Newsgroup sci.archaeology 51337

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In <32a44bf1.78947663@news.demon.co.uk> dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk
(Douglas Weller) writes: 
>
>On 2 Dec 1996 16:14:25 GMT, dolmen1@ix.netcom.com(Leonard M. Keane)
wrote:
>
>>In <32a3818d.27127605@news.demon.co.uk> dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk
>>(Douglas Weller) writes: 
>>>>I honestly don't know what to make of Mystery Hill.  I understand
>>there
>>>>is a carbon-14 dating of about 4000 B.C.
>>>There's a 1045 BC +/- 180 date, but that is charcoal over 3 feet
below
>>the
>>>stone structures, could have been anything from a forest fire to
>>manmade, but
>>>predates the structures.
>>> I also recognize some solar
>>>>alignments and stone placements there. 
>>>You'd expect solar alignments for root cellars.
>>>
>>The dating I heard about, but have not personally verified, was about
5
>>years ago.  The date related orally to me was (going on memory here)
>>either 4000 years old OR 4000 B.C. - I think the latter. - L.K.
>
>I'd like more info, obviously, but do you know exactly what was dated
where?
>>Mystery Hill certainly is no root cellar. Have you ever been there? 
>No, I know someone who's been involved in discussions, etc. about it.
>
>>There are chambers, and also long tunnel-like constructions in and
>>around a central stone "table". Mystery Hill does have shaped
standing
>>stones with rather convincing solar and lunar involvement, associated
>>with the central table. 
>
>There are a lot of problems here which you haven't mentioned. One of
course is
>that the site was 'tidied up' and in fact rearranged in the 30s, quite
a
>serious problem. Hugh Hencken of Harvard's Peabody Museum, who had a
doctorate
>from Cambridge (England) and had been working on a project on Irish
>anthropology, was asked to examine the site by the then owner, William
B
>Goodwin, who had bought the site (known locally as Pattee's Caves) in
1936.
>Hencken wrote an article for the New England Quarterly in 1939 in
which he
>said he believed that Jonathan Pattee, who had owned the property in
the early
>19th century, had built the stone structures we are talking about.
Hencken
>also showed some of the structures to be similar to other structures
known to
>be of recent age.  
>The only artefacts found on the site date to the late 18th or 19th
centuries.
>What you call a central table, and has been referred to as a
sacrificial
>stone, can be found in other New England farming communites, where it
was used
>to produce soap.
>[SNIP]
>>
>>Of all the so-called "bee-hive" structures I've seen in New England,
>>about 50% have rather precise 120 degree alignments (winter solstice
>>sunrise) as one looks out the entranceway. Some are massive, such as
>>the Upton Chamber. The others vary, but often have other significant
>>sunrise alignments. - L.K.
>
>It is one thing to say there is an alignment, another to be sure about
the
>reason. I'd expect structures built for storage to have solar
alignments, as I
>said.
>
>[SNIP]
Web may be getting off the track here.  I did not plan to get into a
justification of any particular interpretation of Mystery Hill. I have
known owner Bob Stone and have seen some of the more recent work in
progress.
The site has been shored up a few years ago by a qualified stone mason
whose work was filmed and well documented.
The standing stones I referred to were not detected until recent years,
after woodlands were cleared, and are not alignments out of the mouths
of any of the chambers as I recall. They are outlying features in a
circle around the main complex.
Not to appear naive, but exactly why might one expect solar alignments
for the entranceways to root cellars? Why 120 degrees as opposed to 60
degrees or 90 degrees which also appear?
I'm sorry, but I don't know exactly where the C-14 sample was found. 
I'm sure you could find out by writing Mystery Hill, N. Salem, NH.
I can't imagine Mystery Hill being a soap factory, if that's what you
suggest, but the large table is clearly the central feature of the
whole complex.
Len.   

Jackhs wrote:  > 
> Hhmmm ... guess this guy's never been to ... well, anywhere ... 
> violance/racism white traits? Tell that to the darker than your standard 
> paper grocery bag skinned applicant to Howard University in Washington DC 
> earlier this century who was not excepted by his own race ... cause he was 
> too dark. Tell that to the man sold during the slave trade by his own people 
> to Europeans. Tell that to the lower castes of India. To the various Asians 
> who are not Chinese or Japanese or of whatever group that looks down upon 
> another group from within. Talk about your pseudo-scientist ... this guy needs 
> to get out of the cave he's living in and observe some reality. Fictional 
> works are not proof.
> 
> 
 All of these actions that you comment on are all modern post
colonization,none of these would occur without the intervention or
should I say imposition of the european mind set. 
   You could never site examples of the existence of the caste system in
any culture pre colonistic infusion by europeans.Your statement is
rediculous, it is as if to say, "the statue of liberty is here today,"
therefore it was here 20,000 years ago, This is rediculous.

I suspect that what really motivated the Europeans to start looking
westward for a route to the Indies was the advance of the Ottoman Empire
in the Muslim world. Previously, Venetians and others had good relations
with the Mamluk rulers of Egypt, and spices and other products from India
flowed into the Mediterranean and Medieval European world. However, with
the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman advanced dramatically, and
in the late 1400s they started menacing the Mamluks. Of course, the
Portugese didn't help matters, when they rounded the south African cape.
They started attacking Mamluk shipping in the Red Sea, and this helped
further weaken the Mamluks. The final blow came in 1517 when Selim I
(the Grim) conquered Egypt. However, by this time the Atlantic had been
crossed, and Magellan soon after circumnavigated the globe, proving beyond
all doubt that you could reach India by sailing west. 
Most sincerely,
Frank J. Yurco
University of Chicago
-- 
Frank Joseph Yurco                           fjyurco@midway.uchicago.edu

> P.S. I do know that this post does not quite belong here but in 
> news.help or whatever it is called.  However, it is just one more little 
> out-of-place posting which, by indirect ways, may even contribute to the 
> quality of the discussion in these 3 newsgroups.
> 
> 
> 
> Domingo Martinez-Castilla
> agdndmc@showme.missouri.edu
> 
I apoligize to for starting this thread here, but I just felt so elated 
when I figured out how to do this.  And I really don't mind reading the 
follow-up flames to the nutcases once in a while, I just hate reading 
from the nutcases directly.
Now on to more interesting subjects: Organizational Anthropology anyone?
Best,
Noel Dickover
LLD
Business Unit Leader - Organizational Change

