Re: Kris Hirst's page on Why Don't We Call Them Cro-Magnon Anymore? updated

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:57:09 +0100, in sci.archaeology, Peter Alaca wrote:

J.LyonLayden wrote: on, 14/02/2008 15:01:

On Feb 13, 8:04 pm, Tom McDonald <kilt...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 13, 11:44 am, "J.LyonLayden" <JosephLay...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<snip>





It's a very rough draft and any feedback would help me get it to
final.
Comments/suggestions appreciated:
No Working Title
The giants stood upon a hill, gazing down at the valley. There were
seven of them, and all of them were thicker of frame than any man that
Nufta had ever seen. And though Nufta was a tall man, in fact the
tallest man in all the hamlets this side of the inner sea, he would
have had to stand on his tiptoes to look even the shortest of them eye
to eye.
The giants were looking down upon the fields where Nufta's people had
been working, reaping wild wheat from the bountiful fields that lay
across the slope. Now the men stood still, faces grim and scythes held
defensively braced before them, or before a woman near them. Some of
the women were scurrying back towards the hamlet, and one just a
second before had let out a disheartening scream. Beyond them, far off
in the center of the valley, small pillars of smoke rose from clusters
of huts, one of which Nufta called his home. The intruders had come
just at the ending of the day, and the sun was beginning to set behind
a further hill.
Dusk draped the tallest giant like a cloak.
Dusk? These guys are on a hilltop, apparently in daylight (the little
guys are still working in the fields).

He was eyeing Maya, the
girl who had screamed. She was running down the hill towards the
smokey huts, her attractive skin glowing bronze in the fading light
and her dark brown hair and garments flowing out behind her like wake
in the wind. the giant looked satisfied; he looked like a man who had
come home.
Nufta breathed in the Mana from the air. He visualized the energy
swelling up around him. He saw his spirit rise above his body, saw it
drop down into the body of the giant, and looked at his own body from
the giant's eyes. Then Nufta imagined a brilliant chord of light,
flowing from the center of his own chest to the giants, and flowing
from the giant's chest to his. He allowed the rest of the world to
fade away, so that only he and the giant existed, poised in time for a
moment, seperate from the world...
Is this business of magic intended to be a real phenomenon in your
world; IOW, more a fantasy than imagined history?

Or are you building the cultural/religious basis for the shorties?

But then the giant shook his head and thundered a roarous laugh down
into the valley below. As it echoed among the hills, the other giants
joined in, and the world came back into quick focus for Nufta. his
magic had failed.
The giants words were strange to Nufta, but he understood them for the
most part, being very close to the speech of the woodsmen who lived to
the north of nufta's people. And in those days men had not yet fully
learned to hide their communications with words.
"I have come to protect you," laughed the giant. "It is a wonder my
people have not yet come to claim you. But you will harvest for ME,
now, and we will keep them and all others at bay."
Before I comment in more detail, can you tell me about your intended
audience? Is there a genre within which you intend this to fall?

And where is your story set, both temporally and spatially?

<snip>

Also the final word will probably not be "giant" but a more ancient
word, maybe basque but not jentilak because it's too much a
possibility that they borrowed it from "gentile" when they got
religion.

Why Basque?

Because I believe they are the oldest surviving indigenous culture in
Europe, and many of their words may be unchanged since the ice-age.
They may be the last people to have seen cro-magnons and neanderthals.

Your belief does not count here.
The language is strange, which says nothing about
the age of their culture and certainly is no evidence
for a culture older than any other Europen culture.
How do you know that the same language wasn't spoken
elsewehere in Europe? How do you know that they weren't
immigrants?
Even if it is the 'oldest surviving indigenous culture
in Europe', why do you think it is dating back to
Neandertal times?


BTW The Basques share their culture with Iberia and France
and with Europe in general

They have their own cuisine, so I'd argue that they have their own
culture. :-)

As for the language, the late Larry Trask was a real expert on Basque.

http://www.buber.net/Basque/Euskara/Larry/WebSite/basque.faqs.html

" Where does Basque come from?

A4. It doesn't really "come from" anywhere -- it's just been there for a
very long time. Western Europe has been inhabited for tens of thousands of
years, but for most of that time writing was unknown and hence we have no
records of the languages spoken. In the second half of the first
millennium BC, writing was introduced into southern and eastern Spain by
the Phoenicians and the Greeks, but it didn't reach the ancestral Basques
farther north. It was only the Roman conquest of Gaul and Spain in the
first century BC that brought writing to the Basques, and only from that
time do we have any written records of the Basques.

