LL-L "Etymology" 2007.11.02 (03) [E/German]

Sat Nov 3 04:08:02 UTC 2007

L O W L A N D S - L  -  28 October 2007 - Volume 03
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From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.11.02 (01) [D/E]

Dear Lowlanders,

It is a very exciting time to be alive. There are so many investigators
around the world opening our minds to what is happening. What I write here
may seem like a series of disjointed facts and opinions, but in my mind, all
relate to a unitary origin of human language.

Luc Hellinckx quoted a communication from R. F. Hahn about some of  approaches
to this subject and added 5 links to articles in "Eurasische Magazin" on the
topic.

The first of these begins:

In der Bibel im ersten Buch Mose wird erzählt, die Menschen hätten zur Zeit
der „Erschaffung der Welt" mit „einerlei Sprache und Zunge" geredet.

I have always believed that the myths and legends of ancient scriptures
around the world reflect realities that need to be investigated.

Further, in a private letter to me, Victor H. Mair expressed the opinion
that ancient Chinese and Sanskrit either came from a common language, or one
came from the other. He edits the "Sino-Platonic Papers", which published a
monograph by Tsung-tung Chang you can find at:

http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp007_old_chinese.pdf

Here Chang juxtaposes Bernhard Karlgren's four periods in the development of
the Chinese language with lots of Julius Pokorny's "Indogermanisches
Etymologisches Wörterbuch"— pages and pages of correspondences of stems
between the two language families in tabular form.

In Robin Dunbar, "The Human Story" 2004 ISBN 0-571-22303-6, language appears
first in Homo sapiens half a million years ago, based on the size of
foramina in the skull, use of tools, burial practices and other
anthropological observations. He associates language with laughter. Chimps
have something like laughter during play, but when a human tells a joke,
teller and audience release endorphins in each of their brains, rewarding
everybody, improving their health and ability to cope. He emphasizes
"intentionality" or "theory of mind" or "mind-reading" in relation to the
beginning of language and religion. If I tell you what I think you want to
hear, that's second degree intentionality. If I tell something to you,
because I think you will tell Susie and that will change her behavior to me,
that's fourth degree. To organize a religion one needs fifth or higher
degree, to participate, fourth.

It's long been known that creole languages around the world—let me make an
aside: creole languages arise where people are transported to other lands
and have no opportunity to speak their native language. This has usually
occurred under conditions of slavery. The slaves are ordered about in the
master's language and they learn the meaning of the commands via the whip.
These unfortunates have invented languages using terms from the masters'
speech, but have elaborated them into a language that seems to obey the
neuroscience of the Homo sapiens brain, rather than any known language.

That is, they—whether orientals in Hawai'i or Africans in the Caribbean, and
I guess that includes the Gullah Dialect of southeastern US, too, quickly
develop an aspective, tenseless language that satisfies their needs. And it
comes right out of their human brains!

Mitochondrial DNA (female inheritance) and Y chromosome studies (male
inheritance) correlate with migration out of Africa and the spread of
agriculture across the temperate zone, both activities unthinkable without
language.

http://www.archaeology.org/9609/abstracts/dna.html

The Eve study examined mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed only by
mothers to their offspring. The researchers, Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking,
and the late Allan Wilson, estimated that the ancestor of all surviving mt
DNA types lived between 140,000 and 290,000 years ago. When did the
migrations from Africa take place? They dated the oldest cluster of mtDNA
types with no modern African representation to between 90,000 and 180,000
years ago. These populations might have left Africa at about that time, but
the mtDNA data could not determine exactly when.

Of particular interest to Lowlanders might be Bryan Sykes popular book
"Saxons, Vikings, and Celts", 2006, ISBN 13:978-0-393-06268-7 and his
website http://www.bloodoftheisles.net. He traces the inheritance of
subjects in the British Isles: mtDNA to seven matriarchs and Y-chromosomes
to five patriarchs. The oldest British mtDNA comes from a matriarch of
45,000 years ago, apparently living in the area of Greece and given by Sykes
the name of Ursula. Their commonest mtDNA comes from a matriarch of 20,000
years ago. Sykes summarizes by saying that the Brits are basically Celts.

Jorge Potter
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