LL-L "Culture" 2010.09.01 (05) [AF-EN]

Wed Sep 1 23:15:40 UTC 2010

=====================================================
*L O W L A N D S - L - 01 September 2010 - Volume 05*
lowlands.list at gmail.com - http://lowlands-l.net/
Posting: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org
Archive: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)
Language Codes: lowlands-l.net/codes.php
=====================================================

From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>

Subject: LL-L "Culture" 2010.09.01 (03) [EN]

Beste Luc en Jonny:

Onderwerp: LL-L "Humour"

You reminisce... Besides...hold your breath...remember that day when we
jumped out of the water and started to live on land? I was suffocating man!
Now thàt was the start of all evil...btw, I can't swim ;=)

'n Hollander vriend het die eens met ons meegedeel: "Ek het 'n verdrag met
die See. Ek gaan nie See toe nie en die Haai kom nie kroeg toe nie."

Groete,

Mark

----------

From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>

Subject: LL-L "Culture" 2010.09.01 (04) [EN]

Beste Luc, Marcus & Jonny:

Subject: LL-L "Culture"

About the Beaker People & Writing::

The interviewed archeologists postulated a theory that these higher
civilized people may have been in contact with the inhabitants of Northern
Africa, maybe they even were descendants of the old Egyptians.

Some points; Egypt is quite far as a non-maritime people of Western Europe
would see it, & Morocco quite close. Moreover, unlike the case today, the
thin coastal edge of a howling desert, but a pleasant & bounteous savanna -
wall-to-wall Kruger Park - look at the rock-paintings of Tassili n Ajjir
(Land of Four [Rivers])& elsewhere. The Beaker Folk didn't need to go to
Egypt for cultural interaction. The Irish hold that Numidians were among
their ancestors

Now the Egyptians had papyrus. Without that, heiroglyphics is a non-starter.
The nearest their nearer neighbours the Sumerians came to a picture script
was cuniform on moulded clay. Have you considered how uncommon clay is in
non-alluvial country? You prospect for it, & when you find it you make pots
with it - you don't scribble on it & dump it for the archaeologists to find
(The boffins agree that most cuniform found is ephemera, pressed into
un-fired, sun-dried clay lumps, & dumped).

The carrying medium for a script must commonly be material commonly
available. In the forests of Northern Europe the locals used rune-staves, on
split lengths of stick (many samples have been found. One, in Ireland, is a
length of hartshorn with the Viking runes cut in it - 'HARTSHORN'), & the
script used was most suitable for cutting & carving, but there is a problem.
Scribbled notes past their sell-by date make good kindling, & if they aren't
burnt, over the ages they will rot into the earth. The same applies to the
long-bow, an instrument of telling Historical Moment: If they had not been
written about how would we know about them? Less than a handful survive to
date, & most of those were raised with the Mary Rose.I wonder how much of
our paper-based book-bound literature will survive the next Dark Age?

In the North we know of two carved scripts, one is the Teutonic Eights & the
other is the Gaelic Ogham. We cannot draw definitive conclusions about a
written culture in either based on the records carved in stone, a rare
medium, except that there was a script. Now the Germans & the Gaels had
bronze & steel, it was an option, for monumental purposes, to carve stone.
What did the Beaker People have - flint. Stone to carve stone?

The most insular Berbers of all (heh, heh) are the so-called Tuareg. Their
script, Tifinargh, can be drawn in the sand or scrawled on a stone face with
a piece of charcoal. Ephemera usually is, but the wind & passage of time
will blow it away. We cannot read it, yet, but their ancestors the
Garamantians used Tifinargh before the Phoenecians came.

Gentle readers, most scripts & most writing has been mostly used for
ephemera, thank the Lord. Just think, if all the drek of ages were to last
for ever! If a representative cross-sectione of the data backed up in
Cloudland were downloaded to stand testimony for us of the merit of our
survival as a race, woe, woe!

I think that those who try to relate the megalithic builders to the
Egyptians are gobsmacked by any ancient building at all, & lump the lot
together for simple - yes, simple - wonder at the magnitude of their works.
On the evidence of surviving structures their techniques & cultures had
nothing whatever in common. In my opinion, it doesn't become an academic's
professional dignity, least of all that of an archaeologist, to take that
option.

Apart from all the above, I agree with Marcus, the written record is a
manifestation of a Third-Level Culture: Urbanisition, specialisation of
crafts & an established heirarchy. Under such conditions one needs to pass
records between three parties or more & store them in the short term.

yrs,

Mark

----------

From: Theo Homan <theohoman at yahoo.com>

Subject: LL-L "Culture" 2010.09.01 (02) [EN]

From: Jonny Meibohm <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>

Subject: LL-L "Culture"

[...]

