Subject: ED'S HISTORICAL OVERHAUL (Chapter II: Columbus' journey)
From: edconrad@prolog.net (Ed Conrad)
Date: 3 Dec 1996 08:58:24 GMT
In response to the most favorable reaction to my recent posting --
that the first humans on the North American continent DID NOT
arrive by crossing the Bering Strait -- I graciously contribute more
interesting tidbits of historical rectification in order to help set
the record straight.
> Chapter II: COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA
Sorry to put the cart before the horse but it is a popular
misconception to believe -- or, to utter whenever placing a small
wager -- that ``Columbus took a chance.''
The fact is, Columbus actually was assuming minimal risk when the
Nina, the PinTa and the Santa Maria pulled out of port to sail far
into the Ocean Blue in Fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two.
The plain fact is, he knew what the hell he was doing.
Granted, Columbus didn't know for sure whether he'd actually discover
a new route to India -- his prime objective -- by sailing due west,
or whether he'd even reach previously unknown land.
But he knew, if the weatherman cooperated, he and his crews would be
as safe as if in their own beds.
(By starting his journey in October, it might be noted, Columbus
undoubtedly knew that the hurricane season was past. Ever wonder why
he didn't set leave port in May or June, a more logical choice?)
In any event, all Columbus and his crew needed was patience, patience
and more patience. Sail on! Sail on! Sail on!
The only thing somewhat unusual about the trip was the sight to behold
on a table in the center of Columbus' small cabin. It contained a
weird-looking contraption, a cumbersome boxed compass. And every once
in a while, the skipper glanced at the needle to make sure they were
staying on the due-west coarse.
Although invented more than a century earlier, the compass was
considered little more than an object of curiosity and nothing better
than an unusual child's toy. But Columbus, aware of its potential,
had been using his compass successfully for years.
On many previous trips into the Wild Blue Yonder, Columbus always
managed to arrive safely back at port in one piece, thanks to his
compass.
In fact, it got to the point that his closest friends stopped calling
him Chris or (his last name) Colon. They kiddingly started calling
him ``Columbo," the Latin word for pigeon.
Columbus earned their respect -- and the nickname -- because, to them,
he had developed a reputation as a homing pigeon. No matter in which
direction he set sail when bound for the open sea, he ALWAYS managed
to return.
That Columbus' most intimate friends spoke Latin should come as no
surprise, either, because, after all, he had been born in The Tyrol,
high in the Alps.
(It is generally -- and erroneously -- believed that Columbus was
Italian. For one thing, Italy didn't even exist back then).
Sail on! Sail on! Sail on!
``Okay, smartass," you're asking. ``What about a food supply?
If Columbus kept sailing and didn't reach land, wouldn't he and his
crew die of starvation?"
The answer, quite obviously, is *NO*.
This is because Columbus had a very high IQ.
Before any of his ships left port, numerous barrels containing a
variety of diffferent food items were placed aboard on one side in the
hold. Strangely, the same number of empty same-size barrels were
stationed on the opposite side in the hold.
Every mealtime, Columbus and members of the crew would fill their
plates to their liking, then walk over to the once-empty barrels and
dump the different food item items into the appropriate barrel.
Then they would return to the first batch of barrels and refill their
plates, then sit down and enjoy their hearty meal.
It was simple logic.
Columbus knew, by operating in this manner at mealtime, it virtually
guaranteed that no one would starve. See, when the food supply in the
original barrels was depleted -- and land had not yet been sighted --
it was the signal to turn the ships around and head due east, homeward
bound.
On the return trip, everyone aboard was assured of having as much to
eat as they had enjoyed in the first few days of their voyage.
Oh, yes, one final historical note: Columbus had yellow hair and a red
beard, conclusive proof that his roots were Tyrolean.
If you know anybody, or see anybody, with yellow hair and a red
beard, ask where their or great-grandparents were born. You'll be in
for quite a surprise.
Subject: Re: Why didn't anyone know before Columbus?
From: joe@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein)
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 03:30:46 -0600
Any humanities.classics readers, this post is really about Aristotle, or
pseudo-Aristotle, OK? Sorry for the confusing subject line but it's part
of a thread elsewhere.
In article <57uqed$bmf@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com>, S.NEMETH@IX.NETCOM.COM
(Stella Nemeth) wrote:
>Bart_Torbert@piics.com (Bart Torbert) wrote:
>
>>In a private E-mail message to me, Peter Van Rossum made several comments
>>concerning what he saw as holes in the Diffusionist world view. In
>>answering him I wish to reform his comments into a series of questions.
>>Each question will be phrased is such a way that it is focused enough to
>>provide for a single topic of discussion. I hope to post these questions
>>and my responses over the next couple of months. I will post one, let the
>>fur fly, then post another.
Obviously the point of this program of posts, overall, is something to do
with sci.archaeology (though not with any particular area of it that
interests me!). But that particular post had best been cross-posted to
soc.history.medieval, dealing as it does entirely with the behaviour of
pre-Columbian *Europeans*.
That said, *this* post is cross-posted to humanities.classics, because I'm
hoping they can provide some insight into the particular point I'm after.
>>First Question:
>> If so many European/Mediterrainean people got here before
>>Columbus, why wasn't the existance of the New World common knowledge by
>>Columbus's time?
>
>>The answer is in two parts. The first is that there were real reasons why
>>anyone who knew of the AMerican continents would have kept this knowledge
>>secret. The second part is that it would not have mattered if they had
>>told their tale, nobody would have believed them.
