On Whitewashed History and the Wentworth Letter

[_Gadianton Plumber]

In what universe is written language not abstract?
Wipe your mouth, lawyer, you gots some spittle there.

[_Yahoo Bot]

In what universe is written language not abstract?
Wipe your mouth, lawyer, you gots some spittle there.

Pictographs. Language evolves from pictures to alphabets. Alphabets demonstrate the greatest level of written linguisitic sophistication. That means that a given letter is not a picture of anything.

Dr. Coe points to some indicators that the Mayans evolved beyond pictures -- he has some dots and things like that to make his argument.

My point in all this, buried perhaps, is that the Nephite system of writing -- abtractions based upon a blended system of Egyptian (hieroglyphs) and Hebrew (alphabet) -- is nowhere manifested in any Mesoamerican setting --- Mayans included. Beastie wants to argue the Book of Mormon position, that the Mayans had a system of written language equivalent to the Nephite writing system. Why she would do that is beyond me, but whatever.

[_beastie]

It was not a gaffe. And I don't really see the need to pummel me for how I see the evidence. I've studied Coe and what he says. There is a difference between abstract written language and written language based upon pictographs. Coe does a good job of arguing that the Mayans used some pictographs abstractly to form sentences and thoughts, but I don't agree with his analysis and there are others who don't, either. There is no dispute, and I've never disputed it, that the Mayan language of hieroglyphs was almost as sophisticated as the Egyptian. But, really now, why bust me over this? I follow the authorities and have my opinions.

Beastie's confused; as our discussion evolved it was plainly clear that she had little clue as to the meaning and origins of Popul Vuh, and that her understanding based upon Google was evolving as I was needling her. So, she's just taken to creating a straw man of what I have said in the past -- "NO WRITTEN LANGUAGE AT ALL," she claims (I've never said that) to basically paint me as some sort of moron.

Bob’s memory is predictably faulty. Here was the conversation:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2633&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=105

bob was arguing in favor of the pre-Columbian horse in Mesoamerica, of course:

I think when it comes to pre-Columbian horses it is indeed the consensus view that they didn't exist, at least in recent history, but the true experts will acknowledge a peer-level contrary view. The problem I see with the pre-Columbian horses is that there has been insufficient radiocarbon data to support that view. There is plenty of stratigraphic evidence.

Beastie:

Well, I'm no expert in the field, but I have read over thirty books about ancient Mesoamerica, written by widely respected scholars in the field, and I've never read even one statement that could even be twisted to imply that some scholars believe horses existed in Mesoamerica during the Book of Mormon time period.

But I could be wrong. Since a consensus only means 50.1 percent, it shouldn't be too difficult for you to find some respected nonLDS Mesoamerican scholars who support the contrary view, ie, that horses really did exist in the specified time frame. And please use sources no less than twenty years old.

And while you're at it, you may want to explain why no horse exists in Mesoamerican art or literature, either, despite the heavy use of animals in their mythology.

Bob

I'm curious as to why you apparently won't read the cited Ray article. I thought you were an academic; if so, you would simply log onto your university's library and read the article yourself.

And, yes, there have been depictions of horses in Mesoamerican art. (The man riding the horse at Chitzenitza is a famous example; the toy horse pulling the cart is another; see references in Cyrus Gordon's book, "Before Columbus").

I'm not sure depictions in art have much meaning here. The Museum of Anthropologie in Mexico City (I've been there; seen them myself) have a depiction of a bearded European man dating back to around 600 AD to 1000 AD; there is a mural depicting two races of people, white and brown, fighting each other. My guide (a moonlighting university professor) at the Museum told me that these pieces of art demonstrated (1) Europeon contact with MesoAmerica long before Columbus, and (2) a now-extinct light-skinned peoples. But, what of it?

What do you mean by "literature?" The only "literature" of which I am familiar is Popul Vuh and since that post dates the conquest I put little faith in it.

You put no faith in the observations of the conquistidors?

By the way, Bob, on what page did Gordon refer to a toy horse pulling a cart?

