Who was Atlas?

[syrakusos]

... The sequence /tl/ is not native to any Indo-European language.

TL appears in Aztec. chocolotl, ocelotl, coyotl, quetzecotl, seattle. It is suggested that this Atlas, Atlantic, and along with the weapon known as the atl-atl shows the existence of an Atlantis. Evidence in America has gone from Folsom to Kennewick and now to Valsequillo, pushing back the date of the first Atlantic crossing. The Olmec heads, of course, still stare out over the water, looking back home to Africa.

As late as 1800 official maps did not show an Antarctic, but maps from the 16th century did: copies of copies. Just as Minos and Pharoah were generic names, it may be that Atlas was the scion of Atlantis before the last Ice Age.

[kiaer.ts]

I won't rule out what civilizations' existences may be buried by the rising seas after the last ice age. But there is no need to travel far to find a plausible local explanation for the name Atlantis, and positive evidence ruling out any link to Aztec.

The word tal in Semitic means hill or mountain, e.g., Tel Aviv "Spring Mountain." The modern Berber cognate is adrar. (This may be a very distant cognate of the root *tel, meaning (flat) stone (Latin tellus, English "thill") which has cognates as far afield as Turkish, Japanese, Mongolian and Eskimo. Berber and Semitic, along with Ancient Egyptian and other language families spoken in Northern Africa make up the Afro-Asiatic language phylum.)

The -tl suffix in Nahuatl (Aztec), an Uto-Aztecan language, is a noun ending, (somewhat like -us in Latin) called the absolutive, used on nouns that are not possessed or otherwise modified. The spelling reflects a sort of lisping sound derived from a weakened final -t. It has no inherent lexical meaning. The Uto-Aztecan homeland is in the U.S. desert south west, and there is no evidence of seafaring by these people.

Zulu happens to have the tl sound as well, but it is related to the ch sound in other Bantu languages like Swahili.

Edited March 13, 2011 by Ted Keer

[kiaer.ts]

[caroljane]

I love this stuff. Do you have an opinion on the pre-Columbian habitation of S.America as not coming across the Bering Strait? There seems to be some convincing evidence that people were already there, or came from somewhere southern, before the conventional dates. From lanuage we know about the Arctic and subarctic and eventual Canadian aboriginals of course.

I am also fascinated by the Red Paint People.

Carol

dilettante

[kiaer.ts]

I love this stuff. Do you have an opinion on the pre-Columbian habitation of S.America as not coming across the Bering Strait? There seems to be some convincing evidence that people were already there, or came from somewhere southern, before the conventional dates. From lanuage we know about the Arctic and subarctic and eventual Canadian aboriginals of course.

I am also fascinated by the Red Paint People.

Carol

dilettante

I think there is sufficient prima facie evidence to accept Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, which holds that except for the Eskimo-Aleut and the Na-Dene (of North/west North America) all the natives of the Americas speak languages descended from a common ancestor. My understanding is that the anthropological evidence supports this also. There is certainly no positive evidence contradicting the hypothesis - all objections are epistemologically skeptical rather than counterevidentiary in nature. My investigation has been rather superficial, and, unlike as is the case with Siberia (where sufficient documentation and reconstruction work is available) there isn't much to go on in the Americas. But what there is all points to Greenberg being right. Greenberg is largely right in his assertion that the majority of languages of Siberia are related to Indo-European in his Eurasiatic family. But his inclusion of Ainu in Eurasiatic strikes me as obviously unfounded - so I do believe it possible he may have made mistakes in the Americas. The problem is that those who criticize him, and who are in a position to truly test his work, rely on authority and raised voices rather than an appeal to facts to disprove him.