[snip]
>>There is even evidence that knowledge of the New World was actively
>>supressed. In a document called "On Unheard-of Wonders" a story of the
>>Carthagenians is related. This document was originally attributed to
>>Aristotle, but is now thought to be by an unknown first or second century
>>AD Roman author. The story tells that the Carthagenian found a large
>>fertile island, a very far way out into the Atlantic beyond the Pillars of
>>Hercules. A colony was established there which quickly thrived. Many
>>people from Carthage started to move there. The rate of emmigration was
>>so alarming that the Carthagenian authorities feared that soon Carthage
>>itself would be so underpopulated as to fall prey to its enemies. So the
>>authorities forbid on pain of death anyone leaving Carthage for this new
>>land. They even went so far as to sent troops to destroy their own
>>colony.
>
>I've never heard of "On Unheard-of Wonders." Could you tell me some
>more about it? Where and when was this documents written and/or
>published?
>
>It is a neat story, but at this point I just don't believe it.
I suspect he's telling you pretty much what's known about it. Our corpus
of Aristotle includes a bunch of more-or-less-wacko,
more-or-less-vaguely-dated texts from the time *after* the rediscovery of
Aristotle c. 80 BC. Here's how I described that particular text, if I'm
not mistaken, for the , forthcoming in April:
: (c 130; trans Launcelot D. Dowdell
: [1909], repr as ³Of Marvellous Things Heard² in ed Jonathan Barnes [1984]) is a sort of ancient , several hundred short and mostly untrue items.
I recommend that translation simply because it includes the spurious works
(not all do), but would be interested to hear opinions on other
translations. I don't remember the item about Carthagininan exploration,
which strikes me (as retold here) as rather long for that document and
rather more human-oriented than normal in it, but I only skimmed the thing
and could easily have missed it.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer, banker, bookseller joe@sfbooks.com
speaking for myself alone http://www.tezcat.com/~josephb/
But...co-proponent for soc.history.ancient, now back under
discussion in news.groups!
Subject: JUST LIKE HUMPTY DUMPTY ... fearing a great fall
From: edconrad@prolog.net (Ed Conrad)
Date: 3 Dec 1996 10:22:54 GMT
>George P Hrynewich wrote
>(to sci.bi.paleontology):
>A few days ago I posted an actual palaeontological question. I asked for
>information on Procolophons and Rauisuchids. This is to thank those of
>you who took the time to answer my queries. It is nice to see that not
>everybody here is too busy calling each other names, and slandering
>establishment etc. to help someone out.
>I must say that it does bother me to see so many people being so petty.
>There are a lot of people posting to this newsgroup, who ought to be on
>Rikki Lake or Geraldo. If you wish to plaster someone with colourful
>monikers, then please do so via private e-mail. State your views once or
>twice, take your flak, cut your losses ( or enjoy your gains) and then
>stop, until either you can provide NEW, USEFUL information on your
>subject, or you wish to express another view.
>Please, please stop peppering the majority of us with the same inane,
>comments.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By George, you're right!
I keep putting out NEW, USEFUL information about my discovery of
petrified human, hominid and animal bones; human, hominid and animal
teeth; an ax handle that has turned to coal; tusks; etc., etc. (which
I've discovered in Pennsylvania's coal region where they certainly
don't belong) and yet I continue to collect lots and lots of static
and plenty of verbal abuse.
How would you like it if you were called dimwit, low-life, moron,
imbecile and -- in the less-than-eloquent words of Paul Z. Myers of
Temple University -- ``an ungrateul pissant" and, even worse, ``one
major hypocritical asshole."
How do I face my grandchildren? What happens when they're old enough
to click on the computer? What a dreadful thought when they're old
enough to read!
By George, the kids won't understand why some folks have become so
nasty and abusive -- or why some of News Groups have begun to resemble
Monty Python and already qualify as a three-ring circus.
Maybe the kids will be figure it out when I explain that people are
writing nasty words because of their intrinsic fear that, at long
last, the very foundation of their particular discipline of science
is being subjected to long-overdue criticism in a battle where no
holds are barred.
Of course, I could explain it to the kids a lot easier by putting it
in story-book form which they'd find much easier to comprehend.
I could simply tell them that many people are annoyed and angry
because, just like Humpty Dumpty, they're scared they'll have
a great fall.
Subject: Re: "Out of India"
From: mcv@pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 12:50:12 GMT
Steve Whittet wrote:
> The CIA Ethno linguistic map of Iran...
> ...Baluch/Beluch (Brahui)...
> ...The Elamites remain a single cluster of Bakhitari at the head
> of the Gulf. I see no association of them with Dravidian...
> ...Here we have a Hamitic Semitic culture following the coasts of the
> Persian Gulf...
> Whatever the linguistic connection is, though the same language
> may be spoken in both Elam and Gedrosia if that language is
> Dravidian it has to deal with this discontinuity in both time
> and space.
Yes, let's talk about discontinuities in time and space (and in the
facts, I might add).
Last time I heard, the CIA was not in the business of making historical
maps of the Early Neolithic, which is basically what was at issue here.
As a matter of fact NONE of the languages depicted on the map had even
remote ancestors spoken in Iran at the time that matters here (3rd
millennium BC and earlier).
* Elamite has absolutely nothing to do with Bakhtiari, and has not been
spoken since the time of the Achaemenid Empire.