In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
>
>In article <58231a$siq@fridge-nf0.shore.net>,
>Steve Whittet  wrote:
>>In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
>
>        [Mr. Whittet:]
>... 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.
>
>>What would you call the process by which a parent teaches a child
>>to speak?
>        [...]
>
>        There you go again, Mr. Whittet. Children do NOT learn to speak by
>formal instruction; 
Children do have the capacity to individually invent language, but
without instruction they won't speak anything intelligible to anyone
else. Wild children have been found from time to time and if young
enough can be taught to speak, but the ability to learn language
seems greatest at an early age, and develops according to the
intensity of the interactions with significant others.
>they pick up the language(s) spoken by those around
>them as they grow. 
That is what I said
>And the large majority of us use the languages we use
>*without* concerning ourselves with what each linguistic feature is
>called. For example, I can describe what each word in this posting is
>supposed to be, but when I write, I do it without being consciously
>concerned about such things. I don't say to myself "be sure to keep the
>adjectives before the nouns they refer to" or "form negatives with 'not'
>between the first and second verbs of a verb phrase, and if there is only
>one verb, and it is not 'am/are/is', make it the second one and use 'do'
>as the first one"; I just do it. 
You have also had a considerable amount of instruction to be able to
do that. Consider the great rapidity with which most of us learn
foreign languages while travelling overseas.
>
>>>        However, even people at Paleolithic levels of technology, like 
>>>many of the New World peoples, have had language.
>
>>They also had fire. We have the same fire they did, we just do more
>>with it.
>
>        In what way? Mr. Whittet, you'll be in for a nasty surprise if 
>you expect (say) some American Indian language to be childishly simple, 
>which is what you seem to be implying.
You can put an American Indian Language anywhere on that scale
you choose. I have said absolutely nothing about such a language.
I have not characterised it as either childish or simple. I have
made no implication concerning such value judgements.
I expect English to be somewhat more advanced than Greek
Greek is somewhat more advanced than Akkadian
Akkadian is somewhat more advanced than something from the Neolithic
Something from the Neolithic is somewhat more advanced than whatever
was in use at the point man evolved the physical and mental ability 
to use language c 200,000 BC
>
>>>        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.
>
>>That's why I am drawing a distinction between the upper and lower
>>Indus. 
>
>        Very ingenious [sarcasm]. Why didn't the more urban part leave a 
>poetic heritage if there was this continuity?
Both the Urban and Pastoral nature of India were reflected in the
Vedas. I happen to think the descriptions of life tie in quite well
with what archaeology has found. India matured early.
>
>>>        A priestly caste more likely.
>>What makes you think the warriors were not priests? Isn't that exactly
>>the martial arts tradition?
>
>        They usually are not.
I was being a bit flippant. I tend to think of physical and mental
activity as reinforcing one another. There is nothing to make me
suspect the Mittani writing books on the training of horses were
any different than the Mittani using horses and chariots in battle.
As aristocrats they may well have been trained in both arts.
As to their aristocratic nature and descriptions as "Maryannu",
they appear to have had the appelation "noble" which in the form
of the Indian word "ara" is really the root of the word Aryan. 
I admit I am attracted to the idea of the Aryans as having come 
out of India to spread their culture to the west rather than 
seeing it the other way around.
>
>-- 
>Loren Petrich  
steve

