Evidence... humans were capable of living within the very liminal area of the Ice sheet interface, therefore, it is possible to say with a certain ammount of certainty that as a sheet retreated, humans would be there as well, as the ice sheets retreat and advance, in the main evidence would be lost, but not always... looking at the various ice sheet limits for example, some areas did survive the scour... but thats not really the question... where it has come from I am uncertain, and how exactly it fits into your theory on English being spoken.

In the main, your understanding of prehistoric movement, dates, 'cultures' is like my understadning of epistimology.

I can prove things via evidence, and strong cases based on strong evidence. You have not really provided me with anything that passes as strong evidence for English being the original language.. rather a series of very very tenous theories.. backed only by if's, maybes and er... that word sounds a bit like that one... er... if they did that.... er.... Chaucer sounds a bit like modern english.. er... therefore.. conclusively English was spoken in the Mesolithic...

MASSIVE leap of faith... not proof

quote:

My problem here is a state of being where you exist by saying this is true now prove me wrong.. -- give me overwhelming evidence.. ah... but not that.. er... or that.. nope... not that... etc etc... until you can say... see... no evidence.

Dear BAJR,

Let me try to demonstrate to you that our methodology is not so irrational as you imagine.

What Harper has done essentially is to apply to History a basic rule borrowed from Newton. That rule is inertia. That, absent a sufficient external force, people tend to keep on doing what they are already doing.

Now with regard to the language of Anglo-Saxon Britain, neither orthodoxy nor we know what language was spoken. To solve the mystery, academia pursues a strategy quite different from the methodology we advocate. Let me explain how each works…

The standard academic premise is to work from evidence alone. That is, if we don’t know what language was spoken in the past, then it is possible that any language might have been spoken. The job of the researcher is to find out what language actually was spoken.

So everyone gets to work – from historians to archaeologists to geneticists – trying to find some indication of what everyone was speaking. Turns out, a lot of Anglo Saxon turns up in the written record and not much of anything else. So, no evidence having been found for an alternative, Anglo-Saxon it is. This must be the language of the period in question because there’s no real evidence that anything else was available as an alternative.

Our method is different. We apply (what we maintain are) empirically-demonstrated principles to historiography. Chief among these is Newtonian inertia: “What is, is what was.”

We start with the assumption that yesterday was pretty much the same as today. That’s our working premise. That’s why we’re not just saying “Oh they spoke Mayan or Magyar or Esperonto – prove me wrong!” We’re only allowed to use as our template the present situation – we cannot template just anything that comes to mind.

So, as yesterday was pretty-much the same as today, it follows that the day before, was pretty much like yesterday.

And so it goes on, as far back as you want to go.

Our assumption must remain that the past was pretty much like the present in every respect. We can conclude otherwise only in those cases where strong and convincing evidence exists to establish that the past was indeed different than today.

You can see right away how this differs from the normative methodology. In standard practice, the past is a blank-slate on which the historian may write anything for which he has evidence and nothing for which he has none. In Applied Epistemology, the past is already filled with the present: The historian changes the text only when and where he has convincing reason to do so.

In Applied Epistemology, we try to determine how convincing is the evidence for change and, where it is found to be suspect, we revert to the principle of inertia. In so far as all the data can be explained by assuming stasis, we conclude that indeed nothing has changed.

It is our position that nothing in British History is inconsistent with the following proposition:

English was pretty much always spoken here by the majority of the inhabitants.

Until we can find something inconsistent with this proposition, we are simply not permitted to conclude otherwise.

If you have any questions concerning the methodology, please feel free to put them forward. We are interested in a free exchange of points of view and we do happen to believe that we have a valuable perspective that can be of benefit.

That approach has absolutely NOTHING whatsoever in common with epistemology applied or otherwise. Why do you call it one thing but do another? Yes, I think we all have very many questions about your so-called "methodology" it's actually that of the Medieval artist and chronicler as well as Kossinna and the Ahnenerbe and none of them turned out to be a "valuable perspective".....