* Brahui falls just off the map in Pakistani Baluchistan. It has
absolutely nothing to do with Baluchi.
* The other Dravidian languages are spoken in Southern and North-Eastern
India, and also do not appear on the map of Iran.
The Elamite-Brahui-Dravidian connection is what matters. Elamite was
spoken in Elam and Fars. Proto-Elamite writing has been found in
Tepe-Yahya and Shahr-i-Shokhta (Eastern Iran: Kerman-Baluchistan).
Brahui is still spoken in Pakistani Baluchistan. The Indus Valley is
just beyond Baluchistan. Linguistically, Elamite is closest to Brahui,
Brahui to Dravidian.
What more continuity do you want?
As to the CIA map, all of the languages that appear on it are relative
"newcomers" (archaeologically speaking):
1. The Iranian languages:
* North-West Iranian (Baluchi, Kurdish and the Caspian dialects),
* South-West Iranian (Persian-Bakhtiari-Tajiki, Lur, Tat), and
* East-Iranian (Pashto)
First attested in the first millennium BC, they might have entered Iran
at the beginning of the Iranian Iron Age c. 1500 BC.
2. The Oghuz-Tu"rkmen Turkic languages:
Tu"rkmen, Azeri-Qashqai, Turkish
The Oghuz entered Iran with the establishment of the Seljuk Sultanate in
AD 1037, a well established historical fact.
3. Arabic.
Arabic settlers colonized Khuzestan (ancient Elam) and parts of Fars
after the destruction of the Persian Empire by Muslim Arab forces AD
637-649, again a well established historical fact.
From what you have told me, I gather you believe Turkic and Arabic
represent the earliest populations in Iran, and that they were "split"
by a later "Persian wave". No, there were no Arabs in Elam in the
Neolithic. No, the Scythians were not Turks. No, the Brahui are not
Baluchi. No, the Bakhtiari are not Elamite. No, the Kurds are not
Hurrian. No, the Kassites did not speak Sanskrit. No the Hatti did not
speak Turkish.
==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal ~ ~
Amsterdam _____________ ~ ~
mcv@pi.net |_____________|||
========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig
Subject: Re: Shang script among Olmecs
From: hmccullo@ecolan.sbs.ohio-state.edu (Hu McCulloch)
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 16:02:40 GMT
Bart_Torbert@piics.com (Bart Torbert) writes:
>dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk says...
>>On 29 Nov 1996 20:39:23 GMT, bartjean@privatei.com (Bart Torbert/Jean Du
>>
>>>Try the Cave Creek, Tennessee Mound. It was dug under "correct"
>>>procedures. It produced a bit of "pseudo-hebrew".
>>
>>Do you mean Grave Creek, West Virginia?, another famous fraud?
>My brain went off line when I was typing the message. I was
>trying to refer to the Bat Creek Mound. Look in Biblical Archeology
>Review, July/Aug 1993 for the article "Did Judean Refugees Escape to
>Tennessee" by J. Huston McCulloch.
See also P. Kyle McCarter's critique, immediately following my article,
and don't neglect the letters in the Nov/Dec 93 and Jan/Feb 94 issues,
including my own rebuttal to McCarter and others! There doesn't seem
to have been any discussion of Bat Creek in BAR or anywhere since then.
The stone, excavated by Smithsonian staff from an undisturbed mound
in Eastern Tennessee in 1889, remains safely out of sight in the NMNH
in Washington, so far as I know. Cyrus H. Gordon, prof. emeritus of
Hebrew etc at Brandeis and NYU positively identifies the writing as Paleo-
Hebrew of the 1st or 2nd c AD, not to be confused with Pseudo-Hebrew.
C-14 dated wood fragments found with the inscription to 32 AD - 769 AD,
which is consistent with the script and definitely pre-Anse-aux-Meadows,
not to mention pre-Columbian.
On the Grave Creek stone from W. Va, identified above as a "famous fraud"
by Doug Weller, see Terry
A. Barnhart, "Curious Antiquity? The Grave Creek Controversy Revisited,"
_West Virginia History_, 1986, 103-124. Barnhart, an historian formerly with
the Ohio Historical Society, concludes that there is no serious reason to
doubt that the stone came from the mound as reported. In 1858, Wills de Hass
effectively debunked EG Squier's key argument that JW Clemens had made
no reference to its discovery in his published account of the excavation. De
Hass demonstrated with the manuscript of Clemens' published report that
the SG Morton, the editor of the1839 volume in which Clemens' report was
published, "suspecting fraud, had prudently taken the liberty of deleting
Clemens's specific reference to 'the stone medal, with its characters' from
the published extracts of their correspondence." (p. 114.) I have no idea
whether Barry Fell's America BC reading of it works, but that's a different
matter than whether or not it was a genuine artifact from the mound. For all
I know it's Olmeco-Shang, per the title of this thread. The letters do
look somewhat Mediterranean, however, per Fell's reading.
David Kelley, the well-known proponent of the phonetic nature of the
Mayan glyphs (I guess that's the link here to sci.arch.mesoam?),
in his devastating review "Epigraphy and Other Fantasies"
of Stephen Williams' book _Fantastic Archaeology_ in
_The Review of Archaeology_ 15, #2, 4/19/95, discusses at length Williams'
treatment of Grave Creek. Kelley concludes, "I have a hard time criticizing
the view [espoused by Williams] that the inscription is non-alphabetic, for
that seems _to me_ an obvious fantasy. I think that anyone who could
not recognize that obvious fact should, _ipso facto_, disbar
himself from any serious discussion of the problem." As I
recollect, Williams makes no mention of Barnhart's new resurrection
of de Hass's defense of the stone's authenticity.