I strongly recommend:

George Campbell's Concise Compendium of the World's Languages http://www.amazon.com/Concise-Compendium-Worlds-Languages-Campbell/dp/0415160499/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299991548&sr=8-1

Anatole Lyovin's An Introduction to the Languages of the World http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Languages-World-Anatole-Lyovin/dp/0195081161/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299991690&sr=1-5

for a survey of world languages (Cambell has sketches of dozens of languages, Lyovin detalied samples of the major families)

and, especially: Merritt Ruhlen's The Origin of Language http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Language-Tracing-Evolution-Mother/dp/0471159638/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299991864&sr=1-1

Ruhlen's book presents the evidence for deep time linguistic relationships in a way perfectly valid and accessible to the interested layman.

[caroljane]

I love this stuff. Do you have an opinion on the pre-Columbian habitation of S.America as not coming across the Bering Strait? There seems to be some convincing evidence that people were already there, or came from somewhere southern, before the conventional dates. From lanuage we know about the Arctic and subarctic and eventual Canadian aboriginals of course.

I am also fascinated by the Red Paint People.

Carol

dilettante

I think there is sufficient prima facie evidence to accept Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, which holds that except for the Eskimo-Aleut and the Na-Dene (of North/west North America) all the natives of the Americas speak languages descended from a common ancestor. My understanding is that the anthropological evidence supports this also. There is certainly no positive evidence contradicting the hypothesis - all objections are epistemologically skeptical rather than counterevidentiary in nature. My investigation has been rather superficial, and, unlike as is the case with Siberia (where sufficient documentation and reconstruction work is available) there isn't much to go on in the Americas. But what there is all points to Greenberg being right. Greenberg is largely right in his assertion that the majority of languages of Siberia are related to Indo-European in his Eurasiatic family. But his inclusion of Ainu in Eurasiatic strikes me as obviously unfounded - so I do believe it possible he may have made mistakes in the Americas. The problem is that those who criticize him, and who are in a position to truly test his work, rely on authority and raised voices rather than an appeal to facts to disprove him.

I strongly recommend:

George Campbell's Concise Compendium of the World's Languages http://www.amazon.com/Concise-Compendium-Worlds-Languages-Campbell/dp/0415160499/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299991548&sr=8-1

Anatole Lyovin's An Introduction to the Languages of the World http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Languages-World-Anatole-Lyovin/dp/0195081161/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299991690&sr=1-5

for a survey of world languages (Cambell has sketches of dozens of languages, Lyovin detalied samples of the major families)

and, especially: Merritt Ruhlen's The Origin of Language http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Language-Tracing-Evolution-Mother/dp/0471159638/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299991864&sr=1-1

Ruhlen's book presents the evidence for deep time linguistic relationships in a way perfectly valid and accessible to the interested layman.

Thanks Ted. I will look for Ruhlen. I have been interested in linguistic history theory since I read about epigraphy-based Welsh-in-America, Troy-is-Camelot, and so on - now that we are all more and more one world it is even more fun to think about.

There is a movement here to save the aboriginal languages which are dying out, and with them the irretrievable culture and history they embody. Such movements have succeeded in reviving gaelic for example (not to mention Hebrew) so I hope and will do whatever I can to help that they can succeed also.

[kiaer.ts]

I love this stuff. Do you have an opinion on the pre-Columbian habitation of S.America as not coming across the Bering Strait? There seems to be some convincing evidence that people were already there, or came from somewhere southern, before the conventional dates. From lanuage we know about the Arctic and subarctic and eventual Canadian aboriginals of course.

I am also fascinated by the Red Paint People.

Carol

dilettante

I think there is sufficient prima facie evidence to accept Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, which holds that except for the Eskimo-Aleut and the Na-Dene (of North/west North America) all the natives of the Americas speak languages descended from a common ancestor. My understanding is that the anthropological evidence supports this also. There is certainly no positive evidence contradicting the hypothesis - all objections are epistemologically skeptical rather than counterevidentiary in nature. My investigation has been rather superficial, and, unlike as is the case with Siberia (where sufficient documentation and reconstruction work is available) there isn't much to go on in the Americas. But what there is all points to Greenberg being right. Greenberg is largely right in his assertion that the majority of languages of Siberia are related to Indo-European in his Eurasiatic family. But his inclusion of Ainu in Eurasiatic strikes me as obviously unfounded - so I do believe it possible he may have made mistakes in the Americas. The problem is that those who criticize him, and who are in a position to truly test his work, rely on authority and raised voices rather than an appeal to facts to disprove him.

