Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[Iversen]

I have just watched a TV program (in English) about the migrations of mankind. This ws the last part of a series, and its topic was the mystery surrounding the arrival of humans to America. The obvious gateway would be the Bering Strait, which once was a landmass because of the lower water level during the last ice age. The problem was that there also was a lot of ice in that part of the world during the ice age. For a time the researchers put their faith into an icefree corridor through Alaska, which the ancestors of the clovis indians could have used. The problem is that it then should have happened around 13.000 years BC ... which also is the time where the mammoths disappeared. It is hard not to blame the proto_Clovians, but some researchers think that a meteor may have crashed into North America somewhere and killed them off... hmm... Never mind, there are factors that make it almost certain that the Clovis weren't the first to enter the Americas. There is a genetic trail centered around the mitocondrial haplogroup Q-M242 leading down the Pacific coast all the way from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, and one site, Monte Verde in Chile, has been dated to around 14.500 BC. However the proposed Alaskan corridor wasn't open early enough to allow that. So what now?

The program concluded (as I do) that the first migrants must have used boats and passed along the coast line instead of overland. But did boats actually exist so early? Well, none have been found, but my first thought was that Greenland was populated several times during the last 4500 years, and those that came must have all had boats - and even though this happened long after the push from Siberia, the climatic conditions must have been roughly similar. So yes, it was physically possible to build boats - you only needed to have someone to come up with the idea first.

But there is one more twist to the tale of human history in South America - and her name was Luzia.

POR: O cránio e pelvis de Luzia forem encontrados numa caverna em Minas Gerais, e mesmo se 'apenas' tem 11.500 anos de edade, ficam os mais antigos do continente. O que tem mistificado os pesquisadores é o fato que ela não se parece como os índios hoje vivos, seja no norte ou do sul. Alguns viram semelhanças com as pessoas do Pacífico, mas (quase) ninguém se atreveu a acreditar que eles cruzaram o Oceano Pacífico. Assim, os ancestrais de Luzias devem ter seguido a mesma rota que os homens das 3 o 5 linhas genéticas existente hoje, e quer dizer: viajante ao longo da costa do Pacífico. Porém num caso semelhante na América do Norte, o homem de Kennewick, descobriu-se que, apesar de suas características fisiológicas, ele estava genuinamente relacionado com os atuais índios no campo genetico, e então ele foi enterrado num lugar segreto para evitar futuras pesquisas.

Devido às condições na caverna de Luzia, teria sido impossível investigar seu DNA, e provavelmente já é demasiado tarde agora (mesmo no caso da creação de novas técnicas de exploração), pois tudo o Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro queimou há duas semanas. No entanto, há esperança de que outros esqueletos de uma localidade chamada Lagoa Santa estejam em melhor condição (e que representem a mesma população) - e, por acaso, alguns poucos crânios foram resgatados do fogo e um deles podría pertencer a Luzia. A hipótese mais excitante - ainda que não confirmada - é que as características 'oceânicas' de Luzia poderiam relevar traços dos Denisovanos da Sibéria, os quais eu mencionei há alguns dias neste tópico.

E enquanto isso, posso estar ficar contento por ter pelo menos conseguido a visitar o Museu Nacional enquanto ainda existia.

Museu_Nacional_Rio.jpg

Luzia.jpg

[Iversen]

By the way: I have learnt some new English words today from the realm of dentistry. I was reading about immigration patterns in old times in North America and happened to find some pages that hypothethized about some giants in North America that might be late offspring of the denisovans. And why the denisovans? Well, the three tooths that have been found were all significantly larger than the corresponding teeth of sapientes (a factor of around 1½), so if you multiply the average height of an average native American with 1½ then ... well, you get the picture. The idea has also been ventured that the yeti from Himalaya was either a surviving denisovan or even more implausible: a Gigantopithecus. This extinct species has been estimated to have had a height of up to three meters. But like the denisovans the actual gigantopithecine fossils are so scarse that it would be equally possible that this critter just was a moderately large primate with some seriously big molars.

