Re: Vinca script, cross bar angle - Ki Ri Ke

Franz Gnaedinger wrote:

Sorry for a stupid mistake in my previous message.
The remark on the cycle of four volumes was not
by Joan Marler but Kim Engels, and the books are:

The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, 1973
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 1982/96

The Language of the Goddess, 1989

The Civilization of the Goddess, 1991

The Religion of the Goddess, (1993)

Marija Gimbutas worked on the last book in 1993,
when she was already seriously ill. She attended the
opening of the Wiesbaden exhibition in June of 1993,
and gave a series of lectures on the subsequent evenings.
Joan Marler, her editor since 1987, held a speech at the
opening (four pages in the catalogue from 1994), wherein
she says that one should just stroll through the exhibition
and get a feeling for the art of that old civilization, moreover
she announced evening courses on ritual dances - she
herself had been dancing since 30 years, and dancing,
she finds, is a perfect way for finding access to those
ancient symbols. Her interests are the language of art
and dance. You can do a Google query on her. She is
lecturing at Sebastopol, California, and has a background
in linguistics, but from what I read by her she is interested
in the language of art, visual language. You find 1,170
Google entries for

Art historians seem to have a desperate need to label any sort of visual
semiotics "writing." The final chapter of Houston's *First Writings* is
by one such, and it's ridiculed even by other contributors to the same
volume.

"joan marler" gimbutas

but only 2 for

"joan marler" "vinca script"

and the two results are not linked, they are two separate
messages, one concerning Joan Marler, the other one
the Vinca script. Not one single text includes Joan Marler
and the Vinca script.

Peter T. Daniels wrote:

Don't be ridiculous. You recognize the voice of the translator.

I have the English version of The Goddesses and Gods of
Old Europe, UCLA Press 1996 (a book you don't know, as
you told me), and I know her voice well from that book. The
same diction is present throughout her book The Civilization
of the Goddess from 1991, including chapter 8, The Sacred
Script.

The claim you snipped was that you recognized her voice even in the
German translations.

No one suggested that Gimbutas did not plan that chapter there.

The only suggestion that Vinc^a script is a writing system is on the
first page or two of that chapter.

What about the title Sacred Script? Marija Gimbutas says quite
clearly and unmistakably that the Vinca signs are a sacred script,
2,000 years prior to the Sumerian invention of writing. Everybody
can read her book The Civilization of the Goddess, and chapter
8 on the Sacred Script, and have a look at the comparative tables
of Old European signs on the one hand, Cypriotic and Linear A/B
signs on the other hand.

I'm not responsible for the poverty of the German language. A "script"
is not a "writing system," even though the same word _Schrift_ is used
for both in German.

Graphics people do not "sign as" editor. (If they did, why is there not
a similar credit on the first volume?)

She was an editor, _and_ she was responsible for the graphics
of The Civilization of the Goddess, with the help of two designers.

Why is there not a similar credit -- in good-size type on the cover --
in the first volume?

Then why is there not the slightest hint of this nonsense in the first
volume, the one devoted to interpreting the signs?

You can interpret the signs on two levels. Pictures and images
convey messages, they are a language of their own, a "meta-
language" in the diction of Joan Marler. But then a picture can

Aha! You're an art historian!

go over into actual writing, as was the case with Sumerian
and Egyptian hierogylphs, and may also have been the case
with the Vinca script, where the signs are emerging from

For which there is not the slightest shred of evidence.

decorative patterns of the Upper Paleolithic on the one hand,
and from natural and physical objects, for example from the
female body. I found .

[snipping the egotism, though much less of it than usual]

As usual, it ends up all about you.

I was saying that Maria Gimbutas came quite close to
a deciphering of the Vinca script when she considered
angles and cross as the insignia of the Bird Goddess.
From there it was just a little step to my attempt at
deciphering her Sacred Script. I honored her by saying
that she almost got it, and if my work should hold, I owe
it to her.

Your work does not hold.

Moreover, you are now claiming that the language of the ancient Balkans
of 5000 BCE was the same as the language of your "Magdalenians" 10,000
years earlier and localized, so far as anyone can tell, at a specific
archeological site in Anatolia.

Only an art historian could imagine such an absurdity?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Vinca script, cross bar angle - Ki Ri Ke
    ... The Civilization of the Goddess, ... Joan Marler, her editor since 1987, held a speech at the ... and the Vinca script. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Vinca script, cross bar angle - Ki Ri Ke
    ... Numbers are part of every language, ... you read chapter 8, The Sacred Script, of The Civilization ... The Language of the Goddess is about symbols "only." ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Vinca script, cross bar angle - Ki Ri Ke
    ... writing to anyone who studies writing carefully. ... Numbers are part of every language, ... you read chapter 8, The Sacred Script, of The Civilization ... The Language of the Goddess is about symbols "only." ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Vinca script, cross bar angle - Ki Ri Ke
    ... pre-IE language, some of the signs may have phonetic interpretations, ... Marija Gimbutas published some twenty books, ... The Gods and Goddess of Old Europe, ... The chapter on the Sacred Script is contained in the second ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Which Is The Better Approach To Working With Javascript?
    ... Java SCRIPT runs in the browser exclusively. ... No language is written just for a single environment. ... You have to understand that I come from a hardware background, a huge area that is complately unknown to most 'computer programmers' whose life begins and ends with an interpreter or compiler.. ...
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