Chess - oh yeah, that game with the little horseheads...
This is very cool! One of the few words I recognized in the audio was "ekwhos" (horse/horses; L: equus; OHG: hros) -- but it is not spelled in the English transcription ("akvams," "akvasas, "a vavakat") anything like it sounds in the audio or as I've seen it traditionally transcribed in P-I-E.
Side note: From Wikipedia regarding Sanskrit word for "horse:"
Aśvaḥ (अश्व) [Ashvah] is the Sanskrit word for a horse, one of the significant animals finding references in the Vedas as well as later Hindu scriptures. The corresponding Avestan term is aspa. The word is cognate to Latin equus, Greek ίππος (hippos), Germanic *ehwaz and Baltic *ašvā all from PIE *hek'wos.
I found the English transcription (below) undecipherable as I tried to link the words I was reading on the page to what I was hearing on the audio. Fortunately, the article does provide a pronunciation guide at the end that appears in the format with which I am more familiar, so I was able to match up some of the words I was hearing in the audio more easily in the English transliteration of the P-I-E.
The audio clip is - well, I just find it utterly intriguing. See what you think:
At Archaeology Magazine online
Telling Tales in Proto-Indo-European
By ERIC A. POWELL
By the 19th century, linguists knew that all modern
Indo-European languages descended from a single tongue. Called
Proto-Indo-European, or PIE, it was spoken by a people who lived from roughly
4500 to 2500 B.C., and left no written texts. The question became, what did PIE
sound like? In 1868, German linguist August Schleicher used reconstructed
Proto-Indo-European vocabulary to create a fable in order to hear some
approximation of PIE. Called “The Sheep and the Horses,” and also known today as
Schleicher’s Fable, the short parable tells the story of a shorn sheep who
encounters a group of unpleasant horses. As linguists have continued to discover
more about PIE, this sonic experiment continues and the fable is periodically
updated to reflect the most current understanding of how this extinct language
would have sounded when it was spoken some six thousand years ago. Since there
is considerable disagreement among scholars about PIE, no one version can be
considered definitive. Here, University of Kentucky linguist Andrew Byrd recites
his version of the fable using pronunciation informed by the latest insights
into reconstructed PIE.
Schleicher originally rendered the fable like this:
Avis akvāsas ka
Avis, jasmin varnā na ā ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vāgham garum vaghantam,
tam, bhāram magham, tam, manum āku bharantam. Avis akvabhjams ā vavakat: kard
aghnutai mai vidanti manum akvams agantam. Akvāsas ā vavakant: krudhi avai, kard
aghnutai vividvant-svas: manus patis varnām avisāms karnauti svabhjam gharmam
vastram avibhjams ka varnā na asti. Tat kukruvants avis agram ā bhugat.
Here is the fable in English translation:
The Sheep and the Horses
A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one
carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the
horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said:
"Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes
the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no
wool." Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.
And here is the modern reconstruction recited by Andrew Byrd. It is based on
recent work done by linguist H. Craig Melchert, and incorporates a number of
sounds unknown at the time Schleicher first created the fable:
H2óu̯is h1éḱu̯ōs-kwe
h2áu̯ei̯ h1i̯osméi̯
h2u̯l̥h1náh2 né h1ést, só
h1éḱu̯oms derḱt. só gwr̥hxúm u̯óǵhom
u̯eǵhed; só méǵh2m̥ bhórom; só
dhǵhémonm̥ h2ṓḱu bhered.
h2óu̯is h1ékwoi̯bhi̯os u̯eu̯ked:
“dhǵhémonm̥ spéḱi̯oh2
h1éḱu̯oms-kwe h2áǵeti, ḱḗr moi̯
aghnutor”. h1éḱu̯ōs tu u̯eu̯kond: “ḱludhí,
h2ou̯ei̯! tód spéḱi̯omes, n̥sméi̯ aghnutór ḱḗr:
dhǵhémō, pótis, sē h2áu̯i̯es
h2u̯l̥h1náh2 gwhérmom u̯éstrom
u̯ept, h2áu̯ibhi̯os tu
h2u̯l̥h1náh2 né h1esti. tód
ḱeḱluu̯ṓs h2óu̯is h2aǵróm bhuged.
Showing posts with label proto-Indo European language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label proto-Indo European language. Show all posts
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Minoans Were European According to DNA Analysis
This is an awesome discovery. For how many years were people thinking the Minoans were a Semitic or African population...
The Minoans, the builders of Europe's first advanced civilization, really were European, new research suggests.
The conclusion, published today (May 14) in the journal Nature Communications, was drawn by comparing DNA from 4,000-year-old Minoan skeletons with genetic material from people living throughout Europe and Africa in the past and today.
"We now know that the founders of the first advanced European civilization were European," said study co-author George Stamatoyannopoulos, a human geneticist at the University of Washington.
"They were very similar to Neolithic Europeans and very similar to present day-Cretans," residents of the Mediterranean island of Crete.
While that may sound intuitive, the findings challenge a long-held theory that the ancient Minoans came from Egypt.
First European Civilization
The Minoan culture emerged on Crete, which is now part of Greece, and flourished from about 2,700 B.C. to 1,420 B.C. Some believe that a massive eruption from the Volcano Thera on the island of Santorini doomed the Bronze Age civilization, while others argue that invading Mycenaeans toppled the once-great power.
Nowadays, the Minoans may be most famous for the myth of the minotaur, a half-man, half-bull that was fabled to lived within a labyrinth in Crete.
