Ancient Capital City Research Articles

How Yukawa Arrived at the Meson Theory

It is a privilege and a pleasure to discuss the birth of the meson theory here in Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital and Yukawa's own city, on this memorable occasion. The meson theory, which appears today so natural and straightforward, could not have seemed so fifty years ago. Otherwise, it should have been invented by one of the European physicists working on nuclear forces; those included some of the greatest names. If the merits of meson theory had been immediately apparent, it would not have been neglected (as it was) for two years, for Yukawa's paper was written in lucid English and published in a journal of rather wide circulation. > Far from being obvious, the meson theory was the result of a powerful creative act ; it incorporated ideas that may be commonplace today, but which were novel and surprising fifty years ago. These were some of its original features: ( a ) force transmitted by the exchange of massive charged particles (heavy quanta), ( b ) range of force inversely proportional to the mass of the quantum, ( c ) two nuclear forces, strong and weak, hence two coupling constants, (d) mediation of the weak interaction (charged current) by charged bosons, ( e ) unstable (weakly decaying) elementary particles.

Burma: Political Unrest and Economic Stagnation

A severe cyclonic storm struck the Irrawaddy delta around Bassein in May 1975. Almost two months later an earthquake wrought havoc on the pagodas of Burma's ancient capital city of Pagan. In traditional times such natural disasters would have been interpreted as bringing ill omen to the r?gime. In fact the Ne Win Government, since it came to power in 1962, has been plagued with problems of economic stagna tion, insurgency and, more recently, political unrest in the towns. In order to get a proper picture of the ills that affect the state, it would be worthwhile to quote a lengthy extract from a report of a broadcast over Rangoon Radio on 13 July, 1975. The broadcast commented on a notification issued by the Council of People's Justices urging the Burmese courts to pass stiffer sentences on persons found guilty of various crimes. According to the notification of the Council of People's Justices:

Some Aspects of Commercial Life in Assyria and Asia Minor in the Nineteenth Pre-Christian Century

WHEN SURVEYING, in a monograph published some forty years ago, the data then known about the Hittites of Asia Minor, their state and their civilization, Eduard Meyer, the well-known historian of the ancient Near East, felt impelled to characterize the excavations in the ancient capital city of Assur as somewhat disappointing.1 His disappointment sprung from the fact that the finds made in the lowest strata of the old metropolis of Assyria were anepigraphic and failed to elucidate the presumably very early period in which, according to a few Middle and Late Assyrian inscriptions, Uspia erected the first temple of the god Assur and Kikkia surrounded the city with a wall. With the same regret he noted that the epoch around 2000 B. C. was hardly illuminated by the small number of inscriptions of some Old Assyrian kings which, after all, had been unearthed during eleven years of extensive digging at Assur. But he ventured to assert that there was still a good chance to obtain insight into the early history of the Assyrians by excavations to be undertaken elsewhere and, especially, at Eultepe, a site located four hundred and seventy miles north-west of Assur in the heart of that part of Asia Minor which became subsequently the Hellenistic kingdom of Cappadocia. This optimistic view, as well as Meyer's strong advocacy of systematic excavations at Eultepe,2 was the result of an ingenious combination of the following data: Firstly, thanks to Ernest Chantre's explorations in 1893 and 1894, there was virtually no doubt that Eultepe was the place of origin of the so-called Cappadocian tablets, the first two specimens of which had been published by Pinches in 1881.3 Secondly, even before Chantre's