Subject: Re: Grandma Nefertiti
From: Saida
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 09:33:56 -0600
Chrisso Boulis wrote:
>
> Saida (saida@PioneerPlanet.infi.net) wrote:
>
> a lot of interesting things and many complex ideas. I do have a couple > of comments, observations, etc.
>
> : Among the other interesting articles in the current issue of KMT (one of > : the most beautiful ever, pictorially) is a piece about the
New York > : Met's display of Amarna art--"Images of Beauty From Ancient
Egypt". > : Included in the display is a full-body statuette of
Nefertiti I have > : never seen before. It is on loan from the Egyptian
Museum in Berlin. : In this sculpture the queen is either totally nude
or wearing a > : transparent open robe of some sort that does not cover
her breasts in > : any way. On her head, instead of the tall, blue
crown, she wears what > : appears to be a helmet-like hat. Although
Nefertiti's body still seems > : fairly youthful, her lovely face is
actually ravaged--much older than it > : looks in any portrait of her
that I am aware of.
>
> This sounds extremely interesting. I'll have to check it out.
>
> : In the statuette,
> : Nefertiti, unless she was extremely ill at the time of its execution
> : (her figure certainly doesn't look wasted) must have been a bare minimum > : of forty years old. Nowadays, most forty-year-olds don't
look that bad. > : If I were to hazard a guess at the age of the woman
just from the > : wear-and-tear on the face, I would put her from 45 to
50--nearer 50. > : And not a well-preserved 50.
>
> : How do we reconcile such an advanced age for Nefertiti with the Amarna > : period in general? Not easily, if you ask me.
>
> One thing to remember, Egyptian art was rather stylized. Real age was rarely > shown; dignified "maturity" was. The Amarna period was not
conventional > by Egyptian Standards. I've always felt that they at
least tried to show > the real person more than the other periods.
Perhaps the face of this statue > as such a representation, while the
body falls into the stylized tradition.
Chrisso, I think that Amarna art, while stylized to a degree, is
probably more reliable than the portraiture of any other Egyptian era,
although other artists in various times did (and succeeded) in showing
the individual characteristics of their subjects. Nefertiti is always
recognizable in her sculptures even though few are clearly marked as
being of the queen--and only in one is she wearing her famous tall
crown. As far as we know, we have a very young Nefertiti (on front
cover of KMT), older but with beauty intact (the Berlin head), various
ones starting to show aging and the one I am referring to, which
portrays only the bleak remains of beauty. These portraits indicate a
progression, it seems to me, an indication that the sculptors of this
era were committed to realism and so were the patrons. There is
absolutely nothing flattering about the statuette in question. It is of
an aging and bitter or aging and sick woman and not a young one under
any circumstances, IMHO.
>
> : Recently, we had a little discussion about the "Elder Lady" as Queen
> : Tiye and the question of the age of the mummy at death came up. I said, > : as far as I know, the "Elder Lady" has dark hair without any
gray (I > : challenge anyone to show me a direct quote that says
otherwise). In my > : opinion that would make the mummy fairly young as
dark-haired people > : often go gray before the age of forty.
>
> Here's a conundrum for you to comtemplate - I'm Greek. My dark brown
> haired grandmother was in her 60's and had become serious ill before she > started to go gray. My brown haired aunt went white in her teens.
My > grandfather - a redhead, went completely white before 30. My
mother, > also a redhead was still all red in her 60's. Genetics,
disease and age > all factor into the graying of hair making it not the
best indicator of age.
You're right, Chrisso, it isn't the most reliable. Maybe I'm just going
by my own family. We're Jewish, all have dark hair (mostly black)--but
nobody on either parent's side has dark eyes, which I always found kind
of interesting. Everybody got gray early. I, having the lightest hair
of my sisters (dark brown) held out the longest, but around forty, I got
some gray, too.
>
> : Yet the conventional wisdom says that Nefertiti died or disappeared
> : after Year 12 of Akhenaten's reign. Let us say that Akhenaten became > : co-regent with Amenhotep III at 13, a man in oriental terms.
He is on > : the throne 12 years later, which makes him 25 at the time.
How do we get > : a dying or disappearing Nefertiti at this point who
is, herself, around > : 25 but, in her last portraits, looks above 40?
>
> I've seen some pretty old look 25 year olds living in villages in northern > Greece. I've also seen some really old looking middle aged
women who have > spent a lot of time on the beach.
Perhaps life is difficult in those villages, whereas I don't think it
can have been so bad for the Queen of Egypt. The greatest sorrow of her
life probably was the death of her daughter after which, I'm sure, she
was never the same. About the effects of the sun, you are absolutely
right.
(snip)
> What I'd like to know is how much time Egyptian Royalty spent outside
> in the Egyptian sun for personal reasons (sport?) or traveling or
> in religous activities, etc. How did they protect their skin against the > elements when they were outside. They didn't have uv protection,
but they > didn't pollution either. There are a lot of pictures of
naked children > in gardens. If they started "sunning" early, then yes,
their skin would > have shown the age. On the other hand, people from
Mediterranean (including) > Egypt) climates do tolerate sunlight better
than say Scandinavians.
Or Semites with very pale skin! I have avoided the sun all my life and
some of my sisters wish they had now. I feel that noble Egyptian ladies
kept the sun off with parasols. To be "tanned" was not "in", I have the
feeling. Nefertiti, in her famous bust, is painted a pinkish flesh
color.
>
> I've rambled on long enough. I'm going to start craving beach instead of > a museum basement if I'm not careful!
Try living here in Minnesota ;->
Subject: Re: Diffusion of Sanskrit (was Re: The Coming of the Greeks)
From: joe@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein)
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 10:07:35 -0600
Thanks, Mr. Whittet, for a post which copiously fills in background
material re 1st-millennium B.C. South Asia. I will be snipping much but
not all. I'll be adding a lot of details where I think you're wrong, or
where I think you over-simplified, or just where I think more details are
appropriate.
This is a MONSTER long post...
In article <56ttis$cbl@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net (Steve
Whittet) wrote:
>In article , joe@sfbooks.com says...
>>
>>In article <56pnj1$jf6@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net (Steve
>>Whittet) wrote:
>>
>>>What is perhaps more interesting is to note that the Indus Valley
>>>Civilization connects to the painted greyware culture of the Ghanges
>>>at Dehli. The Ghanges leads to Calcutta where the painted greyware
>>>and Bang son Drum culture of Indo China meet as the Aruna flows
>>>into the Ghanges. The head waters of the Aruna bring you up into the
>>>mountains where the headwaters of the Mekong and its tributaries flow
>>>from Xizang, Quinghai, Sichuen, and Yunnan, to Vietnam, Laos, Thailand
>>>and Burma.
