Lascaux, a lunisolar calendar
Franz Gnaedinger
We are in the Dordogne, some 17,000 years ago. A shaman is
working in the entrance zone of a cave. Using a round pebble
he presses long lines of small holes into a soft clay bank.
And in between he goes gathering small yellow and reddish
pebbles along the river ... What is he doing? One of his
forerunners had established a marvellous lunar calendar by
placing sets of 30 white and 29 grey pebbles in alternate
order into long lines of such holes, and thus he had been
able to predict lunar phases for over a year: 30 29 30 29
30 29 30 29 30 29 30 29 30 ... pebbles yield 30 59 89 118
148 177 207 236 266 295 325 384 ... days for 1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 ... lunations.
Our shaman wishes to go further by reconciling the lunar
cycle with the solar one. He observes the sun at midsummer
and midwinter, for many years. He lays out many long lines
of yellow and reddish pebbles. And then, finally, he solves
his problem with sets of 40 yellow and 41 reddish pebbles.
Nine sets yield a solar year: five yellow and four reddish
sets a year of 365 days, six yellow and three reddish sets
a year of 366 days.
As you have seen above, 11 lunations yield 325 days. Add
a solar period of 40 yellow pebbles and you obtain a year
of 365 days. Add a solar period of 41 reddish pebbles and
you obtain a year of 366 days.
Now the shaman draws a large square grid of 3 x 3 fields
a b c d e f g h i, and presses 40 and 41 holes into the
nine clay fields, according to a symmetrical pattern:
h i b 41 40 41
g a c 40 41 40
f e d 41 40 41
Start a calendar cycle with a full moon marking the begin
of the first solar period in the center of the grid 3 x 3.
The moon will move erratically across the fields of this
calendar, however, it will again be full at the begin of
period i, and in the following years at the begin of the
solar periods h g f e ...
-
Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
Franz Gnaedinger
The lunar calendar of Lascaux can be given as a grid of
six regular fields, one of which is halved:
I I I I 30 29 30 29 30 29
I I I I I 29I30 29 30 29 30
Begin at the top left corner and count cycles of twelve
lunations in counter-clockwise direction. If you stop
at the line that halves the regular bottom left field
you get 11 lunations that yield 325 days.
The solar calendar of Lascaux can be given as a grid of
3 times 3 fields. The central field a has 41 days, and
so have the fields b c f h in the corners, while the
remaining fields count 40 days each. Begin with field a
and move on to the fields b c d e f g h i, a b c d e ...
h 41 i 40 b 41
g 40 a 41 c 40
f 41 e 40 d 41
The nine fields a b c d e f g h i represent nine solar
periods and yield a year of 365 days. If the first
period a in the center of the grid begins with a full
moon, a full moon will again occur at the begin of
period i, and in the following years at the begin of
the periods h, g, f, e ...
30 29 30 29 30 ... 325 ... 649 ... 974 and so on
year 1) 41 41 40 41 40 41 40 41 - 325 - 40
year 2) 41 41 40 41 40 41 40 - 949 - 41 40
year 3) 41 41 40 41 40 41 - 974 - 40 41 40
and so on
Those with a mathematical interest may carry on these
additive sequences, and those familiar with the Lascaux
cave will recongize the above geometric patterns ...
-
Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
-
Franz Gnaedinger
The stag, I believe, was the symbol of the shaman,
while the giant stag Megaceros giganteus was a symbol
of the arch shaman. In the axial gallery of the Lascaux
cave is painted a proud stag with 9-point antlers that
stylize, modify and simplify the antlers of a megaceros:
two arcs of lower points are topped by five long points
radiating from the blades. Instead of the front legs we
see a geometric drawing: 13 dots, a standing rectangle,
a large dot, and a curvy line of 28 dots reaching out
for a horse ... (If you got no Lascaux books at hand
you may do a Google Images quest for lascaux.)
A grid of 28 times 13 days yields the best, namely
regular representation of the lunisolar calendar of
Lascaux. (I tried out other grids, but the resulting
patterns were less regular.) 'M' stays for lunation,
'S' for a solar period, and 'X' for 11 lunations or
8 solar periods that yield 325 days each. Remember
how to count lunations (30 29 30 29 30 ...) and the
solar periods of a year (41 41 40 41 40 41 40 41 40).
Begin at the bottom right corner and count upward:
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - S - - 82
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - S - - - - - 163
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - S - - - - - - - - 244
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
M - - - - - - - - - - - - 354
- X - - - - - - - - - - - 325 days
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - M - - - - - - - - - - 295
- - - M - - - - - - - - - 266
- - - - - - - - - - - S - 41
- - - - M - - - - - - - - 236
- - - - - M - - - - - - - 207
- - - - - - - - S - - - - 122
- - - - - - M - - - - - - 177
- - - - - - - M - - - - - 148
- - - - - S - - - - - - - 231
- - - - - - - - M - - - - 118
- - - - - - - - - M - - - 89
- - S - - - - - - - - - - 284
- - - - - - - - - - M - - 59
- - - - - - - - - - - M - 30
S - - - - - - - - - - - - - 365 days
The last day of the year (365) occurs outside of the
grid of 28 times 13 days, at the same place as the big
dot at the left base of the tall rectangle in the wall
painting.
Next time: Marie E.P. Koenig's understanding of the horse
as symbol of the sun; of the bull as symbol of the moon;
and of the opposing ibices (ibexes) in a small room at
the rear end of the axial gallery as symbol of midwinter
a.man...@attbi.com
best evidence of a Paleolithic lunar calendar.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
http://sambali.blogspot.com
Franz Gnaedinger
Marie E.P. Koenig sees the horse in paleolithic art as
symbol of the sun, and the bull as symbol of the moon.
The ascending young mares in the rotunda (hall of bulls)
of the Lascaux cave show the morning sun, Marie Koenig
believes, while the descending horses in the small room
at the rear end of the axial gallery symbolize winter:
the pair of opposing ibices (ibexes) midwinter; and the
grid of 6 fields in between them 6 winter moons, hence
the winter half year: www.seshat.ch/home/menhjr89.JPG
The rotunda leads into the axial gallery, which ends in
the small room. If the ascending mares in the rotunda
symbolize the morning sun, and if the descending horses
in the small room at the rear end of the axial gallery
symbolize winter, and the opposing ibices the midwinter
solstice, then the mares in the rotunda, rising above
the cave's "horizon," symbolize glorious midsummer.
The ascending mares are heading for the left wall of
the axial gallery, while the "Chinese" horses on the
opposite wall of the axial gallery and the red horse
before them are heading for the rotunda. The axial
gallery would then represent a year, from midsummer
to midwinter (left wall if seen from the rotunda),
and from midwinter to midsummer (opposite wall of
the "Chinese" horses and the red horse before them).
Now for the grid between the pair of opposing ibices,
a standing rectangle divided into 3 small rectangles at
the bottom and 3 tall rectangles on top of the small ones.
Modifying Marie E.P. Koenig's interpretation I propose an
underlying annual calendar of 9 periods (a-i):
h41 Apr01-May11 i40 May11-Jun20 b41 Aug01-Sep10
g40 Feb20-Mar31 a41 Jun21-Jul31 c40 Sep11-Oct20
f41 Jan10-Feb19 e40 Dec01-Jan09 d41 Oct21-Nov30
The 3 small rectangles of the grid between the ibices
correspond to the winter periods d e f (40 41 40 days).
The winter solstice occurs in the middle of period e,
December 20/21. The summer solstice occurs between the
periods i (40 days) and a (41 days), June 20/21.
Next time: the "Chinese" horses mark the end of the five
cold periods c d e f g (September 11 - March 31)
-
Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
-
> A lunisolar calendar in the Lascaux cave - part 3
>
> The stag, I believe, was the symbol of the shaman,
> while the giant stag Megaceros giganteus was a symbol
> of the arch shaman. In the axial gallery of the Lascaux
> cave is painted a proud stag with 9-point antlers that
> stylize, modify and simplify the antlers of a megaceros:
> two arcs of lower points are topped by five long points
> radiating from the blades. Instead of the front legs we
> see a geometric drawing: 13 dots, a standing rectangle,
> a large dot, and a curvy line of 28 dots reaching out
> for a horse ... (If you got no Lascaux books at hand
> you may do a Google Images quest for lascaux.)
>
> A grid of 28 times 13 days yields the best, namely
> regular representaton of the lunisolar calendar of
Franz Gnaedinger
Along the SW wall of the axial gallery that leads from
the small midwinter room to the wide midsummer hall
run a line of ponies in their winter coat, and ahead
of them the pair of "Chinese" horses ...
The "Chinese" horses (resembling the Przewalski's horse,
a wild subspecies discovered in Mongolia) are menaced:
the first one by two flying arrows near the neck, while
the leading horse is hit by a spear that sticks in the
back, just above the tail.
Hunting magic? I plead for an astronomical meaning,
which is revealed by the other signs that accompany
the leading horse:
A twig of nine branchlets appears on the round belly.
A second twig, before the breast, has five brachlets:
four under the stem, plus the one at the end of the
stem (while the four upper ones are missing). The twig
of nine brachlets may symbolize a solar year of nine
periods, beginning at midsummer, June 21 of our modern
calendar, while the twig of five branchlets only may
symbolize the five cold periods that end on March 31
of our calendar.
Next to the twig of five branchlets and before the
horse's mouth appears a second sign of five elements:
two horizontal lines above; two horizontal lines below;
and under the emtpy space between them a vertical line.
The black lines may again refer to the five cold periods
of the Lascaux calendar: upper lines 40 days each; lower
lines 41 days each; vertical line 40 days, from December
1 till January 9, midwinter in the middle, 19 days from
each corner date, between December 20 and 21.
Above the horse appears a red calendar grid, incomplete
as the one between the pair of opposing ibices in the
small room of midwinter at the rear end of the gallery.
However, this time the upper side is emphasized, and
the single small square in the upper right corner evokes
the warmest period of the year that begins on the first
day of our August.
So the arrows and the spear do not really menace the
"Chinese" horses but symbolize the end of the five cold
periods in the calendar of Lascaux. The twigs go along
with spring, and so do these lovely horses.
Franz Gnaedinger
The shaggy ponies in the axial gallery symbolize winter,
while the "Chinese" horses ahead of the ponies mark the
end of the five cold periods: March 31 in our calendar.
Ahead of the "Chinese" horses appears a jumping red
horse, its round, strong and amazingly plastic body
moulded into the curvy line of 28 dots, which ascend
softly, perform a loop and hide the horse's forelegs,
and then ascend very steeply. This would be the midday
sun of spring, climbing ever higher on the sky ...
In the free space between breast, hidden forelegs and
dots another sign: two long parallel lines from which
sprout three short lines, pointing upward and touching
the hidden foreleg.
This sign would symbolize the four warm periods of the
year, with midsummer (New Year) in between. Upper long
line: a period of 41 days, April 1 - May 11, midday sun
rapidly ascending, therefore a long line. Upper short
line: a period of 40 days, May 12 - June 20, midday sun
hardly climbing anymore, therefore a short line. Short
line in the middle: midsummer, New Year, between June
20 and 21, occasional leap days, preferably two days
every eight years. Lower short line: a period of 41
days, August 1 - September 10, midday sun steeply
descending, therefore a long line. (The lengths of the
lines may rely on the experience of climbing a mountain:
ascending and descending are both demanding, dangerous,
and tiring.)
The curved dotty line belongs to the geometric drawing
under the proud stag with the antlers of a Megaceros
giganteus. The 9 points of the simplified, modified
and styled antlers (I compared them with the antlers
of a megaceros from Ireland in the zoological museum
of Zurich) remind of the 9 calendar fields and solar
periods. The stag looks toward the approaching ponies,
"Chinese" horses, and red horse: as if observing the
solar horse on its way from the cold to the warm time
of the year ... The stag, I believe, symbolizes and
honors the shaman, and the megaceros the arch shaman,
here the ingenious astronomical school of Lascaux,
perhaps even a single personality.
Franz Gnaedinger
Now let us have a look at the key scene in the rotunda
(hall of bulls): www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6e.JPG
A line of ponies are rising above the horizon (a dark
band of rock), while a red horse has climbed the sky
and symbolizes midsummer.
A long red spear comes from the upper right side and
touches the head of the midsummer horse, as if saying
that the solar horse - or the midday sun - has finally
reached the highest point of its long ascending journey.
Now, from midsummer on, it will descend again, and so
the red horse with a black mane is heading for the axial
gallery and the small room at its rear end, where a line
of horses descends and gives way to a pair of opposing
ibices - according to Maerie E.P. Koenig the symbol of
the midwinter solstice.
There is no hunting magic in the Lascaux cave. Arrows
and spears mark astronomical and calendaric dates. The
long spear pointing to the head of the midsummer horse
in the rotunda marks the end of a year and begin of a
new year. The horses in the Lascaux cave die a symbolic
death, or, we may say: all these horses are one single
horse moving across the sky and the nine heavenly
grazing fields of the Lascaux calendar, changing
with the seasons.
When the midday sun has reached the highest position
on the sky, it is bound to descend again. But not so
quickly. There is another red summer horse high on
the marvellous ceiling of the rotunda ...
Next time: the white bull behind the midsummer horse
Franz Gnaedinger
Here again the small room of midwinter at the rear end
of the axial gallery: www.seshat.ch/home/menhjr89.JPG
Between the pair of opposing ibices a calendar grid
pointing out the 3 winter periods, bottom fields,
while the calendar grid above the leading "Chinese"
horse denotes the 3 top fields, especially period b,
warmest time of the year (beginning on August 1):
- - - h i b 41 40 41 + + b
- - - g a c 40 41 40 - - -
f e d f e d 41 40 41 - - -
On the right side of the ibices and their calendar grid
a part of the lunar calendar (on a bulging wall, hardly
recognizable in the above picture). The same calendar,
only turned, appears before the head of a bull in the
axial gallery:
I I I I 30 29 30 29 30 29
I I I I I 29I30 29 30 29 30
On a natural ledge two meters above the floor of the
nave parade a line of horses overlapped by a large cow,
which, as a bovine, is a lunar symbol. Behind the cow
and under her hind legs appear 3 colored calendar grids.
As far as I recognize the colors there is bright ocher
(orange), dark brown (or blueish?), and black:
bro och och och bro bro bro bro och ???
bro och och och och bro bro bro bla ???
och bro bro bro och och bro och och ???
The first and second pattern have complementary colors:
bright ocher in one grid turns into dark brown in the
other one. The large cow places her hind hoofs on the
second and third grid; her left hoof on the right grid:
periods h (ocher) and i (brown); and her right hoof on
the left grid: period g (brown); thus marking the solar
calendar of the horse with a bovine influence.
This calendar is a lunisolar clandar.
Franz Gnaedinger
Astronomically speaking, the lunisolar calendar of
Lascaux links 8 tropical years to 99 synodic months
or lunations (e.g. from one to the next foll moon).
This calendar is amazingly well expressed by the lunar
periods of 30 and 29 days, and the solar periods of 41
and 40 days:
h41 i40 b41 a30 b29 c30 d29 e30 f29
g40 a41 c40 l29 / k30 j29 i30 h29 g30
f41 e40 d41
Lunar periods are counted like this: 30 29 30 ... days,
yielding 30 59 89 118 148 177 207 236 266 295 325 / 354
... days for 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 / 12 ... lunations.
Solar periods are counted as follows: 41 41 40 41 40 41
40 41 40 days, and again 41 41 40 41 40 41 40 41 40 days,
and so on, yielding 41 82 122 163 203 244 284 325 365
days for the first year.
Multiples of 11 lunations and 8 solar periods yield
325-325 974-974 1298-1298 1947-1947 2272-2272 2596-2596
2921-2920 days. The lunar and the solar cycle go along
for seven years, then the lunar cycle passes the solar
cycle by one day (2921 instead of 2920 days).
Now let us have a look at the exact multiples of 11
synodic months and 8/9 tropical years (modern values):
324.836... 649.672... 974.509... 1299.345...
324.659... 649.319... 973.978... 1298.638...
1624.182... 1949.018... 2273.855... 2598.691...
1623.298... 1947.958... 2272.618... 2597.277...
(Lascaux 2921) 2923.528... days for 99 lunations
(Lascaux 2920) 2921.937... days for 8 years
The Lascaux values for a cycle of 99 lunations or 72
solar periods or 8 years are correctly predicting that
the moon will pass the sun, and even the order is good:
one day instead of 1.5907... days. Notice that a cycle
of 8 years requires two leap days.
Franz Gnaedinger
Having established all the mathematical tools required
for calculating the Lascaux calendar, and having found
that over a period of 8 years the lunar cycle will pass
the sun by one day (exactly 1.59073... days), we may
have another look at the key scene in the rotunda:
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir62.JPG
If a full moon occurs at midsummer, New Year, begin
of period 'a' in the lunisolar calendar of Lascaux,
it will again occur at the begin of period h, while
the following years will see a full moon at the begin
of the periods h g f e d c b a -- within 8 years we
are back to the original constellation, a midsummer
full moon marking the begin of a year.
However, not exactly, for the lunar cycle has passed
the solar cycle by one day according to the Lascaux
numbers, in reality by 1.59073... days, and this
very situation, I believe, is shown in the key scene
of the midsummer hall, New Year's hall, rotunda, or
hall of bulls: behind the red midsummer horse appears
a white bull, going along with the horse, and passing
the horse ...
Going along with the midsummer horse means: the Lascaux
calendar is based on a coincidence of midsummer and full
moon. Passing the horse means: the Lascaux astronomers
knew that the lunar cycle is slightly swifter than the
solar one.
Before the head of the bull appears a sign of 3 times 3
elements, which evoke the calendar of 3 times 3 periods
and may say that the solar calendar does also belong
to the moon.
If you are so lucky to own a copy of the 1988 issue of
the National Geographic, you may look up the beautiful
panorama on the pages 482-3-4. On the upper left side
you see the big head of the midsummer bull; below him
a black horse; before him a red horse and an opposing
bull; and in the free space of that meaningful scene
three small stags with proud antlers, looking toward
the midsummer bull and midsummer horse: these would
be astronomer shamans observing the sun and moon in
midsummer; throughout the whole year, but especially
during midsummer. And the megaceros in the gallery
might honor the astronomer genius who had come up
that marvellous lunisolar calendar ...
Franz Gnaedinger
Sorry for the invalid link in my previous message.
A picture of the key scene in the midsummer hall
is found here: www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6e.JPG
Paleontology relies on bones, for example in the case
of Sahelanthropus or Toumai, Child of Hope, a hominid
(now confirmed), seven million years old (twice as old
as Lucy, who, presumably, was a Lucian). Archaeology
relies on artifacts, for example in the case of the
some 400,000 years old spears of Homo heidelbergensis.
And history relies on documents we can read. When we
can read the signs and pictures in the Lascaux cave,
the Old Magdalenian may shift from an archaeological
to a historical period of time ...
Having published my discovery of the lunisolar calendar
in a rush of messages, I am taking my time for pondering
the consequences.
For the fun of it: let me look out for the language that
might have been spoken by the Lascaux people. I call it
Guyan, partly as reference to the Guyenne, partly as
hommage to Jacques Guy. Jacques Guy frequently made fun
of Nostratic. He will love Guyan. As a native Norman,
a born French, he can hardly deny his patrimoine ...
A first Guyan word or word-root is easily found: ac.
Richard Fester drew a map of southern France with all
the caves adorned in paleolithic times, and a second one
with all the names of villages ending on ac(q), such as
Montignac, and the correspondence is overwhelming. Seen
in the light of the lunisolar calendar of Lascaux, ac
may mean an expanse of green land with a hill and water,
where wild horses and bovines are grazing and drinking.
The nine fields of the lunisolar calendar would be nine
heavenly ac for the solar horse and lunar bull. Consider
the words aqua, ager/agricultura, equus, ox, ancient
Greek akros, a Swiss river by the Celtic name of Eulach,
or galloroman acum-names of villages such as Kuessnacht
on lake Lucerne. Or the ac in the name of Jacques Guy:
Jacques Jacob Jacobus Giaccobo is a common name in many
languages and may perhaps go back on the laird of an ac.
;-) Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
Franz Gnaedinger
Etymology is fun. So let me go on looking out for words
in the Old Magdalenain language I call Guyan (ghi-an).
The first word ac means a large area of land with water,
where animals are grazing, especially horses, cows and
bulls. The largest ac is the Guyenne in southern France,
the land along the many rivers, which, I believe, have
been mapped in the birdman in the Lascaux cave.
Have a look at a pair of drawings that place the birdman
into a map of the rivers of the Guyenne, whereby the
Gironde forms the beak (the colors of the first drawing
should be a red ocher for the birdman, a yellow green
for the land, and a deep blue for the rivers):
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6i.GIF
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6j.GIF
The world is made of nine ac: the Guyenne in the center,
surrounded by the ac of marshes and sea (W), Brittany
(NW), northern France (N), Switzerland, where mammoths
survived until 10,000 years ago, and where Magdalenian
hunters from the Rhone Valley had been spending summer
(NE), Rhone Valley (E), Mediterrannean (SE), Spain (S
and SW). The heavenly counterpart of the 9 earthly ac
are the nine ac of the sun horse and moon bull. So the
lunisolar calendar grid of Lascaux was also an ideal
world map.
Richard Fester says that names of places can persist
for a very long time. A hamlet of shacks by the name of
Niffer in southern Mesopotamia kept a memory of proud
Nippur for five millennia. Other examples: Toltek Tollan
- Tula; Egyptian Tanis - San; Pheonician Tyrus - Sur.
