The evolution of empathy

There's a great talk here available online at the Centre for Inquiry website that I just have to share with everyone called Evolution of empathy. The speech is very insightful and spoken in plain language. It gives a lot to think about on different societal attitudes towards moral behaviour, behavioural tendencies in social populations, and what direction we're all headed in. (No, it's not necessarily completely doom and gloom at all.) It personally gave me a few positive insights to reflect on.

It's fortunate Indiana Jones wasn't an Etruscanist

I can't say I'm terribly fond of cheaply assembled tourist sites pretending to be genuine blogs and designed to lure netizens in with minimal content while laced with a minefield of ads from top to bottom. Nonetheless, ignoring the advertisement hell (just don't click any of it) and the brainless hook that visiting these tombs "will make you feel like Indiana Jones when you explore them," Maremma Guide still has some great photos here for viewers to learn from about the construction of Etruscan tombs.

I'd just hate to see a yahoo like Indiana Jones visit them though because we all remember what happened to all the other tombs that guy visited, don't we?

The death of TV

Ever since Japan's horrible earthquake, the vultures at CTV News, CBC News, BBC news and many other news stations available on my TV have predictably latched on, chasing the sensational headlines like crack addicts chasing the pipe, providing 24-hour coverage for sadists who need to know all the calamitous details of other people's misery in the comfort of their safe living rooms. The toxicity levels of the television programs are starting to make me noxious.

If the TV news were informational and constructive at all it wouldn't bother me, but I shake my head at how consistently neurotic and obsessive these "newscasters" are at spinning everything into even bigger negatives than the world already is wrought with. While I'm usually pessimistic about a lot of things, television is giving me a Mr BadNews overdose now on a consistent basis. They've naturally latched on to the stories of damaged nuclear reactors after the earthquake and now want to make us all afraid about nuclear meltdown à la Chernobyl. But even if the dreaded worst happens, what could any viewer do about it? In what way does this news inform most of us? All it does is enrage while disempowering us as we are left clueless on how to seriously budge the giant corporate machine or aid the damaged world by any realistic and meaningul way.

If I want balanced coverage of a particular topic or to learn about something other than the Japan earthquake today (like, say, those poor people in Libya still fighting for their freedom that we all forgot about, hmm?), the internet supplies more information. I find myself instinctively turning off the TV altogether and being online. If one feels they want to help, yet again, that information is online. This is strange because, being in my mid-30s, I grew up with TV but I'm now wondering why anyone bothers with that dumb box anymore. It's just static noise. Two and Half Men again? No, thanks. Even Charlie Sheen knows it's shoveled manure so he can't be all that kookoo.

In the past decade especially, I feel like TV has become an antiquated medium for bitter old people with no taste. I google for the information I want when I need to seek out a more balanced picture of world events. I'm resourceful enough to find better shows and movies online instead of being subjected to repeat after repeat on TV.

There's probably little point to my post today other than to remark on how hopelessly irrelevant television has become to me and I'm suspecting, most of you too. I suppose this still has relevance at least to modern sociology and the topic of paradigm shifts. I celebrate TV's destruction (or to be more detailed, the complete assimilation of television into the more expansive, diverse and versatile internet medium).

Isis dethroned

In Klaus Kuhlmann's Throne (2011), I see some debatable claims that seem rooted in a naive literalism and lack of larger vision beyond the details he labours on.


Games of semantics

• "None of the many Egyptian terms referring to the 'throne' imply the 'regal' or 'religious' connotation the word carries today."

This first statement crumbles swiftly once we realize that 'throne' is not the only way to translate these words. Given the semantics he describes, English already has a good equivalent in 'seat' - at once secular and religious, regal and commonplace. The language differences he points to are selective, imaginary and misleading.


Denying cultic reverence in the throne

• "As an object, which could be desecrated (for example, by usurpation), the Egyptian throne underwent purification rites. There is no evidence, however, of it ever having received cultic reverence or having been deified (as the goddess Isis)."

His determination to diminish the widely known historical importance of the cultic throne^[1] is odd. Whether Isis is a deified throne anthropomorphized or goddess as throne is moot; the effect is the same. Despite the many ways one might perceive this object or instrument of devotion, the rites pertaining to kingship and throne remain the same nonetheless. Isis undeniably became related to the notion of authority no matter what the origin of her cult.

