a community of "esperantists" - how amusing --

I am presently working (among numerous projects) on a reading production of "Don Juan in Hell" from Shaw's Man and Superman - this was done wonderfully in 1952 by Charles Boyer (Don Juan), Agnes Moorehead (Dona Anna), Sir Cedric Hardwicke (the Statue), and Charles Laughton (the Devil) - recommended reading for those who have not, along with Clark's "Schizoid Creator" - (Shaw's is the earlier work - 1903 I think) -- Shaw was deeply involved in "spelling reform" - which mercifully died the death -- how much we would lose by dinking with the language, and what an insult to imagine that even the "texting" cell phone generation is too ignorant to acquire language and appreciate its marvelous messy history - how awful to go "dayzee" for "Daisy" and miss the knowledge that it is "day's eye" - or "gudd-bi" (there is no Schwa on my computer, sorry) for "goodbye" - "God be wi' ye" -
and so "adieu mais amis"

I think your computer does have É™. Mine does.

not on my keyboard - and that is not the symbol for the "schwa" in use in my college days -

I have started learning Esperanto, and I am enjoying it immensely. I particularly enjoy writing original poems in it, and have written pieces with single words than can only be paraphrased by clumsy clauses in English.

So, my 2 cents, it is used by me for more than just communication with others, and it has helped me in my daily life by stimulating new areas of creativity.

So it is worth learning, IMO.

I say have at and have fun -- I would personally rather improve my Bantu, or begin Swahili - fascinating grammar - however I am deeply immersed in translating Futhark and Ogham inscriptions found all across wester Arkansas and OK to Colorado Springs -

As to the latter post – good luck. I can by just looking at some of the American runestones (the ones I've seen) and tell they are cunning but indeed forgeries. Please send me a contradicting example, and I'd be the first to congratulate you!

Komponisto Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As to the latter post – good luck. I can by just
> looking at some of the American runestones (the
> ones I've seen) and tell they are cunning but
> indeed forgeries. Please send me a contradicting
> example, and I'd be the first to congratulate you!


Check out works by Dr. Fell, and "in Plain Sight" by Gloria Farley - the Runic inscriptions in Heavener OK, are well authenticated as to age - Mrs Farley was taken to see them as a 12 year old (she just died at nearly 90) and local indians remembered being told by their great- grand parents traceable to 1835 - which means that the inscriptions were there before anyone else could have been interested in making them - further, one was uncovered some 8 feet deep in the root system of an extremely old Oak - further, I have examined the latex cast of the cave inscriptions found in the panhandle - and the university (now in possession of the relevant information regarding the locations which have been closely held by request of the landowners), and they have verified this most significant find - I am more interested however in the Ogham, which is far more numerous - unfortunately, few items are available for viewing in the the books on the subject, - Mrs. Farley's home was wall to wall and floor to ceiling with latex molds she and various teams of students from the Univ. over the years had made. I do not know at this point the disposition of her estate. The inscription I am looking at was a 75 foot cliff, copied by hand at first - then later was blown up by persons who thought it was a map to a gold mine - it is a mixture of clearly modern cuts and very curious markings resembling ogham, possibly in rebus form, a fairly common way to obfuscate the message.
(See Robert Graves on this matter - I was unaware of these incision (deep in basalt by the way) when I studied with Dr. Graves - I do not recall his being familiar with Mystery Hill in Vermont, though he may have been. Some of the now subterranean chambers of that type are found even in Pennsylvania and are part of the local colorful mythology that gave birth to Rev. Solomon Spaulding's puloinded manuscript for a very bad novel which probably would have been called "The manuscript discovered" and was the basis for what became the Book of Mormon - Spaulding's family maintained a lawsuit againt the Mormon church until 1895 about - around 15 years ago, copies from "the unidentified scribe" in the manuscript of the book of Mormon surfaced, and several folk interested is such matters had them independently analyzed and 17 pages were noted as being from Spaulding's hand - he died 13 years before the "discovery" by J. Smith of the "Golden Tablets" which were "translated" into the famous Book - I mention this only in passing to remark about the stories circulating in upstate New York and New England about the mysterious Stone ruins and underground chambers found all over the place up there in the late 17th and early 18th century - the markings on the stones are clearly not made by plow shares or roots, and the stones are quite large and clearly man made - plus there are a number of dolmens - common also to Ireland - I have examined enough in person to to be convinced that there are some genuine inscriptions - plus the reported finds along the Rio, and one I have not seen in Vancouver, BC - make it very intriguing - let us just say the probability of viking long boats with druid priests aboard rounding Florida, coming up the Mississippi, the Missouri, and Poteau Creek Oklahoma is substantially higher than the validity of visits by UFOs. = What is your background by the way, sounds like a meeting someday (if I live that long) would be fun -

