Old, old temples...

[fajrdrako]

One of the news articles on my Yahoo! page today was this one, about the discovery of a 4,000 year old temple.

My first reaction was excitement. I love old temples: I was just looking on Sunday at photos of the wonderful old temples on Malta, at Hagar Qim and Tarxien.¹

My second reaction was disappointment. The temple is in Peru.

Now, why should that be disappointing? Why am I so much more fascinated by Old World archeology than New? I'd say it was cultural familiarity, but the folks who built the temple at Hagar Qim are just as mysterious and unknown as the ones who built anything in Peru four thousand years ago. It isn't even a matter of familiarity, that I've been to Malta but not Peru. Or that I know less about it. After all, before I went to Malta, I didn't know anything much about it, either, except what I'd read in Dunnett. Maybe that's it. I don't have the same fictional/cultural links to Peru.²

I might be excited if someone found a big 4,000 year old temple foundation in Canada, just because it would so absurbly unexpected. I am rather impressed by the site at L'Anse aux Meadows, but that's European - very like sites I've seen in Orkney and other bits of northern Europe. And keep in mind that I've never actually been to L'Anse aux Meadows, though I'd love to see it. Black flies and all. (I assume there are black flies. It goes with the territory, right? Even with global warming?)

I should upload more of my photos of the Maltese sites. All I seem to have online is one photo I took of Hagar Qim, with the sea behind. I thought it was the nicest shot, but I took many, many pictures.

When I was in Orkney, on the Isle of Eday, I was in a house that the tour guide said he could guarantee was the oldest building we'd ever been in - about 5,000 years old. When I stood in the temple at Hagar Qim, I wondered: Is this as old? Older? There's no answer to that, but I love being there, and being able to ask.

~ ~ ~

¹ I hope I spelled that right. I don't think I did. Even making allowances for the fact that I can't type all the Maltese letters and diacritics. Okay, now I've got myself curious, I have to look it up... yay! got it right! I wasn't too sure about L'Anse aux Meadows, either.

² Unless you count Paddington Bear. I wouldn't.

Comments

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

Wow, I can't believe there's a 4,000 year old human-made structure in Peru! That's quite remarkable! The murals actually interest me more than the temple, I'd like to see them.

Hmmm, fictional/cultural roots... didn't Daniel Jackson and that nebbishy little scientist whose name I can never remember go to Peru and get beat up by some fearsome, unshaven rebels (all six of them) on SG-1? Or was that just "generic South America-land"? The rebels were fairly generic in addition to being few. Our little Indy Joneses found an ancient Ancient device that turned a dead guy into a zombie, and Jack and Veronica Mars' father showed up to save them. I think it was Peru. I remember there were ziggurat jokes.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

The murals actually interest me more than the temple, I'd like to see them.

I thought that, too. Fascinating - especially since murals usually depict something - like those wonderful bull-dancers in Minoa, or the lion-hunts in Babylon and Sumeria.

didn't Daniel Jackson and that nebbishy little scientist whose name I can never remember go to Peru and get beat up by some fearsome, unshaven rebels (all six of them) on SG-1? Or was that just "generic South America-land"?

I wouldn't know - I don't watch the SG shows, so that's not in my mental references. I can't think of an Indiana Jones thing set in Peru, or even Lara Croft. It's weird that, even though I am (in theory) fascinated by Macchu Picchu (and hope to visit it some day before I die), I haven't read all that much about it.

Ziggurat jokes? In Peru? ...Okay, I believe you!

[rosiespark.livejournal.com]

Your Maltese spelling is just fine - most impressive!

And yay! for Paddington Bear, too. And his Aunt Lucy. Marmalade sandwiches for ever!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Your Maltese spelling is just fine - most impressive!

The Maltese language and its sounds and spellings made a big impression on me. I was fascinated. I wished I'd remembered more of the Arabic I learned once - not that it would have helped me conceptually, but I kept wanting to learn more about it and the linguistic connections. Hence remembering the spelling as best I could, and paying attention to place-names and bilingual signs and the like. I took a lot of note of the differences between Maltese words that looked Indo-European and those that looked Arabic. Lots of scribbles in my notebook in handwriting that adds to the challenge.

Paddington is one of the great bears, and not just because of the marmalade. There's also the coat and boots. And hat. And personality.