I strongly recommend:

George Campbell's Concise Compendium of the World's Languages http://www.amazon.co...99991548&sr=8-1

Anatole Lyovin's An Introduction to the Languages of the World http://www.amazon.co...99991690&sr=1-5

for a survey of world languages (Cambell has sketches of dozens of languages, Lyovin detalied samples of the major families)

and, especially: Merritt Ruhlen's The Origin of Language http://www.amazon.co...99991864&sr=1-1

Ruhlen's book presents the evidence for deep time linguistic relationships in a way perfectly valid and accessible to the interested layman.

Thanks Ted. I will look for Ruhlen. I have been interested in linguistic history theory since I read about epigraphy-based Welsh-in-America, Troy-is-Camelot, and so on - now that we are all more and more one world it is even more fun to think about.

There is a movement here to save the aboriginal languages which are dying out, and with them the irretrievable culture and history they embody. Such movements have succeeded in reviving gaelic for example (not to mention Hebrew) so I hope and will do whatever I can to help that they can succeed also.

Ruhlen is out of print, buy the book used. He provides the word lists and lets you figure out which families are related by comparing the roots.

My grandmother spoke a dying language which has stories evincing pagan, and even pre-Indo-European roots that would be familiar from Frazer's Golden Bough and Graves' White Goddess. I agree with the value of what is being lost be see little hope of doing more than documenting the dying tongues.

[caroljane]

I love this stuff. Do you have an opinion on the pre-Columbian habitation of S.America as not coming across the Bering Strait? There seems to be some convincing evidence that people were already there, or came from somewhere southern, before the conventional dates. From lanuage we know about the Arctic and subarctic and eventual Canadian aboriginals of course.

I am also fascinated by the Red Paint People.

Carol

dilettante

I think there is sufficient prima facie evidence to accept Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, which holds that except for the Eskimo-Aleut and the Na-Dene (of North/west North America) all the natives of the Americas speak languages descended from a common ancestor. My understanding is that the anthropological evidence supports this also. There is certainly no positive evidence contradicting the hypothesis - all objections are epistemologically skeptical rather than counterevidentiary in nature. My investigation has been rather superficial, and, unlike as is the case with Siberia (where sufficient documentation and reconstruction work is available) there isn't much to go on in the Americas. But what there is all points to Greenberg being right. Greenberg is largely right in his assertion that the majority of languages of Siberia are related to Indo-European in his Eurasiatic family. But his inclusion of Ainu in Eurasiatic strikes me as obviously unfounded - so I do believe it possible he may have made mistakes in the Americas. The problem is that those who criticize him, and who are in a position to truly test his work, rely on authority and raised voices rather than an appeal to facts to disprove him.

I strongly recommend:

George Campbell's Concise Compendium of the World's Languages http://www.amazon.co...99991548&sr=8-1

Anatole Lyovin's An Introduction to the Languages of the World http://www.amazon.co...99991690&sr=1-5

for a survey of world languages (Cambell has sketches of dozens of languages, Lyovin detalied samples of the major families)

and, especially: Merritt Ruhlen's The Origin of Language http://www.amazon.co...99991864&sr=1-1

Ruhlen's book presents the evidence for deep time linguistic relationships in a way perfectly valid and accessible to the interested layman.

Thanks Ted. I will look for Ruhlen. I have been interested in linguistic history theory since I read about epigraphy-based Welsh-in-America, Troy-is-Camelot, and so on - now that we are all more and more one world it is even more fun to think about.

