Newsgroup sci.archaeology 50203

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Xina:
.
>I have no concrete date that I can cite with certainty about the 
>earth's true age
.
     But the 4 1/2 billion year old earth ,in our reality, is fairly 
modern, hence very young -- and, of course, subject to change at any 
time.  It is interesting, however, that the Adam & Eve myth in Gen. 2 
and 3, probably preserved for centuries before Moses as sacred drama, 
also attempts no chronology.  The chronology of Gen. 5 starts with a, 
probably estimated, epoch of the Genesis calendar equated with the 
epoch of the 1st dynasty (Adam) is much like our own chronology based 
on the estimated birth of Christ.
     It has also been suggested by several physicists (cf. Gribbin's 
"Schrodinger's Kittens") that 10 billion years is not nearly enough 
for the development of cellular forms, and that such forms must 
therefore have developed long before our solar system and its planets.  
Recently this theory that these forms peppered our planets from outer 
space has been given new impetus by the discovery of the possibility 
of such forms on Mars.
.
>If Adam was the 'first man' (or was he the first white man as some 
>here have proposed) then we can actually date him to over 10,000 years 
>ago.
.
     No we can"t.  Even though the name Adam (from Heb. DM = blood) 
suggests "blood pigmented" and therefore "white", that does not mean 
that the first MAN (in the biblical idiom) can be dated much before 
4000 BC.  That is because MAN, in the biblical sense, is that life 
form that had a national nonmimetic written language and a monarchical 
civilization (such that "whatsoever Adam called [everything], that was 
the name thereof" -- Gen. 2:19).  Our extension of the term "man" to 
an organic "species" only causes confusion.  In the biblical idiom, 
MAN is verbal (also literate and monarchical) not organic.  That life 
form is scarcely 6000 years old.
.
>If the biblical flood was an actuality, *why* was there no break in 
>the architecture, art and culture of any civilization in the areas of 
>africa and Europe at that time?
.
     Because the flood was confined to "the face of the earth" -- KJV, 
or "faces of the Adamah" -- Heb.  If you read my previous message to 
you, including the postscript, you know that probably "faces of the 
Adamah" was approx. Long. 95 to 105, Lat. 44 to 54, from whence Cain 
had long since been expelled -- Gen. 4:14.
.
SOURCE
.
     The Bible
.
                                                      Suds

DARWIN IS BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY WITH OTHER CHURCH OF ENGLAND GREATS

John A. Halloran (seagoat@primenet.com) wrote:
: In article <56dpr3$r14@news.ycc.yale.edu> bdiebold@pantheon.yale.edu 
: >Anyway, your word number arguments should not be accepted. Miguel has
: >posted several excellent posts demonstrating why your repeated claim that
: >word count is isomorphic with language sophistication is bunk.
: This is not true.  It is easier to learn Biblical Hebrew than it is to learn 
: Modern Hebrew because they had a smaller vocabulary back then.
Read again. My point was with regard to Whittet's claims about
isomorphism, that counting words determined language complexity (a
position he has now recanted). 
But your point is strange. All else being equal, it is better to learn
fewer words than more, but all else is never equal. Memorizing vocabulary
is typically the *easiest* part of learning any language. What makes
language study hard are all the different ways people put things together.
: At the time that the Sumerians invented writing (ca. 3200 B.C.), they had a 
: vocabulary somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 words.  And a number of these 
: words describe Bronze Age inventions, so earlier the word count was smaller.
An even more strange point. Why on earth you should imagine that the
earliest Uruk texts represent in written form the complete spoken language
capabilities of the people of Uruk is beyond me. It utterly ignores
everything, including the context of early literacy in the Near East. This
is like arguing that every non-literate society has no language (except
for those cases where they are known to actually have language, which is
*all* of them, everywhere).
[snip]
:   Actually, the more economical explanation for 60 families of 
: languages on a small island is that the concept of language diffused to 
: separate clans each of whom basically invented their own vocabulary 
: and grammar.
Frankly, one might argue that an even more economical argument is that the
world was created 6000 years ago with language from the get go. If you're
going to argue for ex nihilo creationism without an oort of proof why not
go all the way? 
Anyway, I'm still interested in the correlates of diffusion, which seem to 
be utterly lacking here. How is it that the "concept of language"
diffuses without *any* associated material culture or linguistic
traces? Is there any parallel for such a thing happening anywhere? 
Ben

Saida wrote:
> 
> saraswati@vossnet.co.uk wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone have any up-to-date information about the identification
> > of the 'Elder Woman' found in the tomb of Amenhotep II as Queen
> > Tiye?  The analysis of the hair samples from Tutankhamun's tomb
> > with those of the mummy seem to indicate that it is Queen Tiye,
> > but apparently the 'edler woman' is too young to be Tiye.  Anyone
> > heard anything new?
> 
> DNA samples have been taken from the royal mummies to confirm, among
> other considerations, their identities.  Since female mummies are
> crucial in this work, one can safely assume, I think, that the "Elder
> Lady" has been included in the study.  For more information, and a
> hypothesis regarding his work, see Scott Woodward's article in the
> Sept/Oct 96 issue of ARCHAEOLOGY magazine. (Maybe you can even read this
> article online).
I've heard that there is some speculation that she could be
Ankhesenamen.  (Apparently this was based on her age).  I wish I could
remember where I had read this....

Eliyehowah  wrote:
*Necron wrote:
*>   Elijah,
*> Noone cares what you post, but we prefer that you keep biblical
debate out of
*> alt.satanism and in a more appropriate newsgroup.This is only
common courtesy and it's
*> as simple as trimming your headers. I am trying to get people in
alt.satanism to do
*> this as well. Part of this whole thing was started by people not
trimming their headers
*> and inappropriately crossposting. I do not know if you frequent
alt.satanism where I
*> am reading this thread, so I will leave the headers to insure that
you see this.
*> Necron
*> Temple of the Ram
*Your reply is good and reasonable. (Most are not.)
*When I wish to reply to a 22-newsgroup header, I would open
*a new thread and just paste the few groups I was sending to.
*However, a reply about Satan may be a thread to some idol
*image of the dark ages so how do I know whether to edit out
*archeology......you soon find out by the threats. Another example,
*is your posting why you left the headers to find me.....I only
*search alt.religion.christian, alt.mythology, and alt.archeology
*All the other headers come from replying. etc.
**************************************************************************************************************
I have noticed that this issue of crossposting via not trimming
headers has been around for a long time without solution.  As a person
who does not have much time to spend on newsgroups triming headers is
more time consuming than I can afford.  It is also putting me in the
position of editor to decide where this post belongs.  Who am I to
judge through the plethera of newsgroups just where this particular
post should go.  Instead of asking the origninal poster (the person
who is really responsible) not to send certain materials to certain
newsgroups, people who are merely trying to participate in discussions
are harrased continually.  I am not responsible for deciding what goes
where, I refuse to be put in the spot of the editor of the newsgroups.
If you don't like a thread you may delete it or you could also put it
in your kill file.  Let us all try to make the newsgroups a more
pleasant place to be.

In article <328C94C2.71B9@ccil.org>, cowan@ccil.org says...
>
>Steve Whittet replied to me thus:
>
>> >> Just to give an analogy, after man arrived in the New World and
>> >> hunted big game like bears, bison and mamoths to the point of
>> >> extinction horses evolved some twenty two new *species* to fill
>> >> the niche. Man has been in New Guinea about 70 times as long
>> >> as it took the new World horses to evolve.
>
>Note the structure of this claim is that the following events
>occurred, in the given order:
>
>        1.  Man arrived in the New World.
>        2.  Man hunted bears, bison, and mammoths to extinction
>        3.  Horses evolved 22 new species to fill the niche
>            (a horse filling a bear's niche would be quite something!)
Actually, the niche that is created by an absence of a predator
need not be a predatory niche. Bears not attacking horses as 
frequently may have made them a gentler more easily domesticated
animal. This would have applied throughout Beringa which includes
Siberia as far west as lake Baikal.
>
>> >Now this is the merest rubbish.  Within historic times there have
>> >been only two species of horses (plus two ass and three zebra
>> >species):
>
>I said "historic times", i.e. 6,000 B.P. at most.  Even extending
>that back to 30,000 B.P. or so, the date of event 1 above
>has nothing to do with equine evolution.
1.) Mans arrival in North America was about 12,000 years BP
Though earlier dates were claimed some decades back, none of the
30 some odd early claims in the Americas have remained uncontroversial.
2.) Comment 3 above is a quote from a phone conversation with
Bruce MacFadden. It isn't known if the "sub species" which
evolved from, Equus Caballus between 12,000 and 10,000 years
ago could have interbred, they might not have because of
no other reason than geographical separation. A rapid
rate of evolutionary change apparently was caused by the
enviornmental stress of being hunted to extinction compounded
with climatic change. The horses refered to apparently were
found in and named for separate box canyons in Mexico.
Equus Caballus Laurentis for one, if I remember corectly.
3.)I provided cites, where are yours?
>
>[irrelevancies removed]
>
>[Table showing evolution of equids from *Hyracotherium* to
>*Equus* removed: the most *recent* event in this table is
>2 My B.P.]
>
>[more on pre-*Equus* species removed]
>
>> However, one-toed
>> Equus was very successful. Until about 1 million years ago, there
>> were Equus species all over Africa, Asia, Europe, North America,
>> and South America, in enormous migrating herds that must easily
>> have equalled the great North American bison herds, or the huge
>> wildebeest migrations in Africa.
>> 
>> In the late Pleistocene there was a set of devastating extinctions
>> that killed off most of the large mammals in North and South America.
>> All the horses of North and South America died out (along with the
>> mammoths and saber-tooth tigers). These extinctions seem to have
>> been caused by a combination of climatic changes and overhunting
>> by humans, who had just reached the New World.
>> 
>> For the first time in tens of millions of years, there were no equids
>> in the Americas.
>
>Note well the dating.  *Until about 1 My ago* there were many
>species of horses.  *Nobody* thinks that there were *Homo sapiens*
>in the New World 1 My ago.
Please note that Kathleen Hunt caries on down to the Pleistocene
and finishes with the phrase
"These extinctions seem to have been caused by a combination of 
climatic changes and overhunting* by humans, who had just reached 
the New World.* 
The Quaternary period from about 1.5 MYBP to the Present
which is where Kathleen ended her graph with a tree
is divided into the Pleistocene which ends about 10,000 BP
and the Holocene. For horses and man to be linked in the
new world you can't go much farther back than the end of 
the Pleistocene.
>
>[3 species of zebras removed]
>
>>      Equus caballus, the true horse, which once had several subspecies.
>
>Subspecies aren't species.
>
>[P's wild horse and 2 species of asses removed]
>
>> In North America Equus Caballus developed into a number of species
>> to fill the niches of other animals going extinct sometime before
>> it went extinct itself.
>
>Which was in the 1 My time frame, not the 30Ky (or 11Ky) time frame.
>Or do you think 60,000-90,000 years negligible?
No, read the sentence again:
"These extinctions seem to have been caused by a combination of 
climatic changes and overhunting* by humans, who had just reached 
the New World.* 
> 
>> >Mr. Whittet is plainly smoking some unusual juice here.
>> 
>> Research first, then post.
>
>Understand what you read, too.
That's good advice...:)
>
>-- 
>John Cowan     
steve

