I think this book review by Nelson Goering of Robert Mailhammer & Theo Vennemann's book "The Carthaginian North: Semitic Influence on Early Germanic: A Linguistic and Cultural Study" at https://hcommons.org/deposits/download/hc:40752/CONTENT/goer... and https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.20028.goe does a good job of summarizing the argument and the review author's issues with it.
> The thesis presented in this book – that there was a substantial linguistic impact on what would become Proto-Germanic from the Punic spoken by Carthaginians who allegedly established outposts in northern Europe – has been argued by one of the authors in various articles for many years (see the collected articles in Vennemann 2003, 2013), and is already known as ‘controversial’. ... This book can be taken as arguing the best possible case for Punic influence on Germanic ...
> This, then, is the sum of the strictly linguistic evidence marshalled by MV for the alleged Punic contact and linguistic influence on Germanic. They supplement it with an appeal to writing systems, arguing that runes are best derived directly from the Punic alphabet. They make a number of points, but a large core of their argument turns on the supposed derivation of the first four runes (for f, u, þ, and a), in order, shape, and sound, from the Punic alphabet. .
> The result of this, it should by now be clear, is that I must conclude that the central thesis of the book – that there was linguistic influence from Punic on pre-Germanic – is not supported by the evidence marshalled here. More than that, I would say that this Punic hypothesis may now be confidently rejected as very probably untrue. If such influence were real, then the combined labours of two talented linguists, one working on the problem for very many years, and with ample (if often critical) feedback to build on, would have uncovered convincing traces by now. That they have not strongly suggests that such do not exist. If this is the best argument that can be made for the Punic hypothesis, then the hypothesis would appear to be incorrect.
The guy's post said it was checked by linguists and found inadequate to support your claim. Not that your claim is wrong, just unsupportable by that checking.
Not whether this runestone find affects our understanding of history.
What does "the picture" mean? For just about every topic there are multiple pictures, depending on one's interest.
I think it's good science for geospatial information scientists to object to requests to check for a flat earth, and for medical scientists to object to using humoral theory in medical diagnostics, so I think your second sentence, when interpreted a blanket statement, is wrong.
Surely Mailhammer, or Vennemann, or you could perform and publish your own checks, so I also don't see how your comment is relevant - who is stopping them from checking?
Equating the possibility of literate Carthaginians having sailed to the Baltic Sea and maybe settling and affecting development of writing there with "flat earth" is frankly beneath you. Either it happened or it didn't, and the evidence supports it or doesn't. If it is inconclusive, which is the surest you can ever be that it didn't happen (unless some show up from before Carthage), you don't know what new evidence will indicate.
The only legitimate opinions are based on the evidence available to date. Whenever older runes show up, the picture might change. Whose ox is gored by talking about it?
Poppycock. As the source I pointed to shows, those two authors have been publishing along these lines for years.
> Equating the possibility of literate Carthaginians having sailed to the Baltic Sea
I'm showing how your flat assertion about how science works is not correct. I said nothing about Carthaginians having reached the North Sea, much less the Baltic. (Earlier you said Denmark, and you don't need to get to the Baltic to get to Denmark.)
If you want to have a real argument, make a real argument. Don't start by using faulty logic to dismiss others.
> Whenever older runes show up, the picture might change.
But of course. From what I gather, that's why specialists in this field are so interested in this work.
Do note that this mild statement of your is quite different from your earlier assertion that "Any discussion that doesn't even mention the possibility of origin in semitic forms ... seems unlikely to enlighten".
What is your strongest argument that the semitic origin hypothesis is viable enough to warrant its coverage in a paper like this? Simply that they could have reached Denmark? And why is it more viable than, say, Tartessian explorers?
Carthaginian influence might or might not be more relevant than Tartessian. It depends on the facts. Explorers are much less likely to affect origins of a script than settlers or refugees who were there at the formative time. Has anyone suggested a Tartessian influence, or are you just making shit up?
Hostility to revisiting old conclusions in the face of new facts is anti-science, but common, maybe moreso in history than in other fields.
Then say what you mean. Why must the hypothetical Carthaginian explorers have reached the Baltic in order to trigger the start of runes? Why couldn't they stopped at the Elbe and had the same impact?
Your "could" is carrying a LOT of weight. Could they have sailed to the Shetlands? To the Faroes? To Iceland? To Greenland? To Vinland? Why, or why not?
> It depends on the facts.
What is your facts? I don't think you've said anything other than hand-waving "could". Is it a subset of the ones presented by Goering and Mailhammer? Or do you have other evidence, like we have physical evidence of the Norse presence in Vinland?
> are you just making shit up?
Are you?
As I understand your argument, the Carthaginians were literate and could sail along the Atlantic coastline of Europe (elsewhere we have an account of them reaching Britain and Ireland). Therefore, it's possible that they could have reached the Germanic peoples that way, and it's possible the Punic language could have influenced the creation of runes.