This cult too extended far beyond Ancient Egypt into neighbouring cultures. It would be ignorant to deny that cultic thrones were present all around the surrounding Mediterranean, among the Minoans, Mycenaeans, Hittites, and Phoenicians. An Etrusco-Punic artifact known as the Pyrgi Tablets suggests a derivative of these earlier Egyptian traditions. The artifact replaces the Egyptian goddess with fitting foreign equivalents, Etruscan Uni and Punic Ashtarte. In that inscription, it's explicitly explained that Thefarie Viliana was raised by Uni-Ashtarte's very hand to rule the city of Caere. Both Caere and Carthage share the very Egyptian theme that Kuhlmann seems to downplay: Isis as deified throne, Isis as granter of authority. To add, consider Hattic Halmasuit, a contemporaneous "throne goddess" to Egypt's north. How well versed is Kuhlmann in surrounding non-Egyptian history?

Could he be seriously dismissing the role of Isis in kingship altogether?


Goddesses and the granting of power

• "It was mainly Ra, Atum, Amun, Geb, and Horus who confirmed pharaoh's rightful claim to power by saying 'to thee I give my throne...' (e.g., Sethe Urk. IV: 563, 571)."

Listing only male deities as those who mainly "confirm pharaoh's rightful claim to power" strikes me as a bit chauvinistic. According to Egyptian legend, Isis had resurrected the divine first king of Egypt, Osiris, from death so that he may become ruler in the underworld. As Osiris represents the mortal king, Isis acts as the source and embodiment of his authority,^[2] directly shown in her active will to restore Osiris as god-king. Consider too Cleopatra's later self-association with Isis, effectively then empowering female rule as well as male.

So if this overwhelming evidence shows that Isis granted power to the ruler and gave support to his authority, why does Kuhlmann not list Isis too as a confirmer of pharaoh's right to power? Because Isis is female? Among the matrilineal Minang people of Indonesia, property is inherited through the female line. It should not then be so unusual that it's a female granting power to male rulers. The absence of Isis in his list then is an odd gap. Is there a Victorian belief at work here enforcing an outdated notion that only male entities can ever grant males power in societies?


The false dichotomy between writing and symbol

• "The block-throne sign on the head of Isis (3st: HCE) is not a symbol but 'writing' (= s/se). It allowed the identification of iconographically undifferentiated female deities just as other hieroglyphic signs like [see symbol in article] or [see symbol in article] on the head of other goddess denoted a 'reading' as 'Nephthys' or 'Nut', respectively."

Since writing is transparently symbolic in itself, Kuhlmann's pedantics grows mildly vexing. By lumping the main female deities into a big hazy pile of confusion, he artificially incubates a different artistic analysis of the female deities compared to the male ones, imposing a sexist bias. One could equally muse that the feather atop the god Shu's head is likewise "merely writing", not a full-fledged symbol, and only used to differentiate him from a cloud of vague male gods too then. In what way can Kuhlmann prove that Egyptian goddesses are, to quote his wording, "undifferentiated" - that is, in what way are female Egyptian deities as a whole any *more* undifferentiated than male Egyptian gods as a whole? I'm not as yet convinced of a difference.


So by the end of the article, Kuhlmann is making many confident statements but which have no relevance or basis to the issues he raises. Is this consistent pattern of inventing false dichotomies to write about deliberate (ie. writing vs. symbol, the semantics of 'throne' vs. that of Egyptian terms, representation of male gods vs. the allegedly more undifferentiated female goddesses, goddess as throne vs. throne deified, etc.)? Or was it accidental that he authored this big ball of hanging threads and contrary claims?

NOTES
[1] Botterweck/Ringgren, Theological dictionary of the Old Testament, vol 7 (1995), p.240 (see link): "The throne of Pharaoh was deified at an early date in a development comparable to the deification of the 'throne seat' (ḫalmašuit) in the Old Hittite period of Boghazköy. The same hieroglyph represented both the throne and the goddess Isis."
[2] Botterweck/Ringgren, Theological dictionary of the Old Testament, vol 7 (1995), p.241 (see link): "The so-called identity theory holds that Isis as the personification of the ruler's throne represents the personified power of the throne. Jürgen Osing and Kuhlmann, however, reject any etymological, morphophonemic, or semantic connection between ś.t 'throne,' and ȝśt, 'Isis,' on the grounds that the name of the goddess derives from the root wȝś (< *ȝś) and means 'the one who has sovereign power, powerful influence.' The throne symbol depicted on Isis's head represents merely a graphic aid to identification, although even the Greek Isis areatologies already interpreted this symbol as identifying the throne and Isis."; McCabe, An examination of the Isis cult with preliminary exploration into New Testament studies (2008), p.103 (see link): "A possible connection with Ra could also be illustrated by the hieroglyphic name of Isis, meaning 'seat' or 'throne' (thereby demonstrating 'her association with sovereignty')."