In article , joe@sfbooks.com says...
>
>In article <57qnjd$jed@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net (Steve
>Whittet) wrote:
>
>>In article , joe@sfbooks.com 
says...
>>>
>>>...chronology for northern India.
>
>Don't seem to be getting anywhere on it, do we?
I admit it is difficult to decipher the massive amounts of 
contradictory data. If Mallory says one thing, the ethnolouge
says another. If the encyclopedia says one thing the Atlas 
says another. I also had recourse to Michael Roaf and the 
CIA's World Fact Book, plus the apparently somewhat biased
accounts on the net, (David Frawley?). The sources we mentioned
earlier appear from some accounts to be outdated depending on
how much credence you choose to give the work of Dr. Rao.
Has the Indus Valley script been deciphered by Rao?
Does it provide evidence of a language the Vedas may have been 
written in before c 1500 BC as some would claim c 3000 BC? 
What about the cities discovered by Rao along the coast
flooded by the rising waters of the Persian Gulf?
The earliest farming in India was either in the seven rivers
area or at the mouth of the Indus c 7000 BC depending on which
accounts you go with.
Settlement dates to c 3000 BC and ends at Mohenjo-Daro c 1500 BC
There are also settlements to the east of Harrapa (on a sacred
river mentioned in the Vedas?) which ended when the river changed
course and dried up. This may have happened closer to 3000 than
1500 BC. Should the Vedas be dated earlier?
The Harrapan civilization at Rupar never really comes to an end as
far as I can see. There is a change from farming to pastorialism.
There is deforestation (slash and burn agriculture and cattle
ranching ?) reminiscent of what has been going on in the Amazon.
There is resultant flooding.
The earliest PGW date I have heard is c 1300 BC. I used c 1000 BC
There is extensive PGW at the site of a village flooded and destroyed
c 900 BC and you claim it didn't exist before c 500 BC.
Do you agree it is fair to consider Mohenjo-Daro, Harrapa
and their sattelites like Rupar separately or not?
>
>>>In article <57n33u$rqa@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net (Steve
>>>Whittet) wrote:
>>
>>>>The Rig Veda adresses the origins myths of the culture of India 
>>>>in the period between c 1500 and c 450 BC
>>>
>>>They certainly *don't* include things like the origin myths of the
>>>Hebrews, the Babylonians, or the Greeks, narratives explaining a) how
>>>people came to be and b) how the particular people telling the myth came
>>>to be ("ethnicity" stuff!).  That's just not what the Rgveda is about.
>>
>>The Vedas are four collections of hyms conventionally dated 
>>c 1100-900BC but in their present form from the 3rd century BC
>
>Come again?
The collections of the Vedas, like the collection of the Gospels and 
Old Testament, come some time after they are first written or composed.
>
>Conventional dates I learned for the Rgveda run around 1500-1200 BC.  The
>Atharvaveda, around 1000 BC, maybe as low as 800.  The Sama and Yajur, in
>between (note that the Sama is essentially out-takes from the Rg anyway).
This may all be out the window if Rao is right (his archaeological
dating pushes the time of their composition back to when the city
flooded and the river dried up because these things are mentioned
in the Vedas as underway.
>
>But in any event, what does "in their present form from the 3rd century
>BC" come from?  They aren't written in the classical Sanskrit of that era,
>that's for sure.
I think the next line explains what I mean here.
>
>>Rishis or sages transmitted the Vedic material orally, changing
>>and elaborating on it in the process much as was the case with
>>judao-christian-moslem religious traditions.
>
>Have you any evidence of this?
Just what I have already produced, the information from the Encyclopedia,
Atlas of World History and World Fact Book seem to agree on this, but that 
could all stem from one source and be a speculation.
>
>There were different schools of each Veda, and I admit I don't know how
>different their Vedas got to be.  But I would really question a comparison
>with the Hebrew Bible, where there are routine claims for detectible
>layers, and I don't really know what you mean by bringing in Christian and
>Muslim scriptures that became fixed documents relatively quickly.
The Judaeo-Christian-Moslem traditions are also about 4,000 years old,
and have been subject to editing throughout that period. The heaviest
glossing probably occured in the period c 400 BC - 400 AD. Sanskrit
was also subject to some grammatical arrangement during this period.
How much of it was syntax and how much semantic, I don't know.
>
>The layering that *did* happen is that, within each school, the Veda got
>an appendix, a Brahmana, which is sometimes represented as a technical
>manual for the sacrifice.  Then Brahmanas often got further appendices,
>Aranyakas or "forest books", with which I'm not too familiar; and finally
>the Upanishads were appended.  But these are distinct texts.
>
>>Some of this material was taken from older cultures thought to
>>have been Dravidian and or Aryan.
>
>"Aryan", in the Indian world whence the word derives, *means* the folks
>who wrote these texts.  It's what they called themselves.  We don't know
>if this was an ethnic, or cultural, or religious term, or what (I'd favour
>the last-named), but it's kind of silly to say some of the Vedas was taken
>from cultures "thought to have been" Aryan.  As for Dravidian influence on
>the Vedas, well, that really depends on who you ask; it's not as though we
>have older texts of Dravidian origin.
What I am finding is that "ara" is now taken to mean noble and pure,
perfected and emlightened, but not necessarily white. Compare the
word "Dayra" which means river in the sense of "flowing stream",
throughout the region.
>
>[snip tolerably accurate summary of the Vedic books' natures]
(I finally got one right)...:)
>
>>In refering to them as origins myths I had in mind the doctrins
>>of moksha or release from samsara and karma and the attainment
>>of nirvana which compares to the abbarakadabara of the Egyptians
>>very nicely. I was not just thinking of them in terms of the
>>epic poem Mahabharata.
>
>Um, you also weren't writing at all precisely.  I mean, "origin myth" is
>not usually used to refer to a religion's salvific scheme or its
>metaphysics.  By the way, I didn't refer to the Mahabharata at all in this
>context and I'm completely confused by your reference to it.
It is mentioned in the context of being an epic poem and having 
reference to places which can be checked in an archaeological dig
as to what they were, where they were located, and when they existed.
>>The quote was:
>>
>>"Indian epic poems, The Ramayana, the Mahabhatra, the Rig-Veda, in
>>particular gives some notion, however selective and stylized of life
>>in the period  from about 1500 BC to 450 BC" 
>>"Atlas of World History", page 64
>
>Well, since the Rgveda is *not* an epic poem (as you can easily find by
>opening a copy of any translation), and the Ramayana and Mahabharata are
>usually not dated anywhere near as old (being, for one thing, in *much*
>later forms of Sanskrit; you can readily check this in any history of
>Sanskrit literature), I am simply left to be disappointed in that atlas.
The dating may be subject to change. All I can do is reserve judgement
till we get more facts, but this apparently refers to work started
in 1986 and pursued through the last decade by Dr Rao.
>
>>>>1.) loss of forest in Northern India starting c 1500 BC
>>>
>>>Where?
>>>
>>>In the Ganga valley, Makkhan Lal has shown pretty conclusively that there
>>>was lots of forest around as late as AD 1500.  That's a pretty big chunk
>>>of Northern India.
>>
>>The c 1500 BC date comes from the Times "Atlas of World History", 
>>but it is also backed up by the discussion in BTTA and "The Pre 
>>and Proto History of the Arabian Penninsula" as regional climatic 
>>change. There was general climate change in this period. Forests 
>>changed character from coniferous to decidious. 
>>
>>Slash and burn agriculture associated with creating pasture for 
>>cattle similar to what we see going on in the Amazon is also 
>>typical of sedentism. 
>
>Where?  You still haven't answered.  It *looks* like you mean the Indus
>valley, but it'd be nice if you'd say.  I'd have a hard time buying it in
>the Punjab as a whole.
I think the reference to the seven rivers area means the Punjab 
as a whole and not the Indus valley as a whole.
>
>>>Reference, "Iron Tools, Forest Clearance and Urbanisation in the Gangetic
>>>Plains", MAN AND ENVIRONMENT 10:  83-90, 1986.
>>>
>>>>2.) cattle after c 1400 BC
>>>
>>>Why that date specifically?
>>
>>"At first the newcomers appear to have been hunters and herdsmen
>>tending cattle, which were already aquiring sacred attributes, and 
>>breeding horses." Ibid
>
>I'm losing patience with that atlas.  Oh, by the way, you do know that the
>Indian cattle originate in the east, right?
In using the date c 1500 BC, I am presuming this refers to their 
moving into a deforested Punjab. I was not refering to India as a whole.
There are cattle in India considerably earlier than 1500 BC, perhaps
before c 3000 BC (cattle were first domesticated c 7,500 BC in Africa
and quickly spread to Northern Arabia, but I don't know the date of
their first arrival in India. As to their coming from the east, not
to my knowledge. 
>
>>The Bulls on the Indus Valley seals or possibly the large granaries 
>>at Harappa if used for silage.
>
>What does this mean?  A part of speech or two is missing.  But I'm glad
>you brought up the Indus valley seals, which have, n.b., Indian cattle
>depicted on them.
They mostly have bulls. Where these bulls came from I don't know.
>
>>About this time it appears the forests 
>>begin to be cleared and indeed, if the forests were no longer there 
>>to retain the soil,that might be one reason for the disasterous flooding 
>>c 900 BC.
>
>Well, so far you've cited (as regards South Asia) the atlas only.  I no
>longer trust the atlas as regards this period of South Asia, and you're
>not citing them here anyway.  I'm left to recur to my previous point about
>the minimal degree to which forest clearance was necessary to support
>populations known for this era.
I guess its time to go to the library again...
Till then, here is what I have been using for desk reference material.
"In Search of the Indo Europeans",J P Mallory
"The Times Atlas of Archaeology"
"The Times Atlas of World Prehistory"
"The Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia" Michael Roaf
"Atlas of Ancient Egypt" Baines and Ma'lek 
"Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia"
"Bahrain through the Ages" 
"A History of Seafaring" Bass
"The Pre and Proto History of the Arabian Penninsula", Nayeem
"Archaeology" Renfrew and Bahn"
supplemented by whatever I find on line.
CIA maps and World Fact Book, Frawley, Ethnolouge, etc;
>
>>>>3.) the emergence of social caste after c 1300 BC
>>>
>>>This is *highly* misleading.  The implication that we know caste wasn't
>>>there before 1300 is sort of true, maybe, unless you take the "out of
>>>India" approach; from any other approach, caste shouldn't be there before
>>>1300 because you're positing a major discontinuity around then and anyway
>>>there are no textual records of caste until much later.
>>
>>We really don't know for sure when it occured, that's true. I picked 
>>this date as associated with the revitalization of the Punjab following 
>>the end of the Indus Valley civilization and the first stirrings of 
>>interest in the Ghanges as evidenced by PGW. 
>
>PGW in 1300?  Oh, dear.  I just know what's coming...
>
>>Social Stratification is associated with urbanization which is back in 
>>business in the Punjab by this time. The old urban culture ends c 1550.
>>In the next century forests are cleared for cattle to graze, then there 
>>is some trade with the Ganges, a few people prosper, others are exploited
>>and that takes maybe another century to emerge as a trend.
>
>Quoted in full, because I'm rather tired of this.  *Please* check *one*
>reference actually within the field.  The Indus valley's urban culture did
>*not* end c. 1550.  That's an uncalibrated radiocarbon date, or else an
>inference from assumptions about the Rgveda, that backs that up.
>
>Mature Harappan dates don't reach into the 2nd millennium, I've been
>reading lately.  I'm unsure how well calibrated those dates are, and
>there's a problem in the curve at 2100 BC which could bring dates reading
>that as low as 1900 or so.  But where you get 1550 I know all too well: 
>it's reference works that don't bother to apply the same standards of
>accuracy to their study of South Asia as to regions they consider more
>important.  Dastards.]
>
>Meanwhile, I recommend you look up the new book by F. R. Allchin, which
>includes enough detail about chronology and cultures of the 2nd-millennium
>Punjab to put this entire set of claims to rest; you can then back it up
>with Dilip Chakrabarti's new book for references to the literature.  I
>expect my reviews of these to hit sci.archaeology.moderated and this
>newsgroup reasonably soon, with full bibliographic details.
Good I will take your list with me to the library and see what I can get.
>
>>>But what it *looks* like you mean, in a chart of this kind, is that
>>>something we *do* know about happens in 1300 and caste starts to
>>>"emerge".  And that's just not so.
>[snip elaboration]
>>
>>I am not getting into it in that much detail. Basically I am just noting
>>it as a typical class conflict, which comes across sociologically as a
>>pointer for urbanism.
>
>Then it would be quite helpful if you'd use the word "class" instead. 
>"Caste" has an extremely clear meaning when used of South Asia, and it
>isn't "class".  For the relationships between these in ancient times, see
>almost anything by Ram Sharan Sharma, or relevant works by D. D. Kosambi
>or Romila Thapar (such as ).  For what it's worth,
>I don't think any of them would date the development of class that far
>back, although I concur it's a pointer for urbanism and they do too.
>
>Oh, I believe "caste" also doesn't mean "class" in sociological terms...
That's correct. While "class" and "caste" are not the same thing they
do result in the same "social stratification as a pointer for urbanism"
evaluation.
>
>Joe Bernstein
steve