That's all you've presented.
But in that case, who else fits that pattern? The Tartessian people had a written language and could also reach Britain and Ireland from the Iberian peninsula.
There is nothing in your hypothesis which lets us resolve if it was Tartessians or Carthaginians who aided this bit of cultural diffusion.
Why do you focus so much on the Carthaginians, and disregard other peoples who also fit your model?
> Hostility to revisiting old conclusions in the face of new facts is anti-science
There you go again, making shit up about science again.
When an archeologist or geologist finds evidence of a flood, they do not revisit the old conclusion that the entire world, up to the top of the tallest mountain, was covered by water. Revisiting that old conclusion as if it were viable, without substantial new facts that cannot be explained by the existing model, is not scientific.
There was a conclusion that Finns were culturally and biologically from eastern Asia. In the US people used the racist slur "China Sweden", and wanted to bar them from entry under the Asian Exclusion Act. This conclusion is thoroughly discredited - for one, the genome of Finns is mostly Northern European. Revisiting that old conclusion as if it were viable, without substantial new facts that cannot be explained by the existing model, is not scientific.
Using each new fact as a reason for revisiting and discussing every single previous conclusion and pet theory, no matter how disproven or unsubstantiated, is not science.
So, yes, just making shit up. Good day, sir.
From "Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies: Finland" at https://books.google.com/books?id=s8eNDR6YDlwC&lpg=PA148&ots... you can read how Castrén's philological analysis appeared to give scientific justification for a long-suspected Asian origin for Finns, with the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica entry stating the Finns were "no doubt ethnically, if not also linguistically connected" to "the 'Mongolian' race." See also Turanian theory at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turanism ("a pseudoscientific pan-nationalist cultural and political movement").
From http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/199706/10_los... you can read:
> Racial prejudice against Finns sprang from a belief that they were related to Mongolians. Some 19th century scientists cited the Finns' exotic language, which is completely unrelated to other European languages, as evidence that Finns were racially unrelated to Europeans as well. It was said that they descended from a tribe that migrated from Mongolia. At a time when federal law barred all immigration from Asia, a federal immigration committee investigated the Finns' racial background, examining them for such physical characteristics as small eyes, high cheekbones, round heads, or stocky stature. Historian Marianne Wargelin:
> "After the 1907 strike, they tried to make the Finns be seen as Asians. There was an Asian exclusion act, and if the Finns could be seen as Asians, they could get them kicked out of the country."
> In 1908, Federal authorities tried to use the act to deny citizenship to 16 Finnish men. A Duluth judge ruled in favor of the Finns; in keeping with the racist tenor of the times, he wrote that Finns had white skins and thus could not be denied citizenship. But the case's echoes lingered for years.
For a description of the court case, where you can read how the St. Paul D.A. asserted that Finns are Mongolian, see https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jamerethnhist.31.1.0011... . See also https://inktank.fi/china-swedes-forest-finns-and-the-great-m...
That moloch-hai doesn't know this is fine - there's no reason to know all of the crappy science people have published.
That moloch-hai would rather jump to the conclusion that I'm making shit up - willing to trust personal views over doing research or ask for pointers - is a sign of bad scholarship.
My point remains true. There is no need for a modern paper on the origins of Finns to revisit this racist 19th century conclusion as if it might be viable. There is a lot of evidence that it isn't true, and ignoring the old Mongolian conclusion would not make the modern paper "anti-science."
Similarly, if the connection between Carthaginian has no persuasive evidence, while there are more persuasive connections with other origins, then I don't see why every modern paper on an ancient rune find would need to present the Carthaginian model as if it were viable. That would not make the modern paper "anti-science."
I am forced to admit I was wrong. Nothing is beneath you.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
If runes can be derived from italic or greek letterforms, they can also be derived from any others that could plausibly have reached there. (Thus, not Korean.) Carthaginians famously sailed far and wide. So it is a legitimate question to ask--what evidence is there?--for each, with no legitimate reason to exclude any plausible possibility from consideration. Refusing to include semitic alphabets among candidates (why?) is the crackpot position.
If you insist (why?) that semitic alphabets can have made no contribution, and you are correct, then the evidence will show that, and you have nothing to fear. So the only reason to object is that you fear the evidence will contradict your belief. But that is the best reason to check.
How could evidence show lack of contribution? You can’t prove a negative like that. You can’t prove lack of influence from Korean or ancient aliens either.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sensational-runest...
You may say nobody can prove a negative, but cocksure deniers are fairly swarming out of the woodwork, here.
You seem to be very upset about something, but it is not really clear what.
“Deniers” is usually used about people who deny evidence, but this does not seem to be the case here.