Re: SV: SV: Mitanni, Hurrians, etc.

Dear Adrian

It so happens I have been working a great deal with both C14 and other
forms of dating so I´m fully conversant with both their strengths and
weaknesses. As for the "nuclear Tectites" and 120,000 year old villages I
would greatly appreciate some references please!

Tommy Tyrberg

----------

> Från: Adrian <afme@...>
> Till: cybalist@egroups.com
> Ämne: [cybalist] Re: SV: Mitanni, Hurrians, etc.
> Datum: den 16 december 1999 00:52
>
> Subject: [cybalist] Re: SV: Mitanni, Hurrians, etc.
>
> > > === Dating is a very vexed issue. Feynmann, the scientist, once
> commented
>
> > *** Actually while historical dating isn't really firm before the

oldest

> > Assyrian limmu-lists (911 BCE) geophysical dating within the Holocene

> > rather tightly constrained by C14-dating, dendrochronology and rhytmite
> > (varved clay) dating. These three quite independent dating methods

agree

> > that the Holocene began slightly over 11,000 calendar years ago, with

> > uncertainty of a few centuries at the most. Since the Cultural sequence
> > (and initial neolithization) in the Near East can be stratigraphically

and

> > climatologically tied to the immediately preceding Younger Dryas

stadial

> > the starting point of Near East farming cultures (Pre Pottery Neolithic

> > is pretty well tied down to approx. 10,000 BCE.
> > Admittedly there are areas that have not been too well surveyed
> > archaeologically yet, but it seems to me that the chances of finding a
> > major center of neolithization older than the Near East one somewhere

else

> > are very slim. For one thing there doesn't seem to be any important
> > cultivars left whose origin hasn't been at least approximately

determined.

>
> Hi Tommy, being one trusting fellow, refuse to call myself a sceptic, for
> obvious reasons, I did some looking into C14 Dating. It is VERY error

prone,

> mainly because it assumes uniformity, and science has just thrown out the
> ultimate constant, the speed of light. If one reads what the pundits

tell

> each other it makes a different story, but one hidden rule of

specialisation

> is "No poaching in other's territory" thus one cites the authority in the
> field who is seldom agreed with by his peers. They went into counting

tree

> rings and ice cores to rectify this and only found more anomalies. One
> happening right now for the solar system.
>
> The Russians reported several villages, dated between 13 - 18,000 BC,

with

> factories and an organised layout. A more recent report found, in

building,

> under 12 foot of clay, date some 120,000, more signs of vivilisation,

we'll

> have to wait for more detail, of course. Next there are some six centres

> civilisation I stand told, covered by sheets of tectites, which, I stand
> told, can have only come about from nuclear stuff, redolent of the
> Mahabharata, quoted
> by Oppenheimer at the Wite Sands test :"Brighter than A 1000 suns". Read
> Charles Fort, for one example. Our history is actually the most untidy

mess

> ever, taking all into consideration, but if one reads the books it's
> somewhat orderly.
>
> Next, I tend to poach abroad and outside what English scholars keep on
> re-assurring one another about and that turns up several kinds of anomaly
> and misfits. Besides, antiquity did date by astrological planetary
> conjunctions, if one can recognise the signs. Next to take ONLY as

evidence

> what's written down I find a somewhat objectionable procedure, for many
> tedious reasons. I agree on the sparsity of the evidence, but to then
> confine oneself to ONLY that and exclude the rest, hhhmmm., enough said.
> I've done a reconstruction from myths,, epics and 'evidence" which in the
> altogether, hangs together in a consistent patterrn, the sine qua non of
> acceptability to call it logical. What happens, one is contradicted by

the

> already known, mainly as constituted by some or other authority, if not
> simply propounded from a lectern. I say soemthing, get flattened by a

given

> 'meme" to which academics seem more virus prone than common folk, a joke.
> Next as for science r any thoery, knock over one assumption and the whole
> cardboard construction collapses. But that is taboo, the theory is taken

for

> granted and the facts thereby produced are quoted. Yes, I know what I am
> saying, a fact IS a product of a theory which packs it together as a

pattern

> to filter data with and NOT the other way around. The red Shift makes a

good

> example, I can provide dozens more.
>
> Next one gets apodictic utterances in reply, no quotes from authority,
> reasoned argument, use of logic or any such thing. Nor, for that matter
> much understanding of whatever is poached from outside a given speciality
> that makes one's podium. Cavil, quibble, question, put up more data and
> replies fail, hhmmm. We're supposed to be scholars not quoters from

books

> , researchers not armchair philosophers. I did my degree in the early
> sixties, I get here what" Exactly the same stuff I left behind as if time
> has not passed, knowledge not changed, the METHOD has not changed and if

the

> method fails, drop it, no dice one is shown.
>
> The depth psychology beneath it all is that man tends to want to be
> understood and is not very good in under=standing others. One should

take

> in a WHOLE pattern, thema, topoi, theory, ideas, not cavill at the bits.
> Does not happen. Dating is not just not very firm it's exceedingly

sloppy.

