Open Questions

Open Kaba'ir and Sagha'ir

Why It Is Open The manual is standardly cited under the name of Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi and is one of the most reproduced texts on the subject, but the attribution has been questioned, and this entry could not settle it from the sources available to it. The entry therefore describes the work without asserting authorship.

What Would Settle It A manuscript study of the earliest surviving copies and their transmission chains, compared against al-Dhahabi's securely attributed writings for method, vocabulary and the authorities he cites.

Expertise Needed Arabic manuscript studies; Islamic intellectual history

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Soma

Why It Is Open The Rigveda describes a mountain plant of stalks and shoots, never mentioning root, leaf, flower, seed or fruit, and never names it in identifying terms. The Brahmanas already prescribe substitutes, so the plant had passed out of reach inside the tradition itself. Fly agaric, ephedra and Syrian rue each have serious advocates and each faces an objection that has not been answered.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis of pressing stones, strainers or storage vessels from a securely dated Indo-Iranian ritual context, with the identification independently replicated. Earlier claims of ephedra in Central Asian Bronze Age vessels have not settled the matter, so replication rather than a single result is what is needed.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany and residue chemistry, working with Vedic and Avestan philology

Question posed in Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, R. Gordon Wasson.

Open Soma Sacrifice

Why It Is Open The Rig Veda describes soma's habitat, preparation and effects, but the living tradition lost the plant before the late Vedic period, when the ritual texts already prescribe substitutes. Two centuries of proposals (ephedra, fly agaric, Syrian rue, and others, including Wasson's 1968 book-length fly agaric case) each fit some verses and fail others, and no candidate has won consensus.

What Would Settle It Archaeobotanical residue analysis from an early Vedic or BMAC-context ritual vessel with identifiable plant remains, or a decisive phytochemical match between the full Rigvedic description and a candidate species in its Indo-Iranian range.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany and Vedic philology

Question posed in The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India, Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton, Introduction, on soma and its identification.

Open Haoma

Why It Is Open The Zoroastrian ceremony has been performed continuously and uses ephedra, which is the strongest evidence anyone has in the whole soma and haoma question because it is a practice rather than a reconstruction. But continuity of a rite does not establish continuity of a species, and substitution is documented on the Vedic side of the same inherited tradition.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis of Iranian ritual vessels of Achaemenid date or earlier, compared against the ephedra of current practice.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany with Avestan philology

Question posed in A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce.

Open Tobacco

Why It Is Open Multiple archaeological finds across the Americas have been proposed as early evidence of tobacco use, but which specific, securely dated find or residue analysis is genuinely the earliest has not been confirmed here.

What Would Settle It A residue analysis study identifying nicotine biomarkers from a securely dated, named excavation, compared against other candidate early pipe finds.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany, archaeochemistry

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open DNA Barcoding of Commercial Myrrh

Why It Is Open The result stands for the modern trade and does not reach the ancient question. No securely dated archaeological myrrh from any trade period has been analysed the same way.

What Would Settle It Genetic or chemical analysis of securely dated archaeological myrrh residue from a known trade-period context, compared against the modern reference barcodes.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany; archaeological science

Question posed in Deciphering Insights into Commercial Myrrh Species Authenticity from the psbA-trnH Genetic Region, Changhong Cao, Wenting Zhong, Feng Gao, Ying Zhang, Zhiguo Ma, Hui Cao and Menghua Wu.

Open Kykeon

Why It Is Open Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck proposed in 1978 that ergot on the barley was the agent. Critics hold that ergot as it grows is severely toxic and that no ancient technique for separating a psychoactive fraction has been demonstrated, and that fasting, darkness and staging account for the reported experience without pharmacology. The oath of silence means no participant account survives to test either reading against.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis of drinking vessels securely tied to the Eleusinian sanctuary and to the rite rather than to general sanctuary use, with independent replication.

Expertise Needed Archaeochemistry and classical archaeology

Question posed in The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl A. P. Ruck.