>>
>>I think I saw something about the relations among Indus, Ganges, and
>>Euphrates earlier that I'll want to comment on, but not without looking at
>>a source or two first; I'm not at my best with topics older than 1000 BC
>>in that region.
>
>The earliest farming in India was on the Kachi plain west of Mohenjo-Daru
>in the 7th millenium BC. In the Vindhyan hills south of the Ganges it
>started in the 6th millenium BC. At any rate the bulk of the early
>settlement is in the river Valleys of the north of India and not on the
>Deccan Plain where there is some evidence of cattle pens dating to the
>3rd millenium BC. Time Atlas of Archaeology p 88-89
The references for the Deccan plain have to do primarily with a key-site
called Inamgaon. The report is, I believe, listed under M. K.
Dhavalikar's name; another prominent figure who was involved (I think) is
H. D. Sankalia. There are other copiously researched sites in that
region, under Sankalia's leadership, and at least one other has been
published. I only wish Sankalia had been more important in the national
archaeological scene; the work of the Deccan College at Pune under him was
for decades unequalled elsewhere in the country, and although his focus
was primarily on much earlier periods, as it is working outside the
geographical mainstream his *leftovers*, so to speak, were quite
significant. That is: as you say, the Deccan, while fascinating, does
not appear to be a "mainstream" culture until quite late, and thanks to
Deccan College we have lots of evidence to back up this claim. We have
every reason to believe Asoka Maurya ruled the region for at least a
while, but it doesn't appear to have been that closely tied to the north
in material culture much before his time. (I do think the Jains and
perhaps also Buddhists got there sooner though.)
I know the Vindhyas are usually the earliest claim for agriculture in
India; although the 6th millennium seems a bit early to me, it wouldn't
greatly surprise me. I'm going back to Northwestern shortly to look at
some of this stuff and will try to get some details. Also, my original
post did actually get sent to the Indology mailing list, where a short
discussion pointed to some references and web pages. When I return to
this thread (in a day or two) I'll try to summarise in both directions.
I'm disappointed that up until now Moin Ansari hasn't shown up, as I'm
fairly sure he's been working on this stuff rather more than I lately.
Please note that Mehrgarh, which I assume is your reference to the Kachi
plain, is *not* in India but in Pakistan. I recommend not confusing the
two in discussions like this as it can get people quite upset. It's also
worth mentioning that the sequence of Mehrgarh, Pirak Damb, and a couple
of more-forgettable Harappan and Iron Age sites, is by far the longest
sequence of occupation in one place known to us (given that digs have not
generally been done straight through the mounds under major Indus valley
cities!). Discussion of ancient South Asia is made necessarily more
speculative precisely by this fact: it's generally accepted that this is
a case of luck with the rivers of the Indus watershed, which have usually
not spared such sites so effectively.
>I have the Indus Valley as first settled by farming groups c 3500 BC
>and the first walled towns emerging during the next millenium.
I'd push that farming date back *considerably*, since Mehrgarh isn't
really all that far from there. I'm also dubious about the 3500 BC date
for another reason: dates you cite below look innocent of radiocarbon
calibration.
[snip Southeast Asian stuff]
>The question is can we connect northern Thailand and Burma with
>Calcutta at the mouth of the Ganges? The route runs up the Aruna
>to the headwaters of a fan of rivers running into China and Indo
>China. The key site is the Chou Dynasty city of Babona on the Mekong
>where it is adjacent to the Salween leading north to the Aruna.
I have no objection whatever to assertions of contact between early
Southeast Asia and early South Asia. You may recall that I've asserted
both rice farming and iron technology reached the Ganges valley via
Bengal; this is prima facie an assertion of at least indirect contact.
Moreover, it's worth noting that Makkhan Lal's settlement archaeology
studies establish clearly that early settlers in the Doab favoured
riverbanks. For obvious non-nautical reasons; but the fact tantalises.
I'm just arguing that Harappa, the PGW folks, and your Bong son Drum
people were not next-door neighbours on the land. This fact, I think, is
significant because it entails other facts: Harappa and PGW were not
contemporary; there were other populations in between each of the pairs.
Moreover, the fundamental material cultures of at least Harappa and PGW
have *strong* in-place roots going back millennia; while I don't want to
reject all diffusion, I do want to be pretty damn careful about diffusion
hypotheses, which have tended (using diffusion from the west) to lay waste
to South Asian archaeology for the past couple of centuries.
>In India at this time there are cultures on both the Indus and Ganges.
You're none too clear as to *which* time. You've been citing periods from
something like the 7th millennium BC forward.
The Vindhya hills are not normally considered to be "on the Ganges". It's
precisely the arrival of farmers *from* the Vindhyas, into the Ganges
valley and the Ganga-Yamuna Doab, that is a watershed in early north
Indian cultures. To the best of my recollection, that was dated (when
last I was current) in the 3rd millennium BC.
>The largest cites are Harrapa and Mohenjo-Daro, each covering some 60
>hectares. These really look like two separate cultures to me.
Um... On what basis? At what period? You list a bunch of sites but
don't explain this remark.
Normally, the "uniformity" of Harappan civilisation has been considered a
hallmark of it. I'm perfectly prepared to believe this is just as untrue
as most of the stereotypes of that civilisation (e.g., "theocratic"), but
I'm not at all prepared to believe that Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were two
entirely separate civilisations without some serious evidence from you.
[snip]
>Alamgipur are actually on a headwater of the Ganges, the Yamuna.
The Yamuna, aka Jumna, is an extremely long river. Calling it (or the
Sutlej or Chenab) "headwaters" may be correct in some technical language I
don't know but is a mite confusing.
My own confusing lingo, by the way: A doab is the piece of land between
two rivers that meet (or maybe just between two rivers in general). The
Doab, when I speak of such, is specifically the land between the
Ganga/Ganges and the Yamuna/Jumna, the heart of Uttar Pradesh in the
middle of northern India. It should be easily found on any map now that
I've explained what the word means...
[snip list of sites which includes Rojadi=Rojdi]
>Of these Lothal is on the Mouth of the Mahi which leads to the Chambal
>running into the Yamuna and the Ganges.
Um... First of all, please be aware that some of the sites you mentioned
are at least somewhat controversial as to their Harappan affiliations.
Moin Ansari would in fact go on at *great* length about how they're no
such thing (much of the debate he and I had back when was, in fact, due to
some lack of clarity in his argument about this, and a resulting
misunderstanding of mine). The site report for Rojdi is simply amazing in
the way it *argues* for the site's Harappan-ness.
I'm no specialist in the IVC, and I wish one were here. All I can really
do is say, I don't think you've backed up your statements adequately. I
don't really intend to pursue this chunk of this thread very far
(hopefully Mr. Ansari can pick up from me) --
largely because I've yet to see *anything* I find a convincing evidence of
Harappan contact with Gangetic cultures other than the Ochre-Coloured
Pottery folk of the third millennium BC, who in turn are essentially
irrelevant to the later history of the region.