On 4 Dec 1996 16:08:44 GMT, grooveyou@aol.com wrote:
>...the book from which I am reading now is 484 pages...
>
excellent...progress is possible...when you finish that one, start
another...better still, read several at a time, preferably by authors
of widely differing backgrounds and viewpoints...allow conflicting
ideas to vie within you for your acceptance...get confused...allow the
discomfort of no longer knowing what the truth might be to throb
within you to the point of near physical pain...seek the internal
honesty and integrity that will allow you, when the time comes - and
if you've the strength to endure, it will come - to sit down and
realize how easily you've been wordled, how your spirit has danced by
the danglestrings of others' spoke and illusion...write yourself a
little requiem card in celebration of each death of belief now seen as
too silly to be enslaved to...repeat the process...progress is
possible...
good luck
frank

Yes... Very sad:)
Laurie

In article , Kathy McIntosh  wrote:
>Seriously, Art, did they actually eat the stomach contents?  Surely
>caribou eat grass, would it really have been that important to them?
My daughter has just finished a school paper on the Inuit.  She was 
thrilled to learn that an Inuit delicacy is the raw, 
partially-digested-krill-filled small intestine of freshly killed seals.  I 
don't know about caribou.  They eat a lot of lichen as well as grass.
H. Brent Howatt, Director of Ins. Svc.| The first days are the hardest days,
Humboldt County Office of Education   | Don't you worry any more.
Eureka, California                    | When life looks like Easy Street,
Behind the Redwood Curtain            | There is danger at your door.
============================================================================
hhowatt@cello.gina.calstate.edu         PGP public key by FINGER or e-mail
bhowatt@humboldt.k12.ca.us
hbhowatt@sloc.net

