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TelMiles
In: London
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What date are we talking?
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Against all Gods.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Tel, you must get into the habit of Googling these very basic facts. Eight hundred and forty three AD is the figure in my head. I am a polymath and don't ever neeed to Google.
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TelMiles
In: London
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Tel, you must get into the habit of Googling these very basic facts. Eight hundred and forty three AD is the figure in my head. I am a polymath and don't ever neeed to Google. |
Oh ok, I'll just ask you then Mick.
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Against all Gods.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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'Old High German' is supposed to have been spoken from c. 500 to c. 1000 AD but written texts can only be dated from around 750. By the mid eleventh century a radical simplification of German grammar had taken place.
According to wiki
Grammatically, however, Old High German remained very similar to Old English, Old Dutch and Old Saxon.
As though it were a different language in fact from German.
1050 is seen as the start of the Middle High German period, though in fact there are almost no texts in German for the next hundred years.
Modern German is almost the same as Middle High German, says wiki blandly.
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TelMiles
In: London
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So German changes around the same time that French enters England...
So English is rather late being written down then? compared to other languages
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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Might be churlish to cut across threads like this but:
| Yes. I've heard the same thing. That no one knows where Sparta is. And I also seem to recall something else that's odd about Sparta -- that the city disappears from history for about 500 years -- then comes back just as it was. |
Sparta is real enough. It sits in the Greek Peleponnese. The ruins of the ancient city are right next to the modern one. Love this idea of the disappearing five hundred years though. Tell me more....
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Can you check your sources, Dunc? Greek nationalism effects their current practices as well as their archaeo-history very profoundly (they practically went to war with FYR Macedonia the other year because of Alexander the Great!)....so I wouldn't be suprised if they built a new city and called it Sparta next to a set of old ruins they decided might have been Sparta.
The five hundred year gap refers to the King of Sparta being at the Trojan War (c 1250 BC on the orthodox calendar) and then popping up again in the immediate pre-Classical era (c 550 BC) with no mention in between. Actually that's seven hundred years but I daresay orthodoxy has been finagling the dates either end.
If you come up with anything Spartan between these dates (either history OR archaeology), you will have single-handedly saved orthodox Ancient History from a watery AE grave.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| So English is rather late being written down then? compared to other languages |
Well, it would be nice if the wretched linguists would come up with something useful for a change like a league table of ancientness but actually you'd have to say "early", comparatively speaking. Only French and Irish are definitely earlier (I am speaking 'to my own knowledge', alternatives highly welcome) among demotic European languages. Welsh used to antedate English but it looks now overwhelmingly that what orthodoxy calls Old Welsh is actually just Irish.
Funnily enough, if orthodoxy is correct about Anglo-Saxon, English would then become the earliest written demotic language (in Europe? in the world?).
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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| Can you check your sources, Dunc? |
Other than a visit, my principal source is Bethany Hughes's three-part programme simply entitled 'Sparta'. If I remember correctly she even visits the site of the cliff where the weak babies were hurled over to an early grave. Apparently the bones of many children were discovered. I'll certainly look into this some more.
| The five hundred year gap refers to the King of Sparta being at the Trojan War (c 1250 BC on the orthodox calendar) and then popping up again in the immediate pre-Classical era (c 550 BC) with no mention in between. |
The orthodox account is, of course, that Mycenaen Sparta collapsed with Mycenaen civilisation per se soon after the victory over Troy. Dorian invaders overwhelmed the Mycenaen empire. When Sparta re-emerges in the immediate pre-Classical period it is the city of the same name but certainly not Mycenaen. The lack of written sources between the two periods is down to Dorian illiteracy, or so we are told.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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So let me see if I understand orthodoxy's version of this seven-hundred year period of history correctly.
1. The 'Spartans' are a literate Greek-speaking people in the thirteenth century BC
2. Then they become an illiterate Greek-speaking people.
3. Then a bunch of foreigners take over
4. Then these foreigners emerge as literate Greek-speakers in the sixth century BC.
I know! Let's chuck Bethany Hughes over a cliff!
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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What changes is the writing of the language. According to Wikipedia:
The use of the syllabary system of the Minoans, the so-called Linear scripts, fell into sharp decline in favour of a new alphabet system, adopted from the Semitic Phoenicians to write not only the Greek language, but also other languages in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time. Before this turbulent time, Myceneans were writing their Greek language in Linear B but after the Dark Ages when history was being recorded once again, we find this new alphabet, the more familiar alpha-beta-gamma.
The Dark Age apparently lasted some 200 years, between 1100 and 750 BCE, again according to Wikipedia. However, there's no dispute that the language being spoken was Greek. Nonetheless, Mycenaen civilisation ended with the destruction of palaces and an end to writing.
Would you argue for a Trojan War taking place more recently than 1250 BCE, on the evidence of there not being a Greek Dark Age?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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You're being driven up entirely the wrong creek, Dunc. In the early fifties, Linear B was undecipherable. Velikovsky, the original proponent of the six hundred year gap thesis, predicted that Linear B would turn out to be just Greek. How everyone chortled!
