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I'm glad you noticed. Two thousand years after and more than 2000 miles away from the alleged origin of the story (northern Iran & Uzbekistan for Al-Tabari and Al-Bukhari respectively). That's pretty far away from Mecca and Medina both in time and space. Add to that the fact that 'muhammad' (MHMD in most Semitic scripts) just means 'the praised one' and we are pretty much where we are with many other founders of religions. Nothing much except the hope of human group from centuries upon centuries ago to become relevant on the grounds of a religious preacher who might or might not have existed even. No religion should be taken seriously. But the more modern ones are the more ridiculously off-base. Take Scientology, for example. Patricia Crone died some 9 years ago. Her book Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam is just a pacient and meticulous gathering and exposition of facts as recorded from contemporary records from the 5th-6th centuries (and somewhat before) AFAIK. She very patiently shows how and why the "centre-of-trade" theory of Mecca is a physical/historical impossibility. Maybe aliens from Proxima-Centauri could have made Mecca a commercial hub of the Nabateans. Camels just couldn't have done it. All the Nabatean know-how couldn't make up for the fact that Mecca is about 1000 meters below the main route to Ta'if, and extremely inconvenient --to say the least-- to be any kind of rendezvous in the trade route. Impossible. What other things happened in Mecca in the 6th century? We don't know. Trade certainly was not one of them. That's probably why Mecca appears in NO book from before the 9th century. Crone got many death threats from that and decided to keep a low profile from then on. That's what I know.

I think his presentation always comes up o this topic as it strongly challenges many false and simplified notions. Also relevant are his other talks related to gapminder, dismantling many global misconceptions. It is not a coincidence that folk lamenting about overpopulation rarely make the case to first reduce the population that is overconsuming resources.

Beautiful! Thank you. Here's the hook-up to why this happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_flower_(sea_ice)

Never seen these before: ice flowers in Norway.

It seems that P Crone now also rejects her former ideas. The general consensus seems to be that Mecca was a trading post where many trader caravans stopped, as they made their way across the Arabian peninsula. It was already an area of major religious significance ( because of a large black cubic structure of stone, mentioned by Eise ), and was a 'meeting point' of many other religions of the traders that passed through Mecca. Muhammad incorporated many aspects of the differing religions he was exposed to, as well as the Kaaba, into Islam.

Just an add on to earlier comments regarding pharna investments https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/big-pharma-spends-billions-more-on-executives-and-stockholders-than-on-rd/

! Moderator Note Chat GPT and their ilk are just amped-up predictive text. The give plausible-sounding, but not necessarily accurate answers. They are not to be used as a technical resource at SFN. That said, if you don’t phrase a question to explicitly include gravity, one might conclude there is no gravitational shift. GIGO

I am not sure about this. Muhammad's life is no better documented than the life of Jesus - all information about him comes from sources written over a century after his death (the first biography of Muhammad comes from ca. 750 AD while he died in 632 AD). Confucius and Buddha aren't better documented either.

I guess "Wanktank" might sound too much like a collection device...

He’s turning himself into the modern day equivalent of Howard Hughes, and IMO he’s on the precipice now of Spruce Goosing himself out of relevance. Eventually, the spoiled child having yet another tantrum gets ignored and the adults in the room move on to more important things. In large part, this is our own damned fault since we as a culture tend so often in large massive numbers to idolatrize wealth.

Money attracts money and once it reached a certain critical mass, it's gravy all the way. Recipients then become full of their own importance, even on matters where they have no real skills.

Perhaps we can dispense with the notion that he’s a genius, and stop paying attention to his nonsensical ramblings.

I don't assume that. I think the human population is underutilized, mismanaged, and kept barely above slavery in many parts of the world. I think the outrage of overpopulation is being manufactured by those who hoard resources and demean the labor of people. Rather than giving the resource hoarders more control over our reproduction, I'd like to try more cooperation and less competition, and try to distribute resources more efficiently and effectively for a larger percentage of the population. No more food rotting on docks because there's no profit in getting it to starving people, which will make them healthier and more able to continue their own prosperity. I'd like to start a cycle like that, because we know where the "overpopulation" cycle leads.