Four interconnected programs measuring the accuracy of ancient knowledge and mapping its loss
Oral traditions in specific domains maintain extraordinary accuracy: 98% tracking in animal behavior, 25-year rainfall prediction from stellar observations, 37,000-year geological memory. The observability gradient identifies the variable that separates accurate transmission from cultural drift.
Papers in this program are at varying stages; the original Emergent Precision paper under cultural consultation, and the songlines paper held pending cultural consultation. See the papers page for the current list.
Around 9 languages die every year. The majority of medicinal plant knowledge in many regions is unique to a single language. The most accurate traditional knowledge (high-observability, environmentally embedded) is also the most linguistically vulnerable. This program maps the intersection of knowledge accuracy and language endangerment.
A quantitative analysis of ancient monument distribution along a great circle path. ~259,000 unique sites across 8 independent databases (over 550,000 raw database entries); 180,000 sites in the land-constrained monument/settlement spatial-test subset. The alignment is statistically real; the explanation is geological and geographic, not mystical.
The Orion–Giza statistical evaluation from this program was published in 2026 in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. Further manuscripts are in peer review, including the great-circle corridor enrichment analysis and the geological-circumscription methodological paper; the megalithic-stone-transport physics paper and the radial-versus-latitudinal Clovis discriminant test are being rebuilt for new venues. See the papers page for the current list.
The External Referent Constraint (ERC) framework: a five-component decomposition of when cultural transmission keeps content accurate and when it drifts. What tends to survive is what the world keeps checking. The program tests this empirically across observable and unobservable knowledge domains and ties the cultural-scale dynamics to Friston's free energy principle and the Price equation as a single cross-scale claim.
Papers in this program are at varying stages; two under cultural consultation (fire management + songlines), and four in preparation including the capstone synthesis. See the papers page for the current list.