I also was able to obtain Ray’s article quite a while ago and dissected it at length on my website here:
http://mormonmesoamerica.com/horses.htm#Ray%20Article

My response to bob:

I'm not an academic and don't have access to Ray's article. Have you read it yourself? Moreover, I want recent references. When LDS apologists offer a reference to support the possible existence of an anachronistic item in the Book of Mormon,
it is often either from an article in the fifties, without further support, or a reference from a quack like Barry Fell.

I have never heard of Cyrus Gordon nor his book, but from what I read from google searches, he sounds like another Barry Fell. He certainly isn't an expert in Mesoamerica, he's a scholar of ancient languages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/09/obitu ... 64&ei=5070

Now, tell me more about the man riding the horse and the horse pulling the cart. You know, the "famous" examples. If you give me enough details I may be able to figure out what you are talking about. It's a guessing game right now, because none of the books I've read about ancient Mesoamerica have mentioned these "famous" examples, and I don't recall sorenson or Brant gardner using these famous examples, either.

And what makes you think the bearded man was European?

And what statements of the conquistadors support the idea that horses were already in ancient America?

Like I said, I'm not an expert, but I have done quite a bit of reading about ancient Mesoamerica in general, and also read a history of the horse in specific. Not one of these texts offered any of these evidences you refer to, which makes me suspect they are Barry Fell quality.

(ps, literature would have to include the four extant codices as well as the Popol Vuh)

Bob’s reply:

Sorry; I am not familiar with "Berry Fell." I guess that is a pretty easy way to dispose of my experts. Cool tactic. I'll try it next time.

Cyrus Gordon was a professor of anthropology at Brandeis. He wrote a book examining relationships between Middle East cultures and the Americas. His particular expertise was in linguistics and artifacts. His conclusion was that there was Hebraic influence in America. He cites as evidence unscientific finds by amateurs, which he plainly identifies as such, and scientific finds using modern techniques. He distinguishes between the two.

One of books I cited you above (I guess it must have been another Berry Fell reference!!!) is a study of the influence of the horse upon Native American culture. It concludes that the horse pre-dated Europeon arrival, and the book bases its conclusions upon the journal entries from the Spanish in mesoAmerican and some journal entries of northern Europeans elsewhere about the horses they say the Indians were riding. Book reviews of the book I've seen conclude that the only possible explanation for pre-Columbian horses would be the release by Scandinavians.

I had a university professor from a Mexican university point the sculpture out to me and inform me that it was obviously European. His conclusion was that Norsemen must have travelled to Mexico around 600 A.D. It really is a well-known sculpture; I've seen it on the museum's website in the past.

I don't know who Brandt Gardner is.

I reiterate my question to you. When you told me that pre-Columbian literature does not reference horses, to what literature were you referring? Or were you just blowing smoke? (Because, I can assure you that other than the Gold Plates, there was no literature.) You know what? You're really not worthy of discussion with me; you don't know basic sources; you can't check my sources; you rely upon phantom bogeymen I've never heard of but whom you imagine are aligned with me. So, be gone with you. For now.

Is this where you supposedly told me about Barry Fell, Bob?

(snipping to my pertinent reply)

What hubris. You provide the lamest references for your claims ("a university professor told me it was obviously European") and act like you have the SLIGHTEST clue about ancient Mesoamerica, and don't even know about the most important archaeological finds, the four codices, which, unlike the Popol Vuh, are originals.

I added the underlining for emphasis here, but clearly I understood the Popol Vuh was not original.

Bob’s reply:

These codiecs are not "literature." The Mayans did not have a written language.

When the topic came up again later, in regards to a Nova program about Breaking the Mayan Code, crocket said:

Let's just say that you believe that a written language can include stick figures and I believe that that a written language requires something akin to an abstract alphabet.

I suppose Homer Simpson would be a written language element, in your estimation.

And, as I recall, you originally thought Popul Vuh was written in Mayan. Go figure.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5769&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=21

This is how Bob operates. He either deliberately or due to a horrendous memory makes false claims about what other posters have written. I suspect it’s deliberate because he refuses to modify his statements even after being shown the black-and-white evidence that he is wrong.
I corrected him on this thread and he still repeats the lie.