In article <32a dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk (Douglas Weller) writes:
>(Hu McCulloch) wrote:
>> Bart_Torbert@piics.com (Bart Torbert) writes:
>>>dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk says...
>>
>>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.
>How does he deal with Matthew Read's account, in which he says that he wrote
>to P.B. Catlett, who claimed to have discovered it, and Colonel Wharton, who
>said he saw the discovery, and they both agree it was found in a pile of dirt
>dumped from a wheelbarrow. Yes, the site owner, Tomlinson, denies this, but
>evidently his account of the diggin doesn't match any statements made by any
>of those who observed the excavations.
Barnhart appears to agree with MacLean, that "Regardless of who found
the stone or whether it was discoverd inside or outside the mound, all 
professed witnesses agreed it had come _from_ the mound." (Barnhart,
p. 122, summarising MacLean).
>>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." 
>I presume he backs this up some how. How does he deal with Read's experiment
>getting 4 people to draw 20 arbitrary symbols with straight lines, and
>supposedly ending up with inscriptions with equal claim to be alphabetical and
>with characters that looked Cypriotic or Phoenician, Coptic, runic, etc.
At length -- see Kelley's article.  Recall that Kelley's credentials are as 
a philologist, best known for his 1970s book on the Mayan script.  It is
now perhaps outdated but still is regarded as the big breakthrough 
(literally over Thompson's dead body)  in recognizing the phonetic nature of 
the Mayan glyphs. -- see Michael Coe's book on the history of the 
decipherment. 
Kelley quotes Williams' caustic remark on Thomlinson, 
the finder and original owner of the stone, "Bah, humbug, Mr. Thomlinson." 
(Fantastic Archaeology p. 87).  But after demolishing Read's pseudo-
philology,  Kelley concludes, "Bah, humbug, Mr. Read." (p. 12). 
>And surely Williams is spot on in saying that Fell's suggesting that this
>extremely tiny stone - 1.75 inches long - is a royal commemoration -- is
>ridiculous.
"I [Kelley] agree with him [Williams] entirely that all of the proposed
translations [by Fell and earlier attempts by Oppert, Schwab, 
and Bing] attribute an unlikely monumentality to the inscriptions [on 
the Grave Creek and related Ohio County W. VA and Braxton tablets].  The
context suggests to me something more like a property tag." ( Kelley p. 13).
I don't know whether Fell's translation makes sense, but again that is 
an entirely different issue than whether it is genuine and whether or 
not it is alphabetic.
>btw is Kelley suggesting that it is the only surviving fragment
>of an unknown form of writing?
"As a principle, I accept Haven's position as fully as Williams does, but 
in practice I do not think that our archaeological sample is so good that 
items will never appear to be 'solitary monuments'.  The professionally
excavated Phaistos disk, from Crete, is written in an otherwise completely
unknown script and shows the otherwise equally unknown practice of 
printing symbols from simple stamp dies.   The Tuxtla statuette from 
Mexico had to wait three-quarters of a century before a major monument
written in the same script was discovered. 
  "There are, in fact, two other small stone tablets which have been 
reported from West Virginia, without archaeological context, 
which contain inscriptions in the same alphabet. ..."  (Kelley, pp. 12-13).
These are the Ohio County, West Virginia stone and the Braxton County 
stones, discussed by Fell, in America BC.  But since they were more or 
less surface finds, Kelley admits they aren't great evidence.  
I might add that a very good duplicate 
of the Grave Creek stone was found by Philip R. Hough in a shoebox of 
artifacts for sale in a gas station in Steubenville OH, just a ways up the
Ohio from Moundsville, W. VA,  in 1952, and purchased for $1.  
See Hough's  "My Part in the Story of the Grave Creek Tablet,"  _Tenn. 
Archaeologist_, Summer 1952, pp. 47-48. 
My comparison of a photo of it sent by Hough's grandson Bob Miller
to Victor Moseley, late President of the Midwestern Epigraphic 
Society, to a photo of the Smithsonian's cast of the original Grave 
Creek stone, reveals that  it is not the original, but just someone's
copy, not necessarily made with any attempt to deceive, and 
certainly with no such attempt by Mr. Hough or Miller.  Although it 
could easily pass for the original, the 
rulings are too straight, and the vertical alignment of the letters is not 
quite right.
The Smithsonian's cast of the original is NMNH # 7252.   An 
8x10 print of it (negative # 6768) can be obtained at cost from 
them.  See also negative # 90-9022, of Davis's collection, which 
actually contains the original (!), down in a corner (#64), but 
unfortunately rather fuzzily.  They also have a wax imprint of 
the original.  It is badly cracked, but clarifies some ambiguous spots in 
the cast (National Anthro Archives, MS 3146 (EH Davis collection). 
The original is still missing, but there is an off chance it may be in 
Wills de Hass's papers in a library somewhere in W. Va.  (U W Va?)
Davis once owned it, and his collection went to the British Museum, 
but I have bugged them about it, and am satisfied they don't have 
it.  De Hass apparently acquired it separately from Davis, and is the 
last known owner. 
Lest I have overwhelmed Doug with these arguments, I should 
caution that Kelley merely concludes, "My major point, however, 
is not to argue that the [Grave Creek, Braxton, and Ohio Co.] inscriptions 
are, indeed, genuine, but rather that I do not find it fantastic to think that 
they may be." (p. 13)
-- Hu McCulloch
   Econ Dept.
   Ohio State U.
   mcculloch.2@osu.edu

> >> Americas via the Bering Strait.
> >
> >   then how did people get here, osmosis?
> 
> Heh... can you really not see it coming?  It's part of Ed the 
> Evangelist's (hidden) young earth/creationist/Eden's in America agenda.
> 
> Gosh, he's just so subtle.  Not.
> 
> B.
  you are right. MAybe someone will give him a "life" for Xmas. Dan
O'Connell

On 29 Nov 1996 usa1997@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> According to the teachings of Jehovahs Witnesses, Satan is the ruler of
> the system of things that we live in today.   They believe Satan is in
> charge of the Governments, The Political systems, every aspect of the
> world is run by satan.   Everyone and everything except Jehovahs
> witnesses.   
> 
	Yeah, they can knock on your door on Saturday morning but they 
still don't have a warrant!
Hail the Alien Elite!
Hail Satan!

In article  seagoat@primenet.com
(John A. Halloran) writes:
>As another contribution to this subject of word counts for ancient languages,
>I have received my copy of Christopher Ehret's 1995 book Reconstructing
>Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian), in which the number of reconstructed words
>is 1,011.
The reconstructions in Ehret's book are *roots*, rather than *words*, as I
recall.  These are the lexical-meaning-bearing portions of words without the
derivational and grammatical affixes.
Since the language was clearly inflected (as evidenced by its descendants), the
number of *roots* is a low minimum for the number of words, by a factor on the
order of 6 or so.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_

Summarizing Groovy's post he says: "I am not racist, but I can proof that your 
race is the only racist race".
Am I the only one who thinks there's bit of a cock-up in the logic here??
Ralf
grooveyou@aol.com wrote:
: Michael Bradley an American of european descent argued that Caucasoid
: abcestors and their modern Caucasion descendants are significantly more
: aggressive than other major genetic groups because of their uniquely
: glacial evolution. He opened this book dramtically:                       
:                    This book is racist.                                   
:                             For, among other things,I will attempt to show
: that racism itself is a predisposition of but one race of Mankind-the
: white race.                                                            I
: believe  that I can show that our converging contemporary crises, like
: racism itself, have their origins in the prehistory of the white race
: alone. We attribute various threats to our survival to man's folly, but
: this is a conscious and self- protecting euphemism.                       
[...]

Xina@netins.net wrote to the world again instead of to Elijah
>Your words are empty and I do not hear them.  
***so how come you bother replying to them then ?
    some deep mystery here somewhere.
>I wish you happiness and release from your pain.  
>You are sick and I wish you health and healing.  
>You are adrift and I wish you safe harbour.  
***enough to make one puke isnt it.
    just be honest, and hope that he gets a severe 
    dose of constipation.
>You are cursed and I wish you deliverence.  
>You are contempible and I bid you good day.  
>May your God and ours have mercy on us all.
>Adieu, Elijah....I will not respond to you again.   > Xina
***until next week she means, when the urge will be irresistible again.   
kaman.

Hello i'm looking for a Database to catalog my collection of stones and
fossils is there anybody out there who can help me. PLEASE
Wouter Dijk.

