["[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-01 00:00]\n<User>Here are some new facts I learnt just now:\nThe rivalry between Nintendo and Sega resulted in what has been described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the \"cool\" console, with more mature titles aimed at older gamers, and edgy advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo however, scored an early public relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade classic Street Fighter II for SNES, which took over a year to make the transition to Genesis. Despite the Genesis's head start, much larger library of games, and lower price point, the Genesis only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. Donkey Kong Country is said to have helped establish the SNES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20 million SNES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the SNES ultimately outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market.\n\nDuring the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over titles released for the system\u2014the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, for example Konami's \"Ultra Games\" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. However, competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.\n\nThe company continued to carefully review submitted titles, giving them scores using a 40-point scale and allocating Nintendo's marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. One game, Mortal Kombat, would challenge this policy. A surprise hit in arcades in 1992, Mortal Kombat features splashes of blood and finishing moves that often depict one character dismembering the other. Because the Genesis version retained the gore while the SNES version did not, it outsold the SNES version by a ratio of three or four-to-one.\n\nGame players were not the only ones to notice the violence in this game; US Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993 to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children.[e] While Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board, and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.\n\nWhile other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the SNES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released Donkey Kong Country, a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on SGI workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation and high-quality music, Donkey Kong Country rivaled the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, the game sold 6.1 million units, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game sent a message that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the SNES, and helped make way for the more advanced consoles on the horizon.\n\nIn October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the SNES (the SNS-101 model) in North America for US$99, which sometimes included the pack-in game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Like the earlier redesign of the NES (the NES-101 model), the new model was slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacked S-Video and RGB output, and it was among the last major SNES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time.\n\nInternally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it later became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.\n\nPAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60 Hz while PAL operates at 50 Hz, resulting in approximately 16.7% slower gameplay. Additionally, PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue while others will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the SNES PPU into a 60 Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.\n\nAll versions of the SNES are predominantly gray, although the exact shade may differ. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as had happened with the flat surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons. The North American SNS-101 model and the Japanese Super Famicom Jr. (the SHVC-101 model), all designed by Barr, are both smaller with a rounded contour; however, the SNS-101 buttons are purple where the Super Famicom Jr. buttons are gray. The European and American versions of the SNES controllers have much longer cables compared to the Japanese Super Famicom controllers.\n<Assistant>Thank you for sharing. I've noted this information.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-02 00:00]\n<User>Let me tell you about some new developments:\nAll versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.\n\nThe ABS plastic used in the casing of some older SNES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidization on exposure to air, likely due to an incorrect mixture of the stabilizing or flame retarding additives. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a \"two-tone\" effect results. The color can sometimes be restored with UV light and a hydrogen peroxide solution.\n\nThe cartridge media of the console is officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as Cassette (\u30ab\u30bb\u30c3\u30c8, Kasetto?) in Japan and parts of Latin America. While the SNES can address 128 Mbit,[f] only 117.75 Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95 Mbit of ROM data (48 Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8 Mbit of battery-backed RAM. However, most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32 Mbit. The largest games released (Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean) contain 48 Mbit of ROM data, while the smallest games contain only 2 Mbit.\n\nThe standard SNES controller adds two additional face buttons (X and Y) to the design of the NES iteration, arranging the four in a diamond shape, and introduces two shoulder buttons. It also features an ergonomic design by Lance Barr, later used for the NES-102 model controllers, also designed by Barr. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporate the colors of the four action buttons into system's logo. The North American version's buttons are colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later consoles derive elements of their controller design from the SNES, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller.