Re: Pearls before Swine: Medieval wonders come to Los Angeles

On Dec 15, 9:25 am, "Chess One" <OneCh...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Michael Kuettner" <mik...@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:fjse7q$njr$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Do you get what he's saying in this sentence ?
He's a specialist for Semitic languages and doesn't know too much about
Greek.
But, he knows that there's _no_ writing until roughly 800 BC.
Got that ?

Is the intended sense, no /alphabetic/ writing?

Certainly there is vastly older writing than alphabets, though formal,
consistent and alphabetically constant materials are evolved forms from
previous iconic representations, which have a different and non-linear
basis. The very idea of non-linearity is an unfamiliar one to us these days,
so we can discount it, or even not notice it at all!

Interesting that Chinese still maintains orginal forms of non-alphabetic
iconic representation. Some time ago I investigated early pre-Celtic
iconographies and symbol sets, with the idea that these too were constant
materials in the culture.

Other forms or representation also seem significant in any semiology,
including such things we scarce notice these days, including measure and
proportion - the extent to which these were shared in any culture, and among
other cultures. Adoption of the 'foot' in the Islands is for example very
similar to Egyptian use of the old measure, the Royal cubit.

It is also interesting to observe why alphabets came into being, and the
majority factor seems to be the need to conduct commerce, and are
concommitant with evolution of tallies and arithmatic.

and then in -750, the Greek Alphabet pops into place fully formed.

Nope. As Larry pointed out, it pops _fully formed_ into existance
earlier. The Olympic records.
But _fully formed_ is right.
Got that ?

Ignoring the question of why there's no Greek writing for 700 years,
we still have to wonder how exactly the Semitic alphabet --- via the
Hebrews, Arameans or Phoenicians --- became Greek so quickly, and why
there are no proto-Greek alphabets.

Here he _explicitly states what I said : There were no proto-Greek
alphabets !

Well - interesting /question/ though should we say instead, no /known/
prototypes?

Got that ?

How did the Semitic alphabet, in
which consonants but rarely doubled as vowels, so quickly become the
Greek alphabet in which separate letters were used for vowels?
Similarly, why did the Greeks feel compelled to preserve the order of
the letters, but not their sounds?

After Greek, the story becomes clearly, but the leap from Semitic to
Greek is still a partial mystery.

And here he's spot on mark again.
The single inventor from Euboea is our best bet.

And yet there is a significant difference in these two forms - since
typically any successive form diminshes the former, yet Greek letters are
formed from a geometry not found in Euboean materiel.

Got that ?

Thank you for making my point for me. Just read your cites and what
the guys at sci.lang and I have told you.

Short summary :

Greek was invented by a single person on Euboea around 800 BC.
Before that, there was no writing after the fall of Mycene.
The statement by some authors "The Greek alphabet was invented
to record Homer's works" is nonsense.

Yes, that statement deserves a question mark!

What then is the link between the letter-forms of Greek and, for example,
Egyptian or Hebrew iconographies?

Phil Innes

Any questions ?

Just say "Thank you. I didn't know that."
Or dig deeper. Your choice.

Cheers,

Michael Kuettner

It would appear that the archaeological site at Lefkandi on Euboia
offers a clue as to the connection between commerce and the alphabet.

B. The physical and ideological structures of Greek communities

Lemos' presentation focused on the remarkable Greek site of Lefkandi,
Euboea,
providing a strong framework for discussions of the archaeological
context of the
emergence and transmission of the Greek alphabet. This site flourished
during the so called 'Dark Age' of Greece, following the Bronze Age,
between 1100-c.710 BC.

<snip>

Both from finds of imported material at Lefkandi, and from finds of
protogeometric
and geometric Euboean pottery across the Mediterranean, it is clear
that the Euboeans
retained active links with other parts of the Mediterranean world,
especially the
Levant, at a time when much of Greece appears to be relatively
isolated. Commercial
marks (incised before firing) appear on protogeometric pottery found
at Lefkandi as
early as the tenth century BC (fig. 1). The alphabet probably came to
Greece late in
the ninth or early in the eighth century BC, at a time when there is
abundant
archaeological evidence to suggest that contacts between Lefkandi and
the Levant
were buoyant. Most of the oldest examples of Greek alphabetic writing
appear to be
Euboean. These have been found not only at Lefkandi (fig. 2) and other
Euboean
sites, but right across the Mediterranean from Al Mina in Syria to
Italy (fig.3). One of
the most intriguing of these, and possibly the oldest, dating to
around 775 BC, appears
on an indigenous Italian impasto flask in the cemetery of Osteria
dell'Osa.

It is clear that the Euboeans were in active contact with many other
cultures across the
Mediterranean world. They were important agents in the spread of Greek
culture and
socio-political institutions to other parts of the Mediterranean
region. Most
significantly they were probably the earliest (though not necessarily
the only) agents in the transmission of alphabetic writing from the
Phoenicians to Greece and Italy. It is the Italian version of the
Euboean script from which the Roman alphabet in use today was derived.
<snip>

But the situation is quite different in the earlier period,
from the end of the eighth century BC to the end of the seventh
century BC. Only a
very few dedications of valuable votives are known, in a very
restricted number of
sanctuaries; the bulk of the evidence is represented by graffiti
(sometimes dedications,
but also abecedarias, single names etc.), concentrated in a few
places.
The difference between the two periods is so sharp, both in quantity
and geographical
distribution, and the change so sudden around the turn between the
seventh and sixth
century, that it can hardly be entirely ascribed to differences in the
quality of
archaeological record. For the same reasons, the idea of a purely
evolutionary process,
where the use of writing would have been first the privilege of a
restricted elite later
extended to larger parts of the society, is unconvincing: it can not
explain why no
evidence has been found in some of the most aristocratic sanctuaries,
like Olympia,
while writing is intensively used in sanctuaries like Mt Hymettus
where the
aristocratic symbolic investment is rather low.

and an extra gem, sneered at and derided by the cognescetti .

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ElAnt/V1N2/powell.html
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: How did the Semitic Alphabet become the Greek Alphabet so quickly?
    ... "In early Greece various forms of alphabet were current but all ... derived from a Phoenician source, ... Greek examples of_c._740). ... the Greeks decided to have a writing system at this time ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Pearls before Swine: Medieval wonders come to Los Angeles
    ... The first evidence of script comes with -surprise! ... So that leaves Hesiod, writing c. 700, ... value in it save that the Greek alphabet is obviously developed from the ...
    (soc.history.medieval)
  • Re: All languages are equally fit
    ... You _seem_ to be claiming that deaf mathematicians don't write ... just as the alphabet simplified writing. ... Can you name any culture where an alphabet replaced some other ... I can name at least two, Greek and Coptic. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: How old is the Greek alphabet?
    ... Cadmeian version of the alphabet has been found in the recent ... Crete where it can be observed how the Phoenician symbols became the ... Greek ones. ... Phoenician alphabet, and many scholars agree with this as well. ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Pearls before Swine: Medieval wonders come to Los Angeles
    ... name dark ages too eg in China and Ancient Greece but these don't seem ... Homer and Hesiod. ... the time between Linear-B and Homerian Greek script. ... Re invention of the alphabet: Wouldn't you think that a society ...
    (soc.history.medieval)
Loading