Howdy folks,
This may take a bit of explaining to get down
to the actual 'question'!

My main passion (aside from being hard-bit by
the writer-bug and addictively dependant on wiggling my fingers over the keys every day..)
is to track down the flow and ebb of humanity
on this planet, thru history, using evidence of language, symbology, etymology, stories, tradition or what ever it takes to evidence possibly diffusionistic connections in the most unexpected places.

My latest gnarly mystery comes from a chance newsfeed about an archaeological dig going on in NE India. Nothing strange about that... ancient temples have been cleared and studied since before Napolean. BUT it just so happened, this particular place was called "Wari".

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, i've been steadily adding info and research material into my personal files re> MesoAmerica, archaic S.Am'n Andean traditions and peoples et al. Down around Lake Titicaca on the border of Chile and Bolivia there used to be a Matrix-civilization during 500 AD- 1000AD called Tiwanaku... or Tiahuanaco. Their upshot, vibrant but shorter lived rivals to the north, more in Peru, from 600-900 AD called themselves (get this) the WARI.

This is a language forum, so i will dispense with the archaeology and just say, yes, if one surfs and goes into researching the Wari district of India and the characteristics of the once and great Wari Nation of Peru, there are excitingly similar facets to argue, connoting that the great mariners of India went farther than Africa and Australia.

With that in mind, one continuous misconception the egotistic, euro-centric mainstream dogmas of "academic anthropology" repeats over and over is that 'The Andean people had no writing system'. Horsefeathers.

True, they did not use an 'alphabet' system, in the Greco-Roman-Levant ideological way. Not one that was apparent to the researchers who would ask the 'iggnerant savages' how they kept records. It never occured to the 'outsiders' that perhaps the trained Initiates of the inner-societies chose not to disclose their sacred communication processes. It has taken me years of study and networking with cutting edge researchers in other places than America to learn the truth.

For those who would like to go into the archy-proof,
contact me via PM, but take it there is stonehard evidence that the ancient Indus-Sumerians made it to S.Am'a and left their script-form behind. The indigenese, just as intellegent HomoSapiens as the rest of us, picked it up and incorporated the script into their traditional designwork as a phonetic way to record their own languages.

If you surf up any Andean traditional designs as seen on 'village garb', blankets, basketry, pottery et al, you will see it tends to fall into bands built up of little squares. Each little square is called a Tocapus. Each individual tocapus can be picked apart into zig-zags, crecents, steps, triangles, semi-circles, squares etc. These are references and direct evolution from the Indus-Sumarian script.

The Wari people were but one link in that possible chain of reinforcement, keeping the East Indian connection vital. Keep in mind, the relatively 'short-lived' Wari still thrived and exsisted as a definable culture for over 400 years. The US has only been 'us' for 200. The Tiwanakans doubled the Wari's time on earth. We are toddlers by comparison.

No i can't speak, read or write Queshua. But there are linguists who can and are willing to stick their necks out and risk their careers (much of the rest of the mainstream academia would scandalize such heracy) to say they can, and do correlate the symbology, in the Andean and MesoAmerican tocapus, to the phonetic equivilencies of ancient Sumerian script.

Again, Sherman, fire up the Way Back Machine!
Pop 5000 yrs into the past and visit the oldest known
City-State civilization in the western hemisphere...
"Caral" in Peru. The finding of this non-aggressive, non-militaristic, farmer-trader society has proven that "civilization" need not arise from warfare and acquisitional stresses. Deep in one mound an offering bundle was uncovered, buried as a dedication gift to the dieties, as the builders began a fresh height to their main pyramid. Among intact reed baskets and other items, there lay a precious wad of strings and sticks all tangled together... a quipus! This is the closest non-verbal, non-script way the human mind has ever invented prior to the modern computer [and binary languge] to transfer thought concept, math, words and literary history as accurately as writing without drawing a line or using a papyrus.
(go google, im too lazy to detail it here ha!)

Point being, as far back as Caral, 3000 BC at the same time as Sumer, Egypt and China were kickstarting 'civilization' it was blooming in South America and the quipus was already a sophisticated, developed system of communication. [twilite zone moment 'where did it come from??'] [Not to be speculated here... different topic, different forum.]

Trying hard to control my ADD tendancies... back on track, back in the Way Back Machine, zip ahead again to the late 1400's AD and the rise of the Inca.

