Newsgroup sci.archaeology 47954

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Well, when I hear statements like "We don't want any foreign teams doing
archaeology here because they might "co-opt" our history", I think that is
indicative of what some anthropologists have called "colonial angst" - a
common occurrence throughout Africa and Asia. This situation (compounded by
some pretty juvenile behavior by the Americans involved accusing each other
of being CIA agents) is what closed down research in Ethiopia on
Plio-Pleistocene hominids until very recently. I can't say specifically of
what goes on in Egypt, but my experience in South Asia and in East Africa
suggests that the fear of colonialism and loss of independence is still
there.

In some of Petrie's materials in the University College of London,
Institute of Archaeology, there are etched Carnelian beads associated with
some Old Kingdom burials. These type of beads with an eye motif are
associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, so trade (perhaps through
intermediaries) with the Indian subcontinent is not inconceivable.

In article <538jc1$rf@netnews.upenn.edu> edanien@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Elin Danien) writes:
>From: edanien@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Elin Danien)
>Subject: Re: Nutmeg
>Date: 6 Oct 1996 15:31:13 GMT
>Piotr:
>My dictionary (OED) says that nutmeg is native to the east indies.
>If the ancient Sumerians used it.......??????
>
Well, I have never seen any evidence for any word in any Mesopotamian language 
for it nor any archaeological evidence either, but it has been asserted here 
to have been imported, so I wanted to know what data may be out there that I 
knew nothing about.  

Baron Szabo wrote:
> 
> August Matthusen wrote:
> > [distortedly snipped]
> > [the] TV special with West and Schoch on the Sphinx.
> 
> I saw it and realized I still hadn't cleared myself up about
> something...     ;)
I've never seen this wonderful show, just read Schoch's work and much 
of the other work.
> Again, how does Gauri et al explain the vertical fissures that appear on
> the Sphinx well above the pit enclosure?
These would probably be part of the "...two sets of intersecting, nearly
vertical, irregulary spaced joints." (page 123) 
> Also, how is the roughly 400 year period (according to the show) of
> weathering, between its creation and restoration, accounted for.  The
> show showed about 2.5 to 3 feet of weathering in that time, and stated
> that Egyptologists account for it as weathering within about 400 years.
> Do you think this is correct?
I'm not exactly sure what is being asked here or upon exactly what 
information this query is based.  Is this supposed to be 2.5 to 3
feet of material eroded from the original shape to a degraded shape 
which is then restored?  Is the show claiming that this much 
erosion couldn't have occurred in the 400 years from the conventional 
chronology?  How did they know what the outline of the original shape
was?
How did they know whether or not additional material was removed by the
restorers during the restoration?  Could you clarify this, Peter?
Something else to think about: if Schoch's weathering profile is 
supposed to be from the time when rainfall was the *incredibly high*
rate of 10 to 20 inches per year (how much rain do you get in BC?), 
then why didn't the later restoration destroy that weathered profile?  
Regards,
August Matthusen

In article , piotrm@umich.edu says...
>
>In article <32568993.78BF@PioneerPlanet.infi.net> Saida 
 writes:
>
>>  Its now quite agreed they are
>>> coordinate branchs of Afro-asiatic, and the earlier classifications of
>>> Egyptian in Hamitic usually maintained that Hamitic was a mixture of
>>> Semitic and West Sudanic or some other proposed family of Africa, not IE.
>
>>I'll bet it's NOT agreed.  Anyway, Piotyr M. says that the term 
>>"Hamitic" is out-of date.
>
>Ca we please stop arguing about what people have established or not and 
check 
>these things out?  Pleae read Loprioeno's book on Egyptian, it has a very 
nice 
>into about the descent and classification of Egyptian.  This book is neither 
>so hard to get nor very expensive. The point that I made, by the way, was 
that 
>the concept of a Hamitic group is now completely obsolete.  Some people 
still 
>use the term Hamito-Semitic for Afroasiatic, but that is simply 
terminological 
>stuff and has no meaning; even those who use HS do not recognize a Hamitic 
>group (if they are linguists).
Here is the issue as I see it. The original classifications of
"Hamitic" and "Semitic" came from Biblical references to the sons
of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth. 
If we can discover what tribes had what territories it makes some
sense to assign their linguistics accordingly.
The idea that Hamitic equates to Afro Asiatic takes the perspective
that language diffused somewhere in the Neolithic. I think the
operative movements of Semitic peoples which separated them from
Hamitic peoples occured much later than that.
Egypt was conquered by Hamitic peoples coming from the east who
overran the Naquada and established the first dynasty of Narmer
or Menes. These were people coming across the Red Sea from Arabia.
A nomadic horde of Asiatic people who moved in on the territory
of an African people at the start of the Bronze Age before any
real center of civilization was established they came from southern
and western Arabia across the Red Sea to overwhelm the indiginous
population of Africa and the Nile all the way from Kenya north 
to Egypt.
They were probably closely related to Semitic peoples at the time
of their first migration but,they very quickly were assimilated by 
he African populations they had moved in on.
When I say that the original classifications of "Hamitic"
and "Semitic" came from Biblical references to the sons
of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth, I expect that any sensible 
person can see that these are clearly references to early
tribes, clans, or households.
In that sense they provide a good correlation to which early 
people were settled where  and related to whom. There also 
appears to be some relation to chronology as well.
Some references are clearer than others. Each group should be
clustered in some relative adjacency.
Japeth's sons: 
Gomer
	Gomers sons:
	Ashkenaz (Arzashkun belonging to Aramu king of Urartu near Lake Van)
	Riphath (Arrapha)
	Togarmah (Armenia)
Magog
the Medes (North of Susa to the Caspian)
Javan
	Javan's sons:
	Elisha (Alyisha/Cyprus)
	Tarshish (Phoenicia)
	the Kittim (Crete)
	the Dananites (Palestine)
		from these came the dispersal to the islands of the nations
		(ie; the sea people)
Tubal (Tabal-Anatolia)
Meschech (Weshesh ? - Anatolia)
Tiras (Troy ? using ras as cape or headland? Anatolia)
Ham's sons:
Cush
	Cush's sons:
	Seba (el-Heba traditional frontier post between the 
	Theban area and the territory of the frontier kings 
	to the north.)
	Havilah (Egypt)
	Sabtah (Sahure at Abusir)
	Raamah
		Raamah's sons:
		Sheba
		Dedan (Dendur)
	Sabtecca
	Cush became the father of Nimrod (Narmer)
		who was the first potentate on earth
		He was a mighty hunter in the eyes of Yahwah 
		(Naram Sin/Baal/Osirus pose)
		First to be included in his empire were
		Babel (Babylon)
		Erech (Eresh)
		Accad (Akkad)
		All of them in the land of Shinar (Mesopotamia)
		From this country came Assur the builder of Ninevah
		Rehoboth-ir
		Calah (Kalhu south of Ninevah)
		Resen (between Ninevah and Calah this is the great city)
Mishriam (Nabateans) (Nahal Mishmar/Dead Sea) 
	Lud 
	Anam (Anam north of Damascus)
	Lehab (Lebanon)
	Naphtuh (Naptha)
	Pathros (Petra)
	Cushlu
	Caphtor (Crete from which the Phillistines came)
Put (Punt)
Canaan
	Sideon (his first born)
	Heth
	Jebusites
	Amoritesn (Nomads)
	Girgashites (Gurgum- Carchemish)
	Hivites (Hittites)
	Arkites
	Sinites
	Arvadites (Adadites)
	Zemarites (Samaria)
	Hamathites (Hamath)
		later the Canaanite tribes scattered
		The Canaanite frontier stretched from Sideon
		in the direction of Gerar as far as Gaza
		then in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim 
		as far as Lesha
Shem's sons:
Elam
Asshur (Ashhur)
Arpaschad
	Shelah
		Eber
			Peleg (in his time the earth was divided)
				Reu
					Seug
						Nahor
							Terah
							Abram
							Nahor
							Haran (Haran)
			Joktan
				Almodad 
				Sheleph
				Hazarmaveth (Hazor)
				Jerah
				Hadoram (Najran)
				Uzal
				Diklah
				Obal
				Abima-el
				Sheba (Ab ha)
				Ophir (Ethiopia)
				Havilah (Halba Deset- Bar al Mandab)
				Jobab (Djibouti)
				 	they occupied a stretch of
					country from Mesha (Mecca)
					in the direction of Sephar
					the eastern Mountain range
Lud
Aram (Aram- just north of Damascus)
	Uz
	Hull
	Gether
	Mash
steve