\n\nThroughout the course of its life, a number of peripherals were released which added to the functionality of the SNES. Many of these devices were modeled after earlier add-ons for the NES: the Super Scope is a light gun functionally similar to the NES Zapper (though the Super Scope features wireless capabilities) and the Super Advantage is an arcade-style joystick with adjustable turbo settings akin to the NES Advantage. Nintendo also released the SNES Mouse in conjunction with its Mario Paint title. Hudson Soft, under license from Nintendo, released the Super Multitap, a multiplayer adapter for use with its popular series of Bomberman games. Some of the more unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), and the TeeV Golf golf club.\n\nWhile Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the SNES (though the instructions included a way to connect both consoles to the same TV by either daisy chaining the RF switches or using AV outputs for one or both systems), the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the SNES. The Super Game Boy touted several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and (for specially enhanced games) access to the SNES console. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which added a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.\n\nJapan saw the release of the Satellaview, a modem which attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station. Users of the Satellaview could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom titles, released in installments. Satellaview signals were broadcast from April 23, 1995 through June 30, 2000. In the United States, the similar but relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.\n<Assistant>Excellent. I've documented all of this information.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-03 00:00]\n<User>I want to tell you about some new discoveries:\nDuring the SNES's life, Nintendo contracted with two different companies to develop a CD-ROM-based peripheral for the console to compete with Sega's CD-ROM based addon, Mega-CD. Ultimately, deals with both Sony and Philips fell through, (although a prototype console was produced by Sony) with Philips gaining the right to release a series of titles based on Nintendo franchises for its CD-i multimedia player and Sony going on to develop its own console based on its initial dealings with Nintendo (the PlayStation).\n\nNintendo of America took the same stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators as it did with the NES, insisting that they represented flagrant software piracy. Proponents of SNES emulation cite discontinued production of the SNES constituting abandonware status, the right of the owner of the respective game to make a personal backup via devices such as the Retrode, space shifting for private use, the desire to develop homebrew games for the system, the frailty of SNES ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports.\n\nEmulation of the SNES is now available on handheld units, such as Android devices, Apple's iPhone and iPad, Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP), the Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance, the Gizmondo, the Dingoo and the GP2X by GamePark Holdings, as well as PDAs. While individual games have been included with emulators on some GameCube discs, Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii marks the introduction of officially sanctioned general SNES emulation, though SNES9x GX, a port of SNES9x, has been made for the Wii.\n\nIn 2007, GameTrailers named the SNES as the second-best console of all time in their list of top ten consoles that \"left their mark on the history of gaming\", citing its graphic, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, \"The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N.\" Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed \"The SNES is the greatest console of all time\" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the SNES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the SNES first place in 2008, declaring it \"simply the most timeless system ever created\" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of ten for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, IGN named the Super Nintendo Entertainment System the fourth best video game console, complimenting its audio and \"concentration of AAA titles\".\n\nHowever, some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language. It has been suggested by them and others, that the Sumerian language was originally that of the hunter and fisher peoples, who lived in the marshland and the Eastern Arabia littoral region, and were part of the Arabian bifacial culture. Reliable historical records begin much later; there are none in Sumer of any kind that have been dated before Enmebaragesi (c. 26th century BC). Professor Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians were settled along the coast of Eastern Arabia, today's Persian Gulf region, before it flooded at the end of the Ice Age.\n\nNative Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Neo-Sumerian Empire or Third Dynasty of Ur (Sumerian Renaissance) approximately 2100-2000 BC, but the Akkadian language also remained in use. The Sumerian city of Eridu, on the coast of the Persian Gulf, is considered to have been the world's first city, where three separate cultures may have fused \u2014 that of peasant Ubaidian farmers, living in mud-brick huts and practicing irrigation; that of mobile nomadic Semitic pastoralists living in black tents and following herds of sheep and goats; and that of fisher folk, living in reed huts in the marshlands, who may have been the ancestors of the Sumerians.\n\nThe term \"Sumerian\" is the common name given to the ancient non-Semitic inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Sumer, by the Semitic Akkadians. The Sumerians referred to themselves as \u00f9\u011d sa\u011d g\u00edg-ga (cuneiform: \ud808\udf26 \ud808\ude95 \ud808\ude2a \ud808\udcb5), phonetically /u\u014b sa\u014b giga/, literally meaning \"the black-headed people\", and to their land as ki-en-gi(-r) ('place' + 'lords' + 'noble'), meaning \"place of the noble lords\". The Akkadian word Shumer may represent the geographical name in dialect, but the phonological development leading to the Akkadian term \u0161umer\u00fb is uncertain. Hebrew Shinar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite \u0160anhar(a), all referring to southern Mesopotamia, could be western variants of Shumer.