Let's talk history

[MWoo7]

30 minutes ago, back to earth said:

But ....    well   ...   I'm no linguist . 

Me either. Cripes thought I picked up what is the main one Mandarin? of like 9 official who know's how many other minor ones, a very good Chinese friend said he could travel basically anywhere in China and it was hard to understand others. Prob like back east in Canada and in the states, all sounding too French or like Rocky! or in the deep southern states.
But I also tried to write it, IMPOSSIBLE !
Just speak it, and practice, easy peezy capitian cheezy! BUT DON'T WRITE IT!

Regarding the vast distances the Junks traveled way before anyone,
oh people profs etc. argue and argue.

A curiosity when some Chinese has been located on rocks.
A curiosity when some coastal tribes have same signs for house winter, moon, running, bear, seasons etc.
Actually though, inland languages are not even close to coastal's/Salish.
Actually, if you ask real Indians or bring it up your lucky to be still standing.
Well, some of the women that I'd run across can't stand Chinese, its very deep,
whatever the reason, I've no idea, not talked about.
I've been around Eskimo/Aleut but no deep discussions.

Edited March 15, 2017 by MWoo7

[back to earth]

Oooh ,  I am not saying no  ......   I just know that things get examined very deep ( for me ) on a linguistic level .  But I get a bit lost in it (indigenous friend speaks his local  language,  that language's  'mother tongue' , 4  other  nearby area languages,  a secret clan {initiation / magic / ?  lingo }   language, English, two different lots of sign language and another  secret sign language . 

Sometimes I dont know what the hell is going on around the fire at night  when I visit them  !  

(I think that is the idea   ) 

[Frank Merton]

32 minutes ago, back to earth said:

I put this up before ;  pearl shell trade routes  Indigenous Australia    

 

I take it this is of a later time; I remember seeing a genetic map of Australians and it seems the first settlers migrated almost entirely down the east coast leaving the desert uninhabited until much later.

[MWoo7]

13 minutes ago, back to earth said:

Sometimes I dont know what the hell is going on around the fire at night  when I visit them  !  

(I think that is the idea   ) 

Same here, and some of its sexual stuff/innuendos secret hand sign, loads of giggles and only they know what's being said naturally.
Yeah, I know a few but they are kind of nasty / lewd, one or two would make anyone blush,
But for men(my cowboy friends), well they always roll on the floor or really laugh like hell.

Edited March 15, 2017 by MWoo7

[Frank Merton]

Well, if this is general history, you'd never guess that Khmer (Cambodian) and Vietnamese are both what are known as "Austronesian" and maybe a thousand years ago were the same tongue.  Now, at least using surface descriptions, they seem so different.  Vietnam is tonal, isolating and monosyllabic (rigidly), Khmer is flat, isolating and polysyllabic for many words (although of course all languages consist of mostly one-syllable words).

The one commonality, that they are both isolating, to me only proves that neither is Indo-European -- there is where you find all sorts of inflections and declensions and so on.  Neither Cambodian nor Vietnamese has tense, case, number, any of that grammatical garbage (which English is slowly dispensing with too -- it has such things left over in plurals and some possessives and in pronouns but the English Verb system is as complicated as it gets, but, interestingly, for the most part not with inflections but with helpers, as is the case in isolating languages.

How did Vietnamese and Cambodian get to be so different?  First of all, the association can be pretty clearly seen in cognates.  The vocabularies, especially of basic words, are much the same.  However, Vietnamese has a large collection of words taken from South Chinese (neither Vietnamese nor Cambodian is related to the Hamitic family), but the core vocabulary of the two languages is strongly cognate.

The two languages also depend heavily on position in the sentence and use the same sentence structure (as with English) of Subject Verb Object.  (However, things like what we call "dative" is done with helpers, not position in the sentence) This is of course by a large margin the most common sentence structure in the world, although Subject Object Verb is found in a lot of Indo-European tongues, causing discussion about this.

Vietnamese tones and Vietnamese monosyllabic rules are entirely from Chinese influence and were not present in early Vietnamese.  Once the rule was adopted that words had to be one syllable, lots of words were just simply split up (airplane versus air plane) although of course in both Cambodian and Vietnamese the adjective follows the noun so my example is for English speakers.

Once you have gone monosyllabic, you have a homonym problem of serous proportions, and the Chinese solution, of introducing tones, greatly reduced this.  It was I suppose a logical thing to happen, although it makes Vietnamese a much harder language to pronounce (for Westerners) than Khmer.