I repeat: Postulated links between Harappan cultures and Gangetic ones
are signs of bad radiocarbon date calibration. I'm prepared to be
disproven on this, but I've yet to see the disproof. Certainly it isn't
at Lothal or Rojdi.
Name me an item of material culture which you postulate reaching the PGW
peoples from the "late Harappan" region around Gujarat (on which the
Allchins' book which you cite below has an excellent though now dated
discussion). Then we can pick this one up again.
[snip]
>By 1000 BC the focus of interest had shifted to the Ganges. With the
>demise of the Harrapan cities at the beginning of the 2nd millenium BC
>the cultural center of northern India shifted eastward to the Yamuna
>and Ganges valleys.
Um, um, um, no...
What gets dug in Pakistan is Harappan-period cities because they're the
flashiest thing Pakistan has. They're what attracts interest, they're
what attracts tourists, you get the idea.
What gets dug in India is Iron Age cities because India just doesn't have
much to offer from the Harappan era.
Unfortunately, this leaves the (postulated) relations between them more
than a little in the dark. But that's our fault.
Given the existence of Taksasila and Puskalavati (that's Taxila and
Charsada to us heathen), it is *way* too emphatic to call the Yamuna-Ganga
region "the cultural center of northern India", especially as early as the
second millennium BC. I'm happy to see someone agreeing with me that it
*matters* that early. But I won't buy "cultural center" until sometime
between the Buddha and Asoka Maurya.
>>That said... You're throwing around the "painted greyware culture" way
>>too freely here. This is probably because you have a source or two which
>>does (plenty of non-specialist ones do, and too many specialist ones), but
>>still, what you've said remains misleading without your intending that.
>
>Painted greyware is dated 1000 BC to 500 BC and has been found
>at Taxila on the headwaters of the Indus. [snip]
Painted grey ware lasted past 500 BC, I *think*. Back to this in a day or
two. When last I'd heard, there was no confirmation that it was done
before 800 BC, but I'd hardly be shocked to hear 1200.
>Northern Black Polished ware is 500 BC to 100 BC
>and reflects the shift to the east.
No. Northern black polished ware, first of all, was made in the east
before they stopped making painted grey ware in the west. I'd bet it was
made before 600 BC, in fact. Both wares are, in any event, fairly
straightforward decorative styles of the underlying pottery technique and
forms (dish and bowl assemblage) which originated - here's your shift to
the east by the way - in the Doab in the 2nd millennium BC.
It's too easy to get misled by these potteries just because they're
spectacular. The reason I keep insistently pointing you at King 1984
(reference in previous post) is that she states concisely what becomes
obvious anyway if you read enough site reports.
PGW culture is a culture characterised by a bunch of things like
dish-and-bowl assemblage, scarce iron remains, mud-brick construction at
most, a fairly low level of urbanisation if any (there is some though!),
you get the idea. Oh, and ashes everywhere, just all through the sites.
Many PGW sites have painted grey ware; others have black-slipped or
black-and-red ware, or two or three of these; a few actually have Northern
Black Polished Ware. The identification of PGW culture with later Vedic
texts is devastatingly clear: these are the folks who wrote the
Brahmanas, the first Upanisads, etc. See Vibha Tripathi's book, or see
Romila Thapar's .
NBP culture is a culture characterised by other things. One of these is
Northern Black Polished Ware, usually; others are, e.g., little terracotta
toys that may be the first chessmen; ring-wells; consistent mud-brick
construction and often baked bricks; higher prominence of urbanisation;
etc. It's reasonably clear that this is the society of the Tripitaka.
By Maurya times (3rd century BC) Northern Black Polished Ware has
generally gone out of use, and there are other significant differences,
with which I'm less well acquainted.
>This is characterised by rice farming and iron tools c 1000 BC. By
>600 BC no fewer than 16 small states had developed in northern India
>on the Ganges. By the end of the 1st millenium BC Buddhism had become
>the most prominent religion in northern India.
Um, those 16 small states are hardly all small (one of them occupies most
of Maharashtra, for example, not my idea of the minor league). Also, note
that they're a textual datum, not an archaeological one; it's thought that
they may be an idealisation of a consistently more fluid situation.
>Here we could digress into a discussion of the Bakh of the Zotts
>but only if you have read "Bury Me Standing" by Isabel Fonseca.
Nope. Still, what is the Bakh of the Zotts?
[snip]
>>I know of no reports of painted grey ware as far east as Calcutta,
>
>The ports shown as recieving painted greyware on the Bay of Bengal
>include Sisupalgarh and Tamluk which is at the eastern extremity
>of the Ganges delta over which spreads modern Calcutta
You got me. Shoulda checked my sources.
I still think Sisupalgarh is pretty late, though. I've got a paper or two
on it at home, which I'll check when I can.
Tamluk, I have no serious references on, but maybe Northwestern will fix
that for me.
>Sites listed include Charsada and Taxila on the Indus, Rupar,
>Hastinapura, Ahichattra, Atranjikhera, Cosam, Chirand, Rajjgir
>on the Ganges, Bairat, Uijair, and Nasik running through the
>Deccan plain to the Deccan coast of the Arabian Sea; Tamluk and
>Sisupalgar on the Bay of Bengal.
Hmmm. Some spelling stuff.
Ahichattra is more often spelt Ahicchatra or even Ahichchattra.
Rajgir has only one j.
Ujjain has only one i and no r. (Oh, also, Bairat, Ujjain and Nasik are
in Malwa, not the Deccan. They're north of the Deccan proper, which is
quite far south and still, in PGW times, quite a different region
archaeologically. They're also a little bit funky for a PGW culture, and
I really wish there were a properly published site from Malwa...)
Sisupalgarh usually has an h.
Isn't transcription fun?
>> I think I've heard some reports, questioned but still reports,
>>from Bihar; the furthest east I'm confident it's been reported is
>>something like the middle Doab. Vibha Tripathi wrote a book about this
>>ware which is still considered standard, I believe, but you can probably
>>just check Ghosh's encyclopaedia or Allchin's new book for something this
>>basic.
>
>I know of their books
I gave references to Ghosh and Allchin in the post starting this thread.
I can e-mail it to you if it's difficult for you to recover; it's got most
of the references I'm citing.
I'll give full reference for Tripathi when I get back to this thread; I
expect to have a bunch of new references then and would rather conserve
effort.
>B and FR Alchin, "The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan"
>Cambridge, 1982,
That's two Allchins. I was referring to the one whose blurb you cited below...
>"The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia"
>
>The Emergence of Cities and States
>
>Allchin, Raymond
[snip blurb detailing the contents of this book, which everyone should
certainly read and I soon will...]
>Contributors: G. Erdosy, R.A.E. Coningham, D.K. Chakrabarti, B. Allchin
>
>Do they have something more recent out?