I am doing research at the moment on how disease spread throughout North 
America eradicating hundreds of thousands of Indians whose immune systems 
could not combat European sicknesses.  I am hoping to specialize on how the 
American Indian diet affected their immune systems, as well as the spread of 
disease in general after European contact.
If anyone has any information on this, especially recent studies/findings, 
please feel free to share it with the group or with me directly over e-mail at 
spryder@sprynet.com -- thank you!
Stephen P Ryder

In article <538jc1$rf@netnews.upenn.edu>, edanien@mail1.sas.upenn.edu 
says...
>
>Piotr:
>
>My dictionary (OED) says that nutmeg is native to the east indies.
>
>If the ancient Sumerians used it.......??????
>
>Elin Danien
>edanien@sas.upenn.edu
>
>Piotr Michalowski (piotrm@umich.edu) wrote:
>: SW has twice now made reference to nutmeg in ancient Mesopotamia, 
>: once refering to Terqa (Tell Ahara on the Euphrates in Syria). 
> I must admit that I know nothing about nutmeg outside the kitchen 
>:and I had no idea that it was known in the ancient world. 
>:  Where does it come from and what is the evidence 
>: from Terqa and elsewhere?
Actually Piotr is right I admit it, my error, mea culpa...
(He knows very well I meant cloves but wishes to drive home 
the point that he disagrees with Bucellati I think...)
The reference is to cloves at Terqua, not nutmeg. Both are spices
native to the Mollucas (Meluhha) in the Singapore straits.
There may even be evidence for the entry of Oriental goods into 
Mesopotamia as late as  about 1700-1600 BC. 
This comes from Terqa on the Central Euphrates in the shape 
of a pot containing cloves.
The identification of these spices was announced by G. Buccellati 
at the 1982 Recontre Assyriologigue International in London.
It has been argued however that the Terqua material 
should be dated substantially earlier in the 2nd millenium
(Tubb 1980)"."Commerce or Conquest", J Reade BTTA p 330
steve

In article <538r80$rgh@shore.shore.net> whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) writes:
>
>Here is the issue as I see it. The original classifications of
>"Hamitic" and "Semitic" came from Biblical references to the sons
>of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth. 
>If we can discover what tribes had what territories it makes some
>sense to assign their linguistics accordingly.
 snip
>When I say that the original classifications of "Hamitic"
>and "Semitic" came from Biblical references to the sons
>of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth, I expect that any sensible 
>person can see that these are clearly references to early
>tribes, clans, or households.
>In that sense they provide a good correlation to which early 
>people were settled where  and related to whom. There also 
>appears to be some relation to chronology as well.
Why don;t you pay a little more attention.  The notions of "Hamitic" vs 
"Semitic" are not Biblical, but modern, and are part of the history of 
linguistics.  I posted earlier the history of both terms.  Today, no linguist 
recognizes these as separate entities, but you persist, and attach ethinic or 
tribal meanings to boot.  If you want to now become a Biblical scholar, all 
power to you, but be warned that there is more secondary literature on Genesis 
than you can read in your lifetime, and the good stuff is not on the net.  
There are active debates about the time of the writing down of Genesis, about 
the metaphors involved in the table of nations etc.  All of that has nothing 
to do with the fact that you are now projecting a hypothetical "hamitic" 
entity, which was recognized for a time, but now is not, back into Biblical 
times.  The terms Hamitic and Semitic were invented by European linguists, and 
they used the Biblical names only as matrixes.  What is the point of all of 
this if you ignore history and scholarship completely, and just ramble on 
without any idea of what hundreds of people have spent their lives working on.
How about resurrecting Japhetic, as somene else suggested in jest, or a little 
Marrist linguistics?  The last few decades have witnessed a tremendous amount 
of new discoveries in Afroasiatic, especially on the African side, and you 
want to take us back to the last century.  What is all this research for if 
people like you want to simply ignore it and blather on.  The internet is 
becoming a horror show, as it seems that reading and thinking are taboo, and 
one can simply bypass everything that has been done before, refuse to learn 
the subject one is rambling on about, and just emote.  I assume that one would 
not try to discuss nuclear physics without first learning the basics of the 
field, why is ancient history and linguistics any different?    

Saida wrote:
> 
> Steve Whittet wrote:
> 
> > As all of us have now pointed out to you repeatedly, the fact
> > that some or many Egyptian words may have been the root of
> > some English words should really not suprise you.
> >
> > It tends to show that Egyptian is not as easily compartmentalized
> > as you might like and that there may be many ways in which the
> > foundations of our modern world go back past the Greeks and Romans.
> >
> > Why is that so difficult for you to accept?
> 
> I admit that I find it very strange, also.  We have not asked anyone to
> accept that ancient Egyptian is the *basis* of the IE language group or
> that Egyptian was *primarily* an IE language in itself.
But you *have* claimed in a previous post:
> >that Egyptian IS partly an Indo-European language.  It
> >is also partly Semitic.  This is precisely what troubled scholars when
> >they first began to study it.  It just wouldn't be classified.
Just because there are a handful of Egyptian words that find their ways
into English does **not** make Egyptian "partly IE". There are a large
number of Arabic words in English as well (mainly via Latin and Spanish,
some French too) -- does that make Arabic "partly IE"?
>  I challenge anyone
> in this group to say that, as far as they know, NO Egyptian terms are
> found in the English language. 
No one is claiming that at all. But a few **borrowed** words does not
change the fact that English is IE and Egyptian is AA.
> I think I wrote something yesterday that was significant but, as with
> most of my posts that could not be denied, it was totally ignored.  I
> said that, after the Norman conquest of Britain, Norman French
> influenced whatever language was being then spoken in England, which I
> assume was Anglo-Saxon. This seems to be accepted by everyone.
But this doesn't change the fact that English is a North Germanic
language and French is a Romance language. Maltese is filled with IE
lexical items (thanks to Italian), but still remains an AA language
(thanks to its Arabic origins).
[snip]
Troy

In article <538944$5ne@shore.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet  wrote:
>In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
	[Me on Bedrich Hrozny on:]
>>Nu NINDA-an ezzateni watarma ekuteni
>Loren, this was mentioned by another poster less than a week ago,
>who went through the whole bit. It is a fairly common reference
>in the literature.
	But it bears repeating as an excellent example of linguistic 
detective work, and it shows how to do serious linguistics, instead of 
scattershot "comparisons".
>>where NINDA is an ideograph for bread.
>Piotr denies such things as ideographs existed.
	Where did he do that?
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html

In article <3257D150.46FA@pioneerplanet.infi.net>,
Saida   wrote:
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>> Who is denying this?  There *are* words of Egyptian extraction in
>> English (ebony, gum, bark (=ship), etc.)  But they did not go from
>> Ancient Egyptian directly into English.
> Who ever said they did????  Is that what you think this has been all 
>about?  Although, you never know, SOME words may have done...
	And maybe I'm a dead hen. Egypt had been a part of the Roman 
Empire, and before that, a Hellenistic kingdom some centuries before the 
Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes crossed the English Channel. So any 
traders from Egypt would have found Latin and Greek more useful languages 
along the way than Egyptian.
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html