There is a movement here to save the aboriginal languages which are dying out, and with them the irretrievable culture and history they embody. Such movements have succeeded in reviving gaelic for example (not to mention Hebrew) so I hope and will do whatever I can to help that they can succeed also.

Ruhlen is out of print, buy the book used. He provides the word lists and lets you figure out which families are related by comparing the roots.

My grandmother spoke a dying language which has stories evincing pagan, and even pre-Indo-European roots that would be familiar from Frazer's Golden Bough and Graves' White Goddess. I agree with the value of what is being lost be see little hope of doing more than documenting the dying tongues.

I lived on Majorca for 8 months (ay Caramba!) and saw Graves's house, I loved the White Goddess and of course the Claudii.Did not care so much for his translations.

For my money Mary Renault is the best storyteller of myth/history/philosophy from the Indo-European through the Hellenic.

Yo Phil, are you ready for the test? "un jour triste et pensif, assis au bord des flots, au courant fugitif, il addressa ces mots: si tu vois mon pays, mon pays malheureux, va dis a mes amis, que je me souviens d'eux".

Who said this (in ancient Greek or whatever)?

1. Alexander the Great, running away from the palace again

2. Theseus, dead and rememebering Athens

3. Trick question.

You can guess too Ted.

[Selene]

I love this stuff. Do you have an opinion on the pre-Columbian habitation of S.America as not coming across the Bering Strait? There seems to be some convincing evidence that people were already there, or came from somewhere southern, before the conventional dates. From lanuage we know about the Arctic and subarctic and eventual Canadian aboriginals of course.

I am also fascinated by the Red Paint People.

Carol

dilettante

I think there is sufficient prima facie evidence to accept Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, which holds that except for the Eskimo-Aleut and the Na-Dene (of North/west North America) all the natives of the Americas speak languages descended from a common ancestor. My understanding is that the anthropological evidence supports this also. There is certainly no positive evidence contradicting the hypothesis - all objections are epistemologically skeptical rather than counterevidentiary in nature. My investigation has been rather superficial, and, unlike as is the case with Siberia (where sufficient documentation and reconstruction work is available) there isn't much to go on in the Americas. But what there is all points to Greenberg being right. Greenberg is largely right in his assertion that the majority of languages of Siberia are related to Indo-European in his Eurasiatic family. But his inclusion of Ainu in Eurasiatic strikes me as obviously unfounded - so I do believe it possible he may have made mistakes in the Americas. The problem is that those who criticize him, and who are in a position to truly test his work, rely on authority and raised voices rather than an appeal to facts to disprove him.

I strongly recommend:

George Campbell's Concise Compendium of the World's Languages http://www.amazon.co...99991548&sr=8-1

Anatole Lyovin's An Introduction to the Languages of the World http://www.amazon.co...99991690&sr=1-5

for a survey of world languages (Cambell has sketches of dozens of languages, Lyovin detalied samples of the major families)

and, especially: Merritt Ruhlen's The Origin of Language http://www.amazon.co...99991864&sr=1-1

Ruhlen's book presents the evidence for deep time linguistic relationships in a way perfectly valid and accessible to the interested layman.

Thanks Ted. I will look for Ruhlen. I have been interested in linguistic history theory since I read about epigraphy-based Welsh-in-America, Troy-is-Camelot, and so on - now that we are all more and more one world it is even more fun to think about.

There is a movement here to save the aboriginal languages which are dying out, and with them the irretrievable culture and history they embody. Such movements have succeeded in reviving gaelic for example (not to mention Hebrew) so I hope and will do whatever I can to help that they can succeed also.

Ruhlen is out of print, buy the book used. He provides the word lists and lets you figure out which families are related by comparing the roots.

My grandmother spoke a dying language which has stories evincing pagan, and even pre-Indo-European roots that would be familiar from Frazer's Golden Bough and Graves' White Goddess. I agree with the value of what is being lost be see little hope of doing more than documenting the dying tongues.

