Talk:Cultural History of Mazes

From Maze

---

[//bracketing for now] According to Kern, “the earliest depiction of a maze dates from about 1420 CE”. However, as Espen Aarseth argues, Architectural mazes: church mazes, Purposes of Labyrinths and Mazes: 1) Protection: “to protect places of importance in their immediate vicinities” (13) 2) Games: “Swedish peasants living in Finland used to use the stone mazes in that country for running games in which the young men would run through them to a girl at the centre” or alternatively “ a stone coffer grave at the center” (13). 3) Research: For the study of intelligence in humans or animals [NICE! Mouse in the Maze] 4) Dances patterns a. Exclusion Ritual 5) Talismans to protect 6) Symbolic mazes: a. Path a soul takes… b. Birth, life, death Exclusion ritual: W. F. Jackson Knight. “The nine men’s morris is fill’d up with mud; and the quaint mazes in the wanton green, For lack of tread, are undistinguishable” -- A mid Summer night’s Dream.

What is a Maze? [Feel free to skip over this next section that was mostly written by Nick] (mostly excerpts from the listserv) [on definitions of mazes and distinctions from labyrinth] One objection to calling the output a maze is the lack of a solution or single correct path through this visual pattern. However, the definitions of maze include: The OED lists two related senses, the first of which requires that there is *exactly* one correct path, the second of which has no such requirement:

II. A labyrinth, and related senses.

   4. a. A structure designed as a puzzle, consisting of a complicated network of winding and interconnecting paths or passages, only one of which is the correct route through; a labyrinth; (occas. in pl.) the windings of a labyrinth. Also (as in quot. 1903): a structure comprising two points joined by a single winding line much greater in length than the direct line between the two points.

   b. In extended use: a complex network of paths or streets; a bewildering mass of things (material or immaterial), in which the individual components are difficult to separate or make out.
     In the 16th and 17th centuries often in to tread a maze, perh. with

allusion to sense 5.

There are quotations for the second of these senses from 1531 to 1994, including:

1542 H. BRINKELOW Lamentacion sig. Cviii, Leadyng them in an endlesse Maze of dyrtye tradicyons and folish ceremonyes.

So, there is an early occurrence of a maze which presumably (being endless) has no correct path through it ... and furthermore, it is endless.

The relevant definition from the 1913 Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary is:

3. A confusing and baffling network, as of paths or passages; an intricacy; a labyrinth. Quaint mazes on the wanton green." Shak.

   Or down the tempting maze of Shawford brook. Wordaworth.
   The ways of Heaven are dark and intricate, Puzzled with mazes, and

perplexed with error. Addison.

   Syn. -- Labyrinth; intricacy. See Labyrinth.

Again, nothing there requires that the maze have a solution.