Art, Civilization and Law - 250 LexiLine Journal

I refer you all to a posting that I have just made at LawPundit at

http://snipurl.com/4575 (this is the short form URL of the one below
which does not wrap in Yahoo so use the snipurl link)
http://www.lawpundit.com/blog/2004_01_01_lawpunditarchive.htm#1075237
97994406909

on the topic of "Indigenous intellectual property, art,
architecture, cultural icons and modern copyrights."

This touches very closely on the issue of the history of
civilization, which is very much tied to the question of art.

Just who does ancient art really belong to?

Faked Japanese Finds - 249 LexiLine Journal

The important point of this story is at the end.

An article which we missed some months ago in the
The Scotsman at
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=644342003
refers to the fairly recent story of a Japanese archaeologist who
faked top finds of Paleolithic artifacts to make his archaeological
reputation.

Much of Japanese paleolithic history will have to be "rewritten" to
correct errors in historical conclusions made as a result of these
fake finds.

The archaeologist was only caught by a hidden camera as he
himself "pre-buried" a "future find" out of a plastic bag in his
pocket. This has been going on for 30 years.

In fact:

"[the archaeologist] entirely fabricated his astonishing finds at
159 of the 178 sites he worked on...."

How could such a thing have happened?

Interesting as an explanation is the quote at the end of the article:

"Young archaeologists do not challenge revered senior scholars,"
said Hisao Baba, an anthropologist at the National Science
Museum. "It is extremely difficult to directly deny others' work
because it is taken as a grave personal and professional insult."

We are often very critical about the overall discipline of
mainstream archaeology, and frankly, it is often justified.

Academic Research FAILS - 248 LexiLine Journal

[This is a cross-posting from my LawPundit site at
http://www.lawpundit.com/blog/lawpundit.htm
since the subject matter crosses ALL academic disciplines.]

Research Skills in Academia FAIL according to Berkeley study.

Berkeley studies have confirmed what I have known and argued for
years as a teacher of "legal research" - that very few people out
there in academia have learned how to do research properly, and this
includes the professors, where failing research skills are often
mirrored in the incompleteness or even falsity of their articles in
peer-reviewed journals.

We have been battling against this for years. See
http://www.megaliths.co.uk, http://www.StarsStonesScholars.com and
http://www.LexiLine.com.

The Law Pundit was lucky in his younger days on this score, laboring
as a research assistant for professors throughout undergraduate and
law school days and knowing the library inside and out.

In her article of January 21, 2004, Wendy Edelstein of the UC
Berkeley News in "Improving undergraduate research skills" - see
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2004/01/21_mellon.shtml -
writes about some remarkable findings at Berkeley:

"[I]n a five-year survey of information-literacy competency
conducted by Berkeley's Teaching Library in the 1990s ...results
indicated that graduating Berkeley seniors were perplexed by
elementary tasks involving organizing and accessing information.
More specifically, the survey found, the median result in
information-literacy competency among the surveyed seniors was a
failing score."

Worse, in a follow-up study, professors themselves were tested and
found that they were equally inept in research:

"Last summer, a number of Berkeley professors from a variety of
disciplines were asked to research a group of Jewish chicken farmers
in Petaluma, a topic well outside their respective academic
purviews. Much like students might, they became overwhelmed, turning
to databases they regularly use (and even, it can now be told, to
Google) for help."

Note that the study - in finding that professors when overwhelmed,
turn to known resources - mirrors what we have found to be rampant
in academia. When the mainstream is confronted with NEW ideas
outside of what they think they know, they retreat to old well-
trodden paths and ignore the new material. This is NOT science.

Worse than even that, in the course of these studies it was
discovered:
"The humanities faculty were thrilled to learn that their teaching
goals weren't different from those of their counterparts in the
sciences," Tollefson continued. 'They both prefer teaching concepts
over facts.'"

We agree that it is more fun to teach "concepts", but a review of
the humanities in particular shows that they have often FORGOTTEN
the facts. Each academic teaches his or her "concepts" - which is
fine - but those concepts must be checked and researched AGAINST the
facts and abandoned if the facts do not agree with the concepts.
Many academics still have not learned this lesson.

To the credit of the Berkeley professors above, they subsequently
changed their teaching to deal with the weaknesses found in the
study.

Now, what about all the other academics out there who do not now
that they have these weaknesses and are passing them on to new
generations of academics? We speak here particularly about academic
disciplines outside of law.