If the name of the Guyenne should go back to Magdalenian
times, 'Guy' might originally have imitated the call of
a bird, perhaps of a sea-gull: ghi, sharper ki.
The ruler of an ac may have been a sh'ac. The birdman
of the Guyenne would have been the ghi'shac. Later on,
ghishac may have designated every worthy dweller of the
Guyenne, simply meaning human being (perhaps real human
being). The word ghi'shac would survive in the French
names Guy and Jacques, and in the Basque word gizaki,
man, human. (Yes, Jacques Guy, I find this very funny.)
-
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
-
Franz Gnaedinger
A further word in Guyan (ghi-an), the language spoken
by the Magdalenian dwellers of the Guyenne, is provided
by a map: Languedoc, a province in southeastern France.
The name Languedoc comes from langue d'oc, a southern
form of French that uses the word oc for eye, whereas
the eye is called oeuil in northern France. Oc might
well have been a Magdalenian word for eye, also for
the verb looking, to look, and for the call: look!
An ac, we have seen, was an expanse of green land with
a hill and water, where horses and bisons have been
grazing. Paleontologists are assuming that a clan or
tribe needed 40 to 60 kilometers of land along a river.
Hunting deer, fishing salmon, and gathering herbs and
berries on such an expanse of land requires good eyes.
Picture yourself watching out for deer. When you happen
to see one you will alert your hunting comrades, but of
course without alarming the deer. Softly croaking oc
oc oc may well do. In my language it would be a soft:
lueg lueg! In English: look look! And the same word can
be shouted out loud, alarming your comrades of a danger:
OC - watch out, careful, attention !!
The word oc for eye would have become oculus in Rome,
from where it returned to Gaule, where it was kept in
the southern province of Languedoc, while it became oeuil
in northern France, ojo in Spain, eye in England, Auge
in German. The same oc became eg in Basque begi for eye;
ik in Basque ikusi for see; and ok in Basque osoko for
eye again (apparently a rareer word than begi). The oc
root is also present in English look, German lugen lug
(rarely used, a deer looking out from bushes does lugen),
gucken guck, and in Swiss German luege lueg (looag,
very common). And there is the English word ogle ...
Next time: how to say "I love you" in Guyen
-
Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
Franz Gnaedinger
Here is how to say "I love you" in Guyan (useful for
time travelers who are planning to visit the Guyenne
in the Old Magdalenian period of time ;-)
Oc, we have seen, means eye, also: I look, and: look!
A further meaning of oc may be darling ("eye apple").
My mon mio mein - the possessive mine could have been,
say, ma. Now we need light for to see. Let me propose
lic for light. Latin lux was light; Hittite luk was
the morning light, Hittite luha was the verb to shine.
Seeing the sun rise makes happy, and so does looking
into the eyes of one's darling. Well then, let me
propose the same word for luck. Ancient Greek leukos
means shining, white, bringing luck. Richard Fester
mentions Nordic lykt for light and lykka for luck.
The German words are Licht and Glueck, close to the
English words light and luck.
Now we have all the words we need for declaring our love
to a Magdalenian sweetheart: Oc lic ma oc. this means:
I see light in your eyes, my darling, I am happy, I am
so very happy, and look, there is light in my own eyes,
meant to make you happy too!
You may convey the same message by giving your darling
a pretty, small, round and shining white pebble as
symbol of a shining eye, and if you give her that sign
of your affection secretly, or via a messenger, it
would be a Magdalenian love letter ...
Next time: ca (sky, heaven), calic (a bright sky),
calicin (a misty sky), caleq (sun), calun (moon)
Miguel Carrasquer
<fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
>The ruler of an ac may have been a sh'ac. The birdman
>of the Guyenne would have been the ghi'shac. Later on,
>ghishac may have designated every worthy dweller of the
>Guyenne, simply meaning human being (perhaps real human
>being). The word ghi'shac would survive in the French
>names Guy and Jacques, and in the Basque word gizaki,
>man, human. (Yes, Jacques Guy, I find this very funny.)
What's even funnier is that giza-ki literally means
"man-flesh", like urde-ki "pork", idi-ki "beef".
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
m...@wxs.nl
Miguel Carrasquer
<fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
>A further word in Guyan (ghi-an), the language spoken
>by the Magdalenian dwellers of the Guyenne, is provided
>by a map: Languedoc, a province in southeastern France.
>The name Languedoc comes from langue d'oc, a southern
>form of French that uses the word oc for eye, whereas
>the eye is called oeuil in northern France.
Langue d'oc vs. Langue d'ouil (not oeuil), refers to the
word for "yes" in Southern ("oc") vs. Northern Gaul ("oïl",
"ouïl" > modern "oui"). Respectively from Latin <hoc> and
<hoc ille>.
The languedocian for "eye" is <uelh>.
Franz Gnaedinger
Miguel: thank you for the correction, yes, oc is the
word for yes, not for eye, so I need a little more
phantasy: oc meant eye, and looking somebody into
the eyes was as good as saying yes ...
If ac was land, ca might have been the sky (s-ca-y).
Combine ca for sky with lic for light and you obtain
calic for a bright, luminous sky. The word calic might
have traveled along the Ligurian coast (lig lic, hence
a bright shore) into Italy, where it would have turned
into coelus for sky; lic alone into lux; and into lum
in illuminare. The lum form is kept in French lumière.
Indirect evidence comes from archaic caliginous for
misty, dim, dark, going back on Latin caliginosus
for misty. Ca-lig-in-osus. Here you have a ca for sky,
and lig for light, yielding bright sky, followed by in,
which would be a negation: no, not a bright sky, a misty
one; a dim or dark sky. In/un is a very common negation
in Western European languages and may thus be very old.
If 'calic (stress on ca) or ca'lic (stress on lic) was
a bright sky, calic'in (stress on in) would have been
a misty, dim or dark sky.
Basque zeru for sky goes along with ca and coelus, while
urdin for blue might explain a further part of "Liguria"
on the Côte d'Azur, blue coast, Lig-ur-ia. If -ia should
be a form of ac, we might read: lic-ur-ac, land (shore)
of light and blue. The form ac-ur as name for a stretch
of land by the blue sea would have become azur, a deep
and beautiful blue as seen slong the Ligurian coast.
Now, in the context of a lunisolar calendar, we need
words for the sun and the moon. The word for sun might
have been ca'leq, leq being a form of lic, namely the
brillant light provided by the sun, while the rump -eq
would have become equus, horse, in Latin (and eguzki,
sun, in Basque). The word for the moon might have been
ca'lun, lun meaning the light provided by a full moon.
Ca'lun would have become se'lenae in ancient Greek,
and 'luna in Latin.
Caleq caleq caleq caleq for the gallopping sun horse,
calun calun calun calun for the running moon bull ...
If the above deductions hold, light, going along with
luck, would be a very old word, since there are so many
early forms: lic lig leq lun lux lum luk (Hittite for
morning light, while Greek leukos means shining white,
bringing luck), and so lic might even come from, say,
Dolni Vestonice and be some 26,000 years old.
Franz Gnaedinger
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal corrected my silly mistake
concerning Languedoc. I should have known that oc
means aye, not eye ... Funny that several words
for yes and eye are similar: I ay aye, ie eie eye;
oui(l), uelh oeuil; gese yis yes, ege eage ie eie
eye(s); oc, oculus occhio oug aug ege eage ...
Let me try a modification of my thesis regarding oc
and yes. The early form of saying yes might have been
a firm look into the eyes of the person to whom you
make a promise or give an answer. When a mother asks
her child: did you do the homework?, and the child
mumbles an answer, the mother may say: look me in¨
the eye ... A look into the eye, perhaps going along
with a nod, may have been the first yes. When a word
was needed, the situation of one pair of eyes locking
with another pair of eyes might have been imitated by
saying oc oc, meaning eye eye; confirmed from eye to
eye ... However, oc oc sounds rather silly. A better
term would be a combination of two words for eye, say,
oc-il. This word could have turned into Latin oculus
for eye, and survived in Basque jakile, see, look,
also man, human (I am not really sure about jakile).
Oc-il, eye eye, might have given rise to Latin hoc
ille for yes, meaning: this that, maybe: this (pair
of eyes and) that (pair of eyes). When the Romans
brought their language to Gaul, hoc ille could easily
have been adopted, since the old meaning shone through,
so hoc ille became oc in southern Gaule, the old word
for eye, and (hoc) ille became uelh for eye, keeping
a memory of the old il for eye. And in northern Gaul
hoc ille became oui(l) for yes, and oeuil for eye,
again keeping a memory of the oc-il form eye-eye.
The English (or Scottish?) "Aye aye, sir!" would be
another version of eye eye: from eye to eye, from
man to man. One might even muse whether okay has
actually come from oc-il: ok I, ok ay, okay. If so,
the current although contradicting explanations of
okay as abbreviations of oll/orl korrekt, and OK
Club (Old Kinderhook Club) would be based on the
false assumption of an o-kay instead of ok-ay.
The il word for eye could have survived as pars pro
toto in French cil for eyelash(ses), and oc(c)il
may have turned into Sanskrit aksi for eye.
Next two messages: a provisional glossary of the
words we found so far.
-
Aye Aye - Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
-
> A lunisolar calendar in the Lascaux cave - part 15
Miguel Carrasquer
<fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
>A lunisolar calendar in the Lascaux cave - part 16
>
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal corrected my silly mistake
>concerning Languedoc. I should have known that oc
>means aye, not eye ... Funny that several words
>for yes and eye are similar: I ay aye, ie eie eye;
>oui(l), uelh oeuil; gese yis yes, ege eage ie eie
>eye(s); oc, oculus occhio oug aug ege eage ...
>
>Let me try a modification of my thesis regarding oc
>and yes. The early form of saying yes might have been
>a firm look into the eyes of the person to whom you
>make a promise or give an answer. When a mother asks
>her child: did you do the homework?, and the child
>mumbles an answer, the mother may say: look me in¨
>the eye ... A look into the eye, perhaps going along
>with a nod, may have been the first yes. When a word
>was needed, the situation of one pair of eyes locking
>with another pair of eyes might have been imitated by
>saying oc oc, meaning eye eye; confirmed from eye to
>eye ... However, oc oc sounds rather silly. A better
>term would be a combination of two words for eye, say,
>oc-il. This word could have turned into Latin oculus
>for eye, and survived in Basque jakile, see, look,
>also man, human (I am not really sure about jakile).
Jakile can be decomposed into jakin "to know" and -le "-er".
So jakile is a "knower", someone who knows. It usually
means "witness".
The verb jakin can be reconstructed as *e-aC-gin-i, where
e-...-i is the past participle marker, *-gin- is the verb
"to do", used as a dative marker or transitivity extender.
In this case, it adds a middle nuance to verb ("... for
oneself"). The verbal root *aC ~ *an is the same root as in
<jan> (*e-an-i) "to eat". So <jakin> originally meant "to
eat for oneself => to taste". The semantic development is
the same as in Latin <sapere> "to taste => to know".
So it's about taste, not sight.
Franz Gnaedinger
Provisional first glossary of Guyan, pronounced ghi-an,
hypothetical language spoken in the Magdalenian Guyenne,
on the substratum of a much older paleolithic language,
delivered in three messages
AC - an expanse of green land with water, where horses
and bisons are grazing and drinking; surviving in names
of rivers (Richard Fester), in Galloroman acum-names of
villages, also in Latin ager (agricultura)
SH'AC - ruler of an ac; surviving in the name Jacques
Jacobus Giaccobo Jacob Jack Jakob ..., also in Arabic
sheikh, Persian shah, Japanese shogun (titles mentioned
by Richard Fester as versions of his TAG word)
GHI (sharper ki) - call of the sea-gull, name of the
birdman; surviving in the name of the Guyenne as land
of the birdman, especially the Gironde and Dordogne,
and in the French name Guy
GHI SH'AC - birdman, ruler of the Guyenne, over, say,
some 30 clans of some 500 persons each; then the word
for human being in general (perhaps: real human being)
used for any worthy dweller of the Guyenne; surviving
in the French names Guy and Jacques, also in Basque
gizak for man, human (according to Miguel Carrasquer
Vidal also for human flesh: giza-ki; then perhaps
a composite: ghi'sh'ac gizak gizak-ki gizaki)
CA (inverse of AC) - sky (s-ca-y), nine heavenly ac of
the solar horse and lunar bull. The grid of 3 times 3
fields in the Lascaux cave would be a world map of nine
large ac, the Guyenne in the middle; and the same map
would represent the nine heavenly ac of the solar horse
and lunar bull ...
-
(To be continued) Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
Franz Gnaedinger
LIC - bright, light, luck: a very old word occurring
and surviving in many forms, for example in Latin lux,
coe-lum, in/l-lum-inare, French lumière, Hittite luk for
morning light, Greek leukos for shining, white, bringing
luck, in German Licht and Glueck (the initial g- being
a plural according to Richard Fester), in English light
and luck, in Nordic lykt and lykka (Richard Fester)
CA LIC - bright sky; became early Latin cae-lum, and
later on coe-lum for sky, while lic alone became lux
CA LIC IN - not a bright sky (negation), a misty sky,
a dim or even dark sky; Latin ca-lig-in-osus for misty
sky; negation -in surviving in the forms in- un- (a-)
CA LEQ - solar horse, leq meaning the light coming from
the sun; onomatopoiesis: caleq caleq caled caleq ...
for the gallopping sun horse; rump -eq developed into
Latin equus for horse, and Basque eguzki for sun
CA LUN - lunar bull, lun meaning the light of the full
moon; onomatopoiesis: calun calun calun calun ... for
the running moon bull; ca'lun became Greek se'lenae
and Latin 'luna
UR - a conspicuous color, for example the deep blue
of sky and sea, especially along the Ligurian coast
(linguistic bridge between Guyenne and Tuscany)
AC UR - earth of a conspicuous color, ocher, also
land by the blue sea, especially the Ligurian coast
and Côte d'Azur
LIG UR AC - Liguria
(to be continued again) Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
Franz Gnaedinger
OC - eye, man (a respondsible person who can look into
your eyes), also darling ("eye apple"); as a verb: see
or look; imperative: look; warning: watch out, careful,
attention. Became Latin oculus, and survives in many
forms: Italian occhio, Spanish ojo, English eage ege
ie eie eye, German oug aug Auge; English look, German
lugen lug (rare), gucken guck, Swiss German luege lueg
(pronounced looag), English ogle ...
CIL (inverse of LIC for bright, light, luck) - second
word for eye; survived as pars pro toto in French cil
for eyelash(es)
OC (C)IL - eye eye: from eye to eye, from man to man;
an early form of yes. Originally a look into the eyes,
perhaps accompanied by a nod. Became Sanskrit aksi for
eye, and Latin hoc ille, this that, for yes, perhaps
meaning: This pair of eyes and That pair of eyes; from
eye to eye, from man to man. Hoc ille became oc for yes
and uelh for eye in southern Gaul (Languedoc), oui(l)
for yes and oeil for eye in northern Gaul, keeping
a memory of the old forms oc and cil for eye, oc(c)il
for eye eye, from eye to eye, from man to man. Eye eye
might survive in English I ay aye "Aye aye, sir!" Yes
goes back on the c/k/g word gese. Okay is explained in
two ways: either as abbreviation of oll/orl korrekt,
or as keeping a memory of an O(ld) K(inderhook) Club.
If these explanations should be insufficient, one might
consider a possible old root of ok-ay meaning eye eye:
confirmed from eye to eye; agreed upon from man to man
and "sealed" by a firm look into each other's eyes.
My favorite canditate for a link between Magdalenian
oc(c)il and okay would be Scottish "och, aye"
MA - mou meus mei mio mia mis mi meu mon ma mes mijn
mine min mit -m mai mein mine my
OC LIC MA OC - eye/see light/luck my/mine eye/darling,
meaning much as "I love you": I see light in your eyes,
my darling, I am happy, I am so very happy, and look,
there is light in my eyes, meant to make you happy too!
Regards Franz Gnaedigner www.seshat.ch
Franz Gnaedinger
If the geographical names Liguria and Côte d'Azur go
back to Magdalenian words, the original names might
have been lic-ur-ac, bright land by the blue sea,
and ac-ur, land by the blue sea.
The Basque word for blue is urdin; the Irish and Gaelic
word grom, pronounced gorom, whereby ac-ur would have
become ()gor- in the spoken version gorom.
There is also a resemblance between ac-ur and ocher.
So ur may not only mean blue, but a conspicuous color,
whether blue or red: land by the blue sea in the case
of Liguria and the Côte d'Azur; red land, red earth
in the case of ocher.
The Irish and Gaelic word for red is deorg, pronounced
d(j)arak. This time ur-ac would have become -arak in
the spoken form d(j)arak.
An older archaeological atlas I have at home shows me
that the Magdalenian culture comprised the Provence
and the Ligurian shoreline. So it could well have been
that ocher from Siena was traded along the Ligurian
coast and reached the Guyenne. If so, we may perhaps
speak of a Magdalenian Ocher Road (in analogy to the
later Silk Road) from Siena along the Ligurian shore
to the Guyenne and Cantabria, and lic-ur-ac would have
had a double meaning involving the colors red and blue:
especially fine and precious red earth (namely from
the region of Siena) transported along the bright land
(shoreline) of the blue (sea, namely the Ligurian coast
including the Côte d'Azur).
Picture a Magdalenian dweller of the Côte d'Azur on an
evening, looking across the Ligurian sea, where a yellow
or even reddish full moon rises above the horizon. How
beautiful! Upon rising higher, the moon turns a silvery
white, loosing its color. Where does it go? It must
fall as a fine shower of dust on Tuscany across the
wide Ligurian bay, and this must be the reason for the
yellow and even reddish earth in the region of Siena.
The name of the moon was ca-lun, and the original name
of Siena was calun-ac, moon earth. When calun became
Greek selenae and Latin luna, calunac became seluna,
and then Siena ...
(A phenomenon of red dust occurs in Italy and rarely
even in Switzerland: fine dust of an amazingly strong
color from the Sahara.)
Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
Franz Gnaedinger
We have seen two inversions: ac for land along water,
ca for sky; lic for bright, light, luck, and cil for
eye. The first word for eye is oc. Also the inverse
co might hold meaning. As far as I know, Basque gogoan
and lakoan mean reasoning, thinking. One may also think
of Latin cogitare for reasoning, thinking - actually
co-agitare, gather together knowledge in one's mind.
Sapere, to know, has the meaning of taking in knowledge
as if by eating. According to Miguel Carrasquer Vidal,
the same applies to Basque jakile, knower, originally
taster. Comparing seeing with eating has a psychological
truth to it: children have to learn about the world by
touching, and if possible by sticking things into their
mounth, only then can they fully develop their visual
sense and acquire a reliable and useful knowledge.
Co as Guyan word for reasoning would survive in co- con-
com-, and may even originally have had the meaning of
together, wherein (if true) I see a fine piece of Stone
Age philosophy that will be valid for all times.
Reasoning involves other people. I get precious help by
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, who explains Basque words to me
(thank you very much, Miguel). I rely on books by other
authors, for example on a book by Richar Fester with
explanations and tables of his BA KALL TAL OS ACQ TAG
words. I am "hunting" words, while the Stone Age people
have been hunting animals, which required cooperation,
planning, reasoning. When I reflect my onw situation in
life I do it in respect of other people: with whom can
I go along, how shall I behave with this or that person,
and so on. I try to get the best possible for me, and by
doing so I support my community, for a society depends
on the ability of a large majority of its members to
maintain their own life; on the other hand I do favors
to other people, thus I earn respect, which helps me
leading my own life. You can look at reasoning in any
which way, there is always a co- involved.
English with and wit are close, whereby the old form
of wit, namely witte, meant reasoning.
Franz Gnaedinger
In my previous message I explained that Magdalenian co
- as inverse of oc for eye and to see - meant reasoning.
The word co- would survive in the modern prefixes co-
con- com-, implying that reasoning always involves a co,
a together: either we are putting together impressions
and experiences for ourselves, or we are planning common
actions, or we consider our own life in regard to others,
or we ponder what we can do for others, either by means
of actual deeds, or then by gathering knowledge that
may become useful for our society.
A telling and witty illustration of this can be seen
in the entrance of the Lascaux cave. This cave, I shall
explain in a later message, served for initiating
aspiring rulers of the Magdalenian clans. Now picture
yourself an aspiring sh'ac (name of such a ruler).
You undertook a long journey to Lascaux. Now you are
finally gazing into the entrance of the cave, and
there you see a strange animal running behind a horse:
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6f.JPG
www.seshat.ch/home/menhjr88.JPG
Let me quote from the October 1988 issue of the National
Geographic: "Creature of imagination has the hind end
of a bison, the belly of a pregnant mare, the front legs
of a feline, a mottled hide, and two straight horns -
although it was once dubbed the unicorn. Some observers
see in the odd head the profile of a bearded man. Is it
a shaman in animal dress? Or a creature drawn from a
verbal description?" I consider it a witty illustration
of what a sh'ac has to be: powerful as a bison (a man),
caring as a pregnant mare (a woman and mother), decided
as a feline, and making a mindful and reasonable use of
weapons, which is why the horns are growing out of the
head of this human animal ... A meaningful composite,
well illustrating the word co for reasoning, and going
along with oc for eye.
