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Author: Steven R. Fischer Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1461222982 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
After successfully deciphering the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, Steven Roger Fischer gained a unique place in the pantheon of glyphbreakers: he is the only person to have deciphered not one but two ancient scripts. Both of these scripts yield clues of great historical importance. Fischers previous decipherment, of a Cretan artefact called the Phaistos Disk, provided the key to the ancient Minoan language and showed it to be closely related to Mycenaean Greek. Fischer's decipherment of Rongorongo shows that it was not merely a mnemonic device for recalling memorised texts, but was actually read and used for creative composition. This is the exciting story of these two decipherments, by the man who now must rank as the greatest glyphbreaker of all time.
Author: Steven R. Fischer Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1461222982 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
After successfully deciphering the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, Steven Roger Fischer gained a unique place in the pantheon of glyphbreakers: he is the only person to have deciphered not one but two ancient scripts. Both of these scripts yield clues of great historical importance. Fischers previous decipherment, of a Cretan artefact called the Phaistos Disk, provided the key to the ancient Minoan language and showed it to be closely related to Mycenaean Greek. Fischer's decipherment of Rongorongo shows that it was not merely a mnemonic device for recalling memorised texts, but was actually read and used for creative composition. This is the exciting story of these two decipherments, by the man who now must rank as the greatest glyphbreaker of all time.
Author: James R. Russell Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 900446073X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1629
Book Description
The present volume is a collection of articles published by Professor James R. Russell of Harvard University, in various journals over the past decades.
Author: Milan Randic Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1453518185 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 546
Book Description
Nobel is a pictographic language based on some 120 basic signs and many arrows of different shape that are mutually combined. It is named after Alfred Nobel (18331896), Swedish chemist and industrialist, inventor of dynamite, who left most of his fortune to a foundation that annually gives awards to individuals whose work is characterized as greatest benefit to mankind, known as Nobel Prizes. Besides the awards for sciences and literature significantly, Alfred Nobel included, among others, a prize for peace (that besides individuals, also organizations may obtain). Although it would be utopian to believe that human conflicts could be avoided if communication tools would improve, the emergence of universal languages certainly cannot make the situation worse! Universal languages are a communication tool, which makes it possible for people of no common language to communicate. They are graphic, but they should be distinguished from picture writings, which only passively offer information on some event or give messages. Universal languages have more similarity with the sign languages that are used for people who lost hearing or the sign language of American Plains Indians, who spoke different languages and could communicate by sign language that they developed. However, written language has some advantages over hand sign languages in that one can communicate at a great distance, particularly today in the age of fax and computer communications, and that one can leave messages for posterity. This is not the place to argue for or against the promise of written sign languages. Graphic (written) sign languages exist today, and the best known are Chinese characters used in China and Japan. The problem with Chinese characters is that there are too many characters and it is difficult to learn so many. It takes years for children in China and Japan to learn so many different characters, and the task would be even harder for grown people to learn if they have not done this when young. Nobel is designed to remove this difficulty and is based on the following requirements: 1. SMALL NUMBER OF BASIC SIGNS 2. SIGNS SHOULD BE EASY TO RECOGNIZE 3. SIGNS SHOULD BE EASY TO REPRODUCE 4. COMBINATIONS LIMITED TO THREE SIGNS 5. COMPLEMENTARY We have already mentioned that Nobel uses about 120 basic signs, which can be viewed as a small number, particularly in view of over 100 signs of Nobel that are so obvious that they can be easily absorbed. The other requirements are also very important. There are many signs that can be easily recognized, but in order to be acceptable for Nobel, they also need to be easily reproduced, because that will facilitate communication. Also, when making combinations of signs, one has to make some restriction in order to maintain clarity, so we decided to have no more than three signs combined into single word. Finally, the last requirement, that of complementarities, needs some explanation. Besides having signs that one can easily recognize and easily draw, one needs some structure to be embedded into composition of signs that facilitates one to remember and learn signs easily. We refer to this structure as complementary or, broadly speaking, associational, and what it implies is that words and objects that are related should have related signs. Thus, for example, pairs of words like man-woman, cat-dog, coffee-tea, good-bad, love-hate, etc., should have signs that are in some opposition, while words like smoke-flame-fire, tree-wood-forest, water-sea-ocean, good-better-best should have signs that are in competition. With this in mind when one sees and learns the basic signs, the meaning of many combinations of signs can be in advance anticipated. This helps one to learn Nobel rather fast; not months, not weeks, perhaps not even days, but a couple of hours may suffice that one may learn hundreds and hundreds of words. In this respect, Nobel may be unique among languages written, spoken of,