The Pompeiian diet of the poor

When reading the article Pompeii skeletons reveal secrets of Roman family life on the BBC website and the part about the diet of the poor, we're told that the diet may not have been so impoverished as one might assume. This reminds me a lot of the theory of the original affluent society.

Despite some criticisms against the idea of a relatively more leisurely ancient lifestyle in comparison to our hectic modern environment, one can hardly pretend that the excessive modern urbanization that we now have hasn't led to a large segment of our population being all too dependent on other entities to handle food gathering and production, sometimes to the point of crippling dependence. Afterall, how many of us city-folk pick our own berries, fish our own trout or grow our own radishes? Most have lost this ancient knowledge.

We most often go to grocery stores and buy the items we need. Yet we can't do this without first earning monetary tokens from someone else. We therefore struggle in dead-end, highly demanding, even mentally or physically toxic jobs just to acquire the means to obtain food and shelter. Our complete inter-reliance on apathetic strangers through a multi-layered economic system for even the most basic necessities is somewhat unique to modernity. And it's precisely our lack of personal autonomy in so many ways that makes us, in a manner of speaking, "less wealthy" than even our Roman antecedents.

We shouldn't feign too much shock at the notion that the poor in ancient times may have had a healthier diet than what we're capable of or are willing to supply our most vulnerable population despite all our showy technology and superficial symbols.

Illegal baby names

The following amusing article is so àpropos to the topic of society, culture and mass insanity. It's also just plain funny.

10 illegal baby names

Personally I'm stunned that the Swedish name Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (pronounced 'Albin') would be banned. I think we should name more kids such things to screw telemarketers up. I can envision hilarious scenarios in the future:

"Is there a Mr. or Mrs... um... erh... Oops, nevermind!" {Phone hangs up suddenly.}

Truth be told, despite all the well-intentioned legislation, there exist quite a share of Nancy Gaylords and Hung Dongs in the world. As far as I know, lawyers haven't objected to their parents' flagrant brutality. The entire character list of the Matrix trilogy must really dismay a lot of lawmakers, come to think of it - Mouse, Trinity, Merovingian, Morpheus, etc.

It's also fascinating how certain arbitrarily selected baby names touch such a raw nerve for lawmakers and yet eliminating child poverty is relatively low on society's list of things to do. Oh well. I guess it's true what they say: A dead malnourished baby is better than a healthy teased baby. And I leave you all to ruminate on that sad note.

The semantics of giving

Avid polyglots may eventually notice that so many innocent things can get lost in translation. Translation is a comical affair at times. I believe Etruscanists are also getting lost in translation when they try to wrap their heads around the syntactics and semantics of a quite innocent-looking verb like tur 'to give'.


First an example of bilingual confusion

Before I explain the Etruscan problem, let me illustrate a living example of confusion between, say, English and Chinese speakers. The verb "to rain" seems like such a simple little verb. How can anyone misunderstand it? When waking up to a rainy day, an English speaker may announce, "It's raining today!" while a Mandarin speaker may say, "Jintian xia yu le!" (今天下雨了！) Roughly this means the same thing, but more specifically the Chinese sentence might be translated back into English literally as "Today (jintian) has started (le) descending (xia) rain (yu)!"

What can be confusing in this language clash is not just the slightly different idiom used but also the way in which "rain" may be perceived by the speaker by way of the words and syntax chosen. In English, it's a continuous action marked in the present tense and the focus is on the state of raining. In Chinese, the action is inchoative and punctual; the verb is also unspecified for tense. What is being focused on in Chinese is the very split-second it's started raining, something which can naturally only occur abruptly. So this is why the Chinese sentence ends in the punctual marker le, leaving many Anglophones perplexed (especially when they further mistake the aspect marker as a past-tense marker).

