Inonu cave is Palaic, not Kaska

Bulent Ecevi university are looking at Cro-Inonu at Karadeniz Eregli in Zonguldak, near Heraclea Pontica. They've found signs of sentient life during around what would be the Hittite period.

This article from Türkiye Today is poorly edited. Although I do appreciate Gordon Doherty's map. Very late-1990s amateur 2e-D&D. I might have drawn some maps like that myself.

The region could be protoPhygrian (Thracian), or Mycenaean (Greek). I take it they've ruled out these cultures. Native to northwest Anatolia, this is about where I'd expect Palaic. Apparently they're ruling these out too. Left are those dirty woodwoses and troglodytes whom the Hittites named "Kaska", of whom all we know from their personal names is they're not Palaic or Greek.

I've heard musings the Kaskians might be the original Hatti; expelled from Hattus and Nerik (and Sapinuwa which just means "Divine City" in Hattic).

The problem I got is that even the map is suggesting that the Kaska clustered around the mouth of the Red River later named (after old Hattus) Halys, spreading east. Even Nerik was pretty far west of the core Kaska-land... which is why the Hittites were able to retake it. The cave is far westward of Nerik, across the river.

PostKurgan gylanism

As Marija Gimbutas and Merlin Stone noted, there never was a matriarchy. Matrilocality, by contrast, may be seen in a belt across the Bantu southern regions of the African continent. Here's Lara M. Cassidy et al. arguing for its existence in old Prydain.

The Celtic/Volcae Netherlands were in close contact with what's now southern England, including Cornwall. North of that, the Britons tended not to move abroad much. The solution stumbled upon, was to define "wealth" as "this land". A man who wanted wealth and status had to marry the land (as documented in Holy Grail). That meant he had to move abroad. This kept inbreeding low-enough for the locals to survive and not to war upon each other too much. It also avoided the queen's brothers muscling in, to get their own daughters on the throne in place of the queen's... therefore, really their daughters' brothers: the word for that is "avunculate". Instead I think we're looking at anarchosyndicalism, the only "communism" as can possibly work.

The system contrasted with the Gauls and Aquitanians in what's now France. The mainland grew more urban. The weather was better and it has more navigable rivers, plus some of those rivers drained into the Med.

With the Gaulish (or Belgaic?) to-and-fro, it may be that the Celtic of southern Britain had to shift to be more Gaulish, notably taking on the q>p shift of the Greeks (like Oscans did). Cornovia and Cambria, both rather marginal, would have lagged. Roman influence in Gaul sidelined Gaulish, so the southern Britons simply spoke Gaulish Trade Latin. Ireland meanwhile was less tied with the Gaulish/Greek world; when it got Med visitors, the visitors were Latins who never did q>p, so the Irish didn't either.

Maybe Hezeqiah wasn't rescued

As followup to this piece, I'll bring in Johanna Markind. The claim is that Exodus' core narratives, around Moses being drawn from the Nile and then drawing water abroad, and around Moses striking the overseer, and about the Nile flowing with blood, are legends like what Sargon II spread about his heroic Akkadian namesake. Traditionally Genesis 13; Exodus 16, 22-3; and Isaiah 30 had thought of Egypt as a refuge. And so modern-day Egyptian apologist Henry Aubin in The Rescue of Jerusalem.

But then Sennacherib shut Hezeqiah in Jerusalem "like a bird in his cage". The siege was lifted; but Sennacherib doesn't seem aware that Egypt had helped much. Markind, against Aubin, argues for a Surrender of Jerusalem. If the Assyrians would just content themselves with a garrison and an alliance, against the Nubians calling themselves Pharaoh (like the Ramessides did); Hezeqiah could stay on his throne.

If the Exodus 1-16 be antiEgyptian propaganda, this may go to explain how it wasn't always canon in Egyptian Judaism, which maintained the old Pesach as having nothing to do with any earlier "sojourn" by the Nile. And why nonJewish Egyptians don't seem to know the tale until Ptolemy of Mendes, Agartharch, and others. That half of the book would then fall along with Isaiah 9 and 19.

If the tale is from Hezeqiah, that is after the northern kingdom fell. There's no Elohist up to Exodus 16; green and blue here be merged. If to this farrago there be earlier sources in Hebrew, we can't get at them.

BACKDATE 1/16

Lead pipes again

Here's the latest on the muh-lead-pipes canard. The good news, I guess, is they're not talking about the piping.

They are talking about the process of smelting which brings lead into the air.

They may also mention the lead "silver" ware, actually mostly pewter. This is fine for water cups too. But less fine for acidic drinks like, er, wine. Also I think lead was sometimes used in sweeteners.

Psalter pscholarship

Open-access journal on Biblical translations on Ancient World Online. This concerns this Psalter.