BAJR, your ability to grasp quite simple ideas is starting to get me down. In my reconstruction there is no necessity whatsoever for any human being to go anywhere near an ice sheet. Rhinocerous and giraffe flourished in Trafalgar Square during the interglacials (according to my Ladvybird Book of Olden Days) so I don't expect any putative Scotsmen had to wear much under their kilts.

I have never stated English was spoken in the Mesolithic era. I have simply stated that we have no urgent reason to suppose that it couldn't have been.

quote:

Newtonian inertia: “What is, is what was.”

In that case... why did we stop being Hunter Gatherers.. or Why did we industrialise.. or colonise, or invent and move forward.. Even Newton moved forward ..

you seem to be taking a physics based concept and applying it to human progress.. note the word progress,

Change is the driving force.. quicker and quicker nowadays.. but fast (by the period of Anglo Saxons) time change, movement, altering patterns, settlement, pottery weapons, farming, process, law, religions.. changing moving.. altering..

quote:

Originally posted by 1shmael: “What is, is what was” [...] Our assumption must remain that the past was pretty much like the present in every respect

That is a creed not a scientific principle.

For epistemologists (a self-professed epistemologist) you don't seem to have much of an idea how "knowledge is created". You oppose two approaches to studying the past. An epistemologist would be aware that the first step of the approach of the historians was to ask "WAS it the same then as it is now?", that the answer was "no" was fully realised by the sixteenth century, and it was then the search was on for "how it was" by the creation of approaches to determine that. It is HOW it does that which real epistemology studies.

BTW: No "genetecists" were involved in establishing that the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons (duh) was "Anglo-Saxon".

Like BAJR, it is self-evident to me this basic paradigm of your group of "inertia" is one that will also have people rolling around on the floor laughing in derision. To suggest this is a general rule is simply ridiculous. All over the world, quite independent of any "external force", cultures CHANGE. This is a FACT and whether it fits your group's idealistic conservative vision of "how things should have been", it cannot be denied.

quote:

We apply (what we maintain are) empirically-demonstrated principles to historiography. Chief among these is Newtonian inertia: “What is, is what was.”

Do please show us where cultural conservatism is "empirically-demonstrated". If its as widespread a process as you assert, then presumably there is a great quantity of sociological and cultural anthropological literature on the topic, can we have some decent references please? I know lots on culture change and its conditioning (even edited one selection of papers myself), none at all which says it does not as a rule occur.

quote:

The standard academic premise is to work from evidence alone. That is, if we don’t know what language was spoken in the past, then it is possible that any language might have been spoken

Umm, no. A real epistemologist looking at the historical sciences would know how this type of knowledge is created by the standard academic method, and sorry, it's really not at all the way you naively suggest!! If you are going to lecture us, please make sure of the facts first.

One of the techniques criticised (by Harper though quite on what grounds we never learn) is comparative linguistics. As an 'epistemologist' you will know that this discipline starts from the present structure of a language like English and by comparative means tries to reconstruct precisely to what degree change and inertia interreact in the linguistic processes which led to that state. I am sure we don't need to explain to an epistemologist how this works. There is no great difference between this and "your" approach, except the historical approach starts from and incorporates real evidence while your and Harper's "method" seems to incorporate mainly "what ifs".

quote:

So, no evidence having been found for an alternative, Anglo-Saxon it is

Umm, yes. There is no evidence there was any Hindi or Polish spoken in the midlands in the first century AD either, though it is today, and the Romans had very good contacts with both areas where they are spoken today.

quote:

In so far as all the data can be explained by assuming stasis, we conclude that indeed nothing has changed

well, there it is, ALL the data. So you would think that when discussing the origin of French (p. 176) Harper's book would mention the Treaty of Verdun and the Coligny calendar wouldn't you? After all these two documents provide data which as you point out his postulated model (assumption) would also have to explain to have any chance of being regardable as valid. Remind us all again, on which page of his book are these two key documents discussed and explained by the model of stasis? What? They aren't actually mentioned? Hmmmm. The fundamental idea behind the Harper "method" is surely that certain data "dont fit" the model proposed by those "nincompoop" academics he so distrusts... so how does he deal with those that don't fit his own?