 

[MWoo7]

12 minutes ago, Frank Merton said:

How did Vietnamese and Cambodian get to be so different?  First of all, the association can be pretty clearly seen in cognates.  The vocabularies, especially of basic words, are much the same.

My word, a linguistics expert, you probably speak them well too HA!
I wish I would have picked it up, but any I know is Slang I'm sure.  Vietnamese seemed very hard, just the sounds of it AND NO THIS MEANS NOTHING:: li li clik lou, or binjohn lik meeow
Almost expected mouth pops and clicking sounds HA! very hard.
I'd two roommates and I gave up RIGHT AWAY !
Oh we knew slang, left over junk from the war,
even some words I'd say yeah from GI from soldiers, not your word, they'd say Noooooo, I'd say " ask your mother, yeah. " ahahhaa!

Edited March 15, 2017 by MWoo7

[Frank Merton]

2 hours ago, cern said:

i think the willendorf kostenki complex is considered a real thing isn't it? and if the melos obsidian is in the 11kbc layer on mainland greece then that sorta means the two neighbours were across a sea? we would call that trade today would we not?

The point? It strikes me that inter-island trade in an island nation is not much different than neighbor-to-neighbor trade and not quite long caravan routes.

I recently read a book dealing with where the stones in Stonehenge came from, and of course we know they came from a good distance away by ship.  Still, it appears they were traded from tribe to tribe, each making a profit, rather than in a single trip, even though everyone knew the intended ultimate destination.  I don't know if that makes much sense beyond saying that communication over long distances is easier than moving big rocks.

[MWoo7]

2 hours ago, cern said:

willendorf

Sorry to butt in if you all were talking only about Australia, I had a question because I couldn't recall but -- isn't there an important old trade map under that name?  THought it williamborg or something willenord, thought to run it by you maybe you know all about it, at least how it was spelled HA!  Just something I thought I remembered vaguely. Thanks in advance.
UUUPDATE, okay to ignore, I can't find it, it was in 1100 A.D. of the West Coast of United States,? maybe even included down to Peru, way before there was suppose to be a map, eeeh I'll find it later, okay to ignore this HA!

Edited March 15, 2017 by MWoo7

[cern]

Just now, Frank Merton said:

The point? It strikes me that inter-island trade in an island nation is not much different than neighbor-to-neighbor trade and not quite long caravan routes.

I recently read a book dealing with where the stones in Stonehenge came from, and of course we know they came from a good distance away by ship.  Still, it appears they were traded from tribe to tribe, each making a profit, rather than in a single trip, even though everyone knew the intended ultimate destination.  I don't know if that makes much sense beyond saying that communication over long distances is easier than moving big rocks.

actually i was just trying to figure out what  wide ranging group "from the earliest times" wasn't an actually group because there were tribe to tribe intermediaries which only made it look that way. aren't many wide ranging groups from the earliest times  guessed willendorff kostenki since i was talking about that area and paleolithic and it was wide ranging, genetically those mother goddess idol makers are the. same ydna haplogroup as some natufians, a few ppnb folks and the first farmers in iran so seems like more than exchange unless you mean body fluids. 

i knew that the word trade is used academically about the obsidian from melos from the early ages [early neolithic]. so i didn't think you were questioning that.

what is the difference between exchange and trade?

[cern]

46 minutes ago, Frank Merton said:

The point? It strikes me that inter-island trade in an island nation is not much different than neighbor-to-neighbor trade and not quite long caravan routes.

I recently read a book dealing with where the stones in Stonehenge came from, and of course we know they came from a good distance away by ship.  Still, it appears they were traded from tribe to tribe, each making a profit, rather than in a single trip, even though everyone knew the intended ultimate destination.  I don't know if that makes much sense beyond saying that communication over long distances is easier than moving big rocks.

so wait now... you are saying the bluestones were traded commercially to the builders of stonehenge? what book is that? coming up the river yes but evidence of trading for them? excellent. there is a snow storm today and i will be bored. came home way too early again. mercurial weather is bad.

i did see the documentary where the mouth breather that is digging there says its a tower of silence using the zoroastrian term and everything.