Lituanus and Ancient Languages - 247 LexiLine Journal

The following LITUANUS Linguistics Index by author with links to all
of the below articles
is found at http://www.lituanus.org/ (at that site, firsts click
Search, then click Linguistics at the subsequent page). This is
important stuff for the history of the Indo-European languages.

"Did the 'Indo-Europeans' Collide with 'Pre-Indo-Europeans'?"
Alfred Bammesberger

"Homage to Lithuania: My Trip to Vilnius and Kaunas" Alfred
Bammesberger

"The Semiotics of A. J. Greimas: An Introduction" Marvin Katilius-
Boydstun

"How I Became the Editor of this Dictionary" Professor Kazimieras
Būga. Translated by A. T. K.

"The First Description of the Latvian Debitive Mood" Trevor G.
Fennell

"Some Remarks About Simonas Vaišnoras' Žemčiūga Teologiška or
Margarita Theologica" Gordon B. Ford Jr.

"Some Remarks About Jonas Kruopas' 1947 Edition of Martynas
Mažvydas' Catechism of 1547" Gordon B. Ford Jr.

"Pre-Christian Name Giving in Lithuania" K. A. Girvilas

"Language and Decolonization: a Latvian Perspective" Karl E. Jirgens

"Baltic and Slavic Revisited" Antanas Klimas

"Studies on Word Formation in Lithuanian (1944 1974)" Antanas
Klimas

"430 Years of Lithuanian Books: Editorial Introduction" Antanas
Klimas

"Kazimieras Būga and the Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian" Antanas
Klimas

"The Newest Lithuanian Spelling Reform" Antanas Klimas

"Some Unsolved Riddles of Lithuanian Linguistics" Antanas Klimas

"Some Unique Features of Lithuanian" Antanas Klimas

"Some Remarks on the Lithuanian Reflexive Verbs" Antanas Klimas

"The Lithuanian Participles: Their System and Functions" Antanas
Klimas

"Professor Wolfgang P. Schmid and his Trojan Horse" Antanas Klimas

"Some Remarks on Idioms" Antanas Klimas

"A Few More Remarks on Idioms" Antanas Klimas

"The Anglicization of Lithuanian" Antanas Klimas

"A Few Remarks on the Lithuanian Vocative" Antanas Klimas

"Reflexive Nouns in Lithuanian" Antanas Klimas

"Prefixes and Suffixes in the Lithuanian Verbal System" Antanas
Klimas

"A Few Remarks on the Number Category of the Lithuanian Nouns"
Antanas Klimas

"Two Kinds of Passive Voice in Lithuanian" Antanas Klimas

"The Future to Express the Past: A Strange Case in Lithuanian" -
Antanas Klimas

"Uniformity and Change: a Case in Lithuanian Accentuation" Antanas
Klimas

"Issues in Standardizing Lithuanian Sign Language" Dainora
Kupčinskas

"The Self, the Familiar and the Other in the Narrative Structure of
American Lithuanian" Jolanta Macevičiūtė

"To Celebrate Pavel Trost's 65th Birthday" Jiři Marván

"Baltic and Indo-European Ergative" Jiři Marván

"Two Linguistic Myths: Balto-Slavic and Common Baltic" Harvey E.
Mayer

"Was Slavic a Prussian Dialect?" Harvey E. Mayer

"Aspiration and Native Baltic Forms" Harvey E. Mayer

"Prussian, an Aboriginal Ā-Language?" Harvey E. Mayer

"North Baltic" Harvey E. Mayer

"Baltic Diglossia in Lithuanian" Harvey E. Mayer

"Tokharian and Baltic versus Slavic and Albanian" Harvey E. Mayer

"Dacian and Thracian as Southern Baltoidic" Harvey E. Mayer

"The Origins of Pre-Baltic" Harvey E. Mayer

"Reflexes of Indo-European Syllabic Resonants in Baltic, Slavic, and
Albanian" Harvey E. Mayer

"Slavic, a Balticized Albanian?" Harvey E. Mayer

"West Baltic Latvian / East Baltic Lithuanian" Harvey E. Mayer

"Slavic Archaic / Baltic Archaic" Harvey E. Mayer

"East Baltic Influence on West Baltic" - Harvey E. Mayer

"South Baltic" - Harvey E. Mayer

"Balts and Carpathians" Harvey E. Mayer

"Aorist or Future" Harvey E. Mayer

"Causative Construction in Lithuanian" Chien-Ching Mo

"A Case Grammar Approach to Verb Classification in Modern
Lithuanian" Chien-Ching Mo

