Linear B texts

[George Hart]

Dear Steve,

Thanks for your reply.  Of course, our Tamil inscriptions from Sangam  
times are longer than the IV writing/symbols, but they're still  
relatively short, which was my point, and very very few have  
survived.  You wrote, "The reason the argument fails was something we  
first noted: no premodern civilization is known that wrote long texts  
on perishable materials but failed to leave *obvious* and *abundant*  
examples of such texts behind on durable materials as well."  Your  
premise is correct, but your conclusion (that the IV civilization  
could not have had writing) does not follow, as we have no way of  
knowing of (perhaps numerous) civilizations that had writing but left  
no surviving record.  This is not a "what if," but a purely logical  
problem.  What's more, each of the civilizations we know about had its  
own peculiar and distinguishing features.  Surely, it's not a stretch  
to imagine that the IV people wrote longer texts on perishable  
materials.  As I said, this does not affect your other arguments.

As far as "Dravidianists" are concerned -- I think there has been a  
natural and understandable tendency to speculate that the IV Civ might  
have spoken a Dravidian language.  Michael Witzel takes issue with  
this in his extraordinarily detailed articles on substratum languages  
in the RV, and his arguments are impressive -- though they're not  
conclusive, in my opinion.  I do, however, find myself tending to  
accept his idea that the linguistic composition of the IV and  
surrounding areas at the time of the RV was quite complex, and that  
Dravidian was only one of several families spoken there.

My particular concern is to get some notion of the prehistory of South  
India and the influx (if there was one) of the Dravidian languages  
into that area.  While this area is outside my expertise, my  
impression is that Dravidian speakers might have come to South India  
about 3000 BC and brought neolithic culture.  I'd be interested if  
others have evidence in this regard.

George


On May 4, 2009, at 12:23 PM, Steve Farmer wrote:

> George Hart writes:
>
>> It seems to me there is a fallacy in Steve Farmer's contention that  
>> no civilization with writing lacks longer texts.  The fact is, if  
>> any civilization committed all its writing to perishable materials,  
>> we would not know they had writing.  There may be 20 or 30 ancient  
>> civilizations that had writing about which we have no clue.  Thus  
>> one cannot argue that if the IV civ. had writing we would  
>> necessarily have longer texts.  All we know is that they left their  
>> symbols on specialized seals and on a couple of artifacts (the  
>> famous sign).  Carving something on stone or making a seal is a lot  
>> more difficult than writing on a palmyra leaf -- there is no reason  
>> whatsoever why they couldn't have written longer things (like  
>> accounts ) on bark or some other material that is perishable and  
>> easier to write on.  We have no long examples of writing in Tamil  
>> from Sangam times, yet we know that they had writing and wrote  
>> longer documents on palmyra leaves.  Of course, Farmer et al. have  
>> other arguments that need to be considered.
>
> Dear George:
>
> Ignoring all the purely speculative "what if's" in your post, just a  
> reminder, although I hate to repeat myself: what we in fact argue is  
> that no known civilization that wrote long texts on perishable  
> materials didn't also leave texts of significant length behind on  
> durable materials.
>
> On your claims about the earliest Tamil inscriptions: I know this is  
> your field, but your claims here are demonstrably wrong. See the  
> photo and discussion below.
>
> The fact is, the Indus left *thousands* of short symbol strings  
> behind on all sorts of durable objects -- not just on "a couple of  
> artifacts." Huge numbers of symbol strings on potsherds haven't even  
> been cataloged, as you'd find if you read the excavation reports.  
> None of them is of any length, unlike the situation in all known  
> literate civilizations in antiquity.
>
> Moreover, if we believe the dates given by the Harappa  
> Archaeological Research Project (HARP), run by Richard Meadow and  
> Mark Kenoyer, those finds extend over a millennium. As already  
> noted, these durable materials include *exactly* the same kinds of  
> materials that truly literate civilizations routinely wrote long  
> texts on.
>
> There are issues of pausibility at stake here, leaving aside totally  
> untestable speculation that "There may be 20 or 30 ancient  
> civilizations that had writing about which we have no clue." Well,  
> there usually are clues -- and also clues when you're not looking at  
> "writing" but other types of ancient symbols, of which there are in  
> fact many "flavors," as we've discovered over the past decade.
>
> Quickly: Why everyplace else in the world where we KNOW there was  
> literacy would we find literate peoples leaving long texts behind on  
> potsherds, pottery, metal plates, vessels, weapons, etc.? -- while  
> in the Indus civilization *only* they *exclusively* left symbols  
> behind on the same types of objects that were *never* more than a  
> handful of symbols long?
>
> I guess you could in principle argue that there was a taboo on  
> leaving long texts behind but not thousands of short ones. :^) Well,  
> one Indus researcher whose whole career has revolved around "Indus  
> writing" has actually said something, obviously rather in  
> desperation. ....
>
> You write that "carving something on stone or making a seal is a lot  
> more difficult than writing on a palmyra leaf." This is in fact not  
> true, George. As you'll recall when you think about it, preparation  
> of palm leaves for writing is a quite elaborate and time-consuming  
> practice. It is also expensive (as is writing on materials like  
> cloth, parchment, silk, papyrus; wood also takes special preparation).
>
> See for one review, Anupam Sah, "Palm leaf manuscripts of the world:  
> material, technology, and conservation," Reviews in Conservation  
> (2002): 15-24.
>
> We take perishable writing materials for granted. The ancients could  
> not.  Scratching on a potsherd, on the other hand, is quick,  
> extremely cost efficient, and very useful, especially for accounting  
> records. (Think here of the hundreds of thousands of ostraca with  
> accounting records we have from the ancient Mediterranean.) We have  
> many hundreds of thousands of examples of potsherd fragments with  
> real writing and quite long texts from all over the ancient world --  
> including India, but of course not from Indus times. In any event,  
> take a look at our already detailed discussion of this issue on  
> around p. 23 in "Collapse" (<http://www.safarmer.com/fsw2.pdf>), and  
> esp. Fig. 1.
>
> One final and obviously critical point -- since it involves your own  
> field. You write:
>
>> We have no long examples of writing in Tamil from Sangam times, yet  
>> we know that they had writing and wrote longer documents on palmyra  
>> leaves.
>
> I hate to point out that claims from someone who is a specialist (as  
> you are) in this field are wrong, but.... :^) If you in fact look at  
> the photos of the very earliest Tamil inscriptions, in Iravatham  
> Mahadevan, _Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the  
> Sixth Century A.D._, Harvard, 2003 (in the series edited by  
> Michael), you'll see unambiguous evidence that the inscriptions,  
> scarce as they are, were *regularly* longer than *any* of the  
> thousands of Indus "inscriptions" from many centuries of Indus  
> civilization.
>
> Ouch! I always thought that was amusing, and when Mahadevan  
> published his wonderful 2003 book I pointed out the irony to him  
> when we both gave talks at a big Indus conference. In fact, the very  
> FIRST inscription he gives in his book (pp. 314-15), which he dates  
> to the 2nd century BCE, is in fact well over three times longer than  
> any Indus inscription gathered over the past 135 years from large  
> numbers of sites dating from the late 4th millennium to early 2nd  
> millennium! Take a look at this scan I just made of Mahadevan's  
> transcription of that piece:
>
> http://www.safarmer.com/Indo-Eurasian/early.tamil.inscription.jpg
>
> If anyone came up with one such real (not fake) Indus inscription,  
> Michael, Richard, and I would have to fork over $10,000. (It won't  
> happen, but we'd *gleefully* turn over the $10 K -- not our money,  
> but an anonymous donor's -- for reasons we explain in our 2004 paper.)
>
> We've carefully looked at all these counter-arguments, George --  
> trying to falsify our own model. That's what goes on in science, if  
> it is real science: trying to "save" a busted model is a scholastic  
> and not scientific exercise. Things in fact only get interesting  
> when models get busted, so you try every way to find holes in your  
> own arguments -- not burying those holes anyway you can. (That's  
> what I learned from my years hanging out with theoretical high- 
> energy physicists: I quickly learned that unfortunately that wasn't  
> the norm in ancient studies.)
>
> But the evidence wins in the long run, and then you move on to the  
> new interesting places that takes you. That's what we plan to do in  
> Kyoto later this month.
>
> Hmm, why do I feel as if I'm in a tag-team wrestling match with  
> Dravidianists? Is there a bigger story here that involves things  
> thousands of kilometers (and years) from any Indus sites? :^)
>
>> Of course, Farmer et al. have other arguments that need to be  
>> considered.
>
> Indeed, and those arguments are constantly being missummarized in  
> the discussions. We are very careful in our arguments --- and we try  
> to careful summarize the positions of those on the other side.   
> That's a requirement for honest scientific discussion, as we see it.
>
> Best wishes,
> S. Farmer