THEY would point back to Tiwanaku, some 3 centuries earlier, and claim the Inkan wisdoms had been handed down to them from that older and long dead tradition. Believe that or not, whatever, the Inka 'were' notorious for being ravenous, bloody militarists as well as a highly cultured people. They assimlated other regions on a par with the Borg (Resistance is Futile).

So it is difficult to actually say what the Inca were morphing into by the time the Spanish caught up with them. But core to the Inka language and record keeping was the ubiuitous Quipus! (Along with the unrecognized tocapus woven into their robes, blankets, mats, baskets, painted on their ceramics, walls and bodies; right under the noses of the Spanish.)

So. We've established that language, words, thought, math and traditional history was maintained using quipus from 3000AD to 1500's AD. Sans the need for writing, even tho it really was there too, undercover.

In the middle of all that enter the Olmecs (circa 1200BC-200 AD ish or so) and their 'cultural' protogés the Maya.

It can be argued (check out the internet) that the Olmec came to Mexico and the Yucatan because of a desperate African diaspora at that time. Settling in Mexico, they genetically and culturally absorbed both the Native population as well as Asiatic influences (yes, the Chinese WERE sailing to their East since BC) to become the epitome cosmopolitan civilzation known to archaeology. [give it up, academia, humans were everywhere as soon as they figured out a log floats. A raft of bamboo tied together will cross almost anything. let alone purposefully crafted creations]

The Mayans were mostly indigenous and rose to development a great deal on their own, but were co-extant in their rise with the tail end of the Olmec,adopting & preserving the teachings and knowlede of the elder lot. The Maya, as is known, concentrated on writing in a complex form of heiroglyphics that is still being deciphered today.

However...(sigh, always the sabot to make an easy thot complicated...) the Mayans were temporally co-exsistant with a full range of various Andean cultures who were obviously using and preserving the Quipus, or the Inka wouldn't have still had it later.

Since it is proven that the Maya as well as the Andean folks were great mariners and traders, it is impossible that the three systems of tracking history, valuables and resources did not meet somewhere... heirglyphs, tocapus and quipus. [We wont confuse the issue more with evidence of Roman brickmaking in Comalcalco, Mexico; or Indus-influenced Celts sipping Soma in Brazil; or pharonic Egyptian artifacts found in Chile] [And you thot English was complicated!]

So finally... the Big Question that started all this.
Does or has anyone out there seen or found evidence that the Mayans knew about and acknowledged the use of
quipus? Were there any factions of the Maya that used
quipu-records to anyones knowledge to tell stories, track finances or deal with the foriegn Andean traders?

Here is why i ask at all, in the first place.
> http://www.mayainfo.org/works/knot/ <
Why would a twined knot be acknowledged in a sacred position and illumination, carved in stone on Mayan temples, painted on pottery etc.? Was it saying something in 'quipu'? If so, what? Beautiful knotwork is considered sacred and message transfer-ral from Gaelic Europe, to India to Arabia. Why would the Carrick Bend have special meaning to the Maya?

Words have many more vessels than alphabetic phonetics. Thru gematria, even individual letters can contain mathematical concept. One of the earlier posts, i noticed, in the Word Meanings forum, expressed a query about similar/ related cultures going different routes with their mode of script-expression. (Grecco vs Semitic) Can it be logical to reverse that and speculate that a single, cohesive culture would entertain divergent modes of expression within itself?

Just me, putzin around my headspace! LOL

Words have many more vessels than alphabetic phonetics. Thru gematria, even individual letters can contain mathematical concept. One of the earlier posts, i noticed, in the Word Meanings forum, expressed a query about similar/ related cultures going different routes with their mode of script-expression. (Grecco vs Semitic) Can it be logical to reverse that and speculate that a single, cohesive culture would entertain divergent modes of expression within itself?

