Holy cow!

[plonq]

These statues are evidence that the people of the region worshiped oxen and humped cows 3000 years ago.

O_o

The article in includes a picture of the statue, and I can't see how this stands as evidence that they humped cows 3000 years ago!

Comments

[dronon.livejournal.com]

... I think (I hope) that the word "humped" here is being used in the adjectival sense, i.e., cows that have a hump.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

The little statue in the picture (of a suspiciously-happy looking cow) sports quite a hump on its back, so I'm sure it's meant as an adjective.

On the other hand, I'm surprised that an editor didn't catch this and send it back for being unfortunately ambiguous.

It's amazing how a word can have such radically different meanings in the same sentence, just by interpreting it as a verb rather than a noun.

[dronon.livejournal.com]

That's one of the joys of the English language. Other languages avoid this by having a number of possible suffixes attached to a word that indicate its grammatical role in the sentence. Latin is like that - consequently, word order is less important and you can rearrange words to make a sentence have a nicer rhythm.

[hantamouse.livejournal.com]

I am with English having trouble please.
Yeeg.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Well, the article does refer to the cows in particular as fertility symbols. But not the oxen. So who knows? ;-)

At least they still respect the animals. That's all I can say. :-)

These statues are evidence that the people of the region worshiped oxen and humped cows 3000 years ago. “Even today we can see some kind of respect towards the animals in the region,” added Mahforouzi, referring to kinds of cows being regarded as symbols of hard work and fertility.

What's your idea about this news?

LOL! You REALLY don't want to know!!

[anthony-lion.livejournal.com]

*Sigh*

I don't know what's worse, the poorly edited article, or that achaeologists ALWAYS assumes that anything they can't explain has to be religious....

I'd hit them over the head with a clue-bat, but they'd probably complain that I'm not using the blessing-stick properly...

[gedrean.livejournal.com]

I too fail to see why it was such a "religious" situation if they were found in the dustbin. Aka THE TRASH!