What in the world is 'Balkan-Danube script'?
Doug Weller
Picture of runes
here:http://www.bosnian-pyramid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=59&highlight=runes
alleged script here:
http://www.prehistory.it/scritturaprotoeuropai.htm
Looks like nonsense to me. Does anyone support the idea?
Thanks
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/
Peter T. Daniels
>
> This came up on a forum discussing the alleged 'pyramids' in Bosnia.
>
> Picture of runes
> here:http://www.bosnian-pyramid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=59&highlight=runes
>
> alleged script here:
>
> http://www.prehistory.it/scritturaprotoeuropai.htm
>
> Looks like nonsense to me. Does anyone support the idea?
> Thanks
Anything to do with Vinc^a?
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Marco Pagliero
Peter T. Daniels schrieb:
> Anything to do with Vinc^a?
Yes, http://www.prehistory.it/scritturaprotoeuropai.htm says: "From the
small village of Rast (west Romania) belonging to the Vincha culture."
And?
MP
Peter T. Daniels
No one has provided the slightest bit of evidence that it's writing.
They don't claim any recurring sequences of symbols, for instance.
calm_weather
Not quite Phaistos Disc material, then... ;-)
##minty..
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> No one has provided the slightest bit of evidence that it's writing.
> They don't claim any recurring sequences of symbols, for instance.
There _is_ a recurring sequence of symbols, namely
cross bar angle, which I read as Ki Ri Ke
cross Ki, bar Ri, angle Ke
cross bar angle --- Ki Ri Ke
for the name of the bird goddess of Old Europe (in the
sense of Marija Gimbutas), a goddess of many shapes
whose main emanations are a woman and birds, and who
survives as Kirkae (Circe) in Homer's Odyssey. Starting
from these three signs, cross bar angle, Ki Ri Ke, I went
for a live attempt at deciphering a part of the Vinca script
online, in sci.archaeology and sci.lang, thread "Did the
Trojan war really happen the way Homer said it did?",
messages from the spring of 2004. The result, 37 tables
plus additional material, especially calendars, are online:
Marija Gimbutas considered the Vinca signs actual writing,
and a sacred script. I can only confirm her opinion.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
Overall, there might be more of it, though!
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > No one has provided the slightest bit of evidence that it's writing.
> > They don't claim any recurring sequences of symbols, for instance.
>
> There _is_ a recurring sequence of symbols, namely
> cross bar angle, which I read as Ki Ri Ke
>
> cross Ki, bar Ri, angle Ke
>
> cross bar angle --- Ki Ri Ke
>
> for the name of the bird goddess of Old Europe (in the
> sense of Marija Gimbutas), a goddess of many shapes
> whose main emanations are a woman and birds, and who
> survives as Kirkae (Circe) in Homer's Odyssey. Starting
> from these three signs, cross bar angle, Ki Ri Ke, I went
> for a live attempt at deciphering a part of the Vinca script
> online, in sci.archaeology and sci.lang, thread "Did the
> Trojan war really happen the way Homer said it did?",
> messages from the spring of 2004. The result, 37 tables
> plus additional material, especially calendars, are online:
Ah, of course, the Vinc^a symbols are closely related to the Trojan War.
> www.seshat.ch/home/vinca.htm
>
> Marija Gimbutas considered the Vinca signs actual writing,
> and a sacred script. I can only confirm her opinion.
Curiously, she didn't say so in her two big books on the topic.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> Curiously, she didn't say so in her two big books on the topic.
So I take it you read her book Language of the Goddess
the same way you judge the book by Derk Ohlenroth:
without having much as seen it, let alone touched it,
let aloner opened it, let alonest read it. Falta que eso.
Readers in German may have a look at my page
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > Curiously, she didn't say so in her two big books on the topic.
>
> So I take it you read her book Language of the Goddess
> the same way you judge the book by Derk Ohlenroth:
> without having much as seen it, let alone touched it,
> let aloner opened it, let alonest read it. Falta que eso.
Why don't you give me a page reference? Is it the same page(s) I cite in
*The World's Writing Systems*, sec. 2?
> Readers in German may have a look at my page
>
> www.seshat.ch/home/kirike.htm
SherLok Merfy
> This came up on a forum discussing the alleged 'pyramids' in Bosnia.
>
> Picture of runes
> here:http://www.bosnian-pyramid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=59&highlight=runes
I saw some very phony looking proto-pyramids, that is mountains into
which pyramids
were being carved. Corel Draw?
> alleged script here:
>
> http://www.prehistory.it/scritturaprotoeuropai.htm
>
> Looks like nonsense to me. Does anyone support the idea?
> Thanks
If THIS topic were really up my alley, I'd be asking them for
references or evidence,
and I suspect that there is some. Along lines of practicality, it would
also be like
they say, more difficult than the Rosetta stone to decipher. I can see
a lot of angularity
in this writing that might be an arbitrary phonetic language. Or, if
the more elaborate
elements were taken out, perhaps not so arbitrary. Still, even if you
could work out
the sounds, I doubt that you'll find a dictionary.
_______
http://www.mynumo.com/SherLok
grap...@www.com
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> >
> > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > >
> > > Curiously, she didn't say so in her two big books on the topic.
> >
> > So I take it you read her book Language of the Goddess
> > the same way you judge the book by Derk Ohlenroth:
> > without having much as seen it, let alone touched it,
> > let aloner opened it, let alonest read it. Falta que eso.
>
> Why don't you give me a page reference? Is it the same page(s) I cite in
> *The World's Writing Systems*, sec. 2?
You are both showing your ignorance :
In the Introduction to her book, M. Gimbutas wrote :"The purpose of
this book is to present the pictorial "script" for the religion of the
Old European Great Goddess consisting of signs, symbols and images of
divinities". In the Foreword, Joseph Campbell said the same, talking
about "Gimbutas's lexicon of the pictorialscript of that primordial
attempt on humanity's part to understand...etc." So, Peter is wrong
saying that M. Gimbutas didn't talk about a "script" (between quotation
marks).
But Franz is a fool to believe that M. Gimbutas has ever considered
that this script could be other than PURELY IDEOGRAPHIC, i.e. 100%
SYMBOLIC, with for instance a "frog" symbolising (maybe) "giving
birth", etc.
grapheus
Peter T. Daniels
I don't know what Franz snipped. Gimbutas does not claim that the Vinc^a
symbols are writing. Grapheus's last paragraph confirms this.
They've always been called "the Vinc^a script."
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> Why don't you give me a page reference? Is it the same page(s) I cite in
> *The World's Writing Systems*, sec. 2?
I have / had three books by Marija Gimbutas:
Die Sprache der Goettin
Die Zivilisation der Goettin
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe
I would have preferred the English versions of the two
first books, alas, there were only German ones available,
beautiful and large volumes, though. I helped a friend of
mine with her diploma, and when she got it (well deserved)
I gave her the first book for a present, so I can't tell you the
title of the English original. May have been: The Language
of the Goddess, since the English title of the second book
is: The Civilization of the Goddess, and chapter 8 of that
book is devoted to the Vinca signs: Heilige Schrift, in English
probably Sacred Sript. Marija Gimbutas doesn't mention the
sacred script in The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe,
but she does mention it in her book on the Civilization of the
Goddess, and, as I recall, also in her book on the Language
of the Goddess. Beautiful books. I hope they can be found
in American libraries.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
They were, and I think still are, ubiquitous. They're published by
HarperSanFrancisco, not exactly a scholarly publisher. The English is
the original, the German is a translation.
*The Language of the Goddess* (1989), $24.95 in pbk. (1991), makes it
abundantly clear that she interprets the signs as _symbols_ only, what
writing scholars call "ideograms," and hence not as writing. They are
the sole topic of that book.
*The Civilization of the Goddess* (1991), $30 pbk., has one chapter
entitled "Sacred Script," in which it is suggested that they represent a
pre-IE language, some of the signs may have phonetic interpretations,
and the possibility exists that a bilingual with an IE language may
someday be found!! However, the name of an "editor" is prominent on the
cover of this book, and it seems highly unlikely that after working on
the first volume for ten years (as she says), she suddenly changed her
mind a few months after it was published. It seems much more likely that
those thoughts were inserted by the "editor" and Gimbutas had little to
do with the later book.
I don't know what the third book you mention is.
Tommi Nieminen
> Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
...
>> I have / had three books by Marija Gimbutas:
>>
>> Die Sprache der Goettin
>> Die Zivilisation der Goettin
>> The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe
...
> I don't know what the third book you mention is.
That's the only one I'm familiar with (The Goddesses etc.). I've browsed
it through many years ago, and can't recall there being anything on the
Vinča script.
--
.... Tommi Nieminen .... http://tommi.legisign.org/ ....
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from
experience. -G. B. Shaw-
.... tommi dot nieminen at legisign dot org ....
grap...@www.com
Tommi Nieminen wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels kirjoitti 18.6.2006 0:30:
>
> > Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> ...
> >> I have / had three books by Marija Gimbutas:
> >>
> >> Die Sprache der Goettin
> >> Die Zivilisation der Goettin
> >> The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe
> ...
> > I don't know what the third book you mention is.
>
> That's the only one I'm familiar with (The Goddesses etc.). I've browsed
> it through many years ago, and can't recall there being anything on the
Another error in this thread, which is an exchange of remarks between
guys who don't know M. Gimbutas' work!...
The book "Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe", edited in 1974, has been
one of the first written by M. Gimbutas. It has been reedited in 1982,
with some revisions, under the title, this time, of : "The Godesses and
Gods of Old Europe". A bit confusing, of course, for those who are not
familiar with M. Gimbutas' work !..
Both books deal, of course, with the Vinça Script, even if this
denomination is not explicitely used by M. Gimbutas. In the book "The
Godesses and Gods of Old Europe", one has just to look, for instance at
the map of the "Vinça Civilization" on p. 23, to be convinced that M.
Gimbutas talk in fact of what other scholars have called "the Vinça
Script"...
grapheus
grap...@www.com
ANOTHER ERROR of yours !.. The original editions were published by
"Thames & Hudson" , a reputable editor !
> The English is
> the original, the German is a translation.
YES.
>
> *The Language of the Goddess* (1989), $24.95 in pbk. (1991), makes it
> abundantly clear that she interprets the signs as _symbols_ only, what
> writing scholars call "ideograms," and hence not as writing. They are
> the sole topic of that book.
CORRECT. But that "it is not "writing" " is YOUR opinion, which comes
from a restrictive and arbitrary definition of what is "writing" and
what is not !.. When one accepts the definition that there is "a
script" when any sign ou signs-group transmits a message which can be
understood by the "reader", then one may call "writing" a "NO ENTRY"
sign as well as the 7 letters alphabetic mention "No entry"... Both
they convey the same message, and both may be called "script" !..
grapheus
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Tommi Nieminen wrote:
> > Peter T. Daniels kirjoitti 18.6.2006 0:30:
> >
> > > Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> > ...
> > >> I have / had three books by Marija Gimbutas:
> > >>
> > >> Die Sprache der Goettin
> > >> Die Zivilisation der Goettin
> > >> The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe
> > ...
> > > I don't know what the third book you mention is.
> >
> > That's the only one I'm familiar with (The Goddesses etc.). I've browsed
> > it through many years ago, and can't recall there being anything on the
>
> Another error in this thread, which is an exchange of remarks between
> guys who don't know M. Gimbutas' work!...
> The book "Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe", edited in 1974, has been
> one of the first written by M. Gimbutas. It has been reedited in 1982,
> with some revisions, under the title, this time, of : "The Godesses and
> Gods of Old Europe". A bit confusing, of course, for those who are not
> familiar with M. Gimbutas' work !..
> Both books deal, of course, with the Vinça Script, even if this
> denomination is not explicitely used by M. Gimbutas. In the book "The
> Godesses and Gods of Old Europe", one has just to look, for instance at
> the map of the "Vinça Civilization" on p. 23, to be convinced that M.
> Gimbutas talk in fact of what other scholars have called "the Vinça
> Script"...
Perhaps it is a scholarly work underlying her later popular works. I
expect, therefore, that it is consistent with her later discussion of
the Vinc^a script in not claiming that it is writing.
And you don't mean "edited," you mean "published."
Peter T. Daniels
Don't be ignarrogant.
T&H is a publisher, not an editor. (But not a scholarly publisher.)
Why would an American professor place her work with T&H?
If they were originally published by T&H and only released in the US by
HSF, then the copyright page would say so, and it does not.
> > The English is
> > the original, the German is a translation.
>
> YES.
>
> >
> > *The Language of the Goddess* (1989), $24.95 in pbk. (1991), makes it
> > abundantly clear that she interprets the signs as _symbols_ only, what
> > writing scholars call "ideograms," and hence not as writing. They are
> > the sole topic of that book.
>
> CORRECT. But that "it is not "writing" " is YOUR opinion, which comes
> from a restrictive and arbitrary definition of what is "writing" and
> what is not !.. When one accepts the definition that there is "a
> script" when any sign ou signs-group transmits a message which can be
> understood by the "reader", then one may call "writing" a "NO ENTRY"
> sign as well as the 7 letters alphabetic mention "No entry"... Both
> they convey the same message, and both may be called "script" !..
You may define "script" however you wish. That, however, has no bearing
on the definition of "writing."
Writing represents _language_, not _"thought"_.
grap...@www.com
OK, sorry ! I gave only half of the story !.. The book has been
published in 1974 by the "Berkeley University of California Press" ,
and by "Thames & Hudson" . If the last publisher is not a "scolarly"
publisher, the first one is.
>
> If they were originally published by T&H and only released in the US by
> HSF, then the copyright page would say so, and it does not.
>
> > > The English is
> > > the original, the German is a translation.
> >
> > YES.
> >
> > >
> > > *The Language of the Goddess* (1989), $24.95 in pbk. (1991), makes it
> > > abundantly clear that she interprets the signs as _symbols_ only, what
> > > writing scholars call "ideograms," and hence not as writing. They are
> > > the sole topic of that book.
> >
> > CORRECT. But that "it is not "writing" " is YOUR opinion, which comes
> > from a restrictive and arbitrary definition of what is "writing" and
> > what is not !.. When one accepts the definition that there is "a
> > script" when any sign ou signs-group transmits a message which can be
> > understood by the "reader", then one may call "writing" a "NO ENTRY"
> > sign as well as the 7 letters alphabetic mention "No entry"... Both
> > they convey the same message, and both may be called "script" !..
>
> You may define "script" however you wish. That, however, has no bearing
> on the definition of "writing."
>
> Writing represents _language_, not _"thought"_.
So, do you believe that one may "think" without using a "language" ???
The only difference between "Ideographic Script" and the other types of
(phonetic) script, is that the signs are "read" by the reader in his
OWN language, what is not the case with the phonetic scripts, where the
"reader" must know the language of the "writer" to fully understand the
message.
I repeat it : the distinction you make between what is writing and what
is not is ARBITRARY and ARTIFICIAL. It's just a question of CONVENTION.
grapheus
Peter T. Daniels
You are not talking about the two books I described, but about the one I
have never seen.
> > If they were originally published by T&H and only released in the US by
> > HSF, then the copyright page would say so, and it does not.
> >
> > > > The English is
> > > > the original, the German is a translation.
> > >
> > > YES.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > *The Language of the Goddess* (1989), $24.95 in pbk. (1991), makes it
> > > > abundantly clear that she interprets the signs as _symbols_ only, what
> > > > writing scholars call "ideograms," and hence not as writing. They are
> > > > the sole topic of that book.
> > >
> > > CORRECT. But that "it is not "writing" " is YOUR opinion, which comes
> > > from a restrictive and arbitrary definition of what is "writing" and
> > > what is not !.. When one accepts the definition that there is "a
> > > script" when any sign ou signs-group transmits a message which can be
> > > understood by the "reader", then one may call "writing" a "NO ENTRY"
> > > sign as well as the 7 letters alphabetic mention "No entry"... Both
> > > they convey the same message, and both may be called "script" !..
> >
> > You may define "script" however you wish. That, however, has no bearing
> > on the definition of "writing."
> >
> > Writing represents _language_, not _"thought"_.
>
> So, do you believe that one may "think" without using a "language" ???
Philosophers have been discussing that for 2500 years or so.
> The only difference between "Ideographic Script" and the other types of
> (phonetic) script, is that the signs are "read" by the reader in his
> OWN language, what is not the case with the phonetic scripts, where the
> "reader" must know the language of the "writer" to fully understand the
> message.
