate the points he is making about visual awareness, such as studies investigating the phenomenon of blindsight in macaques.

The later chapters of the book synthesize many of the points made earlier about the visual system into a unified framework, although Crick recognises exceptions to his proposed framework. Also, here he takes the opportunity to make suggestions for further experiments that could provide empirical basis for further understanding about human consciousness and includes a brief addendum on several topics he glossed over, like free will. Overall, the message Crick repeats as the main purpose of writing the Astonishing Hypothesis is to break the scientific community's reluctance to give consciousness a thorough and scientifically-grounded investigation, and to encourage others such as philosophers to address the issues of consciousness in a way that takes account of neuroscientific discoveries.

Background and response
Crick had discussed the relationship between science and religion in his earlier book What Mad Pursuit. Crick's view of this relationship was that religions can be wrong about scientific matters and that part of what science does is to confront the errors that exist within religious traditions. For example, the idea of a mechanism for the evolution of life by natural selection conflicts with some views on creation of life by divine intervention. Crick's subtitle for The Astonishing Hypothesis is The Scientific Search for the Soul.

Criticism
Crick's decidedly materialistic approach to explaining consciousness has many detractors both in the neuroscientific and philosophical communities. Some, such as neurologist and Nobel Laureate Gerald Edelman believe that neural Darwinism is a more satisfactory explanation for the emergence of complex intelligence in humans. Another school of thought, this one largely made up of those outside of scientific disciplines, consider consciousness to either be simply beyond the possibility of explanation or at least dependent on some qualities that are not simply physical (i.e. molecules, etc.). Lastly, those who support quantum theory of mind also disagree with how Crick simplifies the workings of the brain to only classical physics.

title: The Astonishing Hypothesis