Not that I know of. When I talk about "Allchin"'s book, I mean that one.
The other is both of them; that one is, more than half, just him.
>>The culture which is well shown in King's study to be a unified culture
>>whether or not it had painted grey ware, doesn't reach a whole lot
>>further, as I recall.
>
>This is a development of the 1st millenium BC, where the Ganges
>seems to have replaced the Indus in importance.
Nope. It's born in the 2nd millennium BC when those farmers show up from
the Vindhyas. Re your "importance" remarks see above.
(Should I mention that the Vedic texts of the first millennium BC
consistently refer to the Indus' Taksasila and Puskalavati as very holy
sites, while dismissing Bihar on the Ganges as bad territory?:-)
[snip again]
>>The other connection you draw, between the Indus Valley Civilisation and
>>the PGW folks - well, I assume you mean the Indus Valley Civilisation that
>>produced Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, right?
>
>Those I see as two separate cultures; both a bit earlier than the
>period we are talking. I think the Tamluk, Pataliputra, Mathura
>period is a better fit.
That's *really* late.
Mathura, I'm not sure about, nor Tamluk. (Though I seem to recall B. B.
Lal being just stunned at how young Mathura turned out to be...) But
Pataliputra was a new city in the 5th century BC.
At this point, however, I've lost track of what exactly you're talking about.
>>Won't work. Despite some controversy about its date, PGW isn't *remotely*
>>old enough for PGW people to have direct contact with Harappans.
>
>The Harrapan city of Rupar was still in business c 1000 BC and
>that is apparently in the range for painted greyware. That was the
>period when the power shifted from the upper Indus to the upper Ganges.
Power? Heavens, no. Not in a political sense. At 1000 BC we just don't
have a political map with which to do that kind of stuff!
Also, I'd be very surprised if Rupar were either still a city or still all
that Harappan by 1000 BC. Give me a day or two though...
[snip me]
>The Formative period culminated c 2000 BC introducing the Mature
>period which lasted until c 1000 BC
If you mean Harappan periods, no. Bad radiocarbon dates putting it
*mildly*. I don't know of any "Mature" period that ended 1000 BC north of
the Deccan.
The pre-Harappan phases have a disconcerting tendency to change their
names, and I'm not sure what Formative is supposed to mean. But the
Mature Harappan is generally considered the era of the great cities, and
that, with calibrated radiocarbon dates, is something like 2500-2100 BC.
[snip]
>>PS Is your reference to Delhi just a place marker, or do you know of any
>>digs there? I'm curious.
>
>Modern Dehli is close to where ancient Alamgirpur was located as the
>easternmost outpost of the Harrapans.
Stupid me, again. Yep. Alamgirpur (I'm not positive of that spelling...)
is the Delhi site.
Til later
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, free-lance writer and bookstore worker joe@sfbooks.com
speaking for myself and nobody else http://www.tezcat.com/~josephb/
Subject: Re: "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" was Re: Urban Villagers: was Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
From: joe@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein)
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 10:49:15 -0600
In article <56q3d0$7ut@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net (Steve
Whittet) wrote:
>In article , joe@sfbooks.com says...
>>
>>Sigh, what an *embarrassing* place to do the foot-in-mouth thing in...
Um, had I known that this opening line would be blazoned across five
replies (so far), I'd have been *much* more reluctant to apologise, you
know.
I might add that the remark about your having gone past introductory
courses was uncalled for. I've never hidden the fact that the vast
majority of reading I've done, relevant to this newsgroup, was done in a
few years and outside any specialised training. I believe on one occasion
I devoted a whole post to explaining that.
That said. The first of the two research projects that occasioned that
work, I *began* with a series of citation searches. I may not have been
superbly informed, but I *was* thorough. When I say that people I cite
have respect, I have some basis for it.
Whether or not I got past the introductory courses.
[Oops. I just snipped some reference lines. An odd number of
greater-than signs is Mr. Whittet, and an even number is me.]
>>>Yes, I note that you are apparently less than familiar
>>>with the jargon of disciplines involved. We need to establish
>>>a basic working vocabulary. To begin with, the classic definition
>>>of an urban area which I gave you comes from Jane Jacobs
>>>"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" Vintage Books, 1961
>>>
>>>Might I recomend to you as well:
>>>"Introduction to Urban Planning", Cantonese and Snyder,
>>>"The City in History", Lewis Mumford
>>>"Good City Form", Kevin Lynch
>>>"An Introduction to Urban Design", Johnathan Barnett
>>
>>Well, here we have it.
>>
>>The norm, in the works I've studied, was essentially to dismiss
>>Jacobs and Mumford as archaeologically ill-informed and as
>>unworkably focused on modern cities.
>
>I guess it depends on how you adjust your focus. If you see
>cities and urbanism as recent developments on an evolutionary
>scale which goes back 200,000 years, and you see how important
>it is that the rate of change is changing at an increasing rate,
>then Jacobs point that nodal cities were and are an anachronism
>in the larger scheme of things is worth some consideration.
I thought it was clear from my prior post, but let's try again:
I concede that Jacobs' points, as you describe them, are relevant to my
discussions of urbanism. I will go further and say that definitions of
urbanism which fail to account for the modern American urban forms are
guaranteed to fail, whether or not this exponential rate of change you're
so fascinated by is relevant.
I AM AGREEING WITH YOU ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS DATUM AND THE FACT THAT
IT'S "WORTH SOME CONSIDERATION", OK?
So will you *please* let me do so and move on?
What I am trying to move on *to* is that there is a separate set of
studies, largely about archaeological cities and often by archaeologists,
which works from utterly different definitions, such that I *could* spend
two years solid studying this stuff, and still end up not even seeing the
books you cite as basic references. You have two options at this point.
You can decide that I was a hopelessly useless researcher, and anything I
say is worthless because I haven't read Jacobs.
Or you can do as I'm trying to do here, and try to see the other person's
point of view. Which is, in this case, *quite* differently informed from
yours.
[snip some unclear dialogue, in which, however, I do say: the people I
read dismissed Jacobs.]
>>Since I understood Jacobs' book to be about modern cities only,
>>I saw no point at all in looking further.
>
>If thats all you got out of it, go back and read it again.
Let's keep trying...
What I got out of the people I *read* was, I didn't need to *read*
Jacobs. (Et al.)
So I didn't.
You have (believe it or not) persuaded me that this was a mistake. As I
think about this, it may significantly alter the confidence with which I
talk about "urbanism", here and elsewhere, and it may even lead me to read
the book (or the others you cited).
Need we really go another round on this? I very much doubt you can
persuade me to post "mea culpa" three separate times. Watch out. I may
just go read all your cites so as to come back and argue viciously against
you, just out of sheer irritation, if you keep this up. Why not accept
that you have actually persuaded one of your opponents, in an argument on
this newsgroup, that something you said needs investigating, and leave it
at that?