Well, there's a lot there before you get to your question. (And welcome aboard, Epiphile.) While a language's writing system does have an effect on spoken language (cf. spelling pronunciations like saying the t in often), there are many languages that do not have writing systems. The alphabetic system used in Europe, comes from the Semitic alphabet as exported by the Phoenicians to the Greeks. Even the Indian syllabaries descended from the Brahmi script are thought to be from this anicent Semitic alphabet. As for hieroglyphic writing systems, the ones I'm familiar with (Egyptian, Luvian, and Mayan) are all rather different from one another, but do have the sorts of similarities one would expect from independent invention at different times and in different places. I know some older writing experts see connections between Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, but I and others don't. I'd be willing to say that the Egyptians may have gotten their idea of a writing system from the Sumerians. For examples of alphabetic writing systems developed after contact with a culture that used one, see the Hmong Messianic script and Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary. Could you cite some of the linguists who tie Quechua and Sumerian, or Mesopotamian and Andean symbols together

As for using the letters of the alphabet for numerical purposes, the Semitic letters seemed to serve that purpose early on. The Greek's used letters for numbers, but the Romans got their numbers elsewhere. Gematria, which is a sort of interpretation by equalting words whose individual letters add up to the same amount, and are therefore somehow connected, in a sense beyond semantics, is a rather late development. Part of a whole hermeneutic system developed during the Talmudic times. The word itself is not Semitic, but an Aramaic borrowing of the Greek word geōmetria.

As for connections between languages far separated in time and space, one needs more than a couple of correspondences between syllables or words. The relationships of the Semitic and Indo-European language families took a lot of time and effort during the 19th and early 20th century.

As for whether quipu were simply for keeping accounts (there is some evidence that all writing comes from a need to keep accounts, at least in Mesopotamia and on Crete) or was some kind of full-blown writing system.

In the end, writing was used in 19th century archeology to divide the peoples of the world into civilized and uncivilized. Most anthropologists see that there were some rather complex civilizations that lacked a writing system. When a language doesn't have a writing system, people tend to memorize things. For example, we've been discussing poetry recently in some of the threads. Devices like meter, rhyme, and formulaic epithets are kinds of mnemonic devices to help a poet create an epic poem ex tempore without having a way to write it down. (See the work of Perry and Lord on oral composition.)

quote:

track down the flow and ebb of humanity
on this planet, thru history, using evidence of language, symbology, etymology, stories, tradition or what ever it takes to evidence possibly diffusionistic connections in the most unexpected places.

While you're tracking things down, I'd just love a citation with the word "epicaricacy" in it. Thank you! [I will PM you with the significance of that comment, rather than to bore my poor fellow posters, once again. ]

I am so glad that Zmj is here to give you such a substantive answer. Let's just say that I'm not there yet...but I am learning!

Hi, Epiphile!

My head now hurts from reading your post! I'm forwarding it to a cultural anthropologist friend for her comments - along with two aspirin! She's spent a good bit of time studying Indian (the real ones) cultures, so maybe she'll have some ideas for you.

Asa the addle-pated

zmjezhd:
"Could you cite some of the linguists who tie Quechua and Sumerian,
or Mesopotamian and Andean symbols together?"

hey, headjam (de hedze jamz)

wat kinn i sey, Long 4th. Here's more for yer basket.

Sumer-Indus in the western hemisphere:

People involved in noting the occurance...

> http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_boliviarosseta.htm# <

Dr. Clyde Winters is quite qualified and accurate in defining
Sumerian in the Americas as well as his basic translations.
He is also the one of the most prolific online authors
concerning his pet projects, creating many reiteratory
articles that interlink all over the internet. However, as
with the bulk of his other research among the Olmec and
Mayans, if you look around the 'net for his articles, Winters
will insist on linking most western hemisphere finds with his
favorite African Vai traditions. Personally, i agree the Vai/
Mande were involved with the Mexican societies, but i
question bringing them in on thiese Bolivian artifacts. I trust
Clyde's Sumerian parts of his S.Am'n tretises, but hold
reservations on the African correlations at this time.

You will find the teamwork, headed by Dr. Bernardo Biados
Yaccovazo to be most accurate in working with the Fuente
Magna and the Pokotia Monoith, as it is a group effort, not
a singular person's POV. My opinion, anyway.

The presence of the Pokotia Monolith is certainly in support
of the Sumerian contact of the Americas. However in of
itself, it's so complicated and info-compex that Winters'
initial speculations, there, are doomed to revision. Even
in my own graphic research, the first interp is hardly
ever the last!