Douglas,
Of course Time is a wonderful scientific source, haven't you viewed their
wonderful series on ghosts, ufos, myths and legends?
Paul Pettennude
Douglas Weller  wrote in article
<32bc2220.45813142@news.demon.co.uk>...
> On 3 Dec 1996 16:54:34 GMT, yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
> 
> >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.
> >
> >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)
> 
> TIME? A well known scholarly source?  Makes me dubious about the whole
book if
> that's the author(s) idea of a good reference.
> 
> 

Stella,
You obviously can NOT read, so I will write veeeeerrrrry slowly.  Elsewhere
in this newsgroup you will find postings I have made lending evidence of
the possibility of contact.  I suggest that since you ready very slowly you
get an Internet Service Provider which charges a flat rate per month to
keep your online bills down.
Paul PettennudeStella Nemeth  wrote in article
<5831ql$q02@sjx-ixn4.ix.netcom.com>...
> "Paul E. Pettennude"  wrote:
> 
> >We can beat this horse to death and probably already have.  If you go by
> >the rules we archaeologists have created for ourselves, then we are
missing
> >the so called "smoking guns".  We need a text, a piece of boat, an
ancient
> >souvenir (no coconuts please); something that says people came from "x"
and
> >visited "y".  Without these simple requirements we are all simply
> >hypthosizing.  
> 
> I think there is a difference in method and philosophy here.  You
> require a concrete piece of evidence, of "enduring value" to even
> consider the possibility of any contact of minor importance.  I'd
> rather use a bit of common sense.  Minor levels of contact are
> unlikely to produce your required concrete piece of evidence of
> enduring value (by which I gather you mean silver or gold objects of
> substantial size).  To demand such evidence to consider a less than
> hermetically sealed New World seems counterproductive to me.
> 
> So let me make myself clear.  I totally agree with you that such
> evidence does not seem to currently exist.  I, however, very much
> doubt that there was no contact at all.  The truth is almost certainly
> somewhere in the middle.  Truth generally is.
> 
> 
> Stella Nemeth
> s.nemeth@ix.netcom.com
> 
> 

sudsm@aol.com wrote:
>     The name "Arrarat" is, of course, transliterated, not translated, 
>and it means "high hills" -- whether or not it was later used for a 
>territory.  No such name is shown by ancient geographers as applied 
>anywhere, either to a mountain, mountain range, or kingdom.  
***Actually, this is not correct. Ararat was the Hebrew form
[transliteration] of the name Urartu, in Assyrian sources  the name of
the Armenian mountain region. Urartu also became the name of a kingdom
in that area [ca. 835-714 BC],  that, with its capital near Lake Wan,
at one time stretched towards the Caucasus in the north, Lake Urmia in
the east, Tigris  in the south and the upper Euphrates in the west. It
was to this kingdom, often at war with Assyria,  that the murderers of
the Assyrian king Esarhaddon fled: 2Kings19:37 "the country Ararat"
= "the kingdom Urartu". So it is on this evidence that all the old
traditions base their notion that  it was  Armenia were the  Ark came
to rest - not 'at Mount Ararat' but 'at one of mountains of Ararat'. 
I do not know were the name Urartu/Ararat stems from. If it is Semitic
it could just mean "high land, mountain region", like you say [*] .
And it could *possibly*/in theory have been given to more than one
area with large mountains - which seems to be your desire. The problem
with that idea is that  the Assyrian and Jewish sources that we have
only with certainty use it for the Armenian highland. 
[*] cf. Hebrew:   Aram ="High land" 
                         Armageddon=Har-Megiddo="Hill of Megiddo"
                         Hor = "hill, mount, peek"
    I do not know whether the name could have had a meaning 
    in the  Urartian language itself (related to Hurrian; non-Semitic
    and non-Indo-european, likely Caucasian) 
> I am open to any plausible line of reasoning that would 
>make looking in Turkey rational -- other than as a tourist attraction.
**Well, whether go  looking would be rational depends on whether
you see the flood story as history or as literary product. But the
answer to that question is not relevant for the identification
of the Ararat region itself - and it was only on that question  i
could not resist dropping my 2 cents in the hat. 
A.K. Eyma

Dear all:
I posted a similar message one year ago and did not get many replies. 
So I try it again.
----------------------
   I am working on some of the Cenozoic vertebrate fossils from North
   America (55 - 30 million years old). An interesting phenomenon is
   that red-purple iron oxides, or sometimes, black Mn oxides are as
   encrustations on the fossil bones. Most of these fossils are from
   paleosol deposits. I am now having some speculations how these
   encrustations formed but would like to have a modern example to compare
   with and perhaps for detailed in-site geochemical study of the formation
   processes. However, I've been unsuccessful in finding any such 
   encrustations from recent unearthed bones.
  From your experiences in excavating, have you seen any secondary
  mineral encrustations on bones? 
  BTW, is there a mialing-list for archaeologist in US? I know one in
  UK but I guess that's mostly UK archaeologist.
   I appreciate any information and suggestions. Please reply to my account
   since I don'y regularly follow this group.
Best,
Huiming Bao
Ph.D candidate in Geology
12/4/96
-- 
Huiming Bao
Dept. Geol. & Geophys. Sci.
Princeton Univ., NJ 08544

In <32A5A5F1.10E6@advfilms.com> Everett Battle  >
All of these actions that you comment on are all modern post
>colonization,none of these would occur without the intervention or
>should I say imposition of the european mind set. 
>
>   You could never site examples of the existence of the caste system
in
>any culture pre colonistic infusion by europeans.Your statement is
>rediculous, it is as if to say, "the statue of liberty is here today,"
>therefore it was here 20,000 years ago, This is rediculous.
              Wrong.  There was intra-African slave trading
                before any African colonization took place.
                You attempts to isolate racism to the white
                race is racism itself.
-- 
                Gary
________
"What luck for rulers that
        men do not think."    
      __Adolf Hitler

julia  wrote in article
<583d7o$nc4@perki0.connect.com.au>...
> Just out of curiosity..how did you find all this out? Where did Columbus 
> come from if it wasn't Italy? 
Christopher Columbus came from Genoa.
Regards,
Roh

In article <581krl$ej9@fridge-nf0.shore.net> whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) writes:
(snip rubbish)
>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.
Would you please explain to us what the distribution of chlorite vessels, 
which just last week as supposed to be an indication of Kassite presence (in 
your mind),  has to do with what you are trying to argue?  What is the 
mechanism, and what is its significance?
>>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.
This is not serious.  How can you, without knowing any of the facts in 
question, call something a fantasy.  McAlpin is not the only person to claim 
that Elamite might be Dravidian, but he did take on the problem seriously, and 
wrote a whole book about it.  Have you read this book, and are you capable of 
refuting his arguments?  As usual, you are piling fact upon upon unrelated 
fact,  without any sense of what goes with what, and now have decided to use a 
CIA ethnolinguistic map to argue the remote past.  Lovely!   So please, 
details only, give us a refutation of McAlpin's position.

