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Author Topic:   Evidence for the Biblical Record
slevesque
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 1456
Joined: 05-14-2009


Message 256 of 348 (552096)
03-26-2010 2:14 PM
Reply to: Message 254 by Theodoric
03-25-2010 5:20 PM


Re: Denial Of The Evidence
This is an assertion that is almost laughable. There are no premissionary historical documents. Love to see them. Would be a hell of a find. Who wrote this supposed documents? Even if there were some sort of premissionary documents, they are not pre-european influence documents.
Lets look at your assertion that there are documents that predate christian missionaries. You are Canadian right? Do you know who the first Europeans in most of Canada were? The Jesuits. A lot of times they preceded the voyageurs. What do you think the first stories that were exchanged between the Catholic Voyageurs and missionaries and the natives were? Bible stories and native myths.
The first writings documenting contacts with the native tribes were from the Jesuits. A great overview of these isThe Jesuit Relations. As a college student I spent many hours reading these. Fascinating, but ultimately disturbing as I began to understand the ultimate goal of the Jesuits and the Europeans. The destruction of the native cultures and people.
Sorry, I didn't intend to say I had premissionary historical documents. Maybe it was my wording.
Anyways, the documents I was referring to are the ones written by a Jesuite from the very first batch that arrived. In it he writes about this particular myths and is atonished at the similarities with Noah's flood. As I said, my friend while making this myth his work subject had adressed the case of christian influence on the myth and his teacher had supported his conclusions that the version this particular myth had written was the original one that predated christian influence. (If I remember correctly, he also had access to later version of the myth in which the christian influence was clearly visible)
Well it seems you have provided evidence that shows the Biblical flood is just a copy of the Sumerian myth that predates it.
This is almost a Red Herring since we were adressing the case of the Cree Myth, not the Sumerian one and it's dating vis-a-vis the Biblical account.
But you are partially right, the same study of similarities/differences let's us know that the Sumerian myth and Biblical account have a common origin (either an original myth or original event.)
I am amazed that you can take the similarities and derive a relationship, but all differences you can just excuse.
I am amazed at how you can take the differences and derive independency, but all similarities you can just excuse.
See what I did there ?
Anyhow, do you not agree that in both case;, independent origin i different cultures or common origin seperated by 4kyears in different cultures, we would expect to have differences ?
How else would a myth explain the continuation of life after a worldwide flood? A boat would be needed, breeding stock would be needed.
Of course, but why a worldwide flood ? Why cover the highest of mountains ? Why take a pair of each animal ? Why one man and not the whole tribe ?
Why wouldn't they? Dove are not limited to Mideast. As a matter of fact I hope to see them back here in northern Wisconsin any day now.
Maybe I am too used to seeing pigeons in the city I can't imagine them in the woods hehe.
But if it did inhabit the forest back then, it is far from being a refered animal in indian culture. Unlike the Beaver,bear,caribou, wolf, duck, etc. (and the muskarat)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 254 by Theodoric, posted 03-25-2010 5:20 PM Theodoric has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 257 by ZenMonkey, posted 03-26-2010 2:20 PM slevesque has replied
 Message 259 by Theodoric, posted 03-26-2010 2:57 PM slevesque has replied

  
ZenMonkey
Member (Idle past 4511 days)
Posts: 428
From: Portland, OR USA
Joined: 09-25-2009


Message 257 of 348 (552097)
03-26-2010 2:20 PM
Reply to: Message 256 by slevesque
03-26-2010 2:14 PM


Floody.
Or is possible that since civilizations have often evolved around river valleys and that cities have most commonly been built near rivers and/or the ocean, that most peoples are familiar with the phenomenon of floods? Maybe?

I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John Lydon
What's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a new puppy? The puppy eventually grows up and quits whining.
-Steven Dutch

This message is a reply to:
 Message 256 by slevesque, posted 03-26-2010 2:14 PM slevesque has replied

Replies to this message:
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slevesque
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 1456
Joined: 05-14-2009


Message 258 of 348 (552103)
03-26-2010 2:44 PM
Reply to: Message 257 by ZenMonkey
03-26-2010 2:20 PM


Re: Floody.
Or is possible that since civilizations have often evolved around river valleys and that cities have most commonly been built near rivers and/or the ocean, that most peoples are familiar with the phenomenon of floods? Maybe?
Maybe, but I doubt an anthropologist would accept that as an answer considering the depth of similarities which are much more then superficial. Not only that, but that these core similarities are shard by flood myths around the world ? It would be so because all humans think of the same thing when creating a 'flood myth' ? This is tagging the human mind with a lot less imaginative power then it really has, in my opinion.
Just look at the complete differences in other unrelated myths, how they explain the creation of the world, or lightning and thunder, or the afterlife. Or anything else. In all these cases we see the great imagination of the different cultures of the world, yet when they would talk about a flood, they would all be limited by the main frame of a guy who builds a boat, brings aboard pairs of animals, worldwide flood comes, then eventually sends an animal look for land, then another, and when the second one brings back something in his mouth, it would mean the earth is coming back, and animals can once gaain go on firm land.
You may believe that if you want, but I find it totally unreasonable.