Franz Gnaedinger
By considering French words beginning with c/g-a
I stumbled over galet, polished pebble. If this word
should go back to a Magdalenian word, it may have been
ca-let, meaning sky-stone: a perfect word for the walls
and ceilings of a painted cave, especially for Lascaux,
where caleq horses represent the sun, and calun bulls
the moon on their respective journeys across the sky
(Marie E.P. Koenig; confirmed by the newly discovered
lunisolar calendar).
Now the word ca-let is close to ca-leq. Even too close.
How can we possibly resolve that problem? By trying
a different pronounciation for ca-let. We produce our
't' by placing the tip of the tongue to the upper front
teeth and quickly pulling it back. Another t may be
produced by sticking the tip of the tongue to the lips,
and then quickly retiring it. If you have a problem
understanding what I mean, you may say: these these
these these ..., and each time stick out your tongue
a little more.
The impression you get by doing so is one of spitting,
and this would make perfect sense. Michel Lorblanchet
has very convincingly demonstrated that the paleolithic
cave paintings had actually been _spat_ at the walls.
By placing his hands for templates on a wall, or by
using other templates, and spitting colors onto the
stone, he produced a really remarkable copy of the
Pech Merle horses, dots, a salmon, a medusa (?), and
hand negatives (Michel Lorblanchet, Les Grottes Ornées
de la Préhistoire, Nouveaux regards, Editions Errance,
Paris 1995). By spitting colors on the walls, Michel
Lorblanchet believes, the cave painters gave life in
the form of moisture and breath to their creations.
Very plausible to me. So if ca-let means the stone of
a cave's wall and ceiling, the t at the end would be
a "spitting" t, henceforth given as t-: (lip t). And
so it came that let-: for stone became lithos in Greek
(a t-word) and lapis in Latin (a p-word).
Next time: right hand mhayn, left hand clyn, right foot
p'hed, left foot yolg; with examples from many languages
Franz Gnaedinger
Right hand mhayn, left hand clyn, right foot p'hed,
left foot yolg.
Mhayn: man - manus (Latin), hay - cheiros (Greek), mayn
- main (French), han - hand (English) Hand (German);
han - handle (English) handeln (German); man (English)
Mann (German); right manner (English) manière (French)
Clyn: cl - claw (English) Klaue (German) klon (Tibetic),
cyn - kynnae (Finnish); cyn - sinister for left (Latin),
(c)lyn - links for left (German); clyn - cling, clinch
(English)
P'hed: ped - pedes for feet (Latin), p(e)d - podoi for
feet (Greek), p'hed - pied for foot (French), ph(e)d -
foot (English) Fuss (German // prefered by so-called
Indo-European languages
Yolg: jalga for foot (Hungarian) juolge (Lappish)
jalka (Finnish); jog, jolly jollies, jail (English),
Schalk for rogue, prankster (German)
Note a preference for the right hand and foot, whereas
the left hand is rather a claw, meant to hold firmly
a piece of work, while the usually more skilled right
hand does the actual work. The form of the right foot
served for both feet in Latin and Greek, while the left
foot may perhaps be associated with a funny behaving -
jolly jollies Schalk - which, however, can bring you in
jail. Latin sinister has also a negative connotation.
(Negative aspect may be limited to "Indo-European")
Calling each hand and foot with a name of its own would
have been helpful for hunters. Imagine a group of men
lying on the ground, watching the ac (land) before them.
If one of them notes a bull, say, in the area covered
by the left arm, he may simply whisper: clyn. - Picture
a hunter lying on his belly, looking northward. Now he
may name astronomical directions: rising midsummer sun
mhayn (sector N-E), setting midsummer sun (sector N-W),
rising midwinter sun (sector S-E), setting midwinter
sun (sector S-W).
'Yolg' for the (sector of the) setting midwinter sun
and 'yolk' may be more than a pretty coincidence.
The right hand mhayn would prevail in the astronomical
sense, as it names the rising midsummer sun. And the
same word mhayn could have given rise to the word man
- someone who behaves in the right manner.
Next time: dig 1, du 2, der 3, dag 4, mhayn 5, clyn 10,
p'hed 15, yolg 20; clyn-der 13, yol()-mhay(n)-der 28,
p'he()-der-yol()-dag 364, p'he()-der-yol()mhayn 365
Franz Gnaedinger
The hypothetical names for the left and right hand and
foot are mhayn and clyn, p'hed and yolg. We might use
them for numbers: mhayn 5, clyn 10, p'hed 15, yolg 20.
Let me propose dig for 1, inspired by Latin digitus for
finger; du for 2, inspired by Latin duo for 2; der for
3, inspired by Latin ter for thrice; and dag for 4,
inspired by Greek daktylos for finger, also by Turkish
dag for mountain: the supreme Hittite god Teshub, god
of the Celestial Weather, ruled from mountain tops,
where he overlooked the four regions of the world.
Now for my Magdalenian numbers. Common people (I claim)
learned how to count from 1 to at least 28:
1 dig 2 de 3 der 4 dag 5 mhayn 6 mhay()-dig
7 mhay-du 8 mhay-der 9 mhay-dag 10 clyn
11 clyn-dig 12 clyn-du 13 clyn-der 14 clyn-dag
15 p'hed 16 p'hed()-dig 17 p'he-du 18 p'he-der
19 p'he-dag 20 yolg 21 yol()-dig 22 yol-du
23 yol-der 24 yol-dag 25 yol-mhayn
26 yol-mhay-dig 27 yol-mhay-du 28 yol-mhay-der
Tributes to the sh'ac and shaman of a clan were due
every 28 days, for each family on another day, e.g.
for the p'he-der (Peter) family on day 18, and this
13 or clyn-der times a year, from which came Latin
calendare, pay tribute, on the calendae, at the
begin of a month, and from this comes our calendar.
So he have: clyn-der calendare calendae calendar.
Higher numbers involve multiples of 20, which are
formed in the peculiar way the French count their
numbers from 80 to 99 (quatre-vingt-dix-neuf is
4 times 20, plus 10 plus 9, yielding 99):
30 29 yol-clyn yol-mhay-dag lunar periods
41 40 du-yol-dig du-yolg solar periods
325 p'he-dig-yol-mhayn (16x20)+5 lunisolar number
13 28 clyn-der yol-mhay-der rhythm of tributes
364 365 p'he-der-yol-dag p'he-der-yol-mhayn year
Franz Gnaedinger
- - - - - o o o o o o o o yol-mhay-der
- - - - - o o o o o o o o yol-mhay-du
- - - - - o o o o o S o o yol-mhay-dig
- - o o o o o o o o o o o yol-mhayn
M - - - - o o o o o o o o yol-dag
- M - - - o o S o o o o o yol-der
- - - - - o o o o o o o o yol-du
- - M - - o o o o o o o o yol-dig
- - - M S o o o o o o o o yolg
- - - - - o o o o o o o o p'he-dag
) - - - M o W o o o o o o p'he-der
- X - - - M o o o o o o o p'he-du
- - - - - o o o o o o o o p'he-dig
- - ) - - o M o o o o o o p'hed
- - - ) - o o M o o o o o clyn-dag
- - - - - o o o o o o S o clyn-der
- - - - ) x x o M o o o o clyn-du
- - - - - ) o o o M o o o clyn-dig
- - - - - o o o S o o o o clyn
- - - - - o ) o o o M o o mhay-dag
- - - - - o o ) o o o M o mhay-der
- - - - - S o o o o o o o mhay-du
- - - - - o o o ) o o o M mhay-dig
- - - - - o o o o ) o o o mhayn
- - S - o o o o o o o o o dag
- - - - o o o o o o ) o o der
- - - - o o o o o o o ) o du
S - - - - o o o o o o o o o dig
)
Picture the above table on a clay bank in a cave, layed
out with small pebbles of various colors. This would be
the practical calendar as indicated by the geometrical
signs under the megaceros in the axial gallery of the
Lascaux cave. - Let us read the records of the shaman.
Before New Year (June 21) occured a waxing moon, small
arc at the right base. The same lunar phase will occur
again on the days marked with further small arcs. A full
moon occured mhay-dig (6) days after New Year, first M.
All the further full moons can be predicted by counting
mhay-dig (6) positions upward from the arcs. We are now
in row mahy-dag (9), line dag (4). Since New Year have
passed clyn-dig-yol-mhay-der (228) days; since Midwinter
W du-yol-du (42) days. We have day yol-mhayn (25) of the
winter period der (3) in the Sacred Calendar of mhay-dag
(9) caleq (solar) periods S (February 1). All families
have payed their tributes, family yol-mhayn even der (3)
times in advance; only the clyn-der family couldn't pay,
already du times.
You see, one can actually work on a Mac Lascaux, using
Magdalenian Windows ... The names of the numbers, as
derived from so-called Indo-European and non-Indo-
European word fields, are well pronounceable, distinct
(so they won't be confounded), and in most cases shorter
than the English names.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
[50 lines of contrubution]
[60 lines of quoted material, also by Franz Gnaediger]
[65 lines of quoted quoted material, again by Franz Gnaediger]
Why all these quotes of yourself? Isn't it enough to just post it
once? Or put it on a website?
--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com
Franz Gnaedinger
archaeologists are hoping that by understanding the
past we may perhaps have a glimpse into the future.
And how could we possibly comprehend signals from
another civilization somewhere out there in space when
we don't even understand the 'signals' from the past?
the heritage of our forebears on our own planet? All
the ancient and very ancient civilizations I studied
so far reveal the same pattern: simple yet complex.
This, I believe, is the very key for success. Keep
it simple and functional, thus you allow complexity.
Google follows that policy, and so, not surprisingly
to me, they are very successful. My humble glimpse
into the future: if they stand by their policy,
their sucess may last.
I shall go on with my online research, publishing
my very recent insights on a daily basis, developing
them online, for interested readers, for really
interested readers, not for chatters united, not
for those who just complain without offering anything
of value. And publishing my work online, I claim
a right to quote two messages per new message, thus
anticipating a future random loss of messages from
the Usenet archive.
In my previous message I presented the practical version
of the lunisolar calendar of Lascaux, just another fine
example of simple yet functional and complex, and dubbed
it jokingly a Mac Lascaux that makes use of Magdalenian
Windows. Upon posting my message, I noticed a resemblance
of Mac and Mag-, and on my daily walk, especially nice
in spring, a chain of quick associations led me to a
possible poetic explanation for "Magdalenian":
Mhayn ac dal lun ac, abbreviated to m'ac-da'-lun-ac -
five land valley moonshine land - five expanses of land
belonging to the (wide) moonshine valley land ...
Mhayn ac would have been abbreviated to m'ac, and may
designate five clans that form a larger community in
a river valley. The chieftain of such a community of
five (up to five) clans might have been a mac, which
title would survive in the Scottish name Mac, and his
wife could have been a mha'a' or Maya, while the
name Magdalena would keep a memory of ma(c)da-lun-ac,
meaning a girl or a woman of the Moonshine Valley.
English maid; Old German magdelin (if memory serves),
became Maedchen for girl, also Magd for maid-servant.
A German Meyer Meier Mayer Mayr was the chief of a farm
with manor, houses, workshops, stables and all, and the
same may perhaps be true for Scottish muir (as in Alan
Dunsmuir): once a title, then a name.
We have a new word: dal for valley, surviving in German
Tal, probably also in French val, Italian valle, English
valley. Lun is the light coming from the moon. Ca-lun is
the moon (actually moonshine). The Moonshine Valley
would be the valley of the winding river Vézère with
Montignac / Lascaux, Belcayre, La Madeleine, Les Eyzies,
and Bara-Bahau.
Girls and women called Magdalena, Madeleine, Maddalena
have then a name that originally meant a Maya from the
Moonshine Valley in the Perigord, Dordogne, which has
been dubbed Land of Game and Honey in the October 1988
issue of the National Geographic.
Next time: another way of noting the lunations in the
grid 28 by 13 pebbles evokes the winding river Vézère;
and an explanation of the name Belcayre, plus a second
word for horse
Regards Franz Gnaedigner www.seshat.ch
Peter T. Daniels
> I shall go on with my online research,
"Online research" would be if you were using the internet to find facts
and interpretations. What you are doing here is "online publication."
> publishing
> my very recent insights on a daily basis, developing
> them online, for interested readers, for really
> interested readers,
Is there any evidence that you have any readers at all, interested or
not?
> not for chatters united, not
> for those who just complain without offering anything
> of value. And publishing my work online, I claim
> a right to quote two messages per new message,
Your "rights" stop at others' border. Your massive duplications are
dropped into the computer of everyone who reads these newsgroups.
> thus
> anticipating a future random loss of messages from
> the Usenet archive.
Why would a "random loss" affect one in three of your messages?
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Franz Gnaedinger
As we have seen last time, m'ac-da-lun-ac, surviving
in La Madeleine and Magdalenian, means five regions of
the Moonshine Valley, namely the valley of the winding
river Vézère. That river is really winding, between
Montignac and Les Eyzies. Funny enough, the same sort
of line appears when we fill in the grid of 28 by 13
pebbles in an alternative way. Regular way: begin
at the bottom right corner and count always upward.
Alternative way: begin at the same bottom right corner
and go to the left, then to the right, then again to
the left side, always making horizontal U-turns, and
you will certainly remember the number sequence 30 29
30 29 ...
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - o - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I o - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - o - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - o - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - o -
o - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- o - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - o -
- - o - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - o - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - o - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - o - - - - - - - - I - - - - o - - - - - - - -
- - - - - o - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I o - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - o - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - o - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - o - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - o - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - o - - - I - - - - - - o - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - o - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - o - I - - - - - - - - - o - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - I - - - - - - - - - - - - -
PS I am doing online research here, more than just
publishing, very different from working at home.
Regular publishing is: you work, and when you are
finished you publish your paper or book. I jump into
the water, I just go on, on a daily basis, never
knowing what comes next, whether I go astray or find
a way, thus I show interested young readers how
research is done. You don't see that when you read
a paper or a book. Again, once again, againestly:
I write for interested young readers who may find my
messages in the Google archive. I do not write for
edus who are just in the know. That sort of edus
may please killfile me. That would make me glad.
For I wish to go on with my work, quietly, without
having to get ruud.
Franz Gnaedinger www.sehsat.ch
-
Franz Gnaedinger
I don't know how the rock-shelter La Madeleine got its
name, nevertheless I found a poetic explanation for
Madeleine and Magdalenian: m'ac-da'-lun-ac, long version
mhayn-ac-dal-lun-ac, meaning five regions of the wide
land of the Moonshine Valley, namely the valley of the
winding river Vézère in the Périgord, Dordogne, land
of game and honey (National Geographic), and of salmon
galore.
The cave in between the rock-shelter La Madeleine and
Montignac with the Lascaux cave is called Belcayre,
which name sounds rather ancient to me. Let me try to
explain it by means of a word root found by Richard
Fester, present for example in Basque bello for warmth.
Other versions of that common word are e.g. Lappish
buella for fire, also Baal and further mythological
names including Volcano, which testify to a very old
word meaning warmth, fire, burn, heat. If so, there
would be a very interesting combination: ca-bal, sky
heat, for the red summer sun horse, as in the rotunda
or midsummer hall of the Lascaux cave. Ca-bal would
survive in Spanish caballo, Italian cavallo, French
cheval. Onomatopoiesis: cabal cabal cabal cabal ...
for a horse running on soft ground.
So there would be two words for the sun-horse: ca-leq
and ca-bal, perhaps also ca-bel.
Bal might have meant heat, bel warmth. Belcayre may
go back to a hypothetical composite bel-ca-ur-ac,
meaning warm sky blue land - land under a warm blue
summer sky (ca meaning sky; ur a color, often blue,
sometimes red, like sometimes a morning sky, or an
evening sky of the setting sun; ac being an expanse
of land with water, inhabited by a clan).
Next time: lad-ca-ur (Lascaux), hill sky color,
meaning a hill (of limestone) with a painted sky
within.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
Franz Gnaedinger
Dal, we found, may have meant valley. The inverse, lad,
may then mean hill. The origin of "ladder" was something
that slopes.
Ac was an expanse of land with water, where horses and
bisons are grazing, and which was inhabited by a clan.
The inverse, ca, means the sky.
Ur was a conspicuous color, especially a blue sky, or
the deep blue of the river Vézère; also red, the sky on
some mornings, when the sun rises, or evenings, when
the sun sets (ur survives in French azur and vermeil).
Now combine the three words: lad-ca-ur, and you obtain
hill sky color, which may be the origin of "Lascaux,"
meaning hill of the painted sky within. (Say lad-ca-ur
lad-ca-ur lad-ca-ur ........ and 'see' what happens.)
The Lascaux cave is found some two kilometers from the
village Montignac on the Vézère, in a limestone massive
that forms a flat round hill. So the name Hill of the
Painted Sky Within would be very appropriate for that
marvellous masterwork, which was dicovered only in
1940, der-yol-mhayn (65) years ago, and is already
decaying. Our time, the Early Concrete Age, is very
good at destroying the heritage of old. A reason for
me to go on with my interpretations: an act of saving
what can be saved, of extracting the spiritual meaning
before the material basis decays and is lost forever.
An idea from this morning, not even two hours ago:
if gol was the word for mouth and throat (Italian gola
French geule) and language (French geuler, inferior,
and Gaul as land of language?), gol-ur would have been
the word for color, British colour, French couleur,
namely the colors prepared in the mouth and then blown
and spat on the walls of a cave, as demonstrated by
Michel Lorblanchet. More in a later message.
Franz Gnaedinger
We found several inverse forms: ac for land with water,
and ca for sky; oc for eye and see, co for mind and
reasoning; dal for valley, and lad for hill.
Bal meant heat and hot, bel warmth and warm. The inverse
of bal would be lab and could have meant cold, coldness.
This word may have survived in 'Lap'land, meaning cold
land, perhaps also in Greek labros for wild, stormy,
if that word should originally have meant winter storms
on a cold northern coast. The inverse of bel would not
have been cool as opposite of warm, but lips (lèvres
in French, labbre in Italian), from which comes warm
breath ...
Pesh might have been the word for fish, Latin pesces,
French poisson, and for swim, as in French piscine for
swimming pool. The name of the cave Pech Merle could
also rely on pesh, the more so as the well-known scene
of two horses and several hand negatives comprises
a salmon and a Medusa.
The river Vézère was teeming with salmon, and so pesh
could have been the word for the number 400, a 'school'
of 20 by 20 fish. If so, we are now living in the year
mhay-pesh-mhayn (5 times 400 plus 5) AD.
The inverse of pesh would be sheb, and this could have
been the name of smaller and medium-sized land animals,
a word that would survive in sheep, French chèvre for
goat, chevreau for kid, chevreuil for roe-deer and
roebock. It may also be the origin of Latin ibex. Sheb
as verb may have meant run. Shdeb could have been walk,
surviving for example in step, while shdib may have
been the word for shoes or boots: leather wound around
the feet and lower legs, filled with moss; a pleasure
to walk with, as experimental archaeology has proved.
This word-root survives in many forms and languages,
no need to quote them all here. I dare say that this
(of course hypothetical) word goes back to at least
Dolni Vestonice, 26,000 BP. For the fun of it, let me
give that number in Guyan: der-yol-mhay-pesh, 3 x 20
plus 5 yield 65, and 65 x 400 yields 26,000.
Franz Gnaedinger
Bel meant warm, warmth, and the inverse leb meant lip,
also exhaling warm breath between the lips: live, life.
This may be indicated by signs before the mouth of an
animal, for example the short strokes before the mouth
of a hind in the grotto of Pergouset (dep. Lot). Leb
can also be indicated by the sticking out tongue
of bisons, for example in the Lascaux cave. Leb would
survive in English live and life, in German leben and
Leben; ()b for the tongue between the lips would have
become bio in Greek, from which may have come Latin
vita, French vie and vivre.
Long strokes before the lips of an ibex in Jordania,
Kilwa, Mount Horsfield, however, mean the contrary:
bleeding from the mouth, bleeding out, die. The word
for die could have been ble, persisting in blood and
bleeding, perhaps also in pale, in French blême for
getting very pale, and in German bleich, erbleichen,
erblassen for getting pale, verblichen means dead
(now a rare word, but once common).
So we have three words made of the same letters:
bel for warm and warmth; leb for live and life,
ble for bleeding and die.
Ur was the word for color, for the blue sky and water,
for a red morning or evening sky. Gol was the word for
mouth and throat. Gol-ur may then have been the word
for a painter's color prepared in the mouth, then blown
and spat on the wall of a cave as demonstrated by Michel
Lorblanchet. We may assume that ocher was mixed with fat
as binder, and perhaps the juice of a herb or root for
sweetening the bitter ocher. The color would have been
a warm and moist mixture blown on the wall with breath
and thus it would have given leb / life to the painted
animal ...
Col-ur would survive in color, British colour (keeping
a memory of the original though for the time being
merely hypothetical) -ur, and in French couleur.
Gol may also have meant language, gol-ac would have been
the land of language, surviving in Gaul, gallic, and in
Gaelic for Welsh (our Swiss word for French).
If gol was the word for mouth and throat, eat may have
been glo (perhaps surviving in glutton), and drink gla
(onomatopoietic, as our funny gloo gloo).
The inverse of gol is log, which syllable or word can
be pronounced with a smacking l and may have been the
word for tongue, move the tongue, speak, argue. This
word and meaning would have survived in Greek logos
for word and reasoning, in English logic, in French
langue, which means both tongue and language.