My intended warning here is to avoid forcing one's own native semantics on foreign vocabulary. Sometimes the most straight-forward equations between tongues turn out to be a little less than exact. When Etruscanists who write books on language and who are otherwise well-versed in linguistic science linger on about the "mystery" of why the genitive is used to express the recipient of tur 'to give', I get the impression that even they are having a hard time stepping out of the boxes of their own native speech patterns.


The moment of gifting

So why is the recipient of tur marked in the genitive instead of, say, the dative? Instead of trying to force our assumed patterns on Etruscan, let's begin by just accepting what we see: What could the Etruscans be trying to express by this? Since the genitive elsewhere is so regularly used to mark the possessor, taken as is, it means simply that the recipient must be understood as equal to the possessor in these instances. Suggesting otherwise presumes added, unnecessary roles for the case ending. We should heed Occam's Razor and hold back the temptation to assume.

Personally I reason that perhaps the aspectual focus of tur, unlike in English 'give', focuses on the final result of the transfer rather than on the moment of transfer. When is the recipient equal to the possessor? When the act of giving is complete. Once the action is complete, the donor is naturally no longer the possessor. Thus, with tur treated as a punctual and resultative action, there's no need to speak of a special "dative usage" for the genitive. The genitive instead can now be seen to consistently mark the possessor, even in cases where "give" is used.


Recipient as possessor

I've just noticed that John Newman has written the perfect book to understand cases where the recipient is equal to the possessor in "give"-constructions called Give: A cognitive linguistic study (1996). Page 98 begins with a relevant example from Australian Dyirbal and then compares with a Chinantec example from Southern Mexico that employs a relative clause signifying "which X has" to express the recipient X. So with that in mind, it suggests that examples like mi tn Arnθal turuce "I gave that to Arnth" are short for mi tn [ipn cei] Arnθal [ama] turuce "I gave that [which is now] of Arnth." My perception of inherent punctual aspect in this verb can coexist with Newman's interpretation and gives a secure answer to a "riddle" that Etruscanists have been sitting on far too long.

What sort of 'soul' is the Egyptian ka?

Oddly enough, all this latest talk in my commentbox of the European Urnfield culture and Etruscan cremation practices led me to thinking about Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife. I suppose that lacking comprehensive resources on the Etruscan concept of death and afterlife, something which I doubt exists yet, I look to the Egyptians for even a shade of insight, particularly since there are so many connections to be made. (Remember that the Etruscans used scarabs as tomb offerings directly proving that they were affected by Egyptian beliefs in some form or fashion.)

Now, as I understand it, the Egyptian spirit is often said to be divided into three parts: the ka, the ba and the akh . These names are modern Budgisms based on the vowelless spelling of the Egyptians but I gather that they were pronounced more like *kuˀ, *baˀ and *ˀaḫ respectively at around 1500 BCE. I notice the Wikipedia under Egyptian soul currently claims there are five components of the Egyptian soul but then piles on even more concepts in its schizophrenic, multi-author account. Added is the sheut 'shadow' (or rather *šawīt), the ib 'heart' (*ˀib) and the ren 'name' (more accurately *rin), helping to thoroughly confuse the reader rather than elucidate. I consider these last three related but incidental to the fundamental Egyptian notion of 'soul'. In the following I want to explore a new idea that came to me.

The ka is sometimes translated 'soul', sometimes 'image' and sometimes 'double'. Many other translations are also attempted. Yet I wonder recently if this odd translation confusion exists because this term wasn't just referring to the spirit itself as modern theologians might understand it but instead to the containment of the spirit in a vessel, a vessel such as a body or statue. If so, this gives a whole new nuance to the *Ḥáˀat-Kuˀ-Patáḥ, a famous temple in the city of Memphis. It would then suggest that this temple wasn't just housing the 'soul of Ptah' (*kuˀ Patáḥ) but that it was so named because it was believed, at least by its cult leaders, to be the temple in which the very body *and* soul of Ptah was present. This gives me a vision of a grand building within which an impressive, monumental statue of Ptah sits, around which rituals were enacted by its devout priesthood as if he were the living article, all for the wonder of the entranced commonfolk. Such a subtle notion of the word *kuˀ would emphasize this particular temple's central importance to the worship of this god of death and resurrection. Why go to just any temple of Ptah when one can experience Ptah's holy spirit 'in the flesh'? It would certainly have been great temple marketing if my perception here is realistic.

