Oldest Writing?
S. M. Sullivan
Turkey, with a band of symbols around it. Stele is carved in low
relief, and has been dated to 11,500 BC.
There is obvious sign repetition, looks like horizontal orientation,
too.
Comments?
Jack Linthicum
Outdoor cave paintings? Similar themes and symbols, birth of the adman.
S. M. Sullivan
What cave paintings have similar symbols? Do you have a link?
I found a similar sign to the U-shaped Gobekli Tepe glyph in the
necklace of the Iberian Phonecian bust Lady of Guardamar, a U-shaped
element in the lowest row, center.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_of_Guardamar
Since the Iberian Phonecian Lady of Elche had amphorae on her
necklace, the U-shaped element could represent a jar.
I know Gobekli Tepe is much older than the Phonecian works I mention,
but there is a possible relationship; Phonecians were related to
cultures in Syria, and the Gobekli site is not far from Syria.
S. M. Sullivan
Gobekli Tepe is an obvious Natufian site, and has the same sort of
cultural complex typical of other Natufian sites from Israel, Syria
and Lebanon. Natufian sites typically have microliths which were set
into sickle blades and used for harvesting grass or grain. The
Natufians hunted gazelles, cattle, boar, ducks and other animals,
which were often portrayed in their art, along with vultures,
scorpions, foxes, lions and asses. They did not have pottery and made
do with stone jars. Their funeral customs included head removal and
exposure of the headless bodies, and this exposure is shown in
contemporary murals from other sites in Turkey.
The thing that boggles the mind is the idea that the Natufians had
writing. I think Gobekli Tepe script should be compared to proto-
Canaanitic script to see if there are any correspondences.
Yusuf B Gursey
there's a resident eccentric at sci.lang that sees all sorts of
"writing" at Göbekli Tepe, but the linguists there, including an
expert on scripts, don't take him seriously.
Jack Linthicum
http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2010/06jun/RIR-100624.php
and
The monoliths are decorated with carved reliefs of animals and of
abstract pictograms. The pictograms cannot be classed as writing, but
may represent commonly understood sacred symbols, as known from
Neolithic cave paintings elsewhere. The carefully carved figurative
reliefs depict lions, bulls, boars, foxes, gazelles, asses, snakes and
other reptiles, insects, arachnids, and birds, particularly vultures
and water fowl. At the time the shrine was constructed the surrounding
country was much lusher and capable of sustaining this variety of
wildlife, before millennia of settlement and cultivation resulted in
the near–Dust Bowl conditions prevailing today.
gobeklitepe_schmidt
Vultures also feature in the iconography of the Neolithic sites of
Çatalhöyük and Jericho; it is believed that in the early Neolithic
culture of Anatolia and the Near East the deceased were deliberately
exposed in order to be excarnated by vultures and other birds of prey.
(The head of the deceased was sometimes removed and preserved—possibly
a sign of ancestor worship.) This, then, would represent an early form
of sky burial.
Few humanoid forms have surfaced at Göbekli Tepe but include a relief
of a naked woman, posed frontally in a crouched position, that Schmidt
likens to the Venus acceuillante figures found in Neolithic north
Africa; and of at least one decapitated corpse surrounded by vultures.
Some of the pillars, namely the T-shaped ones, have carved arms, which
may indicate that they represent stylized humans (or anthropomorphic
gods). Another example is decorated with human hands in what could be
interpreted as a prayer gesture, with a simple stole or surplice
engraved above; this may be intended to represent a temple priest.
http://open.salon.com/blog/suresh_emre/2010/08/21/gbekli_tepe_first_temple_11500_years_old
S. M. Sullivan
I don't take him seriously either, but I'm not sure why the abstract
pictograms from Gobekli Tepe are being dismissed as non-writing.
This seems every bit as idiotic as dismissing Indus script as non-
writing.
Is everyone but me assuming that the hunter-gatherers at Gobekli Tepe
were illiterate because a) the symbols are more than 10,000 years old,
and b) they were made by pre-agricultural people?
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Or as idiotic as imagining that something could be learned by
comparing these "pictograms" with "proto-Canaanitic" several millennia
later?
> Is everyone but me assuming that the hunter-gatherers at Gobekli Tepe
> were illiterate because a) the symbols are more than 10,000 years old,
> and b) they were made by pre-agricultural people?
It's not an unreasonable assumption, given everything else we know.
But subject to disconfirmation by evidence of course.
If everybody-but-you is like me, they may be wondering which picture
it is where you see this stuff that looks to you like writing?
I see some curious stone structures, a lot of nice animals, and some
bands of abstract shapes. "Repetition of signs" and "horizontal
orientation" are hardly enough to imply writing.
S. M. Sullivan
It's alright, Ross,
Hardly anyone here knows yet how oblivious you are to the obvious.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Well, hardly anybody here is paying any attention to this thread. So
you won't impair your dignity by taking the trouble to explain the
"obvious" to me.
Just which part of which photograph are you looking at when you see
this "obvious" writing?
Jack Linthicum
Question: Is there a source online for the actual number, format and
sequences for this collection of signs? I did a quick run on "Gobekli
Tepe script" and "signs" and got nothing except some fuzzy pictures of
rocks.
Elijahovah
in the whole world beginning at the city of Ur. The definition of
kingship is to anoint or choose someone young as being equivalent as
someone older or an elder to make rules as the older ones do. Kingship
rises above other elders, placing the younger above his parents. This
is why Peleg Mesanipada putting all his house under his son Reu
Aanipada was trusting that his son knew more than those older than
himself.
The kingship of Ereck appears to begin in 2209 BC but this is only if
actual years back to that date. If the 360-day calendar is used then
137-144 years has gained two Julian years or two Egyptian years which
thus gives kinship the same year 2207 BC as Ur. Evidence of this is
found in the sothic aniversary of natural leap days as 1460 years to
747 BC. If Babylon felt kingship began at Ereck then how is it 2207 BC
is honored instead of 2209 BC. (Understood that a 19-year moon is 1463
years, but less likely to be honored; or that the 1461 egyptian years
as 1461x 365 days may be mistaken as actual years though spanning only
1460 years.)
Thus writing began with kingship which was an intent to SYSTEMIZE all
things. This led to war because each city chooses to systemize in
their own better way. Why war? Why killing/ Because as Moses said it
was decided that if someone was killed then someone in return should
die. But this has no end if you keep blaming back-and-forth and sop
the numbers of deaths just increase in what we call war. War is
judicial punishment for murder and man slaughter by circumventing the
required court, judge, and jury.
Pharaoh was not created until year 350 after the Flood, this kingship
in year 163 precedes The Pharaoh which gathered kings into a assembly
house in 2020 BC to replace the death of Noah. Noah didnt rule because
most words in the name of Noah were by those who twisted what Noah
actually taught us all; like those who rule in the name of Jesus and
actually rule their own way twisting what Jesus taught. Thus the 365-
day calendar began 10 years (in year 340) before Noah died. The reason
is because society was enraged that life was 240 and so cut 700 years
off PROMISED LONGEVITY where society enslaved people with the
reasoning they had centuries more to live and so their younger years
(the first 200) should be devoted to the society. Upon aging and
dying, all nations revolted these chains and bonds to those who ruled.
Hattusa uses the same cuneiform writing in 1640 BC to speak Germanic-
Latin-English as is used to write Semetic-Sumerian-Akkadian-Hebrew-
Arabic. Thus writing can be compared to many computer languages in
machine languages despite unrelated to the languages we speak and are
displayed on our computer screens. The stifling of learing the TREE of
writing and the TREE of language is due to hate for any implication
taht the biblical record is indeed fully true.
Yusuf B Gursey
I'm crossposting to sci.lang . I'm sure Franz will give you all the
references you need.
Hayabusa
<smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
You seem to take the concept of writing way too liberal. If two people
agree to assign a meaning to a vertical line, say, 'man' it is not
writing yet, but a symbolic convention. It has restricted validity in
time and geographic extent, obviously.
The two people may extend their symbolic arsenal to a few dozen
symbols, and find 2000 others who adopt their convention. It is still
not a writing, but a symbolism.
Symbolic conventions can actually carry quite far if everybody
understands what they mean. But at this early stage in culture the
meaning of a symbol is commonly rather extended. For example, if two
tribes of hunter-gatherers close a treaty, the act may be "documented"
by painted symbols. Both sides know what they mean, but it is still
not writing, but a ritual. It has nothing to do yet with language, but
with meaning, and it is not structured.
This stage lives with painted symbols, yes, but it is the same stage
as a child making a sketch of its world. Many things on their sketch
is assigned a meaning, and the kid can explain it, and it makes sense;
but still, the kid does not write. It is a cultural stage that may
lead to writing - in the Chinese and the Egyptian case it did - but to
become a writing it needs a far more stringent formalism. It is
telling that Mesopotamian writing, i.e. cuneiform, developed from
accounting, i.e. a process where numbers and nouns acquired precise
meaning. Our understanding of language today is far too strongly
influenced and educated by the existence of writing for a couple
thousand years than we could imagine how floating meaning of words can
be for a people that does _not_ have writing.
In order to form something of a symbolic writing, such as the Chinese
script, you need much more - definition of terms, a strong narrowing
of meaning and concept, and the development of a minimum syntax, that
is, a structure to the language. The oldest form of Chinese writing,
the symbols on the oracle bones, are in fact not writing yet. Hence
they cannot be deciphered.
Writing implies a convention of symbols and meaning which includes
many people, and which is relatively stable and repeatable.
The earliest attempts at symbol-scratching (from early palaeolithic to
the Linearbandkeramik symbols are related to modern art. For a series
of symbols to be writing it must be repeatable, the symbols very
narrow in meaning, the application of the symbols be structured, and
it must apply to a larger region such that the convention (any writing
is in principle a convention) serves as a means of communication,
rather than a spiritual ritus.
Hayabusa
Peter T. Daniels
> references you need.-
Gobekli Tepe pictograms are "writing" only under the modern
redefinition of "writing" as any sort of graphic communication.
The redefinition is pointless, because once you've perverted the word
"writing" that way, you'll just have to come up with some other word
to refer to a system of graphic communication that notates a
_language_ in sufficient detail that the reader knows exactly what the
writer intended to write.
If pictograms are ideographic, then it can't even be identified what
language the draw-er was thinking in, let alone _exactly_ what they
were communicating.
Presumably the redefinition happened so that nonliterate cultures
wouldn't "feel bad" about not having thought up this wonderful thing
"writing" on their own.
Eric Stevens
>Just which part of which photograph are you looking at when you see
>this "obvious" writing?
I would like to know the answer to that question also.
Eric Stevens
Tom McDonald
Well, there was one place where a very clear capital H was enclosed by two
very clear parentheses. I am certain that was the Natufian sign for
"Registered Trade Mark".
:-)
--
Tom
Jack Linthicum
> On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:30:52 -0700 (PDT), "benli...@ihug.co.nz"
>
> <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> >Just which part of which photograph are you looking at when you see
> >this "obvious" writing?
>
> I would like to know the answer to that question also.
>
> Eric Stevens
Partial reason I asked for some sort of list and display.
(H) is not "writing"
VtSkier
Agamemnon...
Call on line one!
S. M. Sullivan
Well, there's a raised horizontal band around the lower part of a
stele (that is engraved with a fox encircled by a pair of elongated
human arms.) The raised band has H, U and I shaped signs and
parentheses/boomerang shapes.
S. M. Sullivan
As I recall it, the photos are copyright 2010 by John Anthony West and
someone named Schoch; I'll look for an online link.
S. M. Sullivan
How do you know that the Gobekli Tepe signs were not repeatable, very
narrow in meaning, structured in application and applicable to a large
region?
S. M. Sullivan
You do NOT know that the Gobekli Tepe signs were ideograms. They could
just as easily be logosyllabic signs or even part of an abjad wrting
system.
S. M. Sullivan
> On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:30:52 -0700 (PDT), "benli...@ihug.co.nz"
>
> <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> >Just which part of which photograph are you looking at when you see
> >this "obvious" writing?
>
> I would like to know the answer to that question also.
>
> Eric Stevens
Okay, look at the raised horizontal band around the lower part of the
stele with the fox on it.
S. M. Sullivan
> On 10/12/2010 4:16 PM, Eric Stevens wrote:
>
> > <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
> >> Just which part of which photograph are you looking at when you see
> >> this "obvious" writing?
>
> > I would like to know the answer to that question also.
>
> Well, there was one place where a very clear capital H was enclosed by two
> very clear parentheses. I am certain that was the Natufian sign for
> "Registered Trade Mark".
>
> :-)
> --
> Tom
Or maybe, 'Here lies Fluffy the Fox.'
Peter T. Daniels
> system.-
Yeah? How many different ones are there in all?
Oh, that's right, you don't bother determining the inventory of signs
before you start assigning arbitrary readings to them.
I do NOT know that they are ideograms. All I KNOW is that some of them
are pictograms. Maybe they're just decoration.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
OK, thanks for clarifying that. You won't be surprised to learn that
it doesn't strike me as obviously like writing rather than decoration.
The shapes could be stylized representations of something, or not. As
for comparison, if we compare it with the Roman alphabet we can see
obvious similarities: H, U/V, I, C. What does that tell us?
Franz Gnaedinger
>
> I'm crossposting to sci.lang . I'm sure Franz will give you all the
> references you need.
