"Brit-Am Now"-293
September 15, 2003
1. Scottish Place-Name Society
2. Korea and Japan =
Ammon and Moab?
3. Supermarket molluscs reveal Roman secret
4.
Afro-Centric View Probably Partially Correct.
5. Biblical Proofs no.22: Best
Places
1. Scottish Place-Name Society
Visit the Scottish
Place-Name Society website at
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/institutes/sassi/spns/index.htm
2.
Korea and Japan = Ammon and Moab?
Are Korea and Japan descended from Ammon
and Moab? Reactions?
As far as I know no-one has previously raised this
possibility but it could
explain a lot.
DNA tests reveal a possibility of
significant overlap in the male line between
Tibet and Japan.
3.
Supermarket molluscs reveal Roman secret
By Kristine Krug, in Salford
The
secret of imperial purple has been rediscovered.
A British amateur
chemist has worked out how the ancient Romans dyed the
togas of emperors
this deep colour thanks to a bacterium found in cockles
from the supermarket
Tesco.
The hue had special significance as the colour of imperial power.
Cleopatra
also had the sails on her ship dyed the same colour.
The
recipe for the dye had been kept a craft secret, even in ancient Egypt
and
Rome. There are few references to the dying process in the historical
literature.
Green to purple
Modern chemistry can make every
shade of every colour, but retired engineer
John Edmonds is interested in
how the ancients managed to make dyes from
natural materials.
He
explained to the British Association science festival in Salford,
Greater
Manchester, how he rediscovered the secret of imperial purple after
studying
the fermentation process of indigo pigments from the woad plant.
With
help of researchers in Reading and from Israel he has been able to
establish
the vital role played by a bacterium in chemically reducing (the
addition of
electrons) the ancient pigments so that they will dissolve in a
dye
solution.
The pigment for imperial purple was derived from Murex
molluscs, a form of
shellfish. So, Mr Edmunds reasoned that he could try to
use the related
common cockle.
He bought a jar of them from Tesco.
"Having removed the vinegar, I placed
several of the cockles with some of
the purple pigment in a vat consisting
of a 2 lb jam jar."
Modern
jeans
The cockles are thought to harbour a bacterium that is crucial in
reducing
the dye. Wood ash was added to the vat to ensure the mixture did
not turn
acidic.
The mixture was then kept at 50 Celsius for about 10
days.
Wool dipped in the pigment turned green at first but, eventually,
in
contact with light, it turned purple.
The recreation of the old
dying method might have implications for
present-day
practice.
Currently, tonnes of chemicals are needed to reduce the dye for
denim blue
jeans, resulting in large quantities of sulphur waste.
Mr
Edmonds said: "University of Reading scientists are trying to understand
how
the bacterium reduces indigo in order to develop a clean biotechnology
to
replace the chemical process for indigo reduction in the future." Story
from
BBC NEWS:
4. Afro-Centric View Probably Partially
Correct.
Afro-Centric theories claim that people from Africa were primarily
responsible for founding civilization and spread all over world. These
ideas are considered eccentric and part of the lunatic fringe.
Even
though these people exaggerate however they do seem to have a point.
Ancient
Egyptian civilization and its offshoots was important on a
world-wide scale;
there were connections between Africa and India,
etc. This is consistent
with the Bible and with Brit-Am understanding.
The following article may
therefore be of interest:
It is based on the work of Clyde Winters whom we
have quoted in the
past and whose views in my opinion are worth
considering.
From: "M. Washington" <best@mail.datanet.hu>
MEROITIC,
EGYPTIAN, AND OTHER ANCIENT RELATED SCRIPTS
OUTLINE
[A]
SUMMARY
[B] MORE ON THE CONTENT
[C] THE LINKS
I. SOUTH
AFRICAN PREHISTORIC SAN ROCK ENGRAVINGS
II. MEROITIC WRITING OF
NORTHERN SUDAN ON THE NILE
III. HIEROGLYPHICS OF MAORI IN NEW
ZEALAND
IV. HIEROGLYPHICS OF THE UBAID PERIOD OF SUMER
V. THE DOGON SCRIPT OF MALI
VI. A SOMALI WOMAN WITH A DOT IN
THE MIDDLE OF A CIRCLE
VII. AN INDIAN GIRL WITH A DOT IN THE MIDDLE
OF A CIRCLE
VIII. CLYDE WINTERS ON MEROITIC, EGYPTIAN, AND
OTHER
ANCIENT RELATED SCRIPTS
(If the links wrap around, they
wont display. You may have to copy and
paste the second part of a broken url
onto the first in the Explorer address
panel)
[A] WHY THIS POST WAS
WRITTEN
I was drawn to write this post some days ago when encountering
the
translation in [I] below of the Meroitic script of Nubia because I so
often
read that it has not been translated. But, for those few of you who
dont
know, it has been translated (see II and VIII). And it is similar to
scripts
found in Egypt, Sumer, India, and New Zealand. The links provide the
visual
evidence. When seeing the scholarly contribution that Clyde Winters
has made
to this discussion over 20 years, I thought to upgrade the original
post.