Open Onycha

Why It Is Open The Hebrew shecheleth of Exodus 30:34 is rendered onycha, fingernail, in the Septuagint. The leading identification is the operculum of a marine gastropod, which fits the sense, a nail-like hard plate, and the ancient aromatics trade. Benzoin, labdanum and rockrose are proposed plant alternatives but fit neither the sense nor the trade as well. A non-kosher animal product in the sacred incense is a live halakhic difficulty, which is the main reason the operculum identification is resisted by some commentators rather than for philological reasons. No reconstruction of the ketoret can be made without settling this, and it has not been settled.

What Would Settle It A residue analysis of an incense deposit from a securely dated Second Temple period altar or vessel, compared chemically against operculum keratin and against the candidate plant resins, would settle which substance was actually burned.

Expertise Needed Archaeochemistry, biblical studies

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open The Huei Tzompantli Excavation

Why It Is Open The structure runs under standing colonial buildings on Calle Guatemala in the Centro Historico of Mexico City, and only the portion reachable around them has been exposed. Every published count is a count of that partial exposure and has risen with each season of work. No scholar has proposed a total, so this is a gap rather than a disagreement. The sixteenth-century figures are narrative rather than counts and cannot stand in for one.

What Would Settle It Full exposure of the structure, which would require access beneath the buildings above it, together with a minimum-number-of-individuals count taken across the complete assemblage rather than across the reachable part. Short of that, a defensible estimate would need the geometry of the excavated portion projected onto the full plan of the rack, published with its assumptions.

Expertise Needed Archaeology and bioarchaeology, with urban heritage engineering for access beneath protected colonial buildings.

Question posed in Programa de Arqueologia Urbana: the Huei Tzompantli excavations at the Templo Mayor, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia.

Open Sardinian Folk Tradition

Why It Is Open Sardinian folk belief is described as layered over the island's prehistoric Nuragic civilization and Ozieri culture tombs, but the folklore itself was recorded only from the nineteenth century onward, and nothing currently establishes a documented line of transmission between the prehistoric archaeological culture and the modern oral material.

What Would Settle It Archaeological or textual evidence linking specific Nuragic-era ritual practice to a named figure or custom still recorded in nineteenth or twentieth century Sardinian folklore would establish an actual continuity, rather than a merely geographic layering.

Expertise Needed archaeology and folklore studies

Question posed in Leggende e Racconti Popolari della Sardegna (Turchi), Dolores Turchi.

Open Basque Mythology

Why It Is Open Basque mythology survives only as legend recorded from rural informants after Christianization was already dominant, and Basque, a language isolate, offers no comparative linguistic route to an earlier stage the way related Indo-European mythologies do. Nothing currently ties the figure of Mari or the wider nature-spirit cast to any datable period before the ethnographic record itself.

What Would Settle It An inscription, cult site or artifact in the western Pyrenees securely tied to a named pre-Christian Basque deity or practice, or a linguistic reconstruction anchoring core mythological vocabulary to a datable stage of the Basque language, would give scholars an actual point to reason from instead of the modern record alone.

Expertise Needed archaeology and historical linguistics

Question posed in Selected Writings of Jose Miguel de Barandiaran: Basque Prehistory and Ethnography, Jose Miguel de Barandiaran, ed. Jesus Altuna, trans. Frederick H. Fornoff, Linda White and Carys Evans-Corrales.

Open Bighorn Medicine Wheel

Why It Is Open The structure is stone laid on the ground surface, so it carries no stratigraphy and cannot be dated directly. Cairns have been added to and rebuilt by users over an unknown period, and material recovered at the site has returned a wide spread of dates. Estimates in the literature run from a few centuries to several thousand years. The builders are equally open: the Plains nations now associated with the site did not all occupy the Bighorn country at the same time, and Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Shoshone and Lakota traditions each connect the wheel to their own history.

What Would Settle It A securely associated context: a buried feature or datable deposit beneath an undisturbed part of the structure, excavated with the consent of the associated nations and dated on material demonstrably contemporary with construction rather than with later use.

Expertise Needed Archaeology, working with the associated Plains nations; archaeoastronomy for the alignment claims

Question posed in Astronomical Alignment of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel, John A. Eddy.

Open Sudarium of Oviedo

Why It Is Open Radiocarbon testing of the cloth returned an approximate seventh century date, but the testing laboratory itself cautioned that oil contamination absorbed by the cloth could distort the result, so the date obtained has never been treated as reliable.