I do find it hard to read the text on this page, maybe it is the font, I don't know. I hope that I get everything.

The so called Glomedal inscription is interesting, but indeed a forgery. The word it self, GLOMEDAL is modern Scandinavian, the custom to write words without case started in the 1500-s (AD) and the word itself if written before 800 AD would have been something like GLOMA DA(I)LIZ. I am not questioning the truth in the testimonials, but they do not say that THE inscription was there in 1835, just that SOME inscription was there then. Word of mouth proof is of little weight in the serious archaeological world, I'm afraid...

I know little of Ogham, and I'd like to see some examples from the USA before making a statement. We have similar stories from Sweden, but every one of them later turned up to be forgeries and lies. If you have the time, I'd like you to study the case of the Runamo slab: [en.wikipedia.org]

I am pursuing a batchelor's in archaeology at the university of Stockholm with the ancient world as main subject, but I do have some knowledge of my own ancient history (that of the Vikings). My main speciality in that field is runes and runestones, which is (to many's surprise) a almost wholly christian thing, and has little to do with vikings.

If you some day would visit Stockholm, or I the USA (hah, such a little country, right?) then I'd surely like to meet. Just send me a mail!

There have been a number of opinions about the Heavener Runestone, its presence as acknowledged by the Indians, does not imply that it has been altered in any way - the Indians certainly didn't do it, and the chances of some one in that period of American history doing it is excessively remote - prior to Dr. Fell's attempt, the translation was quite remote from "valley of Glom" -- One of the consistent errors in archaeology, is the assumption that all graffiti artists from ancient times knew how to spell - It is my opinion that it ought to read the "l" aa an "r" - Grimm's studies make it very clear that this is one of a family of sounds that migrates (b-v-f etc) - Grom as you probably know is the onomotopoetic Russian word for "thunder" - I suspect "thunder valley" is closer to what was in mind, though it is not out of the question that the leader of the group had something like that as a name or title.
The piece about two feet long that has been translated as "blessing of the Gods for Glom", and is commonly interpreted as a grave marker, is at least 500 years old and probably much, much more since the tree that grew up around it, dropping eons of leaves and building up the soil would have been an acorn when it was left behind -- at 8 ft deep, tangled in the roots of this ancient tree, there is no possibility that it could be a forgery -- of course all this kind of thing flies in the face of accepted wisdom, however, that, in itself, lends it credence based on past events.
You will recall that Galileo had to recant his discoveries - but that didn't alter their truth. The inscriptions are found from Murphy's creek Arkansas to Colorado Springs, Colorado - the book I mentioned has examples of Ogham -
It is in a cave or undercut cliff, and in the "Panhandle" section of Oklahoma - it is large enough to accomadate a couple of people and has a large arc cut in with notches at regular intervals - there is a wall drawing of an elephant and crocodile, a notch stone near the entrance traces the day on the arch as the sun moves, and particularly denotes the equinoxes - at the dawn section of the arch, there is the familiar egyptian symbol of the Ra as the sun deity, with regular rays descending, on the opposite end is the dog symbol for "Anubis" with his tail divided (as commonly seen in Egyptian glyphs) as the flail and sceptre as commonly seen in the examples of the seated pharaoh with arms crossed holding these instruments of his authority. An Ogham inscription on the upper left laments of the aloneness of the "priest"(maybe), and his desire that "they" return for him. There is some debate on the various inscriptions found because some of them, while in Ogham script, are clearly Celtic Iberian, which more commonly used Cuneiform or Hierglyphs (even as we commonly write Arabic or Oriental words in English letters) since they had no "alphabet" of their own. - You would have to visit the sites to grasp how utterly improbable their existence is for a hoaxer - the effort in getting to them prior to the existence of roads alone is a major factor -
the sheer number and distance between is another consideration -
I would love to visit Sweden, but it is likelier that you might come here - though, if the legends about Swedish women are true, I can understand that it would be difficult to pry oneself loose from the land. In actuality, the archaeologist's discipline provides very poor tools for studying epigrapha - people who merely traded, rarely left artifacts of residence -- there are some very intriguing artifacts in the Indian mounds in Mississippi et al.
This is great fun. Keep working at it.