> I repeat it : the distinction you make between what is writing and what
> is not is ARBITRARY and ARTIFICIAL. It's just a question of CONVENTION.
Chinese script is writing -- it cannot be read in any other language.
(Sino-Japanese and Sino-Korean are no exception -- they can't be read in
Chinese.)
Symbols that can be "read" in any language are not writing, because to
weaken/broaden the meaning of "writing" to cover any visual/semiotic
system merely means that another term would have to be devised for what
has hitherto been called "writing."
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> *The Civilization of the Goddess* (1991), $30 pbk., has one chapter
> entitled "Sacred Script," in which it is suggested that they represent a
> pre-IE language, some of the signs may have phonetic interpretations,
> and the possibility exists that a bilingual with an IE language may
> someday be found!! However, the name of an "editor" is prominent on the
> cover of this book, and it seems highly unlikely that after working on
> the first volume for ten years (as she says), she suddenly changed her
> mind a few months after it was published. It seems much more likely that
> those thoughts were inserted by the "editor" and Gimbutas had little to
> do with the later book.
Marija Gimbutas published some twenty books, among them
The Gods and Goddess of Old Europe, 1974
edited again as
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 1982/96
(I got the reprint from 1996, UCLA Press). Her last books
were intended as a cycle of four volumes:
1) The Language of the Goddess, 1989
2) The Civilization of the Goddess, 1991
3) ???
4) The Religion of the Goddess
The first and second volume have been published, while
the third and fourth volume may be unfinished. In 1993,
when she was already ill, she worked on the fourth volume.
The chapter on the Sacred Script is contained in the second
volume, the language is pure Marija Gimbutas, her voice is
recognizable even through the German translation, clear and
lucid, nothing forced, artificial and faked about it, nothing at
all that may indicate her editor imposed her will on Gimbutas
and introduced that chapter, which is part of a logical sequence
of chapters. Joan Marler signs as editor. She was responsible
for the graphics, and she did a marvellous job, revealing the
spirit of the Vinca figurines, freeing them from their somewhat
crude appearance and elevating them into the sphere of high
art, and a most appealing art. Joan Marler did a great job,
and as the graphics make out 2/3 of those large volumes
she is justly mentioned on the cover.
I take it that Marija Gimbutas intended her cycle of 4 volumes
as legacy, wherein she said it all, and felt free to stay to all her
opinions, including the one about the Vinca signs that she
considered an actual script, predating the Sumerian invention
of writing by two millennia, and a sacred script, as those signs
appear on religious figurines and objects, whereby she relies
on the dissertation on the Vinca script by Shan M.M. Winn
from 1973.
Agroup of women organized an exhibition on the Language
of the Goddess at Wiesbaden in 1993. Joan Marler wrote
a text of five pages for that exhibition in honor of Marija
Gimbutas, wherefrom I got the information about the cycle
of the four volumes: presently (in 1993) Marija Gimbutas
is working on the fourth book of her cycle, The Religion
of the Goddess, despite her illness. In her text, Joan Marler
calls the Language of the Goddess a meta-language with
a grammar and syntax of its own. She doens't mention the
Vinca signs at all. If Marler had pushed the Sacred Script,
whe would have mentioned it in those five pages, but no,
not one word. The object of her fascination is that meta-
language (may be a term of hers).
The Wiesbaden women published a small book on the
exhibition from 1993, in memoriam Marija Gimbutas, 1994.
Joan Marler's text is found in that book. There are several
photographs of Marija Gimbutas attending the exhibition.
She is looking very pleased and bright, although she has
been ill by then. She must have been a strong personality.
Nobody could possibly impose her will on Gimbutas, and
least of all in her legacy, those four intended volumes.
I rather assume that she felt free to say it all near the end
of her life, without any restraints anymore.
An appendix of the 1994 book on the Wiesbaden exhibition
explains a series of Vinca signs in the frame of the above
meta-language, beginning with the cross and angles as
the insignia of the Bird Goddess. Once I had identified
Homer's Kirkae as the goddess of old it was a short step
from cross and angle as insignia of the Bird Goddess to
cross bar angle - Ki Ri Ke as the name of the Bird Goddess.
Franz Gnaedinger
phog...@abo.fi
Franz Gnaedinger kirjoitti:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > *The Civilization of the Goddess* (1991), $30 pbk., has one chapter
> > entitled "Sacred Script," in which it is suggested that they represent a
> > pre-IE language, some of the signs may have phonetic interpretations,
> > and the possibility exists that a bilingual with an IE language may
> > someday be found!! However, the name of an "editor" is prominent on the
> > cover of this book, and it seems highly unlikely that after working on
> > the first volume for ten years (as she says), she suddenly changed her
> > mind a few months after it was published. It seems much more likely that
> > those thoughts were inserted by the "editor" and Gimbutas had little to
> > do with the later book.
>
> Marija Gimbutas published some twenty books, among them
>
> The Gods and Goddess of Old Europe, 1974
Wikipedia on Marija Gimbutas:
'In her work Gimbutas reinterpreted European prehistory in light of her
backgrounds in linguistics, ethnology, and the history of religions and
challenged many traditional assumptions about the beginnings of
European civilization.
In doing so, however, Gimbutas made assertions of her own. Bernard
Wailes, professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania,
told Peter Steinfels in 1990 that she was "immensely knowledgable but
not very good in critical analysis... She amasses all the data and then
leaps to conclusions without any intervening argument... Most of us
tend to say, oh my God, here goes Marija again".'
phog...@abo.fi
Franz Gnaedinger kirjoitti:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > *The Civilization of the Goddess* (1991), $30 pbk., has one chapter
> > entitled "Sacred Script," in which it is suggested that they represent a
> > pre-IE language, some of the signs may have phonetic interpretations,
> > and the possibility exists that a bilingual with an IE language may
> > someday be found!! However, the name of an "editor" is prominent on the
> > cover of this book, and it seems highly unlikely that after working on
> > the first volume for ten years (as she says), she suddenly changed her
> > mind a few months after it was published. It seems much more likely that
> > those thoughts were inserted by the "editor" and Gimbutas had little to
> > do with the later book.
>
> Marija Gimbutas published some twenty books, among them
>
> The Gods and Goddess of Old Europe, 1974
>
> edited again as
>
> The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 1982/96
Such a kowtowing to totalitarian feminism (Goddesses first!) is in
itself message enough that the writer does not deserve to be taken
seriously.
Peter T. Daniels
You never cease to disgust.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > *The Civilization of the Goddess* (1991), $30 pbk., has one chapter
> > entitled "Sacred Script," in which it is suggested that they represent a
> > pre-IE language, some of the signs may have phonetic interpretations,
> > and the possibility exists that a bilingual with an IE language may
> > someday be found!! However, the name of an "editor" is prominent on the
> > cover of this book, and it seems highly unlikely that after working on
> > the first volume for ten years (as she says), she suddenly changed her
> > mind a few months after it was published. It seems much more likely that
> > those thoughts were inserted by the "editor" and Gimbutas had little to
> > do with the later book.
>
> Marija Gimbutas published some twenty books, among them
>
> The Gods and Goddess of Old Europe, 1974
>
> edited again as
>
> The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 1982/96
>
> (I got the reprint from 1996, UCLA Press). Her last books
> were intended as a cycle of four volumes:
>
> 1) The Language of the Goddess, 1989
> 2) The Civilization of the Goddess, 1991
> 3) ???
> 4) The Religion of the Goddess
>
> The first and second volume have been published, while
> the third and fourth volume may be unfinished. In 1993,
Considering the huge sales of the first and second, if _anything_
salvageable of the other two existed, HarperCollins would have brought
it out long ago.
> when she was already ill, she worked on the fourth volume.
> The chapter on the Sacred Script is contained in the second
> volume, the language is pure Marija Gimbutas, her voice is
> recognizable even through the German translation, clear and
Don't be ridiculous. You recognize the voice of the translator.
> lucid, nothing forced, artificial and faked about it, nothing at
> all that may indicate her editor imposed her will on Gimbutas
> and introduced that chapter, which is part of a logical sequence
> of chapters.
No one suggested that Gimbutas did not plan that chapter there.
The only suggestion that Vinc^a script is a writing system is on the
first page or two of that chapter.
> Joan Marler signs as editor. She was responsible
> for the graphics, and she did a marvellous job, revealing the
> spirit of the Vinca figurines, freeing them from their somewhat
> crude appearance and elevating them into the sphere of high
> art, and a most appealing art. Joan Marler did a great job,
> and as the graphics make out 2/3 of those large volumes
> she is justly mentioned on the cover.
Graphics people do not "sign as" editor. (If they did, why is there not
a similar credit on the first volume?)
> I take it that Marija Gimbutas intended her cycle of 4 volumes
> as legacy, wherein she said it all, and felt free to stay to all her
> opinions, including the one about the Vinca signs that she
> considered an actual script, predating the Sumerian invention
Then why is there not the slightest hint of this nonsense in the first
volume, the one devoted to interpreting the signs?
> of writing by two millennia, and a sacred script, as those signs
> appear on religious figurines and objects, whereby she relies
> on the dissertation on the Vinca script by Shan M.M. Winn
> from 1973.
>
> Agroup of women organized an exhibition on the Language
> of the Goddess at Wiesbaden in 1993. Joan Marler wrote
> a text of five pages for that exhibition in honor of Marija
> Gimbutas, wherefrom I got the information about the cycle
> of the four volumes: presently (in 1993) Marija Gimbutas
> is working on the fourth book of her cycle, The Religion
> of the Goddess, despite her illness. In her text, Joan Marler
> calls the Language of the Goddess a meta-language with
> a grammar and syntax of its own. She doens't mention the
Exactly. JOAN MARLER calls it that, not Marija Gimbutas.
> Vinca signs at all. If Marler had pushed the Sacred Script,
> whe would have mentioned it in those five pages, but no,
> not one word. The object of her fascination is that meta-
> language (may be a term of hers).
No, it may not.
> The Wiesbaden women published a small book on the
> exhibition from 1993, in memoriam Marija Gimbutas, 1994.
> Joan Marler's text is found in that book. There are several
> photographs of Marija Gimbutas attending the exhibition.
> She is looking very pleased and bright, although she has
> been ill by then. She must have been a strong personality.
> Nobody could possibly impose her will on Gimbutas, and
> least of all in her legacy, those four intended volumes.
> I rather assume that she felt free to say it all near the end
> of her life, without any restraints anymore.
>
> An appendix of the 1994 book on the Wiesbaden exhibition
> explains a series of Vinca signs in the frame of the above
> meta-language, beginning with the cross and angles as
> the insignia of the Bird Goddess. Once I had identified
> Homer's Kirkae as the goddess of old it was a short step
> from cross and angle as insignia of the Bird Goddess to
> cross bar angle - Ki Ri Ke as the name of the Bird Goddess.
As usual, it ends up all about you.
Holly
Wow. This came as a surprise. Happily I am seeing you in a new light.
So maybe you might like this link.
http://www.amasci.com/weird/wclose.html
Holly
"The primary advocate of the idea that the markings represent writing,
and the person who coined the name "Old European Script", was Marija
Gimbutas (1921-1994), an important 20th century archaeologist and
premier advocate of the notion that the Kurgan culture of Central Asia
was an early Indo-European culture. Later in life she turned her
attention to the reconstruction of a hypothetical pre-Indo-European Old
European culture, which she thought spanned most of Europe. She
observed that neolithic European iconography was predominantly female
- a trend also visible in the inscribed figurines of the Vinca
culture - and concluded the existence of a matristic (not
matriarchal) culture that worshipped range of goddesses and gods.
(Gimbutas did not posit a single universal Mother Goddess.) She also
incorporated the Vinca markings into her model of Old Europe,
suggesting that they might either be the writing system for an Old
European language, or, more probably, a kind of "pre-writing" symbolic
system. Most archaeologists and linguists disagree with Gimbutas'
interpretation of the Vinca signs as a script: it is all but
universally accepted among scholars that the Sumerian cuneiform script
is in fact the earliest form of writing."
http://www.answers.com/topic/old-european-script
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
I don't know who "answers.com" may be (I don't suppose the entry is
signed, is it?), but it clearly hasn't _read_ Gimbutas's work (or it's
using some lay definition of writing that was not used by Gimbutas or by
any other scholar). Not until Joan Marler entered the lists do we find
the kind of sloppy generalization found in the quoted exhibit catalog
and in this passage.
Holly
encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors
(see full disclaimer)"
Wikipedia does guarantee anything of its content.
> Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Peter T. Daniels
Jeez. Now wikipedia even has parasites.
Brian M. Scott
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in
<news:44971B...@worldnet.att.net> in sci.lang:
> Holly wrote:
[...]
>> http://www.answers.com/topic/old-european-script
> I don't know who "answers.com" may be (I don't suppose the entry is
> signed, is it?), but it clearly hasn't _read_ Gimbutas's work (or it's
> using some lay definition of writing that was not used by Gimbutas or by
> any other scholar).
The present version was written by Michael Everson, who says
that he was her research assistant for two years at UCLA.
It's a great improvement on the previous version, which, as
he noted, 'was not very accurate'. His 'suggesting that
they might either be the writing system for an Old European
language, or, more probably, a kind of "pre-writing"
symbolic system' is a great improvement on the previous
version's 'claiming them to be the writing system for a
hypothetical Old European language'.
[...]
Brian
Franz Gnaedinger
The remark on the cycle of four volumes was not
by Joan Marler but Kim Engels, and the books are:
The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, 1973
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 1982/96
The Language of the Goddess, 1989
The Civilization of the Goddess, 1991
The Religion of the Goddess, (1993)
Marija Gimbutas worked on the last book in 1993,
when she was already seriously ill. She attended the
opening of the Wiesbaden exhibition in June of 1993,
and gave a series of lectures on the subsequent evenings.
Joan Marler, her editor since 1987, held a speech at the
opening (four pages in the catalogue from 1994), wherein
she says that one should just stroll through the exhibition
and get a feeling for the art of that old civilization, moreover
she announced evening courses on ritual dances - she
herself had been dancing since 30 years, and dancing,
she finds, is a perfect way for finding access to those
ancient symbols. Her interests are the language of art
and dance. You can do a Google query on her. She is
lecturing at Sebastopol, California, and has a background
in linguistics, but from what I read by her she is interested
in the language of art, visual language. You find 1,170
Google entries for
"joan marler" gimbutas
but only 2 for
"joan marler" "vinca script"
and the two results are not linked, they are two separate
messages, one concerning Joan Marler, the other one
the Vinca script. Not one single text includes Joan Marler
and the Vinca script.
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> Don't be ridiculous. You recognize the voice of the translator.
I have the English version of The Goddesses and Gods of
Old Europe, UCLA Press 1996 (a book you don't know, as
you told me), and I know her voice well from that book. The
same diction is present throughout her book The Civilization
of the Goddess from 1991, including chapter 8, The Sacred
Script.
> No one suggested that Gimbutas did not plan that chapter there.
>
> The only suggestion that Vinc^a script is a writing system is on the
> first page or two of that chapter.
What about the title Sacred Script? Marija Gimbutas says quite
clearly and unmistakably that the Vinca signs are a sacred script,
2,000 years prior to the Sumerian invention of writing. Everybody
can read her book The Civilization of the Goddess, and chapter
8 on the Sacred Script, and have a look at the comparative tables
of Old European signs on the one hand, Cypriotic and Linear A/B
signs on the other hand.
> Graphics people do not "sign as" editor. (If they did, why is there not
> a similar credit on the first volume?)
She was an editor, _and_ she was responsible for the graphics
of The Civilization of the Goddess, with the help of two designers.
> Then why is there not the slightest hint of this nonsense in the first
> volume, the one devoted to interpreting the signs?
You can interpret the signs on two levels. Pictures and images
convey messages, they are a language of their own, a "meta-
language" in the diction of Joan Marler. But then a picture can
go over into actual writing, as was the case with Sumerian
and Egyptian hierogylphs, and may also have been the case
with the Vinca script, where the signs are emerging from
decorative patterns of the Upper Paleolithic on the one hand,
and from natural and physical objects, for example from the
female body. I found Y for Nae, derived from the female Y
(pubis and tighs), and an arc for Os, especially the arc of
the female womb as shown on several Vinca figurines,
yielding Nae Os for a sanctuary: the sanctuary was then
the womb of the goddess, origin of all life. Ki is represented
by a cross, and may have been derived from a double stola
worn by a priestess. Combine Ki and Nae and you get Ki Nae
or gynae, woman. A Vinca duck is covered with a decorative
pattern that gives way to signs on the breast, namely the
signs arc, ypsilon, bar, cross. Now you can combine them
in several playful ways: cross bar angle X I > for Ki Ri Ke,
name of the Bird Goddess; cross ypsilon X Y for Ki Nae,
gynae, woman; ypsilon arc Y ) for Nae Os, sanctuary ...