>>Well, silly me. I admit it. But you know, those archaeologists
>>had some points too, and I'd recommend looking into their work
>>if you're going to talk about "urbanism" on an archaeology newsgroup.
>
>Basically "urbanism" is a sociological concept, so when I talk
>about it I take off my green architects eyeshade and put on
>my social psychologists rose coloured glasses so I can be as
>optimistic as possible.
I wasn't talking about glasses. I was talking about specific writers whom
I was fairly confident you hadn't read. In one rather astonishing case,
below, you proved me right.
>>Thanks for the references, which are evidently useful as starting points
>>in correcting my error. In return, I will recur to Haas, but also (with
>>some reluctance) to Elman Service's 1975 book >Civilization>.
>
>Elman Service, "Classical and Modern Theories"
>Elman Service, A Century of Controversy. 1985, Academic Press.
Thanks. Hadn't seen this one, which apparently came out just before my
own research.
>Service uses the terms band, tribe, chiefdom, and state,
>to describe social organization whereas I prefer the
>old fashioned oikos, gene, phrater, polis
>or household, clan, brotherhood, body politic.
>
>check out http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/arch/arch1/sum5_1.html
Again, thanks. Service's terms (which you recur to below) are, by the
way, not that extraordinary in anthropology. I'm quite certain they
aren't original with him; I suspect that particular schema goes back to
Julian Steward, but the basic idea goes all the way back to Morgan and
Engels, I believe.
>Service, Elman 1975
>Origins of the State and Civilization: the process of cultural evolution.
>Norton, New York.
>
>[The perception that you are not a part of the decision making
>process being of course, the very definition of alienation]
Um, actually, Service is known in anthro circles for putting an unusually
nice face on early civilisations (his favoured example, e.g., being Egypt,
which looks like the best of the lot from the commoner's point of view).
Fried sees them as much nastier. Fried's is usually typecast as a
"conflict" theory while Service's is something cheerier like 'consensus'.
[snip Fried discussion & Redman cite]
>> Or if you're feeling ambitious, try Paul Wheatley and
>>Thomas See's .
>
>My suspicion is his work would be focused on evidence for the
>development of the actual physical infrastructure of the city
>as opposed to urbanism per se.
Wrong. and are
both heavily focused on the latter. Oh, and the former, if I remember
right, argues vehemently against Mumford (one of your cites).
I would not go so far with regard to , and am
not sure whether he's published another book since (I know he's been
working on Muslim cities).
>Is Wheatley still teaching Middle East Urbanism at the U of C?
>Urban hierarchies, early Islamic cities, ancient Near Eastern
>archeology and medieval Islamic history?
Hmmm. He may be. I believe that course was always by appointment only,
grad students only, so I never got very near it.
I first got interested in this topic, actually, because I knew that Paul
Wheatley, who lived in my dorm, had written a book about ancient China, a
prior interest of mine.
However, we never wound up discussing it. I heard of his interest in the
Muslim city from another source.
I would be simply astonished if, at the same school as has the Oriental
Institute, he taught a course covering ancient Near Eastern archaeology,
by the way. Maybe I should try calling and find out.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, free-lance writer and bookstore worker joe@sfbooks.com
speaking for myself and nobody else http://www.tezcat.com/~josephb/
Subject: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
From: whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
Date: 23 Nov 1996 16:57:07 GMT
In article <575k9a$1c1@reaper.uunet.ca>, sshankar@waterloo/border.com says...
>
>Loren Petrich wrote:
>>
>> In article <32931066.253E@waterloo.border.com>,
>> Sanjeev Shankar wrote:
>> >Loren Petrich wrote:
>>
>> >> of a lot of overland journeying. Consider how Sanskrit arrived in India
>> >> -- over a LOT of mountains in what is now Iran and Afghanistan.
>>
>> >Yes, how did Sanskrit "arrive" in India??
Why not begin with the evidence of contact between peoples and
move to the possibility of the transmission of language rather
than begin with a belief taken on faith. There is no archaeological
evidence of any transmission of language in prehistoric times.
There was not a lot of overland traveling. Prior to the development
of extensive networks of roads in urban areas most long distance
travel was by river raft, barge or boat.
Prior to the domestication of animals people generally went no
farther from home than they could walk.
Languages prior to the developing pressures of a sedentary urban
lifestyle appear to have had relatively small vocabularies. perhaps
on the order of one or two thousand words.
Subsequent increases in the number of words may well have drowned
out the echos of earlier speech. How influential is a vocabulary
core of a thousand words once the language begins doubling?
What we are looking for is a period of increasing urbanization,
communication and transportation. The existence of trade routes
up the Persian Gulf between the Indus valley and Mesopotamia
needs to be compared in this context to the fantasy of an Aryan
invasion.
Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens. essentially modern people have
lived in India continuously for from 400,000 to 200,000 years.
As late as 15,000 BC the Persian Gulf had not yet begun to flood
and India was still connected to Arabia by the Euphrates river
valley and to Africa by what was then a lush Arabian savannah.
Farming arose by the seventh millenium and by the 3rd millenium BC
we already have in India several racial types, Negritos, Dravidians,
proto Australoids, Mongoloids and western Bracycephals.
There is little overland traffic through the mountains prior
to the end of the 1st millenium BC. There is some lapis which
gets backpacked out of Afghanistans mountains as far as the
headwaters of the Indus and Oxus rivers and then delivered by
river to traders for further transhipment.
The Amu Darya or Oxus flows along the border of modern Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan to the Aral Sea. Its headwaters come close to Modern
Kabul. The Indus Valley civilization had an outpost at Taxila
on the headwaters of the Indus which was also close to modern Kabul.
That is the extent of the connection. Were there hordes of horsemen
wandering through the mountains of Afghanistan before Alexander
the Great came to visit in the 4th century BC?
The earliest known culture in the region between the Amu Darya and
the Syr Darya were the Zaman Baba who established two villages named
Dzhan-Basa-Kala and Kavaat where the Amu Darya reaches the Aral sea
between 4500 and 1800 BC and another named Kotcha between 1800 and
1200 BC. Later they established three more villages farther upstream
between c 1800 and c 1200 BC at Muminaba, Gudzheyli and Tashkent.
None of these villages were in the mountains, all were located
in the Amu Dayra river valley which flowed to the Aral Sea.
This was an isolated culture which was first reached by the
bronze age metalurgy of its closest neighbors the Namazga,
who were settled along the Atrak river defining the northern
border of Iran and draining into the Caspian, c 1200 BC.
Generally the steppe culture known as the Andronovo culture
arises between c 1800 and c 1200 BC in very isolated clusters
Half a dozen villages in a fifty mile radius along the banks
of one river and then another half a dozen villages clustered
in a fifty mile radius along the banks of another river 3500
miles away being associated by the fact that both used horses,
metals, pottery had wheeled vehicles and buried their dead.