\n\nThe Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Sumerian written history reaches back to the 27th century BC and before, but the historical record remains obscure until the Early Dynastic III period, c. the 23rd century BC, when a now deciphered syllabary writing system was developed, which has allowed archaeologists to read contemporary records and inscriptions. Classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BC. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief Sumerian Renaissance in the 21st century BC, cut short in the 20th century BC by Semitic Amorite invasions. The Amorite \"dynasty of Isin\" persisted until c. 1700 BC, when Mesopotamia was united under Babylonian rule. The Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian) population.\n\nThe Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. During this time, the first settlement in southern Mesopotamia was established at Eridu (Cuneiform: NUN.KI), c. 5300 BC, by farmers who brought with them the Hadji Muhammed culture, which first pioneered irrigation agriculture. It appears that this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia. It is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture. Eridu remained an important religious center when it was gradually surpassed in size by the nearby city of Uruk. The story of the passing of the me (gifts of civilization) to Inanna, goddess of Uruk and of love and war, by Enki, god of wisdom and chief god of Eridu, may reflect this shift in hegemony.\n<Assistant>Wonderful. I'll remember these key points.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-04 00:00]\n<User>I've gathered some additional data to share:\nBy the time of the Uruk period (c. 4100\u20132900 BC calibrated), the volume of trade goods transported along the canals and rivers of southern Mesopotamia facilitated the rise of many large, stratified, temple-centered cities (with populations of over 10,000 people) where centralized administrations employed specialized workers. It is fairly certain that it was during the Uruk period that Sumerian cities began to make use of slave labor captured from the hill country, and there is ample evidence for captured slaves as workers in the earliest texts. Artifacts, and even colonies of this Uruk civilization have been found over a wide area\u2014from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and as far east as central Iran.\n\nSumerian cities during the Uruk period were probably theocratic and were most likely headed by a priest-king (ensi), assisted by a council of elders, including both men and women. It is quite possible that the later Sumerian pantheon was modeled upon this political structure. There was little evidence of organized warfare or professional soldiers during the Uruk period, and towns were generally unwalled. During this period Uruk became the most urbanized city in the world, surpassing for the first time 50,000 inhabitants.\n\nThe earliest dynastic king on the Sumerian king list whose name is known from any other legendary source is Etana, 13th king of the first dynasty of Kish. The earliest king authenticated through archaeological evidence is Enmebaragesi of Kish (c. 26th century BC), whose name is also mentioned in the Gilgamesh epic\u2014leading to the suggestion that Gilgamesh himself might have been a historical king of Uruk. As the Epic of Gilgamesh shows, this period was associated with increased war. Cities became walled, and increased in size as undefended villages in southern Mesopotamia disappeared. (Gilgamesh is credited with having built the walls of Uruk).\n\nAlthough short-lived, one of the first empires known to history was that of Eannatum of Lagash, who annexed practically all of Sumer, including Kish, Uruk, Ur, and Larsa, and reduced to tribute the city-state of Umma, arch-rival of Lagash. In addition, his realm extended to parts of Elam and along the Persian Gulf. He seems to have used terror as a matter of policy. Eannatum's Stele of the Vultures depicts vultures pecking at the severed heads and other body parts of his enemies. His empire collapsed shortly after his death.\n\nThe Semitic Akkadian language is first attested in proper names of the kings of Kish c. 2800 BC, preserved in later king lists. There are texts written entirely in Old Akkadian dating from c. 2500 BC. Use of Old Akkadian was at its peak during the rule of Sargon the Great (c. 2270\u20132215 BC), but even then most administrative tablets continued to be written in Sumerian, the language used by the scribes. Gelb and Westenholz differentiate three stages of Old Akkadian: that of the pre-Sargonic era, that of the Akkadian empire, and that of the \"Neo-Sumerian Renaissance\" that followed it. Akkadian and Sumerian coexisted as vernacular languages for about one thousand years, but by around 1800 BC, Sumerian was becoming more of a literary language familiar mainly only to scholars and scribes. Thorkild Jacobsen has argued that there is little break in historical continuity between the pre- and post-Sargon periods, and that too much emphasis has been placed on the perception of a \"Semitic vs. Sumerian\" conflict. However, it is certain that Akkadian was also briefly imposed on neighboring parts of Elam that were previously conquered by Sargon.\n\nLater, the 3rd dynasty of Ur under Ur-Nammu and Shulgi, whose power extended as far as southern Assyria, was the last great \"Sumerian renaissance\", but already the region was becoming more Semitic than Sumerian, with the rise in power of the Akkadian speaking Semites in Assyria and elsewhere, and the influx of waves of Semitic Martu (Amorites) who were to found several competing local powers including Isin, Larsa, Eshnunna and eventually Babylon. The last of these eventually came to dominate the south of Mesopotamia as the Babylonian Empire, just as the Old Assyrian Empire had already done so in the north from the late 21st century BC. The Sumerian language continued as a sacerdotal language taught in schools in Babylonia and Assyria, much as Latin was used in the Medieval period, for as long as cuneiform was utilized.