Talk:Pointy hat

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Contents 1 People using pointed hats in history 2 Pointy hat Scyths 3 Best article ever 4 Examples of modern people wearing pointy hats 5 'pointy' is a silly word

[edit] People using pointed hats in history

copy-paste from Talk:Tocharians:

This piece of information seems off-topic:

Similar hats were traditionally worn by women of Lapland, and perhaps coincidentally, the Mi'kmaw people of Atlantic Canada. Pointed hats were also worn in ancient times by Saka (Scythians),and shown on Hindu temples and Hittite reliefs.

The subject at hand is the existence of pointed hats among women. If any information here is really relevant, please explain how.--Wiglaf 11:02, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

The point about pointed hats is that they where not unique to Europe.This article continues to imply that the Tocharians where europeans.By including just the 'whitches hats of Europe' re-affirms this white supremist attitude.I therefore have replaced the old entry.212.85.12.211

I disagree with your accusations of white supremacist attitude in this article. You should read assume good faith, and you should also explain this in the text. Moreover, the connections with western Europe are based on textiles and language and not on pointed hats.--Wiglaf 14:30, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

how about a pointy hats and the Aryan nation article? seriously, how about pointed hats? There could be some interesting results in comparing them (ok, so that's OR). dab (ᛏ) 14:35, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Again the point is that scythians had pointed hats who where Iranians? so why should we associate these textiles with Tocharians at all, they could equally be associated with Iranians not Tocharians.Unless one is trying to impose the idea this mummies originate from Europe for which evidence is lacking.212.85.12.211

Oooh, I see. Your main interest in Wikipedia is to combat the theory that any cultural influences, or people, may have spread from Western Europe in pre-historic times. Unfortunatly, you will have to abide to the same cite sources as the rest of us.--Wiglaf 14:48, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I base my evidence on current Genetic research, not on European Nationalist dogma.Also you have just proved my point ,your aim is to prove they were.I am on a losing streek here ,since I don't have time to argue ,but just to add the Hittite hats is a valid entry, even in this article a contributer has made a link with Hittite/Tocharian languages.Also the removal of Hittite/Hindu/Scythians hats weakens your argument of Indo-European origin.

I could not care less about European nationalist dogmas. I do care about the quality of Wikipedia articles and your POV-pushing has only done the article damage. Cite sources!--Wiglaf 16:25, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

you base your evidence on Genetic research... soo... you add the Hittite pointy hats? Do you even realize how weird that is? Why the hell would you bother with the shape of their hats if you have conclusive genetic evidence? I would be very interested in these Genetic analyses of the mummies, please do discuss them! dab (ᛏ) 15:27, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Here's a link [1].This supports mallory's recent work above.Theres no Y chromsome data yets,soon to be published.For y chromosome I refer you to the above and this paper[2];notice in this paper that haplogroup I only accounts for 1.5%of central asians (its probably due to russian influence or even Roman).

Frankly, due to the fact that most migrations have been led by warbands/armies, i.e. men, your link has little value. By the same logic most of Latin America was never colonized by Spain, since most of the mtDNA is indigenous.--Wiglaf 16:15, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

agree & looking forward to the Y data. But let's do a pointy hat article, Wiglaf! Beginning with the golden hats dab (ᛏ) 16:38, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Great article on the golden hats Dab! I will check my copy of Barber's book and see what I can find later tonight.--Wiglaf 19:26, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Fascinating. If that is really a hat, it can only be so in the sense the Crown of St. Edward is a hat, i.e., a weighty, topheavy thing used only in a ritual context, and just maybe, like St. Edward's Crown, for a coronation. --FourthAve 10:14, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

indeed, there was much uncertainty whether they had actually been worn as hats, and for some time they were just referred to as 'gold-sheet cones' (Goldblechkegel). But there seems to be a general consensus now, that they were indeed ceremonial priestly hats, see the four extensive German articles I have linked by interwiki... Obviously, they have been linked with the pointy witches' hats of folklore, but that is evidently anybody's guess. dab (ᛏ) 10:30, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