Already, the Biados/ Sally Teames research is showing a
whole new perspective on the backside or the PM as a possible
record of the Eta Carina stellar nova-explosions of circa
1000AD (ish) also observed and documented independantly
by ancient Chinese sources. EC seems to be on a pattern
sequence, as more eruptions were seen in the late 1800's
and again in the 1990's. There may be plenty of room for
both Winters' and team-Biados' interpretations to be
inclusively accurate. The inscriptions are that
detailed and rich.

These same researchers are only a few of the ones
currently involved in correlating the "Tocapus" design
squares of the Andian traditions as "written"
language. They have collegues and partners in an
interconnected network across South America and
Europe. The late-great Dr. Ibarro Grasso's work was
also revealing the pioneer work into this field when
the grim reaper caught up to him.

Grasso was a phenom in himself as a person who was
raised in the Andean traditionalist setting, yet
achieved high education with multi-linguistic talents.
He brought the two divergent philosophies together,
awareness of spiritualism and the concept of emperical
"science". Grasso's work opened many doors into the
actual practices and complex cultural levels of Andean
societies that had not been imagined by the Eurocentric
community.

To understand what a 'tocapus' is, here (below) are
some initial examples to view. This following website
URL is a 'word playground' of delight in itself, as it is a
computerized Yahoo 'translation' of a Spanish website.
Without a human brain to inject context, the computer
chose some wonderfully colorful concept alternatives
to what it thought the Spanish was trying to say. One
favorite appears down near the bottom where the
computer translated a Spanish term for 'purple' into the
English word 'dwelled'. Hmmm, i do have to admit, if i
chose a color to live in, shades of purple could be fun.

Tocapus
> http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl=en&u=http://www.ti...6ie%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DN <

Or more simply, from that website the sub-examples:

Nazca Bag circa 100-600 AD
> http://exchanges.state.gov/culprop/peru/textile/fi/00000011.htm <

Inka cloth Tunic... Unku, circa 1300 - 1500 AD
> http://exchanges.state.gov/culprop/peru/textile/fi/0000002b.htm <

Peru -- Huari Cloth Cap
> http://exchanges.state.gov/culprop/peru/textile/fi/00000019.htm <

Further down the page is a picture of an Inka style
"Unku" or over-cloak worn by high dignitaries. It would
appear on the webpage as a simple black and burnt-ivory
checkerboard. This is an infamously repeated photo over
the internet and it has lost the greater part of its detail
from being copied.

Each square, in reality, is subtly, beautifully intricate with
designworn in sewn TEXTURE and weave instead of color.
The yoke is actually a deep burgundy-red with edged
stitching. The squares are more deep indigo-navy blue.
The ivory squares were once, historically, bright white
as one could bleach wool.

Red, White & Blue (Lifeforce, Virtue/Purity and Spirituality)
have been significant to human symbolism thruout the eras,
not just recent Euro-history. By using the colors, actual
words are trancended past the need for tongue (Aymara,
French, or Chinese) to pure concept.

Symbology contained in each color's realm then has
reference to its core ideal first, then to the overall
garment's pattern as a living representation of Community
when ceremonially worn. These ideas were extremely
difficult for the western mind, entrenched in the need for
an alphabetic, phonetic, linear presentation of language to
produce a meaning. So for centuries, the anthropologists
continue to this day to claim the "Andean people had no
written format for their language." And this is incorrect,
as the format is non-linear but just as effective a method
of thought transferral as an alphabetic method. These are
standard marked shapes on, or in, a surface substance
which transfer visually acquired word concepts from one
mind to another.

That is a fair definition of a "written language" if you ask me.
Heiroglyphs and pictographic-based asiatic characters form
other examples of the idea. Same as the Mayan glyphs
contain symbol, concept or phonetics depending on context
within the script system.

The fact that these tocapus shapes are evolved from
Sumerian script, still carrying the original phonetic values
(for the most part) is testimony to the capacity of the
human initiate-training process to accurately preserve
arcane knowledge over generations. In the case of the
Andean Tocapus, this preservation of phonetic symbology
would also point to the designs as being 'written language'
in the true sense, as the standardized use of the symbology
stabilized the language; the same as 2000 yr old characters
in China still represent legible thought, and 700 yr old
Chaucerian poetry can be appreciated today... because of
the preservation of both the visual forms of communication
and the sociatal education system which supports it.