The present writer has seen a commonality in Egyptian script with
so-called
prehistoric and ancient (historic) writing systems. He believes in
what
might be called the verifiable prehistoric: that meaning that whenever
a
cluster of common features (not a single one or two) is found among near
or
distant cultures, that it must indicate common origins. Ten years or
earlier
back, such a claim might be pooh-poohed. But, today, genetic evidence
at
Stanford, Oxford, and elsewhere, shows the most ancient of the
modern
cultures existed in common cultural sphere from late Pleistocene to
early
Holocene Northeast Africa through Anatolia. A cultural sphere which
existed
before European hunter-gatherer incursions after the outset of
the
Neolithic. Those lands were initially covered by Africans; by
people
originating in Northeast Africa.
Why common scripts? So, where
these people traveled (as in a closed hand in
Northeast Africa geographically
opening with fingers ending in, well & the
five corners of the world) the
same cluster of Neolithic advances are seen
in the places geneticists show
they went be it Polynesia, North America, or
Asia. UNDERSTANDING THE
MONGOLOID ISSUE: If we understand the San as
almond-eyed and being more
heavily concentrated in the higher North African
regions and the Negroid
types being more southerly placed, that can account
for the Neolithic Asian
population with the almond eye in Asia and North
America (Indians)
originating, none the less, in Africa. See, for instance:
Yuehai Ke and Li
Jin, et. al., African Origin of Modern Humans in East Asia:
A Tale of 12,000
Y Chromosomes, Science, 292:5519, pp. 1151-1153, Issue of
11 May
2001.
The present posts shows symbols found in writing that are common
to
prehistoric South Africa, the Sudan, Egypt, Sumer of the Ubaid
period
preceding cuneiform, India, and used by the Maori of New Zealand. It
was not
professional Egyptologists but drunk sailors with women on their
minds who
recorded this script in New Zealand back in the 1850s (the book
was
published in the 1860s). They probably didnt even know of Egypt
or
hieroglyphics and surely didnt care even if they knew. This shows all
the
more how genuine their recordings are in their representation
of
hieroglyphics. They wrote them down when they were drunk with women in
their
arms!
This writing is variously found inscribed on outdoor rock
surfaces, tablets,
clothes, and variously tattooed or painted on the human
body (as in the case
of VI and VII. I think a problem in Egyptology is that
the purists cant
conceive of cultural influences upon Egypt from earlier
southern cultures
nor imagine the migration of families and tribes from Egypt
to India and
such places where people went. Keep in mind that Buddhism shares
at least
half-a-dozen features in common with Egyptian religions. And I
havent yet
discussed the Shinto of Japan and its apparent Osirian
connections. Simply
because not every tribe in Asia has written
documentation of the prehistoric
travels of their ancestors does not mean
that they originated in those
places 40 trillion years ago springing up from
the earth like seeds in a
garden.
THE FUTURE OF THE PURIST
EGYPTOLOGIST: The purist form of Egyptology, in the
opinion of the present
writer, is forcing itself into extinction and making
itself a less-and-less
viable social science when it attempts to keep Egypt
in a geo-temporal box
that largely only subjected lands to the south and had
little or nothing to
do with lands beyond the classical Middle East. But,
what am I. Just a little
peon. A little twerp offering ideas that should
remain in the realm of
professional discussion. I. An arm chair philosopher.
A stupid idiot. They
say that ignorance is bliss. Well. I be happy.
Here are the links. Are
they the result of people independently inventing
them? Are the similarities
freaks of nature?