-- Hu McCulloch
Econ Dept.
Ohio State U.
mcculloch.2@osu.edu
Subject: Re: "Out of India"
From: whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
Date: 3 Dec 1996 16:35:01 GMT
In article <5806lm$eb6@halley.pi.net>, mcv@pi.netÁ says...
>
>Steve Whittet wrote:
>
>> The CIA Ethno linguistic map of Iran...
>
>> ...Baluch/Beluch (Brahui)...
>
>> ...The Elamites remain a single cluster of Bakhitari at the head
>> of the Gulf. I see no association of them with Dravidian...
>
>> ...Here we have a Hamitic Semitic culture following the coasts of the
>> Persian Gulf...
>
>> Whatever the linguistic connection is, though the same language
>> may be spoken in both Elam and Gedrosia if that language is
>> Dravidian it has to deal with this discontinuity in both time
>> and space.
>
>Yes, let's talk about discontinuities in time and space (and in the
>facts, I might add).
>
>Last time I heard, the CIA was not in the business of making historical
>maps of the Early Neolithic, which is basically what was at issue here.
I have no clue what they are in the business of except that they seem to
have devoted considerable resources to making and collecting maps of the
areas in which they were interested which happen to include Russia, China,
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, The Persian Gulf, The Near East,
Saudia Arabia, Egypt, The Red Sea, The Gulf of Aden, The Black Sea, etc;
The Historical maps go back to about 1860. This predates a lot of modern
building and you can in some cases get glimpses of things like the
causeway Alexander built to beseige the city of Tyre, which are now
covered up.
The ethno-kinguistic maps can be compared to a good geological map in
that is possible to see earlier strata overlain by more recent strata
and in a sense homogeneous clusters of people like the kurds tend to
weather through the thin overlays of more recent cultures like the
persians.
Take for example the "Peoples of Iran" map.
You can clearly see that rivers and coasts tend to be the skeletons
of the structure on which societies form. You can see that some land
areas are just so inhospitable that they are not now, and in most
likelyhood probably never were, settled.
Administrative languages like Persian cover a wide area thinly and
have a lot of holes where ethnicities which tend to be smaller more
compressed globules indicate the territory of homogeneous city states.
Around the Caspian sea you can see where the Altic group follows exactly
the territorial descriptions of Herodotus for the Scythians and you can
see where the incursions of the Medes and Persians spread from Tehran
north to the Caspian washing over the Altic distribution are thwarted
by the connection of the Atrack to the Aras (Artaxes) across the sea.
You can also see where the Hamito-Semitic groups of Iraq and Saudia
Arabia were distributed through southern Mesopotamia, Dilmun and
Makkan to include the Tepe Yahya region of Iran following thinly
along all of the coasts surrounding the Persian Gulf until rivers
or oasis allow expansion inland.
You can't confuse this with the spread of Islam after c 650 AD
because you can see that Persian is overlaying the Hamito Semitic.
You can see that the Linguistic group of Baluch overlays ancient
Gedrosia and Pakistan without intrusion from any other group.
There are no pockets or clusters of other languages here.
Afghanistan is composed of two cultural groups which overlay upon
one another. You can if you wish argue that all these are later
languages which bear no relation to ancient history.
>
>As a matter of fact NONE of the languages depicted on the map had even
>remote ancestors spoken in Iran at the time that matters here (3rd
>millennium BC and earlier).
Well one of the relations they do bear is the phenomenological
coverage of the same areas as show up in ancient geographical
references and archaeological deposits of artifacts.
>
>* Elamite has absolutely nothing to do with Bakhtiari, and has not been
>spoken since the time of the Achaemenid Empire.
There is, in other words, a correspondence between the present day
ethno-linguistic distributions and the ancient territories of
various civilizations. The sphere of influence wielded by Elam
is well demarkated by the area in which modern Bakhtari is spoken.
There is a strongly compressed globular cental core focused on a river
valley between two mountains and the circumference of those mountains.
Abutting and penetrating into this cluster is administrative Persian
which drives through the circumference to the mountains from the north
and stops.
To the southeast (Anshan) and northwest (Shimaski and later Ellipi)
are other large globular clusters representing other cultures.
"In about 2200 BC Puzur-Inshushinakthe king of Awan established control
over Susa. Shulgi of Ur anexed Susa and the lowlands but the highland
areas remained independent.
Ibbi-sin the ruler of Shimaski who already controlled Ashan,seized
power in Susa. In 2004 BC, Kindattu, king of Shimaski, Susa and Anshan
invaded and destroyed Ur. The Elamites were expelled from Ur in about
1995 BC, but the Shimaski dynasty continued to rule Susa for another
hundred years." Michael Roaf, CAM p 103.
Understanding that the Elamites were really three separate and very
independent kingdoms who had united for a time under a single king
helps us appeciate what we are seeing on the ethno-linguistic map.
Why do people tend to preserve their cultural identities even when
immersed in another culture for long periods of time? I don't know.
It does seem to be a fact however.
Despite the fact that Hawaii and Massachusetts are both parts of the
United States which share some common identities such as a tendency
to vote Democratic, they have retained their own ethno-linguistic
identities underneath. The same is true of other ethnic and cultural
groups in the US.