I also shared this information with him on that thread about why the Mayan language isn’t just a bunch of pictures. This was from Coe’s book, which he says he’s read.

Linda, smarting from Ruz’s jibe at the Segunda Mesa Redonda, took this to heart, and her 1980 doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas not only established the meaning of specific “event glyphs” or verbs in dynastic statements – such as chum, “to be seated” (ie, enthroned) for a picture of what Linda characteristically identifies as “an ass sitting down” – but she also showed how verbal affixes were used syllabically to write the grammatical endings to these verbs. For instance, in Mayan, chum belongs in a special category of verbs that describe the position in space of the subject, and these have their own inflectional endings. With Floyd’s establishment of the true phonetic readings for the syllabic signs T. 130 (United Airlines) and T. 116 (ni), Linda was eventually able to read the all-important “seating” glyph combination as chmuan (I) “he was seated” – in perfect grammatical Cholan, by now generally accepted as the language of the Classic inscriptions. (page 214)

All three Stuarts were in attendance at the great conference “Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing”, held in June 1979 at the State University of New York at Albany. Like the first Palenque Mesa Redonda, this was a watershed in Maya studies and the decipherment of the script. The linguist Lyle Campbell set the tone when he stated at the outset: “No Mayan linguist who has seriously looked into the matter any longer doubts the phonetic hypothesis as originally framed by Knorosov and elaborated by David Kelley, Floyd Lounsbury, and others.” The Maya script was logographic – that is, a combination of logograms expressing the morphemes or meaning units of words, and phonetic-syllable signs. In other words, exactly what Knorosov had been telling us ever since 1952, (page 233)

The report on the Albany conference came out in 1984. In one appendix, Peter Mathews laid out – in published form for the first time – a reasonably complete syllabic grid for the Maya script, one in which the syllabic value of each sign was agreed upon by several speakers. This has been added to and modified over the subsequent years, but there was now little doubt at all that the Maya could and did write anything they wanted to with this syllabary. The logograms would prove a tougher nut to crack, but substitutions with purely phonetic signs would lead to their decipherment, too. (page 236)

It is incomprehensible to me that a person of at least average intelligence could read Coe’s book and come away thinking that the Mayan language was just a bunch of pictures, and Coe is a polemist. (!!!!) But that’s bob for ya.
I’ve never mentioned the “Nephite language” at all in these conversations. The reason I assert that the Maya had a written language is because they did.

Here’s some information I shared about Barry Fell on the first thread I linked. I could have predicted Fell would become one of bob’s sources.

A professional conference was convened in 1977 at Castleton College in Vermont to consider the "evidence" reported in America B.C. Fell was one of the conference participants. A verbatim transcript of the proceedings was kept (Cook, 1987: 85-96). After others of those present had expressed doubts about America B.C. findings, Fell responded - with vehement invective. He charged his critics with being too "damn lazy" to read what he had written, so "ignorant" that they "can't even hold a Phoenician inscription the correct way up," and with being united in a jealous desire to protect their professions' conventional wisdom against the conflicting theories he has been developing. Displaying pictures of petroglyphs he claimed to have found in American caves and deciphered in Celtic Ogam, Fell refused to disclose their location. "As long as I am an unpronounceable person, I am not going to say where they are.

A 1977 review of America B.C. in the New York Times Book Review, by Glyn Daniel, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, England, described Fell's contention as "ignorant rubbish," reflecting a "set attitude of mind" that is "almost indistinguishable from a delusion" (Daniel, 1977). In characteristic fashion, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington published in 1978 a calm, reserved, meticulously careful Statement regarding America B.C. Authors Dr. Ives Goddard and Dr. William W. Fitzhugh, of the Institution's Department of Anthropology, listed five different sets of basic factual errors and anachronisms in the controversial volume that make it totally incredible (Goddard and Fitzhugh, 1978).

Professor F. H. Wilhelm Nicolaisen of the State University of New York at Binghamton, recognized expert on place names, has analyzed Fell's claims in America B.C. that the names of various New England towns and rivers are of Irish Celtic origin. Nicolaisen traces these names meticulously and irrefutably back to American Algonquin derivations (Nicolaisen, personal communication).