A 'written language' is what weaves a culture's development
together. Today, the global village is coming together,
standardizing technology and lifestyles, because of our ability
to present our own thoughts visually to far flung places. The
Andean supra-culture became stabilized and allowed for large,
pan-coastal Empires to arise, swallowing their neighbors yet
still able to effectively communicate, such as Tiwanaku, Wari,
Moche, Chachapoyas and later Inka. This was because they
kept the same writing system regardless of individual realms,
genetic tribes, dialects or kingdoms which arose within it.
(Reflect on the overall acceptance of an "Egyptian" culture
despite the changes of great pharohs, ruling families, even
language bases. Same concept.)

The Euro-centric anthropologist keeps dividing the different
Andean phases into unrelated historical periods because of
the lack of insight to recognize the continuance of a fully
developed tocapus writing system. When in reality, the
Andean presence can be seen as one big flow of human
development with contact and cultural injection from global
mariner traffic, Bronze Ages to present.

Ah the Power of words!
It crochets whole worlds together in new ways!

Ah, a lot to look at here.

First, I'd never heard of the Fuente Magna bowl, but after reading through the resulting googles, here's some preliminary thoughts. Two possibilities; (a) it's real, or (b) it's a fake. The story about its provenance sends up the first alarms: in the possession of a country priest for the first 50 or so years. No other artifacts. In rather good shape for something so old. The script sure looks similar to Akkadian or Sumerian cuneiform. One prlblem is Dr Winters has brought in another script, the Vai, which until now has eluded translation. Another danger signal is that Dr Winter has successfully translated the Indus Valley and Linear A scripts. Not bad. I've seen plenty of translations of Indus Valley script and they're all different. As for Linear A, there's not much of it to translate. The language transliterated from the bowl's inscription doesn't much look like Sumerian, Akkadian, or Aymara / Quechua. The write-ups all seem to be based on the same (newspaper?) article. I note that the bowl is being held by a non-govermental organization.

As for the beautiful textiles and their designs: I don't much see them as illustrating language as symmetrical patterns that one finds on lots of textiles, pottery, and other human artifacts.

Sorry, perhaps somebody else sees more to this than I do. Good luck.

[Addendum.]

There's been many theories about what languages Sumerian is related to. It's a language isolate.

Here's an interesting quote from Wikipedia:

quote:

Sumerian has been the subject of controversial proposals purportedly identifying it as genetically related with almost every known agglutinative language. As the most ancient known language, it has a peculiar prestige, and such proposals sometimes have a nationalistic background and generally enjoy little popularity in the linguistic community because of their unverifiability. Many of the proposed connections belong to the realm of pseudoscientific language comparison rather than scientific comparative linguistics. Examples of suggested related languages include:-

* Altaic languages (see Turkish)
* Aymara language (see the Fuente Magna)
* Burushaski language
* Dravidian languages (see Elamo-Dravidian)
* Hurro-Urartian languages (see Subarian, Alarodian)
* Munda languages (Igor M. Diakonoff)
* Tibeto-Burman (Jan Braun).
* Uralic languages such as Hungarian (Miklos Erdy)

More credibility is given to inclusion of Sumerian in proposed super-families like Nostratic or Dene-Sino-Caucasian, but the mere identifiability of these super-families is itself controversial.

Interestingly enough, there was serious academic skepticism that Sumerian was an actual language back in the 19th century. Some said it was an constructed language that Akkadian priests has invented to give a more ancient lineage to their myths and rituals.

Another thing that looks strange is that the cuneiform sticks out off the surface of the bowl. Cuneiform in Mesopotamia was inscribed on wet clay by using a stylus.

The home page of Dr Clyde A Winters has some more of his papers on controversial subjects.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

Quote:
"Another thing that looks strange is that the cuneiform sticks out off the surface of the bowl. Cuneiform in Mesopotamia was inscribed on wet clay by using a stylus."

That is an optical illusion your synapes is dishing out cuzza the light angle. The letters are carved 'into' the stone, fer shur.

One point towards its authenticity is that, when it was initially found, there were no scholars who were yet deciphering or translationg cuniform to any degree. If the script is found in proper vocabulary and grammar for the original language, and no person at the time of modern discovery knew how to do that, it would make hoaxing the inscription pretty difficult; unless the modern day scribe was a psychic in deep touch with his/her reincarnated past-life. That probability does not weigh as strongly on my scales as the chance that it is an artifact from antiquity.

