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COMPARISON OF
THE DRAVIDIAN * AND GUANCHE
LANGUAGES In his book, Linguistic Archaeology, Edo Nyland (email) compared the
Dravidian language with that of Guanche.
He stated that, “Guanche is the name of the language which was spoken by
the native population of the Canary Islands until the Spaniards came and
massacred a large number of the inhabitants around 1,500 A.D. Mr. Arysio
Nunes dos Santos discovered a relationship between Guanche and Dravidian,
similar to what the eminent linguist Dr. N. Lahovary had described between
Basque and Dravidian in his book: “Dravidian Origins and the West. What we
are likely dealing with in these languages is remnants of the original
language spoken in the Neolithic Sahara. This happened at the time of the disastrous
desertification of that part of the world (see Climate), which had
scattered the population to almost all ocean shores of the earth. That
original language is not the same, of course, as the Basque spoken today, but
a much earlier form of it, without the invented, formulaically enhanced VCV
vocabulary added in. “ Nyland also noted that a few
linguists have identified a large number of languages which also belong to
this group: Numidian, Tuareg, Western Berber (Zenaga), Northern Berber
(Tamahac), Southern Berber (Tamazheq), Eastern Berber (Siwa, Awjila-Sokna,
Ghadames), Atlas (Shilha, Tamazight), Kabyle, Zenati (19 dialects) several of
them still spoken. To this Neolithic group must also be added the large group
of Dravidian languages spoken in India by some 160 million people, the Ainu
language of Northern Japan with 17,000 speakers and Ancient Egyptian
(extinct), including Coptic, which is still spoken as a liturgical language.
Even the Polynesian languages seem to fit in this group. Nyland found that Arysio Nunes
collected as many Guanche words as possible and then compared them with
Dravidian. Dravidian equivalents were obtained from “A Dravidian Etymological
Dictionary” by T. Burrows and M.B. Emeneau (Oxford 1984). Arysio added that
one should pay attention to the phonetic correspondences only, disregarding
the actual spelling, because of the Dravidian alphabet being different from
the Roman one adopted for the Guanche language. It must be assumed that he
did his work well, because Nyland was unable to verify it. The condition for using Arysio’s material
is that the following address be cited: http://www.atlan.org/articles/dravida/index.html
Guanche Toponyms and Theonyms (Interpretation in
Dravidian) “The Dravidian etymologies for these
names are tentative and are offered as evidence of the explanatory power of
that language.”
Nyland continued that “A similar
Guanche-Basque list could easily be made, e.g. achimencey (king’s relative)
relates to atxikidura (family
relation), achaman (heaven) comes close to akabu (death,
supreme), ara (goat) and Basque aragi (meat), kara
(goat) and Basque kara (in heat),
Arautapola (capital of the Taoro kingdom) and Basque arautu (to legislate)
etc. It looks to me like Guanche is derived from the original, unmanipulated
Saharan language, just like Basque, Berber, Tuareg and Ainu.” EDO NYLAND’S ADDITIONAL COMMENTS “Arysio Nunes dos Santos, the
author of the above word comparisons, expresses amazement at the fact that
Guanche and Dravidian, separated by such a huge gap in both time and space,
still resemble each other so closely. He attributes this to the fact that
both races were fairly well sheltered from alien contact and influence, the
Dravidians down to the present, the Guanches down to the extinction of their
culture at the end of the 15th century. He goes on to speak about
the relationship to the Aryan languages, which is where he and I part ways.
He is convinced that the Guanches were blond, blue-eyed people, just like the
Aryans and that they came from Java or Sumatra in Indonesia. Having been in
both these places, I can assure the reader that there are no blond, blue-eyed
and tall tribes in Indonesia that even remotely resemble the blond people of
Europe. “ “ I find it very hard to believe
that any of the original Guanches was blond and blue eyed. Virtually all
blond people are Rh-positive. The Berbers from Morocco are Rh-negative and
they have been sailing this part of the ocean for well over 12,000 years. The
nearest blond people were the Shardana from Cyrenaica (Kirru-unai-ika) in
eastern Libya and they concentrated their activities in the Black Sea, not
the Atlantic ocean. There is no evidence of these two very different races
mixing in the Canaries until the blond Spaniards arrived. It will take some
convincing to believe that the original Guanches were blond. Until then it
would be best to consider that they were dark-featured Berbers.” |
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For further detail, please refer
to:
Nyland, Edo. 2001. Linguistic Archaeology: AnIntroduction. Trafford Publ., Victoria, B.C., Canada.
ISBN 1-55212-668-4. 541 p. [
see abstract & summary]
Nyland, Edo. 2002.
Odysseus and the Sea Peoples: A
Bronze Age History of Scotland Trafford Publ., Victoria,
B.C., Canada. 307 p. [see abstract & summary].
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