"A Case Grammar Analysis of the Lithuanian Predicate Nominal" Chien-
Ching Mo

"The Lithuanian Language - Hostage of Foreign Powers: 1940-1991"
Arnoldas Piročkinas

"Changing Perspectives on the Changes in the Lithuanian Language"
Janina K. Rėklaitis

"The Martynas Mažvydas Catechism of 1547" Alfonsas Šešplaukis

"Jonas Kazlauskas' Contribution to Lithuanian Linguistics" William
R. Schmalstieg

"The Founder of Baltic Philology: Adalbert Bezzenberger" William R.
Schmalstieg

"Tokharian and Baltic" William R. Schmalstieg

"Lithuanian Dialect Nominative Plurals in -aus and -eis" William R.
Schmalstieg

"The Origin of the Lithuanian Language" William R. Schmalstieg

"Standard Lithuanian and its Dialects" William R. Schmalstieg

"Early Lithuanian Grammars" William R. Schmalstieg

"From Donelaitis to Jablonskis" William R. Schmalstieg

"Lithuanian Names" William R. Schmalstieg

"An Etymology of the Word 'to fear' in Indic, Baltic and Slavic"
William R. Schmalstieg

"The Old Prussian, Latvian and Lithuanian Verbal Conjugations"
William R. Schmalstieg

"A Note on Juozas Blačikonis' Contribution to the Standardization of
Lithuanian" William R. Schmalstieg

"Congratulations to an Important Friends of Baltic Studies: The One-
Hundredth Volume of Kuhns Zeitschrift" William R. Schmalstieg

"More About Professor Jonas Kazlauskas" William R.Schmalstieg

"Lithuanian Verbs with the Infinitive Suffixes -in- and -y-" William
R. Schmalstieg

"The Origin of the Lithuanian Half-Participle" William R. Schmalstieg

"Lithuanian Participles in the Nominative Case as the Modifier of
the Phrase Subject" William R. Schmalstieg

"To the Memory of Professor Antanas Salys" William R. Schmalstieg

"Baudouin de Courtenay's Contribution to Lithuanian Linguistics"
William R. Schmalstieg

"Some Comments on New Volumes of the Lithuanian Academy Dictionary" -
William R. Schmalstieg

"Martynas Mažvydas and John Wycliffe: An English Connection?"
William R. Schmalstieg

"The Duration of the Long Vowels as a Perceptual Cue in Lithuanian"
Marc L. Schnitzer

"Conference on Baltic Studies in Stockholm" [Opening Speech by the
Prime Minister of Sweden]

"Three Models of Standard Written Lithuanian Language in the 19th
Century: J. A. Pabrėža, J. Čiulda, S. Daukantas" Giedrius Suba=
69;ius

"The Errors of Martynas Mažvydas" - Giedrius Subačius

"The Linguistic Russification of Titular Baltic Nationalities" Algis
Tamošiūnas

"Similes in Lithuanian Folk Proverbs" Juozas Tininis

"Expressing Cause by Means of Prepositions in Modern Lithuanian"
Elena Valiulytė

"Three Lithuanian City Names: PRIEKULĖ, RIETAVAS, SUBAČIUS"
Aleksandras Vanagas

"Baltic Studies in Australia" Jonas Zdanys

"What's 'instant coffe' in Latvian?" Valdis J. Zeps

Important Links and RSS News Feeds - 246 LexiLine Journal

These are useful links and RSS feeds on archaeology,
archaeoastronomy, linguistics and ancient languages.

http://newstrove.com/cgi-bin/search.pl?search=archaeology
http://newstrove.com/cgi-bin/rss.xml?search=archaeology

http://newstrove.com/cgi-bin/search.pl?search=archaeoastronomy
http://newstrove.com/cgi-bin/rss.xml?search=archaeoastronomy

http://newstrove.com/cgi-bin/search.plsearch=linguist+ancient+languages
http://newstrove.com/cgi-bin/RSS.XML?search=linguist+ancient+languages&title=LexiLine Linguist Ancient Languages&max_results=100&publisher_rank=0&quality_filter=ALL

The upper link in each case is the normal web link.
The lower link in each case is the so called RSS link which you can
plug into news aggregators such as NewsGator (not related to Gator!).