First up, the Psalter tends to be the most-copied book in any language. From John Lee, the Greek Psalter was late-Ptolemaic, second-century B.C. This is bourne out by its deviations from the Hebrew ("MT") which Emmanuel Tov count as hardly any. They even resist fixing that Elohist nonsense.

Although there do exist some Greek changes; nine years back I'd noted Hebrew Psalm 130 "fear of God" against the Greek #129 "law [*torah] of God". And wasn't there Hellenistic south-Syrian jargon not used in Egypt? If the Psalter be Ptolemaic I think it was, nonetheless, done in the Ptolemaic Judaia. (We are here ignoring the three Christian interpolations; after all, the Ethiopian Christians ignored two of 'em.)

Peshitta started as a translation of the MT, although Christians did 1 Isaiah. Van Peurson notes they did the Psalter too. (When the Jews were called in, they did Matthew - which I find ironic.) Later Peshitta MSS have some "corrections" toward the Greek, although not much changing the Christian elements. Of course meanwhile the "kaige" lads were correcting the Greek toward the MT, although with the Psalter they had little to do.

On topic of Aramaic, this article is Greek-focused - we are not here looking at the Targum, either Palaestinian or Iraqi or Late Jewish Literary. Although I understand the Jews fell under heavy Syriac influence when they got past Torah, especially Proverbs.

The Arabic Psalter was Melkite so done from Greek. Later the Muslims will make a run at Psalm One, possibly from Peshitta. I assume Quranic vocabulary slips into all this. Score another W for Sidney Griffith.

For comparison with the Greek MT, Michael Segal brings the Ode of Hannah. This actually does have variations. Psalm 113 may depend on this.

This brings to mind, what about the "variant Psalter". Emmanuel Tov says there wasn't one. Where we see variants as in Qumran, these weren't competitors to the canon. 11QPsAp/11Q11's use of Psalm 91 is a case-in-point. Van Peurson agrees: those extra psalms found in Syriac like 152-155 may have been dug out of the caves, during Timothy I's papacy/catholicate. Qumran's paraPsalters were done for the liturgy; they could be considered lectionaries. Like the Odes, which the Greeks compiled as separate from the Psalter although sometimes attached. Psalm 151 may well have started as Ode.

City of exiles

Every few years I get back into Cucuteni. Anyway Dawn of Everything is in the news again.

The theory here is that Cucuteni - a Romanian site - was indeed an egalitarian town with, in the centre... nothing. The town-commons, in Yankee / Anglian terms. Maybe it was an agora with temporary tents. Maybe it was for town meetings. Maybe they just grazed sheep there. Or choose-your-own-adventure.

But before the culture ended, it changed. (That happens a lot.) The villages emptied (one final ritual burn); the people, however, moved. They moved ... trans-dnestrovie. The big cities are in what's now western Ukraine. All this before the IndoEuropean irruption, Corded-Ware and all that; maybe some of those had moved into Anatolia and/or Tocharia.

Maidanetske 3800 BC - some time after the big farms, and the mouse - has a 200-hectare "megasite" which they don't (yet) want to call a city, given that the Cucuteni towns before it are difficult to define as such. But it has larger buildings. They don't know - yet - if these are what we'd call public, or if they're temples, or palaces. (I doubt festhalls, those seem more IndoEuropean.) Either way they should class as urban, so their "megasites" as urbes.

There's guff about Climate but I doubt this. Climate crises would be 6200 BC then that nasty Bronze Age 22nd-C BC. In between, things should have been fine. Excepting the 3400 BC yersinia which hit the Ukraine-now-urban. Maybe because they'd not been doing the burn ritual anymore.

Karl Popper's other philosophy

Since we've been looking into historian philosophy... why not political. George Soros has one: he claims Karl Popper's. We've dealt with Popper's inductive reasoning; Soros more concerns the Open Society. There are those who think little of Soros. For now we'll start with that run on the Bank of England / "Sterling" he did, under PM John Major.

Dropping out of the Euro allowed Britain to get out from under the Thatcher / Major recession. Yes, that was $3G-1993 lost, from which Soros took $1G. Overall Britain bought, with that money, some prosperity. We can discuss how Major and his successors have handled that prosperity, some other time.

Opposed to Popper are the likes of Putin and Xi, and here Maduro and Ortega. Popper's most coherent proponent these days seems to be Richard Hanania.

Britain basically cannot run herself so requires that outside billionaires intervene to help. It is exactly Popper's Open-Society that saved the Brits under Major, and is attempting to save them under Starmer. If Brits find this "unsporting", they should elect a better King.

Soros' main fault, meanwhile, is that since his good work in Britain, he has failed Popper.