By c 1200 BC these were common denominaters of most sedentary
cultures from China to Britain and from the Baltic to Africa
and India so we may as well include them as Andronovo cultures
also.
It is also worth note that every one of these cultures is
organized in a cluster of villages along a river, and none are
spread out across the steppes, thus shading in the areas
between rivers and calling it one culture may be inappropriate.
>> Its speakers were pastoralist nomads that carried their language
>> from the Russian/Central-Asian steppes across the mountains to India.
There are no pastoral nomads carrying anything across the mountains
to India. By c 1200 BC the pastoral nomads settled on the plains
around the Aral and Caspian seas may be recieving metals and lapis
from Mines in the Pamirs, but the evidence suggests they are just
recieving trade goods and transhipping them rather than actively
going up into the mountains and mining metals on their own.
Here the settlement patterns are a good clue. Clusters of villages
usually around the mouth of the river, settlements upriver are few
or none, the vast majority dated c 1800-1200 BC. Along the Indus
there are some clusters of settlements upriver in Afghanistan
around Mundigak.
Cattle and horses seem to come into India along with painted greyware.
This may be coincidental. My guess would be that the cattle came by
boat down the Persian Gulf from Mesopotamia, the horses came from
China following the Amarna river south to the Ganges and then Painted
greyware pottery moved up the Ghanges to the Harrapans from Southeast
Asia c 1000 BC followed by the Harrapan culture moveing down the Ganges
to meet it c 1000 BC - 500 BC.
Sanskrit probably was transmitted from India to Mesopotamia amd
Armenia by the Mittanni coming up the Persian Gulf and following
the Euphrates into Armenia.
Are the Aryans and their hordes of horsemen a myth?
>This is highly speculative conjecture. Is there any archealogical
>proof for this movement?? Has any Sanskrit-like language
>been found in Russia/Central-Asia??
>>
>> I note that Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-Iranian family, being
>> closest to Old Persian / Avestan.
Dating from c 1500 BC - c 450 BC we have the Vedas, the earliest Indian
literature, including the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and the Rig-veda.
We have some well established Sanskrit Literature in India by this date,
where is there any evidence of Sanskrit in IE prior to this date?
>> This family has several derived features relative to Indo-European;
>> one of them is the vowels. Three of the original IE vowels, *e, *a,
>> and *o, correspond well in the other IE langs, such as Latin and Greek;
Why not Latin and Greek, which come much later, as derivatives of
Sanskrit? Do you have any examples of these vowels in Latin or Greek
which predate c 800 BC? What other IE languages do they show up in
and what is the earliest evidence of their presence? If they first
show up after c 1500 BC then you have to look at Sanskrit at having
been established first.
>> Germanic obscures the distinction between *a and
>> *o -- but Indo-Iranian turns all three into a. However, there is a trace
>> of this feature in some of the ka/cha and ga/ja alternations -- the first
>> of the pair had a or o as the original vowel and the second one an e as
>> the original vowel.
There are no Germans prior to c 200 BC. Latin and Greek are a strong
influence on the Germanic languages, thus again, c 800 BC is your
starting point.
>>
>> If Sanskrit had originated in India, that means that the
>> Indo-European homeland *must* have been in India. However,
>> that means an awfully long march from India to (for example)
>> Italy; the north-shore-of-Black-Sea Kurgan solution, for example,
>> requires a *much* shorter distance to both India and Italy.
The assumption that people had to march from India to reach
Armenia, (the probable melting pot of IE) instead of going
by water is the first of many objections which can be raised
against this theory.
Once you place the Sanskrit speaking Mittani (noble warriors) at the
headwaters of the Euphrates c 1500 BC and allow that their reputation
as horse trainers helped spread their jargon across the Black Sea, the
pattern of diffusion begind to emerge.
From the Black Sea through the Bospherous to the Aegean and Greece,
with the sailors of the Illiad. Up the Dneister, Dneiper, Bug and Don
to the horse cults of the steppes. Up the Danube, to meet the metal and
amber trade with Europe. Across Syria to meet the Phoenicians heading
off to colonize Northern Italy, all c 1500 BC -1200 BC.
>If you can consider a "march" into India as possible without any
>demonstrable proof the you should also consider that the movement
>could possibly have occurred "out of India".
>
>>
>> There's an *excellent* work now out on comparative IE linguistics
>> by Beekes (I forget the title); it can be ordered online from
>> http://www.amazon.com.
That doesn't begin to answer the question. Answer the question first
then give your cites.
>
>Comparitive linguistic theories on the "IE" movement have not
>offered any definitive proof that the "IE movement" started in some
>Central Asian/East European homeland and ended in settlements in
>India & Europe. So far no "homeland" and no "Proto IE" language
> remnants have been conclusively established.
If you disagree find some people , speaking Sanskrit, outside India,
who are in a position to Invade India with it, c 1500 BC.
There are no such people.
>
> The "out of India" scenario has both a definitive homeland and
> a vast amount of literature in Sanskrit plus archeological evidence
>that the various peoples in the area have been there way before the
>time-lines proposed by any "IE into India" theories.
How does your theory answer that one Loren?
>
>The ancient Indian scriptures also do not record any knowledge of any
>homeland other than Indian plains. If you consider Sanskrit to have
>"arrived" in India with the "IE" people then you would also expect
>their scriptures and books to speak of other lands which were passed
>during their movement or atleast of an original homeland . No such
>record exists in the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of India.
Please make your rebuttal specific and catagorical citing who did
what, when and where.
>> --
>> Loren Petrich
steve
Subject: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
From: whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
Date: 23 Nov 1996 17:00:02 GMT
In article <576vu3$s81@halley.pi.net>, mcv@pi.netÁ says...
>
>whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>
>>In article <328FDD35.24B9@scruznet.com>, darwin@scruznet.com says...
>>>
>>>But how does one apply this idea in practical terms to decide whether an
>>>Austrailian language is more or less "sophisticated" than Inuit or
>>>French?
>
>>What I wanted to know was whether a proto language with a vocabulary
>>of a couple of thousand words perhaps used unchanged for millenia by
>>a prehistoric people, could be suddenly overwhelmed by the language of
>>an increasingly complex urban society, simply because of a much larger
>>number of words in the new vocabulary.
>
>No. The Australian aborigines were not overwhelmed by the English
>vocabulary. The English did not simply wave the OED or Shakespeare's
>Complete Works at them (though the King James Version may have been used
>in that way). What did the trick were English firearms, technology,
>methods of food production, demography, etc.
Actually, The Australian aboriginees were most all taught English
in English schools and came very close to being assimilated and losing
their culture entirely in a matter of a few hundred years. The
effect of missionaries on linguistic diffusion is probably worth
some consideration, as are the other effects of rapid urbanization
you mention.