In article <328C94C2.71B9@ccil.org>, cowan@ccil.org says...
[most snipped]
>[P's wild horse and 2 species of asses removed]
                                  ^^^^^
More, more!
(I'm sorry, but one gets few opportunities as golden as this!)
Brian M. Scott

In article  seagoat@primenet.com (John A. Halloran) writes:
>
>In article <56dpr3$r14@news.ycc.yale.edu> bdiebold@pantheon.yale.edu (Benjamin
>H. Diebold) writes:
>>Anyway, your word number arguments should not be accepted. Miguel has
>>posted several excellent posts demonstrating why your repeated claim that
>>word count is isomorphic with language sophistication is bunk.
Answer:
>This is not true.  It is easier to learn Biblical Hebrew than it is to learn 
>Modern Hebrew because they had a smaller vocabulary back then.
I am not so sure that it is "easier" to learn Biblical Hebrew; that is a 
personal matter.  Some people learn a living language much faster than a 
written one in a new writing system.  In any case, vocabulary is not the 
hardest part of learning a language.  The volume of words in Biblical Hebrew 
and modern cannot be readily compared, as the written text has a limited 
stylistic and rhetorical horizon and cannot be used for evaluating the full 
vocabulary of spoken language in antiquity.
>At the time that the Sumerians invented writing (ca. 3200 B.C.), they had a 
>vocabulary somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 words.  And a number of these 
>words describe Bronze Age inventions, so earlier the word count was smaller.
That is quite incorrect.  The first writing system is not a full represenation 
of any spoken language, but a new semiotic system.  It has hardly any verbs 
and was devised to notate only a limited official set of transactions.  There 
is no way that one can use this material to evaluate the vocabulary of a 
language.   We will never be able to evaluate the full vocabulary of 
Sumerian, and it is not even clear if Sumerian was the sole language spoken 
in the area, nor what the relationship, in socio-linguistic terms, was 
between the "language" of the first texts and any spoken in society.  Some, 
including the members of the Berlin team that is publishing the first 
texts, refuse to take a stand on whether the language underlying the 
tablets is indeed Sumerian, although others (including this writer) think 
there is enough evidence that it was some register of Sumerian.  The idea that 
social complexity requires, or engenders larger vocabulary is completely 
unsupported by any research that I am aware of.  If the US is any indication, 
the reverse seems to be the case.  Many people I run into seem to have a ver 
small vocabulary built around the word "like," with the occassional addition 
of "you know"  (not a scientific observation--I know!).   Moreover how 
does one evaluate the size of a vocabulary?  Individuals in a speech 
community have various levels of active and passive vocabulary 
knowledge, as do different groups, in statistical terms.  Gender, 
status, profession, etc., all have an effect.   In literate societies 
words that are longer used in speech are preserved in written language, 
etc.  
This kind of social evolutionary ideology is very much in the 
same theoretical frame as 19th century IE historical linguistics.  Norman 
Yoffee wrote a very nice essay in American Antiquity a decade or so ago on 
this kind of social evolutionary theory.
>>Also, Steve's "theory" (I think it lacks enough supporting data to even
>>make this level), does not account for the incredible variety of human
>>language, such as the some 60 *families* of languages in New Guinea
>>*alone* (a group of societies that never really urbanized, by Steve's
>>standards, until historic times, if then).
>>Naturally, a conception of language as predating all those things would
>>have no difficulty whatsoever with any of these objections.
reply
>This is also not true.  Lacking any other model for language origin than the 
>descent model perfected by scholars of Indo-European, linguists operating in 
>the current paradigm can see no way for a language to arise other than by 
>permutation of an older language, so they extend this ad infinitum back into 
>the past.  Actually, the more economical explanation for 60 families of 
>languages on a small island is that the concept of language diffused to 
>separate clans each of whom basically invented their own vocabulary 
>and grammar.
This is a red herring meant to bolster a strange theory about Sumerian.  
There are various models of language development that are not all based on the 
original tree model and quite a bit of discussion on language contact, 
diffusion, etc.  The incredible explosion of Creole studies is also linked to 
an interest in language "creation", but to set up the models of IE from the 
last century as a straw man and  to insist that any older theory, by 
definition, must be wrong, is not much of an improvement.  The historical 
reconstruction of the development of IE has been, in general terms, quite a 
success, as has been the study of the history of Afroasiatic, Uralic, etc.  It 
is only when one has families, or isolates, that are not well documented, that 
all sorts of unsupportable theories can be proposed without any rigor or 
control.  Just because other related languages have not survived does not 
obviate models of historical linguistics formed on the basis of attested 
families.

Jo Glazier wrote:
> 
> Saida wrote:
> >
> > saraswati@vossnet.co.uk wrote:
> > >
> > > Does anyone have any up-to-date information about the identification
> > > of the 'Elder Woman' found in the tomb of Amenhotep II as Queen
> > > Tiye?  The analysis of the hair samples from Tutankhamun's tomb
> > > with those of the mummy seem to indicate that it is Queen Tiye,
> > > but apparently the 'edler woman' is too young to be Tiye.  Anyone
> > > heard anything new?
> >
> > DNA samples have been taken from the royal mummies to confirm, among
> > other considerations, their identities.  Since female mummies are
> > crucial in this work, one can safely assume, I think, that the "Elder
> > Lady" has been included in the study.  For more information, and a
> > hypothesis regarding his work, see Scott Woodward's article in the
> > Sept/Oct 96 issue of ARCHAEOLOGY magazine. (Maybe you can even read this
> > article online).
> 
> I've heard that there is some speculation that she could be
> Ankhesenamen.  (Apparently this was based on her age).  I wish I could
> remember where I had read this....
I proposed this possibility in my article "A Tale of Two Tiyes", which 
was on this newsgroup and can now be found in Deja News.

Steve Whittet wrote:
[actually, my summary of his claim]
> >        3.  Horses evolved 22 new species to fill the niche
> 2.) Comment 3 above is a quote from a phone conversation with
> Bruce MacFadden. It isn't known if the "sub species" which
> evolved from, Equus Caballus between 12,000 and 10,000 years
> ago could have interbred, they might not have because of
> no other reason than geographical separation. A rapid
> rate of evolutionary change apparently was caused by the
> enviornmental stress of being hunted to extinction compounded
> with climatic change. The horses refered to apparently were
> found in and named for separate box canyons in Mexico.
> 
> Equus Caballus Laurentis for one, if I remember correctly.
Ah, now the claim is that 22 subspecies of (true) horses
evolved in the New World between 12KyBP and 10KyBP.  This
claim is actually moderately plausible, since subspecies
are very much in the eye of the beholder.  As you say, it
is hardly possible to determine from a bunch of slightly
different skeletons whether or not the subspecies could have
interbred: nevertheless, if a vertebrate paleontologist
goes on record with the term "subspecies", he implies that,
in his best judgment, they could have interbred.
> >>      Equus caballus, the true horse, which once had several subspecies.
> >
> >Subspecies aren't species.
You don't deal with this point at all (admittedly, I buried it
too deep).  It is fairly easy to get agreement (at least for
extant species) on species boundaries.  It is often very hard to
get agreement on the number of subspecies, or even on whether the
category is relevant at all.  Taxonomists can be "lumpers" or
"splitters" (just like linguistic taxonomists, no surprise).
-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban

mcv@pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) wrote:
>Lemnos stela:
>side B reads, starting from the top left:
> HOLAIEZI:PHOKIASIALE:ZERONAITH:EVISTHO:TOVERONA
> ROM:HARALIO:EPTEZIO:ARAI:TIZ:PHOKE:\
> ZIVAI:AVIZ:SIALKHVIZ:MARAZM:AVIZ:AOMAI
>A reads:
>(vertical lower right line:)
> HOLAIE:Z:NAPHOTH
>(top right:)
> ZIAZI:
>(bottom horizontal line and up:)
> ZIVAI
> EVISTHO:ZERONAITH
> SIALKHVEI.Z:AVI:Z
> :MARA.Z:MAV
>(bottom left, two vertical lines)
> VA.M.ALA.SIAL:ZERONAIMORINAIL
> AKER:TAVARZIO
>(S and Z are two varieties of s, as found also in Etruscan.
> PH, TH and KH are single letters)
>Woudhuizen reads:
>1. A. Zivai sialkhveiz aviz maraz-m av(iz aomai)
>   B. Zivai aviz sialkhviz  maraz.m aviz  aomai
>     "Sivai of sixty and five years       died?"
>comments: I'd connect  with Etr. am(u)- "to be" (amu-ce 
>"he was").  There is an Etr. infinitive(?) in -e.  A past participle
>might work here...
>2. A. Holaiezi  naphoth Zlazi
>   B. Holaiez   phokiasiale
>     "of Holaie [son? of Sla][the Phokaian]"
>   A. vanacasial Zeronai Morinai.c
>     "during the kingship in Serona and Myrina"
>comments: the Lycian masc. name Sla is gratuitous, and as I don't see
>any other initial clusters in the text, it goes against the spirit of
>Lemnian.  The text reads "ziazi" (dare I say "clearly"?).
***Yes, you may :) Clearly
>In "vanacasial" and "morinaic", Woudhuizen slips in two "Etruscan
>spelling" C's which are totally unjustified: the middle "l" is exactly
>the same as the final "l" in "vamalasial" (Beekes reads: "vanalasial").
***There is very clearly a M, not a N,  in 'vamalasial', you must
admit, looking at the drawing in both Beekes and Woudhuizen..
**I must say that ALL these 'inverted L' signs are nastily close to
each  other - also the one in Holaiz on side A! It has not the small
'roof' as on side B. Thus one has on side A only Ls [small roof] and
on side B only Cs [big roof]. But as the name Holai appears on both
sides, there are two options:
a) There are no Cs in the text at all, and L is written inconsistently
on both sides [on side A with small, on side B with big roof]
b) The C and L are written consistently with large vs. small roof
[and incidentely the one appears only on side B, the other on side A],
and the big roof in Holai on side B is an error.
I guess you choose a, Woudhuizen b [he doesn't clearly states so; and
in this case it should be 'vanacasiac']. 
Neither option seems totally satisfactory. The whole problem lies in
the Greek variants of the script:
In Argos the C [G in Greek case] was written as inverted L with big
sloping roof [in Ionia the roof was straight], while in Ionia and
Corinth the L was written thus [see: B.F. Cook - Greek inscriptions,
British Museum]. So I also do not see why the straight roof in 
'eptesio' is rendered as P and not C, if the sloping roof must be L
[in all Greek scripts, the P had a  gutter at the end of the roof, so
to speak :)]. 
So in my eyes it is a mess anyhow - what we would need is person
without any interest in the text, but with a vast knowledge of old
alfabets, being locked up in a room with a microscope and the original
stela for a day or two...and then come up with a judgement on the
L/C/P s. For now, the jury seems out...
>The connection with Greek (w)anaks "king, leader" does not hold, I
>think.
>3. A. evistho Zeronaith  aker tavarzio
>   B. Zeronaith evistho       toveronarom  haralio
>     "he held? at Serona  ?   governorship municipial?
>comments: Woudhuizen doesn't really understand these passages, and
>neither do I.  There may indeed be a connection with the Etruscan
>magistracy "teverath".
>4. B. Zivai Eptezio       arai          tiz  thoke
>     "Sivai (son) of Epte for community this erected"
>"phoke" or "thoke" has been discussed. I think "eptezio" can be
>connected with "tavarzio" and "haralio",
**Agreed, rather likely they are a group
>and this -io ending would to me
>seem the likeliest equivalent of the Etr. past tense -ce.  I guess.
***Or, looking at their alfabets,  Lemn.  -o = Etr -u , and thus 
rather Lemn -io = Etr -u  [= Beekes: participium perf.].
They also could indicate titles - if you look at the number of
professions/titles in Etr. ending in -u .
However, note the suffixes seems rather -zio and -lio!
Woudhuizen  regards it an adjectival formation -azio
/-alio, which has a perfect pendant in Etruscan -as(i)/-al(i),
that also alternate! I think this is very likely indeed.  
Cf Beekes p. 101-102 for original *-asi/-ali
>[thues = own?]  I expect Latin funerary inscriptions also to use
>"pater suus" sometimes.  And, as I said, it fits in the Pyrgi bilingual.
>It would be interesting to do a search for t(h)u(v)- in Pallottino's TLE
>(Testimonia Linguae Etruscae, AFAIK the last important scholarly book to
>be written in Latin [but there's really very little of it]), to see if
>it occurs elsewhere.
**After reflecting, I retract 50% of my support :-} 
1) I only now realize you are following Beekes
who thinks that 'mech thuta' = 'pecunia sua'. But the text supplies no
real basis for such an equation! Moreover, his suggestion clashes with
his own notion of 'mech rasna' = 'res publica'[>republic]. And you
cannot ride two horses... The Latin 'res' [=matter, case, state of
affairs]  did have a *secundary* meaning of 'capital, money' in some 
[fixed?] expressions [like 'res familiaris'], but to just go
transfering that into the Etruscan seems far too speculative.
More natural is Woudhuizen's: 'mech thuta' = 'mech rasna', as the word
'tuthi/tuti/tuthiu/tutiu/tutina' = "of the state, of the people;
public" is generally accepted, thanks to Umbrian 'touta/tuta'="people,
state", Lycian 'tuta', and general IE *teuta ='people' [like in the
Germanic Teutones, Mysian Teuthrania]. So -a is nom. ["state,
people"], -i is gen. ["of the state, public"]. Only the first 'th' is
a problem, but as also the second th alternates with t, I do not feel
this is a big problem.
2) If 'thuta' in Pyrgi means "[from?, out of] his own", and 'thues'
in TLE 619 means "for his/their own", then the root seems rather
'thu-'. And in the Etr system of declension this would get:
nom.   gen/abl.  dat.     acc.           loc.
thua    thu(e)s     thue    thu(e)n      thu(e)i
Making the -ta  inexplainable?
The 'thues' of TLE 619 would fit.
Of course there exist 'thui' = 'here' 
[common on graves: "here rests.."]
which could be the locativus of thu-?
So thu- being a pronoun of some kind?? Pronoun
of place? [if such a thing exists]
    'thues sians' = "for this.......here"??
Well, I simply wouldn't know....
But I would only agree with a 'new' notion
about 'thues' [whatever its exact meaning;
'new' in it not being 'two'/'one'], but not
in your linking it upo with 'thuta'!
>True, "Sun" is usil (IE *sa:wel- as everybody knows by now), and the Sun
>goddess (!) is Ca(u)tha (Might be a Greek loan, cf. Lat. cauterium, <
>Grk kaute:rion "branding iron", from kaiein "to burn").  
***The latter is an interesting and original suggestion. 
Beekes only records the gloss *kautam = solis oculum "eye of the sun"
as the Etruscan name for the millefolium flower. 
Is there no 'higher' level  [PIE] for the Greek
word 'kaioo'[<*kawjoo]? So it does not have to be a borrowing.....
>> What is the basis of your notion of 'snuiaph'? Only this text and its
>> context? 
>Yes.  All I can say is that -aph looks like an ending, and so snuiaph
>"feels" more like "greater" than like "equal", which I think are the
>only two general translations which are adequate at that place.  Again
>something to look up in TLE.
***Perhaps that "greater than" ending is also present in the numerals
semph, cezp, nurph = 7,8,9    ??
But i do not see how exactly:
1) sa = six - > sa-aph - semph = one more than six = 7, 
but ciz=3th -> ciz-aph = cezp then would be 9? while generally
accepted as 8. 'nurph' remains unexplained.
2) Or perhaps the system works rather like this, with two hands:
esl, zal= 1 --> sa=6, the 1st finger on the other hand added, 
'finger 1 on the other side' as it were
ci=3 ----> cezp = 8, the three fingers on the other hand are added, "3
more"
But that leaves semph and nurph unexplained. Although there is a vague
ressemblance of these with PIE *septm and *hneun - vague indeed!
Oh, what an orgy of speculation! :)
I confess "Guilty!"....
>>And why do you render ''-chva' as '-count'? And not as a
>> collective as Beekes does?
>I can't translate a collective.  But that's more or less what I meant by
>"-count".  I couldn't just translate it as a plural, not after having
>insisted to you that the plural was -(a)r :-)
<> 
apparantly it is confession-time <:-)
regards, 
Aayko Eyma

In article <19961109183200.NAA19303@ladder01.news.aol.com>, grooveyou@aol.com 
says...
>fasion that I sted before.I will not even mention  the historical murder
>record of the genetically inferior, less pigmented peoples of the earth.
If we're so "genetically inferior" why aren't the "genetically superior" more 
pigmented people running things? Stopping us? Survival of the fittest baby ... 
nature don't lie. Genetic superiority if there is such thing is evidenced by 
success ... not failure.

