Abramelin, on 16 March 2012 - 04:11 PM, said:
Great. I couldn't find that text in the OLB.
So "Veneti" is still a possible alternative name for the Fryans.
Now all we have to do is prove that they were around, 2200 BC.
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I remember Swede once told me that the next site - which we posted a couple of times here and in the Doggerland thread - is not created by a scientist, but by an artist. On the other hand, I have read about worse theories.
What he has to say about the Veneti (actually mmost of his website is about them) is interesting. But whether it would 'help' the OLB.... I am not that sure.
Here some text:
Finding sedentary civilizations down there, they would have traded and some would have continued to do so, becoming professional traders. Some would have stayed and become part of the trading world down there - and that led me to wonder about the many instances of the name VENETI in the ancient writings. The words by Finnic language seemed to be plural of boat, or 'something pertaining to water' and could interpret easily as 'boat people' or 'people of watercrafts' or something similar. But scholars were not thinking in terms of traders at all. The Veneti were a mystery. The Adriatic Veneti had left behind inscriptions of their language. Maybe they were a Finnic language indicative or a northern origin? I then noticed that the Adriatic Veneti were at the southern terminus of two major trade routes carrying amber from the north. That provided a direct link. If amber came down for a millenium, the language in the south would have been kept in line with that in the north, and not diverge as fast as if there was no connection. The genetics of the peoples at the south really did not matter anymore. The language was a trade language, a lingua franca. Was the early trade language of the tradeways of early Europe of a Finnic character. It might be, if the traders were derived from the north - those notherners were preadapted to long journeys on rivers in boats. Thus I became sidetracked by these questions and that led me to interpret the Veneti inscriptions and document it in a book. What I have discovered and present has made these articles very heavily visited, and scholars already considering oceanic crossings to North America have sent supportive emails. Andres Pääbo (rev. Nov 09)
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/index.html
http://www.paabo.ca/.../Map-3000BC.jpg
Having established that the original words - when the language was simple and had only the simple vowels and consonants of a baby - were based on UI-, let's explore how an original word like UINI or UINU would have evolved into later words like Finni, Phinnoi, Fenni, etc in the north and the Veneti (Eneti, Henetoi, Uenedi, etc) in the Black Sea and southern Europe.
The Origins of the "Finni" Name: The Introductory F Sound
The Scandinavians of centuries ago called the native peoples throughout Scandinavia by the name "Finns". That must have been a real name used by the natives, since it is unlikely the Scandinavians would have borrowed the use of the same name by the Roman Tacitus and Greeks like Ptolemy, with reference to primitive peoples in the wilderness behind the southeast Baltic. (See Tacitus Germania 98AD, ch 46). The Greeks wrote Phinnoi, and Tacitus used Fenni. But Finnic languages did not originally have the "F, PH" sound; therefore it must have been a sound that somewhat resembled an "F". We note that there are historical records which speak about Indu peoples in the Gulf of Finland as well, and of course there exist the Finno-Ugrians called Khanti at the Ob River, who Estonians call Handid.
The original word could indeed have been "UINNI", but was spoken by the people themselves so it sounded like "WHINNI" or "BHINNI" or "HINNI" or.....The foreign listeners wrote down what the bias of their own language observed, whether the sound was in the language or not.
It is important to always bear in mind that when Latin writers wrote the F-character, they may have been describing the "V" sound, whereas when they wrote the V-character they always meant the "W" sound. Thus Latin Fenni may have actually been "VENNI", while Latin Venni was actually "WENNI"
It is interesting that the name for the ancient people called Veneti by the Romans, were called Eneti or Henetoi, by Greeks. The difference is not that great if we rewrite the Roman version properly as Weneti. What both versions have in common is the ENETI part. It shows that the Roman ear and the Greek ear interpreted the initial peculiarity in different ways. A third language may have interpreted it yet differently still like say "KHENETI" (which reminds us of the people popularly called Khanti, but which Estonian language calls Handid.)
The proof of this explanation for the origins of the name of the Eneti/Veneti seems to be found in inscriptions left by the Eneti/Veneti themselves in North Italy. They left behind short pieces of writing that have been the subject of investigation (of little success) over the years. Of interest are words that could be interpreted as their own words for Eneti/Veneti. In their own phonetic writing modelled after Etruscan writing, they wrote their own name as follows (transcribed to Roman alphabet, but keeping the dots used) .e..n.no -- Note the dots around the initial E. The dots in their inscriptions appear, in my analysis, to signify some kind of special linguistic feature. Scholars have solidly established that in some situations .i. distorts the "I" sound to resemble an "H". It can therefore be assumed that the E with dots on both sides, similarly represents dome kind of H-like quality. We conclude therefore, the Venetic inscription placing dots around the initial E confirms the theory of the actual speech introducing an aspirant consonantal feature in front, but one that was not clear enough to define as a letter. We can speculate that maybe the sound was similar to "WH" since the Romans interpreted it as "WENETI".
The Origins of the "ENETI, HENETOI" Name
Homer in his Iliad, first wrote about a people named Eneti or Henetoi who were located at Paphlagonia on the southwest coast of the Black Sea, who came to the aid of Troy (around 1200 BC). This name Eneti continued to appear in Greek texts, for more than a millenium, describing a people who appear to have been, to the Greeks, a source of tin and amber.
Because archeology shows that Baltic amber came down to the civilizations in Asia Minor and Egypt, even before the rise of Mycenian Greece, even if clear evidence of people called Eneti being handlers of northern amber comes from the colonies of Eneti in northern Italy, we are justified in assuming amber was also handled earlier by Eneti at the Black Sea, since river routes from the east Baltic sources of amber reached the Black Sea easily.
Archeology shows an abundance of early trade amber in the Gulf of Riga, and apparently travelling down the Dneiper River to the Black Sea; thus we can assume that the original Black Sea Eneti were a southern colony of Dneiper traders who carried amber and other goods south from the Baltic. It's possible there was a major source of amber in the Gulf of Riga, which became used up.
Since the culture of the east Baltic region at the time, the archeological "Comb Ceramic" culture, has been associated with the Finnic peoples, we can conclude that the Eneti were Finnic, and that their name came from the same origins - the northern boat peoples, reaching back to the UINI, UINU.
http://www.paabo.ca/.../uini-name.html
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EDIT:
So according to this Paabo:
" - and that led me to wonder about the many instances of the name VENETI in the ancient writings. The words by Finnic language seemed to be plural of boat, or 'something pertaining to water' and could interpret easily as 'boat people' or 'people of watercrafts' or something similar."
I hope you remember what I suggested earlier:
Abramelin, on 14 March 2012 - 07:07 PM, said:
< skip >
Lol, now we can only 'hope' these Romans called all those people "Veneti" because of their blue eyes and/or because they practically lived on the seas.
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His map of 3000 BC:
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Edited by Abramelin, 17 March 2012 - 10:27 AM.