Chad Geraghty, in <582as0$mtj@bertrand.ccs.carleton.ca>:
>I too am new here.  And as best as i can tell there was no logic in that
>post.  Some rantings made by some one who has, sadly lost touch with reality.
then welcome. know two things:
(1) "here" is, if i'm counting commas right in the Newsgroups: line,
    six different places. now, contrary to what some people will tell
    you, crossposting *does* have its uses, but i'll be damned if i
    ever saw a useful crosspost to more than three groups.
(2) elliehoohah (or however he spells it these days) is a certified
    net.kook. there is *no* use and less reason trying to talk to him.
    read him for comic relief if you will, but don't bother trying to
    follow up on anything he produces, it only makes him worse.
note followups.
-- 
        "...Everybody got this broken feeling
         like their father or their dog just died..."
                                                        - Leonard Cohen

fmurray@pobox,com (frank murray) wrote:
> >Does anyone know how to do this with Free Agent?
> 
> i believe you have to upgrade to agent, the pay version, which has
> excellent, easy to use, filtering tools...current version is 99f with
> free upgrades to the eventual agent 1.00...try:
> 
> www.forte.com
YM www.forteinc.com HTH
Comments about Agent's killfiles seconded.
-- 
Roy Stilling, Winchester, England         "Money is a sign of poverty"
rpjs@stilling.ftech.co.uk                        - old Culture proverb
YAPPHP: http://www.stilling.co.uk/rpjs/
Shire of Venta: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2217/        DNRC

In article <582h3h$df4@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net says...
[snipping throughout]
>In article <581vfv$p1f@csu-b.csuohio.edu>, scott@math.csuohio.edu        
>says...
>>Steve, you completely misunderstand what I'm getting at.  You offered 
>>the relationship between bodies of water and the ends of land routes 
>>as evidence for your theory that transportation by water was primary.
[irrelevant disquisition deleted]
>>I think, on the basis of the little that I know of the subject and 
>>the evidence offered in this forum, that you're simply wrong, but I 
>>wasn't arguing the facts. 
>It generally helps to bring some facts to bear.
If an argument is *logically* invalid, the truth or falsity of its 
premises is irrelevant.
>> I was merely pointing out that the relationship in question 
>>is *not* evidence for your theory because it can as easily be 
>>explained by exactly the opposite view.
And if incompatible theories T and U serve equally well to explain 
an observation O, then O is not evidence for or against either of 
these theories.
>Explain why almost all early sites are located on rivers, or
>coasts even when the principal settlement may be on a small
>rocky island where no agriculture is possible.
This has nothing to do with the statement of yours that led to this 
interminable and increasingly pointless argument.  This is a *new* 
argument.  My comments bear only on the original statement, a fair 
summary of which still appears at the top of this post.
>>This is so no matter *what* the actual facts may be. 
>I am attracted to contradictions in terms; lets look at some of
>the evidence you have to support your view that it doesn't matter
>what the facts are.
Oh, don't be dense.  I never said that it doesn't matter *in general* 
what the facts are.  I made a very specific assertion: that your 
argument was inherently flawed to such an extent that no possible 
set of facts could justify that specific argument.  I must say that 
your continued failure to understand what I consider a very elementary 
point does nothing to inspire confidence in your interpretations of 
what's to be found in your manifold sources.
Brian M. Scott

Alan Shaw wrote:
> > I hold no brief for Velikovsky. I have read some of his books, that's > > all. I am very skeptical of his physics but I find much of 
his ancient > > history persuasive. The only reason I have for taking on 
board any of > > his radical assertions is the evidence he produces to 
support them. My > > interest is all this is to find out to what extent 
experts in the field, > > which I am not, can refute his evidence.
> >
> > I wrote previously:
> >
> > > Yet the > evidence of late Classical Greek letters incised on tiles> from > Ramses > III's palace during manufacture says
> > Velikovsky is in all > probability > right. >
> >
> >  3 the back of six tiles. I can see for myself alpha,
> > chi, lambda, lambda, epsilon. V. thinks the sixth may have iota, but I
> > would not insist on that. He quotes T H Lewis: "The most noticeable
> > feature  is that several of the rosettes have Greek letters at the back, > > evidently  stamped on during the process of making." TSBA VII 
1881
> > (1882) 182.
> >
> > Saida:
> >
> > I do not have Velikovsky's book here with me, although, at least for the > > moment, I wish I did.  I'll have to assume that the persons who 
examined > > these tiles knew Greek from Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew, 
which early > > Greek resembles considerably.
> 
> These are late classical Greek letters, no question of them being early.
I have now obtained a copy of Velikovsky's "Peoples of the Sea" and have 
checked out the photos of the tiles, which are on two un-numbered pages 
following page 98.  No wonder nobody but Velikovsky found them to be of 
any interest or significance!  As far as I can tell, they are 
indicative of absolutely nothing out of the ordinary and certainly are 
quite useless as evidence regarding a theory that Ramesses III might be 
Nectanebo.  Primarily, the tiles that I am looking at now do not refer 
to Ramesses III at all.
Velikovsky states that these tiles bear "Persian motifs".  The designs I 
see are rosettes, a lotus bud and an open lotus flower.  Lotuses are 
Egyptian, not Persian, and the rosette is an image used by several 
cultures.  It is found in Egypt as far back as the Old Kingdom. You can 
see rosettes decorating the silver head-band of Nofret, the wife of 
Prince Rahotep, the famous couple from this period.
Certainly, there is something incised on the backs of each of the tiles 
in question.  Velikovsky quotes a couple of 19th Century experts who 
insist that the symbols are Greek, but, from what I see, their being 
Greek is far from a certainty at all!  The first sign, supposedly an 
alpha, could just as easily be a North-Semitic "alef".  When I wrote 
above that I assumed these "experts" knew Greek from Phoenician or 
Paleo-Hebrew, I assumed too much.  The next symbol is far more likely to 
be a Semitic "t" than a Greek "chi" and the two "lambdas" could very 
easily be "lameds".  What Velikovsky says "may be iota" could be a 
"gimel" or just a straight line!  What has been viewed as being "clearly 
epsilon" looks like a "samekh".  There is nothing here to get excited 
about at all.  These tiles were probably made by Phoenician craftsman.
> >
> > Alan, although you say you have no brief for Velikovsky, you are still> > giving us only quotes from his book and ignoring all other 
extant > > evidence that might exist contradicting him.
> 
> I am following Velikovsky only as long as his evidence stands up. When
> and if someone gives me better counter evidence I will dump V.
His evidence stands up like a drunk.  I say dump him.  These tiles are 
useless.  You say there are some that have the name of Ramesses III on 
them.  Why aren't they in the book?  However, as long as I have the book 
here, I might as well read it and you may have the doubtful pleasure of 
hearing from me again.