Thank you for the invitation. I began posting about
the Göbekli Tepe to sci.archaeology in 1998 but
was met with scepticism if not sheer disbelief.
Meanwhile I went a lot further in sci.lang, where
I started what I call a Magdalenian experiment,
reconstructing the language of Lascaux, very
exciting for me, a nuisance to others, but bold new
ideas and hypotheses are required in science.
Richard Fester once drew a map of AQC or ACQ
names in the Guyenne, and said this word must
name places of water. There are plenty of villages
whose names end on -ac, like Rouffignac, Cognac,
and so on, so I postulated simpler AC as expanse
of land with water. Inverse CA would then mean sky,
present in Old Latin caelum 'sky'. And then I read
the hieroglyph of the lying H on the Göbekli Tepe
as AC CA
http://www.seshat.ch/home/acca.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home.tablets.GIF
The lower bar of the lying H represents the earth AC
and the upper bar the sky CA and the slim vertical bar
the exchanges between them, prayers for rain and the
smoke of sacrificial fires imploring rain symbolized
by snakes heading upward, and falling rain rewarding
the prayers and sacrifices symbolized by snakes
heading downward. AC CA may be translated as:
where earth AC and sky CA are meeting. The ancient
Egyptians mentioned a Syrian province by the name
of aqa. As AC CA is related to water - snakes being
the most frequent symbols and having to do with water
- a derivative of this compound might have yielded
Latin aqua 'water'. Further derivatives are akka, the
Indo-European earth goddess, a stammered name
according to Julius Pokorny, a meaningful name in
my opinion, and German Acker 'field', more precisely:
an expanse of land AC under the sky CA. The inverse
form CA AC would account for Greek Gaia, equivalent
of akka. My interpretation of the Göbekli Tepe began
with a lunisolar calendar: a year has 12 months of 30
days, plus 5 and occasionally 6 more days (three days
of midsummer, two and occasionally three days of
midwinter), while 63 continuous periods of 30 days
are 1,890 days and correspond to 64 lunations or
synodic months, mistake less than half a minute
per lunation or half a day in a lifetime. Here is an
intricate version of the Göbekli Tepe calendar
in form of a double loop:
http://www.seshat.ch/home/goebekli.GIF
A unique sculpture is the big limestone ring
http://www.seshat.ch/home/ouranos.JPG
http://www.seshat.ch/home/tablets.GIF
which represents the sky god visualized by the
hollow of the ring, a round head or face with smaller
hollows for the ears, an image consisting of nothing
else than air and light which I read as AAR RAA NOS,
mind NOS of the one composed of air AAR and light
RAA, a god who became Greek Ouranos and Sanskrit
Varuna. The lying H can be read as AC CA. Now there
is also a standing H, on one pillar in a more elaborate
form with an oval for the slim horizontal bar, which
I interpret as talking mouth of the priestess of PIR GID
speaking between the central pillars of temple D,
in my opinion the temple of creation (plenty of animals
on the 11,600 years old pillars of this temple). Below
is a ring in a bowl. I read the bowl as the fur of BIR GID,
and the ring as sign of BRI GID, the ring itself as earth
AC and the hollow inside the ring as sky CA. The
standing H has the phonetic value )OG or LOG,
the bowl or fur (cosmic fur of BIR GID) has the phonetic
value BIR, and the ring has the phonetic value AC CA,
together )OG BIR AC CA or LOG BIR AC CA, which
may well be the first version of Genesis 1:1
http://www.seshat.ch/home/gt01.GIF
This inscription is found on the right (eastern) central
pillar of the big temple D, the female pillar according
to Klaus Schmidt, excavator of the Göbekli Tepe,
while a peculiar bucranium is found on the male
central pillar on the left (western) side. This hieroglyph
combines the sky god AAR RAA NOS and the hot
blooded half-god GIS BAL CA MmOS and the other
half-god AD DA MAN. Explaining these names would
take me too long, so you can read my reconstruction
of the creation myth of the Göbekli Tepe here
http://www.seshat.ch/home/lascaux3.htm
At the end of the page lascaux4, by the way, is my recent
work, with my location of the Indo-European homeland,
and the civilization of REO Rhea Rheia, and more about
her father AAR RAA NOS Ouranos. For the hierogplyphs
on the Göbekli Tepe you have to consult the book by
Klaus Schmidt, the paperback may still be on sale,
about 24 Swiss francs, that will be some 18 Euro,
text in German, way over one hundred illustrations
in English. Impressions of the Göbekli Tepe are found
via Youtube. You can also google for göbekli tepe
in the Images sector. And if you have a serious interest
in these signs or ideograms or hieroglyphs you may
discuss with me, here in this thread.
Eric Stevens
I can see '(H)" but is that enought to justify the claim of writing?
Eric Stevens
Hayabusa
I concede on the last point: if they were regionally used, but only on
wood, we would not know.
The rest: if it were a pictogram-like type of writing, like - to take
something outside of the near east cultural circle - Maya writing, a
systematic application of the symbols is nonetheless easily
recognizeable.
Narrow in meaning: the pre-writing cultures have been studied
carefully. A repertoire of symbols is very common, but if their
meaning is studied, it turns out that these symbols need a lot of
explanation to us today because their meaning is far wider than we can
imagine. Take just one example: man. Is "man"
- the socially dominant person,
- the person with a dick,
- the hunter in relation to his prey,
- the being under the sky,
- the member of the group,
etc? It turns out that none of these figures can be imagined without
the counter-concept, eg a hunter is not a hunter without the animal.
In our view, the concept "man" thus includes the bear. The two needed
to be separated before "man" could be understood as an individual. We
would have a very hard time to find our way in their world. We are
formed by our world as they were by theirs.
Take into account that many so-called primitive people did not even
have a clear idea of the distinction between man and animal. They
lived in an environment where they interacted with the animals as
active partners in the action.
Hayabusa
S. M. Sullivan
Decorative bands have symmetry and sign repetition as their salient
traits. The arrangement of the signs on the fox stele band has some
obvious sign repetition but no symmetry.
How can you ask how many different Gobekli Tepe signs there are
knowing that the site is still being excavated?
I've got a total of 3 photos showing different symbols engraved on
stone from that site. So there is no inventory of signs, and won't be
til the German archeologists excavating that site publish their
findings.
Peter T. Daniels
Ok, so S. M. "cinnamon cat" Sullivan gets to decree that if something
isn't symmetrical, then it isn't decorative.
I guess that leaves out a whole lot of 20th-century architecture.
> How can you ask how many different Gobekli Tepe signs there are
> knowing that the site is still being excavated?
> I've got a total of 3 photos showing different symbols engraved on
> stone from that site. So there is no inventory of signs, and won't be
> til the German archeologists excavating that site publish their
> findings.-
How do you get from "obvious sign repetition" to "it might be
logograms" or "it might be an abjad"?
S. M. Sullivan
Absolutely nothing. Why compare it to a writing system used by Indo-
European speakers?
About the Natufians, some linguists associate them with farming, and
the spread of Afro-Asiatic languages.
Here's a brief list of some Afro-Asiatic languages: Akkadian, Arabic,
Aramaic, Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, Omotic, Cushitic, and at least one
language in Ethiopia the name of which I can't recall. Conventional
wisdom gives the Natufians a point of origin in Northeast Africa, but
their sites have been found in Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey and
Iran, as well. The time spread for Natufians is from 12,000 to 8300
BC, after which they were assimilated into other cultures or their
cultural leavings changed so that they were called some other name by
archeologists. One weird thing about this site in Turkey is that it's
very early Natufian and yet it shows evidence of organized
stonemasonry typical of sedentary cultures that had agriculture and
slave labor. And the other weird thing is those possibly decorative
symbols carved so carefully onto the rocks.
Natufians were very big on creating objets d'art; like the Egyptians
they made many representations (frescoes, sculputure) of vultures, and
may have considered them sacred because they defleshed the bodies of
the dead so people could then burn the bones, as was customary. Heads
were often removed and prepared for use as oracular heads, this was
done by defleshing the skull, removing the brain and covering the
skull with a layer of clay to represent the features of the deceased.
These oracular heads were sometimes decorated with shell beads, in one
case the eye sockets were filled with clay and then cowries were
inserted to echo the form of eyelids. Reminds me
of the Roman custom of putting coins on the eyes of the deceased. Any
way it's a very early example of portraiture, too. Animals and obese
women were favorite subjects of Natufian art, but they also made
ithyphallic sculpture.
Notable things about the Natufians, they domesticated gazelles and ate
the young ones before changing to use of goats, which are hardier and
eat anything that grows prettymuch. Also Natufians made very early use
of wheat, and the Gobekli Tepe area is notable for earliest known
wheat agriculture. One old Natufian man was buried with a puppy or fox
cub, and foxes figure large among the carvings on the steles at
Gobekli Tepe.
What I'm saying is, this culture had similarities with Egyptian and
other very old Afro-Asiatic cultures, so comparing the Gobekli Tepe
signs to signs used by other ancient Afro-Asiatic is IMO not
inappropriate.
S. M. Sullivan
This post is full of painfully wrong etymology.
S. M. Sullivan
No, there are several other symbols. I'm not sure why you can't see
them. Moving right from the '(H)' around the corner of the stele,
there are three smaller signs in a vertical arrangement, reading from
the top down, sign like a capital I, sign like a capital H, sign like
a capital V, and immediately to the right of the three smaller signs,
a large capital U-shaped sign. There's another vertical row of signs
to the right of the U-shaped sign, but due to the angle they are not
describable.
S. M. Sullivan
What has this got to do with whether the Gobekli Tepe signs constitute
writing?
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Why does it make a difference what language the writers spoke? Your
suggestion was to compare it with proto-Canaanitic, which was an
ancestor of Roman and used by Semitic speakers. If you did so, you
would inevitably find some resemblant shapes, which would mean equally
little.
Natufian is at least in the right area and time period. If you're just
comparing symbols, I suppose you might get some clues as to their
meaning or significance.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Actually the narrow face looks quite symmetrical, including the hands
above. (Note the narrow faces of the steles facing inward to the
"court".) Unfortunately we can't see what's on the far side.
pauljk
"S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote in message
news:ecf9bba1-ef3e-4a6b...@i5g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...
> On Oct 13, 12:47 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
>> On Oct 12, 6:23 pm, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> > I'm crossposting to sci.lang . I'm sure Franz will give you all the
>> > references you need.
>>
>> Thank you for the invitation. I began posting about
>> was met with scepticism if not sheer disbelief.
>> Meanwhile I went a lot further in sci.lang, where
>> I started what I call a Magdalenian experiment,
>> reconstructing the language of Lascaux, very
>> exciting for me, a nuisance to others, but bold new
>> ideas and hypotheses are required in science.
>> Richard Fester once drew a map of AQC or ACQ
>> names in the Guyenne, and said this word must
>> name places of water. There are plenty of villages
>> whose names end on -ac, like Rouffignac, Cognac,
>> and so on, so I postulated simpler AC as expanse
>> of land with water. Inverse CA would then mean sky,
>> present in Old Latin caelum 'sky'. And then I read
>> as AC CA
>>
>> http://www.seshat.ch/home/acca.GIF
>> http://www.seshat.ch/home.tablets.GIF
>>
>> The lower bar of the lying H represents the earth AC
>> and the upper bar the sky CA and the slim vertical bar
>> the exchanges between them, prayers for rain and the
>> smoke of sacrificial fires imploring rain symbolized
>> by snakes heading upward, and falling rain rewarding
>> the prayers and sacrifices symbolized by snakes
>> heading downward. AC CA may be translated as:
>> where earth AC and sky CA are meeting. The ancient
>> Egyptians mentioned a Syrian province by the name
>> of aqa. As AC CA is related to water - snakes being
>> the most frequent symbols and having to do with water
>> - a derivative of this compound might have yielded
>> Latin aqua 'water'. Further derivatives are akka, the
>> Indo-European earth goddess, a stammered name
>> according to Julius Pokorny, a meaningful name in
>> my opinion, and German Acker 'field', more precisely:
>> an expanse of land AC under the sky CA. The inverse
>> form CA AC would account for Greek Gaia, equivalent
>> with a lunisolar calendar: a year has 12 months of 30
>> days, plus 5 and occasionally 6 more days (three days
>> of midsummer, two and occasionally three days of
>> midwinter), while 63 continuous periods of 30 days
>> are 1,890 days and correspond to 64 lunations or
>> synodic months, mistake less than half a minute
>> per lunation or half a day in a lifetime. Here is an
>> while a peculiar bucranium is found on the male
>> central pillar on the left (western) side. This hieroglyph
>> combines the sky god AAR RAA NOS and the hot
>> blooded half-god GIS BAL CA MmOS and the other
>> half-god AD DA MAN. Explaining these names would
>> take me too long, so you can read my reconstruction
>>
>> http://www.seshat.ch/home/lascaux3.htm
>>
>> At the end of the page lascaux4, by the way, is my recent
>> work, with my location of the Indo-European homeland,
>> and the civilization of REO Rhea Rheia, and more about
>> her father AAR RAA NOS Ouranos. For the hierogplyphs
>> Klaus Schmidt, the paperback may still be on sale,
>> about 24 Swiss francs, that will be some 18 Euro,
>> text in German, way over one hundred illustrations
>> via Youtube. You can also google for g�bekli tepe
>> in the Images sector. And if you have a serious interest
>> in these signs or ideograms or hieroglyphs you may
>> discuss with me, here in this thread.