(¡ how do you write so much so fast??)

That is an optical illusion your synapes is dishing out cuzza the light angle. The letters are carved 'into' the stone, fer shur.

You might be right.; it's not a very good photo, and my eyes are as good as they used to be. The question is, why carved them into the finished bowl when you could press them into soft clay instead?

One point towards its authenticity is that, when it was initially found, there were no scholars who were yet deciphering or translationg cuniform to any degree.

The bowl was discovered in the 1950s or 1960s according to the articles. Cuneiform was being deciphered starting in the first half of the 19th century. Decipherment of Akkadian cuneiform was accomplished by the mid 19th century. Sumerian decipherment started in the 19th century and continues up to about the mid-20th century. Also, Dr Winters brings the Vai syllabary into the mix. This was developed in Liberia / Sierra Leone in the 1820s. It is said that it orginated in a dream. Also, the Sumerians were supposed to have arrived in the Andes around 2000 BCE. Why has nobody noticed the proposed simularity between Quechua and Sumerian? One reason could be because the few proposed etymologies between the bowl inscription language and Sumerian / Vai don't look to convincing.

how do you write so much so fast?

I'm a moderate typist, and I've been a fan of crank archeology / linguistics for some time.

[Addendum]

I've been reading some of the arguments Dr Winters has had (starting in 1997 on sci.archeology) on Usenet, and I don't think he can be called a linguist by any meaningful stretch of the imagination. I'm still looking for other discussions on the Fuente Magna bowl, but haven't found any.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

To solve your visual illusion, turn the picture sideways or upside down. You will see it is the angle of lighting that has your auto-interp section of your brain making the impression that the cuniform sticks out. It confused me, too, the first time the pictures were shown to me. Now they're so familiar that it does not happen anymore. Our brains, which do the 'seeing', not our eyes, is hardwired by experience and reinforced by culture to assume the light is coming from the upper left corner. The light in the few pictures you've seen online come from room light and changes with each angle of the photographer's snapping. In my files are many more which, out of professional courtesy, must remain at least semi-private as the research is still ongoing. But be assured, the cuts go into the surface, not stick out.

You will not find your correct answers online. i've been working as a graphics assistant with the actual researchers. "50's and '60's" is when the outside world knew of them (there are more than one bowl) ie Euro-community. The natives themselves had posession of them for generations.
Your quote:
"Cuneiform was being deciphered starting in the first half of the 19th century. Decipherment of Akkadian cuneiform was accomplished by the mid 19th century."

Ah yes, the eliteist scholars deep in their museums and Universities. No general member of the public or average joe would have known diddly any more than we do today. You expect one of the scholars sat down, carved the bowls and hid them among the S.Am'n jungle communities? Nobody else had the possible ability to do it. You are saying one of the small handful of academic souls who could recreate this stuff did it then?

The bowl is STONE. One cannot press a stylus into stone. It must be carved rather laboriously and with practiced skill, and script literacy to get that kind of detail. 19th cent indigenese did not have that kind of knowledge anymore. The 17th cent padres had stripped that from them. The Putaki (Pokotia Monolith) was found in situ at Tiwanaku, within authentic archaeological horizon positioning and has had clear provenance since then... sitting in the museum displaybox. Nobody had/has had a chance to 'add' anything to it.

My own comments cast doubt on the conclusion of Winters' translations. I also feel there will be better and more reliable interpretors come along. My own posts here say i have misgivings about mixing the Vai concept into the Bolivian finds. Regardless, it is the consensus of multiple experts that the scripts on the Putaki and the Magna Fuente ARE Old World origin, found in archaic condition on authenticated artifacts.

What the script 'says' will change with each generation of researchers. The fact that there was Old World contact is what fascinates me. Humanity knew of itself world wide. Pyramids as memorial tombs and representatives of a journey to the 'underworld' did not pop up all by themselves around the globe, the concept was seeded by cultural interaction. Items like the FM and the PM are but small bricks in a huge growing foundation of evidence for mankind's communal growth as a whole, not in isolated bits and islands. Language both verbal and literate has been the glue that has brought us all as far as we have come.

Ah, well, I await better information.

The first time I saw cuneiform on a baked clay tablet, it was a piece that was in a small mueum in a seminary. It had been gathered in the late 19th century. I'm sure you could find pictures in encyclopaedia or magazines or Bible dictionaries. I don't think any mean, old academics were hiding things from the public.

