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Re: Ariadne's thread
Posted:
May 5, 2012 3:38 AM
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River Map Ho-T'u and Magic Square Lo-shu of Early China
(revised and illustrated version)
1) Illustrations
River Map and Magic Square, from: James Legge,
The I Ching, Clarendon Press 1899, Dover Publications
New York 1963 (a very fine book that inspired this paper)
http://www.seshat.ch/home/china01.GIF
The same square and practically the same map are given
by David Eugene Smith in A History of Mathematics, 1923,
Dover reprint 1953/58 (richly illustrated, one of my favorite
sources), only that the five and five dark circles of the earth
below and above the heavenly domino five are, for the
sake of clarity, connected with a rectangle. A modified
reconstruction of the lost diagram is proposed in this paper
http://www.seshat.ch/home/china02.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home/china02a.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home/china03.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home/china04.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home/china05.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home/china06.GIF
The circle might keep a memory of a Neolithic calendar
sanctuary, a circle of poles providing sighting lines for
the rising and setting sun on the solstices (and equinoxes),
on the right side the morning sun of the spring equinox
that just rose over the horizon, somewhere on the northern
part of the Ordos Plateau, a couple of millennia ago
http://www.seshat.ch/home/china07.GIF
(to be continued)
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