Kunst136_fragment.jpg

I took an interest in these claims because I have watched a series on TV about two amateur scientists who have spent years searching for giants from old times, maybe inspired by the tales of 'nephilim' that are so popular among 'alien theoreticists'. And this is the point: in addition to their height one characteristic of these giants should be that they tended to have two rows of teeth. And then I ended up reading about hypodontia, i.e. the conditions where people have 'extra' teeth. That was my first new word in this context, and hypodontia is of course its opposite (both words come from Greek, and they come from Greek because the Romans employed Greeks as doctors). The first set of teeth are called 'deciduous', which obvious is a loan from botanics, and when they fall out the process is called 'exfoliation', which also seems to be a loanword from botanics - maybe jesting at first, but later accepted as a serious term. If baby teeth don't fall out by themselves the result may be misplaced 'permanent' teeth - but this is not considered as true hypodontia by the dentists. But there are cases where extra teeth pop up in unexpected places, and in the sources I have read it was pointed out that some illnesses that cause belated excessive growth also are associated with hyperdontia, and there is some old Celtic folkore that may be based on such cases, cfr this text:

Irish tradition recounts that the brutal, warlike Fomorians were "giants" who invaded in ships from Africa, and demanded children at Halloween time. Pict tradition held the same. They were finally driven north to the Hebrides Isles off northwest Scotland and to Tory Island off northwest Ireland in the deep Atlantic. From there, they preyed on the people of Ulster. The Formorian giants were supposedly endowed with double-rows of teeth. Interestingly, Anglo-American settlers in the upper Ohio were told Native traditions of "giants," and early settlers claimed they were digging up (from Lake Erie-to the Ohio River) the skeletons of "giants' with massive skulls and double rows of teeth.

According to the English Wikipedia "The Fomorians (Old Irish: Fomoire, Modern Irish: Fomhóraigh) are a supernatural race in Irish mythology. (...) Donald Schlegel suggested that the Fomorians were Carthaginians who established a trading post on Ireland's west coast. He suggests the name Fomoraige comes from the name of the Carthaginian god Pumay combined with the Old Irish suffix -raige, and thus means "people of Pumay"." You can decide with yourself whether to believe in this explanation - I'm sceptical.

I have of course tried to see whether I could find material of the same kind kind in other languages (ie. giants with unusual dentation), and the search quite unexpectedly came up with an article about the opposite in Bahasa Indonesia, namely too few or no teeth, which it refer to as respectively oligodontia and anodontia (again two new Greek English words - or kata Yunani).

IND: Kurangnya gigi belum dikaitkan dengan cerita rakyat pada pertumbuhan besar - atau tidak juga dengan pertumbuhan kerdil (hobi memiliki jumlah gigi yang normal). Tetapi ada beberapa koneksi ke Indonesia: orangutan dianggap paling dekat dengan mega, dan hobbit tinggal dalam Flores sampai saat ini ... dan Indonesia memiliki sendiri monyetnya legendaris, yang disebut orang pendek. "Orang pendek adalah nama yang paling umum diberikan untuk kryptid yang dilaporkan hidup di hutan-hutan pulau Sumatera", berkata Wikipedia.Dan kemudian saya juga belajar kata baru dalam bahasa Indonesia: kryptid. Jika Anda ingin membaca lebih tentang disebut orang pendek, ada artikel yang lebih panjang di sini. Di Youtube ada beberapa video, tapi sayangnya semua dalam bahasa Inggris.

Kunst166.JPG

[Iversen]

This evening I started out on a second wordcount based on my Serbian dictionary. The last one was based on just six pages, and that's not really enough to get a valid test result. But my second batch didn't go quite as well as the first one - probably because I also at the same time listened to the classical music quiz on Danish television (DRK). Actually my results there were also slightly below expectations. In the section where the teams have to guess play music played backwards I missed Haydn's 104. symphony (which team 1 guessed), but at least I could hear that the next piece wasn't from one of Bach's Brandenburg concertos, which the other team believed. It was in fact the minuet of Mozarts no. 40 and I guessed Schubert ... but haha, as the 'extra' question revealed that none other than Franz Peter Schubert borrowed a melody from this minuet in his 5. symphony, and right now I'm listening through letter S of my music collection. And it continued like this: sometimes the teams knew more than me, and sometimes I knew more than them. I would prefer knowing more than them ALL the time, but you can't allways win.

