Archive for Language and archeology
August 14, 2024 @ 5:31 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Etymology, Language and archeology, Language and culture, Language and food, Language and history, Orthography, Philology, Phonetics and phonology, Reconstructions
As a starting point for pierogi, here's a basic definition:
Pierogi, one or more dumplings of Polish origin, made of unleavened dough filled with meat, vegetables, or fruit and boiled or fried or both. In Polish pierogi is the plural form of pieróg (“dumpling”), but in English the word pierogi is usually treated as either singular or plural.
(Britannica)
Now, turning to Asia, we are familiar with the Tang period scholar, poet, and official, Duàn Chéngshì 段成式 (d. 863), as the compiler of Yǒuyáng zázǔ 酉陽雜俎 (Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang), a bountiful miscellany of tales and legends from China and abroad. Yǒuyáng zázǔ is especially famous for including the first published version of the Cinderella story in the world, but it also contains many other stories and themes derived from foreign sources.
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August 5, 2024 @ 6:52 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and archeology, Language and history
[This is a guest post by Craig Benjamin, the leading authority on Yuezhi history. It is a follow-up to "Yuezhi archeology without concern for Tocharian language" (8/4/24)]
"China Reaches Back in Time to Challenge the West. Way, Way Back: The country’s archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road to trace the reach of ancient Chinese civilization, disputing long-held beliefs", by Sha Hua, WSJ (7/29/24).
A recent article published in the Wall Street Journal concerning attempts by Chinese and Uzbek archaeologists to unearth material evidence of the Yuezhi and early Kushans makes interesting reading. The author prefaces their account by placing the work of the archaeologists in the context of Xi Jinping’s efforts to expand the scope and influence of Chinese civilization, arguing that the efforts of Chinese researchers in various global locations ‘has the potential to change the field of archaeology itself, along with China’s place in the sweep of human history’. However, rather than promoting the influence of Chinese civilization in Central Asia, the archaeologists appear to be intent upon advancing nationalist claims in support of China’s Belt and Road partner Uzbekistan by arguing, on the basis of very slender evidence, that the Kushans ‘were descendants of the local population’.
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August 4, 2024 @ 6:10 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and archeology, Language and history
We have entered a new chapter in the history of the so-called Silk Road. What has happened? For the first time in the history of the field of Silk Road Studies, Chinese archeologists have gone out into the field beyond their own political borders. They are leading their own expeditions and carrying out their own excavations in other countries. An American archeologist who has worked in the stans (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) for three decades and is out there exploring and excavating right now — always slowly and patiently — and who has close ties to the local archeologists, tells me that the region is crawling with Chinese archeologists who are working in support of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), for which see below. As a result, they are now in a position to interpret their discoveries as they see fit, and that takes a radically different approach from what scholars have been saying, among other things, about an elusive people known as the Yuezhi for the last century and more.
"China Reaches Back in Time to Challenge the West. Way, Way Back: The country’s archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road to trace the reach of ancient Chinese civilization, disputing long-held beliefs", by Sha Hua, WSJ (7/29/24).
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July 8, 2024 @ 8:16 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and archeology, Language and history, Language and the military, Uncategorized
We have occasionally mentioned Sarmatians on Language Log, but usually in association with the Scythians, of whom we have often spoken (most recently here, with extensive bibliography).
These two peoples of ancient times both spoke languages in the Iranian language family and lived in the area north of the Black Sea. The languages and cultures of the Scythians and Sarmatians were related but distinct. In particular their styles of warfare were different. The Scythians were noted as mounted archers. They may have been the inventors or one of the inventors of the stirrup. The stirrup enabled mounted archers to fire (shoot) arrows reasonably accurately while riding. The Scythians attacked in a mass firing of arrows. If their adversaries were not overwhelmed by the hail of arrows then the Scythians turned and rode to a safe distance for regrouping to mount another mass attack.