\n\nThis period is generally taken to coincide with a major shift in population from southern Mesopotamia toward the north. Ecologically, the agricultural productivity of the Sumerian lands was being compromised as a result of rising salinity. Soil salinity in this region had been long recognized as a major problem. Poorly drained irrigated soils, in an arid climate with high levels of evaporation, led to the buildup of dissolved salts in the soil, eventually reducing agricultural yields severely. During the Akkadian and Ur III phases, there was a shift from the cultivation of wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley, but this was insufficient, and during the period from 2100 BC to 1700 BC, it is estimated that the population in this area declined by nearly three fifths. This greatly upset the balance of power within the region, weakening the areas where Sumerian was spoken, and comparatively strengthening those where Akkadian was the major language. Henceforth Sumerian would remain only a literary and liturgical language, similar to the position occupied by Latin in medieval Europe.\n\nThe Sumerians were a non-Semitic caucasoid people, and spoke a language isolate; a number of linguists believed they could detect a substrate language beneath Sumerian, because names of some of Sumer's major cities are not Sumerian, revealing influences of earlier inhabitants. However, the archaeological record shows clear uninterrupted cultural continuity from the time of the early Ubaid period (5300 \u2013 4700 BC C-14) settlements in southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerian people who settled here farmed the lands in this region that were made fertile by silt deposited by the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.\n\nIt is speculated by some archaeologists that Sumerian speakers were farmers who moved down from the north, after perfecting irrigation agriculture there. The Ubaid pottery of southern Mesopotamia has been connected via Choga Mami transitional ware to the pottery of the Samarra period culture (c. 5700 \u2013 4900 BC C-14) in the north, who were the first to practice a primitive form of irrigation agriculture along the middle Tigris River and its tributaries. The connection is most clearly seen at Tell Awayli (Oueilli, Oueili) near Larsa, excavated by the French in the 1980s, where eight levels yielded pre-Ubaid pottery resembling Samarran ware. According to this theory, farming peoples spread down into southern Mesopotamia because they had developed a temple-centered social organization for mobilizing labor and technology for water control, enabling them to survive and prosper in a difficult environment.[citation needed]\n\nThough women were protected by late Sumerian law and were able to achieve a higher status in Sumer than in other contemporary civilizations, the culture was male-dominated. The Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest such codification yet discovered, dating to the Ur-III \"Sumerian Renaissance\", reveals a glimpse at societal structure in late Sumerian law. Beneath the lu-gal (\"great man\" or king), all members of society belonged to one of two basic strata: The \"lu\" or free person, and the slave (male, arad; female geme). The son of a lu was called a dumu-nita until he married. A woman (munus) went from being a daughter (dumu-mi), to a wife (dam), then if she outlived her husband, a widow (numasu) and she could then remarry.\n<Assistant>Got it. I will remember them.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-05 00:00]\n<User>I want to tell you about some new discoveries:\nThe most important archaeological discoveries in Sumer are a large number of tablets written in cuneiform. Sumerian writing, while proven to be not the oldest example of writing on earth, is considered to be a great milestone in the development of man's ability to not only create historical records but also in creating pieces of literature both in the form of poetic epics and stories as well as prayers and laws. Although pictures \u2014 that is, hieroglyphs \u2014 were first used, cuneiform and then Ideograms (where symbols were made to represent ideas) soon followed. Triangular or wedge-shaped reeds were used to write on moist clay. A large body of hundreds of thousands of texts in the Sumerian language have survived, such as personal or business letters, receipts, lexical lists, laws, hymns, prayers, stories, daily records, and even libraries full of clay tablets. Monumental inscriptions and texts on different objects like statues or bricks are also very common. Many texts survive in multiple copies because they were repeatedly transcribed by scribes-in-training. Sumerian continued to be the language of religion and law in Mesopotamia long after Semitic speakers had become dominant.\n<Assistant>Thank you for sharing. I've noted this information.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-06 00:00]\n<User>Here are some news I learnt earlier:\nThe Sumerian language is generally regarded as a language isolate in linguistics because it belongs to no known language family; Akkadian, by contrast, belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. There have been many failed attempts to connect Sumerian to other language groups. It is an agglutinative language; in other words, morphemes (\"units of meaning\") are added together to create words, unlike analytic languages where morphemes are purely added together to create sentences. Some authors have proposed that there may be evidence of a sub-stratum or add-stratum language for geographic features and various crafts and agricultural activities, called variously Proto-Euphratean or Proto Tigrean, but this is disputed by others.\n<Assistant>Thanks for the information. I've saved it.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-07 00:00]\n<User>Let me tell you about some new developments:\nSumerian religion seems to have been founded upon two separate cosmogenic myths. The first saw creation as the result of a series of hieros gami or sacred marriages, involving the reconciliation of opposites, postulated as a coming together of male and female divine beings; the gods. This continued to influence the whole Mesopotamian mythos. Thus in the Enuma Elish the creation was seen as the union of fresh and salt water; as male Abzu, and female Tiamat. The product of that union, Lahm and Lahmu, \"the muddy ones\", were titles given to the gate keepers of the E-Abzu temple of Enki, in Eridu, the first Sumerian city. Describing the way that muddy islands emerge from the confluence of fresh and salty water at the mouth of the Euphrates, where the river deposited its load of silt, a second hieros gamos supposedly created Anshar and Kishar, the \"sky-pivot\" or axle, and the \"earth pivot\", parents in turn of Anu (the sky) and Ki (the earth). Another important Sumerian hieros gamos was that between Ki, here known as Ninhursag or \"Lady Sacred Mountain\", and Enki of Eridu, the god of fresh water which brought forth greenery and pasture.