> As usual, it ends up all about you.
I was saying that Maria Gimbutas came quite close to
a deciphering of the Vinca script when she considered
angles and cross as the insignia of the Bird Goddess.
>From there it was just a little step to my attempt at
deciphering her Sacred Script. I honored her by saying
that she almost got it, and if my work should hold, I owe
it to her.
Franz Gnaedinger
phog...@abo.fi
Peter T. Daniels kirjoitti:
Look who's talking.
Peter T. Daniels
On the writing systems list, Michael Everson came very close to
admitting that he was the Unicode professional who so badly screwed up
the definitions of abjad and abugida in its glossary. He's very good at
creating exotic fonts, but nothing he says about writing systems theory
is reliable.
Which coheres nicely with the posted criticism of Gimbutas as jumping to
conclusions without going into the evidence and arguments for them.
Peter T. Daniels
Art historians seem to have a desperate need to label any sort of visual
semiotics "writing." The final chapter of Houston's *First Writings* is
by one such, and it's ridiculed even by other contributors to the same
volume.
> "joan marler" gimbutas
>
> but only 2 for
>
> "joan marler" "vinca script"
>
> and the two results are not linked, they are two separate
> messages, one concerning Joan Marler, the other one
> the Vinca script. Not one single text includes Joan Marler
> and the Vinca script.
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > Don't be ridiculous. You recognize the voice of the translator.
>
> I have the English version of The Goddesses and Gods of
> Old Europe, UCLA Press 1996 (a book you don't know, as
> you told me), and I know her voice well from that book. The
> same diction is present throughout her book The Civilization
> of the Goddess from 1991, including chapter 8, The Sacred
> Script.
The claim you snipped was that you recognized her voice even in the
German translations.
> > No one suggested that Gimbutas did not plan that chapter there.
> >
> > The only suggestion that Vinc^a script is a writing system is on the
> > first page or two of that chapter.
>
> What about the title Sacred Script? Marija Gimbutas says quite
> clearly and unmistakably that the Vinca signs are a sacred script,
> 2,000 years prior to the Sumerian invention of writing. Everybody
> can read her book The Civilization of the Goddess, and chapter
> 8 on the Sacred Script, and have a look at the comparative tables
> of Old European signs on the one hand, Cypriotic and Linear A/B
> signs on the other hand.
I'm not responsible for the poverty of the German language. A "script"
is not a "writing system," even though the same word _Schrift_ is used
for both in German.
> > Graphics people do not "sign as" editor. (If they did, why is there not
> > a similar credit on the first volume?)
>
> She was an editor, _and_ she was responsible for the graphics
> of The Civilization of the Goddess, with the help of two designers.
Why is there not a similar credit -- in good-size type on the cover --
in the first volume?
> > Then why is there not the slightest hint of this nonsense in the first
> > volume, the one devoted to interpreting the signs?
>
> You can interpret the signs on two levels. Pictures and images
> convey messages, they are a language of their own, a "meta-
> language" in the diction of Joan Marler. But then a picture can
Aha! You're an art historian!
> go over into actual writing, as was the case with Sumerian
> and Egyptian hierogylphs, and may also have been the case
> with the Vinca script, where the signs are emerging from
For which there is not the slightest shred of evidence.
> decorative patterns of the Upper Paleolithic on the one hand,
> and from natural and physical objects, for example from the
> female body. I found .
[snipping the egotism, though much less of it than usual]
> > As usual, it ends up all about you.
>
> I was saying that Maria Gimbutas came quite close to
> a deciphering of the Vinca script when she considered
> angles and cross as the insignia of the Bird Goddess.
> >From there it was just a little step to my attempt at
> deciphering her Sacred Script. I honored her by saying
> that she almost got it, and if my work should hold, I owe
> it to her.
Your work does not hold.
Moreover, you are now claiming that the language of the ancient Balkans
of 5000 BCE was the same as the language of your "Magdalenians" 10,000
years earlier and localized, so far as anyone can tell, at a specific
archeological site in Anatolia.
Only an art historian could imagine such an absurdity?
Brian M. Scott
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in
<news:4497E2...@worldnet.att.net> in sci.lang:
> Brian M. Scott wrote:
>>> Holly wrote:
>> [...]
>>>> http://www.answers.com/topic/old-european-script
>> [...]
Except that Everson is on record as defending her
scholarship and bringing the article in question into better
agreement with the facts.
Brian
Peter T. Daniels
Uncomprehendingly.
He's said his interest is in getting as many scripts into Unicode as
possible, with the details being unimportant frills that only scholars
worry about. (Look at the mess they've made of the ancient Semitic
group.)
phog...@abo.fi
Is it really your honest opinion that all this unscientific, blatantly
ideological crap about mother-goddesses and ancient matriarchy somehow
adds to our knowledge?
Is it really your honest opinion that a totalitarian ideology which has
the same view of the male sex as Nazism has of Jews is somehow good for
democracy?
Let me tell you something. When the adepts of Valerie Solanas come to
take us all out to be shot, they sure won't exempt you.
Peter T. Daniels
Have you ever actually read anything she wrote?
> Is it really your honest opinion that a totalitarian ideology which has
> the same view of the male sex as Nazism has of Jews is somehow good for
> democracy?
???
You're very good at name-calling. I haven't seen any substantive
contributions from you, either.
> Let me tell you something. When the adepts of Valerie Solanas come to
> take us all out to be shot, they sure won't exempt you.
No idea what that is.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
yet another evasive reply.
Meanwhile I know where the wind blows. I recognize a pattern.
You are denying everything that goes beyond the book you
edited together with William Bright, The World's Writing Systems,
1996 (as I recall). Your reputation in the linguistic community relies
almost entirely on that book. So you have an interest in keeping it
actual, current. You could achieve this by working on a second
edition, or a second volume on earliest writing, and include recent
insights such as the decipherment of the knotted strings known as
quipa. Or you can deny what goes beyond The Book. You chose
the latter option. In the Ancient Near East forum ANE you deny
that the quipa are a form of writing. You go on dismissing the
book by Derk Ohlenroth without having much as laid a glass eye
on it. The same reaction when I informed sci.lang on Walther
Hinz's decipherment of Linear A tablet Hagia Triada 95 on the
basis of Cyrus H. Gordon's work: no, you won't read my message.
You know nothing about Goebekli Tepe, which proves that it can't
be of any importance. And these days you are turning around
what Marija Gimbutas wrote on the Sacred Script of Old Europe
that predates the Sumerian invention of writing by two millennia,
hoping that by some magic the chapter Sacred Script of her book
The Civilization of the Goddess will go blank, in every copy world-
wide. You are trying to keep your book actual by holding up the
scientific progress and freezing time. You might as well try to stop
a river and hold up the Niagara Falls.
Franz Gnaedinger
phog...@abo.fi
Peter T. Daniels kirjoitti:
I am asking you a question: is it your honest opinion that her writings
somehow add to your knowledge? Yes or no? Or do you, in your heart of
hearts, admit that he is just a feminist propagandist and mystic, but
prefer not to say it aloud, because it wouldn't be politic in an
ideologically uniform PC environment.
> > Is it really your honest opinion that a totalitarian ideology which has
> > the same view of the male sex as Nazism has of Jews is somehow good for
> > democracy?
>
> ???
The ideology is called radical feminism. It is a totalitarian ideology
on a par with Stalinism and Nazism, a fact that should be clear to
anyone who has bothered to read its holy writ.
>
> You're very good at name-calling.
Look who is talking.
> I haven't seen any substantive
> contributions from you, either.
I take it you are a competent linguist who could contribute more
substantially, but you have got lousy manners and an irritating way to
attack people instead of giving a bona fide answer to a bona fide
question. If you lecture at some university, I really pity your
students - they must be dead scared to ever ask you a question.
Sorry, but somebody had to tell you this.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> yet another evasive reply.
Congratulations on not mentioning your "permutations" even once! Maybe
you are beginning to understand. However, as you continue to ignore the
objections to your "theory," why should we take anything you say
seriously?
> Meanwhile I know where the wind blows. I recognize a pattern.
> You are denying everything that goes beyond the book you
> edited together with William Bright, The World's Writing Systems,
> 1996 (as I recall). Your reputation in the linguistic community relies
> almost entirely on that book. So you have an interest in keeping it
> actual, current. You could achieve this by working on a second
We've been trying for a decade to do that, but the publisher has no
interest in a new edition.
> edition, or a second volume on earliest writing, and include recent
> insights such as the decipherment of the knotted strings known as
> quipa.
You should learn to spell what you're talking about. What
"decipherment"? Are you now going to claim that they record language and
not quantities?
> Or you can deny what goes beyond The Book. You chose
> the latter option. In the Ancient Near East forum ANE you deny
> that the quipa are a form of writing.
Do they record language?
> You go on dismissing the
> book by Derk Ohlenroth without having much as laid a glass eye
I don't have a glass eye.
> on it.
I will continue to dismiss _every_ book about P.D.
> The same reaction when I informed sci.lang on Walther
> Hinz's decipherment of Linear A tablet Hagia Triada 95 on the
> basis of Cyrus H. Gordon's work: no, you won't read my message.
I have carefully read Cyrus Gordon's work. It is baseless, so anything
based on it is equally baseless.
> You know nothing about Goebekli Tepe, which proves that it can't
What makes you think this one particular tepe, out of all the tepes that
have been excavated and all the ones that haven't yet been, is special?
Because it's one you happen to have heard of?
> be of any importance. And these days you are turning around
> what Marija Gimbutas wrote on the Sacred Script of Old Europe
> that predates the Sumerian invention of writing by two millennia,
> hoping that by some magic the chapter Sacred Script of her book
> The Civilization of the Goddess will go blank, in every copy world-
Apparently you have never read *The Language of the Goddess*, which is a
very big book about the Vinc^a script and nothing else, which makes no
claim whatsoever that the Vinc^a script is writing (except, of course,
in the art historian sense that any visual semiotic system may be
labeled "writing").
> wide. You are trying to keep your book actual by holding up the
> scientific progress and freezing time. You might as well try to stop
> a river and hold up the Niagara Falls.
That's been done, actually. 10 or 15 years ago, they diverted the waters
for several months so they could shore up the precipice and update the
power stations. Unfortunately I didn't get to go see it.
Again, one of the questions you ignored: How can you equate a Balkan
language of 5000 BCE with an Anatolian language of 15,000 BCE?
Peter T. Daniels
In other words, your bigotry caused you to call Gimbutas ugly names.
She (not he) collected a great deal of data about pre-Indo-European
inhabitants of Europe, and if I were an archeologist, I would find her
work very valuable. Whether her interpretations hold water is of no
interest to me whatsoever, but if you hate women, I suppose you would
find her opinions anathema.
> > > Is it really your honest opinion that a totalitarian ideology which has
> > > the same view of the male sex as Nazism has of Jews is somehow good for
> > > democracy?
> >
> > ???
>
> The ideology is called radical feminism. It is a totalitarian ideology
> on a par with Stalinism and Nazism, a fact that should be clear to
> anyone who has bothered to read its holy writ.
Yes, there was something called "radical feminism" about 40 years ago. I
don't see any "totalitarian" results of the theorizing of Friedan,
Steinem, Greer, or de Beauvoir. Or, for that matter, of R. Lakoff,
Millett, or Elgin (since you won't recognize the names, they were the
principal "feminist linguists" 30 and more years ago).
Don't you wish you were a little older, so you could have lived in
Finland when it was Stalin's puppet? or neighboring Norway when it was
Hitler's client? Then you might not be so cavalier about throwing words
like "totalitarian" around.
> > You're very good at name-calling.
>
> Look who is talking.
>
> > I haven't seen any substantive
> > contributions from you, either.
>
> I take it you are a competent linguist who could contribute more
> substantially, but you have got lousy manners and an irritating way to
> attack people instead of giving a bona fide answer to a bona fide
> question. If you lecture at some university, I really pity your
> students - they must be dead scared to ever ask you a question.
Why don't you ask a real question, instead of deploying what Dwight
Bolinger called "Language: The Loaded Weapon"?
> Sorry, but somebody had to tell you this.
Why don't you tell me what a Valerie Solanas is?
Javi
> Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
>
>
>>insights such as the decipherment of the knotted strings known as
>>quipa.
>
>
> You should learn to spell what you're talking about. What
> "decipherment"? Are you now going to claim that they record language and
> not quantities?
Disclaimer: I don not know what Franz is going to claim or what
"decipherment" is he talking about.
My claim: If lineal B is a script that recorded language (like "four
sheep from the village XXX"), then the quippu system is also a graphic
system that recorded language.
Really, I do not see any basic difference between the two systems, am I
being short-sighted?
>>Or you can deny what goes beyond The Book. You chose
>>the latter option. In the Ancient Near East forum ANE you deny
>>that the quipa are a form of writing.
>
>
> Do they record language?
We don't certainly know yet, but there are clues and ancient testimonies
that, beside the accounting quipus, there were also quipus that told the
stories of the Incas.
--
Javi
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> >
> >
> >> and include recent
> >>insights such as the decipherment of the knotted strings known as
> >>quipa.
> >
> >
> > You should learn to spell what you're talking about. What
> > "decipherment"? Are you now going to claim that they record language and
> > not quantities?
>
> Disclaimer: I don not know what Franz is going to claim or what
> "decipherment" is he talking about.
>
> My claim: If lineal B is a script that recorded language (like "four
> sheep from the village XXX"), then the quippu system is also a graphic
> system that recorded language.
>
> Really, I do not see any basic difference between the two systems, am I
> being short-sighted?
Yes. The language of the Linear B tablets is clearly and unambiguously
Greek.
Even if there are specific knots for 'sheep' and 'Lima', as well as
numbers, they aren't in any particular language -- they are ideographic.
> >>Or you can deny what goes beyond The Book. You chose
> >>the latter option. In the Ancient Near East forum ANE you deny
> >>that the quipa are a form of writing.
> >
> >
> > Do they record language?
>
> We don't certainly know yet, but there are clues and ancient testimonies
> that, beside the accounting quipus, there were also quipus that told the
> stories of the Incas.
That claim was made by the 16th-century Spanish anthropologists who
described the culture, but they provided no evidence. At best, if there
were knots for 'sheep' and 'Lima' and other concepts, they were at best
mnemonics, not records of language.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> We've been trying for a decade to do that, but the publisher has no
> interest in a new edition.
A pity.
> You should learn to spell what you're talking about. What
> "decipherment"? Are you now going to claim that they record language and
> not quantities?
Is the name quipu? Sorry, then. But for me they are a form
of writing. Also noting numbers is a form of writing, and as
far as I know the first knots of each string indicate a place.
You can decipher numbers as well as letters. On the
Babylonian clay tablet Plimpton 322 are only numbers,
yet they have been written, and later deciphered. I don't live
in the cage of your categories and choking classifications,
> Do they record language?
Numbers are part of every language, and places too.
> I don't have a glass eye.
You go on dismissing the book by Derk Ohlenroth without
having laid much as the empty box of a blind old glass eye
on it, then. Doesn't make it any better, does it?
> I will continue to dismiss _every_ book about P.D.
There, you say it again. And you hope I will take you
seriously again?
> I have carefully read Cyrus Gordon's work. It is baseless, so anything
> based on it is equally baseless.
I know how you read Derk Ohlenroth, not at all, and how
you read chapter 8, The Sacred Script, of The Civilization
of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas, twisting her words,
and I know how you read my messages. Won't take stock
in your reading capabilities.
> What makes you think this one particular tepe, out of all the tepes that
> have been excavated and all the ones that haven't yet been, is special?
> Because it's one you happen to have heard of?
Big sigh. If you had participated in the anthropological congress
held in southern Germany in 1898 (as I recall) you would certainly
have voted for the cave paintings being fakes. The participants
of that memorable congress voted, and then officially concluded
that cave paintings are fakes. You had voted for fakes without
ever much as having looked at a cave painting yer own self,
and you certainly will never look at the publications by Klaus
Schmidt on Goebekli Tepe. For others I recommend his book
that appeared recently. Just have a look at the pictures. And
always have the time in mind: 11 600 - 9 500 BP (before present).