I think that each culture which ever has experienced the power of written
letters should have been eager to learn and create the same for its own
purposes.

But we have no relics in Europe which could point to any writing until the
Romans conquered (and later christianized) this region. The Germanic Runic
alphabet is dated younger, already influenced by Latin types and never had
been an important medium for 'daily' communication. I've never heard about a
Celtic writing system as well.

What could be the reasons for this belated evolution? Perhaps because there
was no necessity of any writing for a simply, small structured, familiar
society of hunters, herders and farmers, with no greater settlements like
there probably existed in Egypt, surely in Greece and Italy. Without
anything close to that what later was called "trading" and "money"?!

[...]

Hello,

Eeeeeh... when you write on sticks, there is not much change for the
writings to be preserved.
But, besides, we can point to the ten thousands of runic messages of all
kind [also of scabrous nature] found on the bottom of the harbour of Bergen
in Norway: the soil was 'sour'.

And I may point to the fact that up until the 1950's there were still
Swedish farmers who used the runic system for their written communication
between each other.

It is my firm belief that the Old-Germanics [like other Indo-Europeans] did
not want to use a writing system, as written texts could lead to all kinds
of forgery.

But: Speak up in the meeting of the elders, and everybody can hear it, and
hear whether you are trying to change the texts.

And indeed, we have overdoses of old acts, proceedings and ordinances that
are forgeries, just intended to defraud.

So are the words of Theo who never forges or lies.

vr.gr.
Theo Homan

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>

Subject: LL-L "Culture" 2010.09.01 (02) [EN]

> From: Jonny Meibohm <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
>
> Subject:LL-L "Culture"

> Exaggeratedly expressed: written letters are the very beginning of the
> evil ;-)!?

I think that in these days of widespread literacy achieved by early
teaching it's hard for us to realise just how difficult reading and
writing really is.

Groups tend to start writing in some sort of picture form or ideographs,
which suggests to me that the fact that a word splits into a stream
consisting of a small set of different sounds isn't as obvious as it
seems to we who are so used to the idea.

A system of ideographs, if widely accepted, does eventually start to
develop some phonetic features, perhaps initially through rebus writing,
but the ideographic side of the writing doesn't seem to disappear
because of that.

One idea is that the alphabet arose (as a betagam) when the Pheonicians
started using Egyptian writing: since they spoke a Semitic language they
felt no need to write vowels so it was simpler for them to develop the
sort of writing system we have today. Then classical Greek and Latin
being rather short of vowels, it wasn't too hard for them to take a
passing betagam and augment it into an alphabet by adding a few extra
letters for the vowels.

This sort of theory suggests that an alphabet is a difficult concept
that will only develop under auspicious circumstances, which would mean
that most other alphabets were developed from the original, or at least
from the idea of it.

I think this is quite a believable idea, that an alphabet develops first
in phonetically simpler (or simplifiable) languages, and later in
languages which need more letters. Look at the way it was widely
believed that Slavonic languages couldn't be written, until Saint Cyril
finally took the sledgehammer approach and borrowed letters from both
Greek and Latin alphabets and made up a few of his own until he had
enough.

It seems to me that hieroglyphic systems generally only survive with a
strong government and civil service (or priesthood, perhaps) to support
it, and an empire that continues unbroken (China, Egypt, Maya).

In earlier centuries (eg the Middle Ages), reading was much less common
and reading silently almost unheard of, which goes to show how much we
take for granted these days. On the other hand, there are many claims of
of people these days who can read just by flipping quickly through the
pages of a book, so we may not be at the end of the process yet!

In Victorian times, reading was very much a social event, with one
person in the family reading to the rest, but perhaps that was only due
to lack of other entertainments. I remember when I was a child older
adults used to often read out loud, but not the younger. Is this still
true? Being deaf now, I can't tell!

I also remember that older adults liked to be read to rather than read,
even when they could read, although this may just have been an
unwillingness to look for their reading glasses!

There was also a certain unwillingness, as you mention, for people to
approve of reading. I was often criticised by grandparents and old
uncles and aunts for "always having my nose in a book". Also for
climbing trees, running, shouting, laughing, getting lost for hours on
end, watching TV and generally not being Presbyterian enough.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

=========================================================
Send posting submissions to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
Send commands (including "signoff lowlands-l") to
listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or lowlands.list at gmail.com
http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=118916521473498<http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#%21/group.php?gid=118916521473498>
=========================================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20100901/06509375/attachment.htm>