FR: Mais comment est-ce qu'on peut ne PAS savoir que le 5. concert pour piano et orchestre de Saint-Saëns est appelé le concert Egyptien???

D'ailleurs j'ai passé quelques heures aujourd'hui étudiant la vieille musique française pour orgue ou clavecin de Jehan Titelouze jusqu'a Claude-Bénigne Balbastre...

Kunst117.JPG

[Iversen]

LAT: Donec musicam organi francigalliam exploravi etiam invenivi tarantellam neapolitatem (apud Youtubum hic aut hic, IMSLP hic), "Modo hypodoricum" nominata et de scriptor inexpectatus facta: Athanasius Kircherus. Ille sacerdos teudiscus erat qui maxime in Roma vivabat, ubi apud Collegium Romanum conductus erat, institutio societae Iesu. Quid de Kirchero tantum praecipuum num sit? Eh, praecipuus fuit Kircherus quia OMNIA sciebat!!!!! Kircherus dicitur omnes scientias temporis suae dominare et mirabilis sapientiae esse, et circa XL libros de quasi omnibus rebus mundi scripsit. Sed istud ne tute bone erat, quia fortasse Kircherus omnia sciebat, sed aerumna erat quod in temporis suis omnia scientia sciibilis maximam partes nugas erat, et caput ei igitur repletus fuit teoriae falsae. Ita in libro magno suo de hieroglyphica aegyptia postulavi solutionem habere quam hodierna scimus omnino errata esse - quamvis Kircher primus fuisset relationem ad lingvam copticam indicare. Musicam etiam sciebat, et rationem excogitavit hymnos quadrivocos scribere sine musicam scire quae hodie quam programma computralis refacta est, atque de Kirchero ipse quam Arca Musarithmica nominata. Sed non credo tarantellam sic facta esse - nimis euphonice sonat.

FR: Chaque lundi l'après-midi de 16 à 18 la bibliothèque publique de ma ville a réservé une section aux personnes qui désirent parler en autres langues que le danois. Eh bien, cette occasion est utilisée aussi par ceux qui désirent apprendre le danois, et par conséquent on y parle aussi le danois, et si on parler quelque chose d'autre il est inévitable que ce soit le plus souvent l'anglais qu'on choisit. Aujourd'hui je suis venu et n'ai entendu que l'anglais et le danois, mais heureusement il y avait là une dame qui désirait parler le français, et ainsi avons nous eu une conversation en français où nous avons d'abord expliqué comment nous avions appris le français et depuis j'ai parlé brièvement des 'gatherings' et des 'conferences' polyglottes et de nos forums. Un autre homme s'est assis chez nous, et il a raconté qu'il venait de faire le camino en Espagne pour le huitième fois. Comme on le sait, le camino finit en Galice, et alors nous avons discuté pourquoi il y aussi une Galicie en Ukraïne, ce qui a mené a une discussion de toute l'histoire des peuples Celtes ... C'était tout assez amusant, et si je ne me trompe pas, c'est la première fois du tout depuis Bratislava que j'ai eu l'occasion de parler la langue française.

NO: I tillegg vil jeg kort sagt nevne at jeg i dag har sett et avsnit av en kringkastingsserie på norsk om en sejlads langs norskekysten, og...
DA: jeg har også set et program fra en jysk lokalsender om dykning efter vrag ved øen Bornholm, der ligger i Østersøen, og - hurra hurra - de medvirkende dykkere talte smukt bornholmsk, og der var ikke påhæftet undertekster.

AthanasiusK.jpg

[Iversen]

Today I have been working with text in several Slavic languages, but since I really can't imagine only doing one thing at any one time I have also been listening through most of my collection of music by the Strauss family (the guys with the walzes and polkas, not Richard). And in this moment I'm also watching a TV program about a certain 'cheddar man', whose mortal remains were found in a cave in Somerset. But he died around 9000 BP, so he definitely didn't speak any language I would have been able to understand.