Also by reconceiving of the ka as the 'soul' specifically when contained in its physical manifestation rather than just 'soul' proper, contrastively then the ba must be the spirit itself, particularly when it was separate from the *ẖīˀat or body. It would be the ba, I think, that is most appropriately translated as the English-speaking notion of 'soul'. So maybe we can get away with thinking of the ba as a *subset* of the ka rather than on a par with it.

This theoretical structure of an ancient belief system leads me to wonder if the akh was in turn yet another subset (of the ba, that is). In the resulting reinterpretation, the soul really isn't divided into three parts, or even five. Instead the soul is composed of three layers with the akh, as 'life-force' or 'will', being the innermost of the three metaphysical strata. In this ontology, the 'will' (akh) is a component of the 'soul' (ba) which is further merely an ingredient in the union of body and soul (ka).

I'll have to explore this idea further and see what evidence is in its favour or against it.

The hidden one

In his Glossai, we attribute Hesychius to writing that Γέλχανος (Gélchanos) was the name of Zeus on Crete (ὁ Ζεύς, παρὰ Κρησίν) and Ἐλχάνιος (Elchánios), the name of a month in the Cretan city of Knossos.^[1] Further we read that Velchania was a Cretan spring festival in honour of the god, mentioned in inscriptions from Lyttos and Gortyn.^[2] Understanding the initial gamma of Γέλχανος as a subtle typo for digamma, thus *Ϝέλχανος (Wélchanos), there's a common theme in all of this: a Pre-Greek Cretan god named *Welkʰan. This god is in turn surely related to Etruscan *Velχan which is already accepted by Etruscan specialists to be the unattested source of the Latin name Vulcānus, also of non-Indo-European origin.

If the inherently imprecise comparisons between *Welkʰan and Greek Zeus are based only on a prominent position in the pantheon, and if we already have evidence of an Etruscan solar trinity, the identity of this god and his meaning becomes clear. *Welkʰan appears to be just another name for an aspect of the sun as it passes through the underworld at night. He is then also symbolic of the hope of afterlife and of the sun's re-emergence out of winter's darkness in the spring. This explains the spring festival in his honour and also implies that in Classical Greek times, Pelasgian solar cults and an underlying trinity were still alive and well in Crete, just as in Etruria. Note also the names of Egyptian Amon, the god of the setting sun, and Greek Hades, lord of the underworld, which both fundamentally mean "the Hidden One" or "the Unseen One".


NOTES
^[1] Perseus Online: ϝέλχανος and Γελχάνος; Flensted-Jensen/Hansen/Nielsen/Rubinstein, Polis & politics: Studies in ancient Greek history (2000), p.88 (see link): "The remaining three month names are Welchanios (I.Cret.IV 3.1; 184.3), Eleusinios (I.Cret.IV 232 + Inv. GO 352; Magnelli [1998]), and Ionios (I.Cret.IV 181.3). Welchanos appears to have been an indigenous Cretan (perhaps Minoan?) god who was later identified with Zeus (Hesych. s.v. Γέλχανος; Willetts [1962] 250-251; Capdeville [1995] 155-288)." (boldface mine)
^[2] Dietrich, The origins of Greek religion (1974), p.16 (see link).

Itching to crack the Piacenza Liver soon

Sorry that I've been busy, everyone. However I have a fresh entry just itching to be written about the Etruscan Piacenza Liver, a bronze model of a sheep's liver created for the ritualistic practice called haruspicy in order to divine the future. It's clear that this quirky practice originated from the Near East and there are similar Babylonian liver models fashioned many centuries preceding Etruscan civilization that I've compared on this blog before. The only tricky part is the fact that the Etruscan liver model and the Babylonian counterparts don't seem to coincide very nicely together aside from some general similarities. I've never found any author who has adequately explained the entire significance of this Etruscan artefact in ritual and mythology. Explanations are always vague with little to offer, not even a plausible theory.

That being said, after obsessing over it this past week, I noticed some new and interesting patterns that I want to share with everyone involving the mysterious interior sections marked with names of deities. While the outer border is plainly representive of the 16 directions of the cosmos, the inner sections seem to be connected to less well-known mythological structures or concepts that are important nonetheless to our understanding of Etruscan world-view. On one lobe of the liver there is a circular structure of six deities while on the other lobe there appears to be a mountain-like structure under which lie eight deities. Then there is a central flat section which doesn't seem to be connected to the two opposing, aforementioned structures as well as a fourth, the teardrop structure corresponding to the gall bladder which is allotted to four more deities.