During the past five years, a number of widely recognized and respected archaeologists and linguists have had an opportunity to review the 1983 Wonderful West Virginia report of the Wyoming and Boone County petroglyphs. So far as appears, they all reject, on what seems to be solid ground, the Fell decipherment and interpretation.

[_Yahoo Bot]

Way to revise history!

[_beastie]

Way to revise history!

LOL. I quoted straight from the threads, and linked the threads. There was no revision.

Sometimes I think you're really a nonbeliever who wants to make defenders of the faith look obnoxious and impervious to reason.

[_thews]

Way to revise history!

Do you ever address anything that's been presented, or is this yet another exercise in ignoring everything to repeat the same wrong argument and wait for someone else to come and save you? Not that anyone needs any help in wiping the floor whatever point you think you're making, but there has been a lot of data presented and this is all you have to say? A claim of history being revised without foundation? On what grounds do you make this claim?

[_beastie]

Do you ever address anything that's been presented, or is this yet another exercise in ignoring everything to repeat the same wrong argument and wait for someone else to come and save you? Not that anyone needs any help in wiping the floor whatever point you think you're making, but there has been a lot of data presented and this is all you have to say? A claim of history being revised without foundation? On what grounds do you make this claim?

Bob doesn't worry about piddling details like grounds and evidence.

Although we know that this is largely a game to him in which he tries to score "wins" (which vary according to poster), there are details that can't be known. Does he really believe the things he says? Does he really think he can persuade others of his alternate reality? Is he willing to say obviously false and outrageous things just to score a "hit" (an emotional reaction)? Is his memory really that poor? Who knows.

[_MCB]

<scrunch between eyebrows>

Diffusionism is a very touchy subject. My personal stand is for a very limited diffusionism, with very limited effects.

Olmec possibly. Ancient.
Irish. Mostly west to east, facilitated by ocean currents. Began 600AD.
Viking. Only in NE North America. Began 1000AD
Polynesian. West coast of South America. Began 1300 AD
Chinese. West coast of North America. Began 1400 AD

Anything else began very anciently through the Bering straits and land-bridge. It was sporadic depending on climactic conditions and population pressures.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, except to make the point that even limited diffusionism can prove that the Book of Mormon is a fabulous confabulation.

No horses. Scandinavian livestock were too miniaturized to withstand attacks from wolves and other predator animals.

[_beastie]

<scrunch between eyebrows>

Diffusionism is a very touchy subject. My personal stand is for a very limited diffusionism, with very limited effects.

Olmec possibly. Ancient.
Irish. Mostly west to east, facilitated by ocean currents. Began 600AD.
Viking. Only in NE North America. Began 1000AD
Polynesian. West coast of South America. Began 1300 AD
Chinese. West coast of North America. Began 1400 AD

Anything else began very anciently through the Bering straits and land-bridge. It was sporadic depending on climactic conditions and population pressures.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, except to make the point that even limited diffusionism can prove that the Book of Mormon is a fabulous confabulation.

No horses. Scandinavian livestock were too miniaturized to withstand attacks from wolves and other predator animals.

There are several highly respected Mesoamerican scholars (with actual expertise in that field, not a different field) who believe that some contact between Old and New World likely took place. They just admit that this is highly speculative without any hard evidence. That is what differentiates trained scholars in the field and people like Cyrus Gordon and Barry Fell, who were both highly educated and respected in other fields, but who did not follow standard protocol when dealing with their hobby of Old World influence in the New World.

I really don't understand why defenders of the faith don't just admit this, instead of relying on problematic sources, or very dated sources. It's not like apologists are trying to make the argument of notable Hebraic influence on Mesoamerica anyway, in fact, the exact opposite. So what would they lose? They really need to let go of these tired old and largely debunked arguments for no other reason than to try and salvage some credibility on the issue.

[Guest]

If a written language is only to be considered such when it has a "pure alphabet," then the Chinese will be surprised to learn that they do not have a written language.