[I] SOUTH AFRICAN PREHISTORIC SAN ROCK
ENGRAVINGS
http://www.mightymall.com/TheSecondBookImages/08-10-100-48-10_S.Africa.Prehi
storic.San.engravings.found.from.there.to.Egypt,.India.jpg
Linda
M. Slack, Rock engravings from Driekops Eiland, and other sites
south-west of
Johannesburg, (Centaur Press, London, 1962), p. 15.
[II] MEROITIC WRITING
OF NORTHERN SUDAN ON THE NILE
http://www.mightymall.com/TheSecondBookImages/08-10-100-50-01_Sudan.Meriotic
.Writing.like.Predynastic.S.African.jpg
In:
Dietrich Wildung, Sudan ancient kingdoms of the Nile, (Flammarion,
Paris,
1997), p. 254.
[III] HIEROGLYPHICS OF MAORI IN NEW ZEALAND
http://www.mightymall.com/TheSecondBookImages/08-10-300-15-01_New-Zealand-Ma
ori-writing-like-hieroglyphics-from-1861-book.jpg
Richard
Taylor, Te Ika a Maui; or New Zealand and its inhabitants, 2nd
edition,
(William Macintosh, London [1861] 1870).
[IV] HIEROGLYPHICS OF THE
UBAID PERIOD OF SUMER
http://www.mightymall.com/TheSecondBookImages/08-10-500-09-01_Sumer.Ubaid.4t
h-Mill.African.writing.like.Egyptian.,Maori.jpg
In
an A. Parrot book. The hut used by the Bambotides (Pygmy), San, and
Nubians
is the beehive hut and has been in the archeological record
for
deca-millenniums. It is the beehive hut hieroglyphic used during the
Ubaid
period that represented House.
[V] THE DOGON OF
MALI
http://www.mightymall.com/TheSecondBookImages/08-10-100-32-07_Mali.Dogon.wri
ting.similar.to.Egptian.jpg
Not
all. A few similarities. Found in National Geographic
[VI] A SOMALI WOMAN
WITH A DOT IN THE MIDDLE OF A CIRCLE
http://www.mightymall.com/TheSecondBookImages/08-10-100-47-01_Somali.Woman.w
ith.Circle-Dot-Sun.Hieroglyphic.on.Face.jpg
<http://www.mightymall.com/TheSecondBookImages/08-10-100-47-01_Somali.Woman.
with.Circle-Dot-Sun.Hieroglyphic.on.Face.jpg>
That
the woman is Somali. That she is from a culture in Northeast Africa
In a
Beckwith book.
[VII] AN INDIAN GIRL WITH A DOT IN THE MIDDLE OF A
CIRCLE
http://www.mightymall.com/TheSecondBookImages/08-10-400-05-01.02_India.a.Mar
ia.Girl.Central.India.w.Dot-Circle.Hieroglyphic.jpg
<http://www.mightymall.com/TheSecondBookImages/08-10-400-05-01.02_India.a.Ma
ria.Girl.Central.India.w.Dot-Circle.Hieroglyphic.jpg>
Karl
Gröning, Decorated skin a world survey of body art, (Thames and
Hudson,
London, 1997), p. 186.
He writes: The face of this young Maria is
decorated with the traditional
tattoo patterns. A circle on the forehead
symbolizes the full moon, a
crescent the half moon; a circle with a dot in
the middle is the sign of the
sun.
[VIII] MEROITIC AND OTHER ANCIENT
RELATED SCRIPTS
Clyde Winters deciphered the Meroitic script back in
1983. A list of his
publications on its decipherment and can put the entire
discussion into
better perspective:
Winters, A.A. 1984. "A note on
Tokharian and
Meroitic".Meroitic Newsletter, no. 23:
18-21.
____________.1988. "The Dravidian and Manding substratum in
Tokharian". Central Asiatic Journal, 32 (1-2): 131-141.
------------.1989.
"Chiekh Anta Diop at le Dechiffrement de
l'ecriture Meroitique", Revue
Martiniguaise de Sciences
Humaines et de Litterature, no.8:
141-153.
Winters, A.A. 1984. "A note on Tokharian and Meroitic".Meroitic
Newsletter,
no. 23: 18-21.
____________.1988. "The Dravidian and Manding
substratum in Tokharian".
Central Asiatic Journal, 32 (1-2):
131-141.
