847 replies to this topic

[Abramelin]

cormac mac airt, on 16 December 2010 - 12:19 AM, said:

A person or persons can change the language they speak, obviously though they can't change their genes.



Promoting an artist who dabbles in language/linguistics in no way impeaches, nor supercedes, the credibility of a qualified expert in the field. 'Nuff said.



I'd like to see that too. It would likely answer, at least in part, the question of genetics. However, unless some form of recognizable writing is found as well, it can never answer the question of what language/language family was spoken.

cormac

"Promoting an artist who dabbles in language/linguistics in no way impeaches, nor supercedes, the credibility of a qualified expert in the field. 'Nuff said."

I was not 'promoting', I was just offering a view. The guy may have no credentials, but he is not talking from his rear end either. He may be wrong, but I don't think he is stupid or ignorant.



For the rest of what you said, I agree. Like I did long before, btw.

[Abramelin]

Does any of you know how old the copper plates - see next quote - found in the sea near Heligoland really are?



From: Heligoland, Past and Present - by Alex Ritsema (2007)


"In the 1970s Heligoland's civil engineer Hans Stühmer - the expert in the island's geology until today - was diving close to South Harbour, to the southeast of the Oberland and made an astonishing discovery at a depht between 8 and 10 meters: a huge number of artificial copper plates, more or less circular with diameters up to about 100 centimeters!

Of course, Stühmer and others tried to explain this unexpected discovery. Could the plates be the remains of a shipwreck or have been thrown overboard from some ship in trouble? This explanation was very unlikely, especially because of the extremely high number of plates. Moreover, the copper happened to be polluted with Heligoland sandstone, indicating that the plates might have been made on the Oberland. Almost certainly, the plates had been manufactured close to the spot where they were found, indicating that there was once a part of the Oberland in what is now water with a depth of 8 to 10 meters!

Could the loss have been the result of an ordinary storm flood? This was not very likely. because in that case the survivors would probably have tried to salvage some of the valuable plates. However, so many plates lay so close to each other that we almost have to conclude that there were no survivors. The most likely - and very spectacular - explanation is that the copper mining stopped suddenly as a result of some catastrophic loss of a large part of the south of the Oberland. The catastrophe must have been caused by sudden movements of the salt and gypsum layers underneath Heligoland. This catastrophe must have led to a tsunami-like wave in the North Sea; many of its shores must have been damaged to a larger degree than any ordinary storm flood has ever done.

How old are the copper plates? In the 1970s researchers measured radioactivity from organic material on the plates and concluded that they had been made between about 1140 and 1340 AD. This was a surprising result, because contemporary chronicles neither mention copper mining on Heligoland nor a catastrophe resembling a tsunami. Later researchers made more accurate measurements of the radioactivity and so we know that the plates must have been made many centuries earlier, almost certainly before the people around the North Sea could write, which could explain the lack of written evidence of a tsunami. Of course, the origin of the copper plates is still mysterious and hopefully we wil find out more in the nearby future."


Wouldn't it be nice if it was the tsunami caused by the Storegga Slide at 6145 BC? Not very likely, but who knows. If these copper plates appear to be like 4000-3000 years old, I think some people in another thread here will be very happy (OLB)...

Some general info about Heligoland:
http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Heligoland


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Edited by Abramelin, 22 January 2011 - 06:30 PM.

[Abramelin]

I forgot to add a picture of those copper discs:

Edited by Abramelin, 22 January 2011 - 08:39 PM.

[Abramelin]

"Does any of you know how old the copper plates - see next quote - found in the sea near Heligoland really are?"

No one, eh? Maybe I should ask a rectum talker, and get an answer my 5 years old niece could fabricate...


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Edited by Abramelin, 22 January 2011 - 11:50 PM.

[Abramelin]

The tsunami caused by the Storegga Slide appears to have had an extra devastating effect on the Jutland coast of Denmark:


Bernhard Weninger et al (2008)
The catastrophic final flooding of Doggerland by the
Storegga Slide tsunami
Documenta Praehistorica XXXV. Neolithic Studies 15:1-24

ABSTRACT
"Around 8200 calBP, large parts of the now submerged
North Sea continental shelf (‘Doggerland’) were
catastrophically flooded by the Storegga Slide tsunami,
one of the largest tsunamis known for the Holocene, which
was generated on the Norwegian coastal margin by a
submarine landslide.