>
> This post is full of painfully wrong etymology.
But its EBY MOL LGY is perfect.
pjk
S. M. Sullivan
Yes, and here's more about Afro-Asiatic languages and population
genetics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroasiatic_Urheimat
"Population genetics
Frequency of haplogroup E1b1b in select Afro-Asiatic speakers [14][15]
Language (Region where historically spoken) Frequency
Cushitic 32–81%
Egyptian languages 36–60%
Berber languages 40–91%
Semitic languages 7–29%
Omotic languages >50%
The migration of Afroasiatic speakers from their original homeland is
sometimes associated with dispersal of certain genetic markers. The
most often cited genetic marker is Haplogroup E1b1b which originated
in East Africa. In general, Afroasiatic speakers have relatively high
frequencies of this haplogroup. Christopher Ehret and Shomarka Keita
have suggested that the geography of the E1b1b lineage coincides with
the distribution of Afroasiatic languages.[16] Other markers that are
associated with Afroasiatic include mitochondrial haplogroups M1 and
haplogroup U6. Gonzalez et al. 2007 suggest that Afroasiatic speakers
may have dispersed from East Africa carrying the subclades M1a and
U6a1.[17]
Unlike other Afroasiatic speakers, Chadic speakers have low
frequencies of Haplogroup E1b1b. However in a recent study, a branch
of mitochondrial haplogroup L3 linked the Chadic speakers from the
Sahel with Cushitic speakers from East Africa.[18]"
[edit]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_E1b1b
I wonder if there might be testable DNA in one of the back teeth of
the Jericho Skull?
S. M. Sullivan
wrote:
The symbols on the engraved horizontal band are not symmetrical, and
that's what I was referring to, not the fox and human arms pictorial.
Franz Gnaedinger
>
> This post is full of painfully wrong etymology.
Which one hurts you most? point it out, and I shall
discuss it. I develop a new approach to the language
of Ice Age Eurasia, following Richard Fester but
going way beyond him, a bottom up approach
complementing the top down approach of the
comparative method. What they call Proto-Indo-
European is a version of Late Magdalenian in my
terminology, while Magdalenian is the fully developed
form of the Ice Age language. Every believer in the
present paradigm, in any scientific field, is hurt by
the results of a new paradigm, I can't help that.
As for the list of hieroglyphs you ask for; there was
one, about a dozen signs, published in a Swiss
newspaper, but it's not online. Only a few of many
more temples have been excavated so far, but the
stone pillar temples A and B and C and D are
probably the most important ones, from the earliest
period, around 11 600 BP, the inventory of the signs
on these pillars gives already a fine idea of what
the entire hill was meant for: Klaus Schmidt considers
the Göbekli Tepe an equivalent of the Iranian Towers
of Silence, while I regard it as the Hill of Creation,
relying on my interpretations, and both views go
together if you consider the Egyptian pyramids that
symbolize the Primeval Hill, the hill rising above the
primeval water, and are at the same time funerary
monuments, granting a second life in the beyond.
Now please point out the worst etymology you find
in my post, and I shall discuss it with you.
Franz Gnaedinger
http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1769&category=Science
Is Schoch - in the running text called Schock (!) - still
a topic in sci.archaeology? and Graham Hankook ??
A word about the leaping foxes that appear on several
central pillars. According to my interpretation the fox
was a psychopompos, guiding the souls of dead rulers
through the labyrinth of the Underworld and back to the
surface of the earth and then indicating a leap to the sky,
evoking the trajectory of the rising sun by the perfect arcs
of their backs. However, only worthy souls were allowed
to return from the Underworld and ascend to a heavenly
beyond. Consider the beast turned upside down and
guarding the ground with bared theeth: there are several
of them, and they had the task to hinder the souls of bad
leaders from returning and climbing the sky. Which would
indicate that a leader of the Göbekli Tepe culture had
plenty of power, but was obliged to behave morally.
In Egypt you have Anubis, a canide, as psychopompos,
while a crocodile devoured an unworthy soul. Now
another lesson in my 'painful' etymology. I derive the word
fox from DhAG meaning able, a word of very many
derivatives including English fox as able guide through
the labyrinth of the Underworld. On a charming Celtic
stater you can see the sun horse, and below it, peeping
out from a hole in the ground, the nose of a fox - the fox
that guided the sun horse through the Underworld and
back to the surface of the earth. Other derivatives of
DhAG are Latin dux 'leader', English duke, German
taugen 'be fit, able', (Werk)zeug 'tool', Ding 'thing',
and many more. The supreme Celtic god Dagda was
the good god in the sense of the able god. Then we
have Ugaritic dingir 'god'. While inverse GADh means
good in the moral sense. Here you have the theodicy
in nuce: the able god and the good god - can God
be good and almighty at the same time? There has
certainly been many an able leader of the Göbekli Tepe
culture, but not all of them were good ones, as the
beasts turned upside down are indicating, the most
impressive one on a picture on the above page.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
I can't see what this has to do with your contention that these
Gobekli Tepe marks are writing. Or even with figuring out what they
mean as "symbols".
Franz Gnaedinger
Another false assumption I found in sci.archaeology:
the Göbekli Tepe was not a part of the Natufian!
It is a different civilization that had some contact
with the Natufian. I began posting about the Göbekli
Tepe a dozen years ago in sci.archaeology. What
a pity that you only now begin to realize the great
archaeological sensation of our time, and still spread
painfully wrong information (to quote your own word).
benl...@ihug.co.nz
You haven't quite got my point. If you look at the narrow face of the
stele, you will see that the symbols on the band on that face are
symmetrical (as far as we can tell from the photo). This symmetry is
repeated in the fingers that are visible on that face above the band
_on both sides_, strongly suggesting that another pair of arms (and
another fox?) appear on the other, invisible, broad face of the stele.
The band of symbols/shapes continues around to the left across a broad
face, and this portion, _if taken in isolation_, is indeed not
symmetrical. What I am suggesting is that a mirror-image sequence may
well appear on the invisible broad face, so that the entire band is,
in fact, symmetrical when viewed from the narrow-face position. My
pointing out the orientation of the steles relative to the whole
enclosure was meant to suggest that the steles were meant to be seen
primarily edge-on.
Jack Linthicum
I see about 12 "elements" or "signs" in your illustrations.
|, 0, a downpointing delta with a tail either straight or wavy, that
wavy vertical line, a circle with a diagonal line, a "tree" like
symbol, crosshatching, U, - , an arc, and a series of waves joined.
Some combinations , your H is two verticals and a horizontal, there
are Us with and without a circle, two verticals joined by a circle, a
horizontal line with the arc and U.
Not much of a vocabulary.
JTEM
"S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
> You do NOT know that the Gobekli Tepe signs
> were ideograms. They could just as easily be
> logosyllabic signs or even part of an abjad wrting
> system.
Or, as is most likely the case: Pretty pictures.
S. M. Sullivan
Dear Franz,
About Gobekli Tepe: It was not an Indo-European language used there,
for a start. It was Afro-Asiatic. There may very well have been an
Indo-European language in use in Eurasia thousands of years ago, but
not at Gobekli Tepe (unless it was spoken by the people who tried to
smash some of the steles.)
The writing on one seal from Gobekli Tepe reads very clearly 'M-Sh-He'
in characters similar to proto-Canaanitic. This is a name very common
in Afro-Asiatic languages, it is Mose in Egyptian, Musa in Arabic and
Moshe in Hebrew. It means 'son' or 'birth'.
S. M. Sullivan
I don't have a problem with the idea of fox as psychopompos; there was
a Natufian burial with a puppy, and another with 2 canids (foxes?).
And there are carvings of foxes prominent in what may have been a
memorial site, Gobekli Tepe. You are most likely right about the
Anubis/Gobekli Tepe fox connection; Egypt was a society connected to
other Afro-Asiatic societies by language, myth, religion and DNA.
The actual etymology of duke may come from Sanskrit genitive for
'banner' (dhvaka), describing a leader who bore a flag into battle. I
don't think it is a good idea to connect duke/dux to Ugaritic dingir,
because the Ugaritic word is a loan word from Sumerian, and neither
word is likely to have any connection to duke/dux, Ugaritic being an
Afro-Asiatic tongue and Sumerian being an isolate, or at least very,
very distantly related to any other language.
It looks as though you are much more daring than I when it comes to
identifying words from different language families as cognate. This
sort of thing sets my teeth on edge, it reminds of people who see
things that no one else can see. That is why I called it painfully
wrong.
Sometimes, when you see things no one else can see, you will later be
hailed as a visionary.
But not usually.
S. M. Sullivan
I think you may be right, and that U-shaped symbol was meant to be the
first thing seen by an onlooker. This could indicate that the
inscription (if it is one) begins with the U-shaped sign, and is then
to be read right to left from there, typical for Afro-Asiatic writing.
S. M. Sullivan
Franz, can you explain to me why you are certain that Gobekli Tepe was
built by Indo-European language speakers, when you have admitted the
religion of Gobekli Tepe has parallels with that of Egypt?
S. M. Sullivan
>
> read more »
If the Gobekli Tepe complex was built by Natufians, that gives us some
insight into their language, because the Natufians are associated with
the spread of Afro-Asiatic languages.
Proto-Canaanitic and ancient Egyptian are Afro-Asiatic languages and
have some signs similar to a few of the Gobekli Tepe signs, which
gives one a foot in the door toward deciphering the GT signs, assuming
they had similar phonetic values to the signs used by other Afro-
Asiatic speakers. Some of the GT signs that are similar to Egyptian/
Proto-Canaanitic are: the wavy line ('m', water), the trident ('sh', a
head of barley), short upside-down trident ('he' shouting man).
S. M. Sullivan
It's a generality, Peter. A decorative band will usually have sign
repetition and be symmetrical, but it is not writing. A band of script
will have sign repetition and will not usually be symmetrical.
And how do you get from 'it's probably decorative', to 'it must be
ideograms'?
Peter T. Daniels
> I think you may be right, and that U-shaped symbol was meant to be the
> first thing seen by an onlooker. This could indicate that the
> inscription (if it is one) begins with the U-shaped sign, and is then
> to be read right to left from there, typical for Afro-Asiatic writing.-
WTF is "Afro-Asiatic writing"?
I see all three separate varieties of cuneiform are beyond your ken.
Peter T. Daniels
Oh jeez.
Why can't you just read his 16,000 already existing posts on the
topic, instead of making him type it all out YET AGAIN?
Peter T. Daniels
> Dear Franz,
>
> About Gobekli Tepe: It was not an Indo-European language used there,
> for a start. It was Afro-Asiatic. There may very well have been an
> Indo-European language in use in Eurasia thousands of years ago, but
> not at Gobekli Tepe (unless it was spoken by the people who tried to
> smash some of the steles.)
> The writing on one seal from Gobekli Tepe reads very clearly 'M-Sh-He'
> in characters similar to proto-Canaanitic. This is a name very common
> in Afro-Asiatic languages, it is Mose in Egyptian, Musa in Arabic and
> Moshe in Hebrew. It means 'son' or 'birth'.-
Jesus H. Fucking Christ. Do you not even know what "borrowing" is?
And how, exactly, do you imagine that an AA language got to Anatolia
in 10,000 BCE?
S. M. Sullivan
Afro-Asiatic writing would be writing systems used to record Arabic,
Hebrew, Aramaic and other Afro-Asiatic languages.
Do you know how to read cuneiform, Peter? Which kinds? Akkadian only?
S. M. Sullivan
Who asked him to comment? Not me.
I do not want to read Walls of Bad Etymology and assertions that he
can read Magdalenian and it is really PIE.
It also is annoying to be told that I am spreading false information
because I admitted I did not agree with his ideas.
S. M. Sullivan
The site in question is Natufian and is not far from Syria, where
there are also known Natufian sites, and... how did they get there?
They walked from Syria. Do you even know what Natufians were?
Go look up Natufian culture in Wikipedia or something. They were
associated with the the spread of Afro-Asiatic languages, among other
things. I thought you'd at least know that, but you frequently
disappoint.
What is your area of expertise, exactly?
Franz Gnaedinger
The Magdalenian etymology of etymology would be
EK TOM )OG or EK TOM LOG
EK out (of)
TOM stone knive, to cut
)OG or LOG having the say, logos
together: to cut out in a logical way, the science of
recognizing and identifying the relevant parts (in a word),
etymology e-tym-o-log-y e-tym-log EK TOM )OG or
EK TOM LOG. Greek etymos means real, true, certain;
personified. If you wish to find the truth, what is true,
etymon, look out for the relevant parts. Truth is not found
outside the world, hovering above the world, but inside
the world and life ... Magdalenian is a treasure of early
philosophy.
S. M. Sullivan
Since you bring up the exception of cuneiform writing, which was
written in top-down columns in the earliest form, and then changed to
left to right horizontal (like English), here's a fine article link
about that very topic:
http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlb/2003/cdlb2003_002.pdf
Of course, ancient Egyptian, another Afro-Asiatic writing system, went
both ways, sometimes simultaneously. By that I mean that a text might
be written in one horizontal direction, and an adjacent identical text
would be written in the other direction. This was indicative of the
desire of Egyptians for harmony and balance, and an aesthetic sense
unrivaled in the ancient world.