Carol and Ted:

I saw a special last year about a project to save dying dialects and languages...FYI

World Oral Literature Project

[dansullivan]

Wikipedia, which is certainly not the last word, says the following under "Atlas (mythology)"

Etymology

The etymology of the name Atlas is uncertain and still debated. Virgil took pleasure in translating etymologies of Greek names by combining them with adjectives that explained them: for Atlas his adjective is durus, "hard, enduring",[21] which suggested to George Doig[22] that Virgil was aware of the Greek τλήναι "to endure"; Doig offers the further possibility that Virgil was aware of Strabo's remark that the native North African name for this mountain was Douris.[23]

Some modern linguists derive it and its Greek root from the Proto-Indo-European root *tel, 'to uphold, support'; others[citation needed] suggest that it is a pre-Indo-European name.

[Philip Coates]

> Yo Phil, are you ready for the test? "un jour triste et pensif, assis au bord des flots, au courant fugitif, il addressa ces mots: si tu vois mon pays, mon pays malheureux, va dis a mes amis, que je me souviens d'eux".

Who said this (in ancient Greek or whatever)?

1. Alexander the Great, running away from the palace again

2. Theseus, dead and rememebering Athens

3. Trick question.

You can guess too Ted.

,,,,,

Yo Carol, I prop up my ego and superiority by springing pop quizzes on people on this list, so you are going to have to not turn the tables on me and humiliate me when I can't answer, Eh?

I can only guess (I refuse to use Wikipedia on the quote, which some people do on OL -cheating! I did however use this nice electronic French dictionary someone sent me to look up a word above I was unsure of), since it is someone by the sea lamenting his unhappy country that it wouldn't be Alexander and I don't know why Theseus viewed his country as unhappy....but I'm going to guess Theseus because of Mary Renault and because it sounds like what I remember of her style from BFTS and TKMD.

Of course, from what little I know of you from this list...I wouldn't put trick question past you, you bad girl...

Edited March 17, 2011 by Philip Coates

[caroljane]

> Yo Phil, are you ready for the test? "un jour triste et pensif, assis au bord des flots, au courant fugitif, il addressa ces mots: si tu vois mon pays, mon pays malheureux, va dis a mes amis, que je me souviens d'eux".

Who said this (in ancient Greek or whatever)?

1. Alexander the Great, running away from the palace again

2. Theseus, dead and rememebering Athens

3. Trick question.

You can guess too Ted.

,,,,,

Yo Carol, I prop up my ego and superiority by springing pop quizzes on people on this list, so you are going to have to not turn the tables on me and humiliate me when I can't answer, Eh?

I can only guess (I refuse to use Wikipedia on the quote, which some people do on OL -cheating! I did however use this nice electronic French dictionary someone sent me to look up a word above I was unsure of), since it is someone by the sea lamenting his unhappy country that it wouldn't be Alexander and I don't know why Theseus viewed his country as unhappy....but I'm going to guess Theseus because of Mary Renault and because it sounds like what I remember of her style from BFTS and TKMD.

Of course, from what little I know of you from this list...I wouldn't put trick question past you, you bad girl...

Good for you, cheating on these things is no fun anyway.It is indeed a trick question. Good thing the Sphinx didn't ask Theseus this one.It is a verse from "Un canadien errant" which I felt like when banni from OL. (only I felt like I had an extra n and 3 extra e's.) It's a lament by a fugitive who was in the Riel Rebellion and had to flee to the US, knowing he can never return home.

Better start refreshing your memory on Renault, the test is coming up. But it'll be easier than this.

[caroljane]

I love this stuff. Do you have an opinion on the pre-Columbian habitation of S.America as not coming across the Bering Strait? There seems to be some convincing evidence that people were already there, or came from somewhere southern, before the conventional dates. From lanuage we know about the Arctic and subarctic and eventual Canadian aboriginals of course.

I am also fascinated by the Red Paint People.