What Would Settle It A repeat radiocarbon dating using a sample cleaned of contaminant oils, of the kind used elsewhere to correct for similar contamination in aged relics.

Expertise Needed Archaeometry, radiocarbon dating

Question posed in The Oviedo Cloth, Mark Guscin.

Open Leonidas I

Why It Is Open Herodotus, the earliest and fullest source for Leonidas, gives his parentage and the unusual succession that brought him to the Spartan throne around 490 BCE ahead of his elder half-brothers' male heirs, but nowhere states a birth year for him.

What Would Settle It A Spartan king list or dated inscription naming Leonidas's age or birth year, distinct from the succession narrative Herodotus preserves.

Expertise Needed Archaic and Classical Spartan history

Question posed in Histories, Herodotus.

Open State Atheism in Albania

Why It Is Open Clergy and believers were imprisoned and executed under Communist Albania's religious ban, but no independent body has separated a cumulative death toll for the ban specifically from Enver Hoxha's wider political repression.

What Would Settle It Archival research in Albania's post-Communist state security records isolating religiously motivated cases from the regime's broader political imprisonments and executions.

Expertise Needed Archival history

Question posed in Irreligion in Albania (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Aurum Solis

Why It Is Open The 1897 founding and both founders' names rest on the order's own account and on nothing else that has been produced. No lodge record, no correspondence and no third party notice of either name from the period has come to light, and no scholar has argued the point either way, so this is an absence rather than a disagreement.

What Would Settle It An archival search for the two names in English civil registration, probate and census returns for the period, together with a search of the surviving papers and membership rolls of the English occult lodges of the 1890s, and, if the order will open them, its own pre-1971 papers. Any one of the three would move the question.

Expertise Needed Archival history; history of Western esotericism

Question posed in Encyclopedia of American Religions, J. Gordon Melton.

Open Florence Campbell

Why It Is Open No source checked for this entry gives a birth year or biographical detail beyond her authorship of Your Days Are Numbered (1931) and a reported death in late 1964; her public identity survives almost entirely through the one book.

What Would Settle It A period publisher archive, obituary or genealogical record establishing her birth date and life outside her published work.

Expertise Needed Archival research, history of American occultism

Question posed in Florence Campbell (publisher biographical note), Newcastle Publishing editorial staff.

Open Frank Podmore

Why It Is Open The 1910 inquest could not establish how Podmore entered the water and returned no verdict of intent. Suggestions of suicide, tied to the risk of a scandal over his private life, have circulated since among historians of the Society for Psychical Research but have never been substantiated, and no further inquiry has been undertaken.

What Would Settle It A search of the original coroner's inquest papers and the Malvern and Worcestershire newspaper coverage of August 1910, which may hold testimony not yet examined by SPR historians.

Expertise Needed Archival research, history of science

Question posed in The Founders of Psychical Research, Alan Gauld.

Open Salomone Rossi

Why It Is Open Rossi is last documented in Mantuan court records around 1628. No source names a date or cause of death; he disappears from the record along with his sister Europa during the 1630 Austrian sack of Mantua and the plague that followed it, either of which could plausibly have killed him, and neither of which is confirmed to have.

What Would Settle It A burial record, a parish or ghetto register entry, a will, or a documented later sighting of Rossi in Venice, where some Mantuan Jewish refugees are known to have fled, any of which would fix either a date and place of death or evidence that he survived the sack.

Expertise Needed Archival research, Italian Jewish history of the War of the Mantuan Succession

Question posed in Wikipedia, "Salamone Rossi", Wikipedia contributors.

Open Hubert Pearce

Why It Is Open The parapsychological literature records his trial results to several decimal places and almost nothing about the man. This atlas could not verify a birth date, a death date, or any account of his later life from an accessible source, and records no dates at all rather than estimating them.

What Would Settle It Duke Divinity School enrolment and graduation records for the early 1930s, or the Rhine Research Center's own archive of laboratory correspondence, which would identify him well enough for ordinary genealogical work.

Expertise Needed Archival research; genealogy

Question posed in A Review of the Pearce-Pratt Distance Series of ESP Tests, J. B. Rhine and J. G. Pratt.