S. M. Sullivan
And since we're bringing up exceptions to the general rule of right to
left horizontal orientaion for Afro-Asiatic languages, a lot of older
Egyptian inscriptions are in top-down columns. And Ugaritic, of
course, was a cuneiform horizontal left to right script.
This does not void my point, that most of these Afro-Asiatic written
languages did not go left to right. And Gobekli Tepe Script may be
found in horizontal and top-down mode.
S. M. Sullivan
No one has made him do anything.
You are so full of loathing, contempt and rage.
You don't even read what I post or link to, most often.
Why not go away?
S. M. Sullivan
> On Oct 12, 9:20 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 13, 3:14 pm, "S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 11, 11:30 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
> > > wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 12, 6:31 pm, "S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>
> > > > > > On Oct 12, 12:07 pm, "S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > On Oct 11, 2:33 am, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > > "writing" at Göbekli Tepe, but the linguists there, including an
> > > > > > > > expert on scripts, don't take him seriously.
>
> > > > > > > I don't take him seriously either, but I'm not sure why the abstract
> > > > > > > pictograms from Gobekli Tepe are being dismissed as non-writing.
>
> > > > > > > This seems every bit as idiotic as dismissing Indus script as non-
> > > > > > > writing.
>
> > > > > > comparing these "pictograms" with "proto-Canaanitic" several millennia
> > > > > > later?
>
> > > > > > > were illiterate because a) the symbols are more than 10,000 years old,
> > > > > > > and b) they were made by pre-agricultural people?
>
More about the Natufians' oracular heads and their continued use among
the Israelites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teraphim
Franz Gnaedinger
wrote:
>
> I see about 12 "elements" or "signs" in your illustrations.
>
> |, 0, a downpointing delta with a tail either straight or wavy, that
> wavy vertical line, a circle with a diagonal line, a "tree" like
> symbol, crosshatching, U, - , an arc, and a series of waves joined.
>
> Some combinations , your H is two verticals and a horizontal, there
> are Us with and without a circle, two verticals joined by a circle, a
> horizontal line with the arc and U.
>
> Not much of a vocabulary.
>
Are you speaking of the band under the hands of the
female central pillar of temple D, pillar 18, the eastern
central pillar of the biggest stone pillar temple excavated
so far? The central pillars of temple D represent a triple
goddess, the fire giver PIR GID and the fur giver BIR GID
and the fertility giver BRI GID, an emanation of the triple
goddess of Paleolithic times, known to us in form of the
Celtic triple goddess Brigit (pillar 18) and a triple god and
hero, AAR RAA NOS Ouranos and GIS BAL CA MmOS
GISh.BIL.GA.MISh Gilgamesh and AD DA MAN Adam
(pillar 31); pillar 18 being the eastern and pillar 33 being
the western central pillar of temple D, both reaching a height
of some five meters above the original floor, but their lower
parts are still covered by rubble that was used for filling up
the temples 9,500 years ago, when the site was abandoned.
The signs on the 'throats' of the pillars 18 and 31 have been
explained before. Here again my phonetic interpretation:
http://www.seshat.ch/home/gt01.GIF
While more rubble was removed, below the hands of the
triple goddess of pillar 18 appeared a band: on the right
flank of the pillar, under the horizontal fox in the bend of
the arm, are signs that can be rendered as ( H ) ( H )
only that the arcs are semicircles, while on the narrow part
on the (southern) front of the pillar the band shows four
heads of snakes, in the middle a big U, then again four
heads of snakes. The big U mirrors the U-shaped stone
at the entrance of temple C, the beasts on top of that stone,
baring their teeth (one of them preserved, the other lost)
indicating that the U has to do with the dead ruler's journey
through the Underworld, symbolizing the descent into and
traversing of and return from the Underworld. The snake
heads flanking the U are abbreviations of the more elaborate
version of the snakes on pillar 33, again temple D. Snakes
in the region of the Göbekli Tepe indicate water, this time
the rivers of the fire archers PIR RYT Firat Euphrates and
their 'fingers' (arrows) of light and luck DIG LIC Dicle Tigris.
Now for the ( H ) signs. The semicircles ( ) indicate the
stone pillar rings, while the vertical bars of the H symbolize
the bigger central pillars, and the small horizontal bar has
two differrent meanings: a) the mouth of the speaking
shamaness standing between the central pillars, made
obvious by the standing H on the 'throat' of pillar 18
that is given as a hollow oval evoking an open mouth,
and b) the body of a dead ruler placed between the pair
of central pillars, the body without the head, offered to the
vultures, remember Klaus Schmidt's analogy of the Göbekli
Tepe to the Iranian Towers of Silence. Now these events
are depicted on the most phantastic pillar, pillar 43, again
temple D. The beheaded ruler is riding a giant bird, which
bird carries him out of the temple. Above is the pregnant
vulture priestess, on her outstretched arm or wing a solar disc
- the missing head of the ruler turned into the sun, promise
of a new life in the beyond, anticipating the Egyptian belief
that the dead king will return as the sun, in the solar disc,
one with Ra (from Magdalenian RAA meaning light). But it
isn't time for this transformation yet. The bird carries the
beheaded ruler out to the west, also the Egyptians saw
the land of the dead in the west, region of the settting sun.
The ruler has first to traverse the Underworld, which is
indicated by the horizontal fox in the bend of the right arm
of the triple goddess of pillar 18 temple D. When he returns,
guided by the fox, and passes the guarding beasts of bared
teeth that let only pass worthy souls -- only then can he climb
the sky as the rising sun, indicated by the elegant leaping
foxes on the central pillars of temple B (that combines a year
with the life of a supreme ruler). The reliefs on the pillars
of the Göbekli Tepe convey _visual_ messages,
they are not writing in our modern sense of the word,
and yet they are writing, as they convey messages in the
framework of an amazingly complex ancient belief at the
begin of the era now called Neolithic I. We have to abandon
the view that writing was created ex nihilo around 3 400 BC
in Upper Egypt and Mesopotamia. While a letter has an
exact phonetical value, many signs on the pillars of the
Göbekli Tepe are polyvalent, also the ( H ) sign that has
a further meaning as calendar: one semicircle given as
arc ( indicates the 180 days between the midwinter
and midsummer festival, the other semicircle given as
arc ) indicates the 180 days between the midsummer
and midwinter festival, while the horizontal bar indicates
the additional 5 and occasionally 6 days of the solar year,
midsummer: day of AAR RAA NOS Ouranos, day of turtle,
day of AD DA MAN Adam; midwinter: day of BRI GID,
occasional day of eagle, day of PIR GID and her fire archers
PIR RYT who send up their 'fingers' (arrows) of light and luck
DIG LIC on New Year's Eve, along the shores of the PIR RYT
Firat Euphrates and DIG LIC Dicle Tigris, a happy event
conveyed by the signs on the lower part of pillar 33 temple D.
Franz Gnaedinger
>
> Dear Franz,
>
> About Gobekli Tepe: It was not an Indo-European language used there,
> for a start. It was Afro-Asiatic. There may very well have been an
> Indo-European language in use in Eurasia thousands of years ago, but
> not at Gobekli Tepe (unless it was spoken by the people who tried to
> smash some of the steles.)
> The writing on one seal from Gobekli Tepe reads very clearly 'M-Sh-He'
> in characters similar to proto-Canaanitic. This is a name very common
> in Afro-Asiatic languages, it is Mose in Egyptian, Musa in Arabic and
> Moshe in Hebrew. It means 'son' or 'birth'.
Let me reply here to all your replies to me.
First, the Göbekli Tepe culture was not Natufian,
it was a distinct culture with some contacts to the
Natufian. Earlier linguists postulated a Japhetic
period, when all peoples used the same language.
I revive that concept in a more defined manner:
The tribes of Homo sapiens sapiens who started from
Southern India and entered Europe some 42,000 years
ago spoke Afro-Asiatic, which, under the influence of
the Ice Age that triggered technological and in it's wake
cultural progress, evolved into the language of Ice Age
Eurasia, and the fully developed form of that language
would have been Magdalenian, named for the culture
that spread from Northern Spain in the west to Lake
Baikal in the east. The Göbekli Tepe would have been
a Late Magdalenian outpost, and both the cultural
achievements of the Ice Age and the more developed
language would have spread from there to all sides.
Consider for example AAR RAA NOS who became
the Greek sky god Ouranos and the Indian sky god
Varuna. The same god gave his name to valleys in
Europe, Val d'Aran, Arundel, Val d'Hérens in the
Swiss Alps (a valley is a hollow between solid masses
of rock, filled with air AAR and light RAA). A further
descendant of AAR RAA NOS is the Egyptian Ra,
the supreme god appearing in the solar disc, spender
of daylight, RAA meaning light. AAR RAA NOS also
occurs in the version of AAR RAA CA, the one composed
of air AAR and light RAA in the sky CA, and this version
became muruku in the Indus Valley and Tamil Murukan,
also Horus in Egypt, while the form AAR RAA AC, the
one composed of air AAR and light RAA on earth AC,
would account for Horakhty, Horus on the horizon, his
solar eye or lunar eye rising from or setting on the horizon,
hence being in contact with the earth AC. The Göbekli
Tepe predates the begin of predynastic Egypt by over
4,000 years, the begin of proto-dynastic Egypt by over
6,000 years, and the building of the Great Pyramid by
some 7,000 years. The first stone pillar temples (A B C D)
are 11,600 years old, while the earth mound, a layer of
up to five meters of earth carried to the top of the hill
and deposited there, is about 12,000 years old. On top
of the earth mound I assume wooden temples, wood pillar
temples that were replaced by the later stone pillar temples.
The first cultivated emmer (or tricorn?) identified genetically
is from the base of the Karacadag to the northeast of
the Göbekli Tepe, belonging to the Göbekli Tepe area.
Agriculture was invented here, and so it's only natural
that the language spread from here, together with the
invention of agriculture and all it involved. As for Moses:
I have one of may 'painful' explanations also for this name,
here published for the first time: it might be MmOS CA,
offspring MmOS of the sky CA, having a parallel in
GIS BAL CA MmOS GISh.BIL.GA.MISh Gilgamesh,
gesturing GIS hot(headed or blooded) BAL son MmOS
of the sky CA, the rump form BAL accounting for Baal.
In the society of the Göbekli Tepe he would have been
a guard, an early 'soldier', while AD DA MAN Adam
was the early farmer and digger of ditches - but I stop it
here, having gone far too far already. Only one more thing:
HArran or HAran, some forty kilometers south of the
Göbekli Tepe, an important place in the Bible, was
named for AAR RAA NOS - hAAR RAA N - hARRAN.
Doug Weller
Sullivan wrote:
>
>As I recall it, the photos are copyright 2010 by John Anthony West and
>someone named Schoch; I'll look for an online link.
Is there any sort of reliable source for this? The Linda Howe site is
hardly reliable. I didn't realise Schoch was still working with West, a
shame, but he could never say no it appears.
Doug
--
Doug Weller --
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk
Amun - co-owner/co-moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amun/
Jack Linthicum
I am getting the picture. No one can know what the symbols mean, or
how to pronounce them, so improvise. Another word for invent.
pauljk
"Franz Gnaedinger" <fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote in message
news:2bb4fedd-8fe6-4ca6...@30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
ROTFL!
This is great.
Poor Greeks perverted its correct old meaning with etumologi : etumon,
true sense of a word. The true etymology of etymology is something
like off-cut-word, a schnitzelwort. :-)
pjk
Franz Gnaedinger
wrote:
>
> I am getting the picture. No one can know what the symbols mean, or
> how to pronounce them, so improvise. Another word for invent.
Re-invent and re-construct, relying on a wide spectrum of
cultural legacies. We expect to one day receive messages
from outer space. How can we hope to understand them
if we don't even try to understand the messages left by our
ancient forebears?
Jack Linthicum
If they were messages. Re constructing without a base, say a gap of
8-9 thousand years, is inventing.
Franz Gnaedinger
> "Franz Gnaedinger" <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote in message
Consider the English saying "cut through to the core"
- here a couple of Google results for that saying
About 673,000 results (0.28 seconds)
Search Results
1.
The One Thing You Need to Know | Book by Marcus Buckingham -
Simon ...
"Buckingham is a superb writer and speaker who can make complex
ideas crystal clear, cut through to the core insight, and reveal its
crucial importance. ...
books.simonandschuster.com/.../9780743261654 - Cached - Similar
2. [PDF]
VOLVO TRUCK & BUS
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
team allowed them to cut through to the core issues of. Volvo's
fleet management and significantly streamline management processes ...
www.lex.co.uk/pdf/Volvo_case_study.pdf - Similar
3.
Michael Winner for Prime minister? | Facebook
Like many elderly people he managed to cut through to the core
of the situation and make some very valid and intelligent points
without even the slightest ...
www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=27681157334 - Cached
4.
Amy Winehouse - Amy Winehouse, Biography, Discography, Back
To ...
Amy had cut through to the core of the human condition with her
debut, adding her own jazzy witticisms to the legacy of the
greats. ...
www.amywinehouse.com/about_amy.php - Cached - Similar
5.
An Invitation...
Sometimes questions are like that - burning laser beams of
intensity that cut through to the core of the problem. And sometimes
questions are just pesky ...
www.culturalcreatives.org/invitation.html - Cached
6.