Speaking of which, isn't this (http://theburnsplace.com/padeden.jpg) a great cookie jar?
"For the discriminating collector" says the ad. I should think so.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

While, for me, anything four thousand years old that can be described as a "temple," and in South America, thrills me no end and incites the most delightful curiosity and interest. Maybe because I have a keen interest in the prehistory of the Americas? And because I know that there are some radiocarbon dates from a settlement in South America that register at 38,000 to 42,000 years before present, but even the archeologist whose team and lab acquired those dates is playing them down, so as not to upset the narrow-minded applecart too badly? Bad enough that most of the radiocarbon dates from that site are comfortably in the 13,000 BP range, which drives mainstream people nuts, just as the 19,000 BP date from Meadowcroft in SW Pennsylvania also drives them nuts... looking at the diversity of linguistic groups in these two continents is enough evidence for me that humans have been here for at least 40,000 years. The conclusive archeological evidence simply has yet to be found.

And Malta's way cool, too!

I've been reading up on the two branches of Islam, the Shia and the Sunni... and also on the mountain tribes of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Pashtun. The latter of which has gotten me thinking about the Indus Valley civilizations. And whether people who are trying to translate those cylinder seals are going at them from the wrong direction -- maybe that civilization didn't use the printed characters to represent spoken sounds, words, or even concepts?

Anyway. Hope your writing is going along smoothly!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Maybe because I have a keen interest in the prehistory of the Americas?

I used to. Especially the seventh century stuff, just because it was the seventh century. But now? It doesn't move me emotionally the way the Old World stuff does. It's interesting. Fascinating, even. I want to know more about it, and pursue the discoveries. But it doesn't hit me emotionally the way the similar finds in Europe and Asia do.

And because I know that there are some radiocarbon dates from a settlement in South America that register at 38,000 to 42,000 years before present, but even the archeologist whose team and lab acquired those dates is playing them down, so as not to upset the narrow-minded applecart too badly?

There are so many degrees of curiosity there! I hope we learn more. Since our species is, what, anything between 200,000 and 50,000 years old, depending when you want to mark the beginnings, I can't see why there would be anything impossible about finding the remains of a settlement from that time. When you're looking that far back, the problem isn't that people couldn't have done that then - had settlements or artifacts or art or whatever - it's the unlikelihood of anything remaining for us to find. So if we do find something - well! Pretty spectacular.

At the same time, if the rest of the site is only 19,000 years old, it does make one wonder if there was some mistake or anomaly in the radio-carbon that skewed the results.

(And the fiction-lover in me asks: could it be related to the Cimmerian? But no, it's way too old even for them... Elves, maybe? Have they found Valinor in South America?)

And if humans have been in NA for 40,000 years, that doesn't mean they've been continuously here. They could have come and gone a number of times.

You think the writing from Mohenjo-Daro might be entirely ideograms? I don't even know if that's the word I mean... but if it is, say, tags that identified a certain wine-jug as belonging to a certain person, the symbol might simply be his name - with no phonetic/linguistic correspondence.

But if you think it might not even represent concepts - what would it be, then? Abstract art for decoration?

On the other hand, it certainly looks like an alphabet, or syllabic writing.... Which is to say, it looks like other people's writing when used to represent sounds and words and concepts.

I'd love to know.

What have you read about the Pashtun? Do you have any books to recommend?

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

At the same time, if the rest of the site is only 19,000 years old, it does make one wonder if there was some mistake or anomaly in the radio-carbon that skewed the results.

There were at least three of the 38,000 to 42,000 dates. The claim that they were due to sloppy sampling or testing procedures is the main opposition to them, from the majority faction in US archaeological circles which finds it hard to let go of the idea that humans came to these two continents only about 12,000 years ago. The people on the fringe -- Thomas Dillehay, who did the Mesa Verde site (the name finally came back to me), and James Adovasio, who did Meadowcroft, among others -- cling to patience, and pursue scrupulously careful procedures so that these and future "too old" dates must eventually be accepted. At the same time, interestingly, Dillehay is actively championing only his 13,000-range dates, while saying basically nothing at all about the three or four extremely old dates. Maybe he thinks that he can eventually get the detractors to agree on the 12,000s if he keeps the other ones hanging silently over their heads!

Also, yes, there has been strong speculation that the Mesa Verde site, which is not all that far from the Pacific coast, could be showing that people visited by water from time immemorial. This, too, is an idea that meets with stiff opposition. (I have a problem with these folks... why do they seem to want to believe that people in antiquity weren't as clever as people can be in the modern day? How do they think we all got to the level of technical sophistication of the present day, if there were not brilliant human minds 40,000 years ago? Bothers me.)

You think the writing from Mohenjo-Daro might be entirely ideograms? - with no phonetic/linguistic correspondence.

But if you think it might not even represent concepts - what would it be, then? Abstract art for decoration?

