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

"Franz Gnaedinger" <frgn@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...

John Atkinson wrote:

Mate, we had glaciers too. Or, if you want a really cold place with BIG
glaciers, what about most of USA and Canada? No single language there!
(400
plus in fact, belonging to 60-odd families).

The part of America that rules speaks English. French is
a minor language, so are other languages, and Spanish
is spoken by the lower class of Latinos. The language that
rules is certainly English, and those who aspire a good job
simply must speak and write English.

Christ mate! I was talking about _pre-historic_ NAm, as you're well aware.
There's no BIG glaciers there now (except the St Elias Glacier I guess,
which took us several days to ski up in the sixties). And half the 400+
languages that were there five hundred years ago are gone now too.

The Guyenne is special, an enclosed area in those times,
extended marshes and the Atlantic ocean in the west,
hills and mountains in the north, the French Alps in the east,
the Pyrenees and glaciers in the south, "land of honey and
game" (National Geographic), with a river system that was
as good as the railways we have in Switzerland, connecting
every part of the Guyenne to the other. Do you think that every
local tribe had a genius who produced world art? No, they
gathered gifted young people from everywhere. They established
and maintained a veritable society. The picture you have of the
Magdalenium (note that I don't use the polite "we" any longer)
is just wrong.

I have no "picture" of the Magdalenium, since there's no such word. Even
Google agrees with me there. And you've given me no reason to think
prehistoric France was different as an environment for people to live in in
any significant way from (say) the central valley of California, or several
other river valleys in North America.

Absolute rubbish. You obviously know nothing whatever about Australian
culture, art, or archeology

I happen to be a fan of Australian aboriginal art, of the people,
their art, their legends, and their languages.

You proved you know nothing of their languages in another recent thread.

I see links between
the Middle Stone Age of South Africa, Blombos cave, 75 000 BP,
and even if you don't follow me here you said that Australia was
populated in 60 000 BP - or was it 65 000 BP ? Plenty of time
for the languages to spread and undergo local changes. Australia
is a wide continent, no confined area as the Guyenne. There is
no comparable river system. The famous songlines - I found
Chadwick's book rather mystifying, not really clarifying

I assume you're talking about Bruce Chatwin's book. I'm told it's well
written, and he undoubtedly had an interesting personal philosophy. But he
knew almost nothing about the indigenous Australians. Read it for what he
has to say and the stylish way he says it, but don't get the idea that he's
telling you something about local anthropology or prehistory.

- may
have been songs that enumerated wells and landmarks along
a certain way, and were, as I take it, property of the respective
clan. The songlines as actual ways crossing the land, weaving
a web of crossroads, were in no way comparable to the rivers
of the Guyenne and could not possibly have the same function.

Which time is that? Up to maybe 40 000 years ago, Africa was ahead.
Australia took the lead culturally till maybe 15 000 years ago. Between
15000 and 2000 years ago SW Asia and north Africa were ahead. From 2000
to
less than 1000 years ago, East Asia had the leading culture. Europe took
the lead for the first time less than a thousand years ago. Around 1000
AD,
the American cities were bigger than those of Europe.

Cold climates trigger progress.

Strange, then, that all the world's great early civilizations (in Asia,
Africa, and the Americas) arose in warm temperate or tropical climates.

Arguably, the trigger for agriculture and cities in SW Asia (and elsewhere)
was the availability of suitable cereal crops. And these (especially wheat
and barley) may well have developed the properties that made them so useful
in response to the climate changes associated with the Ice Age. This is the
nearest you're likely to get to support for your statement that "cold
climates trigger progress".

Look at the countries that are
doing best in Europe: northern countries, Finnland, Norway.

And when did they start "doing best"? In the Paleolithic? In early
agricultural times? Or was it some time after the Industrial Revolution,
when abundant fossil fuels first became available? If the last, what's the
relevance to the way people lived 10 000 years ago?

[snip rest]

John.



.

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