\n\nThese deities formed a core pantheon; there were additionally hundreds of minor ones. Sumerian gods could thus have associations with different cities, and their religious importance often waxed and waned with those cities' political power. The gods were said to have created human beings from clay for the purpose of serving them. The temples organized the mass labour projects needed for irrigation agriculture. Citizens had a labor duty to the temple, though they could avoid it by a payment of silver.\n\nZiggurats (Sumerian temples) each had an individual name and consisted of a forecourt, with a central pond for purification. The temple itself had a central nave with aisles along either side. Flanking the aisles would be rooms for the priests. At one end would stand the podium and a mudbrick table for animal and vegetable sacrifices. Granaries and storehouses were usually located near the temples. After a time the Sumerians began to place the temples on top of multi-layered square constructions built as a series of rising terraces, giving rise to the Ziggurat style.\n\nIt was believed that when people died, they would be confined to a gloomy world of Ereshkigal, whose realm was guarded by gateways with various monsters designed to prevent people entering or leaving. The dead were buried outside the city walls in graveyards where a small mound covered the corpse, along with offerings to monsters and a small amount of food. Those who could afford it sought burial at Dilmun. Human sacrifice was found in the death pits at the Ur royal cemetery where Queen Puabi was accompanied in death by her servants. It is also said that the Sumerians invented the first oboe-like instrument, and used them at royal funerals.\n\nIn the early Sumerian Uruk period, the primitive pictograms suggest that sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs were domesticated. They used oxen as their primary beasts of burden and donkeys or equids as their primary transport animal and \"woollen clothing as well as rugs were made from the wool or hair of the animals. ... By the side of the house was an enclosed garden planted with trees and other plants; wheat and probably other cereals were sown in the fields, and the shaduf was already employed for the purpose of irrigation. Plants were also grown in pots or vases.\"\n\nThe Sumerians were one of the first known beer drinking societies. Cereals were plentiful and were the key ingredient in their early brew. They brewed multiple kinds of beer consisting of wheat, barley, and mixed grain beers. Beer brewing was very important to the Sumerians. It was referenced in the Epic of Gilgamesh when Enkidu was introduced to the food and beer of Gilgamesh's people: \"Drink the beer, as is the custom of the land... He drank the beer-seven jugs! and became expansive and sang with joy!\"\n\nAs is known from the \"Sumerian Farmer's Almanac\", after the flood season and after the Spring Equinox and the Akitu or New Year Festival, using the canals, farmers would flood their fields and then drain the water. Next they made oxen stomp the ground and kill weeds. They then dragged the fields with pickaxes. After drying, they plowed, harrowed, and raked the ground three times, and pulverized it with a mattock, before planting seed. Unfortunately the high evaporation rate resulted in a gradual increase in the salinity of the fields. By the Ur III period, farmers had switched from wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley as their principal crop.\n\nAccording to Archibald Sayce, the primitive pictograms of the early Sumerian (i.e. Uruk) era suggest that \"Stone was scarce, but was already cut into blocks and seals. Brick was the ordinary building material, and with it cities, forts, temples and houses were constructed. The city was provided with towers and stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a tower-like appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a hinge, and could be opened with a sort of key; the city gate was on a larger scale, and seems to have been double. The foundation stones \u2014 or rather bricks \u2014 of a house were consecrated by certain objects that were deposited under them.\"\n\nThe most impressive and famous of Sumerian buildings are the ziggurats, large layered platforms which supported temples. Sumerian cylinder seals also depict houses built from reeds not unlike those built by the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq until as recently as 400 CE. The Sumerians also developed the arch, which enabled them to develop a strong type of dome. They built this by constructing and linking several arches. Sumerian temples and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques,[citation needed] such as buttresses, recesses, half columns, and clay nails.\n\nThe Sumerians developed a complex system of metrology c. 4000 BC. This advanced metrology resulted in the creation of arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. From c. 2600 BC onwards, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems. The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period. The period c. 2700 \u2013 2300 BC saw the first appearance of the abacus, and a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system. The Sumerians were the first to use a place value numeral system. There is also anecdotal evidence the Sumerians may have used a type of slide rule in astronomical calculations. They were the first to find the area of a triangle and the volume of a cube.\n<Assistant>Noted. I'll remember these details.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-08 00:00]\n<User>Here's some valuable information I collected:\nCommercial credit and agricultural consumer loans were the main types of loans. The trade credit was usually extended by temples in order to finance trade expeditions and was nominated in silver. The interest rate was set at 1/60 a month (one shekel per mina) some time before 2000 BC and it remained at that level for about two thousand years. Rural loans commonly arose as a result of unpaid obligations due to an institution (such as a temple), in this case the arrears were considered to be lent to the debtor. They were denominated in barley or other crops and the interest rate was typically much higher than for commercial loans and could amount to 1/3 to 1/2 of the loan principal.