Edited March 15, 2017 by cern

[Frank Merton]

38 minutes ago, cern said:

actually i was just trying to figure out what  wide ranging group "from the earliest times" wasn't an actually group because there were tribe to tribe intermediaries which only made it look that way. aren't many wide ranging groups from the earliest times  guessed willendorff kostenki since i was talking about that area and paleolithic and it was wide ranging, genetically those mother goddess idol makers are the. same ydna haplogroup as some natufians, a few ppnb folks and the first farmers in iran so seems like more than exchange unless you mean body fluids. 

i knew that the word trade is used academically about the obsidian from melos from the early ages [early neolithic]. so i didn't think you were questioning that.

what is the difference between exchange and trade?

I'm a little out of my depth here, but it seems likely things started with exchange and gradually evolved into trade as people learned to eliminate the middle man.  Doing so required domestication of horses and mules and camels and the development of wagons and ways traders could defend themselves or be defended.  I would hate to try to put dates on these things -- of course they happened in different places at different times.

[Totah Dine]

4 hours ago, MWoo7 said:

“… The Tartar Chinese speak the dialect of the Apaches. The Apaches bear a striking resemblance to the Tartar. In about the year 1885, W. B. Horton, who had served as County Superintendent of Schools, at Tucson, was appointed Post Trader at Camp Apache, and went to San Francisco to purchase his stock, where he hired a Chinese cook. His kitchen adjoined his sleeping apartment, and one evening while in his room he heard in the kitchen some Indians talking. Wondering what they were doing there at that hour of the night, he opened the door and found his cook conversing with an Apache. He asked his cook where he had acquired the Indian language. The cook said: “He speak all same me. I Tartar Chinese; he speak same me, little different, not much.”

This is a fallacy.  Most people don't know this but the Apache and Navajo are actually different bands of the same tribe.  We can converse with each other and understand each other.  There are some words and phrases that are a bit different.  Each band tends to borrow language from the other tribes around them and incorporate them into their particular dialect.  I have had conversations with White Mountain and Jicarilla Apache on several occasions.  I had to concentrate but it's pretty much the same language.  

I know this won't matter to you much but we're not Indians.  People from India are Indians.  We are not from India.  Speaking for myself calling me an "Indian" is quite offensive.  Right up there with "Redskin".  Just sayin'

I've also heard stories of captive Navajos during WWII were questioned by the Japanese and were thought to be of Japanese descent.  There are some words that seem similar but that happens in any language.  There's a word in Japanese, Nandesuka that is similar to a Navajo word nandeskaadi  which means tortilla.  The Navajo and Apache are Athabaskan and our language is an athabaskan derivative.  We came from the North.  Something bad happened because to this day North is the direction of spirits or evil.  When a relative dies in a home it's customary to break out the north wall and then the house is abandoned.  It's considered a ghost house from that point on.  It's considered a bad omen if a coyote crosses your path going North.  North is bad. I think my ancestors fled Western Canada due to a natural disaster or encroaching tribes that threatened to wipe them out.  

There is a hypothetical relation to Siberia ( Dené–Yeniseian) and Athabaskan languages but not intelligible enough to converse.  Tartar is a Turkic language and has no relationship to Dené–Yeniseian or Athabaskan dialects.  Personally I think the gentleman in question heard the Apaches gossiping among themselves and decided it sounded "Chinese".  Then made up the rest.  The fact he said Tartar should be evidence enough of his ignorance regarding linguistics.  

[Windowpane]

1 hour ago, Totah Dine said:

... we're not Indians.  People from India are Indians.  We are not from India.  Speaking for myself calling me an "Indian" is quite offensive.   

I believe (perhaps someone will put me right if I'm wrong) that  the reason why people native to the Americas were originally referred to as "Indians" was because the early explorers mistakenly thought that they'd landed in some part of India, the continent - hence the West Indies, etc. etc.  So it's an historical error, that somehow stuck.  

But, obviously, no one wants to cause unnecessary offence: and, later on, it was believed to be politer to refer to people native to the Americas as "native Americans."   But this description is apparently no longer deemed to be correct, and it's better to say "First Nations."

Totah Dine: what's your view of this question?  How do you prefer to be described?

 

 

 

[cern]

2 hours ago, Totah Dine said:

 The Navajo and Apache are Athabaskan and our language is an athabaskan derivative.  We came from the North.  Something bad happened because to this day North is the direction of spirits or evil.  When a relative dies in a home it's customary to break out the north wall and then the house is abandoned.  It's considered a ghost house from that point on.  It's considered a bad omen if a coyote crosses your path going North.  North is bad. I think my ancestors fled Western Canada due to a natural disaster or encroaching tribes that threatened to wipe them out.  

glooscap and the bullfrog

 

[Totah Dine]

4 hours ago, Windowpane said:

I believe (perhaps someone will put me right if I'm wrong) that  the reason why people native to the Americas were originally referred to as "Indians" was because the early explorers mistakenly thought that they'd landed in some part of India, the continent - hence the West Indies, etc. etc.  So it's an historical error, that somehow stuck.  