since we're being offtopic, I was wondering about Snorri's "Age of Burning" now referenced at Menhir (Iron Age) because of the standing stones mentioned. Can that comparison be extended to Urnfields? After all, the Tumulus culture seems to have buried their dead, not burned them, while the Urnfields show cremation, but I don't know about a connection with menhirs. The Urnfields are a conspicuous aberration from the usual 'Kurgan' burials, and if tumuli were re-introduced with the Iron Age, wouldn't that hint at migration rather than just evolution (i.e. the Proto-Celts spread from the East (Hallstatt) from about 800, replacing the cremating people with funny golden hats, and re-introducing kurgans)? In this case the golden-hats people wouldn't be pre-Proto-Celts, but a different IE branch altogether, either completely unknown, or maybe the pre-Proto-Italians? did the Italic people practice cremation? Or the pre-Proto-Germans? dab (ᛏ) 10:30, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

That is a difficult question, as burial traditions could vary, within the same culture. Stone circles, ship graves, stone ships, solitary menhirs and barrows were constructed in Sweden during the Age of Burning. But, IIRC, Denmark, including southernmost Sweden used inhumation, at this time, and still the Swedes and the Danes spoke the same dialect.--Wiglaf 11:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I guess the question should be asked as

• when and where did cremation begin (1300 BC? Urnfield? Note that Patroclus is also cremated, at about the same time)? Is there significantly earlier evidence of burning?
• when and where did cremation end. Not in the North, it would appear, since the Vikings burned their dead down to the time of Ibn Fadlan. Are there Celtic cremations, however? Italic?

All I know is that the Beaker people (and the Tocharians/Tarim people, to make a tenuous connection to this talkpage) did not cremate, down to ca. 1900. If cremation arose among the post-PIE tribes, its spread would give priceless information as to migration and cultural influence. People don't change from inhumation to cremation on a whim, there needs to be some significant paradigm shift underlying the change, I imagine. dab (ᛏ) 12:21, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

That sounds like a very interesting lead.--Wiglaf 13:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

• Patroclus was cremated, along with some noble Trojan youths, dogs, etc, the ashes gathered up, put in an urn, then buried in a tumulus, i.e., a Kurgan. But also note that the Mycenaean kings were presumably buried. Also note that the Romans followed both customs, depending on family. I suggest an absorbed substrate is at work; they might become assimilated in just about everything except for a few religious items, of which burial/cremation is certainly one of them. --FourthAve 14:23, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • yes, but where is the substrate? afaik, beaker, funnelbeaker, vinca, they all inhumate. is there a neolithic 'ghost' culture somewhere, invisible to us because nobody was ever buried? dab (ᛏ) 14:30, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

• • This is way off topic; perhaps we should cut/paste the whole conversation to Urnfield talk. The appearance of cremation has something to do with this horizon. My suspicion is that it has something to do with religion. --FourthAve 15:33, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

For y chromosome I refer you to the above and this paper[3];notice in this paper that haplogroup I only accounts for 1.5%of central asians (its probably due to russian influence or even Roman).212.85.12.211

Well, this article states that the Central Asians are a pool of populations from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgystan. This covers a huge area and it would be strange if they could find many Tocharian genes in that mix. Show me a Y-chromosome analysis of the mummies and I may start to take your racially motivated theories seriously.--Wiglaf 13:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

note that the Iron Age "horned helmets" don't look so much 'horned' as sporting two perfect cones: [4]. dab (ᛏ) 16:31, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, or perhaps breasts. The usual Wagnerian horned/winged helmets are 19th century anachronisms (the protruberances would have made the wearer far more vulnerable in battle). Such a helmet could have only been a ritual item, perhaps a crown. --FourthAve 16:53, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

maybe not a 19th century anachronism, if you consider the ballast worn by some 14th century jousters :o) dab (ᛏ) 18:08, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pointy hat Scyths