Chicken soup for the college soul: inspiring and humorous
stories ... - Google Books Result
Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Kimberly Kirberger - 1999 -
Education - 340 pages
The more we met, the more I resented his intelligence and his
ability to cut through to the core issues. And I was aware he was much
more advanced than I. ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=1558747028...
7.
Enter the Open Door - Google Books Result
Ann Conner - 2008 - Religion - 396 pages
Today, simply lay your life before God and allow Him to cut
through to the core of the situation. Something will have to go. It
might surprise you what ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=1606478036...
Franz Gnaedinger
wrote:
>
> If they were messages. Re constructing without a base, say a gap of
> 8-9 thousand years, is inventing.
We have that base. The earliest writing identified so far
by one poster Holly in the spring of 2006 who applied
my reconstruction of PAS to the ideogram in the Brunel
Chamber of the Chauvet cave, some 32,000 years old
PAD --- activity of feet
comparative PAS --- everywhere (in a plain), here,
south and north of me, east and west of me, all in all
five places, wherefrom Greek pas pan 'all, every'
and pente penta- 'five'
Now Holly used my word for naming the domino five
in the Brunel chamber and was very excited about it
O O
O
O O
Actually, there is one more dot, also a red dot, in upper
position that can be read as CA for sky
O O O CA
O
O O PAS
Together: PAS CA, everywhere PAS in the sky CA,
may the bull man or supreme leader (bison on the
stalactite in the rear hall of the Chauvet cave whose
head covers the womb of the Venus drawn on the
same stalactite) be born again in the sky (more
precisely in the region of the Summer Triangle
Deneb Vega Atair) and roam the sky in his next life
as he roams the land in this life ... PAS CA accounts
for Russiam Paskha Italian Pasqua French Pâques
'Easter'.
This is just an example, I have much more, my work
from the past years in sci.archaeology and then sci.lang,
based on almost fifty years of studies in cave and rock art.
By the way, the inverse of PAS, namely SAP, means
everywhere (in space), here, south and north of me,
east and west of me, under and above me, all in all
seven places, wherefrom seven in many languages
including Hebrew sheb, and Latin sapientia for world
wisdom, Greek sophia for wisdom, acquired by having
traveled and knowing the world in all places.
Peter T. Daniels
> On Oct 15, 12:26 am, "S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 14, 8:26 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 14, 10:02 pm, "S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> > > > I think you may be right, and that U-shaped symbol was meant to be the
> > > > first thing seen by an onlooker. This could indicate that the
> > > > inscription (if it is one) begins with the U-shaped sign, and is then
> > > > to be read right to left from there, typical for Afro-Asiatic writing.-
>
> > > WTF is "Afro-Asiatic writing"?
>
> > > I see all three separate varieties of cuneiform are beyond your ken.
>
> > Since you bring up the exception of cuneiform writing, which was
> > written in top-down columns in the earliest form, and then changed to
> > left to right horizontal (like English), here's a fine article link
> > about that very topic:
>
> >http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlb/2003/cdlb2003_002.pdf
>
> > Of course, ancient Egyptian, another Afro-Asiatic writing system, went
> > both ways, sometimes simultaneously. By that I mean that a text might
> > be written in one horizontal direction, and an adjacent identical text
> > would be written in the other direction. This was indicative of the
> > desire of Egyptians for harmony and balance, and an aesthetic sense
> > unrivaled in the ancient world.
>
> And since we're bringing up exceptions to the general rule of right to
> left horizontal orientaion for Afro-Asiatic languages, a lot of older
> Egyptian inscriptions are in top-down columns.
So are a lot of English storefront signs. That doesn't make it the
normal way of writing.
Now try looking at a papyrus document, obviously the primary writing
medium. The three scripts are _never_ written left to right or top to
bottom.
> And Ugaritic, of
> course, was a cuneiform horizontal left to right script.
"Of course"?
I guess you're not aware that a handful of Ugaritic or related texts
are written right to left.
> This does not void my point, that most of these Afro-Asiatic written
> languages did not go left to right. And Gobekli Tepe Script may be
> found in horizontal and top-down mode.-
No, it voids your "point" that there was something that could be
labeled "AA writing."
Peter T. Daniels
> On Oct 15, 1:29 pm, "pauljk" <paul.kr...@clear.net.nz> wrote:
>
> > ROTFL!
> > This is great.
> > Poor Greeks perverted its correct old meaning with etumologi : etumon,
> > true sense of a word. The true etymology of etymology is something
> > like off-cut-word, a schnitzelwort. :-)
>
> Consider the English saying "cut through to the core"
> - here a couple of Google results for that saying
Three of your seven examples aren't even examples of that phrase (in
them, "core" is an adjective, not a noun), and in the other four,
"core" does not stand alone but is modified by an "of ..." phrase.
> About 673,000 results (0.28 seconds)
> Search Results
>
> 1.
> The One Thing You Need to Know | Book by Marcus Buckingham -
> Simon ...
> "Buckingham is a superb writer and speaker who can make complex
> ideas crystal clear, cut through to the core insight, and reveal its
> crucial importance. ...
> books.simonandschuster.com/.../9780743261654 - Cached - Similar
> 2. [PDF]
> VOLVO TRUCK & BUS
> File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
> team allowed them to cut through to the core issues of. Volvo's
> fleet management and significantly streamline management processes ...
> www.lex.co.uk/pdf/Volvo_case_study.pdf- Similar
> 3.
> Michael Winner for Prime minister? | Facebook
> Like many elderly people he managed to cut through to the core
> of the situation and make some very valid and intelligent points
> without even the slightest ...
> www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=27681157334- Cached
> 4.
> Amy Winehouse - Amy Winehouse, Biography, Discography, Back
> To ...
> Amy had cut through to the core of the human condition with her
> debut, adding her own jazzy witticisms to the legacy of the
> greats. ...
> www.amywinehouse.com/about_amy.php- Cached - Similar
> 5.
> An Invitation...
> Sometimes questions are like that - burning laser beams of
> intensity that cut through to the core of the problem. And sometimes
> questions are just pesky ...
> www.culturalcreatives.org/invitation.html- Cached
> 6.
> Chicken soup for the college soul: inspiring and humorous
> stories ... - Google Books Result
> Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Kimberly Kirberger - 1999 -
> Education - 340 pages
> The more we met, the more I resented his intelligence and his
> ability to cut through to the core issues. And I was aware he was much
> more advanced than I. ...
> books.google.com/books?isbn=1558747028...
> 7.
> Enter the Open Door - Google Books Result
> Ann Conner - 2008 - Religion - 396 pages
> Today, simply lay your life before God and allow Him to cut
> through to the core of the situation. Something will have to go. It
> might surprise you what ...
Peter T. Daniels
If you had looked at any of the 16,000+ postings, you would know that
whenever anyone who cannot see immediately what he is doing
compliments him, he starts to type it out _all over again_.
> You are so full of loathing, contempt and rage.
>
> You don't even read what I post or link to, most often.
Because what you post has generally no basis in either fact or logic.
> Why not go away?-
Because someone needs to urge you to learn something about the
techniques of what you're trying to do.
Jack Linthicum
Please, a gap from 3200 BC to 12,100 BC is enough without throwing in
32,000 years. Those are inventions, plain ordinary "I think"s not "I
can prove"s. Try the rongo rongo boards next time.
Hayabusa
<smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>On Oct 13, 2:25�pm, Hayabusa <peregr...@t-online.de> wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:27:54 -0700 (PDT), "S. M. Sullivan"
>>
>> <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>> >How do you know that the Gobekli Tepe signs were not repeatable, very
>> >narrow in meaning, structured in application and applicable to a large
>> >region?
>>
>> I concede on the last point: if they were regionally used, but only on
>> wood, we would not know.
>>
>> The rest: if it were a pictogram-like type of writing, like - to take
>> something outside of the near east cultural circle - Maya writing, a
>> systematic application of the symbols is nonetheless easily
>> recognizeable.
>>
>> Narrow in meaning: the pre-writing cultures have been studied
>> carefully. A repertoire of symbols is very common, but if their
>> meaning is studied, it turns out that these symbols need a lot of
>> explanation to us today because their meaning is far wider than we can
>> imagine. Take just one example: man. Is "man"
>> - the socially dominant person,
>> - the person with a dick,
>> - the hunter in relation to his prey,
>> - the being under the sky,
>> - the member of the group,
>> etc? It turns out that none of these figures can be imagined without
>> the counter-concept, eg a hunter is not a hunter without the animal.
>> In our view, the concept "man" thus includes the bear. The two needed
>> to be separated before "man" could be understood as an individual. We
>> would have a very hard time to find our way in their world. We are
>> formed by our world as they were by theirs.
>>
>> Take into account that many so-called primitive people did not even
>> have a clear idea of the distinction between man and animal. They
>> lived in an environment where they interacted with the animals as
>> active partners in the action.
>>
>> Hayabusa
>
>What has this got to do with whether the Gobekli Tepe signs constitute
>writing?
It was far too early to even think of conscious structured writing.
Far too many things had yet to be invented. - I do hope yo don't
interpret me to sidetrack, but I have been fascinated by this - if you
look at Chatal H�y�k, people lived in houses which seem to have
belonged to families for generations. This is in fact the first sign
to my knowledge that people began to develop the concept of private
real estate property, because before this they did not have that,
like, btw, the Plains Indians up to the 19th century. All primitive (I
don't like the term) peoples I am aware of had only a very rudimentary
sense of property beyond the very personal belongings. Geometry had
yet to be discovered, and there is little reason to believe they could
count beyond 50. They had no real sense of numbers yet. But counting
is still much easier than writing.
Hayabusa
S. M. Sullivan
wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:15:41 -0700 (PDT), in sci.archaeology, S. M.
>
> Sullivan wrote:
>
> >As I recall it, the photos are copyright 2010 by John Anthony West and
> >someone named Schoch; I'll look for an online link.
>
> Is there any sort of reliable source for this? The Linda Howe site is
> hardly reliable. I didn't realise Schoch was still working with West, a
> shame, but he could never say no it appears.
> Doug
> --
> Doug Weller --
> Doug's Archaeology Site:http://www.ramtops.co.uk
> Amun - co-owner/co-moderatorhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amun/
I have looked for a better source for the fox stele photo with the
signs on it, but have not found anything so far. If anyone has a copy
of archeologist Klaus Schmidt's book and might scan in photos with
signs, that would be a wonderful contribution.
S. M. Sullivan
> On Oct 15, 3:45 am, "S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 14, 8:27 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > On Oct 14, 10:09 pm, "S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
> > > > Franz, can you explain to me why you are certain that Gobekli Tepe was
> > > > built by Indo-European language speakers, when you have admitted the
> > > > religion of Gobekli Tepe has parallels with that of Egypt?-
>
>
> > You are so full of loathing, contempt and rage.
>
> > You don't even read what I post or link to, most often.
Peter replied:
>
> Because what you post has generally no basis in either fact or logic.
Sullivan answered:
You can know this without reading or understanding it? Quite a feat.
>
Sullivan asked:
> > Why not go away?-
Peter replied:
>
> Because someone needs to urge you to learn something about the
> techniques of what you're trying to do.
If only you were trying to do that. Instead you are treating people
like scum, while trumpeting your own ignorance (especially on the
Indus script threads).
S. M. Sullivan
> belonged to families for generations. This is in fact the first sign
> to my knowledge that people began to develop the concept of private
> real estate property, because before this they did not have that,
> like, btw, the Plains Indians up to the 19th century. All primitive (I
> don't like the term) peoples I am aware of had only a very rudimentary
> sense of property beyond the very personal belongings. Geometry had
> yet to be discovered, and there is little reason to believe they could
> count beyond 50. They had no real sense of numbers yet. But counting
> is still much easier than writing.
>
> Hayabusa
The Natufians were remarkable in that they were sedentary before
developing agriculture. At least one writer has suggested that Gobekli
Tepe was built by slave labor, possibly by prisoners taken in raids.
And then there is the Sphinx, which would have been built during the
Natufian or Kebaran period, judging from the water erosion marks on
it. Here's another massive stone structure put up by pre-agricultural
people. Could be another instance of slave prisoners being put to work
on grandiose projects, long before this was considered possible.
Your comments about geometry, numbers, property ownership don't really
apply to Gobekli Tepe's construction. It may have been put together
modelled on previous wooden structures that decayed. Who one has
suggested that megalith builders had to know geometry in order to
erect their enormous structures?
What things needed to be invented before writing could exist?
Birchbark, hides, engraving tools, clay, wood, pigment, all existed
and were used in prehistoric times. I think you're exaggerating the
ineptitude of ancient people. People who can paint recognizable
animals can devise symbols and use them to communicate language.
Writing is not something that suddenly appeared after agriculture.
Did you know that archeologists were once reluctant to publish about
material that was older than 3000 BC, because Christians (who believed
the world was created in 4004 BC) had to be mollified and catered to?
Jack Linthicum
What is bothersome to the mind is the concept that neolithic peoples
over a large distance shared the meaning of simple symbols. The Vinca
people had a series of signs used to create other signs. | - X + ^ V .
C
The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age, By Richard Rudgley page 64ff
Did their use of V or U have the same meaning as that at Gobekli Tepe?
Probably not.