>100714.1346@compuserve.com (GuR) wrote:
>>Mr. Velikovski made in his book "The people of the sea" the statemant,
>>that the Egyptian Pharao Ramses III. has not lived in the 1200BC, but
>>around 375BC. Together with this statements he arrangend the sequence
>>of the Egyptian kings since the Hyksos in a new way.
>>
>>I have never heard, if his sequence has been proved with
>>radioncarbon, thermoluminescens or any other physical method, or if
>>his ideas found their way to Egyptology.
***No they didn't. Only his notion that the Dark Ages could be fake
has had followers in the profession:
*James et al - Centuries of Darkness, 1991, isbn 0-224-02647-x
* Rohl - A Test of Time, 1995, isbn 0-7126-5913-7 
Both have received more serious attention than Velikovsky did, and
generated a lot of debate, but they are not followed by the majority
[99.9%?] of historians. Note that Rohl properly acknowleges
Velikovsky's pre-runnership in this No-Dark- Ages idea, but James et
al. are shamefully silent [while even the cover of their book is
virtually the same as Velikovsky's "Ramses II!]
Both chronologies agree with Velikosvsky's on two points:
- no Dark Ages, shortening of Lybian Dynasties
- Exodus at end of the 13th Dyn, ca. 1450, start of Late Brons 
But the disagree on these points: 
- as they do not make the Hyksos period as lenghty as Velikovsky,
their 18 dyn is dated  differently:  between 1300-1050 [James] and
1200-950 BC [Rohl]
- the 19th and 20th dynasty just follow the 18th: 1050-825 BC [James]
and 950-? BC [Rohl)
So they do not accept Velikovsky's dating and suggestions for the
18-21 th dynasties.
The point of the successiveness of 18-19-20 dyn is very important:
 it is well established by Egyptian genealogies.
So also the 'neo-velikovskians' of the [CAH] society do not follow Velikovsky in his theories about
the 19 th and 20th  dynasty!
- they hold on to his work about the 18th dynasty and the shortening
of the Dark Ages
- as a result the 19th+20th  dyn fall about 860-700 BC.
So you see, there are at least 5 competing chronologies around:
A- the , having 
              High 
              Low 
       varieties
B- the , having   
           1 James et al
           2 Rohl 
       varieties
C- the , having  
          1 'moderated'      -  CAH
          2   'pure'              - Velikovsky himself     
       varieties
They form a spectrum in the order they are listed, in regard to the
dating of the 19th dynasty:
from high to low:    A-B1-B2-C1-C2
And recently a 6th one is coming up at the horizon
D - the 
being based on
-the notion that icecore and dendrological evidence
shows a major vulcanic event about 1650-1625
-many want to link that with the Thera erruptian
-the Thera eruptian is archaeologically linked
with the start of the 18th dyn.
Meaning that this would not be a shortening of the Conventinal
Chron, as in the cases B and C, but a lenghtening.... An equally
if not more 'nightmarish' idea....:)
Chronologies by the dozen -     
What a mess, uuh? :)
I hope this gave an overview/impression.
regards
A.K. Eyma

On Fri, 15 Nov 1996 19:23:29 GMT, chiksika@tir.com (chiksika) wrote:
>Xina  wrote:
>
>>There was no "Flood" of the bible. There is NO archeological,
>>geological, or biostratographic evidence.  Next....
>
> While I have no intention of involving myself in this "debate" and
>admire your dueling with a closed mind who seems to think they have a
>direct channel to god him/herself,many cultures have a flood
>myth/story. Chinese,Sumerian,Chaldean,Mayan,Norse, and Native American
>cultures all have flood sories that have been handed down.My native
>tribe(Shawnee) has a flood story. Now I don't intend to sit here and
>call this absolute "proof",however my personal studies have shown IN
>MOST CASES there is at least a certain amount of truth in this type of
Rivers flood. Most cultures have spent a lot of time around rivers. See
below.
>data. At the end of the last ice age there was a tremendous amount of
>water which was either directly melted into the various bodies of
>water or through evaporation found it's way into the atmosphere. I
>find the POSSIBILITY of a flood type event highly probable.Also keep
There is no possibility that the flood event described in the bible
(Global, lasted for a year, covered all land) happened. The described
ark could not have held all the species of life that existed 4,000 to
5,000 years ago. There is no geological evidence. There is no
archaeological evidence, there is no paleontological evidence. 
>in mind that while biblically the involvment was
>world-wide,potentially the involvement coukld have been limited to the
>worlds various coastal plains and low lying areas! At the time little
>was truly known as to what the world even was;) I Do agree with you
>wholeheartedly though on the various dates and ages;o)
The end of the ice age is not a good candidate for this though. The end
of the ice age "flood" was not sudden and did not recede. Apparently,
there was a major flood in the fertile crescent that was the foundation
of the Gilgamesh (borrowed by the Hebrews for Noah) flood story. 
>Thanks for my interruption
>
>Gerry b
>Red Wings Fan
>

Pan of Anthrox  wrote in article
<328B5555.55B3@tnp.com>...
> TJ wrote:
> > 
> > Jukka Korpela wrote:
> > Speaking of human remains...Remember the freeze-dried bronze-age man
> > found in the Alps a few years back. PBS did a once over lightly special
> > on him. I assume much of the research has been done, but where can I
> > find an account of the 'findings' on this guy? Any good books out, or
> > articles? With near-morbid fascination of the very old, tj
> 
> i saw a book on it at a Barnes and Nobles bookstore in new York City.
> One does exist.. i know that!
>
For the Iceman you could also try
http://dm2.uibk.ac.at/c/c5/c504/iceman_en.html

Emmett Jordan (jordan.emmett.electron@worldnet.att.net) wrote:
: George Bush and his military planners tried to turn Los Angeles
: into Alexandria the Second with nuclear tests in Nevada. They did
: succeed in inducing one earthquake that experts claimed was separate
: from the explosion, but LA did not slide into the sea. If someone
: runs a test closer though, it will.
Oh come on, if George Bush had really done that, he'd still be in office
today.  Focus groups have indicated that sliding LA into the ocean is a
big vote getter, particularly in the rest of California.  It's expected to
be a high-priority plank in Pete Wilson's 2000 presidential campaign. 
Ben B.
buckner@enuxsa.eas.asu.edu

hornowl@islandnet.com wrote:
>(snipped a bit of great and helpful information)
> Thus, Earth is probably 4 to 4.5 billion years old.
> 
> I hope that this helps a bit.
Yes, it does.  Thank you very much, Rob!
Regards!
Christina

Brian M. Scott wrote:
> >[P's wild horse and 2 species of asses removed]
>                                   ^^^^^
> More, more!
> 
> (I'm sorry, but one gets few opportunities as golden as this!)
Believe me, it gets better.  The two species in question are
*Equus asinus*, the true ass, and *Equus hemionus*,
the onager, or Asiatic half-ass.
What could be better?
ObSciLang:  For mystified non-North-Americans, the
words "ass" and "arse" (buttocks) are homophonous in
the U.S. and Canada, and are normally spelled the same
way, namely "ass".
-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban

miles@mail.iserv.net (Mr. Pink) wrote:
>While researching in school I had read a book that mentioned the fact
>that Romans had steam powered elevators?!?
>Is this true, was it a bad dream, can anyone shed some light?
>thanx
>-just a fan of the roman empire
I have heared of toy-steam-engines and temple-steam-opperated-doors,
but never of elevators. What is your reference?
Joep Orbons
------------------------------------------------------------------
Joep Orbons, P.O. box 1614, NL 6201 BP MAASTRICHT, The Netherlands
E-Mail: jorbons@xs4all.nl
Website: http://www.xs4all.nl/~jorbons/home.html
------------------------------------------------------------------