In article <538lgk$i8t@halley.pi.net>, mcv@pi.netÁ says...
>
>whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>
>>In article <532vip$iul@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, rg10003@cus.cam.ac.uk says...
>>>
>>>Steve Whittet (whittet@shore.net) wrote:
>>>[...]
>>>: > And Turkish is *very* closely related 
>>>: >to the Central Asian Turkic languages, something on the order of how 
>>>: >close the Romance languages are (I'm not exactly sure, however).
>>>
>>>: Perhaps, but the connection would be trade across the Caspian sea
>>>: and up the Aras river.
>>>
>>>That's in a word bull shit. The turks are a Turkic people 
>>>who used to live in central Asia. Other Turkic peoples lived 
>>>in that region and spoke very closely related languages just 
>>>like say Germans and Austrians - shareing parts of their 
>>>history.
>
>>The question is why would people from Cental Asia want to
>>migrate to Turkey in the first place? Once you realise that
>>there is a major trade route from the Namazga culture across
>>the Caspian to what is to the Kura or Aras river leading to 
>>Mt Arat as documented by a line of closely associated sites 
>>dating to the 3rd millenium BC it seems simplistic to hypothesis 
>>this had no role in the decision making process.
>
>>> If you can speak Turkish you can basically talk and understand 
>>>all the Turkic peoples between Turkey and West China.
>
>>That is because of a much later development called the Silk Road
>>which provides a mechanism connecting these peoples together.
>
>>> There was no need for trade links to spread the same language 
>>>between related peoples - connections help keep it up, but they 
>>>were'nt necessary for establishing it.
>
>>The question is what relation can you produce prior to the 
>>3rd millenium BC when the trade route appears?
>
>I thought the following, which I posted to sci.lang some weeks ago
>might be relevant to the discussion.  This was a long thread about
>Slavic expansions versus Iranians and Turks, under the rather
>inappropriate heading of "Etymology of Warsaw and Kiev". 
>
>====================================================================
>
>To summarize this whole thread:
>
>There's nothing special about Slavs which makes them more likely to
>assimilate other peoples than to be assimilated.  In fact, nothing of
>this has to do with race, language or religion.  It's simply a matter
>of demographics in most cases, and politico-military power where the
>demographics are roughly equivalent (as between Slavs and Germans, or
>Greeks and Slavs, all basically agricultural peoples).
I guess I need to introduce an exception here.
The assumption I question is the term "agricultural peoples"
I would want to make a distinction between "land folk" including
both agriculturalists and nomadic pastorialists as one catagory,
and "sea people" as a separate and distinct demographic profile.
Basically "landfolk" make their living off the land, "sea people"
make thei living off the water.
Making a living off the water includes fishing and trade, in
an area close to home but it is primarily about mobility from
a fixed and settled base of operations, a port city which allows
sedentary nomadism and the implications of that mobility.
Land based nomads are also mobile, but to the extent they are mobile
they give up the ability to have a fixed and permanent base of operations.
Sea people had the oportunity to industrialise. For example to 
engage in boatbuilding, they had a need either to trade for or 
to engage themselves in harvesting timber and mining metals for 
fastenings and fittings. They needed someone to engage in weaving 
to make sails and someone with the ability to make rope. 
I am not saying there was no overlap between the two, but as
Sabatino Moscati points out, Punic settlement is characterised
by a typically Punic site which makes no provision for agriculture
or the domestication of animals favoring instead a small and
rocky island a short distance off a larger island or mainland.
The realization that port cities located where they can command
shipping routes are a feature of the landscape on coasts and rivers
throughout the ancient world after the third millenium BC points
out the distinction in lifestyle.
>
>Where demographics (and also climatic conditions) play a decisive role
>is in the nomad-peasant conflicts, which have played a major role in
>European and also Chinese history. 
Sea people are less dependent on climatic conditions than land folk,
thus they have an advantage in a period when climatic conditions are 
changing.
> Firstly, it should be realized
>that both ways of life are closely intertwined.
Yes, I agree, my point exactly. Agricultural and pastoral nomadism
as lifestyles are both similar to eachother aand different from a 
maritime lifestyle.
>It is sometimes
>incorrectly believed that nomad pastoralism constitutes a more
>"primitive" phase than settled agriculturalism. 
In a way it does. Nomadism essentially means moving on when you
have exhausted the resources on one area, or when the seasons
provide better conditions eleswhere. 
This is closer to a hunting and gathering scenario, than sedentism 
which requires some conservation of resources. 
The storage of grain against a winter, the protection of property 
with walls, the social strification necessary to organise people 
to dig canals to provide water for the irrigation of fields all 
argue the ability to percieve the world in terms of lang range 
as oposed to short range interests.
> This is not so:  in
>fact agriculture represents the earlier stage, and pastoralism did
>only develop _after_ the establishment of Neolithic-style agriculture.
My understanding is that the western techno complex which emerges
in Arabia, Palestine, Syria and Anatolia in the 8th millenium BC
is primarily considered an example of pastoral nomadism. Nelson
Glueck "Rivers in the Desert" and Juris Zahrins "Mar-Tu and the 
Land of Dilmun", BTTA
>It represents an expansion of Neolithic techniques (like pottery) and
>resources (like domesticated animals) into areas that are otherwise
>unsuited for the cultivation of crops.
Yes, but it also greatly preceedes the cultivation of crops.
>  The conflict between nomad and
>farmer is only relative: under normal circumstances, the nomad needs
>the farmer's cereals and the farmer needs the pastoralist's dairy
>produce, and there is extensive trade between the two groups. 
Nomadic pastorialsm involves the nomad scattering some grain 
then coming back later to see if anything grew as opposed to 
tending fields, providing irrigation etc;
The farmer keeps a few animals for his own sustenence but no 
great herds.
> The problem emerges when the line between "arable land" and 
>"grazing land" begins to shift due to climtic circumstances 
>(dry and wet periods), or due to technological advances 
>(iron ploughs, fertilizers, machinery on the one hand; 
Actually you have skipped right over the most interesting part.
When people begin to be able to get their entire sustinence 
from the sea, and from trade, the traders are favored over
the people locked into a lifestyle goverened by climatic change.
Trade leads to monopolies and the control of resources.
>mostly advances in military horse technology on the
>other: chariots [by 1600 BC], horseback riding [ca. 1000 BC],
>invention of the stirrup [by 500 AD]).
Go back and start with the boat and the implications of the
need for timber and metal to build boats c 3000 BC
>
>The areas that have switched between "arable land" and "grazing land"
>over the course of the centuries are primarily: the Balkans as a
>whole, but more specifically the areas north of the Danube [modern
>Hungary and Romania], the "Southern Russian steppe" [modern Ukraine
>and S. Russia through Kazakhhstan], the Iranian and Anatolian
>plateaus, and Northern China. 
All of the peoples in these regions originally placed their 
settlements along rivers. The rivers provided easy mobility
and the trade probably was about equally divided between
routes along the banks of rivers and the shores of seas.
 The areas of Central Asia (Western and
>Eastern Turkestan [Sinkiang]), Mongolia and Manchuria have
>consistently been nomad areas, until the advent of modern agricultural
>technologies by the 17th century, which has brought even these areas
>under the control of "agriculturalist" states like Russia and China.
Nomads yes, but also heavily engaged in trade and using the courses of
rivers as routes between lakes and seas.
>
>The history of nomadic Eurasia is a fascinating affair, chiefly
>because relatively little is known about it.  Only when "nomad
>trouble" made itself felt in Europe, the Near East or China, do the
>chronicles reveal something about the inhabitants of the Eurasian
>steppe. 
Take a look at the lands controlled by the Tang Dynasty of China
see how rivers directed and influenced the ebb and flow of Nomadic 
peoples. This goes back at least to Andronovov culture.
 Archaeology too has been mostly dedicated to investigating
>the areas of dense agricultural settlement, rather than the sparsely
>inhabited pastoralist areas.
And I would add to that the emergence of "sea people"
...snip...
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal   
steve