The Sakâ tigrakhaudâ ('Sacae with pointed hats') were defeated in 520/519 BCE by the Persian king Darius I the Great, who gave this tribe a new leader. One of the earlier leaders was killed, the other, named Skunkha, was taken captive and is visible on the relief at Behistun. (It is possible that Darius created a new tribe from several earlier tribes.) Herodotus calls the Sakâ tigrakhaudâ the Orthocorybantians ('pointed hat men'), and informs us that they lived in the same tax district as the Medes. This suggests that the Sakâ tigrakhaudâ lived on the banks of the ancient lower reaches of the Amudar'ya, which used to have a mouth in the Caspian Sea south of Krasnovodsk. The pointed hat is a kind of turban. From: http://www.livius.org/sao-sd/scythians/scythians.html

Should we disambiguate to "Pointy hat (tribe)" or just incorporate the information into this article & the Scythian one? --Jpbrenna 17:05, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

yes, I have forgotten the Scythians! the latter option, I should say, mention them both here and on Scythians. The tribe, it it deserves its own article, is not called "the pointy hats" in English, it should rather be at Orthocorybantians, I suppose. dab (ᛏ) 17:59, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Best article ever

So so good. -58.105.75.167 09:00, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. I especially love that the title is not 'pointed hat'. That would be dumb.

this is a...good...article, but it needs a description of what a pointy hat is...

Just the name Pointy hat makes me laugh. The fact that Wikipedia has a whole article about pointy hats is funny also.

Yes.... one somehow feels that it should be "pointy", and not "pointed", per common usage - but I'd love to know why we say "pointy", since it doesn't really mean anything.... TheMadBaron 07:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

why not? pointed is as it were from a transitive verb to point ("to give a point to"?) while pointy is an adjective to the noun point. Thus a pointy hat is simply a hat that has a point. point could apparently mean 'sharp tip' from 1330 or so [5]. I am not sure why the expression has such a playful ring to it, possibly because it became fixed in children's stories? I think that 'pointy sword' for example sounds similarly 'childish' while 'sharp sword' sounds perfectly alright. But a sharp sword (well-whetted edge) is not necessarily the same as a pointy sword (acutely tapering point). I am not sure how to describe a sword with a sharp point without making people chuckle. More 'serious' descriptions of the hats could be 'tapering headgear' or simply 'conical hat'? But what about the Judenhut which is not exactly conical but has more of a sort of spike? dab (ᛏ) 08:03, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

That, I suppose, would be a spikey hat. TheMadBaron 09:22, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

are you arguing that a spike isn't pointy? should we mention the Pickelhaube? :) dab (ᛏ) 09:56, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Examples of modern people wearing pointy hats

Could someone upload an image of a modern person wearing a pointy hat? Like that photograph of a young Kazakh lady sporting an ornate pointy hat in the Wikipedia article on Kazakhs, or a picture of a Japanese man in full ceremonial court dress. I'm looking forward to seeing some good examples of modern people wearing pointy hats. Ebizur 08:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

You're asking because the United States' National Cosplay Day is this week, right? --Damian Yerrick (☎) 17:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'pointy' is a silly word

Would any object if I move this to 'conical hat'? ~ crazytales_{-Stalk My Contribs!!!-} 16:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Conical hat already exists, as a disambiguation page between hats that go "up" (pointy hats) and hats that go "out" (coolie hats). --Damian Yerrick (☎) 17:54, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

What about traffic cone-like hat? (: ~ crazytales_{-Stalk My Contribs!!!-} 13:01, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

what, precisely, is "silly" about the word pointy? It is a straightforward adjective meaning "with a point". You probably mean to say that "pointy hat" is a collocation familiar from children's story, and thus strikes you as unencyclopedic as "great green dragon" would. The point, however, is, that we would still have a great green dragon article if there were great green dragons, and pointy hats do undeniably exist. Allow me to say that your coning of "traffic cone-like hat" strikes me as rather silly. dab (𒁳) 13:21, 4 December 2006 (UTC)