SER: Српски текст говори о о националним парковима, посебно Фрушкој Гори у Панонији. Налази се на Дунаву, недалеко од Новог Сада и Београда, а пролазио сам близу, али није био унутра. Текст је написан латиничним словима. Обично ја то третирам српски језик као ћирилични језик, али се креће ка Латиници, а хрватски је већ чист латински језик, тако да морам да је прочитам. У националном парку постоји 30 врста орхидеја. У мојој дневној соби постоји само један, дакле 30-1 у Србију.

SLK: Môj slovenský text je ten, s ktorým som predtým pracoval. Je to z webovej stránky Košickej zoologickej záhrady a hovorí o snahách zamestnancov získať potomkov zo skupiny draz čiernoprsé drozd (Vanellus armatus, aka 'blacksmith plover' z Afriky) na chov. A vtáky majú dobrú vôľu na chov, ale nie sú praktizované. Jedna zo žien začala stavať miesto, ktoré si zamestnanci mysleli, že je veľmi zlá, a tak im dali keramickú misku, a potom ju postavili.

RU: Самый длинный текст на русском языке и относится к триасовому периоду в истории Земли - периоду, который последовал за катастрофой в конце перми и где происходили динозавры. Это описание похоже на Википедию, но я нашел статью на веб-сайте имена Эволюцией. Он рассказывает не только о более известных животных, но и о улитах, червях и аммонитах, иИ на той же домашней странице есть статьи о все другом периоде до 570 миллионов лет назад. Jeh еще не отпечал все это, но, вероятно, буду делать то, потому что предмет меня интересует. Кстати, я использую возможность сказать, что в Москве нет Кремля, а также прекрасный палеонтологический музей под названием Орлов в южном пригороде.

EN: I did however run into some minor problems with the text - and I'll explain them in English since they pushed me to do some research on the Anglophone part of the internet. For instance the article mentions a critter named "циногнат". I tried to look it up under the tentative transcription 'tsinognat', but that was clearly not the right one, a site named "fanon.wikia.com" gives the explanation "A Russian version of a battle tricycle that is able to dig under the ground." However the Russian article gives one clue, namely that it belongs to a group called "цинодонты", which contains " 'цобакозыбых' рептилы" - and then I remembered that there is a group called the 'cynodonts' (dog-teethed reptiles, i.e. a kind of mammalian reptile) so the elusive tricycle turned out simply to be the one meter long carnivore named Cynognathus (see the picture below)

Cynognathus.jpg

So this mystery was solved, but I caused the next one myself. As I first read the article it seemingly mentioned a group called "рин озавры", i.e. 'rhin osaurians'. But if you try to lok this up you'll end up in a swamp featuring things like a pop (or rock?) song and a rhinoceros kaiju - whatever that is - created by TriStar Pictures that first appeared in the Godzilla. Actually Wikipedia asks whether you didn't mean rhinoceros, but no I didn't. On page three of four I found a reference to an incident from the 19. century where one paleontologist named Edward Drinker Cope informed a collegue named Nathaniel Marsh that his new discovery could NOT be called rhinosaurus because that name already was in use. The problem is that the Russian article refers to animals with a beak ("клюв"), and the bones Cope and Marsh discussed were from a marine group which today are called Mosasaurs - and they didn't have beaks. OK, back to the article - and lo and behold, I had overlooked one letter in the name "ринXозавр", and then it was easy to get to the correct Latin name "Rhynchosaurus" .. which by the way also designates a fairly weird critter, cfr the thing at the end of its snout. But is it a beak? Not in my opinion - there are beaks on birds and on certain types of Cretacean dinosaurs (such as psittacosaurus), but this fellah from the Triassic just had some funny teeth.

Rhynchosaurus - Wikiwand.jpg

[tarvos]

Cope and Marsh are some of the most famous paleontologists ever from the 19th century, and they were entwined in a bitter rivalry. They discovered more dinosaurs than you can shake a stick at.

