{"id":5513,"date":"2013-05-09T14:09:31","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T20:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5513"},"modified":"2013-05-09T10:18:24","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T16:18:24","slug":"talking-like-the-old-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5513","title":{"rendered":"Talking like the Old Ones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2000, I was writing an article about a prescribed fire <\/a>on the national forest near my home, so I hiked in with the ignition crew. Some point during the day, I heard a radio crackle with the message, “Come up that little ridge and bring fire with you.”<\/p>\n

Bring fire with you. <\/em>I thought of one of my favorite movies, Quest for Fire<\/em><\/a>, and the language of its Neanderthal characters. And I thought of how that sentence could probably be translated into Neanderthal \u2014\u00a0if only we knew how \u2014\u00a0and certainly into a later Proto-Indo-European.<\/p>\n

Those might be “utraconserved words,” as defined by this piece from the Washington Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You, hear me! Give this fire to that old man. Pull the black worm off the bark and give it to the mother. And no spitting in the ashes!<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an odd little speech. But if you went back 15,000 years and spoke these words to hunter-gatherers in Asia in any one of hundreds of modern languages, there is a chance they would understand at least some of what you were saying.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because all of the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in the four sentences are words that have descended largely unchanged from a language that died out as the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. Those few words mean the same thing, and sound almost the same, as they did then.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest<\/a> and listen to the words themselves.<\/a><\/p>\n

UPDATE: Another piece, this one from Wired<\/em>, on the same research:<\/a><\/p>\n

Pagel and his co-workers took a first step by building a statistical model based on Indo-European cognates. Incorporating only the frequency of a word\u2019s use and its part of speech (noun, verb, numeral, etc.)\u2014and ignoring its sound\u2014 the model could predict how long the word persisted through time. Reporting in Nature<\/em> in 2007, they found that most words have about a 50% chance of being replaced by a completely different word every 2000 to 4000 years. Thus the Proto-Indo-European wata<\/em>, winding its way through wasser<\/em> in German, water<\/em> in English, and voda<\/em> in Russian, became eau<\/em> in French. But some words, including I<\/em>, you<\/em>, here<\/em>, how<\/em>, not<\/em>, and two<\/em>, are replaced only once every 10,000 or even 20,000 years<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2000, I was writing an article about a prescribed fire on the national forest near my home, so I hiked in with the ignition crew. Some point during the day, I heard a radio crackle with the message, “Come up that little ridge and bring fire with you.” Bring fire with you. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[213,131,211,212,36,4],"class_list":["post-5513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-asia","tag-europe","tag-fire","tag-language","tag-movies","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1qV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6377,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6377","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":0},"title":"There, That’s Done, Almost. Also John Cowper Powys","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Where did the week go? It seems like setting up the AAR sessions \u2014 two solo for Contemporary Pagan Studies, two co-sponsored, and one \"quad\" (four sponsors) \u2014 that plus a little snow, some fire department maintenance work, and some chainsaw issues that don't belong here totally exhausted all my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/d\/db\/Glastonbury_Abbey_ruins_c1900.jpg\/640px-Glastonbury_Abbey_ruins_c1900.jpg","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/d\/db\/Glastonbury_Abbey_ruins_c1900.jpg\/640px-Glastonbury_Abbey_ruins_c1900.jpg 1x, https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/d\/db\/Glastonbury_Abbey_ruins_c1900.jpg\/640px-Glastonbury_Abbey_ruins_c1900.jpg 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4010,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4010","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":1},"title":"From Snow into Fire","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone has posted their \"Happy Equinox\" messages. Oh well. I live in a house that was placed by the Old Ones to line up with the equinoctial sunsets, instead. You can see how tonight the sun seemed to fit into a particular notch in the ridge to the west.\u00a0 They\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/SpringEquinox2012.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/SpringEquinox2012.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/SpringEquinox2012.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9063,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9063","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":2},"title":"Fire, Fortune, and Fate","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The Southern Rockies are in a drought, and fire season has come early to Hardscrabble Creek. The alarm came on Monday, and as usual, the \"fog of war\" (which applies in wildland firefighting too) descended rapidly. I am part of a little rural volunteer department \u2014 secretary of the board\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/sardine-can-fortuna.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8287,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8287","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":3},"title":"Not Dead and the House Is Still Standing","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry about the lack of content. Everything went topsy-turvy on the 17th and is just now returning to normal, or to a \"new normal.\" I left home on the 11th for a trip to eastern North Dakota to go grouse hunting with an old friend who himself was facing heart\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"william-f-schmalsle","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/william-f.-schmalsle.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2610,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2610","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":4},"title":"Bollywood versus Desert Monotheism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A discussion (with lots of music and dancing) about why Bollywood movies are a devastating weapon against the more radical desert-father monotheisms. There is some deeper resonance that [these movies] have, which is why people want them. . . . Young people in the Middle East are just lapping up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12396,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12396","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":5},"title":"Will the Temple Return to Florence? A Small Town Watches","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 21, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In March 2020, when the Masonic temple building up in Florence, Colorado, went on sale, I wrote a post titled \"Start Your Own Magical Lodge in Southern Colorado.\" Maybe I was a little under the spell of the AMC television series Lodge 49. I had the usual fantasies about what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5392.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5392.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5392.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5513"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5524,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5513\/revisions\/5524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}