davep@corp.netcom.net.uk wrote:
> John, I again ask you to give examples of where their work is "fatally
> flawed". 
Peter Szabo already pointed out crustal shift being flawed based on 
plate tectonics. 
Check Dejanews at http://www.dejanews.com for previous discussions
of "fingerprints of the gods" "FOG" by Paul Heinrich and "Sphinx 
weathering" by August Matthusen.
> Of course they have made no 'discoveries' themselves but have
> rather taken various theories AND historical facts and, from them,
> build a picture of what might well have transpired back in those early
> times. They have presented their pictures and shown how they reached
> the conclusions they have. 
They have also ignore vat amounts of material (like plate 
tectonics) which contradicts their ideas and they do not present,
discuss, or even acknowledge this material exists.  It can be easy
to make an argument if you ignore other published material 
which refutes your argument.
> If you want to shoot them down in flames
> then it is not enough to accuse them of using "it is possible" rather
> a lot. They really DON'T know for certain so they are hardly going to
> say "it is a fact" rather than "it is possible". All they do is
> postulate theories based on their research and if much of that
> research is based on others work then before condemning them for that,
> remember that all research tends to be extensions of earlier
> discoveries or theories. It seems to me that Bauval, Hancock, Gilbert
> and others are not being judged by the same criteria as perhaps more
> orthodox scholars are.
Nope, they are being judged by the *SAME* criteria to which any 
hypothesis is subjected.  Try reading some of the comment and
rebuttal sections of any peer-reviewed journal.
> Show me where they are WRONG and I will accept what you say.
See Dejanews; this has been discussed many times before.
Regards,
August Matthusen

I have created a temporary web page with images of a point type I can't
identify.  I do not believe it is from the Americas.  Please take a quick
look and see if you recognize this critter.
It is located at .
Thanks.
-- 
Tony Baker
tabaker@nyx.net         
tabaker@nyx10.nyx.net
http://www.usa.net/~ebaker/

Loren Petrich wrote:
[snip]
>         Empty assertion, because of those three words above -- where did
> that -ter go in Egyptian? And what are the Egyptian words for "brother"
> and "sister", anyway? Let's compare IE and Arabic (a Semitic lang) here:
> 
> father   *p@ter-     ab
> mother   *ma:ter-    umm
> brother  *bhra:ter-  akh
> sister   *swesor-    ukht
> son      *su:nus     bin
> daughter *dhugh@ter- bint
Here is the Proto-Afroasiatic:
father      *'ab-
mother      *'am- ("woman")
brother     *'ax-
sister      *'ax- + *-at
son         *bin- ("man; male relative")
daughter    *bin- + *-at
[snip]
Troy

Saida  wrote:
>All right, you have made your point in that I did not know all the 
>grammatical forms of the word Sankrit word "mataa".  I sincerely 
>apologize for my ignorance in this matter.  One would think it might 
>help you at this point to be told what a pompous, condescending jerk you 
>are, but somehow I don't think it will.
Apology accepted! And thanks for the nice words - they will
certainly be of great help to me in days to come! :-)
Friendly regards,
______________________________________________________________
Kĺre Albert Lie
kalie@sn.no

Steve Neeley  wrote:
>I'm just finishing a version of Viking Haltafl and getting ready to turn
>to American Indian games and found something sort of surprising -- well 
>maybe?  I am surprised to learn that the Cree and Chippewa indians played 
>a game -exactly- like the earliest known version of Halatafl (see "Games 
>of the North American Indians" by StewertCullin, University of Nebraska 
>Press, 1992).   Cullin quoted J. A. Mitchell who wrote in the late
>1800's 'The game is one which has been long known to the Indians and is 
>much admired by them'.  
>The Cree and Chippewa's earliest hunting grounds were much further north 
>than in the 1800's -- up far into Canada and east to the tip of the Saint 
>Lawrence Seaway.  Could they have gotten this game from Viking settlers 
>at Vinland?  You laugh!  We'll maybe it is a little crazy, but there -is- 
>a slight possibility that when Vinland died out, the survivors may have 
>been taken into local indian tribes as captives or perhaps refugees (as 
>seems to have actually happened in the case of the dying out of the 
>Greenland Viking settlements).   Just maybe  . . . . . . .  ;-)
>Has anyone ever noticed that this Viking game was played by a very 
>specific tribe of American Indians?  Is it possible that this game is an 
>artifact of the Vikings in North America, or do you think it is of much 
>later origin (Cullin is convinced that it is not a 'native' Indian game) 
Interesting! The tavl game is referred to in Old Norse
literature, and tavl boards were for instance found in the
Oseberg Viking ship. They can be seen exhibited at the Viking
Ship Museum in Oslo.
It might of course be a coincidence.
But here is another such "coincidence" to reflect upon:
The Norse (and, for the sake of precision, by this word I include
not only Norwegians, but also Icelanders, Greenlanders and others
of the same culture during the 'Viking age') had a ball game
called Knattleikr - Knatt-game. This was a popular game - in
fact, one of the neighbor farms to my home here in Norway has the
name Nattvall - from old Knattvollr (Knatt-field) - indicating
that this was the place where the people of this district came
together to play the Knattleik. 
The game of Knattleik died out, but many references to the game
in the sagas has enabled Ebbe Hertzberg to reconstruct the main
rules (as referred in Fridtjof Nansen: _Nord i tĺkeheimen_, p.
318-19). It was played on a large, flat field (leikvollr) or on
the ice in winter. The players formed two teams, and spread
across the field in pairs, one from each team. The pairs were
selcted with care so as to bring as equal opponents as possible
to face each other. Each player had a bat used both for hitting,
catching and carrying the ball. The end of the bat was hollowed
out as a spoon or had a small net to carry the ball in. Once the
ball was set moving, the player who was nearest tried to catch
the ball, preferably with the bat and run off with it to "carry
it out", past a goal or mark. The player from the other team who
was in pair with the first player, tried to preven this with all
his might. The other players should not interfere with these two
who fought for the ball. If the one who carried the ball was
pressed so hard that he had to let go of the ball, he tried to
throw it to one of his team-mates, who then in his turn tried to
carry it out, again being prevented by his pair-mate from the
other team. The game could be rather tough and violent, the
players could be badly wounded, even killed during the game. The
sagas show that this game was very popular in Iceland.
Hertzberg further says that this game has an almost uncanny
similarity to the game Lacrosse, which was played by Indian
tribes in North America. Dr. W. J. Hoffman has described it at
the Menominis in Wisconsin, the Ojibwas in Norhern Minnesota, the
Dakotas at upper Missouri, and at the Chacta, Chickasaw and
related southern tribes. Hoffman also mentions the selecting of
opponents and playing in pairs. He says that at the Ojibwas the
running ball-carrier often is stopped by hitting him in the arm
or the leg. At the southern tribes the game was more violent, and
the opponent often tries to beat the runner almost to death.
Hoffman is of the opinion that the game certainly comes from one
of the eastern Algonkin tribes, possibly in the St. Lawrence
valley. From there it came to the Huron-Iroqois, and later on
further south to the Cherokees, and also to the west.
A somewhat similar ball game is also reported from the Eskimos of
Greenland by Hans Egede (1741). Here the ball was thrown with the
hands (no bats), but Egede's description and drawing show that
the teams formed pairs also here.
A coincidence?
Together with the tavl game, the reports in the Icelandic annals
of sailings to Markland (roughly: the east coast of Canada - the
location of Vinland is not sure, but most descriptions indicate
some more southerly position, probably south of the St. Lawrence,
since a stretch of open water had to be crossed, possibly on the
east coast of the US.), records of American goods brought to the
harbour of Bergen, etc. .... this remarkable similarity of Norse
and Native American ball games may indicate a far much closer
cultural contact between the Norse and the Native Americans than
most historians have been willing to admit.
But, it must be admitted, except for l'Anse-aux-Meadows, little
hard evidence exists. My guess is that there are several similar
sites in Markland and Vinland, waiting to be found.
______________________________________________________________
Kĺre Albert Lie
kalie@sn.no