Franz Gnaedinger
wrote:
>
> Please, a gap from 3200 BC to 12,100 BC is enough without throwing in
> 32,000 years. Those are inventions, plain ordinary "I think"s not "I
> can prove"s. Try the rongo rongo boards next time.
The rongo rongo script has been explained: when a researcher
(I forgot his name) listened again to the tapes with interviews
of two old men he realized that they were often embarassed
and began speaking around the actual text, so this researcher
had the intuition that they were avoiding explicit sexual customs,
ashamed of their old culture, and inventing colorful terms
in order to avert the interviewer. This new researcher was then
able to reconstruct the old meaning, he discovered that there
was a main festival (in spring, as I recall) when a virgin was
led to a rock high above the sea and ritually 'raped'. This was
the most convincing explanation I read of so far.
Now you want connections between the Göbekli Tepe and
Early Dynastic Egypt and contemporary Mesopotamia?
There are very many. I began my journeys to ancient times
with calendars, also in the case of Lascaux, and of the
Göbekli Tepe. Here again the Göbekli Tepe lunisolar calendar.
A year has 12 months of 30 days, plus 5 and occasionally 6
more days (three days of midsummer, two and sometimes
three days of midwinter), while 63 continuous periods of 30
days are 1,890 days and correspond to 64 lunations or synodic
months, mistake less than half a minute per lunation, or half
a day in a lifetime (check it out, one lunation is 29 days 12
hours 44 minutes 2.9 seconds, modern average value from
1989 AD). This calendar and variations of it are found everywhere.
The Halaf calendar introduced this improvement: 25 years
require 16 leap days (25 x 360 days plus 25 x 5 days plus 6 days).
Then followed more and more improvements in Mesopotamia.
A nice variant of the GT calendar is found in Egypt. Also the
Egyptian month had 30 days. The eyes of the Horus falcon
were sun and moon. Seth destroyed the lunar eye, whereupon
wise Thoth healed it, adding the numerical values of the single
parts 1/2 plus 1/4 plus 1/8 plus 1/16 plus 1/32 plus 1/64, or
simply '2 '4 '8 '16 '32 '64. The healed lunar eye was called
The Whole One. However, the numbers don't add up to one.
Why then The Whole One? This term refers to one whole
_lunation_. Multiply a month of 30 days by the series of the
Hours eye '2 '4 '8 '16 '32 '64 and you obtain 29 '2 '32 days,
or 29 days 12 hours 45 minutes, the Göbekli Tepe value.
Beautiful Karames ware from Crete show a rosette of eight
petals, in the center a small circle. This can be interpreted
as a further variation of the GT lunisolar calendar: each petal
representing a long month of 45 days (five Homeric weeks
of nine days), the small circle in the center standing for 5
and occasionally 6 more days, while 21 continuous periods
of 45 days are 1,890 days and correspond to 64 lunations
(64 being 8 x 8). This calendar is also present in the center
of the Tiryns Disc (one side of the Phaistos Disc). Crete
has many more calendars derived from the GT calendar,
especially the calendars from Knossos that anticipates
the Meton cycle, and the calendar from Mallia. Older,
and a real link between the GT culture and the classical
cultures, is the culture from Beersheba. I reconstructed
dozens of lunisolar calendars in the wake of the GT calendar
that was also used in the Indus Valley, and the cultural
influences of the GT culture - I can't possibly repeat all of it
here, in one single message for you. If you are interested
at all, you have to ask me a precise question about a single
place and period of time.
Franz Gnaedinger
>
> Three of your seven examples aren't even examples of that phrase (in
> them, "core" is an adjective, not a noun), and in the other four,
> "core" does not stand alone but is modified by an "of ..." phrase.
"Buckingham is a superb writer and speaker who can make complex
ideas crystal clear, cut through to the core insight, and reveal
its
crucial importance. ...
team allowed them to cut through to the core issues of. Volvo's
fleet management and significantly streamline management
processes ...
Like many elderly people he managed to cut through to the core
of the situation and make some very valid and intelligent points
without even the slightest ...
Amy had cut through to the core of the human condition with her
debut, adding her own jazzy witticisms to the legacy of the
greats. ...
Sometimes questions are like that - burning laser beams of
intensity that cut through to the core of the problem. And
sometimes
questions are just pesky ...
The more we met, the more I resented his intelligence and his
ability to cut through to the core issues. And I was aware he was
much
more advanced than I. ...
Today, simply lay your life before God and allow Him to cut
through to the core of the situation. Something will have to go. It
might surprise you what ...
The seven first Google results, and all valid, illustrating my point.
If you do a query for the verb cut in the online OED you will find
many sayings, which testifies to the still present influence of
early reasoning, when tools were used for beating and cutting
and piercing. Technology defines the way we are reasoning.
The mechanical paradigm turned the universe into a clockwork
(Newton) and animals into automata (Descartes), Freud explained
the human psyche in terms of a hydraulic apparatus, today the
brain is understood as a computer, and there are physical theories
that explain the cosmos itself as an information processing machine.
By the way, you told me for years and years that you have absolutely
no interest in the Göbekli Tepe, and absolutely no reason to inform
yourself about the Göbekli Tepe. Why, then, are you showing up
in here, in a thread about the Göbekli Tepe? Your deliberate ignorance
doesn't make you an expert.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
> On Oct 15, 2:48 pm, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Please, a gap from 3200 BC to 12,100 BC is enough without throwing in
> > 32,000 years. Those are inventions, plain ordinary "I think"s not "I
> > can prove"s. Try the rongo rongo boards next time.
>
> The rongo rongo script has been explained: when a researcher
> (I forgot his name) listened again to the tapes with interviews
> of two old men he realized that they were often embarassed
> and began speaking around the actual text, so this researcher
> had the intuition that they were avoiding explicit sexual customs,
> ashamed of their old culture, and inventing colorful terms
> in order to avert the interviewer. This new researcher was then
> able to reconstruct the old meaning, he discovered that there
> was a main festival (in spring, as I recall) when a virgin was
> led to a rock high above the sea and ritually 'raped'. This was
> the most convincing explanation I read of so far.
Dammit, Franz, why can't you remember his name? I thought I had all
3,798 proposed "explanations" of rongorongo in my collection, and now
you've come up with one I've never heard of! And it's "convincing"!
Come on, think! Did you see it on TV? Or in a movie? Did you dream it,
maybe? What was the name of the researcher? The old guys?
Actually the stuff about spring festivals and ritual rape of virgins
and stuff makes me think of "The Golden Bough". You didn't read it
there, did you?
Franz Gnaedinger
wrote:
>
> Dammit, Franz, why can't you remember his name? I thought I had all
> 3,798 proposed "explanations" of rongorongo in my collection, and now
> you've come up with one I've never heard of! And it's "convincing"!
> Come on, think! Did you see it on TV? Or in a movie? Did you dream it,
> maybe? What was the name of the researcher? The old guys?
> Actually the stuff about spring festivals and ritual rape of virgins
> and stuff makes me think of "The Golden Bough". You didn't read it
> there, did you?
Are you being ironic? Here my answer for the case
your question is meant serious. As far as I remember,
I read a long article (one entire page) of the German
weekly Die Zeit 'The Times', format of a big newspaper,
so it was a very long article. Die Zeit is a high quality
paper, with very good scientific and cultural redactions.
The article may have appeared in the early years or
middle of this decade. If you are really interested in this
interpretation you may ask them, sending an e-mail.
And if you are really really serious I could ask them
for you. Is that an offer? I don't know if they have
an online archive of past articles. The renowned
Neue Zürcher Zeitung from Zurich, once founded
as journal of the revolutionaries of the 19th century,
but that's a long time since, publish a year of their
newspaper on CDs, but that's very expensive,
about 1,600 Swiss francs or as many US dollars,
as I recall. But if you have a query you can ask them
a question and they go through their archive, for a fee,
of course. Maybe Die Zeit in Hamburg offers the same
service?
benl...@ihug.co.nz
I can't deny that irony was part of my intention.
Unfortunately, even high quality serious European newspapers may
devote space to quite crazy stuff, particularly when it is to do with
a distant part of the world about which they know little.
I would like to know more particulars about this theory, but I
wouldn't go so far as to pay money for it. If you can find out for
free, I'll be grateful.
But what was it that struck you as convincing about this theory? The
last person who was even imagined to have a traditional knowlege of
rongorongo was Metoro, whose testimony was taken down by Bishop
Jaussen. But this was in the 1870s, long before any tape could have
been made. And most people think Metoro was largely faking it. Anybody
within the tape recorder era (last half century) who claimed a
traditional knowledge of rongorongo would have to be a hoaxer.
Jack Linthicum
Compare. We have a known language, use up until Europeans arrived, and
a purpose for rongo rongo. Göbekli Tepe "inscriptions" are in an
unknown language, if they are a form of a language; last use perhaps
10k ya, and no possible knowledge of the purpose, beyond decoration.
Franz Gnaedinger
wrote:
>
> I can't deny that irony was part of my intention.
> Unfortunately, even high quality serious European newspapers may
> devote space to quite crazy stuff, particularly when it is to do with
> a distant part of the world about which they know little.
> I would like to know more particulars about this theory, but I
> wouldn't go so far as to pay money for it. If you can find out for
> free, I'll be grateful.
> But what was it that struck you as convincing about this theory? The
> last person who was even imagined to have a traditional knowlege of
> rongorongo was Metoro, whose testimony was taken down by Bishop
> Jaussen. But this was in the 1870s, long before any tape could have
> been made. And most people think Metoro was largely faking it. Anybody
> within the tape recorder era (last half century) who claimed a
> traditional knowledge of rongorongo would have to be a hoaxer.
The researcher I have in mind might perhaps be
Egbert Richter-Ushanas from the university of Bremen
in Germany. Here a very long quote from his website
II. The Rosetta stone of the Rongorongo script
Preliminary remarks
There are two possibilities to read the tablets of the Easter Island
script: Either by ascertaining a structural regularity on account of
the repetition of certain signs or sign-sequences, or by taking
recourse to the oral tradition, though it is sometimes contradictory
and therefore unreliable to a certain extent. In this contribution the
attention will be focused on the oral tradition, but structural rules
will be considered too. The main body of the oral tradition in regard
to the tablets consists of the chants of the natives Metoro Tau a Ure
and Ure Vaeiko. Metoro's chants were written down by the bishop of
Tahiti, F.E. (Tepano) Jaussen in about 1873. The chants of Ure Vaeiko
that could not be affiliated to any tablet so far were recorded by
J.W. Thomson, the paymaster of an American ship visiting the Island in
1886, on the ground of the notes of the Tahitian merchant A. Salmon.
The chants of Metoro are judged by all scholars as incoherent, though
not totally incomprehensible. A few passages were translated in the
past only to illustrate its uselessness for the understanding of the
tablets. Ure Vaeiko's chants have been translated insufficiently into
English by A. Salmon.
Part of the oral tradition are a number of popular songs that have
been saved from oblivion by the ethnologist K. Routledge. The Rosetta
stone of the Rongorongo script, as the Easter Island script is
generally called today, is contained in these songs, in particular in
those songs that deal with youth initiation.
The inscriptions of the breast ornament Rei Miro 2 and of the New York
birdman have been translated here on the ground of this oral
tradition. A sign-list elaborated by bishop Jaussen in 1893 turned out
to be indispensable for the translation of these texts as well as of
Metoro’s chants, after it had been adjusted to the sign-lists
published by the German ethnologist Th. Barthel in 1958 and 1963. As
an example of Metoro’s chants his reading of the first two lines of
the tablet Aruku Kurenga are presented to the reader.
1. The beginning of Rongorongo research
When in the 1870ties bishop T. Jaussen made the first attempt to
decipher the Easter Island script called Rongorongo nowadays, because
the sticks and tablets (kohau) on which it is inscribed were chanted
(rongorongo), he had the assistance of the native speaker Metoro Tau a
Ure who was working on a plant in Tahiti at that time. Four tablets,
known under the names of Aruku Kurenga, Tahua, Keiti and Mamari, were
read to him by Metoro, and by comparing his readings word for word
with the signs Jaussen elaborated a list (J) of 253 signs and
ligatures known as Jaussen-list. It was published posthumously by
Alazard in 1893 and reproduced by Wolff (1973: 66-77) and Heyerdahl
(1965: Fig. 85-94). Though the bishop explained the signs in this list
at first in Rapanui, the language of Easter Island - the island is
called Rapa Nui nowadays -, and then in French, Jaussen was not able
to find out a meaning in Metoro's reading of the tablets. Alazard, the
publisher of his book, was of the same opinion, and illustrated this
by translating the first line of the tablet Aruku Kurenga (Heyerdahl
1965: 353). When 40 years later the reputed ethnologist and expert of
Rapanui, S.H. Ray, studied this line carefully he arrived at the same
result (1932: 153-155).
It even appears, as if Metoro was not interested in revealing the
secrets of the script to a foreigner. It is also possible, however,
that Metoro had a feeling of respect for the bishop, and that he only
relied upon the method, by which he had himself learnt the script from
his teachers on Easter Island. At any rate, the bishop saw only a bulk
of words and short sentences quite similar to a dictionary. Already on
account of the length of the chants he thought it inappropriate to
publish them. Most likely he had objections against the contents, too,
since he could not have failed to notice the sexual meaning of many
words. This may be the reason, why he did not invite Metoro for a
second session. In spite of these circumstances, he made his list, of
which he believed that it would make Metoro's chants intelligible.