In the present paper, we derive a precise calendric date
for the Storegga Slide tsunami, use this date for
reconstruction of contemporary coastlines in the North
Sea in relation to rapidly rising sea-levels, and discuss
the potential effects of the tsunami on the
contemporaneous Mesolithic population. One main result of
this study is an unexpectedly high tsunami impact
assigned to the western regions of Jutland."

KEY WORDS – Mesolithic; Doggerland; Storegga Slide tsunami; North Sea

Free download (pdf, 14 pp, 2.5 Mb):
http://www.soes.soto...aehistorica.pdf


Selected quotes.

"We have assembled a large amount of 14C-radiometric
evidence for the Storegga Slide and its attendant
tsunami, ranging from Norway to the British Isles. We
find that the Storegga Slide tsunami event is reliably
and accurately dated to 7300 ± 30 14C-BP (p = 95%) [8100
± 100 calBP].

We then combined this with published palaeogeographic
reconstructions for the now submerged Northwest European
continental shelf known as ‘Doggerland’ and regional sea-
level records for the southern North Sea to evaluate the
potential environmental and social impact of the tsunami
in the Doggerland region."


* PALAEOGEOGRAPHICAL RECONSTRUCTIONS: KEY STAGES AND EVENTS
"The large continental shelf between Britain, Norway, and
the NW-European coast which is commonly known as
‘Doggerland’ is now completely submerged under the North
Sea, but was subaerially exposed at the beginning of the
Holocene. In addition, a considerable area of land was
exposed off the west coast of Jutland. Due to eustatic
sealevel changes, combined with glacio- and hydro-
isostatic land-level changes, the former land areas were
increasingly submerged during the course of the Early
Holocene.

Key stages in the development of Doggerland, ... include
(i) the gradual evolution of a large tidal embayment
between eastern England and Dogger Bank before 9 ka calBP
(9–8 ka 14C-BP);
(ii) the development of Dogger Bank as an island at high
tide 8–7 ka 14C-BP; and
(iii) the final disconnection of England from the
continent by c. 8.0 ka calBP (7–6 ka 14C-BP).
Prior to its complete flooding around 8000 calBP,
Doggerland formed a wide, undulating plain containing a
complex meandering river system, with associated channels
and lakes.

Although there is general consensus that Doggerland was
completely submerged by c. 8000 calBP, different authors
give alternative palaeogeographic reconstructions for the
history of Doggerland. Corresponding to the quite general
lack of archaeological and palaeo-environmental data from
the submerged areas, contemporary research puts the focus
on the timing of selected major (key) events.

An example is shown in Table 5, where Gyllencreutz has
collated published ages for the opening of the English
Channel. Note that, according to the ages given in Table
5, the English Channel was most likely open at the time
of the Storegga Slide Tsunami – although this may have
been a fairly recent development which had taken place
just a few hundred years previously.
Summaries such as Table 5 would imply that the existence
of the key event ‘Opening of the English Channel’ is not
open to question, but that its age is."

* MESOLITHIC PALAEODEMOGRAPHY
Since the pioneering studies of Coles (1998), it is
beyond credence that Doggerland was an inhabited
landscape during the Late Palaeolithic and earlier
Mesolithic periods. In terms of estimating the impact of
the Storegga slide event on contemporary human
populations, results will depend strongly on the extent
of the area impacted, the severity of the tsunami over
this area, and the density and distribution of human
settlement (Fig. 5).

Average population densities for Mesolithic northwest
Europe, based largely on ethnographic analogy, have been
estimated on the order of 0.05 to 0.10 person/km2.
However, the population would not have been evenly
distributed over Doggerland, and we can propose with some
confidence that coastal, lacustrine and riverine areas
would have experienced substantially higher population
densities, perhaps to the order of 0.50 to 1.0
person/km2, while areas further inland (away from
resources) would have been relatively sparsely populated.
There exists some stable isotope and archaeological
evidence in support of these notions."

http://sci.tech-arch...5/msg00047.html


I have posted about this pdf before but I must have skipped past the remarks about the effect of the tsunami on Denmark.

[Abramelin]

Abramelin, on 16 September 2010 - 06:35 PM, said:

Because I once assumed that the name "Nehalennia" became a name for some sea goddess, but was originally the name of some now 'lost country' she represented, I asked a Finnish woman on my own site, what is "Land near ice and frost" in your language ( I asked her because the Doggerlanders must have been part of the Maglemosian culture, a culture of people speaking a Finno-Ugric language)?