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Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 259 of 348 (552106)
03-26-2010 2:57 PM
Reply to: Message 256 by slevesque
03-26-2010 2:14 PM


Re: Denial Of The Evidence
Anyways, the documents I was referring to are the ones written by a Jesuite from the very first batch that arrived. In it he writes about this particular myths and is atonished at the similarities with Noah's flood. As I said, my friend while making this myth his work subject had adressed the case of christian influence on the myth and his teacher had supported his conclusions that the version this particular myth had written was the original one that predated christian influence. (If I remember correctly, he also had access to later version of the myth in which the christian influence was clearly visible)
Anyways, the documents I was referring to are the ones written by a Jesuite from the very first batch that arrived.
Shows me that this is questionable. The Cree were not one of the first tribes that the Jesuits were in contact with. Your whole story seems a little questionable. Especially how you seem to remember a later version. But put that all to rest and show us the real documentation. I really do not care whether his teacher supported the conclusion. Unless you can provide some sort of documents this is purely a baseless assertion.
Do you have access to these documents? Any chance you could tell us what they were? I am not going to just trust your interpretation. If you are going to claim such documents exist, please provide info on the docs.
As I said in my original post. There were contacts between the native americans and europeans since approx 1500. The first written docs come from a much later period.
I am amazed at how you can take the differences and derive independency, but all similarities you can just excuse.
Because there is NO evidence to show that they are related. All you have is unfounded suppositions. You want us to believe they are related. There are some similarities and many discrepancies. What is the logical conclusion without any supporting evidence?
Maybe I am too used to seeing pigeons in the city I can't imagine them in the woods hehe.
But if it did inhabit the forest back then, it is far from being a refered animal in indian culture. Unlike the Beaver,bear,caribou, wolf, duck, etc. (and the muskarat)
Your ignorance does not make things any less real. The mourning dove and the passenger pigeon were very important creatures in native culture. They were a very important foodstock. The passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction and the mourning dove is still heavily hunted today.
Mourning dove - Wikipedia
quote:
References to Mourning Doves appear frequently in Native American literature.
Maybe you should just let this die. You arent helping your cause any.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

This message is a reply to:
 Message 256 by slevesque, posted 03-26-2010 2:14 PM slevesque has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 260 by slevesque, posted 03-26-2010 3:35 PM Theodoric has replied

  
slevesque
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 1456
Joined: 05-14-2009


Message 260 of 348 (552111)
03-26-2010 3:35 PM
Reply to: Message 259 by Theodoric
03-26-2010 2:57 PM


Re: Denial Of The Evidence
Shows me that this is questionable. The Cree were not one of the first tribes that the Jesuits were in contact with. Your whole story seems a little questionable. Especially how you seem to remember a later version. But put that all to rest and show us the real documentation. I really do not care whether his teacher supported the conclusion. Unless you can provide some sort of documents this is purely a baseless assertion.
Do you have access to these documents? Any chance you could tell us what they were? I am not going to just trust your interpretation. If you are going to claim such documents exist, please provide info on the docs.
As I said in my original post. There were contacts between the native americans and europeans since approx 1500. The first written docs come from a much later period.
This is all by memory from a couple of years ago, and I will try and get access or at least reference to the documents.
Also, I do think the Cree were the first that they met, at least here in quebec. Could not tell about the US. The story is a different tale here, starting with JAcques Cartier instead of Christopher Columbus.
But history class is also very, very far.
Because there is NO evidence to show that they are related. All you have is unfounded suppositions. You want us to believe they are related. There are some similarities and many discrepancies. What is the logical conclusion without any supporting evidence?
I beg to disagree. The similarities are much more present then can be accounted for by random, independent experiences of different floods by different people. If this does not constitute evidence for you, then you are putting a burden on evidence that no Anthropologist or historian would. This isn't a hard science.
Your ignorance does not make things any less real. The mourning dove and the passenger pigeon were very important creatures in native culture. They were a very important foodstock. The passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction and the mourning dove is still heavily hunted today.
Mourning dove - Wikipedia
quote:
References to Mourning Doves appear frequently in Native American literature.
Maybe you should just let this die. You arent helping your cause any.
Are we talking about the same tribe here ? Here is the map of the morning dove habitat:
And this is the cree:
They don't really overlap a lot.
Now I may be wrong because I don't know if this is a map of where they were at the time or if it is their modern location. I looked but didn't find anything other then that.
But in any, it is an extremely side issue because it wouldn't prevent them from changing the dove to a muskarat in the myth
Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 259 by Theodoric, posted 03-26-2010 2:57 PM Theodoric has replied