The ethnopsychologist W. Wolff tried in 1945 to read the first three
lines of the tablet Aruku Kurenga on the ground of Jaussen's word-list
(1973: 80-104) having access to Metoro's reading in a corrupted form
only. Though his 'translation' - the first line is mainly based on
Ray's - contains several mistakes and does not go much beyond simple
word-renderings, it is obvious that Metoro's chants are not completely
meaningless. Wolff regarded Metoro as a competent interpreter
therefore (1973: 90), though on the other hand he deemed it possible
that the natives were consciously misleading the ethnologists (1973:
62). That Metoro, just because he is a competent interpreter could
make himself understandable to the bishop only in the frame of the
latter's limits of thought, is not taken into consideration by Wolff.
Eight years later, P. A. Lanyon-Orgill tried to translate the tablets
Atua Mata Riri (Small Washington Tablet) and Mamari after Wolff's
example with the help of the Jaussen-list only. Metoro's chant of the
tablet Mamari was unknown to him and his transcriptions of the tablets
were quite insufficient. Hence he could not achieve verifiable
results, though he looked on the matter from the right point of view.
Thirteen years after Wolff's and only five years after Lanyon-Orgill's
rather fruitless attempts the renowned German ethnologist Th. Barthel
published Metoro's four chants for the first time in total, but
without a translation in his monograph on the Easter Island script in
1958. The list of about 700 signs that was published by him at the
same place as an appendix has no explanations either. The translations
from the tablets scattered in the monograph and his later attempts to
read the script are confined to short quotations. In the sign-list of
1963 only 170 signs are explained, partly based on Metoro's readings,
partly on arbitrary epigraphic suppositions. It is unrealistic to
expect to obtain the meaning of whole tablets or of whole lines even
by only translating short passages relying on a small number of signs.
Such a method cannot be called scientific either. S. R. Fischer (1997:
228) looks upon Bathel's scientifically uncontrollable explanations as
a house of cards built on sand, the sand being Metoro. But Metoro
cannot be held responsible for Barthel's explanations, since they are
mostly his own conjectures.
Independent of Barthel's publication of Metoro's readings Th.
Heyerdahl studied Jaussen's manuscripts kept at Grottafera near Rome.
Irritated by the fact that different signs can have the same and
identical or nearly identical signs a different meaning he remarked
that it would seem to be a direct disavowal of Metoro's abilities as
tangata rongorongo man if one tried to read from his information
intelligible stories (1965: 381).
It took nearly 30 years till Heyerdahl's verdict was confirmed by the
detailed scientific investigation of Metoro's chants through the
Russian ethnologist and expert of Rapanui, I.K. Fedorova (1986:
238-254). But in her 'evidence based on circumstances', by which she
tries to show that Metoro's readings are deceitful, she has made
several mistakes, which we shall discuss later. Besides, she has only
given an interlinear translation of the first line of the tablet Aruku
Kurenga like her predecessors apart from some examples taken from here
and there of Metoro's readings. Moreover, she confines herself to the
investigation of the realm of rational knowledge, as she admits
herself (1986: 253). In a way, this is contradictory to her
enthusiastic panegyric on the creative abilities of the Soviet
researchers at the end of her article, since creativity cannot be
confined to the realm of rationality. S.R. Fischer follows Fedorova in
his judgement on Metoro's chants (1997: 53), without testing her
arguments.
After considering that bishop Jaussen wanted to know the meaning of
each single sign and making hence no demands contrarily to this
preposition, Metoro's chants are the best means to study the
Rongorongo script. Having undertaken the necessary efforts it will
become clear that a coherent translation can be afforded without
relying too much on fantasy, because each chant deals with a certain
category. They are sometimes even composed according to the rule of
tension, climax and balance found in all works of poetry and music. It
can be assumed, therefore, that Metoro did his best to explain the
meaning of the signs to Jaussen. We have to recognize, however, that
he has often rendered them indirectly or metaphorically. It is
unimportant in this regard, whether different signs have the same
meaning and same signs a different meaning. This is the case with all
symbolic systems of writing.
Metoro would not have deceived the bishop, even if he would have read
the same tablet in a different way a few days later, he would have
done it, however, if he would have read it exactly in the same way. At
any rate, he reads a nearly identical sequence of signs on the tablets
Keiti and Mamari nearly identical. Beyond doubt, he was competent to
read the tablets, too, because he was taught in his youth by three
teachers of Rongorongo (Fischer 1997: 49).
Metoro need not fear the consequences of violating the taboo connected
with the tablets either, since after the year 1862, when most of the
islanders and among them nearly all Rongorongo experts were brought as
slaves to Peru and died there or on the way back of smallpox, nobody
was there to punish him after his return to Easter Island. To read a
syllabic writing is not more difficult than reading a letter script,
if one is conversant with the oral tradition and the symbolic
conception behind the pictograms. Therefore, even boys were taught to
read and write the Rongorongo script.
In 1886, W.J. Thomson, the paymaster of an American warship, was able
to persuade the native Ure Vaeiko to read photographs of the tablets
that had been brought by him to the Island as a loan of bishop
Jaussen. Ure Vaeiko had been a cook of Ngaara, the last independent
king of Easter Island, who died around 1850, and had learnt the script
from the king directly. But Ure Vaeiko's readings did not promote the
understanding of the tablets at all, since they were apparently not
related to them. Moreover, the transcription of the original language
of Easter Island and its translation into English is full of mistakes.
Many words were misunderstood by Thomson's translator A. Salmon, a
Tahitian of Jewish origin, who owned a sheep station on Rapa Nui at
that time.
Another source that could be helpful in understanding the script is
the oral tradition in general, but besides the names of some tablets
only the beginning of a tablet called he timo te akoako has been
recorded apparently. It was quoted by the natives, whenever they were
asked to recite the contents of the tablets and was even given as a
name to all tablets (Fischer 1997: 272). A traditional song going
under this name has been recorded by Routledge in several versions
(Fischer 1994: 415-417) and a short rendering of it is contained in
manuscript A in Latin writing collected by Heyerdahl (1965: Fig 127),
but the text is regarded as being unintelligible (Fedorova 1965: 401).
Other manuscripts that have been written in Latin (B to F) have been
translated, but had no effect on the understanding of Rongorongo.
The at first sight promising attempt to compare the Easter Island
script with the outwardly similar-looking Indus script undertaken by
de Hevesy (1933) does not find the approval of modern scholars
anymore, mostly on account of many faults in his transcription of the
Indus signs. At any rate, it is not helpful for the decipherment of
each of the scripts, because he has compared the unknown with the
unknown. S. R. Fischer admits, however, that de Hevesy opened up a
whole new era of scientific interest in Rongorongo (1957:153).
Scholars who criticise de Hevesy often do not notice that in the title
of his lecture held on this topic he has spoken of 'paraissant',
appearing, in relation to the similarity of the two writings. The most
important point of objection is, however, that even if the signs of
the Indus script were similar to Rongorongo signs, they need not have
the same meaning. The same can be said of the similarities between the
Indus script and the Hittite script discovered by Meriggi (1938).
De Hevesy, for instance, compares the Rongorongo sign for sky with the
Indus sign for the leaf of the pipal (fig)-tree with additional
strokes that lend it the appearance of a maple-leaf, but need not
change its basic meaning. The tree represented by the leaf and the sky
can be related to each other, if the tree is regarded as the world
tree, but this concept is unknown to the oral tradition of Easter
Island. The elements of the Rongorongo sign for sky are the sign for
white and for hibiscus that cannot be regarded as a candidate for the
world tree.
In view of these failures, the greatest hope to read the Rongorongo
script is still resting on the discovery of similarities between the
oral and the written tradition. Although the oral tradition is
unreliable, as is pointed out beforehand by many ethnologists and
linguists, eventually by S.R. Fischer (1997: 268), it can be said with
security, that what is written in the tablets is known at least to a
certain extent from the oral tradition. If anywhere, the Rosetta stone
of Rongorongo lies in the discovery of such similarities. Fischer
mentions the song-tradition in his monograph too (1997: 304). Only on
the ground of the oral tradition a complete reading of the tablets can
be afforded, which was also called for by Barthel (1958: 224), without
he himself being able to do it. Induced by Ure Vaeiko's chant Atua
Mata Riri Fischer discovered a cosmogonic formula on the Santiago-
staff and other tablets, rendered by him as X1YZn. This may be a
breakthrough, as he calls it, from the point of view of his structural
method, even the most important after Barthel's monograph, but it is
not more than a contribution to the decipherment, not the decipherment
itself. Fischer speaks himself of a second breakthrough after the
first discovery (1997: 260). There are many further breakthroughs
necessary, before one can say that the script of Easter Island can be
called deciphered.
One thing, however, has been confirmed by Fischer's explorations: The
Easter Island signs form a script. They are not merely mnemonic
devices nor lists of ancestors nor purely ornamentic. Nor are they
reproductions of constellations, as it is maintained by the hobby-
astronomer and designer M. Dietrich (1998; 1999). The Jaussen-list
does contain signs for star(s) and the Milky Way, but the only
constellation named there is that of the Pleiades. Besides, the Belt
of Orion is mentioned by Metoro several times. The Pleiades and Orion
are spring-constellations on Easter Island and they are related to
youth initiation therefore.
The Rongorongo script cannot be compared to Hawaiian cloth patterns
either that are called a script by L. Melville (1986: 109). Since
cloth patterns cannot render grammatical forms even in a rudimentary
form, they do not deserve the name writing.
Generally, the Rongorongo signs can easily be recognized as men,
animals and plants, implements and geographica. This would not be
sufficient to call them a script, however. For this the ability of
rendering grammatical constructions at least in a rudimentary form is
required, that cannot be afforded by cloth patterns or constellations.
This condition is fulfilled by the reading of the Rongorongo signs
through Metoro and Ure Vaeiko. Therefore it is justified to call
Rongorongo the only script that exists in the huge Pacific area.
Beside the tablets, of which 21 have been retained in a more or less
good condition, there are a four other objects incised with Rongorongo
script, the breast ornament Rei Miro 1 (with two signs), the breast
ornament Rei Miro 2 (with 43 signs), a snuff-box (Fischer 1997: 429)
and the figure of a birdman. Except the snuffbox all artefacts were
published by Barthel in his monograph in the transcriptions of the
americanist B. Spranz. Fischer's new transcriptions (1997: 403-508)
display a great number of improvements, because they are based on the
originals and not on photographs and plasters that were used by
Spranz. Fischer did not numeralize the signs, however. This means that
Barthel's numeralizations have still to be used, as Fischer himself
does.
Before I ventured to approach the comparatively long texts of the
tablets, I thought it recommendable to study the shorter material. For
this purpose, the single line of the breast ornament Rei Miro 2 is
especially suitable. Its study yielded a meaningful result to me at
the very beginning, though several details remained unintelligible.
Meanwhile, the former translation has been proved to be wrong in many
aspects, its formal criteria have been retained until now, however.
After translating the breast ornament I looked for identical passages
in the recitations of Ure Vaeiko and of Metoro. Eventually, I
discovered the model of Ure Vaeiko's Love Song (Thomson 1889: 526)
with the help of the sign for woman in the tablet Tahua. This
discovery led to a provisional translation of the tablets Keiti and
Aruku Kurenga on the ground of the Jaussen-list. The comparison with
Metoro's readings made it clear, however, that much better results can
be obtained by translating them directly from the Rapanui text. Even
Fischer admits that these readings are not Metoro's invention, but
that they are based on the oral tradition (1997: 52). Barthel has
indeed discovered Bruchstücke echter Tradition [parts of genuine
traditions] therein (1958: 210).
Therefore I read these 'fragments' in the light of this tradition, dim
as it may be, to find a common ground either philological or
epigraphical, through which the category of a line can be ascertained.
Fischer relates the category to a complete tablet, but it can be
affiliated to a line as well. Line and tablet can consist of several
categories. The tablet can be named after the main category of the
first line. When the meaning of a number of signs has been
ascertained, the rest of the line can be translated in accordance with
it. In this way, the fragments or the signs and words of a line are
becoming notes of a melody, as it were. Harmony was explained by the
Greeks already as the putting together of sherds. Metoro's chants
require the same hermeneutic endeavour that is given to the
interpretation of texts of the ancient literature, but hitherto it was
not believed that they deserve the same attention. Hermeneutic means
here as well as there to discover the hidden meaning. There remains a
'heuristic rest', no doubt, that is inexplicable, but such a rest is
even found in mathematics. The underestimation, and even disregard of
Metoro's chants is partly due to the fact that they do not coincide
with our conception of sound and melody, that means with our
conception of what is logical. This requires even more philological
endeavour and consistent examination of the results. And as in the
case of other cultures it is necessary here to study the language as
well as the oral tradition of the people, to which the texts belong.
This includes the whole Polynesian culture here.