To the south of Anshan, where there was no homogeneous culture to
Prevent it, the Persians reached the Persian Gulf. The control it
as far south as the shore opposite Bahrain and the rest of the
coast ties to the Globular cluster of Tepe Yajya at Hormuz.
The connection across the Gulf in the 3rd millenium BC is
established by the clusters of chlorite vessels at Tarut (222)
and Tepe Yahya (114) with much smaller numbers at Susa (40)
and Ur (17) indicating the trade route was across the Gulf
by sea and not through Mesopotamia by land.
>* Brahui falls just off the map in Pakistani Baluchistan. It has
>absolutely nothing to do with Baluchi.
Most Nrahui speakers are bilingual in Baluchi which is the secular
language while Brahui is mostly litterary. Baluchi has something
to do with Baluchistan, which is a very homogeneous cluster. What
this tells you is there is no connection to Elam.
>* The other Dravidian languages are spoken in Southern and
>North-Eastern India, and also do not appear on the map of Iran.
This language has no connection to what was spoken in Elam.
>
>The Elamite-Brahui-Dravidian connection is what matters. Elamite was
>spoken in Elam and Fars. Proto-Elamite writing has been found in
>Tepe-Yahya and Shahr-i-Shokhta (Eastern Iran: Kerman-Baluchistan).
>Brahui is still spoken in Pakistani Baluchistan. The Indus Valley is
>just beyond Baluchistan. Linguistically, Elamite is closest to Brahui,
>Brahui to Dravidian.
This is another one of Mallory's fantasy's and he get's it from McAlpin.
In rebuttal here is some information available on the web.
http://www.sil.org/htbin/ethcodes/gopher/ethnologue/?
TEXT=R1206480-1207126-/gopher_root/ethnologue/ethnolog12/eth12eua.db
"Part of the Ethnologue, 12th Edition Copyright © 1992, SIL Inc.
Ethnologue Record: Paki.BRAHUI.BRH, Country; Pakistan; Language name
BRAHUI: Alternate language names: BRAHUIDI, BIRAHUI, KUR GALLI
Dialect names: JHARAWAN, KALAT, SARAWAN: Genetic affiliation
Dravidian, Northwest:Geographical region: South central,
Quetta and Kalat region, east Baluchistan and Sind provinces
Population: 1,500,000 in Pakistan (1981), 1.2% of the population;
200,000 in Afghanistan (1980 Dupree); 10,000 in Iran (1983);
1,710,000 total
Bilingual in Baluchi: Country 2: Afghanistan: Country 3: Iran
Printings of whole books of Bible: 1905-1978 Status of linguistic
and translation work: Work in progress
Remarks: Literary language with a small body of literature. Nastaliq
script used. Some bilingualism in Baluchi
Subsistence type: Pastoralists
Total speakers: 1,710,000
Religion: Muslim
Website Copyright © 1996, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc."
A literary language spoken as a second language by 1,500,000 bilingual
Pakistanis (out of a total population of 65,000,000) has 200,000 additional
speakers in Afghanistan, (mostly Pakistani immigrants around Kabul) and
another 10,000 speakers in Iran, most of whom are shepards who use Baluchi
as a secular language and Brahui to study their religious doctrines.
How do 10,000 Moslem shepards on the wrong side of ethnically
homogeneous Baluchistan make a connection to Elam?
>What more continuity do you want?
How do you connect this to Elam archaeologically, culturally,
or in any other way? If you agree the two disciplines need to work
together, here is a case where the linguistic analysis is not backed
up by the archaeology.
>
>As to the CIA map, all of the languages that appear on it are relative
>"newcomers" (archaeologically speaking):
>
>1. The Iranian languages:
> * North-West Iranian (Baluchi, Kurdish and the Caspian dialects),
Baluchi is south east Iran with no connection to the Kurds in
North west Iran or the Altic dialects of the Caspian
> * South-West Iranian (Persian-Bakhtiari-Tajiki, Lur, Tat), and
This associates an overlaying administrative language of a relatively
recent date with much older homogeneous clusters. Its like associating
the English speakers in India with Sanskrit.
> * East-Iranian (Pashto)
>First attested in the first millennium BC, they might have entered Iran
>at the beginning of the Iranian Iron Age c. 1500 BC.
Pashtun is actually associated with Afghanistan. Mallory has mistakenly
placed it in the area where Baluch is spoken.
>
>2. The Oghuz-Tu"rkmen Turkic languages:
> Tu"rkmen, Azeri-Qashqai, Turkish
>The Oghuz entered Iran with the establishment of the Seljuk Sultanate in
>AD 1037, a well established historical fact.
The Altic Turkish languages are constrained to a belt along the Caspian
which is overlain by the more recent Persian. This cluster corresponds
well with Herodotus and his description of the territory of the
Scythians and Samarkians. (Samarkand).
It also corresponds well to the trade routes followed by Alexander
into Parthia. At a much later date a small group of Turks fleeing
Mongols following the trade routes into this area of Iran left to
settle in Anatolia from which they conquered much of Asia Minor.
This simply reflects the transmission of administrative language
using the skeleton of an already established ancient ethnic structure
along with the relatively new religious fanaticism of the crusades.
>3. Arabic.
>Arabic settlers colonized Khuzestan (ancient Elam) and parts of Fars
>after the destruction of the Persian Empire by Muslim Arab forces AD
>637-649, again a well established historical fact.