Replies to this message:
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New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 261 of 348 (552115)
03-26-2010 3:50 PM
Reply to: Message 260 by slevesque
03-26-2010 3:35 PM


Re: Denial Of The Evidence
The similarities are much more present then can be accounted for by random, independent experiences of different floods by different people.
I agree. The last ice age ended, like, 10,000 years ago. This cause the sea level to rise:
This could be a source for all the different deluge myths. The first hand memories could have been passed down for a long time before they got turned into actual stories.

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 Message 260 by slevesque, posted 03-26-2010 3:35 PM slevesque has not replied

  
Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 262 of 348 (552121)
03-26-2010 4:50 PM
Reply to: Message 260 by slevesque
03-26-2010 3:35 PM


Re: Denial Of The Evidence
You have presented no evidence that it is the Cree we are talking about. All have is a story someone told you about research they did.
The story would only have validity if it was one of the first tribes that came into contact with the Europeans. If this is a Cree story the validity is a lot less.
Let me explain why. The tribes that the Europeans had "official" contact with later, were influenced by the Europeans well before the "official" contact. There were traders and missionaries out and about way before things were documented. Also, trade was a big part of the native culture, with trade comes the exchange of stories. You cannot make a supposition that whatever original story there is was not influenced at all by Europeans. The first documentation of native stories was well after first contact with european people, goods and influence.
Also, I have issues with your maps. The Sibley Field Guide to Birds has a bit farther northern range for the Mourning Dove. If you look at the range for the Passenger Pigeon you will see it extends farther north then the range for the Mourning Dove.
Your other map is not even a map showing where the Cree lived. Look at it again. It is a map of
quote:
Linguistic subdivisions in Canada
Modern day linguistic subdivisions, not traditional home land.
IN the Wiki article it states.
quote:
Traditionally, the southern limits of the Cree Territory in the United States were the Missouri River and the Milk River in Montana.
Try this.
quote:
Until confined to reservations their various bands held most of the extensive territory about Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, the lower Red and Saskatchewan, and eastward to the country of the Maskegon about Hudson Bay, from whom they are hardly to be distinguished. Most of their former territory is now included in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Assiniboia, and Saskatchewan. Their chief alliance was with the Assiniboin; their wars were with the Sioux, Blackfeet, and northern Tinneh tribes. With both French and English they have generally been on friendly terms. When first known to the Jesuit missionaries, about the year 1650, the Cree lived farther to the south-east, but, on obtaining firearms from the English trading posts established on Hudson Bay some twenty years later, they pushed out into the open plains in search of buffalo.
Source
Farther to the south-east would be what? Great Lakes area maybe. What is thought as the traditional home of most tribes is not where they lived prior to and during the first centuries of European contact. Lots of tribes were forced west and north by contact with Europeans. European goods also gave them the ability to compete with the tribes north and west that had less contact with the Europeans.
Do you want to try round 4? Or Are you willing to give up this attempt to pursue a bad argument.
Again I suggest you give up this line of argument.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

This message is a reply to:
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Peg
Member (Idle past 4930 days)
Posts: 2703
From: melbourne, australia
Joined: 11-22-2008


Message 263 of 348 (552134)
03-26-2010 6:52 PM
Reply to: Message 244 by nwr
03-25-2010 9:34 AM