She told me it was "maa lähellä halla ja jäätä". ['ja' is pronounced like English 'ya' or 'ia']

Sounds similar to the various spellings of Nehalennia, or "Neeltje Jans" as the name is preserved in my language. And - like I said - it were Romans in ancient Friesland who wrote it down and inscribed it on stone the way it sounded in their ears


But i think I made it a bit too difficult for myself: I could have simply asked her, "wat is 'land near ice' in your language?"

land near ice: maa lähellä jään ( >> 'j' is pronounced like 'y' in English 'ya' or 'i' in English 'ia' )



The ancient ancestors of the Frisians/Norwegians/Swedes/Danes may have been Doggerlanders who fled to southern Norway and Sweden, and to Denmark. This is even suggested on the Wiki page about Norway.

From the original name for that land that sunk, they only saved part: "Hella" or "Halja" (like San Franciso >> Frisco), and used it as a name for the North Sea, the sea that flooded their original homeland, their 'land near ice', maalähelläjään (Doggerland, as I have said many times in this thread, was nothing short of paradise 2000 years after the end of the ice age - think Gulf Stream and being low land - as compared with the surrounding countries that were still much covered in ice and barren tundra.)

Very much later the name of their ancient homeland still survived as the name for a sea goddess, "Nehalennia". And also for a very long time - well, part of the name - as the name for the sea that now covered their ancient homeland, the North Sea, or in old Frisian, Hel/Helja/Halja.

Today I watched again the BBC "Stone Age Atlantis" documentary about Doggerland.

Near the end of this doc a scientist tells us many neolithic stone axes were found on  the socalled "Brown Banks", smack in the middle between southern Holland and England, and west of where all these much younger Nehalennia votice altars were found. The suggestion was that even long after Doggerland disappeared, people still remembered it, and offered to the sea what was then very precious to them: smoothly carved stone axes.


==-=-===-=-===

It has been recognized for a long time that Northern Norway was populated before the inland Scandinavia glacier melted. The inhabitants came from the West: England, the plains situated at the location of the present North Sea, and Germany. The archaeological findings of these areas have been classified as belonging to the Maglemose culture which now is considered to be largely similar to the Narva culture located to the East of the Baltic Sea. Thus it must have been the same population and probably also the same language. The immigrants were attracted to the Northern shores by abundant game for hunting and a chance of sea fishing. The White Sea cliff drawings of the later comb ceramic era show whalery in which large sea vessels (resembling the umiak leather boats of the Eskimos) were used, already aided by such developed tools as the harpoon and and an attached buoy which prevented the prey from diving. It is also known that the Basques practised whaling using small boats as late as the historic period.

The Finno-Ugrians who had conquered the North from the West had been separated from the Eastern inhabitation by the glacier and also by several centuries; consequently they were also genetically separated from the rest of the Finnish linguistic groups. Some indigenous genetic complexes were enriched while some more recent genetic effects received by their Southern tribal relatives were lacking. A reason like this may lie behind the genetic difference met with the Lapps.



http://victorian.for...ty/32/ak1e.html
http://pakana.150m.c...KART1.HTM#10000


.

Today I found something on some 'Pagan' site:

The cults of Hel/Hella/Hola/Nehalennia far predate the standard Northern pantheon and the Aesir and Vanir gods,evidence exists which traces their existance as far back as the last Ice Age.The figure now known as Hel is a very much a creation of those Pantheons,but was originally a concept of the Primordial Goddess..,the Great Mother,the Earth mother.These staves relate to that concept..the Creater/Destroyer Goddess,to whom belongs life,death and rebirth.

http://www.freewebs....alsyewwands.htm

I thought "WOW!", but where did the owner of this website get his idea from??

--

I once asked a Dutch linguist (on his webiste, in his thread about Nehalennia) what he thought about my - farfetched - etymology of the name "Nehalennia".. Well, for those who can't read Dutch, he agreed it was farfetched but very 'creative' (Lol, a polite way of saying it is crazy) : http://taaldacht.nl/.../08/nehalennia/

His main argument against my idea was that modern Finnish (remember, I asked a Finnish woman how she would translate "Land near ice" in her language) would in no way resemble the Proto Finno-Ugric of the Doggerlanders of 6145 BC, IF that was the language they did speak to begin with.

But then I read this:

Hel ("the Hidden" from the word hel,"to conceal") is the Norse goddess of the dead, ruler of the nine worlds of the Land of Mist, Niflheim or Niflhel, located in the far north-- a cold, damp place that is home to frost giants and dwarves. The name Hel was applied both to the Queen of the Underworld and the land itself, and it is thought that the land gave the Queen Her name. In the late Christianized form of the myth, when Hel became Hell, she was said to be the daughter of Loki, who was equated with Lucifer.
http://www.thaliatoo...m/AMGG/hel.html

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Hel_(being)

Well, Doggerland/Dogger Island got 'hidden' or 'concealed' after it was flooded by the tsunami caused by the Storegga Slide.