mcv@pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) wrote:
>ayma@tip.nl wrote:
>>Whatever  'thu' and 'esal' would be, 1 and 2 or 2 and 1, the last does
>>have a Lydian equivalent  'isl-' .
>Rereading this, I don't understand what you're saying.  Lydian  is
>a numeral of unknown meaning?  Must it be 1 or 2 or are other
>alternatives possible? 
***Yes, alternatives possible -  unknown numeral. My only point was:
this means that also in this case Etr. seems to link up with Anatolia,
and if we ever find some clear proof on the Lydian numeral, it could
solve the thu/esal puzzle - well, 'solve' is too strong a word,
likely. 
> If so, may I suggest "1,000"?  I'm not sure
>whether Lydian shares with Luwian the sound law /ki-/ > /i-/ (e.g. Hitt.
>kessari- "hand", Luw. issari-, isri-; Greek kheir, IE *ghesr-), but if
>it does, the word may be cognate with IE *gheslo- "1,000", Skt. sahasram
>(*sm-gheslom "one thousand"), Greek khilioi (*ghesli-), Lat. mi:lle
>(*smi: (gh)sli: ?).
***Interesting suggestion. However, the Lydain 'isl' is found "as
indication of the day in a month in the dating formula of the Lydian-
Aramaic bilingual inscription from the Sardis necropolis" [Woudhuizen,
in Talanta]. So this would rather mean a number between 1-30! The text
is Lyd.no.1 and is discussed at length by Kahle and Sommer, in
Kleinasiatische Forschungen 1, 1927, p.18-86. I do not have that
article. Woudhuizen does mention in a note that the date in the
Aramaic is "day 5 of Marheshuan", and in the Lydian it is "day -isl-
of Bakillis" - but unfortunately it is not known how the Aramaic and
Lydian months  did 'cover' each other [likely not, cf. Greek/Hebrew]. 
>Further reflections on the Etruscan/Lemnian numerals:
>Mayani (not a very reliable source) says there are also ancient dice
>arranged like:
>1-2, 3-4, 5-6
***[fixed difference of 1]
>and:
>2-4,1-6, 3-5
***[climing addition? - 6,7,8 ]
>The first arrangement is useless for the thu=2 thesis, the second one
>would lead to:
>1=zal, 2=thu, 3=ci, 4=huth, 5=sa, 6=mach.
>I'm not very happy with this arrangement, but, assuming we can trust
>Mayani on this, it does have one thing going for it: it is an attested
>dice arrangement, which the "Beekes dice" is not (or he would have said
>so, I presume).
****Actually the oldest dices found in Italy do show a variety of
combinations. Woudhuizen refers to a dice "presently  in the Villa
Giulia collection [nr. 13.350] which may serve as an analogy for the
distribution pattern 4-2, 6-3, 5-1" [ With reference to Slotty in
Archiv Orientalni 1937, no 9,  379-404.] 
So here there is a climing substraction/difference - 2,3,4.
All in all think we must conclude, that there was a big variety in
dice arrays around, and that  the famous Etr. dice is not really a
help for determining the Etr. numerals.
>So, to give them all (in Beekes order):
>1. thu  (zal? "Mayani dice")
>2. zal  (thu? "Mayani dice")
>3. ci
***100% certain thanks to the Pyrgi tablets
>4. huth (sa? "modern dice")
***huth in my eyes 100% certain thanks to Huttenia=Tetrapolis,
and the painting with demons in Tarquinia [Beekes p.54]
>5. mach (sa? "Mayani dice")
>6. sa   (huth? "modern dice", mach? "Mayani dice")
>7. semph
>8. cezp
>9. nurph
>10. sar
>20. zathrum
>30. cialch
>40. ?
>50. muvalch
>60. sealch
>70. semphalch
>80. cezpalch
>90. ?
>100. ?
>Upon reflection, I would assign muvalch to 50, with Beekes, despite the
>irregularity (one would expect machalch).  
***Why not 40?  I do not see on which your reflections are based!
Remember Luwian 'mauwa' = 4 , from IE *mei, from which also Greek  
'meioo'= 'to reduce, diminish".    mauwa ->muva=4,  muva+alch=40
In this context Woudhuizen gives an interesting suggestion as to
'mach':
*IE *penkwe='5'----> Hittite panku="assembly"
* IE *megh, Hittite mekki ="numerous", Luwian *mai, maya-(n)ti, Lycian
mi-nti ="assembly" ----> Etruscan mech = "assembly, league" 
and by analogy 'mach' =5
The full references to other scholars are in Talanta 1988 p.119; the
Etr. conclusions are of course from Woudhuizen.
So it would seem that in Anatolian 'muva'/4 meant "one less than a
full hand" and 'mach'/5'  "a full hand, all fingers assembled". How
'muva' came to be replaced by 'huth' for the lower numeral [4], but
was retained in the larger numeral [40] is not clear.
[Note: Beekes gives 'mech' as meaning 'matter, case', but that is a
mere guess by seeking analogy of Etr. 'mech rasna' with Latin 'res
publica' ; Woudhuizen would translate 'Etruscan senate'.]
>"Twenty" is zathrum, an
>independent formation (one could see za- as "2 [Beekes]" or as "10", and
>-th(r)um as "2 [Woudhuizen]", of course, but the point is that it
>doesn't end in -alch).
***I suppose it is fully independent. I do not think *zar-thunz
["ten the second time"] >zathrum
sounds very likely f.e, or *zal-thrum[?] "two-?". 
 Woudhuizen's opinion in this case I would not know.
I do not know what 10 and 20 are in Luwian - you?
> If "20" is different, then "40" is likely to be
>as well (and "20" doesn't even have to be, as Russian dvadcat',
>tridcat', sorok "20, 30, 40" show).  The number "40" is probably hiding
>somewhere in the Etrsucan corpus unidentified, and it doesn't end in
>-alch.
***You of course meant "the nummer 50 is hiding".... 
I do not feel your 'then' is very imperative.
>The ending -alch (-alchv(e)i in Lemnian) obviously bears no relationship
>to sar "10".  Mayani notes the similarity with Lithuanian -lik (and one
>might add Germanic -lif), from IE *-leikw "to be left".  In connection
>with the labiovelars, Lemnian -(a)lchv- would make an almost perfect fit
>phonetically.  But what makes no sense at all is that Baltic and
>Germanic use these suffixes for 11 (one left=eleven), 12 (two
>left=twelve), 13 (Lith. try-lika), ..., 19 (Lith. devynio-lika).  I just
>don't see what  "30" could be three left of... three hands left
>of zero??
***No, I fully agree. From the Lemnian I would say the older
Tyrrhenian ending was *-alchva, meaning that likely the collective
suffix -chva was used,  and the adjective ending -al.  So
the collective here replacing 'sar'=10.
ci.al-chva =  'thir.th-count', i.e.3 full pairs of hands. Like English
twen-ty, thir-ty  [-ty=-tig=ten]
>A curious thing about Etruscan counting is that the numbers 17, 18 and
>19 are "ciem zathrum, eslem zathrum, thunem zathrum" [the last two in
>reverse order for Woudhuizen], i.e. 3 from 20, 2 from 20, 1 from 20,
>with an -(e)m suffix, which recalls IE *mei- "less", Hitt. meiu- "4".
>27..29 etc. work in the same way. 
> It's really silly of me that I hadn't
>noticed this before on the Lemnos stele, but what it says is actually:
>"aviz sialchveiz maraz-m (aviz)".  Does that make 65?  The connection
>"mara-" ~ "mach" is not a very strong one phonetically.  Could the -m
>here be Etruscan -m "minus"?  If so, mara- would have to be 1, 2 or 3.
>Maybe 4?  Certainly not 5.  Amazingly, I am inclined to see an
>Anatolianism here, where even Woudhuizen doesn't:

> I would go for 56 >(60-4).  Not that I'm so happy with Luw. mawa ~
> Lemn. mara "4", but 1, 2
>or 3 make even less sense...  Anyway, the guy with the shield looks more
>like 56 than 65 to me (of course if "sialchv-" is really 40 or 50
>[depending on the dice], that would mean 36 [too young] or 46; or 45 or
>55, if -m is simply "and"...).
***I agree with the unsatisfactory analysis of 'maras'. Could it be
that the parts should be seperated? Why else would the word 'avis'
"years" be repeated? So more like:
"For Siva,  60 years (old);  and  at/for -mara- years  he has been
....[city govenor].....for/on behalf of Holaie of Phokai"
-i is dativus in Luwian/Lycian. 
the -m  is enclitic, and in Hittite as well as in Etruscan a slightly
adversative conjunction
aomai as you suggest related to Etr. am(u)- "to be" 
'mara' could mean 'many' or 'half' or whatever -  anything, as long
as it is no numeral 1-10 :-). Cf. the indication 'masu' in Etruscan
in combination with 'naper' [= a measurement of land] that must be
some quantative notion, Beekes [p.71] thinks 'a half' . I suppose
r>s, or s>r [rhotacism?] would be less problematic as r>ch or w>r??
>Some more Etruscan numbers:
>TLE 136:
>Larth Arnthal Plecus clan Ramthasc Apatrual eslz zilachnthas avils
>thunem muvalchls lupu.
>Larth, son of Arnth Plecu and Ramtha Apatrua, twice having been zilach,
>died 49 years (old).  [once? 48? 38?]
>TLE 171:
>Avle Alethnas Arnthal cla(n) Thanchvilusc Ruvfial zilach[nce] spurethi
>apasi svalas marunuchva cepen tenu eprthnevc eslz te[nu] (eprthieva
>eslz)
>"Avle Alethna, son of Arnth and Thanchvil Rufia; he was zilach living in
>the town of his fathers(?); he functioned as `marun'-ship `cepen' and he
>held the `pyrtan'-ship twice (twice `pyrtan')"  [once?]
>The above two I feel speak against eslz being "once".  The following has
>`thunz':
>TLE 324:
>Tute Larth anc farthnache Tute Arnthals Hathlials Ravnthu zilchnu cezpz
>purts'vana thunz lupu avils esals cezpalchls
>"Larth Tute.  Aand he was born of Arnth Tute (and) Ravnthu Hathli.  He
>was zilach 8 times and once pyrtan.  Died 82 years (old)." [twice? 81?]
>The translation "once" is saved by the preceding "8 times".
***I think you mean that the 'pyrtan' was the primus inter pares of
the 'zilach' magistrates. However, I do not see why in the 
above two texts [136/171] it could not read "he was once  zilach'
Such terms of office being carefully recorded. 
1- zilach = praetor  - found in writing variants [zilath/zilach etc.
with varyting endings]; according to Best&Woudhuizen; a title
'zelu'/'zilekuna' is used in Cyprian Linear D for some maritime
officer. In Lydian it appears as 'silukalid' and borrowed in Greek
Anatolian colonies as a title 'zelarchos' [hybrid with Greek -archos].
Here btw the Luwian traits are rather clear:
a)Luw.   ura="great" ->uranuwa ="to make great"
the factitive  morpheme -nuwa being used to verbalise nouns and
adjectives.
b) Luw. chantawat ="king" -> chantawatachi ="kingship"
the morpheme -achi being used to distinguish the magistrate in person
from the impersonal magistracy 
And this is mirrored in Etruscan:
a) zilat(h) = praetor --> zilac(h) = praetorship   
b) zilach = praetor --> zilachnuce = "he entered/fulfilled the
praetorship" 
So -ach < -achi, and -nu-/ -nv < -nuwa-
This added suffix -n- in verbs is also mentionned by Beekes p.104, but
he doesn't give an explanation for it.
2- pyrtan = praetor maximus - found in several writing variants
[pruth-, purts-,  with varying endings; also in Latinized 'Porsenna'],
and having an Anatolian origin: the Greek city-states on the west
Anatolian coastal strip borrowed it as a title 'prytanis' , in Cyprian
Linear D a title 'purarura' [*purat-ura, ura=great] seems to appear
[according to Best&Woudhuizen;], and in Ugarit a title
'chupurtanuri' was used [again uri=great].
So in both cases the titles seem to be indigenous to the Anatolian
area.
>TLE 325:
>Tutes S'ethre Larthal clan Pumplialch Velas zilachnu ciz zilcti
>purts'vavcti lupu avils machs zathrums
>"Sethre Tute, son of Larth and Vela Pumpli. He was zilach 3 times.  Died
>being zilac and pyrtan 25 years (old)."
>Beekes tries to explain this very young three times zilach and even
>pyrtan (an even higher function) by blaming it on Roman domination: the
>Etruscan dignataries had no real power anymore.  I don't know.  I would
>buy "quatre-vingt" if mach could be '4'...
***I agree with your scepsis. You would have expected a guy of at
least 20+3x5?=35. Could we only buy: zathrum = our hidden 50 
[or 40].... So he being 55. But we can't as the Liber Linteus makes
the conclusion '20' inevitable. :(
In that calender 'huthis zathrumis' cannot be anything else than '24'
- so 'machs zathrums' must be '25' - i fear.
>On this unsettling thought, I'll leave it for now...
idem.
regards,
Aayko Eyma
Holland