Here it helps to realise that nobody ever conquers people who live
in mountains. The Persians never really controlled Elam either.
Arabs settled in the lowlands, and they spread the word of Islam,
but the Hamito-Semitic coastal ethno-linguistic structure was
established in the 3rd millenium BC.
>
>From what you have told me, I gather you believe Turkic and Arabic
>represent the earliest populations in Iran, and that they were "split"
>by a later "Persian wave".
The Persians come along relatively late, yes. The Altic distribution
appears to correlate well with that described by Herodotus as the
ancient homeland of the Scythians. The Hamito-Semitic distribution
goes back to the 3rd millenium BC. I wouldn't describe them as being
split so much as overlain by a thin administrative crust through
which their solid cultural homogeneity easily weathered.
> No, there were no Arabs in Elam in the Neolithic.
The 3rd millenium BC is not the Neolithic.
>No, the Scythians were not Turks.
The ancestors of the people who left Iran to come to Anatolia
and who became Turks under the leadership of Ertogrul c 1288
probably were Scythians at some time prior to 500 BC, yes.
>No, the Brahui are not Baluchi.
Actually Brahui is a litterary language spoken bilingually
by a small part (1,710,000) of the Baluch.
> No, the Bakhtiari are not Elamite.
The ancestors of the people living around Shimaski, Susa and Anshan
and today speaking Bakhtari were Elamites. They were not Dravidians.
>No, the Kurds are not Hurrian.
The ancestors of the modern Kurds (and they claim this themselves)
were Hurrian, among others.
No, the Kassites did not speak Sanskrit.
This remains to be proved one way or another. There are some very
interesting suggestions that they did; such as their numbers, the
names of their gods, their personal names. The Kassites are not yet
well understood, nor are the Hurrians and the Mittani. They do have
a relationship both to each other and to Sanskrit. What exactly the
relationship is remains a speculation.
>No the Hatti did not speak Turkish.
That is correct. The Turks came to Anatolia where Alad-a-din granted
some of his retainers land in what had been Phrygia from which they
retraced the route of the Phrygians back into what had been Thrace.
>
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
steve
Subject: Re: peanut in ancient China (_Arachis hypogaea_). (was: Re: Shang script among Olmecs
From: yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky)
Date: 3 Dec 1996 17:10:52 GMT
Stella Nemeth (S.NEMETH@IX.NETCOM.COM) wrote:
: "Paul E. Pettennude" wrote:
: >All of this talk about insignificant items such as peanuts, coconuts, :
>gourds, etc. having an impact on Mesoamerican civilization is nothing
more : >than grasping for straws where there are none. None of these
items played : >any role in the dietary or trade models of the inhabitants
of Mesoamerica.
: I don't think that anyone is saying that peanuts, etc. had any
: significant impact on Mesoamerican civilization. I'm pretty sure that
: everyone involved in this discussion accepts the fact that there was
: little contact between the Old and the New Worlds before Columbus.
: Just to bring the discussion back into focus, what is being discussed
: here is the hermetically sealed New World.
Exactly so, Stella!
: As I understand it Yuri is convinced that since voyages to the New
: World were possible, that such voyages almost certainly occurred, and
: that there is proof of some contact, especially between Asia and South
: America. He also thinks that the idea of writing possibly made the
: trip from China early on, and he seems to believe that it is possible
: that for a short time the voyages were repeatable in much the same way
: that the Norse voyages to Newfoundland were repeatable.
A fair assessment.
I have read the post by Paul where he brings up some significant
similarities in mythology, calendar, etc. All these are valid, and I was
aware of most of them. I hope our discussion will eventually progress to
discussing these. I may disagree with Paul's explanation for them (as I
understand, he thinks the similarities should be attributed to the very
ancient beliefs that were in common _before_ the humans crossed over from
Asia) but the first step is surely to acknowledge that these similarities
DO EXIST, and to be informed about them.
All too often we find that little awareness of these exist even in the
academic circles...
: There is obviously no proof of major, repeatable contacts between the
: Old World and the New World. There is some suggestion that there was
: probably some back and forth travel, on a minor level, during some
: periods of history.
: If you are down to checking out single peanuts, it is obvious that the
: contact can't be a major factor, but that doesn't mean that the
: possibility is totally unimportant.
The peanut and such can demonstrate that contacts did occur very early on,
and to see what is their significance. Peanut may not be the best piece
of evidence...
Best,
Yuri.
--
=O= Yuri Kuchinsky in Toronto =O=
--- a webpage like any other... http://www.io.org/~yuku ---
Diffusionist studies are not, as they are sometimes said to be,
attempts to depreciate the creativity of peoples; rather they are
efforts to locate and specify this creativity. D. Frazer,
THEORETICAL ISSUES IN THE TRANS-PACIFIC CONTROVERSY, Social
Research, 32 (1965) p. 454, as quoted by J. Needham.
Subject: Re: Shang script among Olmecs
From: yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky)
Date: 3 Dec 1996 16:54:34 GMT
Hu,
Thank you for your informed and relevant contribution. I suppose we're
getting closer to identifying some real "smoking guns" here!
Now that we're on the subject, I'd like to quote these potential "smoking
guns" that are given in MAN ACROSS THE SEA, the scholarly volume I already
quoted extensively in these groups.