To learn the native idiom of Rapanui I had to my disposal the
vocabulary attached to his book on Easter Island by W. Churchill
(1912), J. Fuentes' grammar and vocabulary, Pater S. Englert's Rapanui
grammatica y diccionario (1978), Stimson's Tuamotu-dictionary (1964),
the Tahiti grammar and dictionary of bishop Jaussen (1949), the
Marquesan grammar and dictionary of Dordillon (1931) and the grammar
of modern Rapanui by V. Du Feu (1996) that contains a small
vocabulary, too. Quite helpful were the grammatical notes in
Fedorova's articles (1965; 1986). Sometimes the comparison with other
Polynesian languages can deliver interesting results, as was shown by
Bierbach/Cain. The proto-polynesian word list, compiled by Biggs and
Walsh (1966), can sometimes be used as an additional dictionary. The
passive voice that is said to be historical by Du Feu (1996: 150) is
frequently used by Metoro.
Many of the words occurring in his chants are not contained in the
dictionaries, either because they are obsolate or because they have
been incorrectly rendered by Jaussen. In these cases cross-checking,
besides asking the natives, is the most promising means to secure
their meaning. The latter way has become quite easy, as some of them
live in Germany, and some of them still know their native language.
In this paper, we shall confine us to the single line of the breast
ornament Rei Miro 2, the seven short lines of the wooden figure of the
New York birdman and the first two lines of the tablet Aruku Kurenga.
All of them have to do with the initiation of boys and girls.
Barthel's opinion that girls are almost never mentioned in the tablets
(1958: 322) has been proved as wrong.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
> On Oct 16, 11:36 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I can't deny that irony was part of my intention.
> > Unfortunately, even high quality serious European newspapers may
> > devote space to quite crazy stuff, particularly when it is to do with
> > a distant part of the world about which they know little.
> > I would like to know more particulars about this theory, but I
> > wouldn't go so far as to pay money for it. If you can find out for
> > free, I'll be grateful.
> > But what was it that struck you as convincing about this theory? The
> > last person who was even imagined to have a traditional knowlege of
> > rongorongo was Metoro, whose testimony was taken down by Bishop
> > Jaussen. But this was in the 1870s, long before any tape could have
> > been made. And most people think Metoro was largely faking it. Anybody
> > within the tape recorder era (last half century) who claimed a
> > traditional knowledge of rongorongo would have to be a hoaxer.
>
> The researcher I have in mind might perhaps be
> Egbert Richter-Ushanas from the university of Bremen
> in Germany. Here a very long quote from his website
Thank you. That seems plausible. So the "tapes" were actually notes of
what two old guys (Metoro and Ure Vaeiko) said (on separate occasions)
in the 19th century.
The long quote is enough to suggest what his general approach will
be.
I noticed a short Wikipedia article on him which says:
"Richter has also published various pseudo-scholarly claims, including
decipherment of the Rongorongo, Phaistos Disc and Indus scripts.In his
1992 decipherment claim of the Indus script, he argues that the script
is "based very largely on intuition, and this quality is also required
for reading it", likening the process of "decipherment" to
meditation..."
Ah, Franz, I can see this is a kindred spirit. ;-)
Thanks again for the identification.
Peter T. Daniels
> By the way, you told me for years and years that you have absolutely
> no interest in the Göbekli Tepe, and absolutely no reason to inform
> yourself about the Göbekli Tepe. Why, then, are you showing up
> in here, in a thread about the Göbekli Tepe? Your deliberate ignorance
> doesn't make you an expert.
I have said absolutely nothing about GT. I have noted cases of
unwarranted assumptions and unjustified conclusions, problems in
logic, not evidence.
Peter T. Daniels
> On Oct 16, 11:20 pm, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
> > The researcher I have in mind might perhaps be
> > Egbert Richter-Ushanas from the university of Bremen
> > in Germany. Here a very long quote from his website
>
> Thank you. That seems plausible. So the "tapes" were actually notes of
> what two old guys (Metoro and Ure Vaeiko) said (on separate occasions)
> in the 19th century.
>
> The long quote is enough to suggest what his general approach will be.
> I noticed a short Wikipedia article on him which says:
>
> "Richter has also published various pseudo-scholarly claims, including
> decipherment of the Rongorongo, Phaistos Disc and Indus scripts.In his
> 1992 decipherment claim of the Indus script, he argues that the script
> is "based very largely on intuition, and this quality is also required
> for reading it", likening the process of "decipherment" to
> meditation..."
That puts him one up on Steven Roger Fischer, who only claims
Rongorongo and Phaistos!
Ruud Harmsen
<gram...@verizon.net>: in sci.lang:
>Jesus H. Fucking Christ. Do you not even know what "borrowing" is?
I must admit I don't always agree with Peter T. Daniels, we certainly
have our differences now and then. But what I like about him is his
talent to present controversial ideas, or counter them when others
present them, in such a quite civilised and tactful style, that
nevertheless leaves no room for unclarities of any kind.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com
Peter T. Daniels
> Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:29:45 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> >Jesus H. Fucking Christ. Do you not even know what "borrowing" is?
>
> I must admit I don't always agree with Peter T. Daniels, we certainly
> have our differences now and then. But what I like about him is his
> talent to present controversial ideas, or counter them when others
> present them, in such a quite civilised and tactful style, that
> nevertheless leaves no room for unclarities of any kind.
In case you've never glanced at a biblical commentary, "Moses" is
borrowed from Egyptian into Hebrew, and "Musa" is borrowed from Hebrew
into Arabic. The name does not have a Semitic etymology.
Hayabusa
<smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>The Natufians were remarkable in that they were sedentary before
>developing agriculture. At least one writer has suggested that Gobekli
>Tepe was built by slave labor, possibly by prisoners taken in raids.
>And then there is the Sphinx, which would have been built during the
>Natufian or Kebaran period, judging from the water erosion marks on
>it. Here's another massive stone structure put up by pre-agricultural
>people. Could be another instance of slave prisoners being put to work
>on grandiose projects, long before this was considered possible.
>
>Your comments about geometry, numbers, property ownership don't really
>apply to Gobekli Tepe's construction. It may have been put together
>modelled on previous wooden structures that decayed. Who one has
>suggested that megalith builders had to know geometry in order to
>erect their enormous structures?
I didn't. In all likelihood the wooden structures existed. How far you
can get with a thinking without any modern understanding of physics
and mathematics - not even modern numerals yet, so they could not
really multiply in the modern sense - you can see in any 12th century
cathedral. But I suggest that having clearly expressible concepts are
necessary to develop writing, and I think that writing requires a
cultural and political context that did not exist yet 9ky ago.
>What things needed to be invented before writing could exist?
>Birchbark, hides, engraving tools, clay, wood, pigment, all existed
>and were used in prehistoric times. I think you're exaggerating the
>ineptitude of ancient people. People who can paint recognizable
>animals can devise symbols and use them to communicate language.
>Writing is not something that suddenly appeared after agriculture.
Here you see how much you misunderstand me. I am not referring to the
material culture, but the cultural level. And I don't think they were
inept, it is always a mistake to underestimate the mental abilities of
other peoples. But an idea has to fit into its context.
Let's put it like this. In order to want to write, one has to have to
wish to record something. Chinese writing developed from oracle bones,
Sumerian cuneiform from business accounting, Egyptian hieroglyphs from
religious service. Both the Chinese and the Egyptian way presupposed
statehood at least in rudimentary form, at the very least a developed
hierarchy; an organized religion, especially in Egypt (and probably,
as far as I am informed, in the Maya culture), was an expression of
the societal hierarchy, and the Chinese oracles were certainly not
used by peasants. The Sumerian writing grew out of a cultural
institution - trade and taxation - which is at least as complex as a
state, so I think it is comparable. (Note that taxation and writing is
much older than the invention of money.)
None of this existed even closely in the era of Gobekli Tepe.
>Did you know that archeologists were once reluctant to publish about
>material that was older than 3000 BC, because Christians (who believed
>the world was created in 4004 BC) had to be mollified and catered to?
No, and I think it's beside the point. I don't even believe it is
true, archaeology is a child of the mid-19th century, and James Ussher
wrote that in 1656.
Hayabusa
benl...@ihug.co.nz
The 6,000 year chronology was still around in the 19th century. But it
was really the geologists who scientifically overthrew it.
Archaeologists at that time had no serious way of dating anything, and
most of what they were interested in was well within the context of
Biblical and Classical antiquity.
Yusuf B Gursey
> On Oct 14, 12:57 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 14, 5:59 am, "S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> > > This post is full of painfully wrong etymology.
>
> > Which one hurts you most? point it out, and I shall
> > discuss it. I develop a new approach to the language
> > of Ice Age Eurasia, following Richard Fester but
> > going way beyond him, a bottom up approach
> > complementing the top down approach of the
> > comparative method. What they call Proto-Indo-
> > European is a version of Late Magdalenian in my
> > terminology, while Magdalenian is the fully developed
> > form of the Ice Age language. Every believer in the
> > present paradigm, in any scientific field, is hurt by
> > the results of a new paradigm, I can't help that.
> > As for the list of hieroglyphs you ask for; there was
> > one, about a dozen signs, published in a Swiss
> > newspaper, but it's not online. Only a few of many
> > more temples have been excavated so far, but the
> > stone pillar temples A and B and C and D are
> > probably the most important ones, from the earliest
> > period, around 11 600 BP, the inventory of the signs
> > on these pillars gives already a fine idea of what
> > the entire hill was meant for: Klaus Schmidt considers
> > the Göbekli Tepe an equivalent of the Iranian Towers
> > of Silence, while I regard it as the Hill of Creation,
> > relying on my interpretations, and both views go
> > together if you consider the Egyptian pyramids that
> > symbolize the Primeval Hill, the hill rising above the
> > primeval water, and are at the same time funerary
> > monuments, granting a second life in the beyond.
> > Now please point out the worst etymology you find
> > in my post, and I shall discuss it with you.
>
> Dear Franz,
>
> About Gobekli Tepe: It was not an Indo-European language used there,
> for a start. It was Afro-Asiatic. There may very well have been an
> Indo-European language in use in Eurasia thousands of years ago, but
> not at Gobekli Tepe (unless it was spoken by the people who tried to
> smash some of the steles.)
> The writing on one seal from Gobekli Tepe reads very clearly 'M-Sh-He'
> in characters similar to proto-Canaanitic. This is a name very common
> in Afro-Asiatic languages, it is Mose in Egyptian, Musa in Arabic and
Mūsā موسى in Arabic, (with length) and the final ā written with yā',
alif maqṣūra, indicating an older pronounciation as ē .
> Moshe in Hebrew. It means 'son' or 'birth'.
as Peter T. Daniels has said it from an Egyptian word, borrowed into
Hebrew, and then into Arabic.
see: "The Egyptian Origin of Some English Personal Names", Alan H.
Gardiner, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 56, No. 2
(Jun., 1936), pp. 189-197.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/594666
it's likely derived from Egyptian ms "is born" from the verb msy
*mose (reconstructed from Greek transcriptions of names and Coptic),
preceded by a divine name that has been ommitted, thus a common
termination in Egtptian names. the ony trouble is that Hebrew renders
the related word in Ramses with /s/, samekh, rather than /*sh*/,
shin.
Franz Gnaedinger
>
> I have said absolutely nothing about GT. I have noted cases of
> unwarranted assumptions and unjustified conclusions, problems in
> logic, not evidence.
You said time and again that you are not interested
in the Göbekli Tepe and have no reason to inform
yourself about the Göbekli Tepe, you made fun of
my "hobby-horse GT," and now, here in this thread
you play the GöbekliTepe zampanoo.
Ross Clark: one can be wright in one case and
rongorongo in another case. As for the Paistos Disc
I follow Derk Ohlenroth in his decipherment (which
Peter Theophil Daniels also found each and every
silly excuse not to even lay a glass eye on) while
I propose a different archaeo-historical interpretation,
and in the case of the Indus seals and tablets I follow
Asko Parpola and then propose a hypothesis of mine.
I just remember that article in Die Zeit which sounded
plausible to me, but apparently I got some things wrong,
there was no tape of two old men who still could read
the texts, but records in written form. I can't have my
focus everywhere, I pick up a lot from the sides of
my field of vision, if you know what I mean.
Peter T. Daniels
> On Oct 14, 9:20 pm, "S. M. Sullivan" <smr...@sonic.net> wrote:
> > Moshe in Hebrew. It means 'son' or 'birth'.
>
> as Peter T. Daniels has said it from an Egyptian word, borrowed into
> Hebrew, and then into Arabic.
> see: "The Egyptian Origin of Some English Personal Names", Alan H.
> Gardiner, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 56, No. 2
> (Jun., 1936), pp. 189-197.
>
> http://www.jstor.org/stable/594666
JSTOR cannot be accessed from a home computer unless you have an
account with an institution that subscribes (or have paid for your own
access). It shows you the first page of the article as a tease.
> it's likely derived from Egyptian ms "is born" from the verb msy
> *mose (reconstructed from Greek transcriptions of names and Coptic),
> preceded by a divine name that has been ommitted, thus a common
> termination in Egtptian names. the ony trouble is that Hebrew renders
> the related word in Ramses with /s/, samekh, rather than /*sh*/,
> shin.-
Not a problem, and very useful for the study of the spelling of
Canaanite words and names in Egyptian.
"Moses" in Hebrew has nothing to do with 'son' or 'birth'; it is given
the folk etymology 'draw out [of the water' -- by the Egyptian
princess, incidentally, who somehow was supposed to know a Hebrew word
but not realize that the child was a Hebrew -- and assigning that
etymology to it could account for the difference in sibilant.