Re: Denial Of The Evidence
nwr writes:
If there is a linkage from Chinese to Mesopotamian languages, as you seem to believe, that would clearly demonstrate that languages can evolve more than enough to explain the multiplicity of languages around. So the "Tower of Babel" story would still look like a fable (which, of course, is exactly what it is).
you can put it down to evolution if you want
But you do realise that linguists look for such similarities to determine if a language is related to another?
In this case its was said that the chinese were already an established nation far away from the mesopotamians and therefore their language was completely independent and not related....IOW it was established before the 'so called' confusion of languages incident.
So this similarity is either just a coincidence, or the chinese were not an established nation at the time and were a part of the people of mesopotamia who were dispersed after the tower of babel incident.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 244 by nwr, posted 03-25-2010 9:34 AM nwr has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 264 by nwr, posted 03-26-2010 7:35 PM Peg has replied
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 Message 267 by Otto Tellick, posted 03-27-2010 11:12 PM Peg has not replied

  
nwr
Member
Posts: 6408
From: Geneva, Illinois
Joined: 08-08-2005
Member Rating: 5.1


Message 264 of 348 (552140)
03-26-2010 7:35 PM
Reply to: Message 263 by Peg
03-26-2010 6:52 PM


Re: Denial Of The Evidence
Peg writes:
But you do realise that linguists look for such similarities to determine if a language is related to another?
Sure. That's because they are interested in the history of language.
I was just pointing out that it does not help your claim that the Tower of Babel describes an actual event and is not merely an ancient fable.
What I find particularly persuasive, here, is the evidence that languages will form spontaneously. That is, if a group of children are raised in an environment without language, then the group will invent their own. This is known from natural experiments. The best examples are the invention of a sign language by deaf children. But the invention of spoken language also occurs in natural experiments, such as with children whose parents are non-speaking.
If new languages can develop spontaneously, then the diversity of language in the world does not depend on a Tower of Babel incident. And an omniscient God would know better than to think such an incident was required.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 263 by Peg, posted 03-26-2010 6:52 PM Peg has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 266 by Peg, posted 03-27-2010 9:32 PM nwr has replied

  
bluescat48
Member (Idle past 4190 days)
Posts: 2347
From: United States
Joined: 10-06-2007


Message 265 of 348 (552207)
03-27-2010 11:13 AM
Reply to: Message 263 by Peg
03-26-2010 6:52 PM


Re: Denial Of The Evidence
you can put it down to evolution if you want
But you do realise that linguists look for such similarities to determine if a language is related to another?
In this case its was said that the chinese were already an established nation far away from the mesopotamians and therefore their language was completely independent and not related....IOW it was established before the 'so called' confusion of languages incident.
So this similarity is either just a coincidence, or the chinese were not an established nation at the time and were a part of the people of mesopotamia who were dispersed after the tower of babel incident.
Yes similarities are used and it is the point that the similarities are which separate the Sino-Tibetan (ie Chinese), from the Hameto-Semetic(ie Arabic, Hebrew, Egyptian, Babylonian etc) or from the Indo-European (ie Romance, Germanic, Slavic, Hindi, Persian etc) or from the aboriginal Langauges (ie Austaloid, Ainu or Basque). It is not just similarities but how & when these similarities occured. The same with the other language families.

There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002
Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969
Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

This message is a reply to:
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Peg
Member (Idle past 4930 days)
Posts: 2703
From: melbourne, australia
Joined: 11-22-2008


Message 266 of 348 (552263)
03-27-2010 9:32 PM
Reply to: Message 264 by nwr
03-26-2010 7:35 PM


Re: Denial Of The Evidence
nwr writes:
I was just pointing out that it does not help your claim that the Tower of Babel describes an actual event and is not merely an ancient fable.
and that wasnt the point of my bringing it up
Zen Monkey claimed that the chinese had no influence from the mesopotamians because the chinese were far far away and already had an established language of their own around the time of the socalled 'babel' account.
So, if you agree that linguists use similarities in words to establish a link, why should the similarity between the chinese words and mesopotamian ideas not prove such a link?
Do they only identify and establish links under some circumstances but not others...can they pick and choose which links they accept and which links they reject? And what would they base such rejection or acceptance upon?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 264 by nwr, posted 03-26-2010 7:35 PM nwr has replied

Replies to this message:
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Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2331 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


(1)
Message 267 of 348 (552279)
03-27-2010 11:12 PM
Reply to: Message 263 by Peg
03-26-2010 6:52 PM