Next time: a hunters' language, in both word and
picture
Franz Gnaedinger
Col may have been a narrow passage, a word that would
survive in French col for pass, couloir for gangway,
and oouler for flow. The inverse loc may have been
an enclosure, a lake, an enlocked bay, as in Ltain
locus for place, lacus for lake, and in Gaelic loch.
English lock would have the same root.
As verbs, col and loc may have been hunting terms:
driving animals into a natural enclosure, which may
have been enforced by adding branches and stones (loc),
and then through a narrow passage (col), where they
were easily killed, without too much risk and danger
for the Magdalenian hunters.
A spear could have been a piq, surviving in French
piquer for sting and pierce. A spear-thrower could have
been a sh'piq (man device action), surviving in German
spicken for lard. The inverse of piq, namely qib, might
have been a knave, Old English cnif (qib qnib cnif ?)
Tap and the inverse bat may have been words for beating,
which would survive in French taper and battre, also in
English battle.
The cave Bara-Bahau on the river Vézère has a fairly
uncommon name, whose original form might have been
bar-ac-bhau, meaning bear water/land cave: a cave near
a river, once inhabited by bears, before it was taken
over by Magdalenian hunters. If so, bar would have been
a bear, German Baer; ac an expanse of land with water;
and bhau a grotto or cave, surviving in German Bau for
both building and cave of an animal such as a fox or
a dachs, Haus for house, Behausung for shelter.
People lived in the Bara-Bahau cave, but not in the
Lascaux cave, where animals became symbols of heavenly
bodies, the horse a symbol of the sun, and the bison
a symbol of the moon (Marie E.P. Koenig), while hunting
events became astronomical or calendaric events: spears
hitting the "Chinese" horse in the axial gallery mark
the end of the five cold solar periods, and the spear
hitting the red midsummer horse in the rotunda or
midsummer hall marks the end of the year, hence
New Year.
Man has always projected his technical facilities
on the sky. Newton turned the cosmos into a mechanical
clockwork, and physicists of our days are trying to
explain it as a computer ...
Franz Gnaedinger
Ca-leq, we saw, was the sun horse, a mare, while ca-lun
was the moon bison, a bull. Now let us try to find sense
in the inverse forms. Qel-ac is easily understood as
fertile land: Périgord, Dordogne, a river land of
plenty; land of game; of deer, ibices, horses, bisons,
and salmon galore, of honey and herbs, and evverything
a Magdalenian could dream of ... According to Richard
Fester, kell and its many variants were and still are
a very frequent word having to do with women, sexuality,
fertility, and giving birth. You may also consider
German Quelle for well, spring, source. Ca-lun was the
moon bull, the moon; lun alone moonshine, especially
coming from a full moon; so the inverse would suggest
new moon, and nul-ac the land under a new moon, hence
a real dark night. Nul would have become Latin nihil
for nothing, English nul, German Null for zero, and
Nacht for night, close to nul-ac for a really dark
land under a new moon or rather empty moon, as in
German Leermond, contrary to Vollmond / full moon.
Ca-bal for the summer horse; inverse lab-ac for cold
land, Lapland. Ca-bel for warm summer sky, inverse
leb-ac for land of life, supplying the Magdalenian
hunters with plenty of meat.
One may look out for syllables and their inverse forms
and consider their possible meaning. One such pair is
dib and bid. Dib may have been a spoon and a vessel,
a dipper, verb dip, while bid may have been a cooking
pit layed out with leather, filled with meat or salmon,
herbs and water, whereupon a hot stone was taken from
the fire and rolled into the water in order to make it
boil, and the meal cook. Bid would survive in English
pit, in French bidon for bucket, also in familiar bide
and bidon for belly ... Manger et boire "comme Dieu
en France" - eat like God in France. And drink a fine
Bordeaux, in my opinion the best wine in the world
(which, by the way, was the gift of an Englishman who
told the dwellers of the Gironde how to make a real
good wine).
Next time: vad water wet, dra dry, ca-vad cloud rain,
vad-ur water-blue Vézère (new ideas, not even an hour
old when I type this message)
Franz Gnaedinger
also a word for just water? If so, it may have been vad.
Latin aqua would then have combined ac and vad, ac-vad.
Vad for water may survive in English wade, water, wet,
while the inverse dav may have been the word for moist
air, mist, fog, surviving in English dew and German Tau.
Dra may have been the word for dry. Dra-ac would have
meant dry land, and may have become Latin terra. It
would have survived in English dry, German trocken.
A permutation of dra, ard, may have been the origin
of German Erde, also present in irden, made of clay,
and Kartoffel for potato, ard-appel (or so), earth
apple (also Grundbirne, ground pear); Swiss German
Haerdoepfel. English version earth, French terre.
Dra-ac may have become dra'c and would survive in
dragon, German Drachen, as symbol of a really dry,
even fiery hot ground - a dragon lives in a cave,
hence inside the earth, and most dragons are known
from Asia, where draughts are a severe menace.
So we have dra dry draught dragon.
Ca was the sky, ca-vad would have been the wet sky,
rain, clouds - ca-vad - dvad - cloud. French ouatte
for cotton wool may have the same origin: of a cloudy
appearance, soft and fuzzy (and able to soak up drops
of body liquids).
Ca-leq was the sun-horse, or simply the sun, also
the word for day (when the sun shines), whereby the
combination of both meanings survives in our Sunday,
German Sonntag. Ca-lun was the moon bull, also the
word fo a moonlit night, while the inverse nul-ac
was a real dark land under a new moon, hence night,
in German Nacht. Ca-bal was the red summer horse,
or summer; the inverse lab-ac was cold land, winter
(Lapland). Ca was the sky, ac-ur was the land under
a blue sky, surviving in azur. Ca-vad was a cloudy
sky, meaning rain. Vad-ur means blue water, and
may well have been the original word for the deep
blue river Vézère in the Moonshine Valley of the
Five Clans m'ac-da'-lun-ac ...
Note the two forms of night, one with moonshine,
especially at full moon: ca-lun; and one for a dark
night, especially at new moon: nul-ac.
You may also remember ca-lic for a bright sky, and
the negation ca-lic-in for a caliginous, misty,
foggy day.
Franz Gnaedinger
Meanwhile we found explanations for several local names.
Lad-ca-ur, hill sky colo(u)r, hill of the painted sky
within, Lascaux. Vad-ur, water blue, blue river Vézère.
Mhayn-ac-dal-lun-ac, m'ac-da'lun-ac, five land valley
moon land, moonshine valley of the five clan-regions,
rock-shelter La Madeleine, Magdalenian. Bel-ca-ur-ac,
warm sky blue land, land under a warm blue sky, cave
Belcayre. Pesh, fish, rock-shelter Le Poisson, between
Haute-Laugerie and Les Eyzies. Bar-ac-bhau, bear land
cave, cave of the bear land, cave Bara-Bahau.
The five clans of the Moonshine Valley of the river
Vézère would have been the ones of 1) Montignac and
Lascaux, 2) Belcayre, 3) La Madeleine, 4) Le Poisson,
5) Bara-Bahau.
I still have no explanation for Les Eyzies, but I found
a pretty one for Montignac. The original name might have
been mon-dig-lun-ac, mountain one moon land. This would
mean: mountain or large hill, on whose top the aspiring
shamans were spending the midsummer moon (a month around
June 21), studying the starry sky in the warm nights,
taught by the arch-shaman of the lad-ca-ur (Lascaux)
university, whose portrait is seen in the axial gallery
of the Lascaux cave, given as a roaring megaceros, and
he _had_ to shout when he was teaching all those young
men on top of mon-dig-lun, Mount One Moon, high above
dal-lun-ac, the Moonshine Valley of vad-ur, of the
beautiful deep blue river Vézère ...
The inverse of mon is nom, French for name. This could
mean that the names of the important astronomer shamans,
the roaring megaceroi, were remembered on mon-dig-lun,
perhaps by means of wooden statues bearing inscriptions?
Gallic means both French and wit. The roaring megaceros
in the axial gallery of the Lascaux cave as portrait of
a teaching shaman would surely be witty. If you happen
to visit Paris, don't miss climbing on top of Notre Dame
and having a look at the funny figures along the lofty
balustrades: obviously caricating some preachers in
the church below ... Gallic wit. (Jacques Guy: if you
are spending spring in Paris, go and have a look.)
Next time: sharing a mon-dig-lun seminar and learning
how to handle the calendar of 28 by 13 small pebbles
Franz Gnaedinger
Lovely midsummer has come. Over der-yolg (3x20) young
men and some yolg (20) young women have gathered on
mon-dig-lun (Mount One Moon) near lad-ca-ur (hill of
a painted sky within, Lascaux). The aspiring shamans
are wearing a piece of an antler on a leather string
around their neck, while the aspiring rulers of their
respective clan are wearing a feather in their hair.
Each one prepared an area of clay, empties a bag of
pesh (400) small pebbles, lays out the regular calendar
of yol-mhay-der (28) by clyn-der (13) pebbles, with
a full moon marking the night before New Year. Now the
arch-shaman poses a problem. He has to shout in order
to be heard by all: CA-LUN (a full moon) CLYN-DIG
(occurs eleven days after New Year), CA-LUN, CA-LEQ,
NUL-AC DER (lay out the calendar for such a year, give
the full moons, the solar periods, and the new moons of
three nights each). Below on the left side the regular
calendar; on the right side the solution to the above
task; m stays for a full moon, s for the end of a solar
period, x for a coincidence of a full moon and a solar
period, n for a new moon, W for midwinter. A full moon
coincides with midwinter, marked w; the begin of a new
moon period with the end of a solar period, marked z.
The dots and letters replace small pebbles of various
colors:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . m . . . . . . . . . n n
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . m . . . . . . . . n n
. . . . . . . . . . s . . . . . . . . . . . . s . n
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . m . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . m . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . s . . . . . . . . . . . . s . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . m . . . . . . .
. . . . . . W . . . . . . . . . . . . w . . . . . .
. . . . s . . . . . . . . . . . . s . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . m . . . . .
m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . m . . . .
. x . . . . . . . . . . . . s . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . n . . . . . . . . m . . .
. . m . . . . . . . . . . n n . . . . . . . . m . .
. . . m . . . . . . . . . n n . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . s . . n n . . . . . . . . x .
. . . . m . . . . . . . . . . n n . . . . . . . . m
. . . . . m . . . . . . . . . n n . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . s . . . . . . . n n . . . s . . . .
. . . . . . m . . . . . . . . . . n n . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . m . . . . . . . . . n n . . . . . . .
. . . . . s . . . . . . . . . . . . z n . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . m . . . . . . . . . . n n . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . m . . . . . . . . . n n . . . . .
. . s . . . . . . . . . . . . s . . . . n n . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . m . . . . . . . . . . n n . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . m . . . . . . . . . n n . . .
s . . . . . . . . . . . . . s . . . . . . . . . n n . .
m
Franz Gnaedinger
A further lesson for aspiring shamans and rulers,
given on top of mon-dig-lun, lad-ca-ur university,
free for Usenet members.
Lay out squares of small pebbles and count the pebbles,
1 or 1x1, 2x2 are 4, 3x3 are 9, 4x4 are 16, and so on:
1 dig 4 dag 9 mhay-dag 16 p'he-dig 25 yol-mhayn
64 der-yol-dag 81 dag-yol-dig 100 mhay-yolg
121 mhay-dig-yol-dig 144 mhay-du-yol-dag
169 mhay-der-yol-mhay-dag 196 mhay-dag-yol-mhay-dig
289 clyn-dag-yol-mhay-dag 324 p'he-dig-yol-dag
361 p'he-der-yol-dig 400 (yo-yolg) pesh
Do you notice a regularity? Answer: there is a pattern
emerging, dig dag dag dig (-) dig dag dag dig (-) ...,
while no square numbers end on -du or -der.
Give the lunar periods of 30 and 29 days, and the solar
periods of 41 and 40 days, as squares. Solution:
5x5 plus 2x2 (plus 1) 6x6 plus 2x2 (plus 1)
Do the same for the lunisolar number 325, and for the
year of 365 days. Solutions: 18x18 plus 1x1, 17x17 plus
6x6, 15x15 plus 10x10; 19x19 plus 2x2, 14x14 plus 13x13.
Now consider the Sacred Lunisolar Calendar and find
a square number:
(h) 41 days (i) 40 days (b) 41 days
(g) 40 days (a) 41 days (c) 40 days
(f) 41 days (e) 40 days (d) 41 days
Solution: the row i-a-e and the line g-a-c yield
mhay-dig-yol-dig days or pebbles each that can be
given as squares of clyn-dig by clyn-dig pebbles.
Well, the lesson is over, but you got some homework.
Consider the above calendar. Neither 40 days nor 41
days nor the sum of all nine solar periods, 365 days,
are square numbers. Nevertheless, the numbers 40, 41
and 365 can be given as nine small squares in one big
square. Find out how this can be done. - A puzzle of
Lascaux mathematics, 17,000 years old, still rather
demanding, and worth trying, for the solution is
beautiful and elegant.
Franz Gnaedinger
) ) ) ) ) O O O O ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) O O O O O ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) ) O O O O ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) O O O O O ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) ) O O O O ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) O O O O O ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) ) O O O O ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) O O O O O ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) ) O O O O ) ) ) ) )
O O O O ) ) ) ) ) O O O O
O O O O O ) ) ) ) O O O O O
O O O O ) ) ) ) ) O O O O
O O O O O ) ) ) ) O O O O O
O O O O ) ) ) ) ) O O O O
O O O O O ) ) ) ) O O O O O
O O O O ) ) ) ) ) O O O O
O O O O O ) ) ) ) O O O O O
O O O O ) ) ) ) ) O O O O
) ) ) ) ) O O O O ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) O O O O O ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) ) O O O O ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) O O O O O ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) ) O O O O ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) O O O O O ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) ) O O O O ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) O O O O O ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) ) O O O O ) ) ) ) )
Franz Gnaedinger
The Lascaux cave, I believe, was used for initiating
aspiring rulers of the clans that populated the Guyenne
in the Magdalenian period of time. The composite animal
seen from the entrance told a young man how a ruler must
be: strong as a bull, caring as a pregnant mare, decided
as a feline, and making a mindful use of weapons, which
is why the horns grow out of the head of that bearded
human animal ...
The glory of the rotunda promised a young ruler fame.
However, he was then lead to the room of stags, which,
I believe, were the symbol of shamans, and then to a
four meters deep pit, wherein are shown a wounded bull,
a falling birdman, and a bird on a pole that points
downward into the ground. Their eyes, according to
Michael Rappenglueck, symbolize the stars of the summer
triangle. Left of them a running rhinoceros, behind her
a line of 3 dots above, and a parallel line of 3 dots
below. Marie E.P. Koenig sees in the rhinoceros the
goddess of life, and in the dots behind her 3 earthly
and 3 heavenly lives for each the bison, the birdman,
and the bird:
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6c.JPG
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6d.JPG
In my opinion, the birdman is the ruler of the Gironde
and Dordogne, the bull the ruler of the French Alps,
and the bird the ruler of the Pyrenees, while the upper
line of 3 dots are a heavenly life for a worthy ruler
of either region, whereas the lower dots mean that an
unworthy ruler will just be dropped. And even the fame
of a worty ruler will fade in time, as the glory of
the rising midsummer sun eclipses the billiant stars
of the magnificient summer triangle ... A good lesson
for the young men who wish to rule their clan. The task
of a ruler is demanding, even dangerous, and fame can
easily be eclipsed, so what really counts is to live
for the community of the Guyenne, whose glory may
persist for a very long time - as it really does.
Franz Gnaedinger
Marie E.P. Koenig believes that the rhinoceros in the
Lascaux cave was the goddess of life. I agree. Have
a look at the so-called Venus from nearby Laussel:
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6g.JPG
The woman holds a horn before her round empty face,
evoking the rhinoceros from Lascaux. She lays one hand
on her womb, promising a new life to a good ruler,
presumably among the stars of the summer sky.
Her first name may have been ma-dra, meaning my earth,
the earth is mine ... Ma, we have seen earlier on, was
a most common possessive pronoun, while dra was the
earth, dry earth, matter - the Biblical dust of which
we are made and to which we shall return. There would
have been many emanations of that goddess, including
the rhinoceros, a powerful animal thundering across
the earth as if owning it ... Now the second name of
the goddess of Laussel may have been leb-ac, a word
we encountered before, as inverse of ca-bel warm sky,
leb-ac fertile land. Note the difference between ac
and dra; dra was dry, dry earth, matter, earth per se,
while ac was land with water.
Now these hypothetical names are fascinating. Ma-dra
would have become both materia and mater, Magna Mater,
mother, while the inverse ard-am would have become Adam,
the one who was made of clay ... Leb-ac may have become
leb-a eba Eva Eve, also life life leben Leben, and the
inverse of leb-a is, yes, a-bel Abel ...
Even some names in the Bible could go back to ancient
words and early ideas.
In my humble understanding, truth is an eternal task,
engaging every generation, and all ages.
Franz Gnaedinger
Ma dra! says the goddess of earth and life: the earth
is mine; dry earth, matter itself, from which comes
every life, and into which every life returns. The
inverse of dra, namely ard, would survive in earth,
Erde, irden, and many other forms. The inverse of
ma-dra, namely ard-am, would survive in Adam, the one
who was made of clay. Ard may have become ars in Latin,
art in English - as the first works of art presumably
were sculpted in clay, but survived very rarely, as for
example the pair of bison deep in a subterranean recess
of the French Pyrenees, Tuc d'Audoubert, Magdalenian,
14,000 years old. A permutation of dra and ard is dar,
which became Latin terra, ma-dar mater, English mother,
German Mutter, while Italian madre returned to the
original ma-dra form, madra madre.
Ca-bel was the warm sky, the inverse leb-ac, life land,
was the fertile land, second name of the goddess, which
became leb-a eba Eva Eve, while the inverse of her leba
name became the name of her son Abel.
Her other son was Cain, easily understood as ca-in:
ca s-ca-y sky, followed by the negation in. The inverse
of ca-in would be ni-ac, whereby ac is land with water.
Ni might be another negation, as in Latin nihil, and
survive in the French double negation ni ni for neither
nor; also Italian no, French non, English no, German
nein, Russian njet. A confirmation comes from the cave
of Niaux, which name can be read as ni-ac-ur, no ocher,
and really are the animals in that cave drawn in black.
Cain slew Abel, which is why he got no place in heaven,
among the stars, ca-in. The inverse ni-ac says that
there is neither place on land for a felon.
Old Irish cain means statute, law, rent, confirming the
aspect of law. The original form of the law would have
been a list of what makes one a criminal or even a felon
and lose ones right of a place in heaven (ca-in) and on
land (inverse ni-ac). "Thou shalt not" was the old law.
Franz Gnaedinger
(this message did not arrive, so I type it again)
The hand negatives on cave walls, I believe, were from
rulers, claiming a place among the stars of the summer
triangle - first symbolically on a stone sky ca-let-:
(as explained in an earlier message), then for real on
the actual sky (consider that an Egyptian star had five
rays, corresponding to the five fingers of a hand).
Cain murdered his brother Abel. So there was no place
for him in heaven (ca-in), nor on land (inverse ni-ac).
In the cave Cosquer near Marseille appear many hands.
A few of them had been wiped out. These may be cases
of bad rulers who lost their right of a place among
the stars of the summer triangle, hence in heaven.
Now for the so-called "blessed men" on cave walls.
The one at Le Gabillou, Dordogne, a man with a bull's
head, is hit by 3 lances, two of which aim at his eye.
The bullman, I believe, was a ruler of an eastern clan.
Hence a ruler of such a clan had either been attacked
- or had been executed for having committed a felony.
Above the blessed man of Pech Merle is a large bird:
this might be the ghi'shac, supreme ruler of all clans
in the Guyenne, inflicting death on a felon by touching
him with the tip of his left wing - a black feather?
In the Cougnac cave is shown a megaceros, which animal,
I believe, symbolized the arch-shaman, ruler of all
shamans in the Guyenne. On his flank appear in clock-
wise direction: on the left side, near the neck of the
megaceros, a stag, probably a local shaman; above the
mane and back line of a horse, probably a weak sun;
on the right side a fat, fully drawn out ibex, probably
indicating midwinter (remember the opposing ibices at
the rear end of the axial gallery in the Lascaux cave);
at the bottom a blessed man (head omitted) who is hit
by three lances - a felon, whose life was sacrificed
at midwinter in order to reinstall order and reinforce
the weak winter sun and make it ascend again?
Another male megaceros in the Cougnac cave is followed
by a female megaceros - the arch-shaman's wife? or an
arch-shamaness in her own right?
Franz Gnaedinger
Oc vad-ur? pesh, pesh pesh pesh, bhau shde' piq, ca-bel
pesh, log / Shdeb-in, ble yolg / Oy, oc-cil, sheb vad,
vad vad dra -: ac-ur shdib / Oc lic ...
Did you see (oc) the blue river? (vad-ur, Vézère). The
fish are coming (pesh), salmon galore (pesh pesh pesh,
400 400 400 fish). Go (shdeb) to the cave (bhau) and
get your harpoon (piq). The weather is fine (ca-bel),
so let us go fishing (pesh), I propose, I say, I have
spoken (log). / I can't walk (shdeb-in), my left foot
(yolg) is wounded (ble). Oy, I see (oc), I see (cil).