But, obviously, no one wants to cause unnecessary offence: and, later on, it was believed to be politer to refer to people native to the Americas as "native Americans."   But this description is apparently no longer deemed to be correct, and it's better to say "First Nations."

Totah Dine: what's your view of this question?  How do you prefer to be described?

 

 

 

Personally I feel anyone born here is native American.  I prefer First Nation.  It just seems more equitable all around.  

Edited March 15, 2017 by Totah Dine

[jaylemurph]

14 hours ago, back to earth said:

Oooh ,  I am not saying no  ...... 

I am. But fortunately for me, Totah Dine has already explained this is great detail. The only person claiming modern Chinese and any First Nation languages are similar is someone with a book/website/fringe doodad to sell you, probably for $19.95.

--Jaylemurph

[internetperson]

17 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

Many modern Christians take Revelations as a prophecy about the End of Days. In my much younger days I would've agreed, but now I really favor the more academic assessment that this book is political propaganda wrapped up in religion. It certainly reads like a nightmarish vision, but that was probably deliberate on the part of the man who wrote it (the so-called John, although no relation to Jesus' disciple). Consider that this book was written not long after Rome had sacked Jerusalem in 70 CE and destroyed the Temple. This had to have been an incomprehensible disaster to Jews of that time, and many of these Jews in the first century were highly militant. They wanted nothing more than the utter destruction of Rome. One sees this pretty clearly even in the allegories of the Dead Sea Scrolls, many of which were written around the same time as Revelations.

So rather than a prophecy about the destruction of the world, it was a fervent hope for the righteous destruction of Rome at the hands of the second coming of Jesus. I've read it's unlikely the author, John, was even Christian, but many Jews of that period considered Jesus to be the messiah who would set things right—in this life or the next.

Or I could be way off and back to earth is right: a really wicked acid trip plus mental defect. But that's not as interesting.

Frankly I knew most of this. I should word my question better. If I can't articulate my question in this 5 min post then the next one I promise I'll take more effort and use examples....anyway

What throws me off about the book is the imagery. Books of the NT are a bit more straightforward with the parables of Christ and whatnot. It's much easier to read than the OT. Revelations is completely out of left field in this regard. It literally reads like someone was abducted by aliens.

Graham Hancock said early Christianity was a fertility cult that apparently used hallucinogens (maybe slightly misquoting him here). He says lots of things though.

Oh! What do you think about the apocryphal text? I mean to ask 1 question per post but I'm bursting at the seams and don't wanna forget.

Edited March 15, 2017 by internetperson

[back to earth]

16 hours ago, Frank Merton said:

I take it this is of a later time; I remember seeing a genetic map of Australians and it seems the first settlers migrated almost entirely down the east coast leaving the desert uninhabited until much later.

Its a  map of pearl shell trade routes, we were talking about Neolithic trade routes . they originate  from the area where the source of pearl shells were. It isnt a map of 'settlement' or migration. 

That seems to have come in from the NW on to the then  exposed NW Shelf area, around the then  coast line there and into the interior. Also from P N G , down to  SW into the interior AND to the E down the east coast.

THEN  (around  4,000 - 4,3000  ? ) another migration into the west coast   ( from India / Andaman Islands , supposedly bringing the Dingo )  and into the interior - there are interesting 'myths' about that one .

Local people in my area, have a story about  a family that came down the east coast and settled here, and started the 'settlements' in this area; oral traditions say they were displaced from the north Gulf Country due to ocean rise, and ended up 'down here' . 

 

[back to earth]

16 hours ago, MWoo7 said:

Same here, and some of its sexual stuff/innuendos secret hand sign, loads of giggles and only they know what's being said naturally.
Yeah, I know a few but they are kind of nasty / lewd, one or two would make anyone blush,
But for men(my cowboy friends), well they always roll on the floor or really laugh like hell.

Cowboy friends ?   