I probably didn't phrase that adequately. I tried to say that I have half an idea that the images on the cylinder seals from Mohenjo Daro were a non-language representation of (let me try it this way) thought-forms. As I know that it is possible to think without having language form the thoughts (since I do it that way myself), I was toying with the cool idea that maybe the oldest civilization currently known ... well, was on a different track than those whose written languages we modern-day people have been able to translate. Decipher. Transliterate. Understand.

Just a thought.

(This needs to be on the list for one of those long rainy afternoons with cups of hot tea and several bags of dried fruit, eh?)

On the other hand, it certainly looks like an alphabet, or syllabic writing.... Which is to say, it looks like other people's writing when used to represent sounds and words and concepts.

Hm. I would offer, do you think it looks like syllabic writing because you think it probably is syllabic writing...? I think it looks quite a bit different. Several aspects of it make it strongly different -- the fact that it appears only as cylinder seals, the fact that animal images are so prevalent... it might be names, but I honestly think it might not be syllabic speech (aka words).

I'd love to know.

As would I! My imagination keeps trying to take me back there to talk to those people.

What have you read about the Pashtun? Do you have any books to recommend?

I have been reading a wonderful book called God's Terrorists, which explores the roots of present-day Islamic fundamentalist groups the Taliban (which simply means "scholars") and al Quaeda -- in, believe it or not, British India. In the 1850s, a leader emerged whose lead is still being followed; he himself had been inspired by an earlier leader who basically formed a cult of personality. What they both had in common was a strict rejection of any aspect of religion or daily life that had not existed in the time of the Prophet Muhammed. Both of them were considered fringe elements.

Also found a book called The Shia Revival, which discusses the internecine antagonism between the Sunni and the Shia branches of Islam. I've stumbled into a huge area of thought that I had not even realized existed, and I'm thrilled.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I have no problem imagining that there was a human population in the Americas c. 42,000 years ago; it would be nice to find more evidence of it. And I hope people do! The idea that no one came here by boat in early times - why on earth would they think that? Seems to me that the concept of a boat would be a very early human invention!

I think of the Mohenjo-Daro script as looking like syllabic writing because (a) it resembles other syllabic writing I have seen and (b) it comes in recognizabel - well, apparently recognizable - units. Which I realize means nothing. Re the "thought forms" you are talking about - makes me think of the ST:TNG episode "Darmok". (Which, as you know, I loved.)

When I was a kid I had, for a while, a pen-pal in Iraq. He was very clear about why the Shi'its were in the wrong (or was it the other way round?) - but I had a great deal of difficulty figuring out the difference. I imagine Catholics and Protestants look the same to them.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Re the "thought forms" you are talking about - makes me think of the ST:TNG episode "Darmok". (Which, as you know, I loved.)

Remind me... "Darmok"?

When I was a kid I had, for a while, a pen-pal in Iraq. He was very clear about why the Shi'its were in the wrong (or was it the other way round?) - but I had a great deal of difficulty figuring out the difference. I imagine Catholics and Protestants look the same to them.

The book The Shia Revival uses the term "Shia," mentioning the term "Shi'ite" only to point out that the people themselves do not much use the term. (I'd point out that some in the US prefer to use the latter because of mean-spiritedness: it resembles the generally-pejorative word "shit" and can be twisted into "shithead" and so on.) As for the differences between Shia and Sunni: the Sunni are in the majority by about five to one, but in some regions they are the majority -- in Iran, for instance, and in the southern one-third of Iraq. The Shia are too often regarded as the "dumb hicks" of the Islamic world. Some regions keep them as second-class citizens, with regional customs such as never sitting down to a meal with a Shia because they spit in their food, and that shaking hands with one makes you unclean and you must perform ablutions (this latter reminded me of the Arab proscription against touching a woman's hands, because one had no way of knowing if it was her menstrual time, which would horribly defile a man's hands). The division between Sunni and Shia lies not just in religious habits but in cultural behavior as well, and -- so says this author -- that is what makes it so hard to get past. However, in Iraq the current president is a Shia, which I hadn't known.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Remind me... "Darmok"?

The Federation was trying to establish friendly contact with a planet whose language couldn't be interpreted by the Universal Translators. Picard got shipwrecked somewhere with a gentleman from this culture. Over the course of time they learned (or we learned) that their whole language-concept was based on metaphorical story references. Not really possible, but very cool as an idea!

I didn't know about the usage of Shi'ite - and I'm not sure I believe it, as it has the sound to me of a racist back-formation, no more objectionable than talking (for example) about the Japanese - but better to be politically correct than sorry!