My question is this: What do these structures signify and why are they placed in this way?

Well I think I have a lot to say on this now. Teehee! So stay tuned and in the meantime see if you readers can make sense of the Piacenza Liver inscriptions as pictured above.

Is the falcon or hawk a symbol of Vanth?

Today I find myself sitting in Bar Italia, one of several cafés on a strip of road called Corydon Ave. It's the place to be here in Winnipeg during the summertime and so I sit here, caught between people-watching and pensive typing on my laptop which I've nicknamed Electrohyperion or E.H. for short. Yes, I'm a geek and proud of it.

Anyways, there are many ideas that I continue to pursue concerning the Etruscan language. Many times, the proper translation of words is intertwined with all other aspects of this subject of history. One of the phrases that's peaking my curiosity lately is the epithet Sal Aracuneta. which was written next to an image of a winged female. She's reclined with wings extended on the lowest tier of the scene. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the three tiers in this scene represent the three layers of the cosmos: the heavens, the earth and the underworld. So the seated female sitting in the tier of the underworld can only sensibly represent Vanth.

The literal meaning of the phrase Sal Aracuneta seems to me self-evident now but something which nonetheless appeared nebulous up until I researched further. Word for word, it appears to mean "The (-eta) Great One (sal) of the Falcons/Hawks (Aracuna)". To add to the validity of this translation, there is a classical Greek gloss of the Etruscan word for "hawk" or "falcon": arakos (no doubt for actual *araχ as similarly believed by Larissa Bonfante and her father). What does this mean? What does Vanth have to do with these birds? At least it would explain her wings, if nothing else.

Fortunately for us, it turns out that there happens to be a Greek mythical character mentioned in Homer's Odyssey named Circe. Her name, lo and behold, means "falcon" in Greek^[1]! She is the daughter of Helios, the sun god, and there's a good historical case for ultimately associating her with death and the underworld^[2]. Her cult is connected with the Etruscans and Italy^[3]. There's even a potential Anatolian origin to her cult in the deity Kubaba who pops up as early as 950 BCE^[4]. So now I'm thoroughly intrigued because De Grummond, Jannot, Bonfante and all the other more notable scholars appear to be largely uninformative on this interesting goddess. Are they even aware of this yet or the full linguistic and mythological implications? I'll just let you good readers chew on that for a while.


NOTES
^[1] Yarnall, Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress (1994), p.28 (see link).
^[2] Yarnall, Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress (1994), p.29 (see link): "This tradition is particularly relevant to Circe. According to Gimbutas, birds of prey, when they appear in prehistoric art, 'are omens of death and epiphanies of the Death Wielder.'"
^[3] Wiseman, Remus: A Roman Myth (1995), p.47 (see link).
^[4] Mary Jane Rein, "Phrygian Matar" in Cybele, Attis and Related Cults: Essays in Memory of M.J. Vermaseren, ed. by Eugene Lane (1996), p.226 (see link): "In Luwian hieroglyphic, the writing used in the late Hittite period at Karkemish, Kubaba is spelled with the phonetic element KU - followed by a logogram of a hawk.".

A note about 'Inuit' and 'Eskimo'

There are many racial slurs out there but the term Eskimo, used for the people now referred to as Inuit (as they in fact most often call themselves), is technically not one of them. After reading various posts and letters in online forums on the issue, I can see that the word Eskimo has been blown out of proportion from an innocent exonym to something that people will defend against with fists flying. (I just find it oh-so-ironic when mental zombies who use political correctness to gain attention end up misrepresenting human compassion and facts with this sort of culturally divisive lexical war so let's get this out in the open, shall we?)