Diffusion versus invention. I see tombs from simple pits to monds of earth to mounds of brick or stone as a natural progression.

If the bowl is real, and if the markings on it are cuneiform, I sure the "elitist scholars" will get to it after a while. They're just a bit more cautious than the Dr Winterses of the world. I'll remain skeptical until then.

The Pokotia Monolith may be real, and it looks realer than the bowl, but the writing on it doesn't much look like Sumerian cuneiform, or even the earlier kinds pictographs for Sumerian I've seen. Again, the main assertion that there is a Sumerian inscription here in an anomolous script seems to be mainly from Dr Winters.

Being new here, im not sure how to work all the options. How does one put a picture up? There's a chart that may be helpful. dhzejmz, you might have seen it already, but the others might be interested. Dr. James Harris' correlation between the archaic proto-semetic found in each, the Old Negev & Sinai deserts, north Africa, Arabia, Middle East ("Sumeria")India and the American great basin/ SW.

That is the script being read from the Putaki stone, not strict 'cuneiform'. A person can see it also at Gary Vey's Viewzone website. He would like to call it "First Tongue" but it probably wasn't. Just very old, tho.

Another researcher in Australia, John McGovern, has a better label for the script..."Archaic Phoenetics" which avoids putting either a place, an era or a people's ID on it... since it is being found pan globe and proof that some sort of pre-to-Bronze Age cosmopolitan culture swap was going on. "AP" vocabulary was preserved both in the Hebrew tradition and the Basque via different modes of intitiate society recording. From the marks on artifacts, cliff faces, worshipsite boulders, oasis meeting spots, this "AP" can be collected and compared by converting it letter by sign into extant Hebrew script then read for rootword meaning.

Be careful with your sarcasm, you're sounding more like Mr.Flavin than an open minded person. Just because an idea is coming from a different perspective than one is used to, is no reason to chide or demean the messenger. It is simple truth, the lay public couldn't care less about how to read cuneiform and isn't about to go about trying to learn it. That characteristic is true now as it was when the script findings were initially being offered to journals and newspapers.

It is you, not i, who said anything about the linguists 'hiding' or keeping anything from the public. You twist my words in order to raise a defensive reaction. On this forum, i would think that a bit risky. Words are sacred here. 'Regular' people are quite happy to leave academic matters in the hands of the specialists, and so being literate in cuneiform would narrow the field of probabilities is all i was saying.

There would be no reason for a hoaxer to go to such extremes to create something like the Fuente Magna or Pokotia Monument unless (s)he had some noteriety to gain from it, monetary or publicity wise. No such person has stepped forward and none of the active, highly qualified researchers in S.Am'a who are working with the artifacts have any designs of that sort. (bad pun!

Be careful with your sarcasm, you're sounding more like Mr.Flavin than an open minded person. Just because an idea is coming from a different perspective than one is used to, is no reason to chide or demean the messenger. It is simple truth, the lay public couldn't care less about how to read cuneiform and isn't about to go about trying to learn it. That characteristic is true now as it was when the script findings were initially being offered to journals and newspapers.

Sorry, but you're the one who brought up "elitist scholars" which got me on the defensive. Up until that moment, I think I was rather neutral. But, if I hurt your feelings with my remarks I am sorry for that, and I hope you will forgive me, and continue to feel free to post here. I, too, will feel free to remain skeptical until I see more proof on either side. So far it's all be rather vague and in a popular vein. Also, I've been reading quite a lot of invective on the Usent groups for archeology where both sides tend to get sarcastic quiet easily. Again, I apologize. (I don't know who Mr Flavin is, so all I can say is the approximation to his voice was not intentional on my part.)

Another researcher in Australia, John McGovern, has a better label for the script..."Archaic Phoenetics" which avoids putting either a place, an era or a people's ID on it... since it is being found pan globe and proof that some sort of pre-to-Bronze Age cosmopolitan culture swap was going on. "AP" vocabulary was preserved both in the Hebrew tradition and the Basque via different modes of intitiate society recording.

I'll take a look at Mr McGovern's research, if I can find it. Basque is a language isolate that has only been written down since about the 15th century CE. There are some writing systems / symbol sets that are from the same area, but nobody knows yet (if possible) what language (if any) they are "written" in.