So IS part of this "shocking truth" that England is the real Urheimat of Latin and French (and thus a large part of Western European) culture? How actually does this differ from what Kossina and then later the Ahnenerbe were asserting about the "urgermanische kultur" in method and implications? An epistemologist would have some useful perpective on that.

(Or are we going to lapse once again into a discussion of the Mesolithic now concrete points have been raised about the Harper Theory as has happened repeatedly in the above pages?)

<<In that case... why did we stop being Hunter Gatherers.. or Why did we industrialise.. or colonise, or invent and move forward.. Even Newton moved forward ..>>

We do have convincing evidence that we stopped being hunter-gatherers and we did industrialise, we did colonise, we did move forward. The principle of inertia never claims nothing happened, it says that it is better to assume nothing happens unless we know something did happen. Curiously, when things happen there's usually evidence for it.

Most of the time of course we come up with exactly the same history as orthodoxy does -- because there's a plenitude of evidence for both sides. Where our methods pay off is where the evidence is either absent or, critically, where it is discontinous. The Inertial Principle then becomes a valuable corrective to overzealous attempts to "tell a story".

<<you seem to be taking a physics based concept and applying it to human progress.. note the word progress>>

Obviously we can make no apology if you are accusing us of having a scientific rationale but actually, if you think about it, Newton's Inertia Principle contributed mightily to the overthrow of the previous paradigm -- that God was keeping the planets orbiting. God being a typical academic device to fill various gaps in our knowledge and to avoid those in charge having to say "We don't know".

<<Change is the driving force.. quicker and quicker nowadays.. but fast (by the period of Anglo Saxons) time change, movement, altering patterns, settlement, pottery weapons, farming, process, law, religions.. changing moving.. altering..>>

And in intellectual development too. Do you really want to be left behind with people whose methodologies are centuries old? Or perhaps you fear to let go of nurse.....

PMB, I have discussed the Coligny Calendar in these threads. If you'd like to me address the issue of the Treaty of Verdun you need only pose me a direct question.

quote:

BTW: No "genetecists" were involved in establishing that the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons (duh) was "Anglo-Saxon".

PMB,

True, but Peter Fõrster, who is a geneticist, has made the claim that English split from germanic 5000 years ago, plus or minus a 3000 year degree of error. Oppenheimer does not dismiss this.

best

Harry A

quote:

In that case... why did we stop being Hunter Gatherers.. or Why did we industrialise.. or colonise, or invent and move forward.. Even Newton moved forward ..

BAJR,

Ishmael doesn't mean that Newton was rooted in a fixed, he's referring to Newton's 1st Law of Motion.

An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

Actually, quite a good principle to introduce to the Cultural Diffusion v Demic Diffusion debate.

best

Harry A


best

Harry A

Please, I know I'm banging on about this, but if MJH's theory is completely wrong, someone tell me how did the Anglo-Saxons manage to to supplant what was spoken in 'England' when they arrived with their own language in a couple of hundred years?

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
If you'd like to me address the issue of the Treaty of Verdun you need only pose me a direct question.

No. I stated quite clearly what I was referring to is how this evidence is dealt with in the book which sets out this "new model". There it and its implications are ignored, though you make some astounding claims about the origins of French and Latin. No, I personally am not a bit interested in having you "address" it in hindsight, because I am sure we will hear some more special pleading. This is evidence which by rights should have been in your model from the beginning, the fact that is is not simply is a further element undermining its credibility and to my mind that of its author. Talk about it if you wish, I am not going to point you with direct questions.

Fair enough. And I apologise in advance for any further breakdowns in my powers of telepathy and precognition when making editorial decisions about what does and does not end up in a book, where that judgement differs from yours.

<<Actually, quite a good principle to introduce to the Cultural Diffusion v Demic Diffusion debate.>>

It would be dynamite if only we could get even the faintest handle on how to judge them apart. The longer I spend in this business the more I am convinced that if we could only come up with one good signifier we'd really start motoring.

quote:

...your so-called "methodology" it's actually that of...Kossinna and the Ahnenerbe...