The word is not of European origin; we know that much. It has been purported to be derived from an Algonquian word (possibly from the Abnaki language: askimo) meaning 'raw meat eater'^[1], although other scholars refute this etymology and offer another alternative involving the Montagnais term aiachkimeou /a:jasʧime:w/ or its Cree counterpart askimew both meaning 'snowshoe-netter'^[2] (even though snowshoes were hardly a distinguishing feature of the Inuit in contrast to any other aboriginal peoples of Canada). People will often just assume a priori that the dreaded White Man invented the word but while many European immigrants have done much harm to First Nations peoples over the centuries, the origin of this word is in one way or another squarely Algonquian. This ethnonym dismays a lot of people though and it probably has to do with the mistaken belief that its meaning is somehow in itself insulting. Yet, let's allow ourselves to think about this controversy for a second. Do the Inuit eat raw meat? Why... in fact, they do! So if it's just a simple observation that Inuit happen to eat a lot of raw meat^[3], why the insult? Perhaps witiko-psychosis adds something to this perception of derogation (i.e. witiko is the Cree term for 'cannibal' as well as a mythical monster who eats humans as if they were 'raw meat' or askiwiyas). To add to the complication however, not all Eskimo-Aleut speaking peoples find the term Eskimo insulting at all^[4].

What have we learned from this? Well, aside from the fact that human beings are worrying too much about political correctness to see the forest for the trees, Eskimo carries no direct racial or cultural insult. However it happens to be insulting for some more because of modern history and cultural politics than anything. Regardless of politics though, the term Eskimo-Aleut remains the term of choice for linguists to refer to the language family with which Inuktitut, Yupik and Aleut are affiliated.


NOTES
^[1] Strong, Captive selves, captivating others: the politics and poetics of colonial American capitivity narratives (1999), p.37 (see link): "The English word Eskimo derives from a pejorative Algonquian term meaning 'raw meat eater,' and Inuit is the preferred term in the Eastern Arctic."
^[2] Bastian & Mitchell in Handbook of native american mythology (2004), p.xii (see link) assert that the 'eaters of raw meat' hypothesis is incorrect: "Many Inuit regard the word Eskimo as pejorative, in part because it was long thought, erroneously, to mean literally 'eater of raw meat.'" The etymological controversy is also mentioned by Archie Hobson on page 160 of The Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words (2001) but details why it's not derogatory as commonly believed: "In recent years Eskimo has come to be regarded as offensive because of one of its possible etymologies (Abnaki askimo 'eater of raw meat'), but this descriptive name is accurate since Eskimos traditionally derived their vitamins from eating raw meat." Finally, another alternative etymology is suggested in Hirschfelder/Beamer, Native Americans Today: Resources and Activities for Educators, Grades 4-8 (2000), p.3: "Some linguists argue that the word originated with the Montagnais and actually means 'snowshoe netter.'" To be precise, the Montagnais term was originally used instead for the Micmac, not the Inuit.
^[3] Artibise, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Canadian Society: A Guide to the Literature (1990), p.117 (see link): "There are three Eskimo languages, but the only one in use in Canada is Inuktitut, and in that language the word for 'people' is 'Inuit,' a term which became a standard for the Eskimos of Canada after it was selected for the title of their major political organization, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada. There is nothing derogatory about using the word 'Eskimo,' and it is still the conventional term in Alaska."
^[4] Bastian/Mitchell, Handbook of native american mythology (2004), p.xii (see link).

Four Stone Hearth - Volume 37

"The art from the 1960s reveals an expectation that we had about the way things might be, should be, or perhaps the way we were afraid things would be. Jet packs, streamlined rocket ships with fins, girls in space with tight fitting spacesuits, and killer robots and aliens."

On to Volume 37, which is served up by Hot Cup of Joe. The blogauthor is a University of Texas anthropology graduate with an added fascination for the psychology behind modern pseudoscientific myth. This is a very fun edition of Four Stone Hearth, reflecting on the thoughts and visions of yesteryear. To access this volume directly, click on the link below or the image above:

Four Stone Hearth: Volume 37

The apocalypse... atheist-style!

I'll get to serious stuff in a moment, but first some levity. A great comic called Subnormality at Viruscomix explores a 'scary' world of atheism and reasoning.

The Atheist Apocalypse!

(It sort of goes along with my previous post about the current trend of populist-driven anti-intellectualism.)

Creativity and society

Just today, I found this article called Why is there Anti-Intellectualism?. Steven Dutch uses Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel as a base in his inquiry into what it means to be truly creative. It's very thought-provoking and, well, creative!