Newsgator appears to me to be the most professional of all of these
programs, but also costs - though not a great deal. Try the 14-day
free demo version at http://www.newsgator.com. Newsgator binds into
Microsoft Outlook and gives one a very quick overview of so-called
news feeds, for which RSS is the technology guiding the feed. In the
realm of blogs, Blogger at http://www.blogger.com has just
implemented a competing similar technology called Atom.

There is no question that these kinds of news feeds are the
technology of the future. Try them out to see how they can enhance
the quality AND specificity of your news experience.

Britain and the Celts - from Steve Burdic - 245 LexiLine Journal

From Steve Burdic
January 16, 2004

"Y chromosome study in Britan favors Celtic heritage."

http://www.racesci.org/in_media/y_chromosomes_brit_hist.htm

Thanks Steve.

Noah's Flood Black Sea - from Steve Burdic - 244 LexiLine Journal

From Steve Burdic
January 16, 2004
...
http://www.webmesh.co.uk/nice/arcnews1.htm
"Remains found at bottom of the Black Sea indicate that Noah's Flood
was real

By Steve Connor
'The discovery of a manmade structure at the bottom of the Black Sea
off northern Turkey has lent powerful support to a controversial
theory suggesting Noah's Flood really happened. Marine
archaeologists have found the first evidence to suggest the floor of
the Black Sea had been inhabited about 7,500 years ago, until it was
inundated with a massive influx from the Mediterranean. Stone tools,
wooden branches and beams are among well-preserved remnants of the
structure 300ft down on the muddy seabed 12 miles off the coast. An
expedition funded by the National Geographic Society in America said
first pictures indicated people lived around the fertile shores of
an ancient freshwater lake before the area was transformed into the
Black Sea. Terry Garcia, head of mission programmes for National
Geographic, said: "The significance of this find is that for the
first time we will have established that human beings had settled in
this area and were occupying this area at the time of this
cataclysmic event." The excavation of the underwater site, once a
fertile river valley running into the ancient lake, has not as yet
shed light on whether the flood was instantaneous or a more gradual
event that allowed people to evacuate the area gradually. The
discovery supports the theory that the seabed was once populated
with a prehistoric farming community who had to flee the rising
waters, which could have prompted stories of a giant flood.
Historians have noticed similarities between the biblical account of
Noah's Flood and the Epic of Gilgamesh, a Babylonian poem written in
the third millennium BC, suggesting both may be based on the same
historical event. Two American geologists, William Ryan and Walter
Pitman, suggested four years ago that the floor of the Black Sea was
once a freshwater lake surrounded by fertile valleys and plains
inhabited by the world's first farmers. They believe that as melting
glaciers from the last Ice Age raised sea levels, the Mediterranean
suddenly broke through the strip of land separating it from the
lower freshwater lake. Calculations suggested the inundation could
have caused a giant waterfall many times bigger than Niagara Falls,
pouring enough water into the freshwater lake to cause its surface
to expand by more than a mile a day. The marine archaeologists are
trying to retrieve samples of the submerged structures for
radiocarbon dating. Fredrik Hiebert, chief archaeologist on the
project, said: "This is a major discovery that will begin to rewrite
the history of cultures in this key area between Europe, Asia, and
the ancient Middle East.'"

Thanks Steve. Great article.

Maes Howe - from Steve Burdic - 243 LexiLine Journal

From Steve Burdic
January 13, 2004
...
"http://www.robertlomas.com/osf/groovyecon/sld028.htm
mentioned that Venus is sighted in Maes Howe. Could the
grooved ware people be the source of mideastern stone work and
astronomy? And where did they come from-the Baltic?"

LexiLine Topics in 2004 - 242 LexiLine Journal

In the past two years, 2002-2003, LexiLine members have been witness
on LexiLine to the decipherment of the megaliths. We will continue
to have more materials on ancient megalithic sites in 2004.

In 2004, we will also begin at LexiLine to explain some ancient
languages more accurately than the mainstream has done, especially
the most ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs - as presented to us in Rainer
Hannig's Egyptian dictionary of Old Kingdom Egyptian [cited in full
further below].

We can already issue the following categorical statement to any
academic who alleges that the ORIGINAL Pharaonic language was NOT
Indo-European in origin - they are wrong. We will be going through
Hannig's dictionary, page by page, word by word, and hieroglyph by
hieroglyph, showing how the most ancient hieroglyphs point to an
Indo-European language foundation. We will demonstrate how VERY POOR
and sometimes even ABSURD transcription and transliteration by the
mainstream scholars have kept this obvious fact from being observed
by the Egyptologists.