> Apparently you have never read *The Language of the Goddess*, which is a
> very big book about the Vinc^a script and nothing else, which makes no
> claim whatsoever that the Vinc^a script is writing (except, of course,
> in the art historian sense that any visual semiotic system may be
> labeled "writing").
Yes, The Language of the Goddess is about symbols "only."
As I told you I have that book no more but gave it to a friend
of mine as a present for her diploma, which is why I wrongly
mentioned that book in the first place. The chapter on the
Sacred Script is found in The Civilization of the Goddess,
1991, and the way you are twisting Marija Gimbutas' words
in that chapter surley earns you a seat of honor among the
conspiracy kooks of talks.origins.
I am tired of your silly and systematic denying of everything
that goes beyond your book. Contact Joan Marler herself
and ask her about the Sacred Script. Here her address:
jmarler (a) archaeomythology.org
I contacted her this morning and just received her reply.
She is leaving for Europe and will read my pages when
she returns. For the time being she forwarded my mail
to a Finnish linguist called Harald Haarman, the foremost
expert on the Danube / Vinca script, as she tells me.
> That's been done, actually. 10 or 15 years ago, they diverted the waters
> for several months so they could shore up the precipice and update the
> power stations. Unfortunately I didn't get to go see it.
Must have been a spectacle.
> Again, one of the questions you ignored: How can you equate a Balkan
> language of 5000 BCE with an Anatolian language of 15,000 BCE?
Sighing again. I am pondering the Magdalenian level from
around 15 000 BP, Goebekli Tepe lasted from 11 600 to
9 500 BP, the Vinca script from around 8 000 to 5 000 BP.
Magdalenian GYN 'women' became Ki Nae in the Balkans,
gynae in ancient Greek. Magdalenian NAI 'to find a good
place for to build a camp' may have become Nae in the
Balkans, represented by an Y, which, combined with an arc
for Os yields Nae Os for sanctuary. The Y may symbolize
two confluent rivers on the one hand, suitable for a camp,
and the female Y on the other had, indicating that the
sanctuary of the goddess is her womb, since the upper
lines of the womb of several figurines form a clear arc,
and the womb of the Bird Goddess was the origin of life.
There is plenty of wit * in the Vinca script. I love it.
Franz Gnaedinger
* While you are trying to be drier than an English man.
And you succeed. Which, however, amuses me sometimes.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > We've been trying for a decade to do that, but the publisher has no
> > interest in a new edition.
>
> A pity.
>
> > You should learn to spell what you're talking about. What
> > "decipherment"? Are you now going to claim that they record language and
> > not quantities?
>
> Is the name quipu? Sorry, then. But for me they are a form
> of writing.
Yes, you like to use words in your own private sense. They're not
writing to anyone who studies writing carefully.
Also noting numbers is a form of writing, and as
No, noting numbers is not a form of writing, it's ideography.
> far as I know the first knots of each string indicate a place.
> You can decipher numbers as well as letters. On the
> Babylonian clay tablet Plimpton 322 are only numbers,
> yet they have been written, and later deciphered. I don't live
No Babylonian tablet needs to be "deciphered" any more; the decipherment
was done well over 150 years ago. Mayan numerals could be read for
centuries before anyone even imagined that Maya writing was true writing
and not ideography to which the key was lost. Likewise, Egyptian
hieroglyphic numbers could be read for decades before Champollion
imagined that Egyptian writing was true writing and not ideography to
which the key was lost.
> in the cage of your categories and choking classifications,
>
> > Do they record language?
>
> Numbers are part of every language, and places too.
And neither numerals nor location glyphs for places belong to any
particular language.
> > I don't have a glass eye.
>
> You go on dismissing the book by Derk Ohlenroth without
> having laid much as the empty box of a blind old glass eye
> on it, then. Doesn't make it any better, does it?
I don't have such a box, either. If you don't understand why the P.D. is
undecipherable as matters stand, then your entire battle with g. was for
nought.
> > I will continue to dismiss _every_ book about P.D.
>
> There, you say it again. And you hope I will take you
> seriously again?
I will also dismiss every book of so-called "American epigraphy," by
Barry Fell and his dupes.
> > I have carefully read Cyrus Gordon's work. It is baseless, so anything
> > based on it is equally baseless.
>
> I know how you read Derk Ohlenroth, not at all, and how
> you read chapter 8, The Sacred Script, of The Civilization
> of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas, twisting her words,
> and I know how you read my messages. Won't take stock
> in your reading capabilities.
I've never claimed to have read D.O., and I've read Gimbutas's chapter
-- or rather, the chapter in her book that contains things she herself
never claimed.
> > What makes you think this one particular tepe, out of all the tepes that
> > have been excavated and all the ones that haven't yet been, is special?
> > Because it's one you happen to have heard of?
>
> Big sigh. If you had participated in the anthropological congress
> held in southern Germany in 1898 (as I recall) you would certainly
> have voted for the cave paintings being fakes. The participants
> of that memorable congress voted, and then officially concluded
> that cave paintings are fakes. You had voted for fakes without
> ever much as having looked at a cave painting yer own self,
> and you certainly will never look at the publications by Klaus
> Schmidt on Goebekli Tepe. For others I recommend his book
> that appeared recently. Just have a look at the pictures. And
> always have the time in mind: 11 600 - 9 500 BP (before present).
Just looking at the pictures accomplishes nothing. You need to read the
text, also. Presumably it puts that site into the context of the other
sites of the same period.
I ask again, what's special about that particular site, as opposed to
all the other sites from similar times and places?
> > Apparently you have never read *The Language of the Goddess*, which is a
> > very big book about the Vinc^a script and nothing else, which makes no
> > claim whatsoever that the Vinc^a script is writing (except, of course,
> > in the art historian sense that any visual semiotic system may be
> > labeled "writing").
>
> Yes, The Language of the Goddess is about symbols "only."
> As I told you I have that book no more but gave it to a friend
> of mine as a present for her diploma, which is why I wrongly
> mentioned that book in the first place.
Then you should either go to the library, or buy yourself another copy.
> The chapter on the
> Sacred Script is found in The Civilization of the Goddess,
> 1991, and the way you are twisting Marija Gimbutas' words
> in that chapter surley earns you a seat of honor among the
> conspiracy kooks of talks.origins.
"Her" words in that chapter do not agree with anything she wrote over
the previous decades on the topic. It is therefore unlikely in the
extreme that she intended what that chapter says.
> I am tired of your silly and systematic denying of everything
> that goes beyond your book. Contact Joan Marler herself
> and ask her about the Sacred Script. Here her address:
>
> jmarler (a) archaeomythology.org
>
> I contacted her this morning and just received her reply.
> She is leaving for Europe and will read my pages when
> she returns.
That's a typical polite response to nutcases who write to professors.
> For the time being she forwarded my mail
> to a Finnish linguist called Harald Haarman, the foremost
> expert on the Danube / Vinca script, as she tells me.
Then you'll deserve what you get. Look up the reviews of his book,
*Universalgeschichte der Schrift*. A while back he sent me, unsolicited,
a package of offprints, and he's just as wacky as the others.
> > That's been done, actually. 10 or 15 years ago, they diverted the waters
> > for several months so they could shore up the precipice and update the
> > power stations. Unfortunately I didn't get to go see it.
>
> Must have been a spectacle.
>
> > Again, one of the questions you ignored: How can you equate a Balkan
> > language of 5000 BCE with an Anatolian language of 15,000 BCE?
>
> Sighing again. I am pondering the Magdalenian level from
> around 15 000 BP, Goebekli Tepe lasted from 11 600 to
> 9 500 BP, the Vinca script from around 8 000 to 5 000 BP.
> Magdalenian GYN 'women' became Ki Nae in the Balkans,
> gynae in ancient Greek. Magdalenian NAI 'to find a good
> place for to build a camp' may have become Nae in the
> Balkans, represented by an Y, which, combined with an arc
> for Os yields Nae Os for sanctuary. The Y may symbolize
> two confluent rivers on the one hand, suitable for a camp,
> and the female Y on the other had, indicating that the
> sanctuary of the goddess is her womb, since the upper
> lines of the womb of several figurines form a clear arc,
> and the womb of the Bird Goddess was the origin of life.
> There is plenty of wit * in the Vinca script. I love it.
Answer the question. What makes you think there is any legitimacy
whatsoever in comparing "languages" that are 10,000 years apart and
hundreds (or thousands?) of kilometers apart?
> * While you are trying to be drier than an English man.
> And you succeed. Which, however, amuses me sometimes.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> Yes, you like to use words in your own private sense. They're not
> writing to anyone who studies writing carefully.
Funny that one says decipherment, one deciphers an early
writing, nobody does deletter, desyllable, de-hieroglyph,
de-logogram, de-pictogram an early message. Ciphers,
as you may know, are 1 2 3 ..., letters are a b c ...
> No, noting numbers is not a form of writing, it's ideography.
Noting numbers is a part of writing, as numbers are a part
of language. Year and years imply numbers, year is one
year, or a fraction of a year, for example half a year, while
years are several years, for example five years, or more
than one year, for example 1 1/2 years. How can you
separate numbers from language and writing. Just plain
impossible.
> No Babylonian tablet needs to be "deciphered" any more; the decipherment
> was done well over 150 years ago. Mayan numerals could be read for
> centuries before anyone even imagined that Maya writing was true writing
> and not ideography to which the key was lost. Likewise, Egyptian
> hieroglyphic numbers could be read for decades before Champollion
> imagined that Egyptian writing was true writing and not ideography to
> which the key was lost.
You are grasping now the meaning of deciphering, finding out
about language via numerals that can often be read more easily
than words? Which is why we speak of deciphering and not of
delettering, desyllabling, dehieroglyphing.
> And neither numerals nor location glyphs for places belong to any
> particular language.
Every language got numbers and place names, and they
surely are a part of language, and in noted form of writing.
> I've never claimed to have read D.O., and I've read Gimbutas's chapter
> -- or rather, the chapter in her book that contains things she herself
> never claimed.
You go on claiming that the chapter on the Sacred Script
is own to Joan Marler and not Marija Gimbutas? You have
not even the shadow of a straw stalk of evidence for that
claim. Look up the publications by Joan Marler, none does
concern the Sacred Script of Old Europe, or Vinca script,
or Danube script, whatever. You are talking yourself out,
and you make me suspicious of your profession, as you
tell me that editors do such things, turn around opinions
of their authors, make them write things they don't mean.
You are doing damage to your own profession, and yourself,
by going on in that kooky way of yours. Contact Joan Marler
and ask her about chapter 8 of The Civilization of the Goddess.
If gave you her e-mail address.
A correction: the name of the foremost expert on the Danube
or Vinca script is Harald Haarmann (with a double n, -mann).
> Just looking at the pictures accomplishes nothing. You need to read the
> text, also. Presumably it puts that site into the context of the other
> sites of the same period.
I see, you can also judge that book without having much
as seen it, you won't look at the pictures of T-shaped
stone pillars, up to eight meters tall, weighing up to fifty
tons, decorated with reliefs of animals, and of hieroglyphs,
from 11 600 to 9 500 BP. Just irrelevant. As nearby but
younger Nevali Cori, as the many other not yet excavated
Azilian sites of that region. You don't know anything about it,
ergo it must be irrelevant, insignificant, unimportant. An early
Greek philosopher (was it Parmenides?) called the human
being the measure of all things. If he lived today he might
add: ... and Peter T. Daniels is the measure of all things
irrelevant, unimportant, and not existing. What you don't
know does not exist, has no significance and importance.
You close the eyes and the world is gone. Game of a child,
played by an adult.
> I ask again, what's special about that particular site, as opposed to
> all the other sites from similar times and places?
What do you mean with "all the other sites from similar times
and places" ? There is not one other site that compares with
Goebekli Tepe, apart from the younger Nevali Cori, where
no pillars remain, and from unexcavated sites in the region.
> Then you should either go to the library, or buy yourself another copy.
I already apologized a couple of times for my mistake.
The chapter on the Sacred Script is found in the book
The Civilization of the Goddess from 1991. Look up
that chapter. Marija Gimbutas, in her own voice, diction
and style calls the signs of Old Europe a Sacred Script
which anticipated the Sumerian invention of writing by
2,000 years.
> "Her" words in that chapter do not agree with anything she wrote over
> the previous decades on the topic. It is therefore unlikely in the
> extreme that she intended what that chapter says.
Many scholars reveal their dearest ideas and most far reaching
assumptions near the end of their carrier, when they have nothing
more to fear from the hounds of academe. And they are "her"
words, you nutcase of a conspiracy kook worth of talk.origins.
> That's a typical polite response to nutcases who write to professors.
I know, but it can also be a serious reply, we shall see.
> Then you'll deserve what you get. Look up the reviews of his book,
> *Universalgeschichte der Schrift*. A while back he sent me, unsolicited,
> a package of offprints, and he's just as wacky as the others.
I jdont care about reviews. I don't care, I don't care, I don't
care at all. I look at a book myself, I don't need reviews.
You are a writer of reviews, tells me enough.
> Answer the question. What makes you think there is any legitimacy
> whatsoever in comparing "languages" that are 10,000 years apart and
> hundreds (or thousands?) of kilometers apart?
My experimental reconstruction of Magdalenian concerns
the Franco-Cantabrian space in around 15 000 BP. However,
the Magdalenians have been wandering widely, some spent
winter in the region of Marseilles and summer in western
Switzerland where mammoths survived until 10,000 years
ago. The Magdalenian space extended until Austria and
Czechia and Hungary. By the end of the Ice Age, animals
retired from the Franco-Cantabrian space, making it ever
more difficult for the hunters. Magdalenian art ended
abruptly in around 12 000 BP. That was the time when
Magdalenians entered England via a landbridge, and
it must have been the time when they followed horses
eastward to the Eurasian steppes. The gap is only 400
years, between 12 000 BP (end of Magdalenian art
in the Franco-Cantabrian space) and 11 600, begin of
Goebekli Tepe. Agriculture started in the late phase of
Goebekli Tepe, at the base of the Karacadag, west of
Goebekli Tepe. In around 9 500 BP the temples of GT
were carefully filled up and abandoned, which means
that the culture of GT didn't really come to an end but
survived in a modified form, presumably in the Harran
plain just south of Goebekli Tepe. And there must have
been contacts between GT and the Natufian culture in
Judah, where, I read yesterday, agriculture began with
the cultivation of fig trees at Gilgal (if memory serves)
as early as 11 400 BP. The rest is well established
archaeology.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > Yes, you like to use words in your own private sense. They're not
> > writing to anyone who studies writing carefully.
>
> Funny that one says decipherment, one deciphers an early
> writing, nobody does deletter, desyllable, de-hieroglyph,
> de-logogram, de-pictogram an early message. Ciphers,
> as you may know, are 1 2 3 ..., letters are a b c ...
I was writing in English, not German. I didn't mention Ziffern.
> > No, noting numbers is not a form of writing, it's ideography.
>
> Noting numbers is a part of writing, as numbers are a part
> of language. Year and years imply numbers, year is one
> year, or a fraction of a year, for example half a year, while
> years are several years, for example five years, or more
> than one year, for example 1 1/2 years. How can you
> separate numbers from language and writing. Just plain
> impossible.
<one two three> or <eins zwei drei> is writing. <1 2 3> is ideography.
Knots in quipus are the latter, not the former.
This time your mind wandered after less than a line and a half -- years
have nothing to do with it.
> > No Babylonian tablet needs to be "deciphered" any more; the decipherment
> > was done well over 150 years ago. Mayan numerals could be read for
> > centuries before anyone even imagined that Maya writing was true writing
> > and not ideography to which the key was lost. Likewise, Egyptian
> > hieroglyphic numbers could be read for decades before Champollion
> > imagined that Egyptian writing was true writing and not ideography to
> > which the key was lost.
>
> You are grasping now the meaning of deciphering, finding out
> about language via numerals that can often be read more easily
> than words? Which is why we speak of deciphering and not of
> delettering, desyllabling, dehieroglyphing.
You do not have the slightest idea what you are talking about. Learn how
cuneiform, hieroglyphs, and Mayan were deciphered. (As it happens, the
best places to do so are my own publications.) Numerals were not
involved in the slightest in deciphering the scripts.
> > And neither numerals nor location glyphs for places belong to any
> > particular language.
>
> Every language got numbers and place names, and they
> surely are a part of language, and in noted form of writing.
<eins zwei drei> and <United States of America> and <Vereinigte Staaten>
are writing. <1 2 3> and a picture of an eagle clutching arrows and an
olive branch, or of an American flag, are not writing.