Yes, I knew about the minority/majority balances and cultural problems - this division was very significant in the time of the Crusades, since Shias (it's difficult for me not to call them Shi'ites out of long habit, sorry! no offense intended!) and Sinnis were fighting then, which was politically very significant to everyone.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Please, don't start doing uncomfortable verbal contortions solely on account of my single voice saying that a book I'm reading uses "Shia" and "Shias" rather than "Shi'ite" -- thank you!!

I vaguely remember "Darmok," now. Thanks. It bothered me at the time. I couldn't watch it directly. I had to (what is the word? it's what a moon does to its planet, or a planet to its sun) do that around the room while this episode was on, because it troubled me so much. It troubled me so much because it hit directly at truth. You say that the basis of their language is Not really possible, but very cool as an idea!, but I say, this is the exact and actual basis for (sorry, it's so hard for me to be verbal right now for several reasons, one of which is that it is Finals Time at the library, and so of course we have a room half-full of studious people at computers, and half-full of jerks sitting there having a loud and frivolous conversation. Times five. And no monitor. Anyway....

Everyday dialect. Common speech. there's a word for it, I know. Use that word there.

People do this all the time. Verbal interaction is based on assumptions that are not spoken. Take my wordo n this -- it has been a chain around my neck, jerking my head all over the place and breaking up my attempts at concentration, all my life. Forty-eight years and counting.

I'll come back to this idea when I am able. Thanks for the good summary of the episode!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Is the word you're looking for 'orbit'? Or 'circumnavigate'?

Verbal interaction is based on assumptions that are not spoken.

Oh, yes, absolutely true. I wasn't quibbling about that. What I was arguing is that you have to be able to communicate a story before you can have a story - the concept has to start from somewhere. You see the logical fallacy? You can't base a language on something until you have that something - whether it's assumptions (as it always is), or anything else.

I loved that episode because it was thinking outside the box, and presenting a new take on communication. It was, if you will, metaphorically true if not literally true.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Again, I argue that today's common everyday verbal interactions are pretty much the Darmok thing: people talk to each other in bits and pieces, knowing that what they mean will be inferred because of the common background within which they speak. For instance, someone hears a person who reminds them of a celebrity that they'd discussed recently, and all the two have to do is lock eyes and raise their eyebrows, and the comment has been made. This totally closes out all who were not already a part of those people's personal database. This occurs, to a greater or lesser degree, I am stating, in every conversation I overhear during any given day in which college students are the primary speakers. Also can be said of any other inclusive group: military (especially those in the same unit), gradeschool sports teams, coworkers at a place with little turnover in personnel... and families. Remember the "personal family languages" in Dune? The Atriedes family used hand gestures, and one of the other families used a humming, umming sort of language that they were proud no one outside the family had ever even suspected was a private language, much less decoded.

That's a little apart from the point I was making about today's everyday lots-goes-without-saying verbal interactions... but it was too fun a thought to let go unspoken [g].

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

today's common everyday verbal interactions are pretty much the Darmok thing: people talk to each other in bits and pieces, knowing that what they mean will be inferred

That's not just true today, that's been true since the dawn of language. Part of the point here is that language does not equal communication, and communication does not equal language. It's a whole process. The show was good because it highlighted that - it wasn't the language per se that broke down and was untranslatable, it was the cultural background, which was unknown.

We can all communicate without language, just not very well; and without language I don't think we can overcome the problems of time and distance.

And yes, groups develop their own language or jargon - social groups, business groups, and any other people. Like tribes. Like - heh - fandom, with our own fannish vocabulary. ("Fannish" iteself is a fannish word.) Just like twins as toddlers make up their own languages to talk to each other. In fact, it's surprising that in RL we don't have more families with their own personal languages.

I took the minutes at Harry's union meeting the other day and it's surprising how many words I didn't know in context - I mean, I knew the words, for the most part (though not the many acronyms!) but not their meaning in the context of government bureaucracy or union politics. So I'm thinking, "The who did what to the which?" and just wrote it all down. It doesn't matter whether I understand.

Another example was in Life, the TV show I was watching last night, where the hero (who had been in prison for 12 years, without computer access) was ingeniously trying to trace a missing person by using online chat rooms. The people in the chat rooms were using acronyms like LOL and IMHO and so on and he was stumped.

It isn't meant to be exlusionary, it's just that different groups of people have unique linguistic needs that they share with each other as/when the need arises. I don't even want to know the government-bureacracy/union jargon that Harry and his friends use so freely, it sounds dire.

This is why language is so colourful... and often totally noncommunicative!