Hey! I'm a Newfie. Not a Nazi! :-D

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
when making editorial decisions about what does and does not end up in a book, where that judgement differs from yours

A book which makes certain claims which go against the grain of almost ALL current scholarship certainly needs to show it is able to take into account the main arguments which it is over-riding. If it does not it is just dishonest scholarship (or the product of ignorance).

I think most Continental (esp. French) historians, linguists, philologists etc etc etc will have the same feeling as me about the uncomfortable but vital evidence you have missed out of your fairy tale. Your book will just be seen as the product of rampant English chauvinism.

quote:

Originally posted by Harry Amp:
True, but Peter Fõrster, who is a geneticist, has made the claim that English split from germanic 5000 years ago, plus or minus a 3000 year degree of error. Oppenheimer does not dismiss this

He can only do that by assuming that linguistic affinities relate to specific populations with specific genetic patterns. This is an extremely dubious claim and goes against modern understanding of identity and ethnicity (but fits that of the far right and neo-Kossinnism).

quote:

Originally posted by Caedbaed:
Please, I know I'm banging on about this, but if MJH's theory is completely wrong, someone tell me how did the Anglo-Saxons manage to to supplant what was spoken in 'England' when they arrived with their own language in a couple of hundred years?

I don't really see the problem and certainly dont see why it should be seen in isolation. How did the Slavs do the same? [I]Let us ask the revisionist historians whether “what is is what was” means that Slavic was spoken in the “lebensraum zone” between the Oder and Western Bug in the pre-Roman period. Well? {/I]What about the spread of Bantu? Arabic in the conquest period, the Iranian languages, the Indo-European languages? Now (with I assume the exception of Arabic – but who knows what other loony ideas this group has cooked up) does their mantra of “what is is what was” mean that all these languages were spoken in the past more or less where they are now? Taking Harper’s arguments about “Caveman English” to their conclusion we would be talking about “Caveman Sanskrit” and a “Caveman Rig Veda”…. These new "intellectual horizons" opened by these what if fairy tales only serve to expose the stupidity of the original proposition and the "basic paradigm" on which it is based.

Just because we don’t necessarily understand HOW the Slavic languages managed to spread so widely in such a short time does not mean we have to deny they did. And if Harper is right, he’d still have to explain why of the pre-existing linguistic mosaic that it was the previously illiterate and totally hidden English that emerged victorious, and not Latin. His group assigns the language and its carriers mystical special properties by assuming that the processes operating on other languages do not apply to this one language alone. Why?

quote:

Originally posted by 1shmael:
Hey! I'm a Newfie. Not a Nazi! :-D

Kossinna was not a Nazi either, but his ideas were used by the Nazis and their Ahnenerbe. And the "revisionist historian" Harper’s (that is the little revisionist group to which you belong) are being latched on to by the ultra right in Britain. Actually what I said was the methods used and the conclusions reached were the same as theirs. And they clearly are. So if you don't wish those of us who DO see the wiser context of these ideas to see any kind of connection, please feel free to demonstrate where the difference lies.

That'd be "wider" context of course.

Caedbaed,

I really don't want to give this theory much more credence, and hope not to have to post on this thread again.. (ps... this is a very potted history - as I would have to write a book otherwise)

410 - Romans Leave Britain (well everything south of Hadrian’s Wall)

Saxons start to appear.. take Kent.. pushing Britons out or taking over communities .. Form or farming is different, settlement is different, culture, religion everything ... towns abandoned, villas burnt or fall into ruin.. "civilisation" as they knew it is coming to an end

7th century Saxon attacks on Cornish Kings, not until end of 9th century is Cornwall taken by Saxons. (well the Wessex Saxons - who fight the Mercian Saxons, who also have problems/help the Danes etc..)

Scots/Dalriadins in southwest Scotland. Pictish and other tribes in 'what is now scotland'

by 8th - 9th centuries the Danes are in Northumbria and Yorkshire Viking appearing in Shetlands and north Scotland

Welsh (what is now Wales are still independent from Saxons)

I hope you are seeing that it is not a case of

Saxons land... 200 years later everyone speaks English..