Let's stop treating coincidence as "evidence"
Peg, I think it's time for you to drop this line of argument about some sort of relationship between the people and/or language of ancient China and those of ancient Mesopotamia. Your statements do not lend any kind of coherent support to the Tower of Babel story being "historical", and more importantly, they do nothing to address the substantial evidence that makes it impossible for the story to be literally true in any sense.
That Chinese symbol you cited, which can be translated into English as "boat" or "ship", is in indeed built up from three symbols, each of which can be used in isolation with their own meanings. Unfortunately, the "compound" meaning that you derived from them is almost certainly the wrong one. Yes, the first of the three can stand alone as another word that translates to "boat" in English, and it's used in several compound characters that all refer various to kinds boats, ships, or other vessels that operate on water. But the third symbol (the square) actually means "mouth" in the sense of "open end, entrance, gate", as in "the mouth of a river", while the middle part, which usually stands alone to mean "8", can also refer to "all around, all sides".
So rather than referring to a boat with 8 people (or "8 mouths") on it, it's far more likely that this Chinese character (船) was drawn to refer to a kind of boat or ship that is used to navigate both rivers and seas ("all around the mouth"). It has nothing at all to do with 8 people, let alone Noah's Arc or any sort of flood myth. Of course, I really haven't had much exposure to the history of the Chinese language, so there may well be some other explanation for how this symbol came about -- maybe it was assembled on the basis of phonetic values of the parts. But any relation to Noah's Arc is absurd.
Now, what about the more substantial issues: the discrepancy between your own time frame for the Babel story (somewhere around 2100 BCE, based on Peleg's 239-year life span, according to as-yet unspecified sources?), and the physical evidence that people in China were using symbols a few thousand years earlier -- symbols that anticipated the Chinese writing system, which itself was already fully developed and in use in China very close to your date range for Babel (not more than a few hundred years later, and probably around the same time).
And of course, there's also the time depth of Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics: these systems were created, and as linguistic analysis clearly shows, they were already being used phonetically (i.e. symbols put together into words on the basis of their sounds, not their original pictographic meanings), long before your date range for Babel.
And lest there be any doubt, the sound systems of Sumerian and "pre-Babel" Egyptian were quite distinct: at the points when these two writing systems were developed, they were being used to represent two mutually unintelligible languages. This has been confirmed by the linguists who draw the trees of relationships among languages, based on the written words in the respective languages, their meanings, their grammar, and their apparent pronunciations.
The Babel story never had any direct evidence to support it, because it was invented to supply a facile answer to the question of why people from different places spoke different languages. It wasn't until the 1800's that scholars of philology began to recognize the systematic relationships among certain groups of languages, the field of historical linguistics was born, and the "comparative method" for hypothesizing the family trees of related languages was formalized on the basis of observed patterns in current, living languages and dialects, as well as the physical evidence of written records from various ages and locations, spanning thousands of years and the whole Eurasian continent and Mediterranean region.
We now understand that language change is an intrinsic, inexorable, never-ending process; the geographic dispersion of one group into two or more isolated groups will lead inevitably to distinct dialects after a fairly small number of generations, and then later to distinct languages if the isolation persists for enough additional generations. This is the correct answer to the question that originally gave rise to the Babel story. That story is nothing more than a myth that began as a made-up tale, like Thor's lightening and thunder. The tale wasn't even invented by the Hebrews; they just adopted it into their scripture, changing some details to suit their message, because there was no other explanation available at the time.
I find it astonishing (and pretty appalling) that adults who are educated enough to use computers are still bent on treating the Babel story as factual history, and when the real facts are explained to them in detail, they deny or ignore the facts, rather than accept that the story is a myth.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : (had to "diable smileys")

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

This message is a reply to:
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nwr
Member
Posts: 6408
From: Geneva, Illinois
Joined: 08-08-2005
Member Rating: 5.1


Message 268 of 348 (552283)
03-27-2010 11:38 PM
Reply to: Message 266 by Peg
03-27-2010 9:32 PM


Re: Denial Of The Evidence
Peg writes:
So, if you agree that linguists use similarities in words to establish a link, why should the similarity between the chinese words and mesopotamian ideas not prove such a link?
I'm not a linguist, so I cannot say what they use. I would consider similarity in words to be weak evidence. I would want a substantial coherent network of such evidence in order to draw conclusions. In particular, there has to be more that what could be considered mere coincidence.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 266 by Peg, posted 03-27-2010 9:32 PM Peg has not replied

  
ZenMonkey
Member (Idle past 4511 days)
Posts: 428
From: Portland, OR USA
Joined: 09-25-2009


(2)
Message 269 of 348 (552296)
03-28-2010 3:21 AM
Reply to: Message 266 by Peg
03-27-2010 9:32 PM