\n<Assistant>Understood. I'll keep these facts for future reference.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-09 00:00]\n<User>The following are some more news I learnt:\nPeriodically \"clean slate\" decrees were signed by rulers which cancelled all the rural (but not commercial) debt and allowed bondservants to return to their homes. Customarily rulers did it at the beginning of the first full year of their reign, but they could also be proclaimed at times of military conflict or crop failure. The first known ones were made by Enmetena and Urukagina of Lagash in 2400-2350 BC. According to Hudson, the purpose of these decrees was to prevent debts mounting to a degree that they threatened fighting force which could happen if peasants lost the subsistence land or became bondservants due to the inability to repay the debt.\n\nThe almost constant wars among the Sumerian city-states for 2000 years helped to develop the military technology and techniques of Sumer to a high level. The first war recorded in any detail was between Lagash and Umma in c. 2525 BC on a stele called the Stele of the Vultures. It shows the king of Lagash leading a Sumerian army consisting mostly of infantry. The infantrymen carried spears, wore copper helmets, and carried rectangular shields. The spearmen are shown arranged in what resembles the phalanx formation, which requires training and discipline; this implies that the Sumerians may have made use of professional soldiers.\n\nEvidence of wheeled vehicles appeared in the mid 4th millennium BC, near-simultaneously in Mesopotamia, the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe. The wheel initially took the form of the potter's wheel. The new concept quickly led to wheeled vehicles and mill wheels. The Sumerians' cuneiform writing system is the oldest (or second oldest after the Egyptian hieroglyphs) which has been deciphered (the status of even older inscriptions such as the Jiahu symbols and Tartaria tablets is controversial). The Sumerians were among the first astronomers, mapping the stars into sets of constellations, many of which survived in the zodiac and were also recognized by the ancient Greeks. They were also aware of the five planets that are easily visible to the naked eye.\n\nThey invented and developed arithmetic by using several different number systems including a mixed radix system with an alternating base 10 and base 6. This sexagesimal system became the standard number system in Sumer and Babylonia. They may have invented military formations and introduced the basic divisions between infantry, cavalry, and archers. They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records. The first true city-states arose in Sumer, roughly contemporaneously with similar entities in what are now Syria and Lebanon. Several centuries after the invention of cuneiform, the use of writing expanded beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to be applied for the first time, about 2600 BC, to messages and mail delivery, history, legend, mathematics, astronomical records, and other pursuits. Conjointly with the spread of writing, the first formal schools were established, usually under the auspices of a city-state's primary temple.\n\nTuvalu (i/tu\u02d0\u02c8v\u0251\u02d0lu\u02d0/ too-VAH-loo or /\u02c8tu\u02d0v\u0259lu\u02d0/ TOO-v\u0259-loo), formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean, midway between Hawaii and Australia. It comprises three reef islands and six true atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 to 10\u00b0 south and longitude of 176\u00b0 to 180\u00b0, west of the International Date Line. Its nearest neighbours are Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa and Fiji. Tuvalu has a population of 10,640 (2012 census). The total land area of the islands of Tuvalu is 26 square kilometres (10 sq mi).\n<Assistant>Thanks for the information. I've saved it.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-10 00:00]\n<User>Here are some facts I recently discovered:\nIn 1568, Spanish navigator \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a was the first European to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during his expedition in search of Terra Australis. In 1819 the island of Funafuti was named Ellice's Island; the name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. The islands came under Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British Protectorate by Captain Gibson of HMS Curacoa between 9 and 16 October 1892. The Ellice Islands were administered as British protectorate by a Resident Commissioner from 1892 to 1916 as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), and then as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony from 1916 to 1974.\n\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding migration into the Pacific that began about 3000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited; thus the name, Tuvalu, means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to *walo meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of fire in the Caves of Nanumanga may indicate human occupation for thousands of years.\n\nAn important creation myth of the islands of Tuvalu is the story of the te Pusi mo te Ali (the Eel and the Flounder) who created the islands of Tuvalu; te Ali (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and the te Pusin (the Eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories as to the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa; whereas on Nanumea the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\n\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764 during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the Dolphin (1751). Byron charted the atolls as Lagoon Islands. Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called The Mystery of Gran Cocal. Mourelle's map and journal named the island El Gran Cocal ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could only be reckoned crudely as accurate chronometers were unavailable until the late 18th century.