> And to add Newton's retort, I've read upon it, have you? Our calendar

does

> not even fit in with actual solar events, which is why antiquity dated

major

> events by that lot, and I find rather few academics even familiar with it
> enough to recognise it when one reads an allusion of it. Sanscrit, for
> example, is a very punny, ambiguous language but one is given in

translation

> only the Kosher meaning resident in the mind of translator. One Vedic
> example, "From Between her legs" came whatever. Translated without the
> sexual allusion. I for instance would love to jump in feet first in this
> stream about salt and salt the conversation with a few other details but
> heroically refrain, too busy.
>
> Next to this the association of artefactual material to culturally
> traditional material is also rather sloppy. Gilgamesh goes north in

> of the secret of Antiquity, dated 3,000 BCE, BUT IFF it actually

happened,

> which it did, then the event would have occurred nearer 11,000 BCE, date
> uncertain. The attendant geographical details fit the trip. BUT because

> cannot trace evidential written records, should I put this in a student's
> essay, I'd get worse than a D. Something funny going on here. IMHO Too
> many naive assumptions.
>
> Adrian.
>
> >
> > ***Tommy Tyrberg
> > >
> > > > The demotic Egyptian script later still.
> > > >
> > > > >in the conversion from Harappan script - stone age glyphs, I

believe

> > > >
> > > > -- Bronze Age, actually; 3rd-2nd millenium BCE.
> > >
> > > === That's OUR dating and specialist confined as well, Indian

scholars

> > date
> > > otherwise, now who's right? They were orally transmitted long before,

> > now
> > > what? Take the Sepher Yetsirah, published 1613 AD Mantua, Spain,
> > Elsevir,
> > > I think.. Rabbinic scholarship, on the basis of phrases and words in
> > common
> > > with the Talmud, dates at 200 BC, and as a geometric contrivance its
> > > conventions are much older. So it just depends as to which "unique
> > Feature"
> > > one elects and names as to how it comes up. Whoever 'composed' it

date

> > > unknown, was assuredly not thinking in or with words, so now how old

> > it?
> > > I could "teach" it in ten minutes with a tray of sand, so what now

about

> > > communicable? IN words it's nearly incomprehensible unless one

already

> > knows
> > > its conventions which were not that of word language.
> > >
> > > > The Harappan script vanished with the civilization and when

literacy

> > > returned to India, it was using scripts derived from further west;
> > > ultimately from the Semitic alphabets.
> > >
> > > === And because conceivably mildly misnamed and possibly somewhat
> > mislocated
> > > the whole argument falls flat? I've known the odd case of several
> > sequences
> > > in changes of mind on several matters.
> > >
> > > > >whereas Western conventions date that as around 1500 BC, as the
> > emergence
> > > of
> > > > the Vedas in written form.
> > > >
> > > > -- no, the Vedas were not written down until much later and in a
> script
> > > > ultimately derived from Aramaic. They were probably _composed_

some

> > time
> > > in the 1000's BCE. Transmission was oral.
> > >
> > > === Again, opinions differ and depends on whom one reads.
> >
> > *** Indic alphabetic scripts can't be much older since they couldn't

very

> > well be older than the script they were derived from.
> >
> > ***Tommy Tyrberg
> > >
> > > > >Hmm, and by what means did such a vocab grow?
> > > >
> > > > -- people invent words as needed.
> > > === Really, I've invented the odd words and OED editors say of 1000s
> > > invented barely a 100 er annum make it. Are all words so invented,

and

> > > there's no odd wrinkly uncertainties about it? I've got a private

label

> > for
> > > this but won't use it.
> > >
> > >
> > > > >Which languages?
> > > >
> > > > -- all languages are of roughly equivalent semantic efficiency.
> > > Vocabulary
> > > > aside, there's nothing that can be said in one that can't be said

> > > another.
> > >
> > > === Now quite by what means and basis and method was that conclusion
> > arrived
> > > at? And as to 'roughly" how roughly or merely by apodictic utterance?
> > > Haven't used that word for about 45 years but it seems to fit.
> > >
> > > > >Thus one has to read the entire textus and decide from context

which

> > is
> > > > meant.
> > > >
> > > > -- you're confusing the script and the language. The first writing
> > > systems
> > > > were less efficient than alphabetic scripts; but that does not

apply

> to
> > > the
> > > > languages themselves.
> > >
> > > === I'm sorry but that's mind reading of a kind. Or, more mildly,
> > replaces
> > > one opinion with another. I've seen a Chinese Mandarin scholar DO

it,

> > Took
> > > him ten minutes and I asked why. It does not really do to pick a
> sentence
> > > from a paragraph and context to "refute" it. Quite explicate, pleae,
> > what
> > > is intended to be converyed by "does not apply to the languages
> > thmselves,
> > > is that relevant to reading a language and if so, in quite what way?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >

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