In article <5387n1$5ne@shore.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet  wrote:
>In article <536g6b$aqn@halley.pi.net>, mcv@pi.netÁ says...
... There *are* words of Egyptian extraction in
>>English (ebony, gum, bark (=ship), etc.)  But they did not go from
>>Ancient Egyptian directly into English. 
>We agree. The interesting part is the detective story. What route
>did they take. Latin and Greek may appear to be the immediately
>obvious solution, but before we jump to that conclusion, lets look
>at what is going on with the spread of trade across the Black and
>Caspian seas and up the rivers of Europe in the 3rd millenium BC.
	[A lot of babbling about aquatic trade routes deleted...]
	There you go again, Mr. Whittet. Obsessed with aquatic trade 
routes even in semidesert regions like Central Asia.
>Why is the diffusion of language presumed to be something which
>happened slowly a long time ago rather than rapidly fairly recently?
>The English/French words listed for example...
	Is it the diffusion of borrowed vocabulary or the diffusion of a
langue's fundamental structure? Ancestors of both English and French
(Anglo-Saxon and Latin) got to where they were because their speakers
conquered what is now England and France, respectively. 
>>In conclusion: Latin and especially Greek did borrow from Egyptian.
>Ok, If Latin and Greek did what about other European languages?
	Maybe. Just maybe. But if there is no convincing evidence of 
that, then just accept that and don't cry like a baby.
... But if an English word, especially "basic
>>vocabulary" (earth, water, sky...), looks suspiciously like an
>>Egyptian word, there's a good chance the coincidence is just that, a
>>coincidence.
>Does that mean there is also the possibility it is not a coincidence?
	While we are at it, let us not forget the possibility that pigs 
may have wings. I, for one, would not want to bet on such 
"possibilities", since words like that are usually not borrowed.
>>  There's an Australian language where the word for "dingo" is  
>>(and upon investigation it was found not to have been
>>borrowed from English). 
>> Coincidences do occur, especially if the word is short. 
>I am always nervous with coincidence as a scientific explanation.
	Coincidences do happen, like it or not.
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html

In article <5389h9$5ne@shore.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet  wrote:
>In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
>>In article <3256A1A8.2469@pioneerplanet.infi.net>,
>>Saida   wrote:
>>        All you did, Ms. Saida, was to select some of the more basic
>>words, which tend not to get borrowed; 
>ummm, excuse me Loren, but these are exactly the words you always want
>to put in your lists claiming they prove the commonality of IE languages.
	There is another thing we must worry about: internal replacement. 
This has happened with several words, like the one for "mouth".
Looking at this list, "star" and "wind" are cognates, while nearly all 
the others derive from some IE root or another. Some of those on the list 
are compounds, like English woman and French enfant, and a small minority 
of them cannot be traced back to IE.
>>English                 French
>>>Earth                  Terre
earth < Old English eorthe < IE *er-
terre < Latin terra < IE *ters- "to dry" (> "dry land")
>>>Water                  Eau
water < OE waeter < IE *wed- (>*wodor)
eau < Lat. aqua < IE *akwa:
(these may have represented two different meanings, like "water, the 
substance" and "a body of water")
>>>Sky                    ciel
sky < Old Norse sky: "cloud" < IE *(s)keu- "to cover, conceal"
ciel < Lat. caelum "sky"
>>>Star                   etoile
ster < OE steorra < IE *ster- (> *sterzo:n)
etoile < Lat. stella < IE *ster- (> *ster-la:)
>>>Moon                   lune
moon < OE mo:na < IE *me:- "to measure" (> "measurer")
lune < Lat. luna < IE *leuk- "light, brightness" (> "shiner")
(These terms may have been euphemisms, for whatever reason; "Sun" and 
"star" are very well preserved in IE)
>>>Man                    homme
man < OE mann < IE *man-
homme < Lat. homo, homin- < IE *dhghem- "earth"
>>>Woman                  femme
woman < OE wif + man
femme < Lat. femina < IE *dhe:(i)- "to suck" (> "suckler")
>>>Child                  enfant
child < OE cild
enfant < Lat. infans, infant- "can't speak, young" from
in- "not" < IE *ne
fa:ri: "to speak" < IE *bha:-
>>>Fire                   feu
fire < OE fy:r < IE *pu:r
feu < Lat. focus "hearth"
>>>Wind                   vent
wind < OE wind < IE *we:- (>we:-nt-os)
vent < Lat. ventus < IE *we:- (>we:-nt-os)
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html

Saida  wrote:
>also says "ME babywyne".  I don't know what "ME" is, not Middle Egyptian, I'm sure.  
>Middle English?
**Yes, the latter 
>Aayko, what happened with "Abracadabra"?  Please post it, because I am very much 
>interested in this item.
Thanks, I forgat a bit; also as I have to transalate it from Dutch;
but i will try to post it this week
>I have a couple of questions for you linguists out there:
>What language were the Gauls speaking before the Romans arrived?
Gallic - being of the Continental branch of  Celtic
>This is from one of my favorite books "The Bible As History" by Werner Keller:
>"At the end of the 13th Century B.C. a great new wave of foreign peoples surged down 
>from the northern Aegean.  By land and water these "Sea Peoples" flowed over Asia Minor. 
> They were the fringes of a great movement of population to which the Dorian migration 
>to Greece also belonged.  The impetus of these foreigners--they were Indo-Germanic--was 
>directed to Canaan and Egypt."
>I am not familiar with the term Indo-Germanic.  What does it mean?
**It's the same as IndoEuropean, but a bit outdated. It was very
common with German scolars, being first invented by Friedr. Schlegel.
The term Indo-european came from Frans Bopp and his followers,
and has 'won' as the term for this language group. 
>Here's something else that's intriguing:
>"Among the "Sea Peoples", as the Egyptians called the foreign conquerors, one racial 
>group assumed a special importance, the Peleste or PRST.  These are the Philistines of 
>the OT...The tall slim figures are about a head taller than the Egyptians (in the 
>reliefs)..."
>If these are the Philistines of the Bible, why should they be so much taller than the 
>Egyptians?  Weren't the Philistines supposed to be just another Levantine people?  If 
>so, what would account for this tallness?  Even the Greeks are, on average, not a very 
>tall people (although probably gaining in height like everybody else).  Is there a 
>possibility these Peleste could have been a more northern race?
***I looked at the reliefs of Ramses III about this [well, the
drawings of them] - and sorry, they are of the same hight as the
Egyptians on these paintings...!
The peleset are generally thought to have come from Crete.