Q17. Are the Basques genetically different from other Europeans?

A17. Apparently, yes. It has long been known that the Basques have the
highest proportion of rhesus-negative blood in Europe (25%), and one of
the highest percentages of type-O blood (55%). Recently, however, the
geneticist Luiga Luca Cavalli-Sforza has completed a gene map of the
peoples of Europe, and he finds the Basques to be strikingly different
from their neighbors. The genetic boundary between Basques and non-Basques
is very sharp on the Spanish side. On the French side, the boundary is
more diffuse: it shades off gradually toward the Garonne in the north.
These findings are entirely in agreement with what we know of the history
of the language.

Q18. Does this mean the Basques are directly descended from the earliest
known human inhabitants of Europe, the Cro-Magnon people who occupied
western Europe around 35,000 years ago?

A18. Nobody knows. This is possible, but we have no real evidence either
way. The only evidence we have is negative: the archeologists can find no
evidence for any sudden change in population in the area for thousands of
years before the arrival of the Celts and later the Romans in the first
millennium BC.

So I don't see any problem here for Joe.

Doug
Like the Celtic and Germanic languages, the Latin language of the Romans
was an Indo-European language, descended from an ancestral language
originally spoken far to the east. As these Indo-European languages spread
slowly westward across Europe, they gradually displaced most of the
earlier languages, which died out. By the time the Romans arrived, an
ancestral form of Basque, which we call Aquitanian, was the only
pre-Indo-European language still surviving in Gaul. The position in Spain
was much more complicated, with several pre-Indo-European languages still
spoken, including Aquitanian and the famous Iberian, but all these others
were soon displaced by Latin. Uniquely among the pre-Indo-European
languages of western Europe, Basque has refused to die out and has
survived down to the present day, though, as Q2 makes clear, the language
has been gradually losing territory for a long time.

So: the ancestral form of Basque was introduced into western Europe long,
long ago -- at least thousands of years ago, and maybe even tens of
thousands of years ago. Nobody knows. All the other modern languages of
western Europe arrived much later.

Q5. Is Basque the oldest language in Europe?

A5. The question is meaningless. Except for creoles, which arise from
pidgins and are a special case, all languages are equally "old", in that
all descend in an unbroken line from the earliest human speech. What we
can say about Basque is that its ancestor was spoken in western Europe
before (possibly long before) the ancestors of all the other modern
western European languages arrived there. That is, Spanish, French,
English, Irish, and all the others are descended from languages which were
introduced into western Europe (from farther east) at a time when the
ancestor of Basque was already there. "
--
Doug Weller --
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk
Amun - co-owner/co-moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amun/

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Kris Hirsts page on Why Dont We Call Them Cro-Magnon Anymore? updated
    ... The giants stood upon a hill, ... Why Basque? ... Europe, and many of their words may be unchanged since the ice-age. ... How do you know that the same language wasn't spoken ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Kris Hirsts page on Why Dont We Call Them Cro-Magnon Anymore? updated
    ... Europe, and many of their words may be unchanged since the ice-age. ... Cro-Magnon appears to be the first H.s.s. ... My reasoning for using Basque words is taht it's a language isolate ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Kris Hirsts page on Why Dont We Call Them Cro-Magnon Anymore? updated
    ... Europe, and many of their words may be unchanged since the ice-age. ... IOW, they would not have *seen* Cro-Magnon folk, they would have *been* Cro-Magnon folk I'd be interested in the DNA evidence wrt Basques. ... how do you propose that the h/g's language diverged so radically from your notional Proto-Basque?* Particularly since the h/gs' language is more likely to be conservative than the proto-farmers' language. ... You might want to consider either having the big guys be the ones who use Basque-derived words; or you might want to consider having the biggies and the shorties discover that they have the same, or obviously similar, words for the same things--for which you could use Basque, if you chose. ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Kris Hirsts page on Why Dont We Call Them Cro-Magnon Anymore? updated
    ... Europe, and many of their words may be unchanged since the ice-age. ... Cro-Magnon appears to be the first H.s.s. ... My reasoning for using Basque words is taht it's a language isolate ... that less than 100,000 years ago all humans spoke the same language. ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Kris Hirsts page on Why Dont We Call Them Cro-Magnon Anymore? updated
    ... The giants stood upon a hill, ... Why Basque? ... the age of their culture and certainly is no evidence ... How do you know that the same language wasn't spoken ...
    (sci.archaeology)
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