mcv@pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) wrote:
>mcv@pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) wrote:
>>[Lemnos stele:]
>I forgot to mention that Holaie and Sivai are almost certainly proper
>names.  
>Herodotus (4.152) talks of a Samian captain Kolaios who discovered
>Tartessos in Spain.  In 1.163, however, he had attributed the discovery
>of Tartessos to the Phocaeans.
***Woudhuizen does refer to that. But I believe he missed your link
for Sivai? [couldn't refind]:
>Cyrus H. Gordon in "Forgotten Scripts" mentions the Psychro Stone (300
>BC, Crete), which reads in Greek letters: 
>  EPITHI 
>  ZE^THANTHE^ 
>  ENETE^ PAR SIPHAI
>and in Minoan script:
>  i-pi-ti (or i-ne-ti)
>Gordon reads this as Semitic, of course: "this stone (he-piti) which I
>have given (z-yatan-ti^), Enete son of Siphai (Enete bar Sipai)".
>Doesn't seem unreasonable.  In any case, he mentions that the name Sipai
>(s-p-y) occurs in I Chronicles 20:4.  I don't seem to have a Bible...
***Foei! ;), but I checked for you: it reads "Sippai, one of the
decendants of the Refaites"  who fought in the army of the Filistines.
The link Filistines - Pelasgians is often made, and although the 
Refaites were non-Philistean but an 'autochtonian' people of Palestine
[Genesis 14:5, 15:2] - a race  on the verge of extinction [in Ugarit
the word 'refaim' is used for 'spirits of the ancestors', if I recall
well.] - it would be logical if he had a Philistinian name, when
living and fighting among them. So the name Sippai *could* well be
of Aegean origin! And thus not only in sound linking up with
Cretan Siphai and Lemnian Sivai! 
>Murina is a Lemnian town.  Serona probably was another (most likely the
>old name for the location where the stele was found, Kaminia, as
>suggested by Woudhuizen).
**Woudhuizen [Linguistica Tyrrhenica I] points to toponyms in the area
with similar elements as in Serona: Zerynthon on Samothrake, Halisarne
and Sarnaca  in the Aeolic hinterland.
There was not only a Myrina on Lemnos but also in the Phokaia area.
regards,
Aayko Eyma

CyberGuy  wrote:
>  Funny thing that the language in the Pyranees has NO
>INDOEUROPEAN ROOTS OF ANY KIND WHATSOEVER
In that case you must find it hilarious that the language in Finland
has NO INDOEUROPEAN ROOTS OF ANY KIND WHATSOEVER.
By the time you find that the language in Hungary NO
INDOEUROPEAN ROOTS OF ANY KIND WHATSOEVER you must be falling about
all over the place with laughter.......
And then there's....
No - he'd die laughing if I gave another example...
----
Robbie Langton                 Hey, this web thing's immense -
robbie@roblang.demon.co.uk     must be one HELL of a spider!

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (mcv@pi.net) wrote:
: cboulis@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Chrisso  Boulis) wrote:

: >We then devolved into giant sparrows carrying bananas
: >all over the world, in addition to coconuts!  Or maybe they
: >specialized in bananas and pineapples in the Roman periods and
: >progressed to coconuts in the Middle Ages.
: Giant sparrows would have been well advised to shun Rome like the plague
: whenever there was an imperial banquet (I guess that means permanently).
Hmmm. . .  yes, they would have made an appropriate Gustum or First
Course.  Hmmmm. Maybe the chicken wasn't chicken but Giant Roman
Banana-toting Sparrows!!! Hmmm.  :)
C.E.S. Boulis
UPMAA

PLEASE see Betsy Hill's artic le in Nawpa Pacha, ca. 1972, and related
pubs by other Columbia investigators, Don Lathrap, etc!  Some are cited im
my Amer Anthro article on Diffusionism and biological analogy in
1979.......   The Jomon-like pottery is interesting---but it evolves out
of earlier local styles in situ!!!
--John R. Cole
(now at fcattus@aol.com)

In article <56il85$3gk@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net (Steve
Whittet) wrote:
* 1.) Mans arrival in North America was about 12,000 years BP
* Though earlier dates were claimed some decades back, none of the
* 30 some odd early claims in the Americas have remained uncontroversial.
My understanding is that this isn't quite correct. I think there
are authenticated remains in Alaska earlier than this -- my understanding
is that humans lived in Alaska for some time, but were unable to proceed
until the retreat of the ice sheet slightly more than 12000 Y BP opened
an ice-free corridor allowing passage south.
  Eric Mankin

www.kfu.com/~pharvey

In article <56gmto$k7r@scream.auckland.ac.nz>,
drc@antnov1.auckland.ac.nz writes
>(A) Human language only began when people started living in cities.
>
>to the less startling
>
>(B) Vocabularies got larger when people started living in cities.
>
>Am I right about this change of position?
>
Only as long as he believes this latter position to be tenable.
-- 
Alan M. Dunsmuir
  "Time flies like an arrow -
   Fruit flies like a banana" --- Groucho Marx (as used by Noam Chomsky)

IM a  student,age of 16,serious,patient and fascinated by
archeologie.Im living in montreal,canada.
Id like to get a summer job,working on archeologie project,in
any country of this world.
If you want me to help you this summer,feel free to mail me or leave
a message to this newsgroups.If you mail me,dont forget to say
that the mail is for Charles Perreault.
Thank you

In article  piotrm@umich.edu (Piotr Michalowski) writes:
>I am not so sure that it is "easier" to learn Biblical Hebrew; that is a 
>personal matter.  Some people learn a living language much faster than a 
>written one in a new writing system.  In any case, vocabulary is not the 
>hardest part of learning a language.  The volume of words in Biblical Hebrew 
>and modern cannot be readily compared, as the written text has a limited 
>stylistic and rhetorical horizon and cannot be used for evaluating the full 
>vocabulary of spoken language in antiquity.
One would have to compare the vocabulary in a modern compilation of literature 
with the vocabulary of the Hebrew bible.  It is true that there are certain 
standardized expressions that are frequent within certain books, so it is 
easier to read because one does not encounter the kind of variety that is 
common in modern Hebrew literature.   It is also true that in ancient 
literature in particular, the prose category was a late invention, with 
literature having to belong to a particular genre to be created at all.  The 
study of literary genres is one of your fields of expertise, is it not?
>>At the time that the Sumerians 
invented writing (ca. 3200 B.C.), they had a >>vocabulary somewhere between 
1,000 and 2,000 words.  And a number of these >>words describe Bronze Age 
inventions, so earlier the word count was smaller.
>That is quite incorrect.  The first writing system is not a full represenation 
>of any spoken language, but a new semiotic system.  It has hardly any verbs 
>and was devised to notate only a limited official set of transactions.
Actually, I found 1,119 distinct Sumerian logograms, and have seen the 
estimate that by the Old Babylonian period 60 percent of Sumerian words 
consisted of compounds, making a total known vocabulary by the Old Babylonian 
period of 2800 words.
>There are various models of language development that are not all based on 
the >original tree model and quite a bit of discussion on language contact, 
>diffusion, etc.  The incredible explosion of Creole studies is also linked to 
>an interest in language "creation", but to set up the models of IE from the 
>last century as a straw man and  to insist that any older theory, by 
>definition, must be wrong, is not much of an improvement.
Studies of creolization, which is the process of expanding the structural and 
stylistic range of a pidgin language to make it into the mother tongue of a 
speech community, can shed light in an indirect way on the process by which 
early languages have gone from primitive to modern.
However, this is still only looking at how languages arise in an already 
speaking population.  In the current paradigm most linguists do not consider 
the process by which a population went from nonspeaking to speaking.  This is 
another case of projecting the present onto the past, thinking that because 
all humans now speak, all humans have always spoken and therefore the 
transition process is not one with which linguists feel they have to deal.
Regards,
John Halloran

krishnanand Khambadkone (krishna@inventa.com) wrote:
: I happened to stumble upon an article recently that 90% of all the 
: artefacts from the famed Kabul museum have been looted by the Afghan
: militia and sold to private collectors. The remaining 10% being large
: statues mainly buddhist have been blasted to pieces.  
: It greatly pains me when I read such articles.  We can never recreate
: history.  Once it is destroyed, it is gone forever. We can however 
: mass produce zillions of modern equipment such as cars, planes, guns
: etc.   
So True!
: Isn't there any International watchdog commitee that oversees 
: archeological treasures.
Yes and No.  IFAR - International Foundation for Art Research publishes
a listing of stolen art and antiquities and maintains a database as
well.  The emphasis is on art, but they are very good at getting
information out into the appropriate public arena.
The worst part about the Kabul Museum is the magnitude of the damage.
Not only were historically important objects stolen and destroyed but
the documentation was also destroyed.  The Museum was hit several
times by mortar fire.
I spoke with several people working on this problem, several years
ago.  They were trying to indentify ways of getting this information
out.  They are succeeding, but it's slow. 
C.E.S. Boulis
UPMAA