The Normans arrive of course in the late 11th century, and still we will have most people not speaking English... far from it.. the welsh don't get conquered until late 13th... but they keep going....

The Scots meanwhile take over the Pictish Kingdoms, and due to being Irish, soon we see the whole of the highlands and islands speaking ..Gaelic (good grief.. how can that be.. it should not be possible for one language to supplant another.. - of course the problem is that we are not sure what the Pictish tribes spoke.. though it could have been an earlier form or even British - by which I mean something akin to modern welsh) …… I could go on………….


English never covered the whole country in one swoop.. it never had a single version, until it had to be used by everyone to communicate and understand... the written version of English is so different from the spoken... the spoken version can often be hard to understand, but we all write the same.. Which is handy if you want to rule an empire

English is a rich language but it is written English that forms the basis of the theory for MJH I don’t know what people actually spoke in every part of ‘english speaking Britain in the 11th century (remember that area is not the whole of what is now Britain) - but I know how a person wrote.. and that would be by convention… most of it was in Latin anyway..

If you want to understand more about this (and it is a fascinating period) try reading some books about the period 5th – 11th centuries…. That’s when you discover – like me, the real story – you don’t have to make it up to make it a hidden history!

Well, Caedbaed, I hope you noted that still nobody will answer your question. PMB thinks he can solve the conundrum by appealing to other similar cases (needless to say none of these happened either) and BAJR thinks that by repeating the orthodox history yet again, the problem will somehow go away.

You will never get your answer, Caedbaed, because yours is a paradigm-busting question. Since this is the central concern of Applied Epistemology, perhaps you will accept my professional assistance. The best known example of what happens when the paradigm-busting question is asked is in the matter of Mercury's orbit.

As soon as the Newtonian System was established it was found to predict all planetary orbits except Mercury's which had a small but persistent anomaly. The academicians said, "Observational error." Time passed. Observational methods improved a hundredfold. "Still observational error." Time passed. Observational methods improved another hundredfold. "Sorry, still observational error." Finally, the penny dropped and it was found that the light from Mercury was actually being bent by the mass of the Sun.

So the moral of the story, Caedbaed, is wait a few hundred years. But you can continue being a nuisance by asking something like, "Yes, but how was it done? Did the Anglo-Saxons kill these millions of Celts or did they persuade them somehown to speak Anglo-Saxon?"

quote:

how did the Anglo-Saxons manage to to supplant what was spoken in 'England' when they arrived with their own language in a couple of hundred years?

Caedbaed,

There is currently a debate as to the level of settlement by germanic speakers in britain at the end of the roman period. The ideas vary from a small number of elite warlords at one end to a mass migration at the other.

The archaeology of the period shows little romano british archaeology in the east of the country but much more germanic archaeology. This looks initially as if supports a mass migration theory but this can be challenged if it is accepted that romano british peoples adopted germanic styles.

Less easily explained by those who argue for a small number of germanic warlords is the disappearance of the local language and the speedy adoption of the germanic language. Three different theories attempt to explain this:

1. The native language, Brythonic, did survive in many parts but the parents attempted to teach their children the language of the new elite at home. They did this badly so the children learned german but spoken as a celtic speaker. This is called a substrate effect.

2. The likes of Oppenheimer, Fõrster and Scutt argue that the speedy transition never actually took place and that the romano british already spoke a germanic language. Thus, when a small number of elite warlords came over, they simply conversed in a language which was already familiar. This theory denies that the british spoke a celtic language, a theory which is very widley held.

3. MJ Harper too denies that Brythonic was spoken by the majority of the population but also denies that their language was a germanic language. He claims that english is a language on its own. This runs into another problem. Ig english is not a germanic language, why does everyone else, including those in 1 and 2 above, place it in the germanic grouping of the indo european languages? MJ says they are wrong to do so.

These competing theories are all meant to explain the speedy transition that you ask about. However, they all do so in an attempt to persuade us that no mass migration took place. If you think a mass migration did take place, you have no need for any of these theories.

best

harry A