> > I've never claimed to have read D.O., and I've read Gimbutas's chapter
> > -- or rather, the chapter in her book that contains things she herself
> > never claimed.
>
> You go on claiming that the chapter on the Sacred Script
> is own to Joan Marler and not Marija Gimbutas? You have
owed
You changed your claim regarding the authorship of the articles you
previously attributed to Joan Marler, so I am not claiming Ms. Marler
wrote them, only that Prof. Gimbutas did not.
> not even the shadow of a straw stalk of evidence for that
> claim. Look up the publications by Joan Marler, none does
> concern the Sacred Script of Old Europe, or Vinca script,
> or Danube script, whatever. You are talking yourself out,
> and you make me suspicious of your profession, as you
> tell me that editors do such things, turn around opinions
> of their authors, make them write things they don't mean.
I've warned you before about lying about me.
I said no such thing about "editors."
> You are doing damage to your own profession, and yourself,
> by going on in that kooky way of yours. Contact Joan Marler
> and ask her about chapter 8 of The Civilization of the Goddess.
> If gave you her e-mail address.
>
> A correction: the name of the foremost expert on the Danube
> or Vinca script is Harald Haarmann (with a double n, -mann).
>
> > Just looking at the pictures accomplishes nothing. You need to read the
> > text, also. Presumably it puts that site into the context of the other
> > sites of the same period.
>
> I see, you can also judge that book without having much
> as seen it, you won't look at the pictures of T-shaped
I don't happen to have an archeological library at my beck and call.
> stone pillars, up to eight meters tall, weighing up to fifty
> tons, decorated with reliefs of animals, and of hieroglyphs,
> from 11 600 to 9 500 BP. Just irrelevant. As nearby but
> younger Nevali Cori, as the many other not yet excavated
> Azilian sites of that region. You don't know anything about it,
> ergo it must be irrelevant, insignificant, unimportant. An early
I've warned you before about lying about me.
All I know about G.T. is that you think it was the origin of
civilization and that your nutty "language" was used there. I have no
opinion of it.
> Greek philosopher (was it Parmenides?) called the human
> being the measure of all things. If he lived today he might
> add: ... and Peter T. Daniels is the measure of all things
> irrelevant, unimportant, and not existing. What you don't
> know does not exist, has no significance and importance.
> You close the eyes and the world is gone. Game of a child,
> played by an adult.
>
> > I ask again, what's special about that particular site, as opposed to
> > all the other sites from similar times and places?
>
> What do you mean with "all the other sites from similar times
> and places" ? There is not one other site that compares with
> Goebekli Tepe, apart from the younger Nevali Cori, where
> no pillars remain, and from unexcavated sites in the region.
>
> > Then you should either go to the library, or buy yourself another copy.
>
> I already apologized a couple of times for my mistake.
> The chapter on the Sacred Script is found in the book
> The Civilization of the Goddess from 1991. Look up
> that chapter. Marija Gimbutas, in her own voice, diction
> and style calls the signs of Old Europe a Sacred Script
> which anticipated the Sumerian invention of writing by
> 2,000 years.
And you'd better take a course in remedial reading. I tell you that *The
Language of the Goddess* contains nothing like what is in the first page
or so of that chapter in *The Civilization of the Goddess*, and you tell
me again and again to read that chapter.
Does _anyone_ find it possible to converse with you?
> > "Her" words in that chapter do not agree with anything she wrote over
> > the previous decades on the topic. It is therefore unlikely in the
> > extreme that she intended what that chapter says.
>
> Many scholars reveal their dearest ideas and most far reaching
> assumptions near the end of their carrier, when they have nothing
career
> more to fear from the hounds of academe. And they are "her"
> words, you nutcase of a conspiracy kook worth of talk.origins.
She had nothing to "fear." She was a highly respected archeologist and a
tenured professor at the University of California.
> > That's a typical polite response to nutcases who write to professors.
>
> I know, but it can also be a serious reply, we shall see.
>
> > Then you'll deserve what you get. Look up the reviews of his book,
> > *Universalgeschichte der Schrift*. A while back he sent me, unsolicited,
> > a package of offprints, and he's just as wacky as the others.
>
> I jdont care about reviews. I don't care, I don't care, I don't
> care at all. I look at a book myself, I don't need reviews.
> You are a writer of reviews, tells me enough.
Finally you admit that you are not interested in facts or accuracy.
> > Answer the question. What makes you think there is any legitimacy
> > whatsoever in comparing "languages" that are 10,000 years apart and
> > hundreds (or thousands?) of kilometers apart?
>
> My experimental reconstruction of Magdalenian concerns
> the Franco-Cantabrian space in around 15 000 BP. However,
> the Magdalenians have been wandering widely, some spent
If you understood anything about human language, you would know that
peoples who "wander widely" no longer speak the same language, or even
similar languages, after a very short time. Look how different English
and German are, after well under 2000 years of separation. Yet you posit
identity of "language" between your (newly named) "Franco-Cantabrians"
and your "Magdalenians" of G.T.
> winter in the region of Marseilles and summer in western
> Switzerland where mammoths survived until 10,000 years
> ago. The Magdalenian space extended until Austria and
> Czechia and Hungary. By the end of the Ice Age, animals
> retired from the Franco-Cantabrian space, making it ever
> more difficult for the hunters. Magdalenian art ended
> abruptly in around 12 000 BP. That was the time when
> Magdalenians entered England via a landbridge, and
> it must have been the time when they followed horses
> eastward to the Eurasian steppes. The gap is only 400
> years, between 12 000 BP (end of Magdalenian art
> in the Franco-Cantabrian space) and 11 600, begin of
> Goebekli Tepe. Agriculture started in the late phase of
> Goebekli Tepe, at the base of the Karacadag, west of
> Goebekli Tepe. In around 9 500 BP the temples of GT
> were carefully filled up and abandoned, which means
> that the culture of GT didn't really come to an end but
> survived in a modified form, presumably in the Harran
> plain just south of Goebekli Tepe. And there must have
> been contacts between GT and the Natufian culture in
> Judah, where, I read yesterday, agriculture began with
> the cultivation of fig trees at Gilgal (if memory serves)
> as early as 11 400 BP. The rest is well established
> archaeology.
Mammoths are irrelevant. Land bridges are irrelevant. Precise dates like
11,400 are absurd. 600 years is enough to change the language of Chaucer
to the language of me.
And you haven't managed to get yourself even from 15,000 to 12,000
without changes to the "language," let alone to 5000 and Vinc^a.
Javi
> Javi wrote:
>
>>My claim: If lineal B is a script that recorded language (like "four
>>sheep from the village XXX"), then the quippu system is also a graphic
>>system that recorded language.
>>
>>Really, I do not see any basic difference between the two systems, am I
>>being short-sighted?
>
>
> Yes. The language of the Linear B tablets is clearly and unambiguously
> Greek.
>
> Even if there are specific knots for 'sheep' and 'Lima', as well as
> numbers, they aren't in any particular language -- they are ideographic.
Are you saying that ideographic systems cannot record language?
>>>Do they record language?
>>
>>We don't certainly know yet, but there are clues and ancient testimonies
>>that, beside the accounting quipus, there were also quipus that told the
>>stories of the Incas.
>
>
> That claim was made by the 16th-century Spanish anthropologists who
Anthropologists in the 16th century? Only if you call a jesuit "an
anthropologist".
> described the culture, but they provided no evidence.
Arguable.
> At best, if there
> were knots for 'sheep' and 'Lima' and other concepts, they were at best
> mnemonics, not records of language.
In the same sense that the Japanese kanji for "Osaka" and "cow", and
other concepts, can be considered mnemonics?
--
Javi
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > Javi wrote:
> >
> >>My claim: If lineal B is a script that recorded language (like "four
> >>sheep from the village XXX"), then the quippu system is also a graphic
> >>system that recorded language.
> >>
> >>Really, I do not see any basic difference between the two systems, am I
> >>being short-sighted?
> >
> >
> > Yes. The language of the Linear B tablets is clearly and unambiguously
> > Greek.
> >
> > Even if there are specific knots for 'sheep' and 'Lima', as well as
> > numbers, they aren't in any particular language -- they are ideographic.
>
> Are you saying that ideographic systems cannot record language?
Yes, they cannot. It is not possible to record language without at least
some phonological component to the script.
If they could, Leibniz and a host of lesser minds who tried to devise
ideographic "writing systems" would have succeeded. The notion that
Chinese writing is "ideographic" was laid to rest by Pierre Étienne
DuPonceau (or Peter Steven Du Ponceau) in 1838. (He was a
Franco-American who came over as a very young man with Lafayette, and
the Chinese book was published in French in the US.)
> >>>Do they record language?
> >>
> >>We don't certainly know yet, but there are clues and ancient testimonies
> >>that, beside the accounting quipus, there were also quipus that told the
> >>stories of the Incas.
> >
> >
> > That claim was made by the 16th-century Spanish anthropologists who
>
> Anthropologists in the 16th century? Only if you call a jesuit "an
> anthropologist".
Have you ever consulted the ethnographies (no mere ethnologies) prepared
by those Jesuits? (I don't think they were exclusively Jesuits.)
> > described the culture, but they provided no evidence.
>
> Arguable.
>
> > At best, if there
> > were knots for 'sheep' and 'Lima' and other concepts, they were at best
> > mnemonics, not records of language.
>
> In the same sense that the Japanese kanji for "Osaka" and "cow", and
> other concepts, can be considered mnemonics?
As you know, every kanji has an on and a kun reading, and someone really
into Sino-Japanese could work out something of the phonological
component. But that's immaterial; the inadequacy of Chinese writing for
Japanese (and Korean) led to the kana (and hangul).
John Atkinson
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote...
Not to mention that in foraging and early agricultural societies, 100 km is
enough to change the language a good deal more than that. It would be
_extremely_ surprising if pre-10 000 BP Europe (with a population of a
million or less) didn't contain several hundred mutually unintelligible
languages each spoken by a few hundred to a few thousand people. These
languages would have belonged to a dozen or more language families so
different from each other that it would have been impossible for a linguist
to find _any_ cognate words between them.
The language of Marrseilles wouldn't have been that of western Switzerland,
though they _might_ have belonged to the same family. Austria and Czechia
and Hungary would have spoken unrelated languages, and the same for GT and
Gilgal.
John.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> I was writing in English, not German. I didn't mention Ziffern.
English cipher, deciphering. 1 2 3 ... are ciphers.
> <one two three> or <eins zwei drei> is writing. <1 2 3> is ideography.
> Knots in quipus are the latter, not the former.
1 2 3 are abbreviations of one two three.
> This time your mind wandered after less than a line and a half -- years
> have nothing to do with it.
I follow ideas, I don't live in the cage of your categories
and classifications. When I begin a message you think:
aha, now he is in this category. And a couple of lines
later you see me in another of your categories, and you
say: his mind wandered off. Niot at all. Your categories
and classifications have no hold over me, they are
imaginary walls, I walk through them, but not off.
> You do not have the slightest idea what you are talking about. Learn how
> cuneiform, hieroglyphs, and Mayan were deciphered. (As it happens, the
> best places to do so are my own publications.) Numerals were not
> involved in the slightest in deciphering the scripts.
I just looked up The World's Writing Systems, and saw
how you deny that pictures can convey language, so
I don't feel like reading your book. I take it you are Jewish.
The Jewish tradition forbids pictures. This may be the
reason for your stance in this question. I respect it for
you, but you can never oblige me to obey the same
commandement, not to consider pictures.
> <eins zwei drei> and <United States of America> and <Vereinigte Staaten>
> are writing. <1 2 3> and a picture of an eagle clutching arrows and an
> olive branch, or of an American flag, are not writing.
And U.S.A. is not writing? an abbrevation of the United
States of America, just as 1 2 3 are abbreviations of
one two three.
> You changed your claim regarding the authorship of the articles you
> previously attributed to Joan Marler, so I am not claiming Ms. Marler
> wrote them, only that Prof. Gimbutas did not.
No no no, don't lie. I remembered that Marija Gimbutas
wrote about the Sacred Script of Old Europe that predates
the Sumerian invention of writing by two millennia, but I
wrongly thought it was in The Language of the Goddess,
then I corrected my mistake, it 's captter 8 of The Civilization
of the Goddess. I apologize now for about the fifth time for
that mistake. Still not enough? I never see you apologize
for one of your mistakes. I have a brief biography on Marija
Gimbutas (five pages) and a speech held at the opening of
the Wiesbaden exhibition (June 1993) by Joan Marler in the
catalogue of the Wiesbaden exhibition (1994, in memoriam
Marija Gimbutas), both by Joan Marler, and she does not say
one single word on the Vinca script. You came up with the
silly notion that she must have imposed the Sacred Script
chapter on Marija Gimbutas, in the way of any conspiracy
kook of talk.origins. I really don't understand why you did
such a thing. I just checked the World's Writing Systems.
There you say correctly that Marija Gimbutas considers
the Vinca signs actual writing, an actual script. No need
to come up with a stupid theory now that contradicts what
you say in WWS, and correctly, carefully weighing your
words. You also say that there seems not to be a reccurent
sequence of signs. In the Usenet you say there _is_ no
recurrent sequence of signs. A big difference. I want
back the Peter T. Daniels of The World Writing Systems,
the impostor in the Usenet may please go away.
> I've warned you before about lying about me.
Don't lie about me. What you suggested happened with
chapter 8 of The Civilization of the Goddess casts an
oblique light on your profession (editing).
> I said no such thing about "editors."
You suggested that Joan Marler imposed chapter 8 on
the Sacred Script in The Civilization of the Goddess on
Marija Gimbutas, you made repeatedly fun of me when
I said that I recognize Marija Gimbutas' own voice in
that chapter, and you raised the suspicion that editors
are doing such things, turning around their authors who
depend on them. I am most glad that Stephen Jay Gould
resisted the lot of you when it came to his great legacy,
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.
> I don't happen to have an archeological library at my beck and call.
You ignore all I write about Goebekli Tepe, then you complain
that you have no archaeological library at hand. Must I tell
you the call number of Klaus Schmidt's book at the Public
Library New York, Research Library? it may be kept there.
Derk Ohlenroth's book is there, and I published the call
number. I will look up the catalogue for Klaus Schmidt's
book, and if I find it in that library I will inform you about
the call number. Apart from that you may have read Brian
M. Scott's reply to you. He says that Goebekli Tepe is no
village, and of more importance than you assume (although
he doesn't share my fantasies). Did you look up the page
he gave a link to? And the photographs on that page are
nothing compared to the ones in the book.
> I've warned you before about lying about me.
Everybody can see that you deny everything that goes
beyond your book. You are shaping the world according
to your ignorance. Don't you lie about me by insinuating
I was lying. Contrary to you I admit mistakes. I make
mistakes, and when I recognize one I apologize, but
I don't lie. Careful now about your wording and accustaions.
> All I know about G.T. is that you think it was the origin of
> civilization and that your nutty "language" was used there. I have no
> opinion of it.
I see you know nothing about Goebekli Tepe, and you
go on shaping the world according to your ignorance.
> And you'd better take a course in remedial reading. I tell you that *The
> Language of the Goddess* contains nothing like what is in the first page
> or so of that chapter in *The Civilization of the Goddess*, and you tell
> me again and again to read that chapter.
For the sixth time: I wrongly assumed that there is a passage
on the Vinca script in The Language of the Goddess, but
I was wrong, there is "only" chapter 8 on the Sacred Script
in The Civilization of the Goddess. As you correctly say in
chapter 2 of the World's Writing Systems, Marija Gimbutas
believes that the Vinca signs were an actual script. Why do
driop below your own level? I want back the real and genuine
Peter T. Daniels of the World's Writing Systems. I have
enough of the dummy that took his place in sci.lang.
> Does _anyone_ find it possible to converse with you?
Yes, people with an open mind. I am getting contacted
by Professor swho want my advice. I give them my advice.
I tell them what I see and how I understand things. I tell them:
you must not believe me, just play, look at things my way for
once, you may notice new aspects, then you can reevaluate
your own opinion, or return to your own former opinion, and
perhaps widen it in this or another aspect. I take my time
to write long letters and long mails, which means very
long letters and very long mails, carefully explaining,
and its big fun, for both sides.
> She had nothing to "fear." She was a highly respected archeologist and a
> tenured professor at the University of California.
And near the end of one's life one finds the courage to say
what one wants to say, without any restraints anymore,
leaving a legacy. And of course also Marija Gimbutas had
to fear the hounds of academe, didn't you notice all the hateful
response?