There would be no reason for a hoaxer to go to such extremes to create something like the Fuente Magna or Pokotia Monument unless (s)he had some noteriety to gain from it, monetary or publicity wise. No such person has stepped forward and none of the active, highly qualified researchers in S.Am'a who are working with the artifacts have any designs of that sort. (bad pun!

Hoaxers have done this sort of thing, sometimes for money, sometimes for fame, and sometimes for unknown reasons. The world is full of strange and marvelous people.

And i apologise for being unduly reactive myself. As you say, the other archy forums can get combatitive at the drop of a hat, i'm not used to finding 'safe space' often. It is honestly a breath of relief to find it here. Thrice or more burnt, all that much quicker to parry at shadows. It is perfectly legitmate to remain skeptical until you have seen enuf
data to satisfy your personal criteria level.

I hope you realize my toying with your name is meant in good spirits. I'm so automatically used to reading a semitic-looking string of letters right to left. As soon as i filled in a few suggestive vowels, the nickname "headjam" popped out of it, and it seemed to fit your aura so well, i had to chuckle and share it... a brain festival.. mental jazz... intellectual improv...

If someone will tell me how to send pix via PM within this format, i might be able to share some of the other photos of non-word and more epigraphic subjects with you.

Epiphile,

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quote:

And i apologise

Are you from the UK, Canada or Australia?

Hi Kalleh,

My birthtown was Richland WA in the southern dry part, along the Columbia River. Dad is a native Californian, Mom was brought up in a foster home run by two wonderful ladies, one a Brit the other a Scot. So in "her" childhood, she may have picked up and used British idioms which she passed on to us without even realizing they were not "American" in origin.

When I was age 3 Dad moved his 4 kids and wife to Seattle where he got his PhD in Chemistry at U of Dub... So i have oodles of toddler and pre-school memories of Puget Sound, farmer's market, Woodland Park Zoo, multi-ethnic visitors to the house and saltwater recreation. The summer after i turned 5, Papa had got his placement in Missoula, MT where i have my most cognizant "growing up" time both as a campus brat (poking my nose in every imaginable academic department, playing with the geology rocks, asking the bio-grad students what they were doing with the lizards, sitting in on the concert-band rehersals..) and equal time out in the woods on my own, learning backpacking, horseriding and wildlife behavior observation.

In Montana, as in MN where i live now, the Canadian accent is quite influential. My repetoire of friends includes a healthy dose of Canadian acquaintences and beloved adopted Native "relatives". So in verbal conversation you will hear me use the Canadian "eh" (actually said as a long 'a' as a brief, single syllable) a lot, as well as the Native, extended version of it..."aayyee". (Think Fonzie)

The shorter sort is used as a confirmational interogative asking the listener to agree with a pointed statement just made by the speaker. "All that business up at Red Hill & Hamilton has sure been a big mess, eh."

The latter is used more in jocular or either, even 'black humor' situations for statement emphasis. "All those ghosts they dug up from the burial grounds, to put thru that freeway, will be out to haunt them cars thru there, ehhhhh!"

Oops,i better be careful or we'll start ANOTHER Brit vs Yank-talk thread!

A man who lived south of the border
Invented a new type recorder;
As an aid to type setters
He arranged all the letters
In strict alphabetical order.

I'm coming to this a bit late, and there is a lot of info here, but I have something to say right away.

Finding some words of similar sound and meaning in two languages and using this as an argument that the languages are related or had contact is flawed.

quote:

This technique, more accurately called "superficial lexical comparison", consists in presenting sets of words from various languages that allegedly resemble each other sufficiently in sound and meaning that the resemblance cannot reasonably be attributed to chance and declaring "Behold!". In point of fact, the probability of finding similarities of the sort adduced as evidence is quite high. Moreover, the technique is unable to distinguish similarities due to common descent from those due to language contact. The technique is known to be unsound both on theoretical grounds and on the basis of experience: although those ignorant of the history of historical linguistics often claim that it is an innovation introduced to overcome the limitations of the comparative method, in fact it is the older technique, displaced by the comparative method as linguistics developed modern, scientific methods.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

Thanks for that, Goofy. Interesting.

Unfortunately, your link doesn't work.

Try this one:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/003283.html