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July 4, 2024 @ 6:28 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Announcements, Borrowing, Etymology, Language and archeology, Language and religion, Typography
Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-first issue: "Placing Western Coins Near the Deceased in Ancient China: The Origin of a Custom," by Pin LYU:
ABSTRACT: This article traces the custom in ancient China of placing Western coins in proximity to corpses during burial. Academic attention has focused on the origin of the custom since Marc Aurel Stein initially connected the finding in Turfan of Western coins placed in the mouths or on the eyes of the corpses with Charon's obol, the ancient Greek coin that, similarly placed, paid Charon to ferry the dead to the underworld. Some scholars agreed with Stein's proposal, while others suggested that it was instead a traditional Chinese funerary ritual, unrelated to Greece. This article moves away from over-reliance on written sources and aims at uncovering the patterns underlying this custom, through the collection and analysis of available archaeological material. Results indicate that the custom possibly originated in the Hellenistic practice of Charon's obol and then traveled to China with Sogdian immigrants, developing into a regional funeral ritual in Turfan.
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June 10, 2024 @ 7:51 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Announcements, Classification, Language and archeology, Language and art
Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-forty-eighth issue:
"A Historical Perspective on the Central Asian Kingdom of Kucha," by Angela F. Howard.
http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp348_kucha.pdf
ABSTRACT
The article reexamines the dating of the earliest Buddhist cave paintings in the ancient Kingdom of Kucha, which was located in what is now Xinjiang, paying particular attention to the site of Kizil. Based on multiple Carbon-14 results spanning thirty years, historical and religious documents, and the author’s in situ research, the dating proposed is earlier than the traditional one, considered to be circa 500 AD. The latter was formulated, close to a century ago, by the scholar-explorer Ernst Waldschmidt on the basis of the “Indo-Iranian” style and is still used in art historical literature. Relying especially on Kucha’s comprehensive history, this paper suggests that the earliest cave paintings might have been coeval with the flourishing of Buddhism in Kucha during the fourth century. Given the centrality of the Tocharian language to the Sarvāstivādin Buddhist school associated with Kucha’s monasteries and the relative stylistic independence of Kucha from India, the author recommends adopting the term “Tocharian style” rather than “Indo-Iranian style” to describe artistic production in Kucha prior to the Tang.
Keywords: Tocharian, Central Asia, Caves
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All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge.
To view our catalog, visit http://www.sino-platonic.org/
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June 5, 2024 @ 12:16 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Language and archeology, Language and astronomy, Language and culture, Language and history, Language and mathematics, Language and philosophy, Language and science
Wherein we embark upon an inquisition into the divine proportions of the dodecahedron and its congeners, take a peek at the history of accounting, explore the mind of Leonardo da Vinci, and examine the humanistic physics of Werner Heisenberg*.
[*Heisenberg's father was a professor of medieval and modern Greek studies at the University of Munich in Germany. Heisenberg had more a “humanistic” education, i.e. more Latin and Greek than in natural sciences. One morning the young Werner Heisenberg discovered reading Plato's Timaeus a description of the world with regular polyhedra. Heisenberg could not understand why Plato being so rational started to use speculative ideas. But finally he was fascinated by the idea that it could be possible to describe the Universe mathematically. He could not understand why Plato used the Polyhedra as the basic units in his model, but Heisenberg considered that in order to understand the world it is necessary to understand the Physics of the atoms. (source) He contributed to atomic theory through formulating quantum mechanics in terms of matrices and in discovering the uncertainty principle, which states that a particle's position and momentum cannot both be known exactly. (Britannica | Apr 23, 2024)
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We have had an exciting, joyful journey through dodecahedra land, from the archeological discovery of a new specimen in England, to deep, dense discussions about the meaning and purpose of these mysterious objects, to scampering through and clambering over a playground installation of a related form. In this post, I would like to return to the essential twelveness of the dodecahedra.
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May 24, 2024 @ 11:05 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and archeology, Language and astronomy, Language and culture, Language and mathematics, Language and science
I stopped short when I passed by this piece of gym equipment in a kindergarten playground near my home.
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May 12, 2024 @ 4:43 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Language and archeology, Language and astronomy, Language and science
A little over a year ago, Frank Jacobs published this admirable survey of a mysterious object that has perplexed and preoccupied us for the past week — The Mysterious Dodecahedrons of the Roman Empire, Big Think, Atlas Obscura (5/12/23):
The first of many of these puzzling objects was unearthed almost three centuries ago, and we still don’t know what they were for.