small added note - we commonly use the term "viking" for those who are capable of owning and handling a long boat - and not as a reference to religious faith - as I understand the term, it refers to the making of a trip - or raid - a "vik" - could be off course on that - I am of the opinion that the chronicles of Leif Ericcson's journey which describes the finding of abundant grapes, is highly accurate - though the location of ruins thus far is no where near any grape growing country - I believe that his scouts went at least as far as North Carolina where the scuppernong grape once abounded on the coast, growing high into the trees - it is the first location known to me where grapes would have been found by someone beaching a long boat easily and going ashore. The capacity of the long boat to follow the great current around Florida and into the Mississippi River and thence easily inland for many miles is beyond question - the return trip, with oars and sailors who knew how to tack to the wind would have been difficult but far from impossible - There is just too much of ancient human history that we cannot account for - and for the studies that interest me, nothng - How, for example, does one account for the fact that over 40% of the Zuni indian language is Basque - also, Basque proper names occur among the Sioux and Algonquin tribes - Basque (Euskara) is one of three languages that have no Indo-European cognates. There has to have been contact or travel in an unrecorded ancient past - Clark might have suggested that all this happened before the dying of the second sun?!

Personally I refuse to read CAS in anything other than my native Sumerian

First a number of questions:

1. Why should people from 5;th century Scandinavia use modern Russian words? It seems sily to me.

2. I still wonder why both the first part of the word (GLOMEDAL) lacks a grammatical ending and why the second part lacks the same and also why it is modern Scandinavian.

3. Why should people of the Hiberno-Celtic language group use cuneiform (hah!) or hieroglyphs when no such writing system has ever been in use in Europe and especially never by the named group of people and also, why they suddenly switched to ogham?

4. Why should "the scouts" (if he indeed had such) of Leifr Eiríksson write with old Germanic runes, a writing system abandoned almost four hundred years prior to their visit? And why should they use a variant of the runes that nobody else had used for 600 years? (and still, why use modern Scandinavian with or without strange Russian loan words)


...followed by a number of statements:

1. "Vík", in both modern Scandinavian and old Norse, means "small bay". (The capital of Iceland, Reykjavík, the bay of smokes)
"Víkingur" is a man who lives nearby an inlet or a fjord, thus often a sailor. Why the word suddenly should have changed meaning to "raid", I don't know.

2. I do not doubt that Greenlandic explorers reached further down the New England coast, but until we've found scientific proof: They didn't. Period. One can not make science without proof. Real proof. Proof that have been published in a scientific journal.

3. I have found no article or book (serious or speculative) concerning the relationship between Euskara and any American language. Please show me one. Oh, but I can show you homepages that clearly states that Euskara is directly related to Chinese, Finnish, Berber, Georgian or any other old world language. :)


You have to excuse me, but most of your statements seem like Thor Heyerdahl or Erich von Däniken gone wrong. And I also think that we've run from the topic. :)


But, when where into the topic:
The Kensington runestone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_runestone), found in Minnesota, USA is interesting since it uses umlaut (dots over vowels), something we Swedes didn't even know of before 1700. I tell you one thing more; it wasn't even invented before that. Then, also, it is written in modern Swedish, with an futhark that existed still in use in Sweden around 1900. The stone was found by an immigrant from... ...Sweden! Strange, huh?