\n\nThe next European to visit was Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer Rebecca, sailing under British colours, which passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters in May 1819; de Peyster sighted Nukufetau and Funafuti, which he named Ellice's Island after an English Politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the Rebecca's cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\n\nFor less than a year between 1862\u201363, Peruvian ships, engaged in what became to be called the \"blackbirding\" trade, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati), seeking recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. While some islanders were voluntary recruits the \"blackbirders\" were notorious for enticing islanders on to ships with tricks, such as pretending to be Christian missionaries, as well as kidnapping islanders at gun point. The Rev. A. W. Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\n\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands became caught in a storm and drifted for 8 weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began proselytising Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865 the Rev. A. W. Murray of the LMS \u2013 a Protestant congregationalist missionary society \u2013 arrived as the first European missionary where he too proselytised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was well established with preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu) were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\n\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged palagi traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu, he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading-station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\n\nIn 1892 Captain Davis of the HMS Royalist reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); John (also known as Jack) O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\n\nIn the later 1890s and into first decade of the 20th century, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. From 1900 the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined and the last of the palagi traders were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although both Whibley and Restieaux remained in the islands until their deaths.\n\nIn 1890 Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the Janet Nicoll, a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The Janet Nicoll visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title The Cruise of the Janet Nichol, together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\n\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called Darwin's Drill, are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and lead the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\n<Assistant>Wonderful. I'll remember these key points."]
[{"question": "Who were a non-Semitic caucasoid people?", "answer": "The Sumerians"}, {"question": "Who said the SNES was \"simply the most timeless system ever created\"?", "answer": "GamingExcellence"}, {"question": "Which native did O'Brien marry?", "answer": "Salai"}, {"question": "What trader turned author established a post on Tuvalu?", "answer": "Louis Becke"}, {"question": "How much sooner than the Genesis did the Street Fighter II game come out for SNES?", "answer": "over a year"}, {"question": "What language did scribes use over Akkadian?", "answer": "Sumerian"}, {"question": "Why did the Sumerian farmers make their oxen stomp the ground?", "answer": "kill weeds"}, {"question": "What was Tuvalu named in 1819?", "answer": "Ellice Islands"}, {"question": "What formations was the Royal Society studying?", "answer": "coral reefs"}, {"question": "How could a citizen avoid their labor duty to their local temple?", "answer": "a payment of silver"}, {"question": "How did the trading companies begin to trade with islanders?", "answer": "deal directly"}, {"question": "Akkadian's language can be traced to the Semitic branch of what languages?", "answer": "Afroasiatic"}, {"question": "What type of traders did the trading companies employ on Tuvalu?", "answer": "palagi traders"}, {"question": "Which dynasty of Ur was the last great Sumerian renaissance?", "answer": "3rd"}, {"question": "What type of traders did the Pacific trading companies cease to use?", "answer": "resident"}, {"question": "Which writer said the SNES was the best console ever from any company?", "answer": "Don Reisinger"}, {"question": "What did the Sumerians a complex system of around 4000 BC?", "answer": "metrology"}, {"question": "What had the Sumerians perfected before coming south?", "answer": "irrigation agriculture"}, {"question": "What was the name applied to the trade of dealing with labor hunters?", "answer": "blackbirding"}, {"question": "What were the titles given to the gate keeps of the E-Abzu temple of Enki?", "answer": "the muddy ones"}, {"question": "By what means did Blackbirders often get islanders aboard their ships?", "answer": "tricks"}, {"question": "How many copies of Donkey Kong Country were sold in its first 45 days?", "answer": "6.1 million"}, {"question": "What type of debt did \"clean slate\" decrees cancel?", "answer": "rural"}, {"question": "What did Nintendo consider emulators?", "answer": "flagrant software piracy"}, {"question": "What followed cuneiform in writing?", "answer": "Ideograms"}, {"question": "In what year was Tuvalu discovered by a European?", "answer": "1568"}, {"question": "Some scholars contest that there was only one what?", "answer": "substrate language"}, {"question": "How many times did Sumerian farmers plow, harrow and rake the ground?", "answer": "three times"}, {"question": "What was the key ingredient in early Sumerian brews?", "answer": "Cereals"}, {"question": "What did Eannatum use to keep the people of the time in line?", "answer": "terror"}, {"question": "What game came with a baseball bat controller?", "answer": "BatterUP"}, {"question": "What output type was the only one directly supported on the SNS-101?", "answer": "composite"}, {"question": "Between what land areas is Tuvalu located?", "answer": "Hawaii and Australia"}, {"question": "Who assisted the ensi?", "answer": "a council of elders"}, {"question": "Where were plants also grown besides the garden?", "answer": "pots or vases"}, {"question": "What realm was guarded by gateways containing various monsters?", "answer": "Ereshkigal"}, {"question": "Who was at the top of