In article <584c75$575@fridge-nf0.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet  wrote:
>In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
>>they pick up the language(s) spoken by those around
>>them as they grow. 
>That is what I said
	But they do NOT acquire language by formal instruction; just read 
some of the literature on language acquisition some time. Mr. Whittet, if 
you expended about a tenth the effort on linguistics that you do on 
archeology, you'd know a heck of a lot more than you do now.
>>And the large majority of us use the languages we use
>>*without* concerning ourselves with what each linguistic feature is
>>called. For example, I can describe what each word in this posting is
>>supposed to be, but when I write, I do it without being consciously
>>concerned about such things. I don't say to myself "be sure to keep the
>>adjectives before the nouns they refer to" or "form negatives with 'not'
>>between the first and second verbs of a verb phrase, and if there is only
>>one verb, and it is not 'am/are/is', make it the second one and use 'do'
>>as the first one"; I just do it. 
>You have also had a considerable amount of instruction to be able to
>do that. Consider the great rapidity with which most of us learn
>foreign languages while travelling overseas.
	Give us all a break, Mr. Whittet. It is much easier to learn a 
language as a child than an adult; there may be some sort of neurological 
switch that makes that happen.
	And when was the last time you heard people saying "The adjective 
goes before the noun, not after it"?
>>        In what way? Mr. Whittet, you'll be in for a nasty surprise if 
>>you expect (say) some American Indian language to be childishly simple, 
>>which is what you seem to be implying.
>You can put an American Indian Language anywhere on that scale
>you choose. I have said absolutely nothing about such a language.
>I have not characterised it as either childish or simple. I have
>made no implication concerning such value judgements.
	That's what you've been implying with your theories of language 
formation, which mean that those without big cities don't have Real 
Languages.
>I expect English to be somewhat more advanced than Greek
>Greek is somewhat more advanced than Akkadian
>Akkadian is somewhat more advanced than something from the Neolithic
>Something from the Neolithic is somewhat more advanced than whatever
>was in use at the point man evolved the physical and mental ability 
>to use language c 200,000 BC
	Advanced in what way? Vocabulary size is NOT everything. And if
you think that Greek or Sanskrit or Akkadian grammar will be easy, you'll
be in for a NASTY surprise. 
	Some linguists, like Bickerton, who have studied pidgins and
creoles, have come to the view that the only "primitive" recorded 
languages are pidgins, because these are essentially makeshift languages 
created by people without some shared language. 
>Both the Urban and Pastoral nature of India were reflected in the
>Vedas. I happen to think the descriptions of life tie in quite well
>with what archaeology has found. India matured early.
	Do they describe living in big, Harappan-style cities? Do they 
describe writing?
>I admit I am attracted to the idea of the Aryans as having come 
>out of India to spread their culture to the west rather than 
>seeing it the other way around.
	Only because it is heretical. Martin Gardner in _Fads and
Fallacies in the Name of Science_ notes that crackpots tend to propose the
exact opposite of what is considered established wisdom.
Perpetual motion is possible, and many crackpots have attempted to build 
some.
Gravity is not a pull but a push. 
Einstein was wrong and Newton was right (in the 19th cy., however, the
crackpots were all anti-Newton and many of them were opposed to the idea
that gravity extended indefinitely). 
Sound is not a wave but a stream of particles (this bit of 19th-cy.
crackpottery, however, is partially vindicated by quantum mechanics, which
posits that sound is quantized like everything else; but even QM states
that sound also has wave properties).
The Earth is not round, but flat.
The Earth is not condensed, but hollow.
We are living not on the outside, but on the inside, of the Earth.
The planets have been known to bounce around the Solar System in 
historical times.
Etc.
Is Steve Whittet fundamentally different???
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
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Remnant populations of small, frizzy-haired, forest-dwelling peoples
still exist (or did within the last century) in isolated pockets 
throughout asia, from the phillipines, malaysia, indonesia, the
andaman islands, and possibly india as well. Average height for men
ranged from around 4 1/2 feet to just under 5, leading to the name
"negrito", and begging the question of relations to the african
pygmies. How did the negritos come to be? The answer to this question
could have important implications for the history of human evolution.
The african pygmies are the best example we have of human adaptation
for a specialized environment. The equatorial african rainforest,
existing throughout multiple cycles of glacial advance and retreat,
presents special problems of survival and adaptation. All the
rainforest species are smaller than their savanna ancestors; one
antelope is the size of a rabbit. The human inhabitants of the forest
have adapted in similar directions; pygmy scale is well suited to the
heat, humidity, and dense growth. 
The origin of the pygmies seems fairly obvious: they have evolved to
live in the forest, which has remained  a stable environment
throughout the climatic fluctuations of the last few million years. It
isn't known how long the forest has been their home; the rainforest
has not yielded any fossil clues as of yet, and conditions are not
good for bone preservation. But what of the negritos? How did they
settle their far-flung range?
One possibility is that the negrito evolved, in-situ, just as did
their african counterparts. If we knew how long it took for the
african pygmy adaptation to evolve, that would provide a useful
comparison for the candleabra hypothesis.
Another possibility is that the negrito are the direct descendants of
african pygmies. The out-of-africa scenario would seem to require a
climatic epoch where tropical forests covered the intervening arid
territory between equatorial africa and india; have such conditions
ever existed? 
A number of factors lend support to the out-of-africa hypothesis, none
of them conclusive; first of all, the negrito *look* african. Their
skin color is light by african standards (though pygmy skin color is
also lighter than their bantu neighbors), but the rest of their
physiology appears african. An interesting detail is the fact that the
negrito *sit* like pygmies, with their legs stretched out straight in
front of them; I know of no other people who sit that way. The socio-
economic relationship between the negrito and their neighbors is
strikingly analogous to that found in africa: the negrito trade meat,
honey, and other forest products for agricultural and manufactured
products from the villages. In common with the pygmies, the negrito do
not build a fixed abode, and they also have largely abandoned their
native language to adopt the speech of their neighbors. 
The relic populations of vedda peoples found in indonesia, sri lanka,
and arabia felix provide another analogy; it seems unlikely that both
races co-evolved in-situ. One, if not both, must have arrived as part
of a great migration.
Keep in mind that asia has been occupied by hominids for at least a
million years, and throughout that time the 100,000 year glacial cycle
has repeatedly exposed and inundated the continental shelves, shifting
ecological zones southwards as the glaciers expanded, and then back
north during the interglacials. If, during one of the interglacials,
rainforest managed to extend around the horn of africa, up into
arabia, and around the persian gulf through the indus valley, then the
puzzle of the negrito may be solved.
-- 
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Disclaimer claims dat de claims claimed in dis are de claims of meself,
me, and me alone, so sue us god. I won't tell Bill & Dave if you won't.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=----   Gerold Firl @ ..hplabs!hp-sdd!geroldf