And the mists - Niflheim, Land of Mist?? As I have showed here in this thread, cold and warm sea currents in the North Sea (cold currents from the north, warm currents from the south, through the newly formed Channel) could have created mists where they met, and that would have been at Dogger Island.

But according to scientists Doggerland/Dogger-Island wasn't cold; they have described it as a post ice age paradise (the only similar area after the end of the last ice age was near Japan).

Hmm... maybe the paradise thing was only true for Doggerland, but not for Dogger Island.

Another problem is this: could that name, "Maalähelläjään" (Nehalennia for Roman ears) - have lingered on for so many thousands of years?




.

Edited by Abramelin, 19 February 2011 - 09:16 PM.

[Flashbangwollap]

But according to scientists Doggerland/Dogger-Island wasn't cold; they  have described it as a (post ice age paradise) (the only similar area  after the end of the last ice age was near Japan).

(post ice age paradise) in comparison too the frozen north of the Ice Age.

That's how I read it Abe.

[Abramelin]

Flashbangwollap, on 19 February 2011 - 09:23 PM, said:

But according to scientists Doggerland/Dogger-Island wasn't cold; they  have described it as a (post ice age paradise) (the only similar area  after the end of the last ice age was near Japan).

(post ice age paradise) in comparison too the frozen north of the Ice Age.

That's how I read it Abe.

Then you read it well, Flash.

[Abramelin]

Origin

Haplogroup V is believed to have originated around the Western Mediterranean region, approximately 13,600 years before present- possibly on Iberia.

Distribution

It is found with particularly high concentrations in the Sámi People of northern Scandinavia, as well as the Basque people (10.4%) [1]and somewhat higher among the isolated Pasiegos in nearby Cantabria. It also is found in particularly high concentrations (16.3%) among the Berbers of Matmata, Tunisia.[3] The highest levels are in Scandinavian and Western and North African populations. It is spread at varying low levels across Europe and smaller portions of West and Central Asia.

23andMe writes: Introduction Haplogroup V first appeared in Iberia toward the end of the Ice Age, about 16,000 years ago, when Europe's human population was mostly restricted to a few temperate enclaves in the southern part of the continent. Aside from a branch that established itself in Sardinia during the period, haplogroup V was mostly confined to the Iberian peninsula until the Ice Age had ended.

The haplogroup began expanding once consistently warmer conditions arrived about 11,500 years ago. One migration carried it northward along the Atlantic to a low-lying coastal plain rich in game and marine food sources such as seals and sea birds. Known as Doggerland, that region lies under the North Sea today – because so much water was locked up in the polar ice sheets during and immediately after the Ice Age, sea level was lower in the past than it is today.
Doggerland slipped beneath the waves about 9,000 years ago, but haplogroup V remains at levels of about 5% in countries that border the Atlantic and especially the North Sea. It is most abundant today in Scotland and northern Germany.


http://www.geni.com/...000007051900070

Edited by Abramelin, 19 February 2011 - 09:36 PM.

[Abramelin]

Abramelin, on 19 February 2011 - 08:51 PM, said:

Today I found something on some 'Pagan' site:

The cults of Hel/Hella/Hola/Nehalennia far predate the standard Northern pantheon and the Aesir and Vanir gods,evidence exists which traces their existance as far back as the last Ice Age.The figure now known as Hel is a very much a creation of those Pantheons,but was originally a concept of the Primordial Goddess..,the Great Mother,the Earth mother.These staves relate to that concept..the Creater/Destroyer Goddess,to whom belongs life,death and rebirth.

http://www.freewebs....alsyewwands.htm

I thought "WOW!", but where did the owner of this website get his idea from??

--

I once asked a Dutch linguist (on his webiste, in his thread about Nehalennia) what he thought about my - farfetched - etymology of the name "Nehalennia".. Well, for those who can't read Dutch, he agreed it was farfetched but very 'creative' (Lol, a polite way of saying it is crazy) : http://taaldacht.nl/.../08/nehalennia/

His main argument against my idea was that modern Finnish (remember, I asked a Finnish woman how she would translate "Land near ice" in her language) would in no way resemble the Proto Finno-Ugric of the Doggerlanders of 6145 BC, IF that was the language they did speak to begin with.