I run (sheb) to get water (vad). Then I wash your wound
(vad), thoroughly and carefully (vad vad). Then I dry
your foot (dra). Then I chew the herb the shaman gave me
and spit the juice as a blood-stilling disinfectant on
your wound (-:) and then I place a layer of red ocher
on it (ac-ur), may the red color give you back the blood
you lost! (implicit in ac-ur for red ocher), and then
I shall wind a protecting strip of soft leather around
your foot (shdib as noun and verb). / I see (oc) light
(lic), I am glad (lic also means luck), thank you ...
When I use Guyan (ghi-an) for inventing dialogues I see
that many words are still missing, for example for wait,
lay down, herb. Gyuan may have had some pesh or du-pesh
(400 or 2 x 400) basic words, such as ca for sky and bel
for warm (both adjective and verb) and warmth; or pesh
for fish, swimming and fishing, and as number 400, or
simply meaning plenty; allowing many composites: ca-bel
for sky warm, fine weather; and whole sentences: ca-bel
pesh - the weather is fine, so let us go fishing. Bal
meant hot, so ca-bal pesh would mean: it is so hot,
let us go swimming ...
Why did Homo sapiens sapiens (Cro Magnon) prevail over
Homo sapiens (Neanderthal)? One theory says the reason
was a higher manual and mental skill; another theory
proposes a better communication among the Cro Magnons.
I guess both theories are right, and communication was
playing a crucial role.
Magdalenian might have sounded something like the above
dialogue - although a then dweller of the Périgrod might
roll on the floor laughing if he could hear me babble in
such a way. But, who nose, he might understand me.
Franz Gnaedinger
The stag, I believe, symbolized the shaman, while the
giant stag megaceros was the symbol of the arch-shaman,
and the female megaceros following a male in the cave
of Cougnac may either be his wife, or an arch shamaness
in her own right.
In the abside of the Lascaux cave are drawn many stags.
Especially nice are the swimming stags, which might keep
a memory of the shamans who gathered at Lascaux and had
to cross the vad-ur, the blue river Vézère.
Such a meeting may have happened once in eight years,
when the lunisolar calendar was re-adjusted by adding
two leap days, and when the young rulers were initiated.
The cave would have been opened one single day once in
eight years. This would make 125 days in 1,000 years.
The very rare visits could explain why the paintings
were so well conserved when discovered in 1940. And
why they were so quickly growing funghi since then,
what with all the visitors who came very day.
Looking out for a word for the shaman stag I found
C'HER NOT-: (ending on a "spitting" t, produced by
touching the lips with the tip of the tongue). C'her
would mean stag, not-: would be mind, reason, together
stag with a human mind (while a real stag was a most
common pray of the Magdalenian hunters).
C'her-not-: allows many derivations: Greek noos or nous
for mind, reason, will, opinion; Latin notare, English
note, notch, notion; French cerf and German Hirsch for
stag; English horn and German Horn; and Cernunnos, name
of the oldest Celtic god who was wearing horns, most
often antlers of a stag, as for example on the silver
cauldron from Gundestrop, Denmark,
The sptting t-: refers to the shaman as painter who
blew and spat his colors on the wall, and to the shaman
as healer who chew the herbs and spat them on a wound.
You may know that saliva is a natural disinfectant.
Erb may have meant grass, herb; Italian erba for grass,
erbe for herbs and vegetables. Bre might have been a tree,
French arbre; also branch and break, German brechen,
break off a branch. Reb may have been a bush or a tree
bearing fruit: German Rebe for vine. Ber may have been
a berry, German Beere; as fruit pear, German Birne,
French poire, Italian pera.
Franz Gnaedinger
Dig was a finger, as number 1, as verb touch, also poke,
poke a hole, and this may have been the origin of ancient
Greek dia, through.
A shaman was a stag C'HER with a human mind NOT-: ending
on a spitting t (tip of the tongue touching the lips).
This would have a humorous aspect, for the shaman was
chewing herbs like a deer, and then spitting them on
a wound, while a painter shaman was preparing his colors
in the mouth and then blowing and spitting them on the
wall of a cave (see Michel Lorblanchet).
DIG NOT-: may be the origin of diagnosis, meaning touch
know - as children have to touch everything in order to
really know it. A shaman takes the hand of a pale man
lying on the ground: is there a pulse? if yes, the man
is still alive; if not, the man is probably dead. By
touching his patient, a shaman can see through (dia)
the skin, learn and know and have an idea (notion) of
what is going on inside a human being.
The inverse of DIG would be GID and may mean give, take,
surviving in give, gift, and get.
Franz Gnaedinger
Magdalenian lic for light, shine, luck, would have
become the name of the Celtic sun-god Lugh, meaning
'the shining one.' In Gaul he was known as Lugus and
gave his name to the city of Lugdunum / Lyon. Lugh's
festival Lughnasadh (Loo-neseh) was held on August 1.
That is the National Day of Switzerland; we celebrate
it by means of fires on hills, lanterns, and fireworks.
Interestingly, the second solar period in the lunisolar
calendar of Lascaux began also on August 1:
h41 Apr01-May11 / i40 May12-Jun20 / b41 Aug01-Sep10
g40 Feb20-Mar31 / a41 Jun21-Jul31 / c40 Sep11-Oct20
f41 Jan10-Feb19 / e40 Dec01-Jan09 / d41 Oct21-Nov30
The other festivals of the Celtic year refer to pastoral
events and therefore do not fit into the above calendar,
which, I claim, was the calendar of the Magdalenian
hunters in the Guyenne.
The Magdalenian festival celebrated on August 1 would
have been CA-LIC, sky bright, perhaps represented by
the second red horse in the rotunda or midsummer hall
in the Lascaux cave, ahead of the red midsummer horse.
Might also have been called CA-BAL, sky hot.
We may assume that the begin of every solar period of
the above calendar was celebrated. For example the end
of period g and begin of period h would have been the
end of the five cold periods, symbolized by one of the
"Chinese" horses in the axial gallery (the one ahead).
April 1 is our fool's day; might originally have been
a day when everybody was overjoyed by the final end of
winter and begin of the warm season, and thus in the
mood of making silly jokes ... The name of the spring
festival could have been CA-BEL, marking the begin of
the warm season, inverse leb-ac meaning life land, name
of the goddess of land and life, the Venus from Laussel,
whose son was 'a-bel, Abel ...
Franz Gnaedinger
Ghy may have been the name of a birdman, a ruler of
a clan in the Magdalenian Guyenne, surviving in the
French name Guy, and in English guy for man. His wife
might have been a ghyn. Ghi ghi ghi - ghyn ghyn ghyn
... may pass for a male bird and female bird calling
each other.
Ghyn would have become Greek gynae for woman; nordic
kvynna and kvynde for woman; Old German kinden for
woman (Kind for child!); Anglo-Saxon cwen for woman;
Scottish quean for a single woman; ghyn as wife of a
ruler ghi survives in queen; the Old Celtic form cyning
goes back to cyn for tribe, clan; Norwegian kona means
wife; Anglo Saxon cund means birth, gennan give birth;
Latin genus means kind in one sense of the word, while
the other sense of kind as friendly also applies to
womean, says Richard Fester, in whose book on the Ice
Age I find all those words. Scottish kin means a cleft,
while Latin vagina, also mentioned by Richard Fester,
may, in the light of Gyuan or Ghyan as reinvented until
now, combine vad for water and ghyn for woman: vad ghyn
- water woman, amniotic fluid in a woman's womb; while
vad not-: (ending on a kissing t, tip of tongue softly
touching the lips) means water mind, surviving in Venus,
the goddess of love emerging from the water ...
3 very small figurines of a Magdalenian bird goddess,
15,000 years old, had been found in western Switzerland
(neck womb upper leg), in the steatopygic form Marija
Gimbutas explained as a birdwoman carrying an egg.
Mammoths survive in Switzerland until some 10,000
years ago, which was a reason for Magdalenian hunters
to life here. Also the Region of the Three Lakes in
western Switzerland can be seen as a birdland, which
is a main idea of the menhirs at Yverdon-Clendy.
(You may look up the illustrations in the menhir
chapters on my website www.seshat.ch, or my lost
thread Chauvet Lascaux Laussel Willendorf.)
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
Water is a vital element, so we may look out for
further words concerning water.
What we found until now: vad means water wade wet wash,
while the inverse dav may survive in English dew, German
Tau. Vad ghyn, water woman, refers to the amniotic fluid,
and may survive in vagina, alos in the name of the Sabine
harvest goddess Vacuna. Ac means land with water. Ac vad
enforces the aspect of water and would have become Latin
aqua. Dra ac enforces the aspect of earth, of dry land,
and would survive in draught, in German trocken for dry,
also in English dragon and German Drache, for a dry land
'burning' under a fiery sun, and really burning in the
case of a forest-fire. Ca vad, sky water, would survive
in cloud, and also mean rain, while ac vad, land with
water water, could also mean flood, while oc vad would
survive in German Augenwasser, poetic for tears ...
Combine bal for hot with lit-: for pebble and you get
a hot stone. Roll it into a pid (cooking pit) filled
with vad (water) and you heat up the water, bal vad.
Both combinations, bal lit-: and bal vad, may survive
in English boil, French bouillir, and Italian bollare.
Vid may be drained water, surviving in French vide
for empty, while the inverse div may survive in dive.
Val may mean water in motion, also a waving motion.
This word may survive in vale and valley, French val,
Italian valle, in German Welle for wave, and wallen
for the wave-like motion of a cloth, also in English
well, well up. The combination ac val would survive in
German Quelle for a well, a spring.
The inverse lav would mean remove by means of a liquid,
as in French laver and Italian lavare for wash, also
the effect a moving liquid can have, a meaning that may
survive in lava, a fiery liquid removing everything in
its way. The first syllable vol of volcano may have come
from bal (hot) and val (liquid in motion) and may have
been combined into bal val, Baal.
Bal val as indication of a volcano reminds of Humbaba,
the Sumerian god of the volcano. Hum may then be a sound,
especially a remote rumble, while the inverse muh reminds
of a snorting bull or a lowing cow, as in German Muh. So
Humbaba would have been an abbreviation of hum-bal-val:
rumbling (mountain) hot liquid in motion.
Franz Gnaedinger
Dra means dry, earth per se, materia, matter, while dar
may have been a flash followed by a thunder, surviving
in the name of the Celtic god Taranis and the nordic god
Thor. Consider Welsh taran and Irish torran for thunder.
Rad may have been a flash; rad (pronounced quickly, r'd,
rshd) dar (long, rolling) would have been flash thunder
(onomatopoetic).
Dar would have become da de ... De-ac as god-land became
dea for goddess; de-oc as god-eye became deus theos for
god.
The name of the supreme Celtic god was Dagda, meaning
good (dag) da (god), actually able god, for he can all
the other gods can. Magdalenian dag was four, and its
religious and ethical implication may have been: Four
(main) Commandements for rulers who wish to become
a star in the region of the summer triangle in their
next life (or simply go to heaven as we say): Being
strong, caring, decided, and wise. This ca-dag-log /
sky-four-sayings / four heavenly commandments are well
illustrated by the composite animal near the entrance
of the Lascaux cave. That animal combines a bull with
the round belly of a pregnant mare, the mottled hide
of a feline, and a bearded (male) head with a pair of
horns growing out of his front and ending in blades,
hence representing lances, of which a wise use must
be made www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6f.JPG
If you wish to become a ruler, and to be a good ruler
who can hope to be reborn as a star in the region of
the summer triangle, you must be STRONG as a bull,
CARING as a pregnant mare, DECIDED as a feline, and
making a WISE use of your lances, which is why they
grow out of the head of that bearded human animal.
Greek kata means from above, down, completely, going
along with ca-dag-log as four heavenly commandments.
Dag is the name of an Anatolian mountain. The supreme
Hittite god Teshub, the god of the Heavenly Weather
(note Te- as variant of de) resided on mountain tops,
where he overlooked the four heavenly regions, and, we
may surmise, embodied the four commandments (log) which
came down (kata) from his mountains. Zeus, originally
a sun- and weather-god, resided on Mount Olympus, from
where his word (log) spread.
Log would have been pronounced with a clicking l, which
l or ) might once have been a hunter's call that warned
of a feline. Clicking ) would have turned into leo leone
lion Loewe, leopard, and lykos lupus for wolf, also into
log for word, speak, rule, ruler, one who has the say,
a possible title for a ruler in very early times, when
the man with the lion head from Hohlenstein was carved
from a piece of mammoth ivory, some 32'000 years ago.
Franz Gnaedinger
MA was my, mine, and could also have been the word for
me, myself (I), French moi (je). The inverse AM could
then have been the word for be, have: (I) am, have.
MA AM, abbreviated MA'M would have been: I am, I have.
TA might have been the word for you, your, and yours;
French tu for you, ton (masculine), ta (feminine), tes
(plural) for your. The inverse AT may then have been
the word for be and have in the second form. TA AT or
TA'T would have meant: you are, you have; French tu est,
abbreviated t'est, pronounced t'e for you are; tu as,
abbreviated t'as, pronounced t'a for you have.
SA might have been the word for he, she, it, while the
inverse AS would have been the word for be and have in
the third form. SA AS or SA'S would have meant: he or
she or it is or has: French il est, elle est, c'est,
and il a, elle a, ça a (sa a, that has).
The plurals may simply have been ME for we, and EM for
be, have in the first plural form, ME EM or ME'M for
we are, we have; TE for you and ET for be and have
in the second plural form, TE ET or TE'T for you are,
you have; SE for you, ES for be and have in the third
plural form, SE ES or SE'S for they are, they have.
Picture a Magdalenian making a fire in the cave and
asking his darling: MA OC TA'T BEL? This means: My
darling (actually eye), are you warm? do you have warm?
She shudders and replies: MA'M LAB, I am or have cold;
so you lay some more DRA BRE (dry wood) in the fire,
and then you hug her, in order to give her more warm,
whereupon she may reply: MA'M BEL, OC LIC, yes, I have
warm now, I see light, the fire is burning brightly,
I see the light reflecting in your eyes, see the light
shine in mine eyes, and you will see I am happy ...
Someone else might visit a shaman and say: MA'M BAL,
I am hot, I have hot, I catched a fever, whereupon the
shaman wil DIG (touch) him, and find out (NOT-:) what
he has (making a DIG NOT-: or diagnosis), and give him
a blend of ERB (herbs) to chew. Pronounce ERB in the
English way and you get a notion of chewing ...
Franz Gnaedinger
Here you are with a couple of words I deduced in
a more synthetic way and then looked out for evidence:
mas sam ams sma, dov vod ovd dvo, cal lac alc cla.
MAS might survive in mass, much, in German Mass for
size and Masse for mass, a great number of people or
goods. Further meanings: many, more, multiply, grow
in number and size, a lot, plenty, more and more.
The inverse SAM may survive in some, lonesome. Further
meanings: few, little, less; all words on some have a
negative aspect, troublesome, cumbersome, German einsam
for lonely, muehsam for cumbersome and tiresome.
AMS may survive in ample: big, wide, plenty; French
ample for wide, spacious, comprising, embracing; amphi
as ancient Greek adverb means on both sides, all around.
The inverse SMA would survive in small, in German schmal
for narrow. Interestingly, French smala means family,
hence unit of a society (I found smala in a dictionary
and am not really sure whether I can subsume it here).
One may also think of smart in the meaning of achieving
a lot (mas) by means of a small (sma) effort.
DOV may have meant toward, in German zu (zur zum); the
inverse VOD may have meant from, in German von (vom).
OVD may have meant often, grow in number, size, weight
and effect, as in over, overflow, overload, oversize.
Ancient Greek ophello means increase, amplify, multiply,
magnify, enlarge, extend, enhance, raise, heighten ...
The inverse DVO may have meant decrease in number, size,
weight and effect, as in dwindle, or in dwarf (German
Zwerg). Ancient Greek duae has the meaning of misery.
Ma shdeb dov lad-ca-ur: I go to Lascaux, to the hill of
the painted sky within. Ta vod bar-bhau shdeb: you came
from the Bear Cave Bara-Bahau. Dov lad-ca-ur shdeb me?
shall we go to Lascaux together? (Magdalenian me is
English we).
CAL - head, skull. Inverse LAC - standing firmly on the
feet; ancient Greek lax, with the feet, laxis for a plot
or parcel of land. ALC - strong, daring, brave; ancient
Greek alkimos. CLA - make noise while attacking, getting
fame as a hunter, being the founder of a clan; ancient
Greek klazo klaggae kleinos klados.
Franz Gnaedinger
Combine cal for head, holding the head up high, with
lac for feet, or rather standing on the ground, and you
obtain CALAC. This may be a pun, as it also combines ca
for sky with a clicking l for a leader, one who has the
say log, a lys-leo-leone-leon-lion-Loewe-man, a leopard-
man, a lykos-loupos(wolf)-man, and ac for land with
water.
Calac reminds of galaxy. The Milky Way might have been
considered a lic vad, bright water, surviving in liquid,
a heavenly river that leads from a far horizon to the
stars of the summer triangle, where a leader of a clan
hoped to spend his next life ...
The idea of the Milky Way as a jet of milk released by
a goddess may be very ancient, even of Aurignacian
origin. Water dropping from the ceiling of a limestone
cave generates columns of stalactites and stalagmites,
which, when meeting, connect the ceiling ca as heaven
(or cal as head), and the ground ac (or lac as feet,
or as ground whereupon one stands).
White sinter on cave walls may have reminded of dropping
milk, and as the animals are painted on sinter, they are
perhaps shwon traversing the Milky Way, their lic vad,
their nourishing milk provided by the goddess ...
The word for milk may have been gal, the word for drop
lag, their combination galag. Ancient Greek gala means
milk, stalagma a drop. Gla may then have been the verb
drink, as found before, while the inverse alg may have
bben the word for full, onomatopoetic for the belch and
overflowing milk of a satified baby. In the case of an
adult, alg would have meant release a liquid from the
mouth, vomit, caused by a sickness or injury, and this
meaning of alg would have been the origin of ancient
Greek algos for pain, grief, sorrow.
Now there is a problem. Gal cal, lag lac, gla cla, alg
alc sound too similar, so I propose that the c-forms
cal lac cla alc were pronounced with a clicking l, from
now on given as an arc ) which may indicate the curved
tongue whose tip moves along the palate: ca), )ac, c)a,
a)c. The last word a)c for strong, daring, brave, would
have become ancient Greek arkos for defense, protection,
as verb arkeo, and may survive in German stark for
strong.
The binder for colors might well have been breast milk
gal, while a worthy leader of a clan, reborn on the sky,
will be nourished by the milk of the goddess, and become
a)c, a strong man, able to climb the sky along the calac
or galaxy.
Ala might have been the word for white, Latin albus.
A)a might be a call, surviving in hullo hello hallo
alo, while ca)a might have been a prayer, evoking the
goddess, and the former leaders of the clan who are
now living among the stars of the summer triangle on
the Milky Way ...
Franz Gnaedinger
Clicking l, given as ) for the curving tongue whose tip
moves along the palate, would have become l and r and t.
)AC was the ruler of a clan ) on his land with water AC;
as verb stand firmly on one's ground, rule one's land.
The l-form became ancient Greek lax, with the feet, and
laxis for a plot or parcel of land. The t-form became
tagos, ruler; tagme, legion; tageia, supreme command;
tacheuo, I lead, rule; taxis, order, marching formation;
tachys quick.
CA) was the first ruler of a clan, the founding father.
The r-form became ancient Greek kar for head, kara for
head and face, kardia for heart, soul, mood, mind,
reason, in Italian caro for dear, while the l-form
became kalos for beautiful, brave, good, successful,
favorable, useful, noble, honorable, lucky, and survives
in English call, the t-form perhaps in cat as a reminder
of the lion-man of old (man with the head of a lion from
Hohlenstein, 32,000 years old).
A)C for strong, daring, brave, became ancient Greek
arkos and survives in German stark for strong. The l-form
alc became ancient Greek alkar for protection, defense,
alkae for defense, protection, rescue, power, braveness,
courage. The t-form atc is hardly pronounceable, but may
survive in the permutation act, from ancient Greek ago,
I lead and move, with many more meanings, agogos for
leader, aktis for ray, light, sunshine.
C)A, inverse of a)c, was making noise while attacking
animals, being a famous hunter, being the founder of
a clan, having class. The l-form became ancient Greek
klazo klaggae kleinos klados. The r-form survives in
croak and crow, in German Krach for noise, in kraehen
and kraechzen for croak, and in Kraehe for crow, raven
(Latin corvus, ancient Greek koronae for crow, raven).
The seven first menhirs at Yverdon-Clendy as raven,
and the head of the raven-man (all three pictures show
the same stone, from different angles:
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir1b.GIF
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir7k.JPG
www.seshat.ch/home/menhjr54.JPG
www.seshat.ch/home/menhjr60.JPG
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
A)A was a call, as in hullo, hello, hallo, alo. The
t-form became ata, patros, patriarch, pater, father,
Vater, while the r-form became ancient Greek ara for
prayer and request; also for curse, thus indicating
the power of a patriarch who can either help or reject.
CA)A was a prayer to the goddess and the founding
father of a clan who live among the stars of the summer
triangle, which can be seen as the vad ghyn or vagina
of the goddess, or as the head of the bison-man, as
indicated by a painting in the rear hall of the Chauvet
cave in the Ardèche Valley close to the Rhone Valley,
on a limestone outcrop of the ceiling in the shape
of a cone ending 110 cm above the floor of the cave,
showing the vulva and legs of the goddess, while a male
bison shares one leg with her and places his head on
her womb - as if he head been reborn by her, in the sky,
presumably in the region of the summer triangle on the
Milky Way; photograph National Geographic, drawings
by the author:
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6m.JPG
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6n.GIF
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6o.GIF
The t-form of ca)a became ancient Greek kata, from
above, down. The r-form survives in Italian cara for
dear (female form).