> Finally you admit that you are not interested in facts or accuracy.
You are a fool.
> If you understood anything about human language, you would know that
> peoples who "wander widely" no longer speak the same language, or even
> similar languages, after a very short time. Look how different English
> and German are, after well under 2000 years of separation. Yet you posit
> identity of "language" between your (newly named) "Franco-Cantabrians"
> and your "Magdalenians" of G.T.
So when Americans fly to Europe and Asia and return
to America they don't speak American English anymore?
When a Magdalenian tribe spent winter in the southern
Rhone Valley and summer in western Switzerland,
roughly 400 kilometers, did they loose their language?
And did tribes wandering from the Magdalenian homeland,
which extended from the Franco-Cantabrian space to at
least Hungary in the east, lose their language in a period
of 400 years, from around 12 000 BP, end of the Magda-
lenium in the Guyenne, to 11 600, begin of Goebekli Tepe?
No, language has a much longer life, words have a long life,
Darwin's model of evolution is wrong, stasis has a strong
hold on a species and on a language.
> Mammoths are irrelevant. Land bridges are irrelevant. Precise dates like
> 11,400 are absurd. 600 years is enough to change the language of Chaucer
> to the language of me.
Changes of the material culture make language change.
The material culture changed between Chaucer's time
and our time, which is mirrored by the changes of
the language. Material culture didn't change between
the end of the Magdalenium and the begin of the Azilium.
Relevant changes occured, however, in the late phase
of Goebekli Tepe, when the first cereals were breeded
and planted in large fields at the base of the Karacadag
west of Goebekli Tepe.
> And you haven't managed to get yourself even from 15,000 to 12,000
> without changes to the "language," let alone to 5000 and Vinc^a.
A stable material culture keeps a language in shape,
while a changing material culture makes a language shift.
No change of the material culture from 15 000 to 12 000
BP, a considerable change orccurring around 11 600 BP
in Goebekli Tepe, statues, t-shaped pillar up to eight meters
tall, weighing up to fifty tons, decorated with carved reliefs
and carved hieroglyphs, big change of the material culture
occurring with the begin of agricultre in the late phase
of Goebekli Tepe (oldest breeded cereals known so far),
turning the absolute male culture of Goebekli Tepe in
the female centered culture of the Balkans in the time
of the Bird Goddess Ki Ri Ke.
Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
John Atkinson wrote:
>
> Not to mention that in foraging and early agricultural societies, 100 km is
> enough to change the language a good deal more than that. It would be
> _extremely_ surprising if pre-10 000 BP Europe (with a population of a
> million or less) didn't contain several hundred mutually unintelligible
> languages each spoken by a few hundred to a few thousand people. These
> languages would have belonged to a dozen or more language families so
> different from each other that it would have been impossible for a linguist
> to find _any_ cognate words between them.
>
> The language of Marrseilles wouldn't have been that of western Switzerland,
> though they _might_ have belonged to the same family. Austria and Czechia
> and Hungary would have spoken unrelated languages, and the same for GT and
> Gilgal.
>
> John.
We have a wrong understanding of the Upper Paleolithic
societies. Can anyone believe that the elaborate cave
paintings in the Franco-Cantabrian space were just local?
Those people exchanged ideas, and I have reasons to
believe that we can call the society of the Guyenne just
that, a society. The birdman in the pit of the Lascaux cave
represents the river system of the Guyenne, his head the
region of Bordeaux, his eye Bordeaux, his beak the Gironde,
by then shorter, as there were marches, but the beak as
the Gironde makes sense, for the Paleolithic dwellers of
the region had been diving for mussels as do the seagulls.
Here you are with two comparisons of the birdman and the
river system of the Guyenne (note that the phallus of the
birdmann corresponds to the river Vézère and Lascaux,
from which I derive that the lovely valley of the Vézère
and the region of Lascaux were the center of a summer
festival, where shamans and aspiring tribal leaders were
meeting):
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6i.GIF
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir6j.GIF
The druids had been wandering from tribe to tribe,
and I assume the same for the Guyenne and the whole
Magdalenian space, from northern Spain to at least
Hungary: arch-shamans, represented by the giant stag
megaceros in the cave art, have been wandering up and
down the rivers and visiting tribes all along their way.
This kept language in shape, as they have been the
lords of language, the ones who had the say. The same
wanderings must have occurred in the Azilian and Natufian,
people wandered all along the fertile crescent. Goebekli Tepe
was the center of a widespread culture, and had the same
hold over official language as Oxford and Cambridge over
official British English in recent times.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
John Atkinson
> John Atkinson wrote:
>
>> Not to mention that in foraging and early agricultural societies, 100 km
>> is
>> enough to change the language a good deal more than that. It would be
>> _extremely_ surprising if pre-10 000 BP Europe (with a population of a
>> million or less) didn't contain several hundred mutually unintelligible
>> languages each spoken by a few hundred to a few thousand people. These
>> languages would have belonged to a dozen or more language families so
>> different from each other that it would have been impossible for a
>> linguist
>> to find _any_ cognate words between them.
>>
>> The language of Marseilles wouldn't have been that of western
>> Switzerland,
>> though they _might_ have belonged to the same family. Austria and
>> Czechia
>> and Hungary would have spoken unrelated languages, and the same for GT
>> and
>> Gilgal.
> We
Speak for yourself mate.
> have a wrong understanding of the Upper Paleolithic
> societies. Can anyone believe that the elaborate cave
> paintings in the Franco-Cantabrian space were just local?
OK, let's compare it with the Upper Paleolithic society I'm most familiar
with -- Australia. (Pre-invasion North America would be just as good an
example, I'm sure).
Items of indigenous Australian art attract bids in the hundreds of thousands
of dollars at auction. You speak of "Franco-Cantabrian" art? It has
nothing on the Bradshaws, the Mimi paintings, the Xray art, the cave art of
the Nullarbor Plain. All of which was produced, over the course of
thousands of years and thousands of km, by people speaking 300 different
languages from, according to one reckoning, 26 different language families.
> Those people exchanged ideas,
Of course they did -- just like the Australians -- ideas and songs and
ceremonies and even material goods. In Australia, songlines and
trade-routes criss-crossed the country for thousands of km. But no single
language was spoken by more than a thousand people (and most by much fewer).
> and I have reasons to
> believe that we can call the society of the Guyenne just
> that, a society. The birdman in the pit of the Lascaux cave
> represents the river system of the Guyenne, his head the
> region of Bordeaux, his eye Bordeaux, his beak the Gironde,
> by then shorter, as there were marches, but the beak as
> the Gironde makes sense, for the Paleolithic dwellers of
> the region had been diving for mussels as do the seagulls.
> Here you are with two comparisons of the birdman and the
> river system of the Guyenne (note that the phallus of the
> birdmann corresponds to the river Vézère and Lascaux,
> from which I derive that the lovely valley of the Vézère
> and the region of Lascaux were the center of a summer
> festival, where shamans and aspiring tribal leaders were
> meeting):
Next time you're in Paris, wander down to the new museum of indigenous art
(on the Seine, right near the Eiffel Tower). Ask someone what the paintings
on the ceilings and walls of the administrative building represent. You'll
be told that they were painted by eight famous Australian artists, brought
across especially for the job, and that they're maps of the dreaming tracks
of ancestral beings across northern Australia, and that everything in them
represents a particular place and what happened there. So what else is new?
> The druids had been wandering from tribe to tribe,
> and I assume the same for the Guyenne and the whole
> Magdalenian space, from northern Spain to at least
> Hungary: arch-shamans, represented by the giant stag
> megaceros in the cave art, have been wandering up and
> down the rivers and visiting tribes all along their way.
> This kept language in shape, as they have been the
> lords of language, the ones who had the say.
Funny, that's not the way things happen in every Paleolithic society we
actually know something about. Each little "tribe" has its own language,
which they're careful to keep distinct from those of their neighbours.
People travel, sure, especially men of high degree, for religious or
economic or political reasons. There were (and still are) big ceremonies at
special places where people gather from all over. Where necessary, people
are bi-, tri-, multi-lingual. But everyone always has one special language
which they own, inheriting it from one or other of their parents, just as
they inherit their personal hunting-grounds and the ceremonies that go with
them.
Do you really think the Europeans were so different?
John.
Franz Gnaedinger
John Atkinson wrote:
>
> Do you really think the Europeans were so different?
Not Europeans per se, but the place they lived, cold
Europe in the Ice Age. The cultures of Australia are
basically the same as the one of the Middle Stone
Age of South Africa, Blombos cave, 75 000 BP.
Life in Ice Age Europe was different, triggered art,
a very homogenuous art at that, with varieties but
on the basis of the same ideas. They were the leading
culture of their time, and the leading civilization always
has a well kept language. They had to cooperate in
their climate, they had to build large camps, they
had to be hospitable to each other, they had to help
each other all along the rivers of the Gyuenne. You
can't possibly study language without considering
material life. I base my claims on a thorough study
of cave art, I don't get my ideas out of the blue.
Franz Gnaedinger
Paul J Kriha
Franz Gnaedinger <fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote in message
news:1151047249.8...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > I was writing in English, not German. I didn't mention Ziffern.
>
> English cipher, deciphering. 1 2 3 ... are ciphers.
The particular meaning of the English word "cipher" you keep
going on about, is only one out of _ten_ possible meanings.
"deciphering" or "decyphering" often means something like
"decrypting" and not necessarily to do with anything numeric.
> > <one two three> or <eins zwei drei> is writing. <1 2 3> is ideography.
> > Knots in quipus are the latter, not the former.
>
> 1 2 3 are abbreviations of one two three.
They are not abbreviations of anything, they are what they are,
i.e. numbers, while <one two three> are words.
> > This time your mind wandered after less than a line and a half -- years
> > have nothing to do with it.
>
> I follow ideas, I don't live in the cage of your categories
> and classifications. When I begin a message you think:
> aha, now he is in this category. And a couple of lines
> later you see me in another of your categories, and you
> say: his mind wandered off. Niot at all. Your categories
> and classifications have no hold over me, they are
> imaginary walls, I walk through them, but not off.
I wish, I really wish I knew how to do that too.... :-)
pjk
[...]
John Atkinson
>
> John Atkinson wrote:
>>
>> Do you really think the Europeans were so different?
>
> Not Europeans per se, but the place they lived, cold
> Europe in the Ice Age.
Mate, we had glaciers too. Or, if you want a really cold place with BIG
glaciers, what about most of USA and Canada? No single language there! (400
plus in fact, belonging to 60-odd families).
> The cultures of Australia are
> basically the same as the one of the Middle Stone
> Age of South Africa, Blombos cave, 75 000 BP.
Absolute rubbish. You obviously know nothing whatever about Australian
culture, art, or archeology
> Life in Ice Age Europe was different, triggered art,
> a very homogenuous art at that, with varieties but
> on the basis of the same ideas. They were the leading
> culture of their time,
Which time is that? Up to maybe 40 000 years ago, Africa was ahead.
Australia took the lead culturally till maybe 15 000 years ago. Between
15000 and 2000 years ago SW Asia and north Africa were ahead. From 2000 to
less than 1000 years ago, East Asia had the leading culture. Europe took
the lead for the first time less than a thousand years ago. Around 1000 AD,
the American cities were bigger than those of Europe.
> and the leading civilization always
> has a well kept language.
Sez you.
> They had to cooperate in
> their climate, they had to build large camps,
But they didn't build particularly large camps. Without agriculture or
similar concentrated resources, they couldn't.
> they
> had to be hospitable to each other,
There's little evidence of that, either before or after they settled down!
they had to help
> each other all along the rivers of the Gyuenne. You
> can't possibly study language without considering
> material life. I base my claims on a thorough study
> of cave art, I don't get my ideas out of the blue.
You appear to have "studied" only _European_ cave art. Perhaps it's time
for you to spread your gaze a little wider?
J.
Peter T. Daniels
me
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>> If you understood anything about human language, you would know that
>> peoples who "wander widely" no longer speak the same language, or even
>> similar languages, after a very short time. Look how different English
>> and German are, after well under 2000 years of separation. Yet you posit
>> identity of "language" between your (newly named) "Franco-Cantabrians"
>> and your "Magdalenians" of G.T.
>
> So when Americans fly to Europe and Asia and return
> to America they don't speak American English anymore?
A short time doesn't mean a few days or weeks. It means a few generations or
a few 10s of generations.
> A stable material culture keeps a language in shape,
> while a changing material culture makes a language shift.
Then, how had hunter gatherers in Indonesia developed thousands of languages
by the time they were discovered by civilization? If their material culture
had remained unchanged, their language should have remained unchanged
according to your theory.
António Marques
>> A stable material culture keeps a language in shape, while a
>> changing material culture makes a language shift.
>
> Then, how had hunter gatherers in Indonesia developed thousands of
> languages by the time they were discovered by civilization? If their
> material culture had remained unchanged, their language should have
> remained unchanged according to your theory.
No, because he'll just add another ad hoc explanation. He knows what
he's doing, Franziskus, and when he doesn't he just fills the gap.
--
am
laurus : rhodophyta : brezoneg : smalltalk : stargate
Franz Gnaedinger
me wrote:
>
> Then, how had hunter gatherers in Indonesia developed thousands of languages
> by the time they were discovered by civilization? If their material culture
> had remained unchanged, their language should have remained unchanged
> according to your theory.
I don't say that languages remain unchanged, they change
over time. What I say is that my method of considering traces
left by early words in groups of 2 words (inverse forms), up
to 6 words (permutations of 3-letter words), of 12 words
(6 D-forms and 6-comparative S-forms), and clusters that
include lateral associations (the biggest cluster I found having
72 words, DAI for camp and permutations, comparative SAI
for life, existence, wealth, plus permutations, and ten more
lateral associations plus their permutations) -- I say that this
method of looking at early language has a focal length of
15 000 years. There are older words, for example PAS for
everywhere in a plain, as water moves, but I believe that
the full range was achieved in around 15 000 BP in the
Gyuenne. As a boy I liked to play with lenses. Holding a paper
behind a convex lens yielded a blur of lights and shadows,
but when I moved the paper and hold it at a certain distance
from the lense the blur, by some magic, turned into a picture
of the window, upside down - a trivial experience, but magic
to me when I was a boy. My mother always complained
that I was inventing things that already exist. Well, now
I go forward and invent things that do not yet exist, for
example a method for reconstructing early words that
does not follow a single word into the darkness of the past
but retrieves information from pairs and groups and clusters
of words, I feel the same as when I played with lenses in my
boyhood, only that my lense now has not the modest focal
distance of one meter, yielding a small picture of the sun on
a white paper, but a focal distance of some 15 000 years,
and by some magic tells me about life in those early times ...
Franz Gnaedinger
me
> me wrote:
>>
>> Then, how had hunter gatherers in Indonesia developed thousands of
>> languages by the time they were discovered by civilization? If their
>> material culture had remained unchanged, their language should have
>> remained unchanged according to your theory.
>
> I don't say that languages remain unchanged, they change
> over time. What I say is that my method of considering traces
> left by early words in groups of 2 words (inverse forms), up
> to 6 words (permutations of 3-letter words),
Let's say a group of hunters had the same 6 words (permutations of a 3
letter word) in 15000 BP when they divided into 3 groups and parted ways.
In what ways could their languages have changed by 12000 BP?
Franz Gnaedinger
John Atkinson wrote:
>
> Mate, we had glaciers too. Or, if you want a really cold place with BIG
> glaciers, what about most of USA and Canada? No single language there! (400
> plus in fact, belonging to 60-odd families).
The part of America that rules speaks English. French is
a minor language, so are other languages, and Spanish
is spoken by the lower class of Latinos. The language that
rules is certainly English, and those who aspire a good job
simply must speak and write English.
The Guyenne is special, an enclosed area in those times,
extended marshes and the Atlantic ocean in the west,
hills and mountains in the north, the French Alps in the east,
the Pyrenees and glaciers in the south, "land of honey and
game" (National Geographic), with a river system that was
as good as the railways we have in Switzerland, connecting
every part of the Guyenne to the other. Do you think that every
local tribe had a genius who produced world art? No, they
gathered gifted young people from everywhere. They established
and maintained a veritable society. The picture you have of the
Magdalenium (note that I don't use the polite "we" any longer)
is just wrong.