And your evidence is...?
Peg writes:
Zen Monkey claimed that the chinese had no influence from the mesopotamians because the chinese were far far away and already had an established language of their own around the time of the socalled 'babel' account.
Well, almost, but not quite.
Here's what I asked for way back in Message 150:
quote:
How about showing how worldwide language dispersal patterns are clear indications that the story of the Tower of Babel is based on fact?
And then in Message 180:
quote:
You're not proving anything simply by asserting that there are a lot of languages around. What I asked for was evidence showing that the geographic distribution of languages and language families is consistent with a mass dispersal from a central point in the Middle East in historical times. That shouldn't be so hard, should it?
Related languages tend to be neighbors, and languages travel as people travel, becoming more and more different from both their ancestors and their siblings as time goes by. French and Spanish are pretty similar, having both split off from Latin relatively recently and both being spoken in the same part of the world. Latin is also related to Sanskrit, both being from the Indo-European family, but there the relationship is more distant and not as immediately obvious. Nevertheless, it can be demonstrated convincingly that once a single group of people spoke a root language that ultimately split into, among many others, Sanskrit and Latin as the speakers moved off into different directions. By studying the relationships in languages, one can map out the movements of people from one place to another, and can even date how long ago related languages split off from each other. So if the Tower of Babel is true, and it happened only a few thousand years ago, then you should be able to map out the dispersal of all human languages from where that tower once stood.
And your answer to that is to show how people who can't read Chinese, well, can't read Chinese? This whole nonsense about the character for "ship" somehow meaning "eight people in a boat" is utterly beside the point even if it weren't nonsense. I'm asking about linguistic evidence to support the theory that all known human languages originated in the Near East in historical times.
Look at how linguistic evidence works.
Languages change over time. They split off into dialects then eventually develop into new languages. They borrow words and grammatical structures from each other. Words are primary evidence of the settlement, interaction, migration, and dispersal of human cultures. Words are living history.
Linguists are people who have studied languages and their relationships. Even those of us who aren't experts can look at the following and make some pretty basic deductions:
lingua Italian
langue French
lengua Spanish
lingua Portuguese
Could it be that these are related words? Maybe this would also help:
limba Sardinian
limba Romanian
llengua Catalan
lhengua Mirandese
Could this have anything to do with the fact that all of these languages come from countries where Latin once dominated? Is it at all possible that all these words are somehow not only related to each other, but might also all be related to the Latin word linguam? Maybe?
What linguists - that is to say, people who have actually spent decades of their lives studying these things - can do is to use evidence like this to establish relationships among many, many individual languages and language groups. Here's the family tree for Indo-European, the major language family of which English is just one tiny branch.
Remember, linguistics can establish relationships among people both chronologically and geographically. In other words, you can tell who lived where and when. You can even re-create languages for which there are no written records and that have been extinct for millenina.
The above family tree shows relationships that go back thousands of years. And Indo-European is only one of hundreds of distinct language families around the world. Your job was to show how a mass dispersal of all of humanity from a single location in the Near East would result in the patterns of language families around the planet in just a few thousand years. How did all this variety arise in that short amount of time? For example, how did the ancestors of all the people who speak Oto-Manguean languages somehow travel from the Near East , arrive in Central America and then evolve from one root into over 20 distinct languages? (We'll ignore for the moment that the archaeological evidence establishes that the speakers of these languages have been in Central America since at least two thousand years before your proposed date for the Tower of Babel story.) Remember, there are no other languages related to the Oto-Manguean family anywhere else, so the original Oto-Mangueans had to have traveled all that way so rapidly that they didn't interact with anyone else linguistically. Then they had to have evolved all the separate languages in that family just as rapidly. How did this all happen in just 4000 years or so? Where is your evidence that this is what happened?
That's the point of this thread. Not made-up stories about mis-readings of single Chinese characters. Not speculations. What is your evidence?
Edited by ZenMonkey, : Spelling, dammit. And added a map.

I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John Lydon
What's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a new puppy? The puppy eventually grows up and quits whining.
-Steven Dutch

This message is a reply to:
 Message 266 by Peg, posted 03-27-2010 9:32 PM Peg has not replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 270 of 348 (552339)
03-28-2010 9:01 AM
Reply to: Message 215 by Peg
03-24-2010 2:59 AM


Re: back to topic of linguistics
If you deny that the character for ship consits of the numeral 8, a vessel and mouths/people, then please address the evidence for that
Well, I guess nobody wants to present any, you know, evidence that the interpretation of that character as a phrase is valid.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 215 by Peg, posted 03-24-2010 2:59 AM Peg has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 271 by Otto Tellick, posted 03-28-2010 10:54 AM JonF has not replied

  
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