When British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the Minoan palace of Knossos more than 100 years ago, he was dumbstruck by its beauty. He also noticed an eerie similarity between Minoan and Egyptian art, and didn't believe that the culture was homegrown.
"That's why Evans postulated the civilization was imported from Egypt or Libya," Stamatoyannopoulos told LiveScience.
Genetic clues
To test that idea, the research team analyzed DNA from ancient Minoan skeletons that were sealed in a cave in Crete's Lassithi Plateau between 3,700 and 4,400 years ago. They then compared the skeletal mitochondrial DNA, which is stored in the energy powerhouses of cells and passed on through the maternal line, with that found in a sample of 135 modern and ancient populations from around Europe and Africa.
The researchers found that the Minoan skeletons were genetically very similar to modern-day Europeans — and especially close to modern-day Cretans, particularly those from the Lassithi Plateau. They were also genetically similar to Neolithic Europeans, but distinct from Egyptian or Libyan populations.
The findings argue against Evan's hypothesis and suggest that locals, not African expats, developed the Minoan culture.
"It was a period of excitement around the Mediterranean," so although the Minoans definitely had contact with their African neighbors across the Mediterranean, any similarities in art were probably the result of cultural exchange, Stamatoyannopoulos said.
Ancient language?
The findings suggest that the ancient Minoans were likely descended from a branch of agriculturalists in Anatolia (what is now modern-day Turkey and Iraq) that fanned out into Europe about 9,000 years ago. If so, the Minoans may have spoken a proto-Indo-European language derived from the one possibly spoken by those Anatolian farmers, the researchers speculate.
Knowing that the Minoan language has Indo-European roots could help archaeologists decipher a mysterious Minoan writing system, known as Linear A, Stamatoyannopoulos said. [Precisely! The Phaistos Disk...]
The prevailing theories hold that Minoan was a separate language family.
The analysis of DNA from the Lassithi cave is a "valuable contribution," said Colin Renfrew, an archaeologist from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study.
However, to make a clearer connection to the Anatolian migration, the researchers should have compared the Minoan DNA with more DNA samples from modern and ancient Anatolia, he said. [Well, Colin, don't get your shorts in an uproar. No doubt someone - maybe even you - will get funding for such a study to be done sooner or later.]
Mysterious Minoans Were European, DNA Finds
Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 14 May 2013 Time: 11:00 AM ET
The Minoans, the builders of Europe's first advanced civilization, really were European, new research suggests.
The conclusion, published today (May 14) in the journal Nature Communications, was drawn by comparing DNA from 4,000-year-old Minoan skeletons with genetic material from people living throughout Europe and Africa in the past and today.
"We now know that the founders of the first advanced European civilization were European," said study co-author George Stamatoyannopoulos, a human geneticist at the University of Washington.
"They were very similar to Neolithic Europeans and very similar to present day-Cretans," residents of the Mediterranean island of Crete.
While that may sound intuitive, the findings challenge a long-held theory that the ancient Minoans came from Egypt.
First European Civilization
The Minoan culture emerged on Crete, which is now part of Greece, and flourished from about 2,700 B.C. to 1,420 B.C. Some believe that a massive eruption from the Volcano Thera on the island of Santorini doomed the Bronze Age civilization, while others argue that invading Mycenaeans toppled the once-great power.
Nowadays, the Minoans may be most famous for the myth of the minotaur, a half-man, half-bull that was fabled to lived within a labyrinth in Crete.
When British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the Minoan palace of Knossos more than 100 years ago, he was dumbstruck by its beauty. He also noticed an eerie similarity between Minoan and Egyptian art, and didn't believe that the culture was homegrown.
"That's why Evans postulated the civilization was imported from Egypt or Libya," Stamatoyannopoulos told LiveScience.
Genetic clues
To test that idea, the research team analyzed DNA from ancient Minoan skeletons that were sealed in a cave in Crete's Lassithi Plateau between 3,700 and 4,400 years ago. They then compared the skeletal mitochondrial DNA, which is stored in the energy powerhouses of cells and passed on through the maternal line, with that found in a sample of 135 modern and ancient populations from around Europe and Africa.
The researchers found that the Minoan skeletons were genetically very similar to modern-day Europeans — and especially close to modern-day Cretans, particularly those from the Lassithi Plateau. They were also genetically similar to Neolithic Europeans, but distinct from Egyptian or Libyan populations.
The findings argue against Evan's hypothesis and suggest that locals, not African expats, developed the Minoan culture.
"It was a period of excitement around the Mediterranean," so although the Minoans definitely had contact with their African neighbors across the Mediterranean, any similarities in art were probably the result of cultural exchange, Stamatoyannopoulos said.
Ancient language?
The findings suggest that the ancient Minoans were likely descended from a branch of agriculturalists in Anatolia (what is now modern-day Turkey and Iraq) that fanned out into Europe about 9,000 years ago. If so, the Minoans may have spoken a proto-Indo-European language derived from the one possibly spoken by those Anatolian farmers, the researchers speculate.
Knowing that the Minoan language has Indo-European roots could help archaeologists decipher a mysterious Minoan writing system, known as Linear A, Stamatoyannopoulos said. [Precisely! The Phaistos Disk...]
The prevailing theories hold that Minoan was a separate language family.
The analysis of DNA from the Lassithi cave is a "valuable contribution," said Colin Renfrew, an archaeologist from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study.
However, to make a clearer connection to the Anatolian migration, the researchers should have compared the Minoan DNA with more DNA samples from modern and ancient Anatolia, he said. [Well, Colin, don't get your shorts in an uproar. No doubt someone - maybe even you - will get funding for such a study to be done sooner or later.]
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