Some questions that arise in my mind are:

• Might we say that 'tinkering' is a prerequisite to 'true creativity' even if the latter is not the inevitable result of the former? Hence: tinkering > true creativity.
• In such a curiosity hierarchy that we may infer from this, might curiosity be in part connected to Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Afterall, I can't imagine people stuck in survival mode having the time or energy to expand their minds beyond the immediate here and now, even if they are capable and willing of higher thought under better circumstances.
• And extending now far beyond this immediate topic, might this pyramid of thought already be instinctively understood by power-hungry dictators who seem to always manage to reduce the governed population to abject poverty in order to make mindControl and groupThink more effective? Who has time to think about government corruption when one's home is being seized because of a housing bubble and one's job is being exported overseas by way of out-of-control globalization?
• Finally, could the latest surge of anti-intellectualism in the past decade (albeit based on my own subjective perception drawn from the increasingly influential internet culture which is replete with cowardly anonymous trolls that exploit logical fallacies at every turn and often attack people like me who are just innocently blogging my thoughts) be just the pretext to establish a modern tyrannical regime by brainwashing the population to blindly ridicule anyone who dares exhibit signs of enjoying scholarly pursuits? Quite frankly, if I were a dictator, corrupting the will of the people through poverty and anti-logical political rhetoric is a deliciously evil way to establish systematic censorship of thought in all levels of society without needing to enforce oppressive rules by myself.

Four Stone Hearth - Volume 36

"It has been an interesting few weeks in anthropology, so without further ado here are the submissions (in no particular order)."

Volume 36 is hosted by Afarensis who gets straight to the chase with a menu of tasty dishes concerning anthropology and human evolution. To access this volume directly, click on the link below or the image above:

Four Stone Hearth: Volume 36

Four Stone Hearth - Volume 35

"Because our only home is bone, we must ask the question, how sleepless is the egg knowing that which throws the stone foresees the bone?"

The Four Stone Hearth blog carnival has come to Archaeoporn, a blog by Thaddeus Nelson (a PHD student at Stony Brook University in Long Island) who devotes his site to "archaeology, religion, and pseudo-science". This is all better explained on his About page.

To access this volume directly, click on the link below or the image above:

Four Stone Hearth: Volume 35

Four Stone Hearth - Volume 33

"The usual rule with blog carnivals is 'one post per blog.' This rule is ignored because in several instances, a post was self-submitted (which is the usual way posts are submitted to carnivals) from a particular blog, and a different post was nominated for that same blog. It would be wrong to ignore either kind of submission, so I chose to ignore the one post per blog rule."

Greg Laden's Blog talks about evolution, life science, science education, human evolution "and stuff". Greg Laden is an independent scholar and an associate advisor with the Program for Individualized Learning at the University of Minnesota, living in Minneapolis-St.Paul.

To access this volume directly, click on the link below or the image above:

Four Stone Hearth: Volume 33

Four Stone Hearth - Volume 32

I have a whole bunch of things to say about the Indo-European stop system, phonation and the presence of Aegean (Etruscoid) languages in Anatolia, after recent comments by Phoenix triggered a synaptic explosion in my cerebral cortex. No, don't worry... That's a good thing. I also found some informative online goodies that I can't wait to explore with you all. But first...

"I thought I’d open up this the 32 edition of the 4SH blog carnival with a few pictures taken last summer at a small Iron Age grave field in Halland county, Sodra Unnaryd parish."

The "travelling social sciences blog carnival" called Four Stone Hearth is now as old as I am. Yes, the big 32. The Swedish blog Testimony of the Spade which touches on subjects concerning archaeology, osteology and cultural heritage conjures up this latest volume.

To access this volume directly, click on the link below or the image above:

Four Stone Hearth: Volume 32

Four Stone Hearth - Volume 31

This whole Christmas/New Years' broohaha has got my schedule all screwed up. I've been late with the Four Stone Hearth notifications again. Mea culpa. And this is a witty one too but thankfully these posts don't have expiry dates.

The latest volume is authored by Tim Abbott, blogauthor of Walking the Berkshires and Litchfield Hills Greenprint Program Director with the Trust for Public Land and Housatonic Valley Association, who describes himself as "a conservation professional and a pretty good writer with eclectic tastes and interests". I'll say. He writes candidly in a brilliantly obfuscated and multidimensional way concerning the issues in preparing for this latest volume:

"Still, I'm a lumper, not a splitter, and besides we were in grave danger of being a three-stone hearth (still a sturdy tripod, but not a fully quadratic edition) [...]".

Informative and hilarious! To access this volume directly, please click on the link below or the image above:

Four Stone Hearth: Volume 31