"Dr. John McMath"  wrote:
>
>Seriously, it is quite likely the ark was destroyed in antiquity,
>probably by the Babylonians in 586 BC, if not by the Egyptian Pharoah
>Necho shortly after Solomon's death.
**Sorry, the latter is not true (based on Kenyon?),  I feel, as there
are references to the ark  much later in the OT, long after Solomon.
As to the first: possible, but less likely - the traditions about it
quickly being hidden by the priests are strong. And after all,
Nebukadnezar's attack was not exactly a surprise raid. And the OT
gives detailed listings of what was taken -
the ark not being mentionned - 2 Kings 24:10-13,25:8-13 1Kings 7:49-50
The plain answer being: we simply do not know

In article  petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich) writes:
>>>where NINDA is an ideograph for bread.
>>Piotr denies such things as ideographs existed.
>        Where did he do that?
I actually have to agree with Steve for a change.  The notion of 
"ideaograophs" is not a very good one.  The cuneiform system that was used by 
the Hittites, adapted from Babylonian (possibly through Hurrian hands), 
consisted of syllabic signs, classifiers (such as "wood"), and logograms, or 
"word signs". In Hittite writing the latter are a bit complex as they would 
write frozen Sumerian as well as Akkadian words either by themselves or with 
syllabic indicators to express certain Hittite lexemes.  In most cases we know 
what the Hittite words that hide under these logograms were, but in a few 
cases, where no syllabic variant has been preserved, apparently Hittitologists 
have not been able to reconstruct the word.  

In article <538s7e$rgh@shore.shore.net> whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) writes:
>
>Actually Piotr is right I admit it, my error, mea culpa...
>(He knows very well I meant cloves but wishes to drive home 
>the point that he disagrees with Bucellati I think...)
>The reference is to cloves at Terqua, not nutmeg. Both are spices
>native to the Mollucas (Meluhha) in the Singapore straits.
Actually, I suspected it, but was not sure.  I thought that perhaps something 
new had turned up.  As for cloves and the Mollucas, I will not go down that 
road again...

In article <538npq$jo5@halley.pi.net>, mcv@pi.netÁ says...
>
>whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>
>>Hence Latin, "caveat emptor" or "buyer beware" lest the 
>>value of the purchase peter out. 
>
>>Here "emptor" is buyer or party to the contract.
>>from the Egyptian "Ptah r" make a written contract...
>
>Sorry, "emptor" is from from the root em- "to buy".
>em-tor > emptor.
And what do we do when we buy something? Do we discuss terms?
Do we shake on the deal? Is there a sense in which we need to
come to a meeting of the minds before the deal is final?
Could we describe this as making a contract?
When we buy something a house, a car, a horse, a computer,
a loaf of bread at the grocery store and we get a receipt
the fact is we have contracted to buy the goods we purchased.
>
>>Lets look at some words that don't exactly match
>
>>words with b replacing p
>
>>Ptah, btah, beta
>>Ptah, btah, beth
>
>>This is the second letter of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets
>>which the Semitic languages exchange for P.
>
>And "beth" means "house", not "father" or "Ptah" or "creator".
It means something larger than house, more like place, Bethlehem,
Beth Shean, etc; and it has the sense of founded lehem, founded Shean.
in the sense of making a settlement.
>
>>using Beta or Bt
>
>>betroth = make arrangements to wed, possible kinship term
>
>be- is a common Germanic prefix.  The root is "troth", related to
>"truth".
hmmm, you mean as in the Egyptian Thoth? Thoth is closely associated
with the Egyptian goddess Ma'at, whose feather of truth is put in the
balance to measure weigh and judge what is right and proper.
Keep in mind that Egyptian gods are specific instances or examples
(ideas of the good if you will) of general principles like truth, beauty,
and in the case of Thoth wisdom. Thoth is also responsible for reading
writing and arithmetic and was generally invoked in the blessings and
curses associated with the making of contracts.
>
>>Are the following words ending in "ter" kinship terms or creation terms?
>
>>better = make improvements
>
>From Germanic *bat-iza
So we have Germanic bat means "make"?
>
>>bitter = make a bad taste
>
>Related to "bite", i.e "biting taste" (*bit-er).
Ok, it begins to appear that the vowels are of some importance here...
without the vowels, given just "btr", how do you know, other 
than by context, whether or not to add some seasoning? 
Does it taste better? or bitter?
>
>Neither of them contains -ter.
>
>>Are the following words considered a "ter" ending?
>
>>bother = make trouble
>
>No, from Irish bodhar, ends in IE *-dher.
>
>>brother = make from wedlock a sibling.
>
>Yes, -ter kinship ending. *bhra:-ter.
>
>>Are the following words related?
>
>>both = make a choice
>>bother = make trouble
>>brother = make a sibling.
>No.
>
>>breath = make air enter the lungs
>>breathe = make a soft utterance
>>breather = one who breathes
>Yes.
>
>>brethren = make brothers 
>Related to brother, of course.
but yet given just the consonants how would I know 
whether or not I was the brthr or the brthr
>
>>And yes I know this is one of the nice things about English,
>>it's just so damm flexible...:)
>
>Everything is flexible if you know nothing about it.
Well that is true. I am fond of the saying that a specialist 
is someone who learns more and more about less and less until 
finally he knows everything about nothing....
I have met some people like that. 
On the other hand we could define generalists like myself as 
people who learn less and less about more and more until finally 
they know nothing about everything...
which is your point I think. 
But then nothing is not mearly the absence of something, 
it is also some thing else. 
Indeed if absolute power is the ability to do nothing...
which seems to be the case; ie, if you are a famous
academic you need no longer bother to consider new ideas
but can rest on your laurels and do nothing with absolute
impunity...
then I guess the other side of the coin is that nothing 
is impossible for those who refuse to listen to reason...
just kidding of course...:)
>
>
>==
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal   
steve

In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
>
>In article <3257D150.46FA@pioneerplanet.infi.net>,
>Saida   wrote:
>>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>
>>> Who is denying this?  There *are* words of Egyptian extraction in
>>> English (ebony, gum, bark (=ship), etc.)  But they did not go from
>>> Ancient Egyptian directly into English.
>
>> Who ever said they did????  Is that what you think this has been all 
>>about?  Although, you never know, SOME words may have done...
>
>        And maybe I'm a dead hen. Egypt had been a part of the Roman 
>Empire, and before that, a Hellenistic kingdom some centuries before the 
>Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes crossed the English Channel. So any 
>traders from Egypt would have found Latin and Greek more useful languages 
>along the way than Egyptian.
Actually, you raise a good point here. The Greeks never reached 
Britain, Iberia and Gaul and that the Romans arrived in the wake 
of the Phoenicians and Carthagineans. I don't think the Phoenicians
spoke Latin or Greek, and these people who were also in contact
with Egypt preceed the Angles and Saxons and Jutes. Have you
bothered to look for what their influence might have been?
Where did those little brown Picts come from anyway?
steve
>-- 
>Loren Petrich                           Happiness is a fast Macintosh
>petrich@netcom.com                      And a fast train
>My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
>Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html
>
>

>>attrack
Is this a kind of portmanteau word, meaning both "attract and side track"?
(: Just kidding :)
+-----
|  NeilUnreal
|
|  I would sooner believe that a Yankee professor could 
|  fall from the heavens than that a stone would lie.
+-----

In article <3257D23E.171C@pioneerplanet.infi.net>,
Saida   wrote:
>Loren Petrich wrote:
>> English                 French
>> >Earth                  Terre
>> >Water                  Eau
>> >Sky                    ciel
>> >Star                   etoile
>> >Moon                   lune
>> >Man                    homme
>> >Woman                  femme
>> >Child                  enfant
>> >Fire                   feu
>> >Wind                   vent
>Loren, those are the same words you asked me to make a list of months 
>ago comparing English and Egyptian!
	Ms. Saida, you have just selected those of different IE origins 
(a few cannot be traced beyond Old English or Latin, but none appear to 
be borrowed); here's a list of native English and French words that *are* 
Indo-European cognates, and whose semantics still match, at least 
approximately. However, many of them involve some nontrivial sound 
correspondences, and I note in passing that the Old English and Latin 
versions are closer.
English	French
am	suis
is	est
do	faire
I	je
me	me
thou	tu
thee	te
us	nous
who	qui
one	un
two	deux
three	trois
four	quatre
five	cinq
six	six
seven	sept
eight	huit
nine	neuf
ten	dix
hundred	cent
father	pe`re
mother	me`re
brother	fre`re
sister	soeur
sun	soleil
star	etoile
night	nuit
light	lumie`re
no	non
new	nouveau (Old French neuf)
name	nom
hound	chien (general word for "dog")
wolf	loup
steer	taureau ("bull")
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html