>
>
>>Lets start with a population of 1000 people and a vocabulary of
>>1000 words.
>
>Why?
Because that seems about right for a neolithic village. A bit
on the high side perhaps, but also trending upward to reach
perhaps 25,000 people with 2,000 words of vocabulary in the
Ubaid cities of southern Mesopotamia c 3,500 BC
>
>>Lets say that represents 100 extended families, composed
>>of Grandparents, parents, children, wives, slaves and infants
>>and call that extended family a household, Say that ten such
>>households make a clan and ten clans make a tribe.
>
>>The tribes language has 1000 words.
>
>You will find no such language anywhere.
Unless your position is that language is invented from scratch with
vocabularies exceeding 1000 words, it will at some point reach that
position.
>
>[Vp,q: ~p => (p => q) snipped]
>
>>Now to those variables add that after about 3500 BC people
>>start writing words down so they don't forget them as often.
>
>Writing did not reach Australia and other parts of the world
>until 5,000 years later.
Actually, the use of symbols which may communicate information,
although we have yet to decipher the meaning, have now been
found in Australia going back 175,000 years BP
>
>>Assume some words get lost along the way and that we now
>>have 200,000 words. What amount of influence do those first
>>1000 words continue to have after the first doubling of words?
>>When did that occur? And while we are at it, at what point does
>>vocabulary reach a saturation point?
>
>Everybody has the vocabulary they need.
Which is what? The same for everyone or different would you say?
>Nobody has a vocabulary of just 1,000 words,
Then language must have been independently invented each time
with a vocabulary of more than 1000 words? Where is the evidence
for that? How many words in Summerian or Akkadian? Don't you
think the number of words in the written language of an urban
culture might have been greater than the number of words in
an orally transmitted culture of pastoral nomads or hunter
gatherers?
List the number of words in any primitive language and lets
see what the range is. After you run through numbers, foods,
body parts, kinship relations, physical surroundings, and
hunter gatherer jargon, what categories do you add on next?
Lets simplify it for you a bit.
At twenty some odd words for snow,(physical surroundings)
you need about 500 categories to reach a thousand words.
I gave you five, come up with 495 more.
> and nobody has a vocabulary of 200,000 words.
The Oxford Companion to the English Language claims differently.
>If your "1,000 words" are merely a metaphor for a language's
>core vocabulary, you'll find that it is remarkably stable
>over time, and hardly affected by borrowings.
Good, then it should be easy to list it.
>Only the phonetic shape changes, as everything does.
You mean its always the same...just different....
>
>
>==
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
steve
Subject: Re: "Out of India"
From: whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
Date: 23 Nov 1996 17:44:53 GMT
In article <576vu0$s81@halley.pi.net>, mcv@pi.netÁ says...
>
>Sanjeev Shankar wrote:
>
>>Loren Petrich wrote:
>>>
>>> In article <32931066.253E@waterloo.border.com>,
>>> Sanjeev Shankar wrote:
>>> >Loren Petrich wrote:
>>>
>>> >> of a lot of overland journeying. Consider how Sanskrit arrived in
India
>>> >> -- over a LOT of mountains in what is now Iran and Afghanistan.
>>>
>>> >Yes, how did Sanskrit "arrive" in India??
>>>
>>> Its speakers were pastoralist nomads that carried their language
>>> from the Russian/Central-Asian steppes across the mountains to India.
>
>>This is highly speculative conjecture. Is there any archealogical
>>proof for this movement?? Has any Sanskrit-like language
>>been found in Russia/Central-Asia??
>
>Scythian, an Iranian language still spoken in the Northern Caucasus by
>the Ossetes of Russia and Georgia. The numbers 1-10 and 100 in
>Sanskrit, Hindi, Avestan (Old Iranian) and Ossete as a small sample:
The problem is you need to present evidence of it in Russia,
Central Asia, prior to c 1500 BC. So far as I recollect,
The Scythians were close to a millenium later.
>
> Skrt. Hindi Avest. Osset.
>1 e:kah ek ae:va yu
>2 dva:(u) do dva duwa
>3 trayah tin thray arta
>4 catva:rah ca:r c^athwa:r c^Ippa:r
>5 pan~ca pa:m.c panc^a fondz
>6 s.as. chah xs^vas^ axsaz
>7 sapta sa:t hapta a:wd
>8 as.t.a:(u) a:t.h as^ta a:st
>9 nava nau nava fa:ra:st
>10 das'a das dasa das
>100 s'atam. sau sat@m sada
>
>>Comparitive linguistic theories on the "IE" movement have not
>>offered any definitive proof that the "IE movement" started in some
>>Central Asian/East European homeland and ended in settlements in
>>India & Europe. So far no "homeland" and no "Proto IE" language
>> remnants have been conclusively established.
>
>Don't be silly: no PIE language remnants will ever be found. PIE was
>spoken long before the invention of writing.
He is allowing even a comparitive linguistic reconstruction.
Mallory provides a map showing where such reconstructions
have been held up to see if they fit. They span a period of
time from c 6,500 BC to c 1,500 BC and all of Europe and Asia.
>
>> The "out of India" scenario has both a definitive homeland and
>> a vast amount of literature in Sanskrit plus archeological evidence
>>that the various peoples in the area have been there way before the
>>time-lines proposed by any "IE into India" theories.
>
>Which is precisely the problem with the "out of India" hypothesis.
>If the homeland was the Punjab, how do you account for Brahui, a
>Dravidian language, being spoken in Pakistani Beluchistan?
Let's allow Sanskrit is associated with the Harrapans on the
headwaters of the Indus and the Ganges and that Rupar (Punjab)
on the upper Indus was Harrapan c 1800 BC.
The Dravidian culture is on the lower Indus associated with
Mohen-daro (Pakistan). Where is the conflict?
How do you account for the numerous Dravidian loanwords even in Vedic
Sanskrit?
The two cultures are located on the same river.
>How do you account for the fact that Dravidian is related to Elamite,
>spoken in ancient Elam (Khuzestan), and that there is linguistic
>continuity stretching from Elamite to Brahui to Southern Indian
>Dravidian?
Both Elamite and Dravidian cultires were focused on the Persian Gulf
and another series of rivers leading up into the mountains of
Afghanistan to the west of the Indus. The region of Makran and
Baluchistan to the west of Pakistan.
>On the map it certainly looks as if the Iranians and the
>Indo-Aryans drove a wedge between these people.
No, on the map it looks as if Mohen-daro is focused on the
Arabian sea the Gulf of Oman, Makkan and the Persian Gulf.
The Harrapans are actually focused on the Juncture of the
upper Indus and the Upper Ganges with a growing attention
to the Ganges after c 1000 BC. This is indicative of a
growing trade with Southeast Asia coming down the Amurna
from the Mekong and its tributaries and then up the Ganges.