Carol

dilettante

I think there is sufficient prima facie evidence to accept Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, which holds that except for the Eskimo-Aleut and the Na-Dene (of North/west North America) all the natives of the Americas speak languages descended from a common ancestor. My understanding is that the anthropological evidence supports this also. There is certainly no positive evidence contradicting the hypothesis - all objections are epistemologically skeptical rather than counterevidentiary in nature. My investigation has been rather superficial, and, unlike as is the case with Siberia (where sufficient documentation and reconstruction work is available) there isn't much to go on in the Americas. But what there is all points to Greenberg being right. Greenberg is largely right in his assertion that the majority of languages of Siberia are related to Indo-European in his Eurasiatic family. But his inclusion of Ainu in Eurasiatic strikes me as obviously unfounded - so I do believe it possible he may have made mistakes in the Americas. The problem is that those who criticize him, and who are in a position to truly test his work, rely on authority and raised voices rather than an appeal to facts to disprove him.

I strongly recommend:

George Campbell's Concise Compendium of the World's Languages http://www.amazon.co...99991548&sr=8-1

Anatole Lyovin's An Introduction to the Languages of the World http://www.amazon.co...99991690&sr=1-5

for a survey of world languages (Cambell has sketches of dozens of languages, Lyovin detalied samples of the major families)

and, especially: Merritt Ruhlen's The Origin of Language http://www.amazon.co...99991864&sr=1-1

Ruhlen's book presents the evidence for deep time linguistic relationships in a way perfectly valid and accessible to the interested layman.

Thanks Ted. I will look for Ruhlen. I have been interested in linguistic history theory since I read about epigraphy-based Welsh-in-America, Troy-is-Camelot, and so on - now that we are all more and more one world it is even more fun to think about.

There is a movement here to save the aboriginal languages which are dying out, and with them the irretrievable culture and history they embody. Such movements have succeeded in reviving gaelic for example (not to mention Hebrew) so I hope and will do whatever I can to help that they can succeed also.

Ruhlen is out of print, buy the book used. He provides the word lists and lets you figure out which families are related by comparing the roots.

My grandmother spoke a dying language which has stories evincing pagan, and even pre-Indo-European roots that would be familiar from Frazer's Golden Bough and Graves' White Goddess. I agree with the value of what is being lost be see little hope of doing more than documenting the dying tongues.

Carol and Ted:

I saw a special last year about a project to save dying dialects and languages...FYI

World Oral Literature Project

This is fascinating Dan, thank you.

[Selene]

What is fascinating Carol?

[kiaer.ts]

Wikipedia, which is certainly not the last word, says the following under "Atlas (mythology)"

Etymology

The etymology of the name Atlas is uncertain and still debated. Virgil took pleasure in translating etymologies of Greek names by combining them with adjectives that explained them: for Atlas his adjective is durus, "hard, enduring",[21] which suggested to George Doig[22] that Virgil was aware of the Greek τλήναι "to endure"; Doig offers the further possibility that Virgil was aware of Strabo's remark that the native North African name for this mountain was Douris.[23]

Some modern linguists derive it and its Greek root from the Proto-Indo-European root *tel, 'to uphold, support'; others[citation needed] suggest that it is a pre-Indo-European name.

One of the problems here is that by etymology the ancients usually meant offering some vague sound resemblance as a rationalization for a derivation, rather than actual genetic derivation of a word from a prior form by regular sound change over time. Plutarch, for example, derives Pontifex from potens, since priests are powerful, while laughing at the actual derivation, from pons (ponti-fex, "bridge-maker") as abusrd. This is no different from modern day preachers who offer such gems as Adam coming from "a damned man."

The name Douris is not the actual native name, unless the natives were Greeks. It is the Greek spelling of a foreign word, probably related to the Berber root adrar which was given above. The -is ending is a Greek suffix commonly added to mark borrowed words as nouns.

The verb tlenai from the Indo-European root *tel- is an unlikely source. It would require a host of unmotivated changes in sound and meaning. And the Atlantians were not Greeks, in any case.