Re: SV: Mitanni, Hurrians, etc.

----------

> Från: Adrian <afme@...>
> Till: cybalist@egroups.com
> Ämne: [cybalist] Re: Mitanni, Hurrians, etc.
> Datum: den 15 december 1999 09:14
>
> Subject: [cybalist] Re: Mitanni, Hurrians, etc.
>
>
> > afme@... writes:
> >
> > >And even if it is 60,000 [I'm not that fussy about dates] what took
> place
> > between 300,000 & 60,000
> > -- we don't know. We probably never will. Entropy has swallowed the
> > information.
>
> === That's a nice way to dispose of the issue, the information is still
> there and the world responds to the kinds of question raised.
>
> > >Wallis Budge, in his "Book of the Dead", mentions in the preface that

by

> at > least 6,000 BC the scribes had no idea what they copied, hence the
> adaptation > into Demotic.
> >
> > -- there weren't any scribes in 6000 BCE. Writing hadn't been invented
> yet.
> === IFFF by that you mean alphabetic writing, of course that's right. IF
> that means any and all kinds, you're totally wrong. Alternatively one
> could, archly <g> say; OHH< were you there? or "Raahhhly?. One suspects

a

> case of "If the past cannot be accommodated to the present it does not
> exist">
>
> > Sumerian cuneiform was developed after 3500 BCE and Egyptian

hieroglyphs

> somewhat later.
> === Dating is a very vexed issue. Feynmann, the scientist, once commented
> that anyone who denied we have a history prior to about 10,000 BCE must

be,

> you know what. Printed in the Sci Am somewhere.
>

*** Actually while historical dating isn't really firm before the oldest
Assyrian limmu-lists (911 BCE) geophysical dating within the Holocene is
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 an
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 A)
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.

***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, so

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 is

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 in
> 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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