> Absolute rubbish. You obviously know nothing whatever about Australian
> culture, art, or archeology
I happen to be a fan of Australian aboriginal art, of the people,
their art, their legends, and their languages. I see links between
the Middle Stone Age of South Africa, Blombos cave, 75 000 BP,
and even if you don't follow me here you said that Australia was
populated in 60 000 BP - or was it 65 000 BP ? Plenty of time
for the languages to spread and undergo local changes. Australia
is a wide continent, no confined area as the Guyenne. There is
no comparable river system. The famous songlines - I found
Chadwick's book rather mystifying, not really clarifying - may
have been songs that enumerated wells and landmarks along
a certain way, and were, as I take it, property of the respective
clan. The songlines as actual ways crossing the land, weaving
a web of crossroads, were in no way comparable to the rivers
of the Guyenne and could not possibly have the same function.
> Which time is that? Up to maybe 40 000 years ago, Africa was ahead.
> Australia took the lead culturally till maybe 15 000 years ago. Between
> 15000 and 2000 years ago SW Asia and north Africa were ahead. From 2000 to
> less than 1000 years ago, East Asia had the leading culture. Europe took
> the lead for the first time less than a thousand years ago. Around 1000 AD,
> the American cities were bigger than those of Europe.
Cold climates trigger progress. Look at the countries that are
doing best in Europe: northern countries, Finnland, Norway.
The Ice Age of Europe triggered progress that is mirrored
in language. If you got money buy land in Alaska, it will have
a future, you will be a Rockefeller in hundred years ;-)
> But they didn't build particularly large camps. Without agriculture or
> similar concentrated resources, they couldn't.
I identified drawings and maps of amazingly large camps
in caves, and the largest cluster of Magdalenian words
I reconstructed is around DAI for camp, plus permutations,
comparative SAI for life, existence, wealth, plus permutations,
and ten lateral associations plus permutations, yielding a
cluster of 72 related words. We - no, you - have a wrong
idea of the Magdalenium.
> You appear to have "studied" only _European_ cave art. Perhaps it's time
> for you to spread your gaze a little wider?
As I said I am a fan of Australian rock art, and the same
for African rock art. I identified a calendar in the shapes
of two figurines in the N'Dhala Gorge with rays for hairs
as calendars, and rock paintings in southern Africa
share a feature with European cave art: animals coming
from or disappearing into crevices and clefts of the rock.
These populations have been separated for at least
75 000 years, but their ideas were basically the same:
life emanates from inside rock, there is a beyond that
can be accessed by a shaman in a trance, and the
beyond is above us, in the sky, also inside rock, in a well,
or deep inside ourselves. The word for this beyond was
KA in the Middle Stone Age in South Africa, Blombos
cave, 75 000 BP, evidence for KA in that sense is found
in the language of the San (bush men), in Australian
languages, for example Pintupi / Luritja, in the language
of the Ainu on Hokkaido, in American native languages,
and the word become CA for sky, beyond, in Europe,
the first written form is found in the Brunel chamber
of the Chauvet cave, where Holly identified a domino
five as my PAS for everywhere (in a plain), while the
additional dot next to the upper right dot can be read
as CA:
O O O PAS CA
O
O O
together PAS CA, may the supreme leader of the southern
Rhone Valley be born again in the sky, among the stars
of the Summer Triangle (drawing on a stalactite in the center
of the rear hall) and roam the sky in his next life as he roams
the earth now, in this life ...
Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
me wrote:
>
> Let's say a group of hunters had the same 6 words (permutations of a 3
> letter word) in 15000 BP when they divided into 3 groups and parted ways.
> In what ways could their languages have changed by 12000 BP?
They were bound to meet other Magdalenians, wherever
they came to, and the Magdalenian tribes in the Guyenne
were controlled by arch shamans and arch shamanesses,
represented by the giant stag megaceros, for example in
the Gougnac cave (where one male megaceros is followed
by a female one). These arch shamans and shamanesses
ruled the Magdalenian society, wandering along the rivers
all year long. Things began to change in around 12 00 BP
when Magdalenian art came to an abrupt end, as the Middle
Stone Age civilization of the Blombos cave in South Africa
came to an abrupt end in around 75 000 BP -- caused by
a drastic temperature drop in South Africa in the case of
the Blombos civilization, and by the raise of temperature
and the retiring of animals in the case of the Magdalenium,
forcing hunters to go on ever longer trails. It was the time
when women had to fight over the rare men that survived
the ever longer and ever more dangerous hunting trips,
and evolved blond hair (a recent hypothesis by two English
researchers). It was the time when England was populated
by Magdalenian tribes, and when other tribes wandered
eastward, reached Anatolia, and founded Goebekli Tepe
in around 11 600 BP. Language changed then partially, and
again with the introduction of agriculture in the late phase of
Goebekli Tepe, at the base of the Karacadag east of Goebekli
Tepe, where the oldest breeded cereals were identified by
means of genetical screening. A tree produces new leafs
every spring, but the tree itself remains the same. We have
fancy words that come and go, while central words remain,
having undergone little changes in dozens of millennia.
I don't say that the same language was spoken from 42 000
BP to 12 000 BP or even 5 500 BP, I just say that my method
of reconstructing early words has a focal length of 15,000
years. If I am right there was a clear pattern of language
in the Guyenne in around 15 000 BP and may have ruled
until around 12 000 BP, then the picture gets blurred,
words are splitting up, different languages emerge, but we
can follow many words into the recent languages of Europe,
Eurasia, and Asia Minor.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Paul J Kriha
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:449C67...@worldnet.att.net...
> I give up. Gnaedinger is a total idiot.
> Peter T. Daniels
Ugh, what a surprise! I didn't see this coming! :-)))
pjk
John Atkinson
>
> John Atkinson wrote:
>> Mate, we had glaciers too. Or, if you want a really cold place with BIG
>> glaciers, what about most of USA and Canada? No single language there!
>> (400
>> plus in fact, belonging to 60-odd families).
>
> The part of America that rules speaks English. French is
> a minor language, so are other languages, and Spanish
> is spoken by the lower class of Latinos. The language that
> rules is certainly English, and those who aspire a good job
> simply must speak and write English.
Christ mate! I was talking about _pre-historic_ NAm, as you're well aware.
There's no BIG glaciers there now (except the St Elias Glacier I guess,
which took us several days to ski up in the sixties). And half the 400+
languages that were there five hundred years ago are gone now too.
> The Guyenne is special, an enclosed area in those times,
> extended marshes and the Atlantic ocean in the west,
> hills and mountains in the north, the French Alps in the east,
> the Pyrenees and glaciers in the south, "land of honey and
> game" (National Geographic), with a river system that was
> as good as the railways we have in Switzerland, connecting
> every part of the Guyenne to the other. Do you think that every
> local tribe had a genius who produced world art? No, they
> gathered gifted young people from everywhere. They established
> and maintained a veritable society. The picture you have of the
> Magdalenium (note that I don't use the polite "we" any longer)
> is just wrong.
I have no "picture" of the Magdalenium, since there's no such word. Even
Google agrees with me there. And you've given me no reason to think
prehistoric France was different as an environment for people to live in in
any significant way from (say) the central valley of California, or several
other river valleys in North America.
>> Absolute rubbish. You obviously know nothing whatever about Australian
>> culture, art, or archeology
>
> I happen to be a fan of Australian aboriginal art, of the people,
> their art, their legends, and their languages.
You proved you know nothing of their languages in another recent thread.
> I see links between
> the Middle Stone Age of South Africa, Blombos cave, 75 000 BP,
> and even if you don't follow me here you said that Australia was
> populated in 60 000 BP - or was it 65 000 BP ? Plenty of time
> for the languages to spread and undergo local changes. Australia
> is a wide continent, no confined area as the Guyenne. There is
> no comparable river system. The famous songlines - I found
> Chadwick's book rather mystifying, not really clarifying
I assume you're talking about Bruce Chatwin's book. I'm told it's well
written, and he undoubtedly had an interesting personal philosophy. But he
knew almost nothing about the indigenous Australians. Read it for what he
has to say and the stylish way he says it, but don't get the idea that he's
telling you something about local anthropology or prehistory.
> - may
> have been songs that enumerated wells and landmarks along
> a certain way, and were, as I take it, property of the respective
> clan. The songlines as actual ways crossing the land, weaving
> a web of crossroads, were in no way comparable to the rivers
> of the Guyenne and could not possibly have the same function.
>
>> Which time is that? Up to maybe 40 000 years ago, Africa was ahead.
>> Australia took the lead culturally till maybe 15 000 years ago. Between
>> 15000 and 2000 years ago SW Asia and north Africa were ahead. From 2000
>> to
>> less than 1000 years ago, East Asia had the leading culture. Europe took
>> the lead for the first time less than a thousand years ago. Around 1000
>> AD,
>> the American cities were bigger than those of Europe.
>
> Cold climates trigger progress.
Strange, then, that all the world's great early civilizations (in Asia,
Africa, and the Americas) arose in warm temperate or tropical climates.
Arguably, the trigger for agriculture and cities in SW Asia (and elsewhere)
was the availability of suitable cereal crops. And these (especially wheat
and barley) may well have developed the properties that made them so useful
in response to the climate changes associated with the Ice Age. This is the
nearest you're likely to get to support for your statement that "cold
climates trigger progress".
> Look at the countries that are
> doing best in Europe: northern countries, Finnland, Norway.
And when did they start "doing best"? In the Paleolithic? In early
agricultural times? Or was it some time after the Industrial Revolution,
when abundant fossil fuels first became available? If the last, what's the
relevance to the way people lived 10 000 years ago?
[snip rest]
John.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> I give up. Gnaedinger is a total idiot.
You told me Saul Levin is an old man - you considered me being
in my eighties. You called him nice - you called me nice and polite.
You called his book from 1995 crap - you call me a total idiot.
You said you are a firend of his - oh Gawd
Franz Gnaedinger
John Atkinson wrote:
>
> Christ mate! I was talking about _pre-historic_ NAm, as you're well aware.
> There's no BIG glaciers there now (except the St Elias Glacier I guess,
> which took us several days to ski up in the sixties). And half the 400+
> languages that were there five hundred years ago are gone now too.
Are you a Clovis first-ling? or dou you allow an earlier arrival
in the Americas? Anyway, those people settled in warm zones
near the equator. Why did Homo sapiens sapiens venture into
Ice Age Europe? My personal assumption is that Neanderthals
paved the way, demonstrating that one can live there, and
hunting mammoths must have been attractive: one kill plenty
of meat and materials, wool hide sinews bones ivory.
> I have no "picture" of the Magdalenium, since there's no such word. Even
> Google agrees with me there. And you've given me no reason to think
> prehistoric France was different as an environment for people to live in in
> any significant way from (say) the central valley of California, or several
> other river valleys in North America.
So then an _idea_ of the the Magdalenium. I don't speak
of prehistoric France in general, I speak of the Guyenne,
and prehistoric is a derogative term, as if nothing happened
in those times. The river valleys of North America are not
enclosed in the way the Gyenne was in the Magdalenium.
> You proved you know nothing of their languages in another recent thread.
Oh my, be honest and say that you didn't reply no longer,
so I ended that former discussion, although I still had to say
plenty. Now you oblige me to do it here. Don't complain when
you get an overfreighted reply, as I have to answer to so many
points, and when I make it short so that you have to do some
thinking of your own. - As I told you a couple of times the only
access to a dictionary of an Australian aboriginal language
I have is one of Pintupi / Luritjia, wherein I found kungka and
composites as an important word for girl woman female.
One year ago I consulted the limited vocabularies of about
a dozen aboriginal languages in the three volumes of the
handbook edited by Dixon and Blake. This year I found them
again. You must have plucked your counter-examples from
the same books. You were just looking up words for woman
and girl and happily told me there are a few words, and many
counter-examples. I look up those lists in a different way,
starting from hypothetical Middle Stone Age KU for woman
and following that word along the arrow of time: how may it
have evolved and developed? I find ample evidence in Dixon
and Blake, only that in one case there is no )ku( word for
woman and girl but for pelvis. )ku( means KU or a variation
of it, such as kin, gu, etc. The Blombos people of South Africa,
75 000 years ago, saw women as only givers of life, while the
contribution of the male sex must have been understood since
a rather long time also by the Australians, so that )ku( in the
sense of life-giver (wider than woman) could also be used for
men, and there are plenty of )ku( words for men and male
relationships in Dixon and Blake. One word irritated me last
year: kun and variants mean feces or defecate in almost every
of those languages. Now it irritates me no longer. Humans know
since a long time that feces fertilize the soil. A 7,000 years old
Egyptian "Gaia" kept in the museum of Turin has fish painted
betwen her breasts, antelopes on her shoulders, a large leaf
on the small of her back, the stem growing from the cleavage
of her buttocks, indicating feces as fertilizer of the soil that
make plants grow that nourish animals that nourish humans
and thus contribute to life. Small round symbols on the womb
can be read as tombs, while the black eyes of the bird-head
symbolize night and death, the surrounding malachite, green,
symbolizes rebirth - the bodies of the dead, rotting in the ground,
are born again by the goddess ... The goddess is creating and
recycling, rotting is just an inevitbale but limited intermediary
phase. In other words: death gives way to new life (the formula
I can accept, as I don't believe in a personal rebirth or going in
heaven, but life in general goes on; the single leafs fall from the
tree, while the tree of life itself grows). Another word that stunned
me is )ku( for dog. There is also ancient Greek kynos for dog.
How have dogs been domesticated? The current explanation
is that hunters killed wolf mothers, brought home wolf puppies,
and women suckled them. Indirect evidence for the role women
played in domesticating animals is found in Homer's Odyssey,
where Kirkae (Circe), descendant of the bird goddess Ki Ri Ke,
turns the men of Odysseus into pigs, tame wolves, and tame
lions. Tame wolves are dogs, tame lions are cats, while pigs
were a symbol of farming, since pigs have been used for
stamping seeds into the soil. By the way, the Vinca word for
woman is again )ku(, namely X Y -- cross ypsilon -- Ki Nae,
gnyae, woman.
> I assume you're talking about Bruce Chatwin's book. I'm told it's well
> written, and he undoubtedly had an interesting personal philosophy. But he
> knew almost nothing about the indigenous Australians. Read it for what he
> has to say and the stylish way he says it, but don't get the idea that he's
> telling you something about local anthropology or prehistory.
What I took from it is that songlines were maps of landscapes,
enumerating landmarks and wells along a wandering route,
property of the resepctive tribe, and not comparable to the rivers
of the Guyenne.
> Strange, then, that all the world's great early civilizations (in Asia,
> Africa, and the Americas) arose in warm temperate or tropical climates.
The Blombos cave Civilization of the Middle Stone Age,
75 000 BP, thrived on the southern shore of South Africa,
coolest part of Africa, farthest from the Equator, moreover
cooled by the Bengali stream (already Johannisburg has
a considerably warmer climate than Kapstadt). The
challenge of Egypt was the desertification of the Sahara
and the wild Nile Valley, the angry River Nile (Rushdi Said,
The River Nile, Oxford Press 1993): taming that river was
a great challenge, equaling the challenge of the Ice Age.
>From then on, the leading civilization was slowly wandering
northward, Babylon India China Greece Rome Europe
and now America where you find the heavy industry in
the north, Chicago and Detroit. Dynastic Egypt had, in
my opinion, been influenced by ideas from the north, by
a tribe that came from Anatolia and entered Upper Egypt
via the Wadi Hammamat in around 5 300 BP. Ideas from
Anatolia were crucial for Mesopotamia, and are, I believe,
own to Magdalenian influences, the hub of ideas being
Goebekli Tepe in southeastern Anatolia, just north of the
Syrian Harran plain, 11 600 - 9 500 BP. Agriculture started
in the late phase of Goebekli Tepe. at the base of the
Karacadag, just east of Goebekli Tepe. As a short formula
one may perhaps say that a successful civilization combines
ideas from the north (more generally from the polar regions)
with the vitality of the south (more generally of the equatorial
zones).
> Arguably, the trigger for agriculture and cities in SW Asia (and elsewhere)
> was the availability of suitable cereal crops. And these (especially wheat
> and barley) may well have developed the properties that made them so useful
> in response to the climate changes associated with the Ice Age. This is the
> nearest you're likely to get to support for your statement that "cold
> climates trigger progress".
It's a general rule.
> And when did they start "doing best"? In the Paleolithic? In early
> agricultural times? Or was it some time after the Industrial Revolution,
> when abundant fossil fuels first became available? If the last, what's the
> relevance to the way people lived 10 000 years ago?
