----- Original Message -----
From: <richard.wordingham@...>
To: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 2:39 PM
Subject: [Nostratica] Re: British Invasion Theory (was: Gerry!)


> It also includes the weird claim that the invaders transferred placenames to make themselves feel at home - Boston, Cambridge, Birmingham, Washington, Richmond, New York, that the Principia of Newton (a professor at Cambridge) is not American, and that their oldest sacred text (King James version) was imported! How can anyone seriously claim that New York is named after a Lincolnshire or a Sussex village? Some even go so far as to claim that the Hispanics are not indigenous and brought the name 'Sierra Nevada' from their homeland! [Not quite parallel; sorry.]

Thank you, Richard. Proponents of the "transfer hypothesis" like to forget that apart from New York there are many American cities called simply York (AL, SC, PA, NE), not to mention the York River (VA). Are we to believe that all these places were named for a provincial town in England, unknown even to the best-educated Americans?

It should also be obvious to anyone that the Americans originated in the West (most likely in the area of the great, ancient and mysterious Cahokia Mounds Civilisation, which we prefer to call the Mississippi/Missouri Civilisation after the mighty rivers that nourished it). Had they migrated westward from the East Coast, they wouldn't speak of "the Old West" (and its legendary king Buffalo Bill), and there wouldn't be so many placenames with the adjective "New" in the East. Most of the great heroes of the Golden Age (from the Earps to Jesse James, Bonnie and Clyde, etc.) were active in the western or southwestern states.

Piotr