Language Atlas
Things this atlas does not know. Each entry is a question that specialists
have posed and not settled, recorded with what would actually resolve it and which
expertise the answer needs.
These are kept deliberately, rather than quietly omitted. An atlas that shows
only what it is sure of implies a confidence it has not earned, and the gaps are often where
the interesting work is. Several sit exactly where two fields fail to meet: identifying the
hyssop of the Hebrew Bible needs a botanist and a philologist of Biblical Hebrew, and neither
one settles it alone.
Grouped by the expertise recorded on each question, in the words the question itself uses. Most of these are held by a single question.
Filter By Specialty 99 fields
Showing 601 to 608 of 608 open questions, page 31 of 31.
Not Yet Classified 20
Eclectic Solitary Wicca
How Many Practitioners Does Eclectic Solitary Wicca Have?
Open Eclectic Solitary Wicca
Why It Is Open Solitary practice leaves no coven roll, initiation record or central registry by design, and religious landscape surveys count Wiccans and Pagans as one combined category rather than separating solitary eclectic practice from initiatory lineages.
What Would Settle It A large-scale self-identification survey that asked Wiccans specifically whether they practice solitary and eclectically, rather than within an initiatory lineage, would let a real estimate be drawn where only a combined Wiccan/Pagan figure exists today.
Question posed in
Eclectic Wicca (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.
Feri Tradition
How Many Practitioners Does the Feri Tradition Have?
Open Feri Tradition
Why It Is Open Feri passes from teacher to student through small covens and houses with no central registry, and general surveys of American Paganism count Wiccans and Pagans as one combined category without separating this smaller initiatory current from the larger traditions around it.
What Would Settle It A survey that asked self-identified witches or Pagans specifically which initiatory lineage, if any, they belong to would let a Feri-specific figure be drawn where only a combined estimate exists today.
Question posed in
Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America, Chas S. Clifton.
Folk Shinto
How Many People Practice Folk Shinto?
Open Folk Shinto
Why It Is Open Folk Shinto names an uncodified stratum of household and local custom rather than an organization anyone joins, with no shrine registry or denominational rolls of the kind Shrine Shinto and Sect Shinto both keep, so no demographic source counts its practitioners apart from the general population.
What Would Settle It A household practice survey that asked specifically about unaffiliated local and seasonal kami observance, rather than about formal religious affiliation, would be the only way to estimate a population that institutional records cannot capture by design.
Question posed in
Folk Shinto (Encyclopaedia Britannica), The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Native American Religion
What is the closed or open practice status of each Native American nation's own religious tradition, rather than of this umbrella entry?
Open Native American Religion
Why It Is Open This entry aggregates hundreds of distinct nations whose access rules range from fully open to strictly closed, so no single status value on the umbrella entity can be honest. A general source can show that variation exists but cannot resolve any one nation's specific rule.
What Would Settle It Recording closed-practice-status individually on each nation's own tradition entity, citing that nation's own statement or a specific scholarly or legal source, the way this has already been done for the Hopi, Taos Pueblo, Warlpiri, Arrernte and Haudenosaunee Longhouse traditions and the Native American Church.
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Native American Church (source), Wikipedia contributors.
Warburg Institute
What Financial Disclosure Exists for the Warburg Institute?
Open Warburg Institute
Why It Is Open The Institute's own Annual Review does publish an Annual Accounts page, but an attempt to read a total income or net assets figure from its multi column table did not survive text extraction with confidence.
What Would Settle It A visual read of page 32 of the Warburg Institute Annual Review 2022-2023 PDF, or a cleaner text or HTML rendition of the same accounts table.
Question posed in
Warburg Institute Annual Review 2022-2023, Bill Sherman (Director).
Sefer ha-Bahir (The Book of Illumination)
Is the Aryeh Kaplan translation of the Bahir open study material or still reserved for prepared students?
Open Sefer ha-Bahir (The Book of Illumination)
Why It Is Open Kabbalah has historically limited study of foundational texts such as the Bahir to students judged ready for it, and this widely published translation's own pages do not say whether that limitation reaches this edition or a citation drawn from it.
What Would Settle It Someone familiar with how this translation is actually used in practice today confirming whether it is treated as open study material or as a text still reserved for prepared students.
Question posed in
Sefer ha-Bahir (The Book of Illumination), Anonymous.
The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life
Is this edition of the Secret of the Golden Flower open published material or still tied to guided meditation instruction?
Open The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life
Why It Is Open This is a Taoist text of internal alchemy with meditation instruction, and some lineages that teach material of this kind pass it only from a teacher to a prepared student; this edition's own pages do not say which applies here.
What Would Settle It Someone familiar with this translation and its source lineage confirming whether the meditation instruction it contains is still treated as limited to guided students or is offered here as published material.
Question posed in
The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, Trans. Richard Wilhelm; commentary by Carl Jung; English trans. Cary F. Baynes.
Saffron
Where and when was saffron (Crocus sativus) originally domesticated?
Open Saffron
Why It Is Open Recent genetic and iconographic evidence (Kazemi-Shahandashti et al. 2022) points to Bronze Age Greece, Crete and Santorini around 1700 BCE, anchored on Minoan fresco depictions and Crocus cartwrightianus genetics. Older scholarship long assumed an Iranian or Asia Minor origin instead, given saffron's overwhelming later importance in Persian culture and its trade-route common names; this atlas's own origin-region fact already records the question as debated among authorities, and the 2022 genetic study does not by itself settle a century-old debate.
What Would Settle It Further ancient-DNA or archaeobotanical sampling of Crocus material from Aegean, Anatolian and Iranian Bronze Age sites, and confirmation of whether Crocus cartwrightianus populations outside Attica also carry the ancestral genome the 2022 study used to anchor the Greek-origin claim.
Question posed in
Ancient Artworks and Crocus Genetics Both Support Saffron's Origin in Early Greece, Seyyedeh-Sanam Kazemi-Shahandashti et al., Frontiers in Plant Science, 25 Feb 2022, doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.834416.