rejohnsn@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu wrote:
> 
> Last night the PBS show "The New Explorers" dealt with late Anasazi
> settlement in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest.  They
> followed a husband-and-wife archaeology team as they sought evidence to
> explain why people started building cliff dwellings between A.D. 1250 and
> 1300.
> 
> Before I go into my rant, let me say that I have a particular beef
> against this show in general because they hold up "the Scientific Method"
> as an icon of objective thought.  To give them credit, they do seem to
> understand that the SM is a process, but the way they illustrate it
> reifies popular (mis)conceptions about the nature of fact, theory,
> induction, and deduction.
> 
> Another thing they do is focus on researchers whose work can be seen as
> going against the mainstream, but, journalism being what it is, the
> grey-shaded nature of such research is reconstituted in black-and-white
> terms:  the renegade researchers doggedly pursuing Truth, opposed to the
> dogmatic inertia of the 'party line'.
> 
> This is what particularly bugged me about last night's show.  A little
> background:  the Anasazi, who built the great pueblos of northern New
> Mexico and the Cliff Dwellings of southern Colorado and northeastern
> Arizona, appear to have vanished between A.D. 1200 and 1300.  Let me
> rephrase that -- evidence of large-scale architecture, long-distance
> trade, and population nucleation vanishes at that time.  The question of
> Why? was a major impetus for southwestern archaeology (from the
> perspective of a young, westward-expanding country, the disappearance of
> a budding civilization which, had it survived, may have given that
> country the heroic past its ego so desperately wanted was a major concern).
> 
> Current answers seem to point the finger at environmental change as the
> culprit. Environmental evidence suggests that the two or three centuries
> prior (i.e., A.D. 900-1200) had unusually good growing conditions, which
> allowed the cultural elaboration that included massive architectural
> programs.  When the droughts started returning ca. A.D. 1250, so the
> story goes, the problems of farming drew people away from these 'extra'
> activities, and the heyday of the Anasazi ended.
> 
> Underlying this has always been the possibility of conflict -- that has
> been a suggestion for decades, and each generation of archaeologists have
> had to deal with it.
> 
> Then along comes "The New Explorers," following some archaeologists
> interested in the conflict theory, and lo and behold the possibility of
> "war" becomes a brand-new theory that hasn't gotten a lot of support
> because it is un-p.c.,  so "TNE" is going to show the indisputable
> evidence on national television.
> 
> The problem is, "TNE" misrepresents the current understanding so that
> conflict and environmental change appear to be incompatible.  This just
> ain't so!
> 
> 1.  The show ostensibly covered all the Anasazi, but the area actually
> covered was a small region around the four corners.  They overgeneralized.
> 
> 2.  The intial evidence was movement of people away from canyon floors
> and into cliff dwellings ca. A.D. 1250.  They certainly showed the cliff
> dwellings, but they didn't go into whether or not canyon-floor
> settlements continued (and I don't personally know).  They presented a
> biased sample.
> 
> 3.  War and environmental change are presented as alternatives.  But
> think about it:  why would people suddenly engage in conflict?  Maybe
> because environmental change had undermined crop reliability?  Granted,
> this was mentioned -- but only in the last ten minutes, after the whole
> rest of the shoe had been plugging "war".  They presented an overly
> simplistic causal explanation in an unethical way.
> 
> 4.  They hyped "war" rather than conflict.  War, as we understand it, is
> a particular kind of conflict that is resource-intensive and engaged in
> by organized polities out to dominate each other.  The kind of conflict
> that was likely going on here was raiding.  Raiding is not war, and it is
> well-documented among Native Americans.  It is not, therefore, a major
> new discovery.  They misrepresented the theory they were documenting.
> 
> 5.  This is actually a problem with the archaeologists themselves.  A few
> mesa-top villages were located that were connected through line-of-sight,
> which meant they could signal each other visually.  The arkies
> interpreted this as a "social" (rather than technological) invention:
> the invention of group identity, what we would today call tribes.
> HELLO!!  Do they SERIOUSLY think it took NINE THOUSAND YEARS for the
> concept of group exclusivity to develop?!  'Fraid not, guys: the
> circumscription of social groups has been going on for millenia.  The
> continuing restriction of territories, from the Paleoindians on down,
> means that people have been living in increasingly exclusive groups,
> membership in which carries rights to local resources, ever since the
> Paleoindians moved in.  Once land got too crowded for people to live off
> the land because nobody had a large enough territory, they settled down
> and started farming.  As farmland got more scarce, people started making
> historical claims to the land they were on:  you weren't part of the
> group, you couldn't farm there.  People developed different forms and
> types of artifacts that may have signalled group identity.  Contrary to
> what those two bozos would have the American public believe, us-them
> social distinctions are much, much older than 800 years.  Villages that
> could signal each other probably represent a defensive alliance rather
> than a tribe -- because we know from the ethnohistoric record that tribal
> membership does not guarantee cooperation.
> 
> So what probably happened?  The environment changed in the 13th century
> and the bottom fell out of agriculture.  There wasn't enough food to
> support the population and the investment in large public monuments.  The
> long-distance social networks that had supported those activities
> disintegrated.  In the absence of that cooperation, groups began to raid
> former friendly groups to get food, better farmland, or both.  Over the
> last half-century, the situation continued to decay, and people abandoned
> the area in search of (a) safety and (b) better farmland.  This is not a
> major surprise.  There is no evidence of organized warfare.  There is no
> evidence of genocide, land-hungry expansionist polities, and so on.
> 
> 6.  The argument in the show was logically flawed.  The show purported to
> explore theories for why the Anasazi vanished.  They held up warfare as
> the emergent best explanation.  Unfortunately, the researchers they
> followed found conflict to be an explanation for *why people moved onto
> cliffs and mesas*, not why the Anasazi vanished.  If you pay close
> attention, here is the researchers' argument:
> 
> People suddenly moved onto cliffs and mesas.  Why?  To escape conflict.
> Why was there conflict?  Environmental decay.  That is, environmental
> change led to conflic, which caused people to move into hidden spots.
> While conflict may have been the immediate reason for the abandonment of
> the area, the conflict probably would not have happened had the
> environment not gone sour.  Ultimately it was environmental change that
> was responsible.
> 
> What "TNE" argues, however, is:  The Anasazi vanished.  Why?  "Was it...War?"
> This is oversimplistic, unethical journalistic pandering to the Ivory Tower
> strawman that our scientifically-illiterate population likes to pummel in
> defense of superstition and prejudice.
> 
> The tragedy is that this show perpetuates such misunderstandings in the
> guise of documenting the scientific method.  Last night did a real
> disservice to archaeologists.
> 
> Cheers,
> Rebecca Lynn Johnson
> Ph.D. stud., Dept. of Anthropology, U Iowa
 I saw the show too and thought very much the same.  One question though, 
you say >>There is no evidence of organized warfare.  There is no
evidence of genocide, land-hungry expansionist polities, and so on.<< yet 
the show seemed to say that there was evidence of whole villages being 
destroyed and murdered (bashed-in skulls, etc.).  Is this true?  They 
seemed to imply that it was for other southwestern sites also.
Best Wishes,
Steve

>Granules removed from various areas of the skull-like protrusion
>have revealed, during microscopic examination, the presence of
>Haversian canals (the distinguishing difference between my petrified
>bones and your concretions).
>In any event, I accept your apology for admitting that you were wrong
>about where the specimen came from.
>Meanwhile, be prepared to write another apology -- perhaps sooner than
>you think -- for recklessly and callously calling The World's Most
>Important Fossil a rock.
This just has to be the longest lasting load of old rocks so far perpetrated 
on the archaeology groups in the Net.
Again, are these canals that -you- see in the 'skull' the same as the 
ones in the 'bones' that have so far avoided scrutiny by researchers in the 
field???
I'll start the ball rolling by calling your  --worlds' most important fossil-- 
 as another simple construction of a concretion.

In article <564ljb$ol4@news1.io.org>, yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
>George Black (gblack@midland.co.nz) wrote:
>
>: True : The first problem with such a theory is, of course, even if the
>Chinese were : an oceanic seafaring people, they are, as the maps
>illustrate :-)))  on the : wrong side of the South American landmass.  :
>
>Irrelevant. If they could cross the Pacific, they surely could cross the
>isthmus. 
I have no reference on the subject at the moment but I believe that there were 
many deaths from Malaria and Yellow fever at the digging of the Panama Canal.
Any people unused to the conditions of the area would suffer from those 
conditions surely. (I know :-)) don't call me surely)
>: And a long, long way away.  There should be, if the Chinese got to the : 
>Americas, a number of artifacts that are associated with such a people : 
>present. 
>
>"Should be" according to you? Argument by omission: invalid.
Argument by omission?? When people move from one area to another they take 
their current technology with them.
These movements of people throughout Europe and Asia is proven by the 
archaeological strata they leave behind.
For example:
The Chinese left a fair amount of material around the coasts of Japan when 
they attempted to invade.
>"The trail of evidence" from Asia to the Americas has been abundantly
>documented in this newsgroup. 
True.  Through the Bering Strait area and, according to some dated sites 
in America, well before the Chinese were casting fortunes on animal shoulder 
blades.