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May 11, 2024 @ 7:19 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Announcements, Etymology, Language and archeology, Language and biology, Language and science
The first part of this series, "Indigo and cabbage", written the day before Thanksgiving in 2023, is one of the most satisfying and fulfilling posts I've ever made. This follow-up is even more of a delight, because here I get to introduce a new paper by anthropologist-linguist-textile expert Elizabeth J. W. Barber, and what a tour de force it is (see below).
Here I give an extended account of her scholarship, especially her early activities in the computer analysis of Chinese, because she was instrumental in helping to make that possible at its foundational stage.
She earned a bachelor's degree from Bryn Mawr College in Archaeology and Greek in 1962. Her chief mentor was Mabel Lang from whom she learned Linear B and who advised her honors thesis on Linear A. In addition to Lang, Wayland wrote her thesis under Emmett L. Bennett Jr. Her thesis used computer indices of the Hagia Triada Linear A texts in an attempt to decipher its signs and symbols. The computer indices were made via punched cards, a method which was preceded by the work of Alice E. Kober on Linear B. She earned her PhD from Yale University in linguistics in 1968. Her doctoral study at Yale University was supervised by Sydney Lamb, under whom she wrote her dissertation, "The Computer Aided Analysis of Undeciphered Ancient Texts."
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May 10, 2024 @ 6:27 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Language and animals, Language and archeology, Language and culture
By now, we have conclusively traced the path of the domesticated horse from the area around the southern Urals and Pontic Steppe through Central Asia to East Asia. It's time to pay more attention to another equid, this one not so glamorous, but still redoubtable in its own formidable way: Equus asinus asinus.
Samira Müller, Milad Abedi, Wolfgang Behr, and Patrick Wertmann, "Following the Donkey’s Trail (Part I): a Linguistic and Archaeological Study on the Introduction of Domestic Donkeys to China", International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics, 6 (2024), 104–144. (pdf)
Abstract
How and when did domestic donkeys arrive in China? This article sets out to uncover the donkeys’ forgotten trail from West Asia across the Iranian plateau to China, using archaeological, art historical, philological, and linguistic evidence. Following Parpola and Janhunen’s (2011) contribution to our understanding of the Indian wild ass and Mitchell’s (2018) overview of the history of the domestic donkey in West Asia and the Mediterranean, we will attempt to shed light on the transmission of the beast of burden to Eastern Eurasia.
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May 7, 2024 @ 11:04 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Announcements, Language and animals, Language and archeology, Language and art, Language and astronomy, Language and biology, Writing systems
Given that we've been discussing astronomy / astrology and their relationship to the alphabet so intensely in recent weeks, I'm pleased to announce this important conference that is about to be convened: “The Power of the Planets: The Social History of Astral Sciences Between East and West”, May 20–21, 2024, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali – Università di Bologna (Ravenna, Italy).
I warmly recommend that you take a close look at the header images of two objects in The Cleveland Museum of Art: Mirror with a Coiling Dragon, China, Tang Dynasty 618-907 (https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1995.367), Drachma – Sasanian, Iran, reign of Hormizd II, 4th century (https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1966.738).
The quality of the photographs is extraordinarily fine and detailed. Using the zoom and expand functions, you can see things not clearly visible to the naked eye. Especially noteworthy is the jagged dorsal fin / frill / spine that runs along the back of the dragon on the Tang mirror and is a conspicuous counterpart of many species of dinosaurs.
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May 5, 2024 @ 7:08 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Announcements, Etymology, Historical linguistics, Language and archeology, Language and culture, Language and history
In our studies of the transmission of Indo-European language and culture across the Eurasian continent, one of the most vital research topics is that of horse-drawn wheeled vehicles. During this past semester, I taught one of the most satisfying courses of my entire half-century career, namely, "Horses and humans". Among the many engrossing subjects that we confronted are the nomenclature for wheeled vehicles, how horses were hitched to them, and so forth. Many of these questions are now authoritatively answered in the following paper by three of the world's most distinguished scholars of equine equipage.
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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-forty-fourth issue:
"From Chariot to Carriage: Wheeled Vehicles and Developments in Draft and Harnessing in Ancient China," by Joost H. Crouwel, Gail Brownrigg, and Katheryn Linduff.
https://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp344_chariot_to_carriage_in_ancient_china.pdf
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