"In a few cases, claims have been made for the pre-Columbian New World
occurrence of actual objects of Old World manufacture, including a cache
of Roman to early Medieval coins from Venezuela, a late Roman torso of
Venus from Veracruz state, Mexico (Heine-Geldern, 1967: 22), and "a cache
of Chinese brass coins said to be dated 1200 b. c. [sic]" from British
Columbia (Larson, 1966: 44). The most convincing case is that of a third
century a. d. Roman terra-cotta head in apparently unequivocal association
with a twelfth century a. d. tomb in the state of Mexico (Heine-Geldern,
1967). ... In addition to these objects, various rock inscriptions have
been attributed to the Phoenicians (see esp. TIME, 1968b; Gordon, 1968)
and the Norse." (p. 30)
All these lend credence to the theory (that I subsribe to) of numerous
small scale contacts that contributed to "cross-pollination" of ideas,
cultural traits, and technologies across the oceans in earliest antiquity.
Best,
Yuri.
Hu McCulloch (hmccullo@ecolan.sbs.ohio-state.edu) wrote:
[Bart:]
: >My brain went off line when I was typing the message. I was
: >trying to refer to the Bat Creek Mound. Look in Biblical Archeology
: >Review, July/Aug 1993 for the article "Did Judean Refugees Escape to
: >Tennessee" by J. Huston McCulloch.
: See also P. Kyle McCarter's critique, immediately following my article,
: and don't neglect the letters in the Nov/Dec 93 and Jan/Feb 94 issues, :
including my own rebuttal to McCarter and others! There doesn't seem : to
have been any discussion of Bat Creek in BAR or anywhere since then.
: The stone, excavated by Smithsonian staff from an undisturbed mound : in
Eastern Tennessee in 1889, remains safely out of sight in the NMNH : in
Washington, so far as I know. Cyrus H. Gordon, prof. emeritus of : Hebrew
etc at Brandeis and NYU positively identifies the writing as Paleo- :
Hebrew of the 1st or 2nd c AD, not to be confused with Pseudo-Hebrew. :
C-14 dated wood fragments found with the inscription to 32 AD - 769 AD, :
which is consistent with the script and definitely pre-Anse-aux-Meadows, :
not to mention pre-Columbian.
: On the Grave Creek stone from W. Va, identified above as a "famous
fraud" : by Doug Weller, see Terry : A. Barnhart, "Curious Antiquity?
The Grave Creek Controversy Revisited," : _West Virginia History_, 1986,
103-124. Barnhart, an historian formerly with : the Ohio Historical
Society, concludes that there is no serious reason to : doubt that the
stone came from the mound as reported. In 1858, Wills de Hass :
effectively debunked EG Squier's key argument that JW Clemens had made :
no reference to its discovery in his published account of the excavation.
De : Hass demonstrated with the manuscript of Clemens' published report
that : the SG Morton, the editor of the1839 volume in which Clemens'
report was : published, "suspecting fraud, had prudently taken the liberty
of deleting : Clemens's specific reference to 'the stone medal, with its
characters' from : the published extracts of their correspondence." (p.
114.) I have no idea : whether Barry Fell's America BC reading of it
works, but that's a different : matter than whether or not it was a
genuine artifact from the mound. For all : I know it's Olmeco-Shang, per
the title of this thread. The letters do : look somewhat Mediterranean,
however, per Fell's reading.
: David Kelley, the well-known proponent of the phonetic nature of the :
Mayan glyphs (I guess that's the link here to sci.arch.mesoam?), : in his
devastating review "Epigraphy and Other Fantasies" : of Stephen Williams'
book _Fantastic Archaeology_ in : _The Review of Archaeology_ 15, #2,
4/19/95, discusses at length Williams' : treatment of Grave Creek. Kelley
concludes, "I have a hard time criticizing : the view [espoused by
Williams] that the inscription is non-alphabetic, for : that seems _to me_
an obvious fantasy. I think that anyone who could : not recognize that
obvious fact should, _ipso facto_, disbar : himself from any serious
discussion of the problem." As I : recollect, Williams makes no mention
of Barnhart's new resurrection : of de Hass's defense of the stone's
authenticity.
: -- Hu McCulloch
: Econ Dept.
: Ohio State U.
: mcculloch.2@osu.edu
=O= Yuri Kuchinsky in Toronto =O=
--- a webpage like any other... http://www.io.org/~yuku ---
Diffusionist studies are not, as they are sometimes said to be,
attempts to depreciate the creativity of peoples; rather they are
efforts to locate and specify this creativity. D. Frazer,
THEORETICAL ISSUES IN THE TRANS-PACIFIC CONTROVERSY, Social
Research, 32 (1965) p. 454, as quoted by J. Needham.
Subject: Re: Sphinx and heavy rains
From: fjyurco@midway.uchicago.edu (Frank Joseph Yurco)
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 17:38:36 GMT
It wan not at all unusual for Egyptians to stop work on a project and
leave it just as it was, unfinished blocks and all. The successor of
Khafre, Menkaure, and his pyramid complex are a fine example. Looking
at the pyramid, you can still roughed out granite casing blocks that
had not received their final polish. Looking at the funerary temple,
you can see that the limestone cores were to be dressed with basalt
blocks, but again, it never got beyond the first stages, and some
of the basalt blocks likewise are not finally dressed, but roughed
out as they came from the quarry. So, it would not be surprising if
the Great Sphinx, developed as an idea late in Khafre's reign, was
left partly unfinished, at least as far as the working of its enclosure
goes. Indeed, there is evidence of this in the very bedrock of the
enclosure, where as Lehner and Hawass discussed, part of a ledge that
was being carved was abandoned and left unfinished. So, my remarks
about the blocks resting atop Dynasty IV remains, do not make the
fact of an unfinished project impossible. Over and over again, in
Egyptian history, we have examples of a king dying and leaving his
funerary monument unfinished. If his successor had filial piety, he
would finish the work, as Ramesses II did for Sety I at Abydos, but
if he was cheap, or elderly, his first interest lay in starting his
own burial place, and his predecessor's monument might be left unfinished,
or hastily finished off in mudbrick, as indeed Shepseskaf did for his
predecessor, Menkaure.