The decline of Switzerland - party party party all year long,
drugs everywhere, new ideas get no chance, bright young
people must emigrate, our country is falling into mediocrity,
we lost our former status, we are being sold out, while our
soccer team at the world championship are celebrated
as heroes (!) which tells me about an as yet unconscious
desperation about our decline - and the rise of the northern
countries of Europe go along with the climatic change,
a slow warming up I notice since the early 1980s.
You can't expect me to answer your points in more length
here, in one single reply. Even I can't handle so many topics
in one single message. So please concentrate yourself on
one topic.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
How is your being nice and polite incompatible with your being a total
idiot?
Peter T. Daniels
>
> John Atkinson wrote:
> > I have no "picture" of the Magdalenium, since there's no such word. Even
> > Google agrees with me there. And you've given me no reason to think
> > prehistoric France was different as an environment for people to live in in
> > any significant way from (say) the central valley of California, or several
> > other river valleys in North America.
>
> So then an _idea_ of the the Magdalenium. I don't speak
> of prehistoric France in general, I speak of the Guyenne,
> and prehistoric is a derogative term, as if nothing happened
> in those times. The river valleys of North America are not
> enclosed in the way the Gyenne was in the Magdalenium.
You've just described California's Central Valley. Look at a topographic
map.
(Is that the region now called Inland Empire? or is that some other part
of CA?)
He was also trying to tell you there's no such word as "the
Magdalenium."
Paul J Kriha
> John Atkinson wrote:
[...]
> > And when did they start "doing best"? In the Paleolithic? In early
> > agricultural times? Or was it some time after the Industrial Revolution,
> > when abundant fossil fuels first became available? If the last, what's the
> > relevance to the way people lived 10 000 years ago?
>
> The decline of Switzerland - party party party all year long,
In Switzerland? Surely not.
And certainly not after 10pm or on Sundays! :-)
> drugs everywhere, new ideas get no chance,
Good God!
> bright young
> people must emigrate, our country is falling into mediocrity,
> we lost our former status, we are being sold out, while our
> soccer team at the world championship are celebrated
> as heroes (!) which tells me about an as yet unconscious
> desperation about our decline - and the rise of the northern
> countries of Europe go along with the climatic change,
> a slow warming up I notice since the early 1980s.
Yeah, it must be at least 0.1 centigrade since then!
Well spotted.
John Atkinson
>
> John Atkinson wrote:
>>
>> Christ mate! I was talking about _pre-historic_ NAm, as you're well
>> aware.
>> There's no BIG glaciers there now (except the St Elias Glacier I guess,
>> which took us several days to ski up in the sixties). And half the 400+
>> languages that were there five hundred years ago are gone now too.
>
> Are you a Clovis first-ling? or dou you allow an earlier arrival
> in the Americas?
Irrelevant! Off topic!
But I'll answer anyway. I have an open mind on this. I feel that the
evidence for man in the Americas more than a couple of thousand years
pre-Clovis is still insufficient. I contrast the situation with Australia,
where there's a plethora of evidence for people from 40 000 BP on (and some
for before then). Similarly in Europe there's an enormous amount of stuff
dated between 15000 and 40 000 BP. In the Americas, despite ten or a
hundred times more research effort than in Australia, much less has been
found. Why?
> Anyway, those people settled in warm zones
> near the equator.
Well if they weren't "settled", they certainly spent a lot of time running
around in small circles and leaving their tools lying around in cold places
like British Columbia, the High Andes, and Patagonia!
> Why did Homo sapiens sapiens venture into
> Ice Age Europe?
She was hungry? Same reason she went everywhere else in the world that she
could get to?
> My personal assumption is that Neanderthals
> paved the way, demonstrating that one can live there, and
> hunting mammoths must have been attractive: one kill plenty
> of meat and materials, wool hide sinews bones ivory.
>
>> I have no "picture" of the Magdalenium, since there's no such word. Even
>> Google agrees with me there. And you've given me no reason to think
>> prehistoric France was different as an environment for people to live in
>> in
>> any significant way from (say) the central valley of California, or
>> several
>> other river valleys in North America.
>
> So then an _idea_ of the the Magdalenium. I don't speak
> of prehistoric France in general, I speak of the Guyenne,
> and prehistoric is a derogative term, as if nothing happened
> in those times.
"Prehistoric" means "prior to written or recorded history". It says nothing
whatever about whether or not anything happened then. In fact, an enormous
amount happened, 99.9% of which we'll never know about. In a world of
small-scale societies, things happen _faster_ than they do in our modern
world, not slower.
> The river valleys of North America are not
> enclosed in the way the Gyenne was in the Magdalenium.
>
>> You proved you know nothing of their languages in another recent thread.
>
> Oh my, be honest and say that you didn't reply no longer,
True. I didn't reply because you got back onto your "GU" hobbyhorse, which
I found too boring to even read.
> so I ended that former discussion, although I still had to say
> plenty. Now you oblige me to do it here. Don't complain when
> you get an overfreighted reply, as I have to answer to so many
> points, and when I make it short so that you have to do some
> thinking of your own. - As I told you a couple of times the only
> access to a dictionary of an Australian aboriginal language
> I have is one of Pintupi / Luritjia, wherein I found kungka and
> composites as an important word for girl woman female.
> One year ago I consulted the limited vocabularies of about
> a dozen aboriginal languages in the three volumes of the
> handbook edited by Dixon and Blake. This year I found them
> again. You must have plucked your counter-examples from
> the same books.
I did (the first six volumes). As you noticed, the editors have the authors
prepare short lists of words in categories like "humans" and "kinship",
which made it very easy to select all the "woman" words. I have several
dictionaries and a few dozen grammars of other Australian languages, but I
didn't use them because it would have been more like work, and the 18
languages in the Handbooks provided me with more than enough examples
> You were just looking up words for woman
> and girl and happily told me there are a few words, and many
> counter-examples. I look up those lists in a different way,
> starting from hypothetical Middle Stone Age KU
[snip!]
> What I took from it is that songlines were maps of landscapes,
> enumerating landmarks and wells along a wandering route,
> property of the resepctive tribe, and not comparable to the rivers
> of the Guyenne.
The Ord (river in the Kimberley region where Chatwin was) is a _much_ more
impressive river than the Garonne and the Dordogne.
>> Strange, then, that all the world's great early civilizations (in Asia,
>> Africa, and the Americas) arose in warm temperate or tropical climates.
>
> The Blombos cave Civilization
"Civilization"? Was there a city there?
> of the Middle Stone Age,
> 75 000 BP, thrived on the southern shore of South Africa,
> coolest part of Africa, farthest from the Equator, moreover
> cooled by the Bengali stream (already Johannisburg has
> a considerably warmer climate than Kapstadt). The
> challenge of Egypt was the desertification of the Sahara
> and the wild Nile Valley, the angry River Nile (Rushdi Said,
> The River Nile, Oxford Press 1993): taming that river was
> a great challenge, equaling the challenge of the Ice Age.
So? Whatever, it wasn't a cold climate.
>>From then on, the leading civilization was slowly wandering
> northward, Babylon India China Greece Rome Europe
> and now America where you find the heavy industry in
> the north, Chicago and Detroit.
I'll throw in another typical Gnaedinger irrelevancy here, and point out
that Detroit and Chigago are now on the skids as far as industry is
concerned, and that the centres of industry in America are, or soon will be,
on the West Coast and (especially) in the South.
> Dynastic Egypt had, in
> my opinion, been influenced by ideas from the north,
Others, of course, reason that the Egyption thing started about 10 500 BP in
the eastern Sahara and northern Sudan, from where cattle-keeping people
spread westwards and northwards, the latter becoming Ancient Egypt. The
cold dry spell about 7800 BP may have been a stimulus.
> by a tribe that came from Anatolia and entered Upper Egypt
> via the Wadi Hammamat in around 5 300 BP. Ideas from
> Anatolia were crucial for Mesopotamia, and are, I believe,
> own to Magdalenian influences, the hub of ideas being
> Goebekli Tepe in southeastern Anatolia, just north of the
> Syrian Harran plain, 11 600 - 9 500 BP. Agriculture started
> in the late phase of Goebekli Tepe. at the base of the
> Karacadag, just east of Goebekli Tepe. As a short formula
> one may perhaps say that a successful civilization combines
> ideas from the north (more generally from the polar regions)
> with the vitality of the south (more generally of the equatorial
> zones).
Leaving out nebulosities like "ideas" and "vitality", Egypt certainly may
well be a combination of south (see above) and north (cereal and sheep
farmers from the Levant, possibly taking to the road to escape the same dry
spell.)
>> Arguably, the trigger for agriculture and cities in SW Asia (and
>> elsewhere)
>> was the availability of suitable cereal crops. And these (especially
>> wheat
>> and barley) may well have developed the properties that made them so
>> useful
>> in response to the climate changes associated with the Ice Age. This is
>> the
>> nearest you're likely to get to support for your statement that "cold
>> climates trigger progress".
>
> It's a general rule.
In history, all "general rules:" are wrong much more often than not.
(That's a general rule.)
>> And when did they start "doing best"? In the Paleolithic? In early
>> agricultural times? Or was it some time after the Industrial Revolution,
>> when abundant fossil fuels first became available? If the last, what's
>> the
>> relevance to the way people lived 10 000 years ago?
>
> The decline of Switzerland [snip]
Why don't you answer the questions instead of going off on yet another
irrelevant tangent?
> You can't expect me to answer your points in more length
> here, in one single reply. Even I can't handle so many topics
> in one single message. So please concentrate yourself on
> one topic.
No comment.
J.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> How is your being nice and polite incompatible with your being a total
> idiot?
May I recommend the course "How to read" offered by the
Public Library of New York? It will help you get my jokes.
When you successfully absolved that course you may show
me the certificate and applicate to my advanced course
"How to become an idiot and be proud of it." Ancient Greek
idiotaes means a private person. As a private scholar
working outside academe I am a classical idiot. My native
language is kept in a dozen or so volumes called Idiotikon
(no joke, this time). Sigmund Freud wrote an idiotic style,
one that closely and effortlessely follows every bend of
a topic, "anschmiegsam" in German; a terminus technicus
of high praise. When my mother was a young woman she
worked as a nourse. She told me later that people who
obeyed all their life long, always trotting along paved ways,
never doing something wild and crazy, never following
a notion of their own, had a hard time passing away when
their time came: was that all?, they asked. One day you
may tell yourself: all my life I lived in a cage of categories
and classifications, never pursuing an idea of my own,
out of fear that someone might call me an idiot - if only
I had had FG's courage ... My course will give you that
courage. I will help you with ideas of your own. I will help
you develop ideas, a task I am very good at.
Franz Gnaedinger, idiotaes, and proud of it
Franz Gnaedinger
John Atkinson wrote:
>
> True. I didn't reply because you got back onto your "GU" hobbyhorse, which
> I found too boring to even read.
Known as Peter T. Daniels Syndrom: judging a book or
a message without having much as read it. And, by the way,
my Middle Stone Age word for woman is KU.
> I did (the first six volumes). As you noticed, the editors have the authors
> prepare short lists of words in categories like "humans" and "kinship",
> which made it very easy to select all the "woman" words. I have several
> dictionaries and a few dozen grammars of other Australian languages, but I
> didn't use them because it would have been more like work, and the 18
> languages in the Handbooks provided me with more than enough examples
As I assumed. You consulted Dixon and Blake and just
looked up words for woman. All I say about my method
of proposing an early word and following it along the
arrow of time and pondering how it may have evolved
and developed and split up and survive in an array of
similar words was in vain. Language is a basic feature
of life, words formed along human experience, they are
a most fascinating mental tool, and the only way one is
allowed to look at them is by consulting a dictionary
one way, and following phonetic laws. As if language
were that simple and boring.
> [snip!]
"snip" is the most powerful argument in sci.lang.
> The Ord (river in the Kimberley region where Chatwin was) is a _much_ more
> impressive river than the Garonne and the Dordogne.
Did you ever look at a map of the Guyenne? There is
a river system that links every place and village. No such
a thing in Australia.
> "Civilization"? Was there a city there?
The Blombos cave was the center of that civilization,
or one of the centers. Look up the excellent Blombos
cave website by Christopher Henshilwood.
> So? Whatever, it wasn't a cold climate.
Cold climates trigger inventions and progress. New ideas
from the north, from the time of the Ice Age, found into Egypt.
And there are other challenges apart from a cold climate.
Desertification that turned the Sahara into an arid zone
in around 7 500 BP and made people venture into the Nile
Valley and tame the "angry river" (Rushdi Said), which was
the great achievement of ancient Egypt, by far bigger than
the building of all the pyramids.
> I'll throw in another typical Gnaedinger irrelevancy here, and point out
> that Detroit and Chigago are now on the skids as far as industry is
> concerned, and that the centres of industry in America are, or soon will be,
> on the West Coast and (especially) in the South.
Microsoft is based in Seattle and not in Santa Monica,
where you find the Getty Center of the Humanities.
> Others, of course, reason that the Egyption thing started about 10 500 BP in
> the eastern Sahara and northern Sudan, from where cattle-keeping people
> spread westwards and northwards, the latter becoming Ancient Egypt. The
> cold dry spell about 7800 BP may have been a stimulus.
The desertification of the once greener Sahara was the
reason why people ventured into the Nile Valley where
nobody in his or her right mind would have settled before,
as the Nile was an "angry river" (see above).
> Leaving out nebulosities like "ideas" and "vitality", Egypt certainly may
> well be a combination of south (see above) and north (cereal and sheep
> farmers from the Levant, possibly taking to the road to escape the same dry
> spell.)
There are two time levels of Egypt, first in around 7 500 BP
when tribes from the Sahara, from Arabia and from Asia Minor
(Levant) began to settle in the Nile Valley, and again in around
5 400 BP when a tribe from Asia Minor if not from Anatolia
entered Upper Egypt via the wadi Hammamat.
> In history, all "general rules:" are wrong much more often than not.
> (That's a general rule.)
The future belongs Canada and Alaska, mark my word.
> Why don't you answer the questions instead of going off on yet another
> irrelevant tangent?
I answered all your question, but as you are throwing in
so many points I have to make it short. If you want a long
answer ask me one (1) ((one single)) question.
> No comment.
Dito, Franz Gnaedinger
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> me wrote:
> >
> > Let's say a group of hunters had the same 6 words (permutations of a 3
> > letter word) in 15000 BP when they divided into 3 groups and parted ways.
> > In what ways could their languages have changed by 12000 BP?
>
> They were bound to meet other Magdalenians, wherever
> they came to, and the Magdalenian tribes in the Guyenne
> were controlled by arch shamans and arch shamanesses,
> represented by the giant stag megaceros, for example in
> the Gougnac cave (where one male megaceros is followed
> by a female one). These arch shamans and shamanesses
> ruled the Magdalenian society,
In that case, arch shamans and shamanesses ruled Indonesian society.
So, how did Indonesia get 1000s of languages?
Marco Pagliero
ranjit_...@yahoo.com schrieb:
Well, one day was the megaceros extinct and the Indonesians began to
tell this and to tell that and nobody corrected them any more and so it
happened. I suppose.
Greetings
Marco P
Franz Gnaedinger
ranjit_...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> In that case, arch shamans and shamanesses ruled Indonesian society.
> So, how did Indonesia get 1000s of languages?
Indonesia is the very opposite of the Guyenne in the Ice Age,
plenty of islands, warm and hot climates, whereas the Guyenne,
relatively small, was enclosed by the Atlantic ocean and wide
marshes in the west, hills and mountains in the north, the French
Alps in the east, the ice covered Pyrenées in the south. Homo
erectus populated Indonesia a long time ago - was it 800,000 or
400,000 years ago? -, crossing a deep sea strait never less than
seventeen kilometers wide (William Line ?) on bamboo rafts.
People sailed from one to the other island of the Indonesian
archipelago all the time, but its population never formed one single,
coherent and controlled society, it consisted of plenty separate
peoples, whereas the Guyenne in the Magdalenian period of time
was, I believe, a veritable society, controlled by wandering arch
shamans and shamanesses, represented by the megaceros,
as for example in the Cougnac cave, and the river system of the
Guyenne, ingeniously mapped in the birdman of the Lascaux
cave, was what allowed to control the Guyenne. Would never
have been possible for Indonesia, whose warm and hot climates
raised no need or necessity for new inventions. Whereas the cold
climate of the Guyenne in the Ice Age triggered progress. The
Magdalenians were no higher race - as the Naazis believed -,
it was the Ice Age that asked for new ways and triggered progress.
Franz Gnaedinger