(This is background info for those not in the know about dinosaurs).

[Iversen]

Yes, March and Cope were the two main dino chasers from the 19. century, and a fair portion of the skeletons you see in the museums in New York and New Haven were dug up by these two men. But they were also fierce competitors, and sometimes this made them cut corners - like for instance when Marsh found an enormous skeleton of a new species and had it put on display under the name Brontosaurus ('thunder lizard"). There was just one problem: the head was missing, so March borrowed the head from another skeleton from his collection and put it at the end of the long neck of Brontosaurus. And everything seemed to be OK ... until a (partial) skeleton WITH a head was found, and that head did NOT look like the one Marsh had chosen.

Another researcher, Elmer Riggs, postulated in 1903 that the skeleton with the correct head didn't qualify as as a new species, so the name Brontosaurus was scrapped, and the type specimen was included in the genus Apatosaurus.... well, until fairly recently, where a new generation of paleontologists looked at the old bones and some new ones and concluded that there was ample reason to keep Brontosaurus as a separate genus separate from Apatosaurus. . So in the end Marsh won this particular battle - but not without some bruises along the way.

Brontosaurus.jpg

[Iversen]

EN: Yesterday I went through texts in three Slavic languages (Russian, Slovak and Serbian), and today I carried on with two more: Bulgarian and Polish, and I read some more about the geological periods of the Earth directly at the Russian Evolution site. I have also read about soothsayers and fortune tellers and shamans and druids and other dubious persons o' that ilk in the Portuguese magazine Super Interesante, but since I don't belong to any of those categories I don't know whether I'll write about it anytime soon. Actually I have also watched a TV program about people who try to invent a time machine, so far without success. To establish a wormhole that could transport a person from here to somewhere else faster than the light speed allows you would probably need all the energy that is in the universe, including the dark kind - and then you might deliver the test person in the middle of a star or somewhere else, like in the room next door but with her head attached to her butt. Speaking about dark energy ...

GR: Μιλώντας για τη σκοτεινή ενέργεια: Έχω επίσης μελετήσει το άρθρο σχετικά με τη σκοτεινή ενέργεια από την ελληνική Wikipedia (όχι όλες οι γλώσσες είναι σλαβικές γλώσσες). Έχω γράψει εκτενώς σε αυτό το θέμα νωρίτερα σε αυτό το νήμα, οπότε δεν θα ακολουθεί οποιοδήποτε μακρά εξήγηση, αλλά θέλω απλώς να αναφέρω ότι το άρθρο παραθέτει τις δύο εναλλακτικές λύσεις: κοσμολογικά σταθερή (και ενέργεια του κενού) έναντι κάποιο είδος βαθμωτού πεδίου, Αυτό σημαίνει ένα πεδίο που μπορεί να ποικίλει από τόπο σε τόπο στο σύμπαν. Και η τάση πηγαίνει προς την πρώτη επιλογή, η οποία είναι επίσης η αγαπημένη μου επιλογή.

RO: De asemenea, am citit un pic într-un text românesc pe același subiect de la descopera.ro: douăzeci și șase de cercetători din Melbourne au publicat acum un raport care susține fără echivoc ideea că energia întunecată nu este o energie de același fel ca energia potențială sau cinetică (sau aceasta energia chimico-biologică care apare după o cola cu zahăr). Este aparent aceeași în întregul univers, ceea ce sugerează că constanta cosmologică a lui Einstein este explicația ceea mai corectă pentru expansiunea accelerată a universului - iar energia vaccum este modul în care constanta își desfășoară activitatea sa la nivelul cuantilor.

BU: И българският текст също разказа ... не, не. Той разказва за археологическите разкопки в Пловдив. Вие сте изкопали центъра на Пловдив в близост до стария театър и открихте останки от 1 до 2. и от 3 до 4. шекела което предполагали драматични събития, но човек не знае какво се случвал.