But then I read this:

Hel ("the Hidden" from the word hel,"to conceal") is the Norse goddess of the dead, ruler of the nine worlds of the Land of Mist, Niflheim or Niflhel, located in the far north-- a cold, damp place that is home to frost giants and dwarves. The name Hel was applied both to the Queen of the Underworld and the land itself, and it is thought that the land gave the Queen Her name. In the late Christianized form of the myth, when Hel became Hell, she was said to be the daughter of Loki, who was equated with Lucifer.
http://www.thaliatoo...m/AMGG/hel.html

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Hel_(being)

Well, Doggerland/Dogger Island got 'hidden' or 'concealed' after it was flooded by the tsunami caused by the Storegga Slide.

And the mists - Niflheim, Land of Mist?? As I have showed here in this thread, cold and warm sea currents in the North Sea (cold currents from the north, warm currents from the south, through the newly formed Channel) could have created mists where they met, and that would have been at Dogger Island.

But according to scientists Doggerland/Dogger-Island wasn't cold; they have described it as a post ice age paradise (the only similar area after the end of the last ice age was near Japan).

Hmm... maybe the paradise thing was only true for Doggerland, but not for Dogger Island.

Another problem is this: could that name, "Maalähelläjään" (Nehalennia for Roman ears) - have lingered on for so many thousands of years?




.

[the L]

http://www.sfu.ca/~m...al_2008_000.pdf
The catastrophic final flooding of Doggerland
by the Storegga Slide tsunami

[Abramelin]

the L, on 27 June 2011 - 03:11 PM, said:

http://www.sfu.ca/~m...al_2008_000.pdf
The catastrophic final flooding of Doggerland
by the Storegga Slide tsunami

Heh, L, this and many other pdf's have already been posted in this thread.

Anyway, I'm glad you bumped this thread, because scientists (divers) are actually busy doing research on the Dogger Bank. However, they are not out to find anything of some old 'civilization', it's about the flora and fauna.

Expedition Dogger bank

http://www.expeditie...-expedition.pdf

http://www.scubasupp...Expedition.html

Here a video on Vimeo:




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Edited by Abramelin, 28 June 2011 - 11:51 AM.

[Abramelin]

Bathymetry of the North Sea. Bathymetry data by GEBCO. Video production with ArcGIS by Carmen Ulmen / KlimaCampus Hamburg, 2008.

[JohnD]

I'm sorry that I don't have anything more substantive to add, but I just thought I'd say what a great thread this is. It's taken me two days to read through it all and follow up the various links; I'm still absorbing all of the information presented here and trying to make some sense of it, but I agree that it's sad that only a few people seem interested enough to comment on it. Anyway, it inspired me to delurk just so I could say this!

If I may indulge in a bit of Sitchin/Oera Linda-like wild speculation, something occurred to me a few pages ago. If one is theorising that the original name of the sunken Doggerland and/or the goddess venerated by its inhabitants was something like "Maalähelläjään", by a process of pseudo-linguistic free association that name (whatever it really was) could end up rendered as something like "Malhalya". I don't know how you get from an "M" sound to a "W"/"V", but at least it kind of rhymes with "Valhalla"...

Okay, okay, it was worth a try though, right?

[Abramelin]

JohnD, on 06 July 2011 - 10:32 AM, said:

I'm sorry that I don't have anything more substantive to add, but I just thought I'd say what a great thread this is. It's taken me two days to read through it all and follow up the various links; I'm still absorbing all of the information presented here and trying to make some sense of it, but I agree that it's sad that only a few people seem interested enough to comment on it. Anyway, it inspired me to delurk just so I could say this!

If I may indulge in a bit of Sitchin/Oera Linda-like wild speculation, something occurred to me a few pages ago. If one is theorising that the original name of the sunken Doggerland and/or the goddess venerated by its inhabitants was something like "Maalähelläjään", by a process of pseudo-linguistic free association that name (whatever it really was) could end up rendered as something like "Malhalya". I don't know how you get from an "M" sound to a "W"/"V", but at least it kind of rhymes with "Valhalla"...

Okay, okay, it was worth a try though, right?

Hi John, welcome to UM!

By this qoute I will from now on always remember you: "by a process of pseudo-linguistic free association", LOL.

Anyway, as long as you know that is what it's about, then I think you are on safe ground.

Btw, I once asked a Dutch linguist (or maybe better, a writer who's life long 'hobby' is studying linguistics) about "Maalähelläjään" because he had written a long article about the etymology of the name "Nehalennia" on his blog. He told me it was 'a nice try', but very, very unlikely (based on sound-shifts, amongst other things).



.

Edited by Abramelin, 06 July 2011 - 11:26 AM.