)OG was the word, speak, having the say, and became
ancient Greek logos for word and reason. The l-form
survives in French langue and langage, in English
language, also in logic. The t-form became ancient Greek
toge, just because, here, that's why, used in a logical
argument. The r-form became roger for begging vagabond,
then rogue (the r-form can either be very positive, as
in ara for prayer and in caro and cara for dear, or
negative, as in ara for curse, in raka for: you moron,
in roger for begging vagabond, and in rogue).
Franz Gnaedinger
by publishing part 55 and part 56 instead of part 54.
Here it comes:
A lunisolar calendar in the Lascaux cave - part 54
Ca) with a clicking l indicated by the arc ) was the
word for head, for holding the head up high, while the
inverse )ac was the word for standing firmly on the
feet, for standing his man, and for the place one stands
upon, origin of ancient Greek laxis for a plot or parcel
of land. )ac may also be read as ) ac, now meaning the
ruler, the former lion-leopard-lykos/lupus-man and his
ac, the land with water his clan dwells on. Ca) may have
been used for the head of a ruler, and would survive in
skull, perhaps testifying to a special worship of a dead
ruler's head or skull. The skulls from Jericho come to
mind, covered with clay, and sculpted in order to make
the deceased appear living again.
Looking out for further words I found cap and pac, hed
and deh.
Cap may have been the body, especially the top of the
head, and became Latin caput for head, corpus for body,
German Kopf and Koerper, while ancient Greek kephalos
may combine cap and ca) to capca), perhaps the word
for a human clad in the costume of an animal. The ruler
of an eastern clan, I believe, more specifically of
a clan in the Rhone Valley, was a bullman; the rhe ruler
of a western clan, Gironde and Dordogne, was a birdman;
and the ruler of a southern clan in the Pyrenees was
a bird; hence the rulers of these tribes may have worn
masks of their animals on special occasions. Ca) would
then be the head of a ruler, cap the mask of his animal
worn on the head, and this meaning of cap as something
worn on top of the head would survive in English cap,
German Kappe. Cap as group of animals may survive
in cattle.
The inverse pac would have been the body again, now
the bulk of the body, also a group of people or animals.
Pac would have beome Latin pectus for breast, and bestia
for animal. It survives in many variants, perhaps in
bulk and body itself, in German Backe English cheek,
in English back German Ruecken, in German Bauch and
Becken English belly and pelvis, in French pacage
English pasture, in English bacon German Speck. French
pechtel means live-stock, bétail cattle. Pac as group
of people would survive in English pack. A further
version of pac is ancient Greek pachys for fat, broad,
dense, obese, full, strong, powerful, rich, noble,
compact, coarse, stupid, plump. The many variants
and meanings testify to a very ancient and important
word.
Hed was the top of a human being, surviving in head
and German Haupt, while the inverse deh marks the other
end of the human body, toe, German Zeh.
Franz Gnaedinger
Mhayn was the word for the right hand, clyn for
the left hand, p'hed for the right foot, yolg for the
left foot. Now arb may have been the right arm, inverse
bra the left arm, bar the right leg, rab the left leg.
The hand belongs to the arm, the foot belongs to the
leg, so the complete forms are arm-hand and leg-foot.
Let us combine the new words for the arms and the legs
with the old ones for the hands and the feet:
Arb-mhayn, pronounced ar'mhayn for the right arm and
hand. From this word would have come Latin arma for
weapon, as most hunters and soldiers threw their lances
with the right arm and hand. The same ar'mhayn survives
in English arm and hand, German Arm and Hand. Mhayn was
the origin of Latin manus and French main for hand.
Bra-clyn for the left arm and hand. This word would have
become ancient Greek brachion for arm, Italian braccio
and French bras for arm; also bracelet, more often worn
on the left wrist. Clyn survives in English claw, German
Klaue, Finnish kynnae, all three words meaning the same.
Bar-p'hed for the right leg and foot. This word would
have become ancient Greek pous for leg, Latin per pedes
meaning on feet, walk; furthermore English barefeet and
German barfuss; in analogy to mhayn perhaps also German
Bein for leg, English bone and German Gebein.
Rab-yolg for the left leg and foot. Rather difficult
to pronounce, therefore modified. The inverse order,
yolg-rab, might have been the root of Old Netherlandish
and Middle English leggr, further simplified into leg.
If the opening r was modified into sh / g, rab would
have become shab / gab and may be the root of French
jambe anbd Italian gamba for leg. Modify the opening r
into l and you get a possible explanation for Finnish
lahje for leg, while Finish yalka, Lappish juolge and
Old Ugric-Altaic jalga are words for foot, close to the
hypothetical Magdalenian yolg for the left foot. Ancient
Greek rabdos means rod, staff, scepter; rabdalos lean;
radinos lean, tender, agile, swift. German Rappe is
a black horse. Rab might also be the oldest form of
run, along the line of rab rad radinos rinna renna
rinnan rennan rennen run ...
Franz Gnaedinger
Postscript to part 57:
If bar was the right leg and rab the left leg, we get
an explanation for bear: bar-rab barrab barra arra
bara bar - the animal that rears and stands on the hind
legs bar and rab. The short form arra might have been
the root of ancient Greek arktos, Latin ursus, Italian
orso and Fench ours for bear. Rab-bar rabbar rabba raba
rab may then have been the word for a rearing horse and
would suvive in German Rappe for a black horse.
(Barabbas in the Bible was a robber, named for a stealing
bear bar-rab? Barbar, originally someone who got two right
legs and is hopping around instead of walking? someone
who can't walk properly, can't talk properly, a foreigner)
Now for part 58
The special sound produced by the tip of the tongue
touching the lips would have survived in English th,
and would have become s (c z) / p (b ph f) / t (d th).
I -: O became iso ipo ito. O -: I became osi opi oti.
I O -: became ios iop iot. -: O I became soi poi toi.
Looking up ancient Greek words for these and further
variants I found: Isos for equal; hippo for horse;
istaemi for stand, hold up, weigh, resist, arrange,
dispose (and many more meanings); eido for look, form,
opinion, picture, idea. Osia for divine right, pious
duty and obligation; opis for observance, obligation,
followance; oti for because. Sio for god; bio for life,
Latin pius pia Italian pio pia for pious; tio tino for
pay, award, atone, revenge. Oios for lonely; hoiper
for where to?; oitos for lot, destiny, fate, ill-luck,
misfortune, death. Ios for one and the same; also ios
for arrow and poison; io (omega) for an exclamation,
when calling a god, or when being hurt; iotaes for wish,
will, order. Hoi soi for your kinfolk; poi for where
to?, poieo for do, make, produce, organize a feast,
induce fear, do a favor, make a poem (poesy), represent,
accept, appoint, estimate, respect, poiaeis for grown
over with grass, poimaen for herdsman, ruler, poimnion
for herd, poinae for penance, revenge, compensation,
reparation, satisfaction; toi for certainly, really.
These words evoke an arch-shaman:
I -: O -- arch-shaman; the firm one; equal to his
forerunners, thus warranting a long tradition; maker
of opinions, ideas and pictures; voice of the divine
O -: I -- awe inspiring divine law, ultimate reason
-: I O -- judge in the name of the divine, requiting
good with good, and evil with evil
O I -: -- one excluded by the arch-shaman: where can
he go now? his fate is misfortune, even death
I O -: -- plead: help me, One and the Same, arch-shaman
in a long line of arch-shamans, have mercy with a pious
believer
-: O I -- plead: do me the favor, maker of ideas and
pictures, let me safely return to my kinfolk ...
Franz Gnaedinger
Magdalenian as spoken in the Guyenne some 17,000 years
ago may have had some pesh (400) or du-pesh (800) words.
A two-year-old child in our time comprehends already
somm 400 words, a four-year-old 1,600 words, while an
American student knows an average of some 14,200 words.
My estimation for the number of Magdalenian words might
even be on the conservative side.
Here are some more words which I found in the synthetic
manner: mel lem elm mle.
Mel could have been something sweet, as ancient Greek
meli for honey, French miel for honey, and something
edible in general, as ancient Greek melinae for millet.
Also a sweet melody, ancient Greek melos.
Lem would have meant collect, either berries or herbs
or honey ... Ancient Greek lambano means touch, take,
seize, chase, conquer, get, also comprehend, perceive,
(with many more meanings).
Elm would have been a shrub or a tree bearing sweet
fruit. One of the oldest and most venerable shrubs
or trees of humankind was the hackberry, belonging to
the genus Celtis of the elm family, bearing cherrylike
fruit, so "elm" could even go back to Africa, where,
as far as I am informed, the hackberry was also known.
Old English elm means noble and survives in the given
name Elmer.
Mle could then have been the contrary of elm, ignoble.
Hindi Mlechi means barbarian, untouchable, not Indian.
So the word field mel lem elm mle could be very ancient,
having spread from Africa to Europe and Asia ...
By the way, ancient Greek melas melaina melan means
black. Richard Fester muses whether the Paleolithic
dwellers of the Guyenne were black, came from Northern
Africa, and lost their skin color during the Ice Age.
Homo sapiens sapiens did come from Africa, and the
oldest rock painting due to Homo sapiens sapiens found
so far is an oblong trapezoid with a regular rhomboid
pattern on a rock wall in Africa, some 70,000 years old.
Bon may have been the word for good, Latin bonus bona
bonum, Italian buono buona bene, French bon bonne bien,
while the inverse nob would have kept the positive
meaning of good, as in noble, Latin nobilis, nobilitas.
A variant may be ancient Greek nomos for custom, manners,
morals, principle, rule, law, regulation, melody (!),
song, and a musical key.
Franz Gnaedinger
The hypothetical words bar for the right leg and rab
for the left leg deserve some more consideration. Hebrew
bar means son, perhaps the one walking at the right side
of his father. Hebrew rabbi means master, perhaps the
one who walks on the side of a father, by a son's or
pupil's or client's left side.
Ancient Greek para may have had the same origin,
surviving for example in parallel.
Bar-rab barrab barra arra bara bar might have been
the word for bear as an animal that can rear and stand
on the hind legs bar and rab. Also the inverse form
may hold: rab-bar. A short form of barrab, namely arra,
might have been the root of ancient Greek arktos -
perhaps in combination with a)c for strong -, Latin
ursus, Italian orso, French ours for bear, while rab-bar
might have been a stealing bear, a robber. Rab-bar could
have been the origin of Old French robber for rob, steal.
Barabbas in the Bible was a robber.
If ancient Greek barbaros came from bar bar, it might
have held satirical meaning: someone who is so very
righteous that he got two right legs (remember the
preference for the right hand) and can't walk anymore
but hops around ... Hoi barbaroi were the Persians,
but also other foreigners who certainly cherished their
own religious belief - also the Celts were fighting in
the name of their gods, and might, moreover, have worn
bear hides ... Sanskrit barbara meant stammering, not
Aryan. So we have: not walking properly, not talking
properly, not going properly (as go means both walk
and talk).
Also bar as noun for "a relatively long, evenly shaped
object of some solid substance ... used as a guard or
obstruction ..." (Webster's), and as verb, bar barred
barring, of obscure, perhaps pre-Latin origin, might
have come from Magdalenian bar for the right leg. French
barrière means a bar that holds up. There are places in
Switzerland called Bar and Barra, designating woods that
serve for protection, also horse pastures, confirming
rab-bar as rearing horse, surviving in German Rappe for
a black horse. Interestingly, Baer (bear) was also used
for bulls, going along with the strong hind leg(s) of
a leaping bull. A robe might originally have been a hide
covering the legs rab and bar. Aramaic abba for father
may be an abbreviation of rabbar, 'abba' abba, meaning
a man who stands there for his family. Much as a bear:
female bears are known for their fierce will to protect
their young ones. Abba was also a female day name for
Thursday.
Coming next: continuation of the glossary (parts 61-79)
and an idea from this morning, Pentecost (part 80); I
hurry sending these messages, for bluemail had been sold
and I might loose my e-mail.
Franz Gnaedinger
Glossary of Guyan (ghi-an), Old Magdalenian spoken in
the Guyenne, continuation, delivered in 19 messages;
t-: means a stronger "spitting" or weaker "kissing" t,
produced with the tip of the tongue touching the lips,
a milder form of t-: survives in the English th, and an
arc ) stays for an especially strong clicking l, the arc
symbolizing the curved tongue whose tip moves along the
palate pa)ate ...
CA LUN AC - moon earth; became seluna (when calun for
moon turned into Greek selenae and Latin luna) and then
Siena; ocher of Siena, understood as dust falling from
a yellow or reddish moon rising above Tuscany, as seen
from the Ligurian coast and Côte d'Azur. This idea would
rely on the observation of red dust falling on Tuscany,
which dust, however, comes from the Sahara.
LIC UR AC / AC UR - Liguria, Côte d'Azur; Ocher Road,
leading from Siena to the Guyenne and Cantabria
CA LET-: (t produced with tip of tongue touching lips)
- sky stone, painted cave walls and ceilings. "Spitting"
t refers to the technique of spitting colors on stone
(Michel Lorblanchet). Surviving in French galet. Let-:
for stone became Greek lithos (th) and Latin lapis (p)
CO inverse of OC, eye, see, look - mind, reasoning;
surviving in co- con- com-, thus involving a together,
which is elementary for any form of reasoning; Latin
co(a)gitare means gathering knowledge in one's mind.
An exemplary and witty illustration occurs in the
composite animal seen in the entrance of the Lascaux
cave, which human animal, I believe, tells an aspiring
ruler of a clan that he has to be: as strong as a bison,
as caring as a pregnant mare, as deiced as a feline,
and that he has to make a mindful and reasonable use
of his weapons, which is why lances grow as horns
out of the front of this bearded human animal
MHAYN CLYN P'HED YOLG - r/l hand, r/l foot. Numbers
5 10 15 20. Heavenly sector N-E mhayn, rising midsummer
sun; sector N-E clyn, setting midsummer sun; sector S-E
p'hed, rising midwinter sun; sector S-W yolg, setting
midwinter sun (yolg yellow yolk)
DIG DU DER DAG - 1 2 3 4
PESH - as noun fish, as verb swim or fish, as number 400
Franz Gnaedinger
1 to 28: dig du der dag mhayn mahy-dig mhay-du mhay-der
mhay-dag clyn clyn-dig clyn-du clyn-der clyn-dag p'hed
p'he-dig p'he-du p'he-der p'he-dag yolg yol-dig yol-du
yol-der yol-dag yol-mhayn yol-mhay-dig yol-mhay-du
yol-mhay-der
CLYN-DER - 13, nickname for the practical version of the
lunisolar calendar, grid 28 by 13 pebbles, as indicated
by the geometrical drawing under the megaceros in the
axial gallery of the Lascaux cave; name relying on the
obligation to pay tribute to the ruler and the shaman
of a clan, and this 13 times per year, every 28 days,
for each family on another day. Latin calendare: to
pay tribute; on the calendae: at the begin of a month.
Would be the origin of our "calendar"
Key numbers of the lunisolar and tributary calendar:
30 yol-clyn, 29 yol-mhay-dag, 41 du-yol-dig, 40 du-yolg,
325 p'he-di(g)-yol-mhayn; 13 clyn-der, 28 yol-mhay-der,
364 p'he-der-yol-dag; 365 p'he-der-yol-mhayn (18x20)+5.
A cycle of 8 years are 2,920 or mhayn du-pesh mhay-yolg
(5+2 x 400 plus 5x20) days and require du (2) leap days
M'AC-DA'-LUN-AC from MHAYN-AC-DAL-LUN-AC - five land
valley moonshine land: five regions of the Moonshine
Valley. This would be the valley of the winding river
Vézère, with Montignac/Lascaux, Belcayre, La Madeleine,
Les Eyzies, Bara-Bahau; m'ac-da-lun-ac Magdalena
Maddalena Madeleine
DAL - valley, val, valle, Tal
MHAYN-AC - five ac: a community of five (or up to some
five) ac, each inhabited by a clan
M'AC - an abbreviation of mhayn-ac: chieftain of such
a community of five (some five, or up to five) clans;
surviving in Scottish name Mac
MAYA - another abbreviation of mhayn-ac: chieftain's
wife, surviving in the name Maya or Maja
CA-AC - sky land: possible root of kyklos, cercle and
cycle, circle and cycle, also of cosmos and cosmic
Franz Gnaedinger
BAL and BEL - heat and hot, warmth and warm; surviving
for example in Basque bello for warmth, Lappish boaldet
and boll for burn, Finnish pola and Lappish buella for
fire (Richard Fester)
CA BAL sky heat, red summer sun-horse; survives in
Spanish caballo, Italian cavallo, French cheval for
horse; cabal cabal cabal cabal ...
LEB inverse of bel for warmth and warm - Lip or lips,
from which comes warm breath; surviving in lip, Lippe,
labbra, lèvres (more in the next chapter)
CA BEL - sky warm, yellow sun horse of the spring,
cabel cabel cabel cabel ...
BEL CA UR AC - warm sky blue ac: land under the warm
blue summer sky; cave Belcayre between rock shelter
La Madeleine and Montagnac with the Lascaux cave (bel
warm; ca sky; ur a color, mainly blue, sometimes red,
as the sky; ac an expanse of land with water, inhabited
by a clan)
LAD inverse of dal for valley - hill; surviving in
ladder, originally something that slopes
LAD CA UR - hill sky color: name for Lascaux, hill of
a painted sky within; the Lascaux cave is found some two
kilometers from Montignac, in a limestone massive, which
forms a flat round hill; ur means a conspicuous color,
mainly the colors of the sky and its reflection in the
water, the blue sky, or a red morning sky, or the red
sky of a sunset
LAB inverse of bal for heat and hot - coldness, cold;
may survive in Lap-land, and perhaps in ancient Greek
labros for stormy, if that word originally refered
to cold and stormy northern shores
CA LAB - sky cold, winter sun-horse, calab calab calab
calab ...
BAL and LAB - hot and cold
ALB and BLA - active and inactive, dawn and dask, stand
up and go to sleep; Italian alba for dawn, English black,
ancient Greek alphaestaes for industrious, energetic,
blakeuo for I am lazy
SHEB inverse of pesh for fish - small and medium sized
land animals (sheep chèvre chevreau chevreuil), as verb
run
SHDEB - as verb walk, as noun step (accentuated form
of sheb)
SHDIB - boot, leather wound around foot and lower leg,
filled with moss; survived in many forms and languages;
also dessing, bandage
Franz Gnaedinger
LEB inverse of bel for warm - lips, warm breath exhaled
between the lips, live and life; German leben and Leben;
indicated by a sign before the mouth of an animal, for
example by the short strokes before the mouth of a hind
in the grotto of Pergouset (dep. Lot), or the sticking
out tongue of a bison, e.g. in the Lascaux cave; leb
reduced to ()b as root of ancient Greek bio, Latin vita,
French vie for life
BLE permutation of bel and leb - bleed, bleed out, die;
indicated by long strokes before the mouth of an ibex in
Jordania, Kilwa, Mount Hirsfeld; English bleed, French
blessé for wounded, blême for getting very pale, German
bleich for pale, erbleichen and erblassen for getting
pale, verblichen for deceased (rare, once common)
GOL or GO) with a clicking l - mouth and throat, also
language; Italian gola, Franch geule, geuler (inferior)
GO) UR - ocher, prepared in the mouth, mixed with fat
(or breast milk?) as binder, and perhaps the juice of
a herb or root for sweetening the bitter ocher, then
blown and spat on the wall of a cave, as demonstrated
by Michel Lorblanchet, giving the painted animal leb,
life, as the color is blended with warm moisture and
blown with warm breath; survives in color, British
colour, French couleur
GO) AC - land of language; survives in Gaul for France,
in gallic for the French language and wit, in Gaelic
for Welsh (Welsh, in Switzerland, means French)
G)O - eat; perhaps surviving in glutton
G)A - drink (onomatopoetic, as our funny gloo gloo)
)OG - tongue, move the tongue, speak, argue, word, say,
have the say, language, argument, reason, explanation;
ancient Greek logos for word and reason; survives in
logic, in French langue for both tongue and language,
and of course in language (that keeps the French langue
instead of building a proper English form tonguage)
Franz Gnaedinger
COL - a narrow passage; survives in French col for pass,
couloir for gangway, couler for flow
LOC inverse of col - a natural enclosure, perhaps
strenghtened by means of added branches and stones, also
a lake and an enlocked bay; became Latin locus for place
and lacus for lake; survives in Gaelic loch for lake,
enlocked bay, and in English lock and lake
COL and LOC - hunting terms: driving animals into an
enclosure (loc as verb and noun), then through a narrow
passage (col as verb and noun) so they can be killed
more easily, without too much risk for the Magdalenian
hunters
PIQ - spear; survives in French piquer for stab, sting,
pierce
SH'PIQ - spear-thrower; German spicken for lard
QIB inverse of piq - knive, cut; Old English cnif for
knive
TAP and inverse PAT - beat; survives in French taper
and battre, in English pat and battle
BAR - bear, German Baer (more in message 79)
BHAU - shelter, grotto, cave; German Bau for building
also the cave of an animal such as a fox or a dachs,
Behausung for shelter, Haus for house
BAR AC BHAU - bear / land with water / cave: original
name of the cave Bara-Bahau on the blue river Vézère,
meaning a former bear cave on an expanse of land with
water (the cave Bara-Bahau was inhabited by hunters
from Magdalenian times onward, whereas nobody lived
in the Lascaux cave)
QEL AC inverse of the sun-horse ca-leq - fertile land
NUL AC inverse of the moon bull ca-lun - land under
a new moon, a really dark night
LAB AC inverse of ca-bal for the red summer sun-horse
- cold land; Lapland
LEB AC inverse of ca-bel for sky warm, yellow spring
sun-horse - land of life, providing the Magdalenian
hunters with plenty of meat and fresh herbs
DIB - spoon, vessel, dipper, dip
BID - cooking pit, layed out with leather, filled with
meat or fish, herbs and water, whereupon a stone heated
in a fire was rolled into the water, made it boil and
the meal cook; survives in English pit, and in French
bidon for bucket, also (familiar) in bide and bidon
for belly - manger comme Dieu en France ...
