"BMAC writing"

[John C. Huntington]

>The second article by J.W.Wilford contains some wild
>phantasies, like suggestions of "a possible Chinese connection" (that
>is, imaginary links between the Anau script and Chinese writing dated
>by at least 2000 years later!).


I must note that this in not so wild a fantasy,   The Shang dynasty
definitely had writing in the second millenium bce and  Ho Ping-ti in
his Cradle of the East, points out that there are markers scratched
on the bases of Yang Shao pottery that easily date to mid fifth
millenium. I am certainly no expert in these fields, but it appears
that the Chinese had a notation system of some sort long before the
"seal" came into existence.  Victor Maier,  who was cited by Wilford,
certainly is however, and deserves a fair hearing.

I must also note that the cutting of the marks on the seal are so
unlike Harappan seals, that it simply cannot be of that area.
Perhaps a "blank" was traded cut with someone elses marks?

In my opinion, we shoud all wait u;ntil the corpus is a bit bigger than "one"

John





>But there are, at the same time, more
>sober remarks."In a story going around the Penn campus, when Dr.
>Hiebert showed the inscribed object to Dr. Robert Dyson, retired
>director of the University Museum of Archaeology, Dr. Dyson said: "
>Good job, Fred. Now go out and find a hundred more like it".
>         Surely we have to agree with Prof. Parpola: "We must wait for
>some more excavation at Anau, perhaps other similar seals
>will emerge". And perhaps not.
>                                                                 Ya.V.
>
>Wed, 01 Aug 101 00:46 +0300 MSK Kengo Harimoto wrote to
>INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK:
>
>>  How timely!
>>
>>  I just read today an article at the NY Times site about this seal:
>>
>>  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/31/science/social/31SEAL.html
>>
>>  It at least gives everyone a clear picture of the inscription on the
>>  object.
>>
>---
>Yaroslav Vassilkov (yavass at YV1041.spb.edu)
>Institute of Oriental Studies
>Mon, 06 Aug 101 21:30 +0300 MSK