Author: Barbara Hand Clow Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Co ISBN: 1591439604 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
• Bestselling author Barbara Hand Clow examines legendary cataclysms and shows how we are about to overcome the collective fear they have instilled in us. • The long-awaited follow-up that continues the revelations begun in The Pleiadian Agenda, which has sold more than 60,000 copies. • Explains why, contrary to many prophets of doom, we are actually on the cusp of an era of incredible creative growth. The recent discovery of the remains of ancient villages buried beneath the Black Sea is the latest instance of mounting evidence that many of the "mythic" catastrophes of history--the fall of Atlantis, the Biblical Flood--were actual events. In Catastrophobia Barbara Hand Clow shows that a series of cataclysmic disasters, caused by a massive disturbance in the Earth's crust 11,500 years ago, rocked the world and left humanity's collective psyche permanently scarred. We are a wounded species, and this unprocessed fear, passed from generation to generation, is responsible for our constant expectations of apocalypse, from Y2K to the famed end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. Catastrophobia reveals the insidious global forces that have used these collective fears to control humanity for thousands of years. But we are in the midst of a tremendous shift in the Earth's 26,000-year precessional cycle, and there is every indication that the changes in consciousness over the last 30 years are the beginnings of a collective healing from these deep fears, heralding a new age where we will see that the era of cataclysms is ending and a time of extraordinary creative activity is at hand.
Author: Steven Roger Fischer Publisher: Reaktion Books ISBN: 1861894163 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
On a long stretch of green coast in the South Pacific, hundreds of enormous, impassive stone heads stand guard against the ravages of time, war, and disease that have attempted over the centuries to conquer Easter Island. Steven Roger Fischer offers the first English-language history of Easter Island in Island at the End of the World, a fascinating chronicle of adversity, triumph, and the enduring monumentality of the island's stone guards. A small canoe with Polynesians brought the first humans to Easter Island in 700 CE, and when boat travel in the South Pacific drastically decreased around 1500, the Easter Islanders were forced to adapt in order to survive their isolation. Adaptation, Fischer asserts, was a continuous thread in the life of Easter Island: the first European visitors, who viewed the awe-inspiring monolithic busts in 1722, set off hundreds of years of violent warfare, trade, and disease—from the smallpox, wars, and Great Death that decimated the island to the late nineteenth-century Catholic missionaries who tried to "save" it to a despotic Frenchman who declared sole claim of the island and was soon killed by the remaining 111 islanders. The rituals, leaders, and religions of the Easter Islanders evolved with all of these events, and Fischer is just as attentive to the island's cultural developments as he is to its foreign invasions. Bringing his history into the modern era, Fischer examines the colonization and annexation of Easter Island by Chile, including the Rapanui people's push for civil rights in 1964 and 1965, by which they gained full citizenship and freedom of movement on the island. As travel to and interest in the island rapidly expand, Island at the End of the World is an essential history of this mysterious site.
Author: Steven Roger Fischer Publisher: Reaktion Books ISBN: 1780239467 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 286
Book Description
This second edition of Steven Roger Fischer’s fascinating book charts the history of communication from a time before human language was conceived of to the media explosion of the present day. Fischer begins by describing the modes of communication used by whales, birds, insects, and nonhuman primates, suggesting these are the first contexts in which the concept of “language” might be applied. He then moves from the early abilities of Homo erectus to the spread of languages worldwide, analyzing the effect of the development of writing along the way. With the advent of the science of linguistics in the nineteenth century, the nature of human languages first came to be studied and understood. Fischer follows the evolution of linguists’ insights and the relationship of language to social change into the mid-1900s. Taking into account the rise of pidgin, Creole, jargon, and slang, he goes on to raise provocative questions about literature’s—and literacy’s—relationship to language. Finally, touching on the effects of radio, television, propaganda, and advertising, Fischer looks to the future, asking how electronic media are daily reshaping the world’s languages and suggesting a radical reinterpretation of what language really is.