------------.1989. "Chiekh Anta Diop at le Dechiffrement de
l'ecriture
Meroitique", Revue Martiniguaise de Sciences Humaines et de
Litterature,
no.8: 141-153.
Winters, C.A.(1998). Meroitic funerary
text. Part 1, Inscription
Journal of Ancient Egypt, 1 (1), 29-34.
Winters, C.A.(1998b). Meroitic funerary text. Part 2, Inscription
Journal of
Ancient Egypt, 1 (2), 41-55.
Winters,C.A. (1999). Inscriptions of
Tanydamani, Nubica et Ethiopica,
IV/V, 355-388.
I discuss the decipherment
of Meroitic and other African writing systems at
the following site:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/anwrite.htm
Well.
I guess that does it. Have a nice day, everybody.
Marc
Washington
5. Biblical Proofs no.22: Best Places
The Lost Ten
Tribes will be in islands (Isaiah 41:1), in the best places
(translated in
the KJ as chief men), at the ends of the earth meaning
geographical
extremities (41:8-9).
[Isaiah 41:9] THOU WHOM I HAVE TAKEN FROM THE ENDS
OF THE EARTH, AND CALLED
THEE FROM THE CHIEF MEN THEREOF, AND SAID UNTO
THEE, THOU ART MY SERVANT; I
HAVE CHOSEN THEE, AND NOT CAST THEE
AWAY.
THE CHIEF MEN THEREOFin Hebrew Atsiliah. Atselmeans height,
noble,
nobility, quality. The expression can preferably be tranlsated as the
best
(or most noble) places thereof.
I once saw a book for
professional scribes. Amongst the subjects discussed
in this work were
parchments made out of animal skins. Torah scrolls,
mezuzahs, and the like
are written on animal parchment. The parchment needs
to be of good quality
to enable writing. The best cowhides, the book said,
come from North America
due to the climate and environment of that area. It
quoted a Talmudic verse
saying that some places are more blessed than others.
All those areas
where the Lost Ten Tribes now populate are naturally
blessed regions when
compared to the rest of world. North America, the
British Isles,
Scandinavia, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and
South Africa have
all blessed physically in so far as they are full of
natural resources,
relatively free from diseases and plague, and have
envigorating climates on
the whole. In Australia there is a problem of skin
cancer due to the
plentiful sunshine but from other considerations the
environment is an
inspiring and joyful one.
Even Scandinavia which is often
considered a cold forbidding area is
actually a healthy blessed region, as
the following quotations (from the
Cybalist Linguistic list)
confirm):
<< People tend to think of Scandinavia as a frozen
wasteland, but in fact
it's not; the winters are less severe than Russia's.
In Norway, you also
have stupendous fishery resources (Atlantic salmon,
among others) which
tend to be ignored in the literature. While you had to
work hard in the
midnight sun of summer to ensure you kept warm in the
winter, a virgin,
relatively thinly-populated Scandinavia can almost be
thought of as
paradisical.
<<Scandinavia is also physically
isolated. The continent-wide disturbances
which have periodically afflicted
Europe (e.g., warlike Indo-Iranians,
Huns, Mongols, Charles V, Napoleon, to
mention only a few) tend to bypass
the Northland. The Fenno-Scandian block
has pretty much been left alone all
through history.>> Mark
Odegard.
<<The main problem with living in these parts is: How do
stay alive in
the winter? You can keep out the cold by proper housing and
clothing
but what would you eat?
Since Nature provides nothing in those
months (except for ice
fishing, brrrr) survival hinges on technologies to
preserve food.
One method is to keep farm animals and slaughter them in
winter.
Another is to keep durable stuff about, like cereals (no, not
corn
flakes). But you could also salt or smoke fish.
(Lower) Saxony, the
old home of the Saxons has the salt mines at
Lüneburg. Denmark and Scania had
the fishing in the Sound. Until the
16th century herring would leave the
Baltic at certain seasons, and,
according to some chroniclers, in such
numbers that you could place a
spear in the water and it would stand upright.
In the late middle
ages this was the basis of Danish wealth: Sound herrings,
bought and
salted by the Hanse Merchants on the markets in Skanör and
Falsterbo.
Standard history will tell you that the importance of this export
was
due to Catholics eating fish during fast; personally I think
they
constituted a large part of food produced in Denmark
then.>>
Torsten
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