Then along came Ventris who deciphered Linear B and showed that it was just plain old, boring old Greek. How everyone forgot Velikovsky!
| The Dark Age apparently lasted some 200 years, between 1100 and 750 BCE, again according to Wikipedia |
A perfect example of 'modified careful ignoral'. When you have a really glaring gap of seven hundred years (an obvious impossibility in the history-rich Near East of this time) you set about whittling it down. Thus the demise of Minoa/Mycenae which is around 1250 BC starts getting written as 1100, and the start of Classical Greece which is about 550 starts getting written down as 750. Then you get phrases like "apparently lasted some 200 years, between 1100 and 750 BCE" which is so breathtaking that ol' Dunc doesn't even notice the figures don't add up. Of course he'll probably say the Dark Age only lasted a coupla hundred years whereas the descent-into-Dark Age and the ascent-from- Dark Age covers the other bits. But it's all Dark Age, Dunc...there's just nothing for the entire period 1250-550 except historians and archaeologists stretching the two ends.
And by the way, please don't use BCE. Whose common era is this exactly? If you are going to use a date that refers to the Birth of Christ have the courtesy to use the Ol' Boy's name. You are perfectly free to use some other dating system entirely but round here you are not permitted to ape a bunch of American Jewish academics who can't stand having to use his name all the time. Or indeed His name.
| Would you argue for a Trojan War taking place more recently than 1250 BCE, on the evidence of there not being a Greek Dark Age? |
Of course I would. If we know most of the Trojan War Bubbles existed in 550 and they are all treating it as their National Poem, then it stands to reason the Trojan War just happened (assuming it happened at all). Shall we say 700 BC tops? Unless of course you believe it happened in 1250 BC and then all these people and the poem itself went into a coma for seven hundred years and then everyone woke up spouting it. Yes, that's probably what happened. There was this prince who had to cut his way through a tangled thornwood....
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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Well Mick, the problem with all of this is the archaeology. I don't want you getting upset again over the BCE thing so I'll stick to BEFORE CHRIST this time.
Manfred Korfmann has spent years excavating the site of Troy and his radio carbon dates put the war around 1250. The war is also attested in Hittite sources, though they call Troy by the name of Wilusa.
Now I don't think any archaeologist is arguing for the collapse of the Mycenaen Empire straight after the fall of Troy but your Dark Age is there in the archaeological record, unless of course you're questioning the integrity of the radio-carbon dates? Mycenaen palaces collapse after 1100 and the Classical Greeks begin writing again in the eighth century (let's say 750 BC).
Still quite a gap but I don't see why this 'false' Dark Age is important. What's so bizarre about a people losing the art of writing and then re-discovering it in another alphabet?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Manfred Korfmann has spent years excavating the site of Troy |
No, he's excavating a site he claims is Troy.
| and his radio carbon dates put the war around 1250. |
No, wars happen all the time. He's chosen one that happens to coincide with the orthodox date of the Trojan War.
| The war is also attested in Hittite sources, |
The Hittites never existed...at least not in the sense of a Great Power ruling the Near East in the thirteenth century.
| though they call Troy by the name of Wilusa. |
Oh, so that's all right then. Remind me how we know they're the same place. We once made a list of the names that Troyand/or the Trojans go under....was it half a dozen or a dozen, I can't remember. Perhaps someone could dig up the list.
| Now I don't think any archaeologist is arguing for the collapse of the Mycenaen Empire straight after the fall of Troy but your Dark Age is there in the archaeological record, unless of course you're questioning the integrity of the radio-carbon dates? Mycenaen palaces collapse after 1100 and the Classical Greeks begin writing again in the eighth century (let's say 750 BC). |
What carbon dates? Please list anything between 1250 and 550. It's not called a Dark Age for nothing.
| Still quite a gap but I don't see why this 'false' Dark Age is important. What's so bizarre about a people losing the art of writing and then re-discovering it in another alphabet? |
If it's not bizarre then kindly produce another people who did likewise.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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Sorry, I can't accept this Mick. Before Korfmann Archaeologists dismissed the site of Hissarlik as a contender for Troy. This was because Schliemann's excavations only revealed a small city, way too small to be Homer's Troy. Korfmann revealed a much larger lower city. Schliemann's city was then shown to be the citadel.
The Hittites were the same people who fought the Egyptians at Kadesh in 1274 BC. They were extremely powerful. Their sources talk of a people from across the Aegean invading the land around Wilusa (Greek Ilios). Their sources also talk of very distinctive underground water cisterns which have only been recently discovered at the site of Troy. That was the link between Troy and Wilusa although it was previously accepted that Hittite Wilusa had been somewhere in north-western Turkey.
| What carbon dates? Please list anything between 1250 and 550. It's not called a Dark Age for nothing. |
You misunderstand. The radio carbon dates are for Troy. There are plenty of them for artefacts throughout the Dark Ages. The phrase refers to the break in written history over the period.
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