PO: Mój polski tekst mówił o trzecim temacie, mianowicie o inwazji Yamnaya, która prawdopodobnie sprowadziła języki indoeuropejskie do Europy. Pisałem także o tym tu, i artykuł ze Sputniknews wspiera teorię o inwazji młodych ludzi ze stepów - a nie alternatywę, a mianowicie powolny przepływ z Anatolii. Ale jest problem: tylko Polska ma ludzi z inną Y-haplogrupą niż ta, którą mamy w Danii. Może przyjechał do Polski z ekspansją niewolników po Attili, być może geny przybyły do Danii z południa, a nie z Polski - nie wiem (jeszcze).

EN: In this thread I often write that I have 'studied' a text (as opposed to just reading it). Mostly the real meaning of this is that I have copied it while making certain that I know all the words (except those that aren't in my dictionaries) and all the grammatical forms and patterns (insofar that I notice them). Mostly this goes so smoothly that the only testimony afterwards is a handwritten sheet with new words notated in the right margin, as shown below. If I see so many new words that they don't fit into that right column then I take that as a sign that I should do something more - which could be anything from going through the text one time more to including hyperliteral translations and other comments at the relevant spots. But in the Bulgarian example below I didn't need to do that - the new words did 'run faster' than the copied text, but not enough to make me insert comments or repeat sections anywhere. And no, I don't pretend to speak Bulgarian, but I could definitely read most of a text like the one about Plovdiv without wearing out my dictionaries. There are still a few Slavic languages on my wishlist, but juggling with five halfbaked ones is enough for me at this stage - it wouldn't be wise to tackle Czech or Ukrainian or Slovenian or Sorbian or Old Church Slavonic right now, as tempting as it might be...

Bulgar.jpg

[Daniel N.]

Small corrections:

а пролазио сам близу, али није био унутра. Текст је написан латиничним словима. Обично ја то третирам српски језик као ћирилични језик, али се креће ка Латиници, а хрватски је већ чист латински језик, тако да морам да је прочитам. У националном парку постоји 30 врста орхидеја. У мојој дневној соби постоји само један, дакле 30-1 у Србију.

Ali nisam bio unutra (1st pers)
Cannot use to in such sentence
moram da ga pročitam (tekst = masc)
Postoji samo jedna (vrsta = fem)
za Srbiju (for Serbia = score)

[Iversen]

Thank you for the corrections. My Serbian has become somewhat rusty, but I should have been able to avoid those ugly concord errors.

I have spent the weekend visiting my mother instead of studying. Apart from TV programs in neighbouring languages and a dosis of TY Irish as night reading I haven't done anyting,apart from baking pancakes, repainting the black plinth course of her house and cutting some of the unwanted things growing in her garden with a battery chainsaw without killing myself. With my sister we have also visited a design museum where they had an exposition with Kaj Bojesen who became world famous in Denmark because of his wooden monkeys (see below) - but there is not much in this to write about in a language forum, except maybe some of the TV programs. Let's wait until tomorrow with the details ...

KajBojesen_Abe.jpg

Oh, by the way, I also read the latest issue of Scientific American (in English), and it contained an article about black matter maybe being slightly more complicated than hitherto assumed. Strictly speaking, it may not be a linguistic issue, but since I have written about this topic several times I'll just write a couple of sentences about the claims in the article. First, dark matter has mostly been assumed to consist of weird particles that don't interact with other particles except through grabity. The alternative would be that gravity didn't always behave as assumed by Einstein (and Newton), ie.e. it might not be directly proportional to the product of two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The argument of the article is that dark energy shouldn't be distributed in the same way galaxies with very different histories or densities, but apparently it seems that the calculated amount of dark matter is proportional with the amount of ordinary matter. How can that be? There are other things that the particle view explains quite well, so the article proposes that dark energy at the galactic scale - but not above that - behaves as a superfluid (akin to a Bose-Einstein condensate), and for some reason it then should cause a new force to appear which should make lump of dark matter function as one large particle ... OK, they lost me there... I can't see why this should make the estimated amount of dark matter become proportional to the amount of ordinary matter in any arbitrary galaxy...