Most sincerely,
Frank J. Yurco
University of Chicago
--
Frank Joseph Yurco fjyurco@midway.uchicago.edu
Subject: pt2: The Hamitic Hypothesis:Black denial history
From: grooveyou@aol.com
Date: 3 Dec 1996 19:11:01 GMT
Ham was the middle child of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.,
The name 'Ham' means 'hot', 'heat,' and by application, 'black...."..The
name 'Ham' (in Egyptian Kham) is patronymic of his descendants. The four
sons of Ham were : Ethiopia, Kmt, Libya, and Canaan. The lines of Ham's
descendants, as described in Genesis, represent a kind of mythologized
ethnology. Until late eighteenth century, it was generally accepted that
Hamites were Black people. The extraordinary results of Napoleon
Bonaportes expedition to Egypt in 1798, however, became the historical
impetus for Europeans to transform the Hamites into Caucasions. In 1966,
Wyatt MacGaffey wrote, "Recently the term Hamite for the Caucasoid ideal
has fallen into disfavor, but certain authors speak of the Brown Race.
This concept is without scientific value, and must be regarded as a myth
with specific ideological functions related to the colonialsituation."
Subject: Re: Vedas: was:The Punjab: was: "Out of India"
From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 19:02:45 GMT
In article <581lvl$ej9@fridge-nf0.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet wrote:
>In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
[Sanskrit "just emerging as a language"...]
>> How would it be "just emerging as a language"?
>I may see language a little differently than some linguists do.
>What reason do we have to suspect that no languages are independently
>invented? What would we mean by the word "invented" in this case?
>Just as ethno-cultural clusters of people tend to collectively work
>out agreements on norms, mores, rules and laws, building consensus and
>homogeneity so as to come together as states; ethno-linguistic groups
>tend to work out grammatical arrangements so as to make language more
>consistent.
Can you give us examples of this alleged process? And something
like the Academie Francaise does not count, since most societies simply
do not have such organizations.
>Working against the emergence of language, just as factionalization
>tends to break down states, dialects tend to break down languages.
However, there is a joke that stats that a language is a dialect
with an army.
>Urbanization helps bring enough people close enough together so that
>at an event horizon there is sufficient critical mass to create a chain
>reaction. That's what I mean by the emergence of a language.
However, even people at Paleolithic levels of technology, like
many of the New World peoples, have had language.
>> What would it have emerged from???
>The Indus Valley culture which had been homogeneous and urban for
>more than a millenia at the time in question, was in the process of
>social disintigration. I would propose Sanskrit may have been an
>attempt by scholars to preserve some of its culture right at the
>very end. It appears to have
a strong litterary and grammatical
>tradition.
The trouble here is that the Indus Valley culture is rather
un-Vedic; the Vedas picture a rural, pastoralist society, instead of an
urban, agricultural one. And the IV writing system did not survive it.
>A lot of the Sanskrit literature consists of poems preserving the norms,
>mores, attitudes, values, rules and laws of the Vedic period. Who better
>to entrust a culture with, than an aristocracy of warrior nobles?
A priestly caste more likely.
>Why do they turn up in Mesopotamia? Because that was the largest
>and most advanced remaining culture known to the Indus valley.
Huh?
--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html
Subject: Re: Sigmund Freud"s 12 Page Essay: Ice age
From: fmurray@pobox,com (frank murray)
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 20:28:03 GMT
On 3 Dec 1996 18:16:31 GMT, grooveyou@aol.com wrote:
>According to Sigmund Freud's 12 page essay which was published along with
>copius notesand comments,by Harvard University Press in April 1987(edited
>by Ilse Grubrich-Simitis,translation and foreword by Axel and Peter
>Hoffer) under the title Phylogenetic Fantasy. According to this short 12
>page essay, survival outside the stone-aged caves was so brutal that the
>only respite from it were "perverse" sexual pleasures within the where Ice
>Age men took their frustration, aggression and fears out on their women.
>Much of modern european behavior was conditioned by an Ice-Age
>evolutionary experience, behavior still transmitted and/or selected by
>cultural values of Ice Age profile,and that the essence of this aggressive
>behavior was psychosexual maladaptation. Thus the birth of all of the
>modern discriminations, sexaul, racial etc.
but groove, you seem a bit obsessed with this 12 page fantasy on the
hypothetical sexual habits of long dead white people...perhaps you
oughta expand your area of expertise, at least slightly...try:
SEX VERSUS CIVILIZATION by Elmer Pendell, Ph.D
if 200 page books are a bit much to handle, that is, if you need
something short, that you can read over and over until pictures begin
forming in your brain, try something that will bring forth images less
damaging to the endangered process of developing a mind within that
brain...rilke's "duino elegies", inspired by the same beautiful white
woman over whom freud fantasized, might be a safe place for you to
begin..
good luck,
frank