Franz Gnaedinger
CA LEQ - sun-horse, sun, day
CA BAL - sky warm, red summer sun-horse, summer
LAB AC inverse of ca-bal - cold land, winter; Lapland
CA LUN - moon-bull, moonlit night
NUL AC inverse of ca-lun - land under a new moon, dark
land, night
VAD - water, also English wade, wet, wash
DAV inverse of vad - moist air, fog; dew, German Tau
CA VAD - sky water: rain, clouds (cavad cvad cloud)
VAD UR - water blue: beautiful deep blue river Vézère
DRA - dry; German trocken
DRA AC - dry land, earth: became Latin terra, French
terre; permutation ARD became German Erde, irden,
Kartoffel (ard appel, Erdapfel); another reminiscence
of dra-ac might have been dra'c dragon Drache as
symbol of fiery hot earth, hence a draught
MON - larger hill, mountain; Latins mons, English Mount
MON DIG LUN - mountain one moon: top of a mountain or
large hill where the aspiring shamans spent midsummer,
a midsummer month, 30 days around June 21, where they
studied the starry sky, advised by the arch-shaman of
lad-ca-ur (Lascaux), whose "portrait" is shown in the
axial gallery of the Lascaux cave: a roaring megaceros,
shouting in order to reach all the young people on
top of mon-dig-lun ...
NOM inverse of mon - the important arch-shamans may
have been remembered on mon-dig-lun, perhaps by means
of wooden statues bearing inscriptions
Franz Gnaedinger
MA-DRA - the goddess of earth and life saying: my earth;
the earth is mine; I am the earth, from which comes all
live, and into which every life is bound to return ...
Dra would be the earth itself, dust, matter, whereas ac
would be land with water; ma-dra materia 'Magna Mater'
mater madre mother Mutter ... Dar as permutation of
dra became Latin terra, ma-dar again mater mother,
while Italian madre returned to the ma-dra form
ARD-AM inverse of ma-dra - survived in Adam, the one
made of clay; ard became earth, Erde, also Latin ars,
English art, for the first sculptures had presumably
been made of clay
LEB-AC inverse of ca-bel, warm sky - life land, fertile
land, name of the goddess of earth and life; became
leb-a eba Eva Eve
A-BEL inverse of leb-a - Abel, son of Eve
CA-IN and inverse ni-ac - double negation: neither sky
nor land; Cain, a son of Eve, murdered his brother Abel,
and so, we may assume, he was driven from his land ac,
and lost his right on a place in heaven, among the stars
of the summer triangle; ca-in would have been the word
for felon and committing a felony; Old Irish cain means
statute, law, rent, confirming the legal aspect of that
word and Biblical name; first law would have been a list
of crimes and felonies ("thou shalt not ...")
-In NUL NI - three forms of negation, for example
ca-lic-in for a caliginous or misty sky; nul-ac as the
land under a new moon, or rather empty moon, no moon;
and ni-ac as 'no land' for a felon ca-in 'no place in
heaven'; ni became Latin nihil; survives in the French
double negation ni ni for neither nor, in French non,
Italian non, German nein, English no, Russian njet
NI AC UR - no ac-ur, no ocher, name for the cave of
Niaux, where the animals are drawn in black, without
colors
Franz Gnaedinger
C'HER - stag; French cerf, German Hirsch
NOT-: (ending on a spitting t, produced by the tip
of the tongue touching the lips) - human mind, reason,
think; became ancient Greek noos nous, English note
notch notion know
C'HER NOT-: (spitting t) - stag mind: a shaman wearing
antlers, a stag with a human mind, as a painter blowing
and spitting colors on the walls of a cave, as a healer
chewing herbs and spitting them as a disinfectant on
a wound; giant stag Megaceros giganteus an arch-shaman,
female megaceros in Cougnac cave behind a male either
his wife, or an arch-shamaness in her own right.
English horn, German Horn; Cernunnos, oldest Celtic
god, was wearing horns, usually antlers
DIG - finger, touch, poke a hole; as number 1
GID inverse of dig - give and take; survives in give,
gift, get
DIG NOT-: (spitting t) - touch know: possible origin
of ancient Greek dia, diagnosis, gnosis
ELB - if ble means wound, blessé, blood, bleeding,
pale, and die, the inverse means help and heal
ERB - grass, herb; Italian erba for grass, erbe for
herbs and vegetables
BRE inverse of erb - tree, French arbre; also branch,
as verb break, German brechen (break off a branch)
and Brett for board
REB - bush or tree bearing fruit; German Rebe for vine
BER inverse of reb - berry, fruit; English berry pear,
German Beere Birne, French baie poire, Italian bacca
pera
LIC - light, bright, shine, luck, also present in the
name of the Celtic sun-god Lugh
GHI - imitating a bird's call; surviving in French
name Guy, and in English guy for man
GHYN - woman, wife of ghi; survives in many words and
languages, for example in Greek gynae for woman, or
queen as female ruler or wife of a male ruler
VAD GHYN - water (inside) woman, amniotic fluid, became
va'ghyn vagina, also Vacuna, Sabine goddess of harvest
(confirming the equation of woman and fertile land as
found in leb-ac leb-a eba Eva Eve)
VAD NOT-: (ending on a kissing t, tip of tongue softly
touching lips) - water mind; became Venus, goddess of
love emerging from the sea ...
GHYN or variants - birth, give birth, child; also kind,
kinship, tribe, clan, mother of a clan; as queen ruler
of a clan, either by herself, or at the side of her ghi
Franz Gnaedinger
VAD and combinations - water wade wet wash. Inverse
dav survives in English dew and German Tau. Vad ghyn,
water (amniotic fluid) woman, survives in vagina, and
in the name of the Sabine harvest goddess Vacuna. Ac
means land with water. Ac vad enforces the aspect of
water and became Latin aqua. Dra ac enforces the
aspect of earth, dry land; survives in draught, German
trocken for dry, also English dragon German Drache for
land 'burning' under a fierce sun, and really burning
in the case of a forest-fire. Ca vad, sky water, rain,
survives in cloud. Ac vad, land with water water, could
also mean flood, and survives in German Augenwasser,
poetic for tears ...
BAL LIT-: and BAL VAD - heat a stone and roll it into
a cooking pit (bid); survives in English boil, French
bouillir, Italian bollare
VID - dried up; French vide for empty
DIV inverse of vid - full of water; survives in dive
VAL - water in motion, moving and winding like water;
survives in vale and valley, French val, Italian valle,
in German Welle for wave, and wallen for a cloth moving
in a wave-like manner, also in English well, well up
AC VAL - land with water moving water - well, spring;
German Quelle
LAV inverse of val - remove by means of a liquid, also
the effect a moving liquid can have; French laver and
Italian lavare for wash; lava, a fiery liquid removing
everything in its way
BAL VAL - fiery hot liquid; combined to vol in volcano,
and to Baal, originally a god of volcanoes
HUM - sound, especially a remote rumble; English hum
MU inverse of hum - snorting bull, lowing cow; as in
German Muh (onomatopoetic)
HUM BAL VAL - rumbling (mountain) hot liquid in motion:
became the Sumerian volcano god Humbaba (onomatopoetic)
Franz Gnaedinger
DRA - earth, dry earth, matter, earth per se, reign of
the earth goddess of many shapes, among them the mammoth
and rhinoceros; inverse ard became earth Erde irden ...
Ma-dra was the name of the goddess of earth and life, of
giving life and taking life; inverse ard-am Adam as the
one made of clay
DAR - thunder, weather-god, consort of the thundering
rhinoceros; Celtic god Taranis, nordic god Thor; Welsh
taran Irish torran for thunder
RAD - flush; surviving in radiare, radiate
RAD (pronounced quickly, r'd or even rshd) DAR (long,
rolling) - flash thunder (onomatopoetic)
DAR, DA, DE, TE, THE-, SSE-, ZE-, THO-, JU- ... - originally
weather-god, then supreme god, as for example Zeus
DE AC - god land; became dea for goddess
DE OC - god eye; became deus theos for god
CA DA LOG - sky four sayings: enumeration of the four
qualities a good ruler needed, namely to be strong as
a bull, caring as a pregnant mare, decided as a feline,
and making a wise use of his weapons, as shown in the
composite animal at the entrance of the Lascaux cave,
a bison with the round belly of a pregnant mare, the
mottled hide of a feline, and the head of a bearded
man, out of whose front grow a pair of horns that end
in blades. Ca-da'log would survive in ancient Greek
kata, from above, down, completely; in catalogue
as list; and in Dag as name of an Anatolian mountain,
where the supreme Hittite god Teshub resided, god of
the heavenly weather, whose name begins with Te- as
a variant of dar de ... Zeus resided on Mount Olympus
and was in the origin a sun- and weather-god. Log would
have been pronounced with a clicking l, which, in very
early times, may have been a hunter's call that warned
of a feline, and which, later on, became lys leo leone
lion leon Loewe, leopard, lynx, and leukos/lupus for
wolf. Then also log for word, speak, say, rule, have
the say, ruler. A memory of this very early ruler may
survive in the man with a lion's head from Hohlenstein,
carved from mammoth ivory some 32,000 years ago.
Franz Gnaedinger
MA - me, myself (I), my, mine; French moi (je), mon,
ma, mes, le mien, la mienne, les miens, les miennes
AM inverse of ma - be and have, first form singular
MA'AM or MA'M - I am, I have
TA - you, your, yours; French tu, ton, ta, tes, le tien,
la tienne, les tiens, les tiennes
AT inverse of ta - be and have, second form singular
TA AT or TA'T - you are, you have; French tu est or
t'est (t'e), and tu as or t'as (t'a)
SE - he, she, it, his, hers its ; French lui, elle, çela or
ça (sa), son, le sien, sa, la sienne
AS inverse of sa - be and have, third form singular
SA AS or SA'S - he or she or it is or has; French il /
elle / ça est or c'est (s'e), il / elle / ça a (sa a)
ME - we, ours, plural of ma
EM inverse of me - be and have, first form plural
ME EM or ME'M - we are, we have
TE - you, yours, plural of ta
ET inverse of te - be and have, second form plural
TE ET or TE'T - you are, you have (plural)
SE - they, theirs, plural of sa
ES inverse of se - be and have, third form plural
SE ES or SE'S - they are, they have
Franz Gnaedinger
MAS - many, mass, much, more, multiply, increase in
number and size; German Mass for size, Masse for mass
SAM - some, few, little, less, lonesome, cumbersome;
diminish, lessen, decrease, getting hard and tiresome;
German einsam for lonely, muehsam for tiresome and
cumbersome
AMS - ample, wide, spacious, embracing, on both sides,
all around; English ample, French ample, ancient Greek
amphi as adverb; Latin amplicifcare, English amplify
SMA - small; German schmal for narrow, French smala
for family as the unit of a society (?), smart for
achieving a lot (mas) by means of a small (sma) effort
DOV - toward; German zu (zur zum)
VOD - from; German von (vom)
OVD - often, over, overflow, overload, oversized ...,
gaining in number, size, weight, and effect. Ancient
Greek ophello means (I) increase, amplify, multiply,
magnify, enlarge, extend, enhance, raise, heighten ...
DVO - dwindle, dwarf, German Zwerg, loosing in number,
size, weight, and effect; ancient Greek duae for misery
MA SHDEB VOD MAC-DA'-LUN-AC - I come from La Madeleine,
from the five clan land of the moonshine valley land
TA VOD BAR-BHAU HDEB - You came from Bara-Bahau, from
the bear land with water cave
VOD LAD-CA-UR-SHDEB ME? - Shall we go to Lascaux
together?
CA) - head, skull
)AC inverse of ca) - stand on the feet, stand one's
man; ancient Greek lax, with the foot, laxis for
a plot or parcel of land
A)C - strong, daring, brave; ancient Greek alkimos
C)A inverse of al) - make noise while attacking,
getting fame as a hunter, become the founder of a clan;
ancient Greek klazo klaggae kleinos klados, English
class
Franz Gnaedinger
CA)AC - a pun, combining ca) for head, or rather holding
the head up high, with )ac for standing ground, but also
ca for sky and ac for land with water, and in between
the leader of a clan ) who has the say )og, the former
lion-leopard-lynx-lykos/lupus-man; columns of stalactites
and stalagmites in a cave; Milky Way, galaxy
LIC VAD - bright water, also used for the Milky Way;
surviving in liquid
GAL - milk
LAG inverse of gal - drop
GALAG - combination of milk and drop, sinter on the wall
of a cave; ancient Greek gala milk, stalagma a drop
GLA - drink (as found before, in a different context)
ALS - full, satisfied, belch of a baby; in the case of
an adult a liquid released from the mouth, vomit, caused
by a sickness or injury; Greek algos for pain
ALA - white; may have beconme Latin albus for white,
surviving in albino
CALA - prayer, calling the goddess, also the former
leaders of a clan who now live among the stars of the
summer triangle on the Milky Way (Atair in Aquila, Deneb
in Cygnus, Vega in Lyra), also the voice that comes from
the head ca), especially when pronounced by a ruler;
survives in English call
A)A - any call; survives in hello hullo hallo alo ...
Franz Gnaedinger
CA) with a clicking l - head, espeacially used with
the ruler of a clan, as verb holding the head up high.
An illustration of this would be the head carved from
mammoth ivory, allegedly found in a field near Dolni
Vestonice, and, if not faked, 26,000 years old (cover
of the October 1988 issue of the National Geographic)
)AC inverse of ca) - feet, standing firmly on the feet,
standing his man, also the ground one stands upon (more
in the next message)
) AC - ruler, former lion-leopard-lynx-lykos/lupus-man
and the land with water of his clan
CAP - body, especially the top of the head, also a group
of people or animals; became Latin caput for head, and
corpus for body, German Kopf and Koerper, while ancient
Greek Kephalos combines cap and ca) to capca), perhaps
the word for a human clad in the costume of an animal;
cap as something worn on the head survives in English
cap, German Kappe, while cap in the meaning of herd
may survive in cattle
CAP CA) - double head, a ruler wearing a mask of an
animal's head, namely a cap, over his own head ca);
became ancient Greek kephalos for head
PAC inverse of cap - bulk of the body, also a group
of people or animals; became Latin pectus for breast
and bestia for animal; survives in many forms, perhaps
in bulk and body, in German Backe English cheek, in
English back German Ruecken, in German Becken and Bauch
English pelvis and belly; also in French pacage English
pasture, in English bacon German Speck; French pechtel
means live-stock, bétail cattle; pack as group of people
survives in English pack; ancient Greek pachys for fat,
broad, dense, obese, full, strong, powerful, rich, noble,
compact, coarse, stupid, plump; the many variants and
meanings of pac testify to a very ancient and importan
word
HED - top of a human being, head, also height; German
Haupt for head (old usage, for important people)
DEH inverse of hed - marking the other end of the human
body, namely the toe, German Zeh
Franz Gnaedinger
Clicking l, here given as an arc for the curving
tongue whose tip moves along the palate, became l, r,
and t:
CA) - first ruler of a clan, founding father; r-form
became ancient Greek kar for head, kara for head and
face, kardia for heart, soul, mood, mind, reason,
Italian caro for dear, l-form ancient Greek kalos
for beautiful, brave, good, successful, favorable,
useful, noble, honorable, lucky, survives in English
call; t-form may survive in cat, as reminder of the
lion-man of old (man with a lion-head from Hohlenstein,
carved from mammoth ivory some 32,000 years ago)
)AC - ruler of a clan ) and his land with water ac; as
verb stand firmly on the ground, rule the land; l-form
became ancient Greek lax, with the feet, and laxis, plot
or parcel of land; t-form became ancient Greek tagos,
ruler; tagma, legion; tageia, supreme command; tacheuo,
quick; r-form became ancient Greek raka for: you moron,
and rakos for rascal
A)C - strong, daring, brave; became ancient Greek arkos,
survives in German stark for strong; l-form alc became
ancient Greek alkar for protection, defense, alkae for
defense, protection, rescue, power, braveness, courage;
t-form atc hardly pronounceable, but may have survived
in the permutation act, from ancient Greek ago, I lead
and move, with many more meanings, agogos for leader,
arktis for ray, light, sunshine
C)A inverse of a)c - make noise while attacking, being
a famous hunter, being the founder of a clan, having
class; l-form became ancient Greek klazo klaggae kleinos
klados, and survives in clan and class, in German Krach
for noise, in kraaehen and kraechzen for croak, in Kraehe
for crow (Latin corvus and ancient Greek koronae for
crow and raven)
A)A - a call, as in hullo, hello, hallo, alo; t-form
became ata, patros, patriarch, pater, father, Vater;
r-form became ancient Greek ara for prayer, request,
also for curse, indicating the power of a patriarch
who can either help or reject
CA)A - prayer to the goddess and the founding father of
a clan who live among the stars of the summer triangle,
as verb pray; bacame ancinet Greek kata, from above,
down; survives in Italian cara for dear (female form)
)OG - word, speak, having the say; became ancient Greek
logos for word and reason; l-form survives in French
langue and langage, in English language, also in logic;
t-form became toge, just because, here, that's why, used
in a logical argument; r-form became roger for begging
vagabond, and rogue (r-forms can be very positive, as
in ara for prayer, and in caro cara for dear, or then
negative, as in ara for curse, in roger for begging
vagabond, in raka for: you moron, and in rogue)
Franz Gnaedinger
ARB and inverse BRA - right and left arm
BAR and inverse RAB - right and left leg
MHAYN - right hand; Latin manus, French main, English
hand, German Hand
ARB - right arm
ARB MHAYN, pronounced AR'MHAYN - right arm and hand;
became Latin arma for weapon, as most hunters and
soldiers were throwing their lances with the right arm
and hand; became English arm and hand, German Arm and
Hand
CLYN - left hand; became English claw, German Klaue,
Finnish kynnae, all three words having the same meaning
BRA CLYN - left arm and hand; became ancient Greek
brachion, Italian braccio, and French bras for arm;
also bracelet, more often worn on the left wrist
P'HED - right foot; became ancient Greek podoi and
Latin pedes for feet, English foot feet, German Fuss
Fuesse
BAR P'HED - right leg and foot; became ancient Greek
pous for both foot and leg; Latin per pedes, on foot
(walking); English barefeet and German barfuss; in
analogy to mhayn bhayn perhaps also German Bein for
leg, English bone and German Gebein, ancient Greek
baino for I go (also go away, pass, die)
YOLG - left foot; became Old Ugric-Altaic jalga, Lappish
juolge and Finnish jalka for foot
RAB YOLG - left leg and foot; difficult to pronounce,
therefore modified; inverse order yolg-rab may be the
root of Old Netherlandish and Middle English leggre for
leg; modify r into sh, and rab turns into shab, which
may be the origin of French jambe and Italian gamba for
leg; modify r into l and you obtain lab-yolg, which may
be the origin of Finnish lahje for leg and jalka for
foot. Ancient Greek rabdos means rod, staff, scepter;
rabdalos lean; radinos lean, tender, agile, swift.
German Rappe is a black horse. Rab might also be the
oldest form of run, along the line of rab rad radinos
rinna renna rinnan rennan rennen run ... The many
variations are again indicating a very ancient word
Franz Gnaedinger
The special consonant -: called spitting t or kissing t
is produced by the tip of the tongue touching the lips.