>And how do you account for Burushaski, a non-IE and
>non-Dravidian language spoken in Northern Kashmir?
I think it is indicitive that the Kashmir was isolated
both from the Zaman Baba and the Harrapans.
>Not to mention Nahali and the Mun.d.a languages.
Isolates.
>
>>The ancient Indian scriptures also do not record any knowledge of any
>>homeland other than Indian plains. If you consider Sanskrit to have
>>"arrived" in India with the "IE" people then you would also expect
>>their scriptures and books to speak of other lands which were passed
>>during their movement or atleast of an original homeland . No such
>>record exists in the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of India.
>
>Do the ancient Greek, Hittite, Gothic, Celtic and Slavic
>scriptures of Europe mention an Indian homeland?
No, but they do record the migrations of their own peoples. The
one culture which does seem to be closely tied to IE along with
India and Sanskrit is the Mittani, c 1,500 BC.
> Does even the Beowulf mention a homeland in Northern Germany?
Beowulf, no. Other sagas do mention Germanic thoughts concerning
their origins. Graves is a good reference on this.
> Take the Gypsies. We know that they indeed came "out of India".
>Do their legends mention that? No,
Yes. Reference "Bury Me Standing", Isable Fonseca, which just
came out. It tells a story documented in arabic texts of the
importation of 20,000 Zotts, or sanskrit speaking Indian lutists
to Persia by boat up the Persian Gulf c 450 AD.
They were treated well and given land, seed, a donkey and an ox
in the hope they would settle down. Apparently they ate the seed
and the ox, saddled up the Donkey and proceeded to make their way
to Armenia where their migration split up.
From there some went on across the Black Sea to Romania and the Danube,
which led them to the Balkans. Some took the Dneiper, Dneister, Don
and Bug into Russia.
>The Spanish Gypsies claim to be from Egypt, which was indeed a "half-way
>stop" they made. Recollection of the earlier Indian homeland had
>vanished, in just 400 years.
While some Gypsies took the northern route, others traveled south
through Palestine to Egypt, thence across North Africa entering
Spain via Sardinia, Corsica and the Balerics, and southern France
via the Rhone.
The migration apperently began c 450 AD, although there continued
to be people coming from India through Persia as late as c 1000 AD
and entering Europe as late as c 1500 AD.
That is at any rate the story as the Gypsies record it in their
histories. No one believes it of course, since all Gypsies are
known to be liars...:)
>
>==
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
steve
Subject: Re: Sanskrit: was: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
From: scott@math.csuohio.edu (Brian M. Scott)
Date: 23 Nov 1996 18:04:08 GMT
In article <574hba$pr6@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net says...
>In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
[snips here and elsewhere]
>>Extrapolation. Mr. Whittet, why don't you compare Latin and the
>>Romance languages some time, or else read the abundant literature on this
>>subject? There is a gap in written records between Latin and the Romance
>>languages, but you can find out how it is possible to extrapolate forward
>>from Latin and backward from the Romance langs to fill this gap.
>What, is there no difference in meaning between the words extrapolate
>and interpolate in your view?
It is entirely possible to extrapolate back from the Romance languages
without taking into account Latin. I'm not sure that it's entirely
accurate to speak of interpolation here anyway; isn't Classical Latin
a bit off the main stem, so to speak?
>>>> In order to discuss the dispersal of IE languages, you first of
>>>>all need a sound basis of knowledge about the said languages.
>>>Not necessarily. The thing about it, is that languages are spoken
>>>by people. That makes a sound knowledge of the movements of people
>>>in the period under discussion equally valuable to a good theory
>>>as to the rules which govern their linguistics and that is where
>>>archaeology gets to put its two cents worth in.
>>There you go again, Mr. Whittet, tediously spouting a whole lot of
>>elementary exposition.
>Actually if you examine the two statements you will see that
>there is a difference of perspectives as to where to begin;
>and, if it's so elementary, why are you always arguing with me?
Actually, if you examine your own statement more closely you will
see that you didn't say anything about where to begin. You merely
said that it was just as important to know about the movements of
the people as to know about the languages. As Loren said, this is
a rather elementary point. Subsequently you seem to argue the rather
different position that the movements are *more* important than the
languages. This seems rather absurd when the objects under study
are in fact the languages themselves.
>> Why don't you look at the literature on language
>>spread some time? And language change?
>Does, ummm Mallory... happen to be in this category do you suppose?
>You remember, the guy you reccomended I read. The one who thought
>Renfrew was wrong, Diakonov was wrong, the Aryans coming into India
>was all wrong, and then tried to conect the Afanaseivo with the Yammaya,
>despite their being rather widely separated in both time and space,
>because that was what his theory needed to do to function.
This may be good debating tactics, but it's dishonest argument. There's
a vast literature on language spread and language change; picking out
flaws in one specific work - rightly or wrongly - does not excuse you from
learning something of a subject that obviously bears directly on your own
interests.
>My position is that you need to begin a linguistic argument
>to the effect that one group influenced another by showing a
>mechanism whereby they had contact of such a nature that it
>would allow such an influence.
Nonsense. You need to begin the argument by showing that there are
linguistic grounds for considering the possibility.
>>>>You must understand the varying forms of the words in related
>>>>languages, see how vowels and consonants change according to
>>>>deducable sound laws, see how grammatical patterns correspond,
>>>>etc. Krahe - or some other basic comparative grammar of IE - will
>>>>give you the basic facts from the known IE languages. These are
>>>>the bare facts.
>>>Thats all very nice, but first do step one.
This *is* step one: the systematic relationships have been demonstrated.
*Now* you may try to figure out what produced these observed relationships.
>>> Show who contacted
>>>whom, where and when, and provide some archaeological evidence
>>>to prove the contact existed.
>>Good Grief! What would *you* consider acceptable evidence, Mr.
>>Whittet?
>1.) Name the two cultures you expect were in contact
>2.) Give a list of their archaeological sites, the dates,
>the artifacts indicating contact, ie; list the artifacts
>of each group present in the sites of the other group.
You seem to be committing the elementary fallacy of identifying
archaeological cultures with languages.
>3.) Show why one group would influence the other exclusively
>rather than there being an interactive relationship.
Why on earth would anyone try to show such a thing? In general
it's pretty unlikely.
>4.) Show the route whereby the contact occured and the
>progression of sites with artifacts of exchange along the route.
>5.) Demonstrate that there were not other connections with
>better grounds for having been the mechanism whereby language
>diffused.
>6.) Demonstrate that the common language was not picked up
>by mutual contact with a third party; ie that you have given
>the primary and principle interests involved.
>7.) After having answered the above questions, provide cites
>to back up what you have said from both archaeological and
>linguistic sources.
And having done all this, perhaps we should also give you the
moon to place on your bedpost.
Brian M. Scott