>Does anyone know why they try to rebuild dinosaurs from millennia ago,
>and not try it first with lately died species like the DODO??
Would you pay to see a movie called "Dodo Park"?  ;)
+-----
|  NeilUnreal
|
|  I would sooner believe that a Yankee professor could 
|  fall from the heavens than that a stone would lie.
+-----

In article <3257C69A.B30@tip.nl>, Victor Reijs  wrote:
> Hello There,
> 
> I am looking for more information about paramagetism. Can somebody help 
> me. I heard that Philip Callahan was doing work on this. But do people 
> have more info on this? It seems that stone (like stone rings, 
> menhirs, stone towers in Ireland) could be some sort of antenna, 
> depending on this paramagnetism.
Phew! Dunno. I remember reading a few years ago that Paul Devereux (of
Dragon Project fame) was doing some work like this at the Rollright Stones
in the UK. There's also a bunch of stuff in Tom Lethbridge's old book,
"The Power of the Pendulum", written in the 1960s .....
> Hope to hear from you.
> 
> All the best,
> 
> 
> Victor
> -- 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> WWW Thuis pagina: http://www.tip.nl/users/victor.reijs/ned/
> WWW Home page:    http://www.tip.nl/users/victor.reijs/eng/
-- 
Pete
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Cassidy,         pcassidy@iol.ie        | Si/ na Samhna, 
Cork, Ireland     http://www.iol.ie/~pcassidy | Tu/ na Bliain U/r.
                                              | Si/ an Chrann Marbh,
                                              | Deireadh an Tuath.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Loren Petrich wrote:
> 
> Troy Sagrillo   wrote:
> 
> >a nominal prefix m- (as in maktab from the root /ktb/)
> 
>         I get the impression that that's the agent-noun prefix in Semitic
> (like English -er).
In essence yes, though it has more of a participial meaning rather than
being limited to a agent-noun meaning (and there are other ways of
forming an agent-noun as well, usually vocalic modifications). However
its use is also found in Egyptian, though not as commonly (we are
hindered by not having all of the suspected root verbal measures being
attested).
A couple examples:
Arabic: murAqib "observer" ("he who observes") from raqaba "to observe"
        murAqabat "observation" ("that which is observed")
        mirqab "telescope" ("that which observes")
        marqab "observatory" ("place of observing" -- see below for
locative use)
Egyptian: mski "slanderer" from ski "to destroy" (as a noun:
"accusation")
          mHwnw "slaughter" from unattested *Hwn "to slaughter"
          mxtmt "closed/sealed receptical" ("that which is sealed")
                    from xtm "to seal"
          msdmt "eye paint" ("that which is painted") from sdm "to
paint"
It is also used to form locative (location) nouns as well; eg:
Arabic: masAfir "part of the face not veiled" from safara "to unveil"
        masjid  "mosque" (lit. "place of bending") from sajada "to bend"
Egyptian: msDr "ear" (lit. "place of laying down") from sDr "to lay
down"
          mXrw "low place" from Xr "under" (prep.)
[snip]
Troy

	This reminds me of an old Peanuts cartoon long ago where Lucy 
explains to Linus how knotty-pine recreation rooms get their name from 
being made from the wood of giant oaks -- as Charlie Brown looks on in 
anguish.
In article <538g5e$f9e@shore.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet  wrote:
>I was thinking of "Ptah r" where "r" is more of a verb
	Actually, Mr. Whittet shows his ignorance of the structure of the 
Egyptian language, whose preferred syntax was verb-subject-object.
>The glyphs "p","t","h" should have the sense of make,
>create, father, cause to come into being.
	For any reason other than the name of the god "Ptah"?
>Hence Latin, "caveat emptor" or "buyer beware" lest the 
>value of the purchase peter out. 
	emptor is an agent noun derived from emere "to buy", from IE *em- 
"to take, distribute"
>words with b replacing p
	Widen the phonetic and semantic net enough, and you will be able 
to match anything with anything.
>Ptah, btah, beta
>Ptah, btah, beth
>This is the second letter of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets
>which the Semitic languages exchange for P.
	True, Arabic uses "b" to represent borrowed "p", but Hebrew has 
both "p" and "b" (Hebrew p > Arabic f).
>betroth = make arrangements to wed, possible kinship term
from be- (< IE *bheu@-) and troth (Are the following words ending in "ter" kinship terms or creation terms?
>better = make improvements
	from IE *bhad- "good"
>bitter = make a bad taste
	from IE *bheid- "to split"
>Are the following words considered a "ter" ending?
>bother = make trouble
	possibly of Celtic origin
>brother = make from wedlock a sibling.
	< IE *bhra:ter-
>both = make a choice
	from Old English ba: neuter of begen "both" and tha:, plural of
thaet "that" (< IE *to-)
>breath = make air enter the lungs
>breathe = make a soft utterance
>breather = one who breathes
	< IE *gwhre:- "to smell, breathe"
>brethren = make brothers 
	old plural of "brother"
	One thing to be noted about Mr. Whittet's "definitions" is his 
amazing willingness to reveal how semantically unconnected they are. Not 
to mention how wrong some of them are.
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html

Well, I had responded to this privately earlier this morning...but....
No, there is nothing copyrighted in the use of that term, just as there is
nothing copyrighted by any term in science - but there are commonly
accepted definitions in the field and the term "New Archaeology" refers the
scientific movement "started" by Lewis Binford in the 1960s in North
American archaeology. You can redefine terms if you want and continue to
call an "oak tree" a "fern" if you want, it just makes communication a
little more difficult. I think that from now on in any of my statistical
calculations I will refer to rho by the sigma symbol. That should make
things a little muddier. As I said in the earlier post, perhaps Pomo (from
Post-modern) archaeology would be a better term...just a suggestion.

In article <5392kt$685@shore.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet  wrote:
... I don't think the Phoenicians
>spoke Latin or Greek, and these people who were also in contact
>with Egypt preceed the Angles and Saxons and Jutes. Have you
>bothered to look for what their influence might have been?
	If one can make a case for words going from Phoenician to
ancestral Germanic, then by all means do so. 
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html

whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>In article <538lgk$i8t@halley.pi.net>, mcv@pi.netÁ says...
>>I thought the following, which I posted to sci.lang some weeks ago
>>might be relevant to the discussion.  This was a long thread about
>>Slavic expansions versus Iranians and Turks, under the rather
>>inappropriate heading of "Etymology of Warsaw and Kiev". 
[article on Central Asian ("steppe") archaeology and linguistics;
interrupted by Steve's comments on "sea people"]
I really don't see what the relevance of "sea people" is to an
article dedicated to the history of the inner Eurasian land mass.
>All of the peoples in these regions originally placed their 
>settlements along rivers. The rivers provided easy mobility
>and the trade probably was about equally divided between
>routes along the banks of rivers and the shores of seas.
Not to mention drinking water for man and beast.
==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal                     ~ ~
Amsterdam                   _____________  ~ ~
mcv@pi.net                 |_____________|||
========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig

In article <53925c$685@shore.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet  wrote:
	[buying something ~ making a contract]
	A purchase, especially of soemting cheap, is often a rather quick
act. Contracts are long-term. 
>>And "beth" means "house", not "father" or "Ptah" or "creator".
>It means something larger than house, more like place, Bethlehem,
>Beth Shean, etc; and it has the sense of founded lehem, founded Shean.
>in the sense of making a settlement.
	So what?
>>>betroth = make arrangements to wed, possible kinship term
>>be- is a common Germanic prefix.  The root is "troth", related to
>>"truth".
>hmmm, you mean as in the Egyptian Thoth? ...
	Then how did that r get in there???
>Keep in mind that Egyptian gods are specific instances or examples
>(ideas of the good if you will) of general principles like truth, beauty,
>and in the case of Thoth wisdom. ...
	I don't see how that is the case.
>>>better = make improvements
>>From Germanic *bat-iza
>So we have Germanic bat means "make"?
	Of course not. This is a comparative, and the bat- part is 
ultimately derived from IE *bhad- "good".
>>>bitter = make a bad taste
>>Related to "bite", i.e "biting taste" (*bit-er).
>Ok, it begins to appear that the vowels are of some importance here...
	As if that was some great discovery [sarcasm].
>without the vowels, given just "btr", how do you know, other 
>than by context, whether or not to add some seasoning? 
>Does it taste better? or bitter?
	Not to mention batter or butter.
>>>brethren = make brothers 
>>Related to brother, of course.
	The old plural, complete with Germanic umlaut.
>but yet given just the consonants how would I know 
>whether or not I was the brthr or the brthr
	So what?
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html

whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>In article <538npq$jo5@halley.pi.net>, mcv@pi.netÁ says...
>>
>>whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>>
>>>Hence Latin, "caveat emptor" or "buyer beware" lest the 
>>>value of the purchase peter out. 
>>
>>>Here "emptor" is buyer or party to the contract.
>>>from the Egyptian "Ptah r" make a written contract...
>>
>>Sorry, "emptor" is from from the root em- "to buy".
>>em-tor > emptor.
>And what do we do when we buy something? Do we discuss terms?
>Do we shake on the deal? Is there a sense in which we need to
>come to a meeting of the minds before the deal is final?
>Could we describe this as making a contract?
Beside the point.  Which was that em- and "Ptah r" have not a single
consonant (and not even a vowel) in common.
>>>betroth = make arrangements to wed, possible kinship term
>>
>>be- is a common Germanic prefix.  The root is "troth", related to
>>"truth".
>hmmm, you mean as in the Egyptian Thoth? Thoth is closely associated
>with the Egyptian goddess Ma'at, whose feather of truth is put in the
>balance to measure weigh and judge what is right and proper.
>Keep in mind that Egyptian gods are specific instances or examples
>(ideas of the good if you will) of general principles like truth, beauty,
>and in the case of Thoth wisdom. Thoth is also responsible for reading
>writing and arithmetic and was generally invoked in the blessings and
>curses associated with the making of contracts.
And I suppose you'd curse someone dead (Thoth) if they broke the
contract...  I can play this game, too :-)  Anyone can.
>>>better = make improvements
>>
>>From Germanic *bat-iza
>So we have Germanic bat means "make"?
Why no: "good", of course.
>>>And yes I know this is one of the nice things about English,
>>>it's just so damm flexible...:)
>>
>>Everything is flexible if you know nothing about it.
>Well that is true. I am fond of the saying that a specialist 
>is someone who learns more and more about less and less until 
>finally he knows everything about nothing....
>I have met some people like that. 
>On the other hand we could define generalists like myself as 
>people who learn less and less about more and more until finally 
>they know nothing about everything...
>which is your point I think. 
Your words :-)
>which seems to be the case; ie, if you are a famous
>academic you need no longer bother to consider new ideas
>but can rest on your laurels and do nothing with absolute
>impunity...
Sorry, I'm just a humble "C" programmer with very general academic
interests.
Now as to being a generalist, as an anti-dote, always bear in mind
what the Romans said: "non multa sed multum".
==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal                     ~ ~
Amsterdam                   _____________  ~ ~
mcv@pi.net                 |_____________|||
========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig

In article  piotrm@umich.edu (Piotr Michalowski) writes:
>to this day no one has come up with Sumerian 
>etymologies for most Sumerian city names.  Jacobsen's etymologies have found 
>little acceptance (as opposed to some of his graphic discoveries)
What do you mean, his graphic discoveries?
  and we 
>really do not know what the origin of Nibru, Urim, Lagasha, etc. was.
What is wrong with Jacobsen's very detailed argument for deriving both Nippur 
and Sumer from nig~ir, found in Toward the Image of Tammuz, p. 418?  He quotes 
Poebel for g~ > b, saying that this development is known only from Eme-SAL but 
that the Nippur dialect had leanings towards Eme-SAL.
I have a note that urim meant 'doorpost', in Semitic.  Ur was on the west bank 
of the Euphrates.
A Sumerian etymology for Lagash is proposed by Armas Salonen in Voegel und 
Vogelfang im alten Mesopotamien, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, ser. 
B, v. 180, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki 1973, pp. 128 and 277.  Many 
Sumerian cities appear to have had birds for totems.
Regards,
John Halloran

In article  piotrm@umich.edu (Piotr Michalowski) writes:
>In 
>addition, your initial premise, that Sumerian is somehow a new, invented 
>language, that is younger than any other,
This is actually the opposite of what I believe.  Actually, I believe that 
when its inventors created Sumerian over 10,000 years ago, they had no 
exposure to other spoken languages, so it is likely to have been one of the 
first spoken languages, if not the first.  I don't think that linguists can 
prove any language family to be older than 10,000 years old.
I actually think that a standard interpersonal symboling system was not needed 
until relative strangers began living together in settled communities.
Regards,
John Halloran

"Chris Anderson"  wrote:
>Although I absolutely agree with your statements, I disagree that ET's
>would necessarily give primitives more advanced technology.  That shows a
>very western viewpoint of the world.  The egyptians had a stable culture
>that lasted thousands of years (given some minor breaks, here and there). 
>That's a feat that is unequaled in human history.  Why not give primitives
>the tools to have a stable culture?
How does one do that?  What are the "tools" to have a stable culture?
Stella Nemeth
s.nemeth@ix.netcom.com

davep@corp.netcom.net.uk wrote:
>John, I again ask you to give examples of where their work is "fatally
>flawed". 
If you do a DejaNews search for this newsgroup you will find a thread
that was here a few months ago where several people, who had
personally done extensive checking of this theory explained why the
idea that the Old Kingdom pyramids are a "star chart" is false.  
From my memory of that thread, it turns out that if you take a map of
the pyramids and superimpose a map of the relevant portion of the
heavens (using several different viewpoints as the people who checked
out this theory did) you discover that it is impossible to match the
pyramids with the stars.  In fact, some of the pyramid/star
correspondences in the book are so impossible to match that they turn
out to be on opposite sides of the two superimposed diagrams.
>...They have presented their pictures and shown how they reached
>the conclusions they have. If you want to shoot them down in flames
>then it is not enough to accuse them of using "it is possible" rather
>a lot. 
This has been done by more than one person who reported back to this
newsgroup and described their results.  
>They really DON'T know for certain so they are hardly going to
>say "it is a fact" rather than "it is possible". 
They either DO know for certain that it is impossible, because they
falsified their evidence (and have been caught at it) or they didn't
know because they didn't do their homework.  In either case, their
diagrams are known to have been either falsified or to be simply
incorrect.
>Show me where they are WRONG and I will accept what you say.
This has already been done here on this newsgroup.  One of the wonders
of the new Internet is that there are archives for the last year
easily available to anyone who can access the Web.  Please do so.
Stella Nemeth
s.nemeth@ix.netcom.com