Author: Jared Diamond Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0141976969 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 608
Book Description
From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times
Author: Barbara Hand Clow Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1591439388 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 332
Book Description
Completing our conscious evolution by releasing our collective fear of catastrophes • Explains how we are on the cusp of an era of incredible creative growth • Shows how we are about to overcome the collective fear caused by ancient catastrophes as we awaken to the memories of our lost prehistory • Examines legendary cataclysms and scientific evidence of a highly advanced global culture that disappeared 11,500 years ago In this completely revised and expanded edition of Catastrophobia, bestselling author Barbara Hand Clow explains how we are on the cusp of an age of incredible creative growth made possible by restoring our lost prehistory. Examining legendary cataclysms--such as the fall of Atlantis and the biblical Flood--and the mounting geological and archaeological evidence that many of these mythic catastrophes were actual events, she reveals the existence of a highly advanced global maritime culture that disappeared amid great earth changes and rising seas 14,000 to 11,500 years ago, nearly causing our species’ extinction and leaving humanity’s collective psyche deeply scarred. Tracing humanity’s reemergence after these prehistoric catastrophes, Clow explains how these events in the deep past influence our consciousness today. Guided by Carl Johan Calleman’s analysis of the Mayan Calendar, she reveals that as the Earth’s 26,000-year precessional cycle shifts, our evolution is accelerating to prepare us for a new age of harmony and peace. She explains how we are beginning a collective healing as ancient memories of prehistory awaken in our minds and release our unprocessed fear. Passed from generation to generation, this fear has been responsible for our constant expectations of apocalypse. She shows that by remembering and moving beyond the trauma of our long lost past, we bring the era of cataclysms to an end and cross the threshold into a time of extraordinary creative activity.
Author: Stel Pavlou Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 1429907797 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 593
Book Description
A “spellbinding mainstream science-fiction spectacular” from the bestselling author, screenwriter, and Doctor Who short story contributor (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Mankind has had 12,000 years to decipher the message . . . We have one week left . . . There is a signal emanating from deep within the ice of Antarctica. Atlantis has awoken. Ancient monuments all over the worlds from the Pyramids of Giza, to Mexico to the ancient sites of China are reacting . . . to a brewing crisis not of this earth, but somewhere out in the solar system. Connecting to each other through the oceans. Using low frequency sound waves to create an ancient network. The earth is thrown into panic stations. For it seems that the signals emanating from Atlantis are a prelude to something much greater. Could it be that the entire city is in fact one giant ancient machine? And to what end? For what purpose? It is the year 2012, the same year Mayan belief prophesized the end of the world. Two armies, American and Chinese stand on the brink of war for the control of the most potent force ever known to man. The secrets of Atlantis. Secrets which are encoded in crystal shards retrieved from the sunken city. Secrets which Mankind has had twelve thousand years to decipher . . . but which will now destroy it within one week. “A rocketing adventure . . . Stel Pavlou’s debut novel burst with marvels of scientific chitchat and towers above most recent science fiction.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “A fascinating blend of science, mythology, language, and much more.” —The Independent (London)
Author: Steven R. Fischer Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9780387982410 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
After successfully deciphering the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, Steven Roger Fischer gained a unique place in the pantheon of glyphbreakers: he is the only person to have deciphered not one but two ancient scripts. Both of these scripts yield clues of great historical importance. Fischers previous decipherment, of a Cretan artefact called the Phaistos Disk, provided the key to the ancient Minoan language and showed it to be closely related to Mycenaean Greek. Fischer's decipherment of Rongorongo shows that it was not merely a mnemonic device for recalling memorised texts, but was actually read and used for creative composition. This is the exciting story of these two decipherments, by the man who now must rank as the greatest glyphbreaker of all time.
Author: Steven R. Fischer
Author: Steven R. Fischer
Author: James R. Russell
Author: Milan Randic
Author: Barbara Hand Clow
Author: Steven Roger Fischer
Author: Steven Roger Fischer
Author: Jared Diamond
Author: Barbara Hand Clow
Author: Stel Pavlou
Author: Steven R. Fischer