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EDO NYLAND’S INSPIRATION *

 

IN LANGUAGE AND HUMAN MIGRATIONS

 

Dr. Erich Fred Legner

University of California

 

 

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Some Interesting Observations

 

          Edo Nyland concluded that all the research into the Ogam inscriptions and the Saharan/Basque origin of the "Indo-European" and other languages started with a talk about Homer's Odyssey. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation regularly features the "Ideas Program" and on November 5 and 6, 1984, historian Edward Furlong gave a talk entitled "Where Did Odysseus Go?" He pointed out various happenings and climatic conditions described by Homer, which did not fit at all in the Mediterranean and obviously belonged in the North Atlantic. After many years of study, he concluded that Odysseus had visited Ireland, Scotland and Norway. Nyland was intrigued by his reasoning and visited Ireland and Scotland several times to see the areas he suggested and to learn more about the subject. Nylandsoon became convinced that Furlong's conclusions were correct: part of the Odyssey had taken place in Ireland and Scotland [Also see:  Human Migrations & Language].

 

A Linguistic Odyssey

 

          The Odyssey epic was written down some 2700 years ago by Homer and ever since has been endlessly discussed, dissected and researched. Numerous locations in both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic have been suggested for the places he visited; yet the researchers could agree on next to no specifics. Would it be possible that all of them had missed some information, contained in the epic, which could shed new light on what really happened so long ago? The only possible place this could be true appeared to be in the names supplied by Homer, because, few had tried to translate them. So Nyland searched for a distinctive name, which could have a hidden meaning. The linguistic Odyssey started with the name "Laistrygonian" (Odyssey Book 10, line 106), the name of the people of the "wonderful" harbour where Odysseus lost 11 of his 12 ships to thousands of giant rock-throwing cannibals.  He tried the Latin, Greek and Celtic dictionaries, all to no avail. But then Dr. Cavalli-Sforza from Stanford University wrote an article entitled: "Genes, Peoples and Languages" (Scientific American., Nov.'91). He pointed out the high concentration of individuals with Rh-negative blood among the peoples of Morocco, the Basque Country, Ireland and Scotland; all four countries with people having at least 25% of their members with that blood peculiarity. The only people among these four populations still to speak their Neolithic language were the Basques. Cavalli-Sforza also commented that this distribution represented an ocean born migration and the Basques were the epitome of the sea farers. Could it be that the peoples along the Atlantic coast of Europe had belonged to the same migration and that all these had spoken the same Neolithic language we now call Basque? To test this idea Nyland tried the Basque dictionary on "Laistrygonian" and very quickly there appeared "lai-istri-goni-an". Using the full Basque words: laino-istripu-gonbidatu-aniztasun, meaning: fog-accidents-invites-many, or "fog invites many accidents". Indeed the excellent geographical details provided in the epic, and the entrance problems hinted at in the name perfectly fitted only one place on the west coast of Ireland: Killary Harbour in northern Conamara. The linguistic adventure was off to a good start.

 

The Ogam Script

 

          While in Scotland visiting the places pointed out by Edward Furlong, Nyland saw some standing stones and artifacts with Ogam writing on them. They were described by Dr. Anthony Jackson in his book called "The Symbol Stones of Scotland", which he found in a small bookstore in Stornoway. He was intrigued when reading that the inscriptions had not been deciphered and suggested that they were not linguistic at all, but numerical. This didn't sound right to me because of the careful way in which the script had been carved; so decoding the recalcitrant inscriptions became a challenge to me. This research went on at the same time that he followed Odysseus' travels.  He also believe to have decoded and translated most of the Ogam inscriptions in Scotland and many of the Irish ones. The solution of the Ogam decoding problem provided the foundation for all research into the origin of languages.

 

Linguistic Archaeology

 

          As the Ogam research results were accumulating, it became clear that Nyland was dealing with a new field of linguistics which was not being considered or taught at any of our universities. The name "Linguistic archaeology" had earlier been proposed by Bob Quinn in his book "Atlantean, Ireland's North African and Maritime Heritage", page 88 (Quartet Books, New York, 1986) when he discussed the linguistic research done by the Swiss linguist Dr. Heinrich Wagner 1976.  A linguistic archaeologist digs for the very roots of our languages, many millennia before writing was invented. He or she considers all the different possibilities of language development and has to be suspicious of anything taught as "fact" in our universities. This person must be free to bring totally new ideas forward about languages origins, unaffected by dogma or tradition. It is a rather lonely position to take but it has its advantages. Having no formal education in linguistics turned out to be both very helpful and also a big drawback. It was helpful because Nyland avoided what Martin Bernal described as:

 

          "It is customary for students to be introduced to their fields of study gradually, as slowly unfolding mysteries, so that by the time they can see their subject as a whole they have been so thoroughly imbued with conventional preconceptions and patterns of thought that they are extremely unlikely to be able to question its basic premises. This incapacity is particularly evident in disciplines concerned with ancient history. ..... Their study is dominated by the learning of difficult languages, a process which is inevitably authoritarian: one may not question the logic of an irregular verb or the function of a particle. At the same time as the instructors lay down their linguistic rules, however, they provide other social and historical information that tends to be given and received in a similar spirit. ..... While this facilitates learning and gives the scholar thus trained an incomparable feel for Greek or Hebrew, such men and women tend to accept a concept, word or form as typically Greek or Hebrew without requiring an explanation as to its specific function or origin"  (Black Athena, Vol.1, p.3, 4)

 

          In other words, linguistic students tend to be brainwashed in our Universities and are trained to reject other ways of looking at a subject, because other views are inherently inconsistent with their training.

 

Now The Whole World Spoke One Language (Genesis 11:1)

 

          Every time new research results are made available about the activities and thinking of our distant ancestors, these results remind us that we have acquired the habit of grossly underestimating, even denigrating our ancestors' knowledge and abilities in many fields of endeavor. One such field is linguistics. Almost all academics working in this "science" have unquestioningly adopted, and religiously defended, the family tree model for linguistic change, the so-called Stammbaum model. Any other approaches to the development of languages are being brushed aside saying that they are not scientifically provable because they are incompatible with the model and the comparative method.

 

          Because of this thinking many, if not most of our university linguists, have become the guardians of the status quo and are disdainful of anybody embarking upon a relentless search for academic truth. They refuse to admit that many of the very early scholars may have been able to do things that are now considered impossible, such as language invention of major languages and their introduction. Nyland's work shows that, instead of staunchly defending the genetic model of naturally evolving languages, very early scholars are likely to have been responsible for inventing all major languages existing on earth, without exception. It appears that highly skilled professional linguists have been busy over a period of ca 4,000 years developing a large number of artificial languages. If this is correct, then the immediate result is that the Stammbaum model must be relegated to the study of primitive, natural languages and the comparative method is to be drastically overhauled or scrapped entirely. This of course means that our modern linguists will have to also re-examine critically what Heinrich Koppelmann so aptly called "das Heiligtum der Indogermanischen Isolierung".

 

          In the following articles, are shown many major languages that were invented by formulaic distortion and manipulation of the ancient language which Genesis 11:1 described as: "Now the whole world had one language". Genesis 11:7  followed this, which instructed the religious leaders of the day: "Let us confuse their language so they can no longer speak to each other". That is exactly what happened, all over the world. The world has never seen a more scholarly project of such magnitude and impact as the language-invention and language-introduction projects, carried out with enormous energy, dedication, including even unbelievable brutality and almost without interruption during some four millennia, until very recently in Canada among its native population. The world will never see such a project again because the same would not be possible any more. In the following pages, Nyland demonstrated that our modern "science" of Indo-European linguistics is founded on the biblical command of Gen. 11:7, with a bit of academic substance thrown in.

 

A Retirement Project

 

          Now why would someone with formal training in forest and land administration, surveying, aerial photo interpretation, wildfire suppression, forest ecology, botany etc. venture into fields as remote as linguistics, Homeric studies, Irish Ogam inscription translation, pre-Christian religion and archaeology? Because here was obviously a wide-open and interesting field of study, which, for centuries, had attracted many non-academic outsiders who made great contributions to the science, they chose to work on. Thomas Kuhn in his book: "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" wrote:

 

"Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have either been very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change." (p. 90)

 

          As forestry is an inter-disciplinary subject taught at our Universities, even more so than geography, Nyland was trained to look at problems from many different perspectives and disciplines, without being opinionated in any field. This, combined with a previous experience in botany (taxonomy) and medicine, the difficult wartime occupation years in Holland and the war in the Pacific, it soon became a habit.

 

     Bibliography

 

==========================================

For further detail, please refer to:

 

          Nyland, Edo.  2001.  Linguistic Archaeology: An
               Introduction.   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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