Mathematics Atlas
Things this atlas does not know. Each entry is a question that specialists
have posed and not settled, recorded with what would actually resolve it and which
expertise the answer needs.
These are kept deliberately, rather than quietly omitted. An atlas that shows
only what it is sure of implies a confidence it has not earned, and the gaps are often where
the interesting work is. Several sit exactly where two fields fail to meet: identifying the
hyssop of the Hebrew Bible needs a botanist and a philologist of Biblical Hebrew, and neither
one settles it alone.
Grouped by the kind of thing the question is about, so you can go straight to the entity type you work on.
Filter By Specialty 99 fields, 1 selected
Showing 3 of 608 questions, filtered to 1 specialty.
Deities 1
Soma
What plant was the soma of the Rig Veda and the haoma of the Avesta?
Open Soma
Why It Is Open At least three serious candidates have been argued at length and none is established. Wasson proposed Amanita muscaria in 1968; Flattery and Schwartz proposed Peganum harmala in 1989; ephedra is favoured on the grounds that it is the plant used in the living Zoroastrian Yasna, a ritual with no recorded break. Each fits some of the textual evidence and fails on other parts of it.
What Would Settle It A securely dated archaeobotanical find from an Indo-Iranian ritual context with residue analysis, or a philological argument that settles the disputed Rig Veda passages. A fourth possibility deserves testing: that the hymns are liturgical praise rather than pharmacological description, in which case a mild plant is sufficient and the search for a potent one is misconceived.
Expertise Needed Indology, Iranian and Avestan philology, archaeobotany, ethnobotany
Question posed in
Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, R. Gordon Wasson.
Plants 1
Myrrh
Which Commiphora species supplied the myrrh of antiquity?
Open Myrrh
Why It Is Open Myrrh is traded and described across the ancient world as one commodity, but the genus has several resin-producing species and the ancient sources do not distinguish them. A genetic study of commercial myrrh found only a small proportion of samples matching the pharmacopoeia species, so even the modern trade is not one thing.
What Would Settle It Species-level identification of resin residues from a securely dated archaeological context, ideally from more than one trade period.
Expertise Needed Botany, archaeobotany, and the economic history of the incense routes.
Question posed in
Deciphering Insights into Commercial Myrrh Species Authenticity from the psbA-trnH Genetic Region, Changhong Cao, Wenting Zhong, Feng Gao, Ying Zhang, Zhiguo Ma, Hui Cao and Menghua Wu, Article e0320731, results on species identification.
Rituals 1
Soma Sacrifice
What plant was the original Vedic soma?
Open Soma Sacrifice
Why It Is Open The Rig Veda describes soma's habitat, preparation and effects, but the living tradition lost the plant before the late Vedic period, when the ritual texts already prescribe substitutes. Two centuries of proposals (ephedra, fly agaric, Syrian rue, and others, including Wasson's 1968 book-length fly agaric case) each fit some verses and fail others, and no candidate has won consensus.
What Would Settle It Archaeobotanical residue analysis from an early Vedic or BMAC-context ritual vessel with identifiable plant remains, or a decisive phytochemical match between the full Rigvedic description and a candidate species in its Indo-Iranian range.
Expertise Needed Archaeobotany and Vedic philology
Question posed in
The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India, Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton, Introduction, on soma and its identification.