This consonant became s, p, and t:
I -: O (iso ipo ito) - arch-shaman: the firm one; equal
to his forerunners, thus warranting a long tradition;
maker of opinions, ideas, pictures; voice of the divine
(ancient Greek iso for equal; hippo for horse, here the
one who speaks in the name of the sun-horse; istaemi
for stand, hold up, weigh, resist, arrange, dispose,
and many more meanings; eido for look, form, opinion,
picture, idea)
O -: I (osi opi oti) - awe inspiring divine law, ultimate
reason (ancient Greek osia for divine right, pious duty,
obligation; opis for observance, obligation, followance;
oti for because)
-: I O (sio pio tio) - judge in the name of the divine;
requiting good with good, bad with bad (ancient Greek
sio for god; bios for life, Latin pius pia Italian pio
pia for pious; ancient Greek tio tino for pay, award,
atone, revenge)
O I -: (ois oip oit) - one excluded by the arch-shaman:
where can he go now? his fate is misfortune, even death
(ancient Greek oios for lonely; hoiper for where to?;
oitos for lot, destiny, fate, ill-luck, misfortune,
death)
I O -: (ios iop iot) - plead: help me, One and the Same,
arch-shaman in a long line of arch-shamans, have mercy
with a pious believer (ancient Greek ios for one and the
same; also ios for arrow and poison; io with omega for
an exclamation, when calling a god, or when being hurt;
iotaes for wish, will, order)
-: O I (soi poi toi) - plead: do me the favor, maker of
ideas and pictures, let me safely return to my kinfolk
(ancient Greek hoi soi for your kinfolk; poi for where
to?; poieo for do, make, produce, organize a feast,
induce fear, do a favor, make a poem, represent, accept,
appoint, estimate, respect; poiaes for overgrown with
grass, poimaen for herdsman, ruler, poimnion for herd;
poinae for penance, revenge, compensation, reparation,
satisfaction; toi for certainly, really)
Franz Gnaedinger
MEL sweet, something edible, also sweet for the ears;
ancient Greek meli for honey, and melinae for millet;
French miel for honey; ancient Greek melos for melody
LEM inverse of mel - collect, either berries or herbs
or honey ... Ancient Greek lambano means touch, take,
seize, chase, conquer, get, also comprehend, preceive;
(with many more meanings)
ELM - a shrub or tree bearing sweet fruit; hackberry,
one of the oldest and most venerable shrubs or trees of
humankind, belonging to the genus Celtis of the elm
family, bearing cherrylike fruit, so "elm" could even
go back to Africa, where, as far as I am informed, the
hackberry was also known; Old English elm means noble
and survives in the given name Elmer
MLE inverse of elm - bad, ignoble; Hindi Mlechi means
barbarian, untouchable, not Indian
BON - good; Latin bonus, Italian bene, French bon, bien
NOB inverse of bon - keeps the positive meaning of bon
for good and means noble; Latin nobilis, nobilitas;
a variant may be ancient Greek nomos for custom, manners,
morals, principle, rule, law, regulation, melody (!),
song, musical key
Franz Gnaedinger
BAR and RAB - right leg and left leg; Hebrew bar means
son, perhaps the one who walks by the right leg of his
father; Hebrew rabbi means master, perhaps the one who
walks on the side of a father, by a son's or pupil's or
client's left leg. Ancient Geek para could have had
the same root, surviving for example in parallel
BAR RAB, BARRAB, BARRA, ARRA, BARA, BAR, also RAB BAR,
RABBA - bear, as a rearing animal standing on the hind
legs bar and rab; arra perhaps the root of ancient Greek
arktos - combined with a)c for strong? -, Latin ursus,
Italian orso, French ours for bear, German Baer; also
rearing horse, surviving in German Rappe for a black
horse. English bar, noun and verb, and French barrière
may also come from bar for leg. Swiss places called Bar
and Barra serve(d) as protecting woods, also as horse
pastures, while Baer was not only used for the bear but
also for the bull, going along with a leaping bull's
strong hind legs. Rabbar may be the origin of Old French
robber for rob, and English robber, robbery, perhaps
referrring to a stealing bear. Barabbas in the Bible was
a robber. If ancient Greek barbaros came from bar bar,
it might have held satirical meaning: someone who is so
very righteous that he got two right legs and can't walk
anymore but hops around; hoi barbaroi were the Persians,
but also other foreigners who certainly had their own
belief - also the Celts were fighting in the name of
their religion, and might, moreover, have worn bear
hides ... Sanskrit barbara meant stammering, not Aryan.
So we have not walking properly, not talking properly,
not going properly (as go means both walk and talk).
A robe may once have been a hide covering the legs rab
and bar. Aramaic abba for father may be an abbreviation
of rabbar, 'abba' abba, meaning a man who stands there
for his family. Much as a bear: female bears are known
for their fierce will to protect their young ones. Abba
was also a female day name for Thursday
Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
Franz Gnaedinger
An idea from the morning of Pentecost, the festival
of the Holy Spirit who came down from the sky to earth
and taught people how to speak in every tongue ...
The Hebrew word for spirit, wind, breath, was ru-ach,
ancient Greek pneuma, Latin spiritus. In -ach we may
recognize Magdalenian ac for land with water, while
the inverse of ru-, namely ur, were the colors of the
sky, blue, also red. Now so many words had meaningful
inverse forms that we may ponder a possible meaning of
ru as inverse of ur. Ancient Greek rheo comes to mind,
flow, drip; a form of rheo was ruae; Rhaeno was the
river Rhine; rhaema was the word, also conversation,
talk, order, message, a lesson, a topic, a verb. If
all these words should come from Magdalenian ru, it
might have meant what comes from the sky, namely wind,
from a whispering to a howling wind, and rain, from
a drizzle to a thundering downpour. Ur as what comes
from the sky would have been a symbol for what comes
from the mouth of a living being: moist breath, and
sounds. Marie E.P. Koenig says that the skull was
considered a tiny sky, and she might well be right.
And also this idea would have survived in antiquity,
namely in the Greek understanding of the living being
as a micro-cosmos in analogy to the macro-cosmos. An
idea which was revived in the Renaissance, and which
may get actual again in a modern form, since we have
learned about fractal geometry, which explains that
similar patterns occur at every scale, in the very
large and in the very small alike ... All ancient
civilizations considered the cosmos, or the forces
that rule the cosmos, living and intelligent beings.
We may hope to find some confirmation of this belief
in the future, when physics will not only unite mass
and energy, but also intelligence or information and
energy. I formulated such a principle at age fourteen:
when I do a work in a clever way, I save energy, so
intelligence and energy should correspond to each other
in some way, and if I had more lives that just one I
would study physics and ponder that question. In this
life I only achieved a position as a Usenet professor,
perhaps the silliest profession one can possibly exert
in this outer region of a minor spiral arm of the Milky
Way, but still, I enjoy it very much, and I wish to
thank Google for the good work they are doing, keeping
the Usenet alive, improving it, and maintaining the
archive. Silly me still believes that the scientific
part of the Usenet could evolve into a free and open
university, and when I see the good work done by
Google I find my old hope not so very silly anymore.
Regards, or, in Magdalenian, oc lic
Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat-ch
Franz Gnaedinger
Readers versed in biology will have noticed that my
synthetical way of reinventing Magdalenian words goes
along with the evolution of the brain, whose areas
doubled and took over new tasks. Even the nod of the
early brain itself doubled into a pair of hemispheres.
Also genes double and are then integrated into other
parts of a chromosome where they serve a new purpose.
Mel was the hypothetical word for sweet. Now you may
double it, and you get mel again. Mel mel, sweet sweet,
very sweet. Now you have a word mel, and a second word
mel. One word mel is enough, so you can play with the
second one. How about inverting the order of letters?
Mel lem. Lem can take over a new function, preferably
in the context of mel. Say: gather berries, herbs,
honey. So mel is sweet, and lem gather something sweet,
then gather anything. Using mel and lem and chanching
the order of letters you may find elm and inverse mle.
Elm may be the word for fine, noble, and the inverse
mle for eech, ignoble. There are two more permutations
of these letters, lme and eml, but these are rather
difficult to pronounce.
As a further step you may combine the words you found.
Mel mel would be sweet sweet. Melmel, melmel, melmel,
melmel ... Within millennia, melmel could have become
meli, ancient Greek for honey. Combine mel and mle,
then you have a word for sweet eech, looking fine but
being ignoble. This berry appears to be ripe and sweet,
but taste it, horrible! Mel mle, melmle, melmle, melmle
... Within a couple of millennia this word could have
become ancient Greek meleos for in vain, worthless,
useless, careless, unreasonable, unhappy, miserable.
So far, no language genes have been found, and I doubt
very much in their existence, while I believe that genes
themselves are using a form of language that is mirrored
in the evolution of human language, word language. As
the law of fractal geometry tells: similar patterns
emerge at every scale. So early language could be
a magnifying glass hold over the genetic process ...
Dylan Sung: being just an expert on early and very early
mathematics I can't answer your question regarding the
Japanese So-doku (number in place) puzzle, but I may
trace it back to Paelolithic and Mesolithic patterns
- when I finished publishing my series of prepared
messages (part 82 on the word group bal lab alb bla,
part 83 shall be a surprise)
Franz Gnaedinger
Another quadruple of hypothetical Magdalenian words are
bal and lab, alb and bla. Bal means hot, ca-bal sky-hot,
summer sun-horse, cabal cabal cabal cabal ..., Spanish
caballo Italian cavallo French cheval for horse. Lab
was cold, winter, Lapland a cold land, ca-lab sky-cold,
winter sun-horse, calab calab calab calab ...
Alb was the dawn, alba in Italian, Albania the region
where the sun rises for Italians, alb also meant morning,
stand up, be active, ancient Greek alphaestaes for
laborious, industrious, energetic. Bla was dusk, English
black, ancient Greek blakeuo also meant I am lazy, hence
bla was the evening, the end of activity, go to sleep,
night, when the sky darkens and gets black.
Interestingly, the alphabet begins with alpha. This
would be a form of Magdalenian alb. So the begin of
the alphabet was not casual but well chosen: dawn,
morning, waking up, being active ... The sign for
alpha was the head of a bull or a cow. This refers
to the old activities of chasing bisons and herding
cattle.
Phoenician alpha was aleph, also recognizable as
a variant of alb: alb aleb aleph, whereas Greek alpha
kept or returned to the alb form: alb alpha alphaetaes,
also alphano for I acquire, gain, bring in, furthermore
alphitopoiia for the preparation of barley flour - in
order to bake a flat loaf of bread for breakfast, we may
assume.
Franz Gnaedinger
LET US JOIN THE SUMMER FESTIVAL OF MONTIGNAC, number 1
Magdalenian hit in the summer of 14,385 BC; you hear
first a man sing, then a woman reply, then their voices
join in the refrain; accompanied by flutes and drums:
CA LAB CA LAB CA LAB CA LAB ...
TA'T LAB, MA OC
CA BEL CA BEL CA BEL CA BEL ...
TA'T BEL, MA OC
CA BAL CA BAL CA BAL CA BAL ...
TA'T BAL, MEL OC
MAJA VOD MAC-DA'-LUN-AC
CA LAB CA LAB CA LAB CA LAB ...
MA'M LAB, MA OC
CA BEL CA BEL CA BEL CA BEL ...
MA'M BEL, MA OC
CA BAL CA BAL CA BAL CA BAL ...
MA'M BAL, MA OC
ELM MAC VOD BEL-CA-UR-AC
PESH VAD UR
SHDEB MON DIG LUN AC
PESH VAD UR
SHDEB MON DIG LUN AC
Free tranlsation:
Do you hear the winter sun-horse?
You have cold, apple of my eye.
Do you hear the spring sun-horse?
You have warm, my darling.
Do you hear the summer sun-horse?
You have hot, honey,
Daughter of a chief of the Moonshine Valley
I hear the winter sun-horse,
I have cold, apple of my eye.
I hear the spring sun-horse,
I have warm, my darling.
I hear the summer sun-horse,
I have hot, my love,
Noble son of a chief from the land of the warm blue sky
Let us swim in the deep blue river Vézère,
And then join the summer festival of Montignac
Let us swim in the beautiful deep blue river Vézère,
and then happily join the summer festival of Montignac
Franz Gnaedinger
Volunteering for a relief organization I am teaching basic
mathematics to a woman with a heavy dyscalculy. She goes for
example: twelve minus one equals (pause) one. We are trying
out new methods of teaching and learning. Rather successfully.
She absolved her first school, as the only one of her class;
all her classmates who laughed at her fell through, she alone
stood the final exams. I made a remark about my reconstruction
of the Magdalenian language, and she got very interested, so
I showed her some words. Now she wants to learn Magdalenian.
I told her: please do not learn these words, for the time
being they are just a fancy of mine. Does she care? No.
She wants to learn Magdalenian, and as she got a beautiful
singing voice she asked me to write a Magdalenian song.
Well, on the Monday of Pentecost I felt inspired and wrote
the song I presented in my previous message. One night,
walking home along the river, I tried to sing it, but failed.
Then I gave the song to her, at the begin of a lesson, she
untertook two attemtps, then she had the melody and sang
it all - so very beautiful, I was moved and touched. Now
we are planning to record the song and air it on the radio
in an emission on word roots (Radio DRS 1, Schnabelweid,
Christian Schmid).
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Goebel, emeritus of Goethe University at
Frankfurt on Main, finds my reconstruction of Magdalenian
well based on serious archaeology, and thrilling. He also
composes, tangoes, sonatas, and just now he is trying to
convert songs of the blackbird into bebop. I asked him
for a melody to my song. Then we have two version we can
compare.
Does a reader happen to know an e-mail address of Dido
Armstrong? Her marvellous CD "life for rent" accompanied
me a year ago when I undertook my attempt at deciphering
the Vinca script.
Coming next: reinventing a Magdalenian puzzle and game,
inspired by Dylan Sung's question to me in sci.lang
Franz Gnaedinger
Dylan Sung asked me a question regarding a Japanese puzzle
(in sci.lang only) and provided a link to Wikipedia - where
the answer is already given. I told him so via e-mail.
However, his question inspired me to look out for a potential
Magdalenian puzzle and game.
The sacred form of the lunisolar calendar in the Lascaux cave
uses a grid of 3 by 3 squares. Draw such a grid on clay (or
on paper). The grid has 4 horizontal lines and 4 vertical
lines that meet or cross in 16 points. Now you need 16 small
pebbles, four white ones, four grey ones, four yellow ones,
and four reddish ones. Place them on the 16 points. Follows
a random pattern, whereby the colors are replaced with numbers:
1 2 3 3
2 4 4 1
2 2 1 3
3 1 4 4
Now for three arranged patterns:
1 2 3 4 --- 1 2 3 4 --- 1 3 2 4
2 1 4 3 --- 3 4 1 2 --- 4 2 3 1
3 4 1 2 --- 2 1 4 3 --- 3 1 4 2
4 3 2 1 --- 4 3 2 1 --- 2 4 1 3
Each horizontal and vertical line contains a set of four
different colors (or numbers). Furthermore, there are 4 /
8 / 7 small squares of 2 by 2 pebbles containing a set of
four different colors each. Moreover, the diagonals of the
third pattern and the four corners of the square 4 by 4
pebbles contain a set of four different colors each.
A game could go as follows. Player A lays out a random
pattern. Player B makes the first move by exchanging two
pebbles of different colors. Player A makes the second
move by exchanging two pebbles of different colors. And
so on. The player who achieves one of the above regular
patterns wins.
I played the game in the solitary mode only, so I don't
know whether it works for two players. If not, one might
modify the rules.
Anyway, games of that sort would have been a good mental
training for aspiring shamans, and a help in order to
handle the practical form of the lunisolar calendar.
Dylan Sung
"Franz Gnaedinger" <fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote in message
news:1117701169.5...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Dylan Sung asked me a question regarding a Japanese puzzle
> (in sci.lang only) and provided a link to Wikipedia - where
> the answer is already given. I told him so via e-mail.
Thanks for considering the puzzle. I haven't recieved an email from you
because the address used for newsgroup posting by me is a spam trap.
I didn't follow up the link to wikipedia, but now I have, it seems that
there are plenty of puzzles to be had and they kindly gave 17 is the minimum
number of initial cells for there to be a solvable puzzle. Thanks.
Dyl.
Franz Gnaedinger
Paul Kekai Manansala replied to my first message here in this
thread and mentioned the Ishango Bone - from Central Equatorial
Africa, some 20,000 years old - as first lunar calendar. On the
bone are seen rows of 11 21 19 9 / 11 13 17 19 / 3 6 4 8 10 5
(?) 5 7 notches respectively, adding up to 60 / 60 / 48 (?)
notches respectively. Alexander Marshack interprets the 168
notches as six "lunar" months of 28 days each.
Still older is the Lumbombo Bone from Swaziland, dated to
around 35,000 BP. It shows 29 notches. Allow me to imagine
them as a representation of a line of 29 small holes in the
ground:
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
29 holes have 28 spaces in between them; add the two spaces
on the left and right side and you obtain 30 spaces. The 30
spaces and 29 holes might serve as a lunar calendar. Place
a pebble on the outer left space in a full moon night. Move
it to the next space in the next night. And so on. Finally,
you will place the pebble on the outer right space, and in
that night the moon will again be full. Now move the pebble
backward, placing it into the holes. When you arrive at the
left hole, it will again be a night of a full moon. Go on
like this, place the pebble on the 30 spaces, in the 29 holes,
on the 30 spaces, in the 29 holes ... Thus you obtain a very
accurate lunar calendar of 30 29 30 29 30 29 30 29 30 29 30
29 30 29 30 29 30 ... nights, yielding 30 59 89 118 148 177
207 236 266 295 325 354 384 413 443 472 502 ... nights for
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 ... lunations or
synodic months (one lunation lasting 29 days 12 hourse 44
minutes 2.9 seconds, modern value from 1989). The lunation
or synodic month, I believe, was the Upper Paleolithic,
Mesolithic and Neolithic measure of the lunar time.
A variation of such a hypothetical first lunar calendar may
have been a line of 60 poles. 60 poles have 59 spaces in
between them. 59 spaces are 30 plus 29 spaces and might
serve as lunar calendar again: (30) 59 (89) 118 (148) 177 ...
nights. Could the two rows of 60 notches each on the Ishango
Bone represent such a calendar? If so, they would have been
combined with further calendaric and mathematical ideas I
do not comprehend for the time being.
I thank Paul Kekai Manansala for his patience. He had to wait
a long time for my reply.
grapheus
Franz Gnaedinger has eructed :
nothing of value...
To KNOW THIS MAN, please look at the following link :
<http:// minilien.com/?aIV4YmYTQ6>
grapheus
grapheus
Franz Gnaedinger has eructed :
nothing of value...
TO KNOW THIS MAN, please read the link :
<http://minilien.com/?aIV4YmYTQ6>
grapheus
Franz Gnaedinger
I like the sponsored links in the Google beta groups,
they turn up many a useful website. Alas, I do not like
to see my compatriot Erich von D. show up in a thread of
mine. Erich von D. wrote an awful book on the Great Pyramid
at Giza, wherein he muses that the alian builder of that
worldwonder of antiquity might be sleeping in a hidden
chamber of his pyramid; the silent assumption being that
the primitive Egyptians of old were not capable of building
such a monument on their own.
Erich von D. is getting sponsored by big companies. My work
is not getting sponsored. My aim is a fair history of
civilization including early mathematics. Back in 1979 I
found a simple but clever number column for calculating the
square, which number column also explains the marvellous
Babylonian value for the square root of 2 as found on the
clay tablet YBC 7289. In February of 1994 I rediscovered
a systematic method for calculating the circle on the basis
of the Sacred Triangle 3-4-5, and I found solid evidence
for the use of that method in the Great Pyramid. Between
1996 and 2000 I interpreted over 60 problems from the Rhind
Mathematical Papyrus, using simple methods, mainly additive
number patterns. In past March I rediscovered an early
Mesopotamian calendar, which would then have spread to
Asia, Egypt, Crete and the Argolis (more on this calendar
in a later message). In past April I found a lunisolar
calendar in the Lascaux cave, and now I am looking out
for potential very early lunar calendars in Africa.
What do I get for my work? I am getting attacked by many
people, from high ranking professors (in 1997, meanwhile
things have changed some, I am getting asked by professors
for assistance regarding early and Renaissance mathematics)
down the scale to a lowing loon, who has been shouting ever
the same stereotyped phrases at me, first as Jean Faucounau
via e-mail, then as grapheus online. Marie Jean Faucounau
grapheus has been molesting, deriding, defaming, provoking
and harassing me for years, and since almost a year he is
overtly stalking me. When someone offends and attacks me
injustly and repeatedly, I give back - may that person be
a top ranking professor, or a simple madman at the bottom
of the scale.
Next time: an argument in favor of Alexander Marshack;
and how to look out for potential very early lunar calendars
in Africa
grapheus
to know the TRUTH about the author of the thread about "Lascaux" : a
guy without ANY DIPLOMA who POSES as a true scholar.
See :
<http://minilien.com/?aIV4YmYTQ6>
grapheus
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
>SNIP a lot of absurdities
Franz Gnaedinger
Alexander Marshack played an important role as pioneer
in exploring potential early lunar calendars. I didn't
read his books, but I own an article in a cherished
issue of the National Geographic.
Marshack's attempts at understanding notches on bones
were criticized, for it seems that some of them were
carved by means of the same tool, while a series of
notches carved over years would have been made with
different tools.
Let me bring up an argument in favour of Marshack.
I believe that the early lunar and lunisolar calendars
have been layed out on the ground, while important
sequences may then have been carved in bones or stones.
For example the Lembono Bone (hope I got it right this
time) from Swaziland, some 35,000 years old, shows 29
distinct notches. This bone could have been a "recipe"
or a "map" for a lunar calendar in a time when there
were no words for larger numbers: dig a line of holes,
and so many that they correspond to the notches on
the bone. If there are as many holes in the ground
as there are notches on the bone, you did your work
well. Then the actual calendar, namely the 29 small
holes in the ground, plus the 30 spaces between them
and next to the outer holes could have been used for
a lunar calendar of the type 30 + 29 + 30 + 29 + 30 ...
nights, yielding 30, 59, 89, 118, 148 ... nights for
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... lunations. The best value in this
very simple but clever lunar sequence are 502 nights
for 17 lunations (check it yourself; one lunation or
synodic month lasts 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 2.9
seconds; modern value from 1989, the value of the
Upper Paleolithic can't have been much different).
Now you got an idea of how one might look out for
further, and perhaps even older lunar calendars
from Africa. More next time.