the power pyramid in Sumerian society?", "answer": "the lu-gal"}, {"question": "On how many of Tuvalu's islands did people live?", "answer": "Eight"}, {"question": "Who designed the North American SNES?", "answer": "Lance Barr"}, {"question": "What sea captain reported on the Tuvalu trading in 1892?", "answer": "Captain Davis"}, {"question": "Which island of Tuvalu was identified as the one that Mourelle sailed past in 1781?", "answer": "Niutao"}, {"question": "From where did the people of the island of Nanumea think they came?", "answer": "Tonga"}, {"question": "The writing system of the Sumerian's is the second oldest to have what done to it?", "answer": "been deciphered"}, {"question": "Where did IGN rank the SNES?", "answer": "fourth best"}, {"question": "How many levels of pre-Ubaid pottery were excavated by the French in the 1980s?", "answer": "eight"}, {"question": "When did Robert Louis Stevenson sail on the ship Janet Nicoll?", "answer": "1890"}, {"question": "What game was key to the SNES's success?", "answer": "Donkey Kong Country"}, {"question": "What are the boreholes on Funafuti called?", "answer": "Darwin's Drill"}, {"question": "By what year were there no more palagi traders on Tuvalu?", "answer": "1909"}, {"question": "What facilitated the rise of Sumerian cities?", "answer": "trade goods"}, {"question": "How long was there native Sumerian rule during the Third Dynasty of Ur?", "answer": "about a century"}, {"question": "Which competitor caused Nintendo to end its restrictions on game developers?", "answer": "Sega"}, {"question": "How man shekel per mina was the interest rate for loans?", "answer": "one"}, {"question": "What was the most urbanized city in the world at the time?", "answer": "Uruk"}, {"question": "Who were the rooms on either side of the aisles in the temple for?", "answer": "the priests"}, {"question": "What contributed to developing military technology for Sumer?", "answer": "almost constant wars"}, {"question": "What color were the North American SNES's buttons?", "answer": "purple"}, {"question": "How many years were the Sumerian city-states at war?", "answer": "2000 years"}, {"question": "Who were the first to practice a primitive form of irrigation agriculture?", "answer": "the Samarra"}, {"question": "What development by the Sumerians allowed them to make use of domes?", "answer": "the arch"}, {"question": "What was the mudbrick table in the temple for?", "answer": "animal and vegetable sacrifices"}, {"question": "Who was the Lady Sacred Mountain?", "answer": "Ninhursag"}, {"question": "How many cosmogenic myths does the religion of the Sumerians appear to be founded upon?", "answer": "two"}, {"question": "What color are the US SNES controllers' A and B buttons?", "answer": "purple"}, {"question": "Fine quality painted pottery is a distinctive style of what period in Sumerian history?", "answer": "Ubaid"}, {"question": "What game accessory was similar to the NES Advantage?", "answer": "Super Advantage"}, {"question": "What type of instrument are the Sumerians thought to have invented to use at royal funerals?", "answer": "oboe-like"}, {"question": "How long did Akkadian and Sumerian coexist as spoken languages?", "answer": "about one thousand years"}, {"question": "Who was Queen Puabi accompanied in death by?", "answer": "her servants"}, {"question": "Where did the Sumerians usually locate their granaries and storehouses?", "answer": "near the temples"}, {"question": "What modem was available for the Japanese SNES?", "answer": "Satellaview"}, {"question": "What group conducted a study of coral on Funafuti?", "answer": "Royal Society of London"}, {"question": "What was the primary purpose of oxen for Sumerians?", "answer": "beasts of burden"}, {"question": "When did Arent Schuyler de Peyster visit Tuvalu?", "answer": "May 1819"}, {"question": "What was the US equivalent of Satellaview?", "answer": "XBAND"}, {"question": "When do the pictograms suggest Sumerians had domesticated livestock?", "answer": "Uruk period"}, {"question": "Where do some archaeologists speculate Sumerians originally moved from?", "answer": "the north"}, {"question": "How did the Sumerians fashion the stone they cut?", "answer": "into blocks and seals"}, {"question": "Which developer began releasing games for both NES and Sega in 1991?", "answer": "Acclaim"}, {"question": "What is the period of Enmebaragesi's reign associated with?", "answer": "increased war"}, {"question": "The salinity of what in the region was long recognized as a major problem?", "answer": "Soil"}, {"question": "Where did the original Sumerians live?", "answer": "marshland"}, {"question": "What type of ship was the Janet Nicoll?", "answer": "trading steamer"}, {"question": "Sumerians also built houses from reeds not very different from ones built by inhabitants in Iraq as recently as when?", "answer": "400 CE"}, {"question": "What are SNES game cartridges officially called in Japan?", "answer": "Cassette"}, {"question": "What systems did the Sumerians develop which remain the first known these types to this day?", "answer": "legal and administrative"}, {"question": "For how many years did Nintendo require exclusivity on NES games?", "answer": "two"}, {"question": "What was there an influx of waves of coming into Sumerian lands?", "answer": "Amorites"}, {"question": "What culture did the peoples who would be called Sumerian have a part in?", "answer": "Arabian bifacial"}, {"question": "When was the SNS-101 released in the US?", "answer": "October 1997"}, {"question": "When was Donkey Kong Country released?", "answer": "November 1994"}, {"question": "What kind of computers were Donkey Kong Country's graphics rendered on?", "answer": "SGI workstations"}, {"question": "What was Barr's job?", "answer": "industrial designer"}, {"question": "During whose rule was the use of Old Akkadian at its peak?", "answer": "Sargon the Great"}, {"question": "What explorer traveled through the Tuvalu islands in 1764?", "answer": "Captain John Byron"}, {"question": "Who designed the SNES controllers?", "answer": "Lance Barr"}, {"question": "How many strata existed in Sumerian society?", "answer": "two"}, {"question": "What name did de Peyster give the Tuvalu islands?", "answer": "Ellice's Island"}, {"question": "What did the Sumerian deities form?", "answer": "a core pantheon"}, {"question": "What does the eel of the Tuvalu creation myth represent?", "answer": "coconut palms"}]