In article <328CEE15.5C46@ccil.org> John Cowan  writes:
>Believe me, it gets better.  The two species in question are *Equus asinus*,
>the true ass, and *Equus hemionus*, the onager, or Asiatic half-ass.
Or as we parodied a Russian opera when we were children *,
	Eugene the Onager, the Wild Ass of Arabia
>ObSciLang:  For mystified non-North-Americans, the words "ass" and "arse"
>(buttocks) are homophonous in the U.S. and Canada, and are normally spelled
>the same way, namely "ass".
Not quite.  There are people in this country who know and use the word "arse"
(and many Americans think that this is a development rather than a retention).
The use of the word "ass" for "arse" is an example of dysphemism, in which the
euphemism has come to have the associations of the original, in this so com-
pletely that many native speakers are unaware of the existence of the older
term.
*Children of an opera singer/director/professor--forgive us our light moments.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_

mankin@bcf.usc.edu (Eric Mankin) wrote:
>In article <56il85$3gk@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net (Steve
>Whittet) wrote:
>
>* 1.) Mans arrival in North America was about 12,000 years BP
>* Though earlier dates were claimed some decades back, none of the
>* 30 some odd early claims in the Americas have remained uncontroversial.
>
>My understanding is that this isn't quite correct. I think there
>are authenticated remains in Alaska earlier than this -- my understanding
>is that humans lived in Alaska for some time, but were unable to proceed
>until the retreat of the ice sheet slightly more than 12000 Y BP opened
>an ice-free corridor allowing passage south.
>  Eric Mankin
  From discussions I've seen in the literature, the various sites that turn up
in Alaska may not actually be any older than 12,500 y.a. (approximately
contemporaneous with Clovis); I think the carbon dating evidence/stratigraphy
is still somewhat controversial, but that hardly anyone thinks that there were
humans at those sites before 15,000 y.a. 
  Any latest opinions on those Alaskan sites? 
   Jonathan Adams

In article , Herdsman
 writes
>This must have been before they moved to New Jersey.
>
>Maybe back in the Y.A. Tittle Days?
>
Its back, close the hatches, lock the doors and windows, tim sutter has
been thrown out of alt discordia again.
-- 
Shez                                      shez@oldcity.demon.co.uk
The 'Old Craft' lady               http://www.oldcity.demon.co.uk/
------------------------------------------------------------------

Group,
I would love to find evidence of contact for it would make the world an
even richer place for it.  Don't those of you who constantly detract
understand we are not working under extraordinary conditions simply to
prove what has already been learned?  Field archaeology is difficult, often
hostile, work.  It's easy for you detractors to sit back in your ignorance
and say we're wrong, we're myopic.  If we're so wrong why don't you get off
your collective asses and volunteer for projects and help us raise funds? 
Until you do you're not worthy to even discuss the subject.  In fact, why
don't some of you take a trip to the library and do some oh soooooo
boooooring research? It would be a pleasure to discuss Mesoamerican
archaeology with a larger number of informed individuals in this news
group.
Paul Pettennude  
Peter van Rossum  wrote in article
...
> In article <56gn91$ncl@beetle.privatei.com> bartjean@henge.com (Bart
Torbert/Jean Dupree) writes:
> >In article <01bbd0ed$09fca740$b494d9ce@tekdiver>, tekdiver@ix.netcom.com
> >says...
> >>Yes, Yuri.  David is a Master of Shang script as well.  Why don't you 
> >>email him up at Harvard?  He shares space with an interesting fellow
named 
> >>Ian Graham.  I don't know if you've heard of either David or Ian.  My
guess 
> >>is you probably haven't since you posed the rather uninformed question 
> >>below. The fact that you did pose the question strongly suggests that
you 
> >>ought to do more reading before you do all of the writing you have
done.  
> >>There's an old proverb about  remaining silent and keeping people
unsure 
> >>of your ignorance as opposed to broadcasting it to the world as you
seem 
> >>intent on doing.
> [deletions]
> >>Paul Pettennude, Ph.D.
> >>Maya Underwater Research Center
> >
> >Watch it Yuri! This guy is dangerous!  He is packing a !!!!PH.D!!!!.  He
> >might get angry at you and get a couple of his !!!EXPERT!!! friends to 
> >throw !!!BIG WORDS!!! at your.  OOOOH THAT WOULD HURT!
> 
> Better yet he might just throw out gobs of facts backed up by extensive
> field research which seems to document that the cultures of Mesoamerica
> developed without any significant outside impacts.
> 
> >I am sure that Dr. Pettennude is just trying to be oh-so politically 
> >correct.  
> 
> I think Dr. Pettennude is simply trying to be FACTUALLY CORRECT.  Other
> posts by Dr. Pettennude indicate to me that he is willing to consider
> the *possibility* of outside contacts but like most scientists he would
> like to see such possibilities backed up by verifiable, objective data.
> 
> >It is not nice to suggest that the Indians would need outside 
> >consultants to create the high cultures of MesoAmerica (I guess as 
> >compared to the low cultures the rest of them muddled along with, the
poor 
> >dears).
> 
> Are you aware of the fact that there are legends from North American "low
> cultures" (whatever the hell that means) of strange contacts as well.  So
> how come these "consultants" were only able to bring "high cultures" to 
> the people of Mesoamerica, and portions of South America?
> 
> >I know when an academician wants advice on a matter he turns to other 
> >academicans.  After all who else could be an "Expert" on the matter.  In
> >this case maybe all these whiz-kids should do something real radical
like 
> >ask the Indians themselves what they think about the whole mess and 
> >whether their dignity needs protection from a bunch of white guys
running 
> >around in long dresses and funny hats(that is academic robes to all you 
> >plebes).  I have asked such questions and the answers have been most 
> >surprising.
> 
> What the hell do you think we do while we're working out in the middle
> of frigging nowhere?  We discuss things with the local populace.  Most
> archaeologists are very interested in the views and opinions of people
> from other cultures (we are after all trying to understand the lifeways
> of people from very different cultures than our own).  Why don't you
> take some time to contact some archaeologists, I think you'll find that
> they are a very mixed lot with a wide range of opinions on virtually 
> any topic.  One of the few topics where there is widespread (although
> not unanimous) agreement is that there is no good evidence of extensive
> Old/New World contacts prior to the 16th century.
> 
> >I was privilaged to attend of gathering of Indian elders last year where
> >the whole topic of Diffusionism was under discussion.  The Indians in 
> >attendence just about covered all the types there could be.  There were 
> >folks with Ph.D.'s in history and anthropology (doesn't that make them 
> >some sort of "Expert" in whose presense us mere mortals are to quake in 
> >our boots-- I guess all experts are not created equal), traditional
tribal 
> >religious leaders, and some of the scarier names in AIM.  None of them
had 
> >any problems with the idea that non-Indians got here long before
Columbus 
> >and had profound influence upon their ancestors.
> >
> >They don't have a problem because their own tribal lore contains many 
> >tales of these early visitors.  They know that somewhere under all the 
> >moralizing and entertainment frills of oral traditions, there are some 
> >gems of historical fact.  They seemed to appreciate the fact that some 
> >folks were starting to get at the same historical events from another 
> >angle and providing new perspectives to the matter.
> >
> >So maybe the academics need to refer to "Experts" before making any sort
> >of comments themselves.
> >Bart Torbert
> >bartjean@privatei.com
> 
> If they can show verifiable, objective evidence of Precolumbian contacts
> then archaeologists will be willing to accept the idea that such contacts
> occurred.  Why do you think there is now unanimous agreement that there
> was a brief contact between Vikings and Indigenous groups in
Newfoundland?
> What archaeologists need, however, are solid artifacts - not legends
which
> can be interpreted in many ways and often contain elements that have no
> basis in fact.
> 
> Instead of just slagging insults and innuendo, perhaps you would care to 
> enlighten us as to some of the evidence which documents such contacts.
> 
> Peter van Rossum
> PMV100@PSU.EDU
> 
> 

On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, at 10:41:55, Eliyehowah cajoled electrons into this
>Your dinosaurs versus my dinosaurs.
Choice of weapons......Dinosaurs at dawn!
>NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. THIS IS NOT YOUR CASE OR THIS MEETING HAS CLOSED.
Fingers are crossed...
>THIS CONVENTION IS CLOSED if 
Toes are crossed...
>Not only have I seen my mother's Watchtower,
That explains much.
>PUBLIC NOTICE: this convention is now closed.
Loud cheers can be heard!!!!  The sun comes out.  Birds are singing.
God is in his heaven and all is well with the world!  :)))
>[1938 AM]
That's right folks, don't touch that dial!!!  This is Pyramid Radio
broadcasting to you on 1938 kHz.  Here is the weather report:
A warm front is moving in from the West.  There will be severe flooding
which will wipe out all life on Earth.  Better blow up your inflatable
chests guys and round up those animals.  Don't forget to take along a
few trees for the dogs!  See you in the post-box period!
>One buries crap, they dont shove it in their ears.
A lesson which you seem to have ignored.
>Okay, seems you caught my point...convention still open.
Loud sighs can be heard.  The sun retreats behind the clouds.  Birds
fall silent.  Darkness descends and yet another inconsequential,
unsubstantiated tirade will surely follow! :((((((((((((((
>The chronology is Watchtower chronology. Our first parent Adam was
>created in 4025 BC and lived 930 years (flood came in 2370 BC as 1656 years).
Did you hear that guys???  You're all wrong!!  You've all been wrong all
these years!!  This chap has the truth!!  He alone knows the TRUE
history of the Earth.  When asked what he put his longevity down to,
Adam replied, "Clean livin' sonny, a good woman and that fruit diet!"
>So Xina, you are absolutely
>valueless if some scholar would send you into the world to gather data.
Yeah, a contention is only valid if you accept it without seeking
evidence to substantiate it.  This logic also explains much.
>And as Paul says my weapon is my tongue,
Stand down the paramedics!  Close the field hospital.  No casualties
expected!
Marc

After scanning the latest BAR, a few questions that have always
intrigued me popped up
1) How many graves have been found? The article mentions thousands, in
at least two graveyards, but how many have been excavated? 
2) Is there a possibility that perhaps some of the graves are symbolic
(spiritual death, or death of an initiate's former life)? ( A long
shot I know...)
3) Is there a possibility that if the Essenes were in fact also
"healers" that the large number of graves were in fact the failures to
do so? Could Qumron have been both a spiritual and physical hospital?
4) Just how many graves are of women and children? From what I've
read, the percentage of woman and children to total graves hardly
recommends itself to the theory of non-celibacy. I would think even a
hundred women and children among a thousand men would prove that women
and children at Qumron were an exception, not the rule. And,
mathmatical extrapolation aside, how can one be sure, without opening
all the graves, what gender or the age is in what grave? Would the
women be buried seperately?
5) There were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people
crucified in Palestine. The latest I've read (Charlesworth) mentions
once again that only one skeleton has been found with crucifixion
wounds. Why? Is it because the very means of this type of death meant
that the bones were scattered by scavengers? I've read that the
victims of some mass crucifixions at least were buried in common
graves. Why have none been found?
6)  A bit off topic, but can anyone recommend a source for the
relationship between the Book of Revelation and the Roman conquest of
Jerusalem and emperor worship.