Re: SMU's museum opens exhibit of Etruscan artifacts

On Feb 2, 11:33 am, Tom McDonald <tmcdonald2...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Eric Stevens wrote:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:31:24 -0600, Tom McDonald
<tmcdonald2...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Eric Stevens wrote:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:35:55 -0600, Tom McDonald
<tmcdonald2...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Eric Stevens wrote:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:10:13 -0600, Tom McDonald
<tmcdonald2...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

David wrote:
On Feb 1, 4:14 pm, "tkavanag" <kavan...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"David" <pchristain...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:19954910-f640-4fe3-bdf8-ab4204caa3a7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

http://www.enquirerherald.com/371/story/519081.html
"The Etruscan language, which has not
been linked to any other known language,
has been decoded but there's still not
enough text to give a full picture."
I had read somewhere that Etruscan is
linked to Hungarian.  Is this true?
Further, Barry Fell had shown examples
of his translation of Etruscan years ago.
Did he do a competent job?
Nothing Barry Fell wrote on epigraphy/linguistics was "competent.."

tk
That's EXACTLY why I brought up the point.

If Barry Fell actually translated an example
correctly, he deserves a second look.
Between Fell and TK, take TK every time. I do, and have never
regretted it.

Either that, or go to where folks are giving Fell a second look.
There are such places. Some not too far from where you are.

But Fell has the same problem as Han***; if they happen to get
something right, it is not by skill but by chance.
Maybe not in the case of the Peterborough inscriptions. According to
David H. Kelley "Fell may very well be correct" (quote from memory)..
I remember. I also remember the history that was invented to make
his reading of the inscriptions plausible -- an extensive and
intensive centuries-long exploitation of Lake Superior-region
copper deposits leading to billions of pounds of American copper
winding up in Europe. Remember Woden-Lithi, Mjolnir, Fenris? All
read by Fell, and all asserted to be at least 1500 years before
anything like the classic Norse Odinic religion?
As I'm sure you well know, Kelley only supported Fell's reading of the
inscriptions.
And his 'reading' of the inscriptions, sans cultural or
archaeological context, is cloud-gazing pattern matching at its
purest. And that particular air-castle still hangs, unsupported,
over this ng, ready to be noticed by new crops of enthusiasts and
newbies. I think it may be useful, every now and again, to take
the opportunity to point this out to those who might otherwise
think there is something securing the castle to the ground.

There is not, AFAIK.

I presume that one day you might say something meaningful on the
subject.

I just did. You may not accept the newbie/lurker-warning as
meaningful; I do.

Plus, of course, all the previous go-rounds in which we all
participated included at least a bit of something meaningful from
most of us..

And I did write 'AFAIK'. If you know something that helps ground
the purported Tiffinagh (or proto-Tiffinagh, whichever) to other
archaeological evidence, then I'm all ears. Eyes. Whatever.



And remember all of the archaeological evidence of a major
European presence in Ontario more than a millennium before
Christ? All that zero evidence?

I respect Kelley for his work on Mayan and his archaeology. He
certainly knows more than I about the situation on the ground.
But unless I am forgetting something, even Kelley had no
unambiguous archaeological evidence for Tiffinagh-writing
Northern European copper merchants.

As I said, there are places where this sort of thing could be
profitably discussed. But without archaeological evidence, here
is not such a place.
The inscription is archaelogical evidence but I agree that arguing
over its meanings is more a linguistic problem than anything else.
Nevertheless it is not entirely irrelevant to archaeology.
Of course the inscriptions are archaeological evidence. And yes,
their interpretation is primarily a linguistic endeavor, not an
archaeological one.

But what I meant was archaeological evidence for the presumed
presence of Tiffinagh writers from Europe in the form of
artifacts, sites, genetic evidence, changes in population
distribution, etc.

The inscriptions _are_ archaeological evidence for the presence of
Tiffinagh writers from Europe.

They are archaeological evidence, no question. But IMO, they have
not been shown to be evidence of Tiffinagh writers, let alone
Tiffinagh writers from Europe.

As the late, partially lamented, Larry pointed out, the Atlantic
is a two-way street. Ocean. Set of sea lanes. Whatever. *If* the
writing is proto-Tiffinagh, it might be that it originated in the
Americas and found its way to the Old World on one of the boats
that shuttled folks and stuff around back then. :-)

As for the rest, there may already be
archaeological evidence which has been misinterpreted as originating
with native americans.

Then *that* is what needs to be investigated. A relatively
unambiguous site of the purported Old World folks, such as L'Anse
aux Meadows, would quickly turn the debate from 'yes there are
these air castles/no there are not these air castles' to 'what
were these guys (and/or gals) doing here, when, and how
extensively did they inhabit their region'. All quite good
archaeological questions, with meat enough to sink one's teeth into.

As long as there is serious question about the exact nature of
these inscriptions, and no clearly corroborating archaeological
evidence, there is little reason to treat the purported Tiffinagh
inscriptions as anything but interesting irrelevancies.

And that really goes for both sides of the Atlantic. If there
were the massive and prolonged Bronze Age copper trade required
by most of the adherents of, or those leaning toward, Fell's and
others' concept of this huge trans-Atlantic trade, one would
expect to find evidence in the Old World. I have never yet seen
any such evidence, although it should be quite easy to find via
source testing of copper and bronze items in Europe at the
relevant time.

Forget the presumed copper trading. That is another matter altogether.

Not really. It is one, and perhaps the current best, suggested
explanations for why Europeans were in the Peterborough area at
that time.

If we put that aside, we are left grasping for another reason why
those folks might have come by. The inscriptions can be studied
without that; and perhaps the inscriptions could lead to testable
hypotheses about who came, from whence, and why. But in that
case, the more urgent issue at hand is linguistic, and should be
investigated by folks as know the relevant languages.

To be of real archaeological interest to archaeologists, there
has to be something that can be looked for, in collections, by
field survey, by excavation, by lit. search, etc.



If I had archaeological evidence in hand to suggest Fell, et
al's, scenario had some merit, I'd be quite happy. I've not seen
any to date. While absence of evidence does not mean there never
can be evidence, evidence would be nice. Especially in an
archaeology ng in the sci. hierarchy.

So, as always, if someone has new or re-evaluated evidence that
supports Fell, bring it on. I'd love to read it.

However -- and this is a big however -- I'm assuredly not
interested in URLs or articles or books rehashing what is already
known or asserted. (David, this is particularly aimed at your
penchant for googling stuff and throwing links into the group
without evaluating their cogency for those of us who have gone
through the whole business several times before.)

Eric Stevens

--
Tom

When Tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing;
When friends rejoice, both far and near,
How can I keep from singing.

I am torn between the people who postulate Bronze Age proto-Tiffinagh
ships crossing the Atlantic at leisure and those who pooh-pooh any
Phoenician ship making a planned or accidental voyage to the Americans
slightly later. I have heard from divers and treasure hunters that
there are sunken "Roman" ships on the coast of South and Central
America in numbers. Some have even offered amphoras from one of those
ships that have been identified with a place in Morocco. But the rock
scratches with uncertain dates trump any finding that has an
identifiable provenance.
.

Quantcast