I am gonna have to meet you one day Wooz    

[back to earth]

16 hours ago, MWoo7 said:

My word, a linguistics expert, you probably speak them well too HA!
I wish I would have picked it up, but any I know is Slang I'm sure.  Vietnamese seemed very hard, just the sounds of it AND NO THIS MEANS NOTHING:: li li clik lou, or binjohn lik meeow
Almost expected mouth pops and clicking sounds HA! very hard.
I'd two roommates and I gave up RIGHT AWAY !
Oh we knew slang, left over junk from the war,
even some words I'd say yeah from GI from soldiers, not your word, they'd say Noooooo, I'd say " ask your mother, yeah. " ahahhaa!

Just as well it wasnt NG Pidgin ! 

'Dispella ime b*ggerimup, e farkimarse' .  - seriously, its not swearing , its their lingo (taught to them by Aussies ) :    (Translation ) ; That is a person that doesnt do things right and makes mistakes ... actually, he makes so many mistakes all the time  that he himself is a **** up . "

Edited March 15, 2017 by back to earth

[kmt_sesh]

1 hour ago, internetperson said:

Frankly I knew most of this. I should word my question better. If I can't articulate my question in this 5 min post then the next one I promise I'll take more effort and use examples....anyway

What throws me off about the book is the imagery. Books of the NT are a bit more straightforward with the parables of Christ and whatnot. It's much easier to read than the OT. Revelations is completely out of left field in this regard. It literally reads like someone was abducted by aliens.

Graham Hancock said early Christianity was a fertility cult that apparently used hallucinogens (maybe slightly misquoting him here). He says lots of things though.

Oh! What do you think about the apocryphal text? I mean to ask 1 question per post but I'm bursting at the seams and don't wanna forget.

I don't know that I'd consider any of Hancock's writing as contributive to the academic knowledge base. He's certainly not as bad as a lot of fringe writers but he's still out there. His comment about early Christianity, for example, is wildly off the mark. I doubt he would even much understand the socio-political context out of which Christianity grew.

As for apocryphal texts, I have never much researched the subject. The earliest development of Christianity is a highly complicated subject, and the establishment of canonical scripture was largely based on personal bias and power-plays by early Church leaders. I'm more familiar with the gnostic sects in the early Christian period of Egypt, but am hardly a scholar on the subject. All I can say is, the average Christian today who sticks only to the Bible with which he or she is familiar, would hardly recognize a lot of the Christianity that was taking form in the first century. It's an interesting subject but not one to which I've devoted much time. I prefer more ancient fields of study.

[jaylemurph]

I've been studying early Christianity as a research project. I was completely unaware of the depth and expanse of Christianity, especially non-Catholic, non-Orthodox branches throughout Asia and Africa -- there were Nestorian monks and missionaries in ninth century Tibet and China. Even under Muslim state rule, many of these branches survived almost into living memory, and some of them, like the Nestorian Church of the East sill exist.

--Jaylemurph

[back to earth]

15 hours ago, cern said:

so wait now... you are saying the bluestones were traded commercially to the builders of stonehenge? what book is that? coming up the river yes but evidence of trading for them? excellent. there is a snow storm today and i will be bored. came home way too early again. mercurial weather is bad.

i did see the documentary where the mouth breather that is digging there says its a tower of silence using the zoroastrian term and everything.

HUH ?    Stonehenge is a tower of silence ? !     Is that what someone is claiming ?  He must be an Indian Parsee in the Indian Nationalist Party Advocating Zoroastrian Out Of India theory all the way to Orkney ?     

 

Never heard that circle monoliths were traded before .   I like the other idea that they were representations of the group of the area they came from, bought by each group and put together in a henge .  

.... one of my favs ; 

 

location ... location  .... location  ;

       

 

view the other way  ( reconstruction)

 

[back to earth]

15 hours ago, Frank Merton said:

I'm a little out of my depth here, but it seems likely things started with exchange and gradually evolved into trade as people learned to eliminate the middle man.  Doing so required domestication of horses and mules and camels and the development of wagons and ways traders could defend themselves or be defended.  I would hate to try to put dates on these things -- of course they happened in different places at different times.

Depends on what assumptions are made .    Here , still in some places, men will walk for a week or more, carrying nothing but  some spears and simple tools and trade items. Trade for large prepared and packaged ochre balls, balance them on their head in a ring of  twisted bark and walk back home .   The individual ochre itself has been tracked from  places as far apart as near Perth W.A. , up and across to the Top End and Gulf Country .... thats a fair stretch !  No horses mules or cameles here back then. 

[kmt_sesh]

17 hours ago, back to earth said:

 

Pearl shell trade routes?

And here I thought it was your secret maps to all of the best party spots Down Under.