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


Peter T. Daniels wrote:

Yes, you like to use words in your own private sense. They're not
writing to anyone who studies writing carefully.

Funny that one says decipherment, one deciphers an early
writing, nobody does deletter, desyllable, de-hieroglyph,
de-logogram, de-pictogram an early message. Ciphers,
as you may know, are 1 2 3 ..., letters are a b c ...

No, noting numbers is not a form of writing, it's ideography.

Noting numbers is a part of writing, as numbers are a part
of language. Year and years imply numbers, year is one
year, or a fraction of a year, for example half a year, while
years are several years, for example five years, or more
than one year, for example 1 1/2 years. How can you
separate numbers from language and writing. Just plain
impossible.


No Babylonian tablet needs to be "deciphered" any more; the decipherment
was done well over 150 years ago. Mayan numerals could be read for
centuries before anyone even imagined that Maya writing was true writing
and not ideography to which the key was lost. Likewise, Egyptian
hieroglyphic numbers could be read for decades before Champollion
imagined that Egyptian writing was true writing and not ideography to
which the key was lost.

You are grasping now the meaning of deciphering, finding out
about language via numerals that can often be read more easily
than words? Which is why we speak of deciphering and not of
delettering, desyllabling, dehieroglyphing.

And neither numerals nor location glyphs for places belong to any
particular language.

Every language got numbers and place names, and they
surely are a part of language, and in noted form of writing.

I've never claimed to have read D.O., and I've read Gimbutas's chapter
-- or rather, the chapter in her book that contains things she herself
never claimed.

You go on claiming that the chapter on the Sacred Script
is own to Joan Marler and not Marija Gimbutas? You have
not even the shadow of a straw stalk of evidence for that
claim. Look up the publications by Joan Marler, none does
concern the Sacred Script of Old Europe, or Vinca script,
or Danube script, whatever. You are talking yourself out,
and you make me suspicious of your profession, as you
tell me that editors do such things, turn around opinions
of their authors, make them write things they don't mean.
You are doing damage to your own profession, and yourself,
by going on in that kooky way of yours. Contact Joan Marler
and ask her about chapter 8 of The Civilization of the Goddess.
If gave you her e-mail address.

A correction: the name of the foremost expert on the Danube
or Vinca script is Harald Haarmann (with a double n, -mann).

Just looking at the pictures accomplishes nothing. You need to read the
text, also. Presumably it puts that site into the context of the other
sites of the same period.

I see, you can also judge that book without having much
as seen it, you won't look at the pictures of T-shaped
stone pillars, up to eight meters tall, weighing up to fifty
tons, decorated with reliefs of animals, and of hieroglyphs,
from 11 600 to 9 500 BP. Just irrelevant. As nearby but
younger Nevali Cori, as the many other not yet excavated
Azilian sites of that region. You don't know anything about it,
ergo it must be irrelevant, insignificant, unimportant. An early
Greek philosopher (was it Parmenides?) called the human
being the measure of all things. If he lived today he might
add: ... and Peter T. Daniels is the measure of all things
irrelevant, unimportant, and not existing. What you don't
know does not exist, has no significance and importance.
You close the eyes and the world is gone. Game of a child,
played by an adult.

I ask again, what's special about that particular site, as opposed to
all the other sites from similar times and places?

What do you mean with "all the other sites from similar times
and places" ? There is not one other site that compares with
Goebekli Tepe, apart from the younger Nevali Cori, where
no pillars remain, and from unexcavated sites in the region.

Then you should either go to the library, or buy yourself another copy.

I already apologized a couple of times for my mistake.
The chapter on the Sacred Script is found in the book
The Civilization of the Goddess from 1991. Look up
that chapter. Marija Gimbutas, in her own voice, diction
and style calls the signs of Old Europe a Sacred Script
which anticipated the Sumerian invention of writing by
2,000 years.

"Her" words in that chapter do not agree with anything she wrote over
the previous decades on the topic. It is therefore unlikely in the
extreme that she intended what that chapter says.

Many scholars reveal their dearest ideas and most far reaching
assumptions near the end of their carrier, when they have nothing
more to fear from the hounds of academe. And they are "her"
words, you nutcase of a conspiracy kook worth of talk.origins.

That's a typical polite response to nutcases who write to professors.

I know, but it can also be a serious reply, we shall see.

Then you'll deserve what you get. Look up the reviews of his book,
*Universalgeschichte der Schrift*. A while back he sent me, unsolicited,
a package of offprints, and he's just as wacky as the others.

I jdont care about reviews. I don't care, I don't care, I don't
care at all. I look at a book myself, I don't need reviews.
You are a writer of reviews, tells me enough.

Answer the question. What makes you think there is any legitimacy
whatsoever in comparing "languages" that are 10,000 years apart and
hundreds (or thousands?) of kilometers apart?

My experimental reconstruction of Magdalenian concerns
the Franco-Cantabrian space in around 15 000 BP. However,
the Magdalenians have been wandering widely, some spent
winter in the region of Marseilles and summer in western
Switzerland where mammoths survived until 10,000 years
ago. The Magdalenian space extended until Austria and
Czechia and Hungary. By the end of the Ice Age, animals
retired from the Franco-Cantabrian space, making it ever
more difficult for the hunters. Magdalenian art ended
abruptly in around 12 000 BP. That was the time when
Magdalenians entered England via a landbridge, and
it must have been the time when they followed horses
eastward to the Eurasian steppes. The gap is only 400
years, between 12 000 BP (end of Magdalenian art
in the Franco-Cantabrian space) and 11 600, begin of
Goebekli Tepe. Agriculture started in the late phase of
Goebekli Tepe, at the base of the Karacadag, west of
Goebekli Tepe. In around 9 500 BP the temples of GT
were carefully filled up and abandoned, which means
that the culture of GT didn't really come to an end but
survived in a modified form, presumably in the Harran
plain just south of Goebekli Tepe. And there must have
been contacts between GT and the Natufian culture in
Judah, where, I read yesterday, agriculture began with
the cultivation of fig trees at Gilgal (if memory serves)
as early as 11 400 BP. The rest is well established
archaeology.

Franz Gnaedinger

.