We are indeed off the track - several misreadings from your post -

the idea that "Grom" is modern Russian is quite true - but it is an ancient onomotopoetic sound root for thunder, there are 8000 root sounds behind all indo-european languages - your studies of philology must go deeper before I can go further in that discussion - dozens of scholars who are experts in ancient norse languages have examines the stone itself - Glomedal was just the latest - I do not assume that the reading is correct, or that the transliteration of the letters is accurate, it is only convenient to use it - if you see the stone in person, perhaps you could do a better job with it -- considering the plethora of inscriptions, I should withhold judgment -
Additionally, no suggestion was made or implied that the Erickson expedition wrote anything anywhere, for if the inscriptions in the midwest are true, they are much older - The kensington stone is a well-known fraud - no news there - That basque is both linguistically and grammatically related to the languages you mention (in its oldest uncorrupted form) is an interesting thought, and I shall pursue that when I have time -- I would not expect you to know the documents on American Indian or Toltec languages - they constitute research that is less than 5 years old, and the status of publication is unknown to me, since what I have seen of them were faxes of sections from the professors at the Univ. in Fort Worth texas which had been sent to Mrs. Gloria Farley -I made no notes on them, and was able to scan what she had only briefly since my visit was necessarily short (she has since died, and was then 88
and frail) I was there mainly to meet her and see the latex impressions of the cave described in my last email. You must realize that because you have not found something has no impact on its truth or falsehood - you are also clearly very young - Your attitude at the moment is the pedantry of the beginner - and your mild insults merely cause an amused smile - All your statements mean is that you have not reached that level of scholarship where the fun begins - and that is the speculation based on reflecting on possible scenarios to deal with the anomolous.
Oh, and by the way, Spain is full of sites where Celtic-Iberian epigrapha have been identified (also north africa).
Keep up your studies, and keep your elders feet in the fire - but do not make the mistake of believing that the truth has to be in monograph from some Universitiy to be stamped, sealed, and approved. - You may discover that as you get older that which is shadowy becomes sure, and that which was sure has become almost lost in shadow. Get into Clark Ashton's poetry if you can - there is a good deal of that in there.

calonlan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There have been a number of opinions about the
> Heavener Runestone, its presence as acknowledged
> by the Indians,

I found a rather interesting rock with inscriptions on it in my hometown, in a cemetery in Flemingville, NY. I wrote an article about it for FATE magazine, Feb. 2007:

[www.fatemag.com]

The inscription confused me, because it seemed to use Latin letters, but the words were incomprehensible: "BoB Y DiDf". I padded out the article with some additional info. on the plates supposedly found by J. Smith in nearby Palmyra. After the article was printed, I received two letters from a FATE reader, who pointed out to me that the language on the Flemingville stone was Welsh! So isn't that interesting, a Welsh presence in America -post-dating the Roman occupation of Wales, apparently, since it's not runes or ogham.

Jojo Lapin X Wrote:
> It is true that when I grew up there was a
> community of Esperantists nearby and we were
> sternly warned by our parents not to go near their
> hovels lest we be kidnapped and eaten. But this,
> of course, in no way informs my mature view of the
> matter.

It's interesting- in his last story for The Shadow pulp, "Malmordo", Walter Gibson had several weird digressions about a criminal gang which uses Esperanto. Its leader, named Malmordo, has a face like a giant rat, and he has the ability to control rats, and lives with the rats in the sewer!!! Apparently pulp writer Gibson himself was an Esperanto student/enthusiast- and as we all know, pulp writers like to pad-out their stories with weird information/digressions. Nostaligia Ventures reprinted the story in Vol. 2 of their collected Shadow:

"'Malmordo is a notorious criminal,' asserted Stacey. 'In fact, until recently, he was the most notorious criminal on the European scene. He still would be- if he happened to be in Europe.'

'His name would indicate that,' stated Weston. 'I take it that the name is derived from mal and morte, words signifying "evil death" or its equivalent.'

Slowly, Stacey shook his head.

'You are wrong,' the gray man declared. 'The term mal means opposite and mordo means something that gnaws or bites. Hence the term is a corruption-'

'In what language? put in Weston. 'Spanish?'

'In Esperanto,' replied Stacey, 'an international language. Malmordo's activities were so far flung, that before the war, the police officials in various countries used Esperanto in their interchangeable reports, in order to puzzle Malmordo's followers.'

'And did it work?' asked Weston.

'It worked quite well at first,' replied Stacey. 'Quite a few of Malmordo's workers were trapped. But then they began using Esperanto too....'" (p. 95)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 4 Jan 09 | 07:30PM by Gavin Callaghan.