Moreover, if time permits me this year to finish what I have already
started in this regard, we will present my new decipherment - or
perhaps the first part of it - of the Sumerian Temple Hymns - which,
contrary to mainstream interpretation, are in fact astronomical
texts - and are also Indo-European in origin. See

http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/index.html

where it is in fact written in the Oxford translation concerning
King Shulgi that
"they will recite my songs as heavenly writings".

Of course, this was NOT meant figuratively, but literally - it was
something which the scholars have simply not comprehended.

With respect to Egypt, during the Christmas season just past, we
were in Berlin and visited the Egyptian Museum in Charlottenburg, a
city region of Berlin. For this museum, see

http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/amp/s.html

It is a museum whose superb collection includes the famed bust of
Nofretete [sic - the name is correctly Hethite or Edite, i.e.
Edith], which - along with the gold mask of King Tut - is probably
the most famous of all ancient world artifacts.

The Egyptian Museum in Berlin also sports a gigantic stone statue of
what the museum claims to be King Tut - but this statue has been
restored after being damaged in war, and the restoration looks
different than the original photo of the statute which can be viewed
next to the statue bust. Especially in the mouth and nose, one can
see that the "original" non-restored statue was NOT King Tut, and,
indeed was originally identified to be a "Pharaoh Eje" (Inventory
No. 1479). Of course, the restoration looks like Tut but not the
original photo of this statue prior to its war damage.

But this fairly recent though highly dubious Superman-like "magical
identity transformation" from Pharaoh Eje to King Tut is apparently
one way to bring in more visitors - and the Egyptian Museum in
Berlin is surely worth a visit, as the display and organization of
the collection are very nicely and informatively done.

If you take along a camera, be sure you can turn off the flash
option since no flash photos are permitted. Our somewhat antiquated
idiot-proof automated reflex camera did not allow the flash to be
turned off, and we were thus unable to take pictures, so we will
have to wait for our next visit to Berlin to document all the
important museum artifacts properly.

The otherwise excellent museum bookshop has only ONE book of
photographs of the items in their own collection and this volume is
so meager that I did not even consider it worth buying. It leaves
out many of the magnificent objects which are found at the museum,
including a fantastic sarcophagus (identified as belonging to Anch-
Hor and dated to ca. 600 BC, Inventory No. 41) with 42 heavenly
judges carved on it (the nomes of Egypt also numbered 42) and two
superb Anubis facing one another in a style indicating to me that
the sarcophagus was several hundred years older than the museum had
dated it (perhaps it was reused in a later dynasty). Indeed, the 42
judges reminded greatly of divinities found on the holy shrines in
the tomb of King Tut.

It is at the Egyptian Museum that I purchased Hannig's Dictionary.
The full citation of this book is:

Rainer Hannig, Ägyptisches Wörterbuch I: Altes Reich und Erste
Zwischenzeit (Egyptian Dictionary I: Old Kingdom and First
Intermediate Period), Hannig-Lexica 4, Verlag Philipp von Zabern,
Mainz am Rhein, Kulturgeschichte der Antiken Welt, Band 98.

The great thing about this volume is that Hannig has created the
dictionary based upon citation to THE ORIGINAL SOURCES - i.e. he has
included hieroglyphs which only come from the early kingdoms of the
Pharaohs and has left out the mixed bag of language which developed
over three thousand years and which most linguists ERRONEOUSLY use
to reconstruct ancient PHARAONIC Egyptian language.

No one doubts that later Egyptian, i.e. Coptic, mixed with languages
such as Aramaic as well as similar Arabic and Near Eastern tongues.
But the principal question is - what was the ORIGINAL language of
the Pharaohs - and Hannig's wonderful book allows us to reconstruct
that origin without great difficulty to be Indo-European - an Indo-
European which existed around 3000 BC and for which we find ample
evidence in the most ancient Indo-European tongues.

National Register of Historic Places - 241 LexiLine Journal

Since many of our members are from the USA, we want to start out the
New Year of LexiLine Newsletters by referring you to the following
NRIS website

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/research/nris.htm

where it is written

"Welcome to the National Register Information System (NRIS), a
database that contains information on places listed in or determined
eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Established
under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National
Register has identified and documented, in partnership with state,
federal, and tribal preservation programs nearly 77,000 districts,
sites, buildings, structures, and objects that are significant in
American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and
culture. Over 1 million contributing resources are included in the
boundaries of National Register listings."

You may want to look at this site or bookmark it for reference. Here
is the URL again:

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/research/nris.htm