PHENOMENON: Migrations of Love

	PHENOMENON: Migrations of Love A journey... THE TERRITORY: The universe, and human history. THE MAP: The spoken word, archaeology, and genetics. THE DESTINATION: We will know when we get there.
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EXPLANATION OF THE PROJECT: The idea for the book, came when I borrowed a copy of Farley Mowat's Farfarers, Before the Norse, from Eric Edquist a former colleague of mine. Yes Eric, I know I didn't return the book, but I will, if I ever figure out how to get a hold of you. I had been doing the WOLF WATCH page at the time, and Farfarers opened up some avenues of research, that paralleled some other things I had researched in the past. I have long had an interest in pre-Columbian North America, and had read of many anomolous archaeological finds, that flew in the face of established thought.	Farfarers broke this wide open, with speculation on European exploration, and settlement in advance of the Norse. Suddenly a lot of unconnected bits and pieces found a common thread. Certainly there must have been comings and goings between the New World and the Old World well in advance of Columbus, and even the Norse. Evidence of human habitation that predates the standard "Clovis first" culture in North America, has been building over the past number of years, and some think there is reason to believe that some sort of cultural exchange across the Atlantic may have taken place as long as 18,000 years ago.

At the end of the last Ice Age, many prime coastal living areas were covered by the waters of the rising Atlantic Ocean, and what would have been traditional trade routes at that time, became longer and more difficult. What is intriguing, is that the timing of Plato's Atlantis, and the end of the last IceAge are contemporary with each other. While countless thousands of 'New Age' pundits have given their view on Atlantis, I share none of their amazement or belief in such a wonderfully advanced civilization. I don't go for all of the 'crystal power source' nonsense. I merely believe that there must have been some sort of civilization, perhaps the most advanced of its time, amazing to others simply because it's power was based on sea navigation. Studying the climatic events at the end of the last Ice Age, it is not difficult to envision trouble for such a civilization. The loss of its major centres, and a great many of its population, would have led to fragmentation, and scattering. This civilization	would not rise again, but memories would remain, although fading with time. The end of Atlantean civilization would have enabled over time, the expansion of the Indo-European peoples into the former sphere of influence. Linguistic, genetic, and lastly archaeological evidence all point toward something missing out of the history books. This book will not paint a picture of Atlantis. We have not been looking in the right place for direct evidence, we have nothing to paint. The ruins of the major centres of any maritime civilization would now be offshore on the continental shelf. What this book will point to is a void. There is something missing from all of the evidence so far compiled. The purpose of this book is to gather the evidence from scattered disciplines and synthesize it into a whole. In that whole, we will find a hole. That hole is neatly filled by Atlantis. I will point this out whenever it surfaces.

But Atlantis is not the destination of this book. Atlantis will be visited rarely. Atlantis is more a symbol, as far as this book is concerned. A symbol that much of what we think we know is either incomplete or mistaken. Much of what we are taught, is taught, not because it is true or valid or correct, but because it fits with the established, entrenched knowledge. Established, accepted 'history' is rife with incomplete facts, omissions, and cover-up. The true story is no less, and no more amazing. It is merely different, and occasionally inconvenient to the establishment.
I know no more about what Atlantis was than the next person. I know a little bit more about what Atlantis wasn't. Were the Atlanteans amazing people with psychic powers, and fantastic machines? No. They were amazing, because we are all amazing, every one of us. This book will show some amazing facts about the other people we do know. We will learn about Neanderthals and Cro Magnon people. We will learn about the spread of agriculture and 'civilization'. We will learn that languages are more intertwined than we had ever imagined. Language and the sounds we use for words are crosswired in our brains with our gestural and motor mechanisms. Cultures and languages change because the people adapt differently to their different environments. Dialects are products of local environment, raw materials, and lifestyles. Eventually, as language change becomes entrenched, the language begins to change the way we react. Language is changed by environment. Culture is changed by language. Culture adapts to, and eventually changes the environment, and language changes again. The wonderful thing about language, is that changes in words, grammar and meaning over time leaves a trace in surviving texts. This trace is like a map. Cultural variance can be found in, or traced to language variance. Relationships and borrowings between languages reveals points of contact.	The difficulty now is that the world wide web, and its profound effects on both language and culture, is in danger of erasing the map. However, since the sequencing of the human genome, the emerging discipline of historical genetics is challenging existing migration models, and confirming or at least pointing to migration models that point to that void we call Atlantis. Some previously ridiculed linguistic theories are being given a second look due to the genetic evidence. We are in a unique era, where we have historical changes in culture and language that can be studied, and compared over time. At the same time, we are in an era where these differences are quickly disappearing. We have to use this time well, or we could lose the key to unlocking our past. This book's main thrust, is to celebrate our diversity, while it still exists, and to follow it back to a time when it was less diverse. In effect, we have almost come full circle, from a single language (with minor variations), through a rich diversity of languages and cultures, back to a time when language and cultural differences are beginning to fade again. The spread of the colonial languages, while accompanied with exploitation and slavery, has given us a wealth of knowledge, about linguistics. Local dialects, pidgins, and creoles have given us the opportunity to delve deeply into the psychology and sociology of language. We have been given some 'near laboratory conditions' under which to develop, test, and confirm linguistic theory.

Since the Second World War in particular, the migration has been the opposite way, from former "third world"( I don't like that term) countries to the former colonial powers. Particularly interesting is the integration of peoples from around the world into Canadian and American society. English, with its lack of rigid structure, causes difficulty of acquisition as a second language, but the kinds of errors or adjustments that continually creep into the ESL vernacular, while humourous at times to native anglophones, are also instructive. From them we learn about the language constructs of the 'foreign' tongues, as well as the idiosyncracies of English. English is my mother tongue, and being Canadian, I also learned French throughout my school years, as well as a year of German. Studies in science have led me to have more than a passing interest in Greek and Latin. Growing up in Toronto, I have been exposed to dozens of languages from around the world, and have helped newcomers to work on their English. We have laughed together, both at their mistakes, and the illogical rules of English conjugation. It is this experience that has resulted in my interest in the subject. Toronto is the worlds largest linguistics lab, apart from being a decent place to live, if you must live in a large city.	How did English evolve (devolve?) from the highly structured German, to the maze of exceptions needed to be navigated by ESL students? This lack of definite structure, while making English difficult to learn, allows English to grow and change, accepting words, and phrases from other languages. It also allows English a considerable amount of variety in dialect, such that variations from Scotland, to Wales, to England, to North America, to Australia, to India, and to China can often be almost mutually unintelligible. This can be experienced in a day of conversation in Toronto. Second and third generation Canadians, who grow up with Canadian English throughout their school years, gradually adopt a regional norm, but at times, glimpses of their hereditary language creep into their speech. We still hear phrases like "close the light', rather than "turn the light off." Using linguistic clues like the above, I go off in a Holmesian search of language roots, tracing the various Indo-European language families back to a Proto Indo European mother tongue. This language will be compared to other major language groups, and at times I will speculate on a theorized mother-tongue or Proto-World Language.

The book will feature a lot of language study. There is likely enough material on language study to have been given its own book. I will look at current linguistic theories and comment on the state of the discipline. Then I will delve into several of the individual theories in some depth. The Motor Theory of Language states that the parts of the brain used to generate language are also responsible for gesture. Consequently language and gesture are related far more than is given credit for. The utilization of the various parts of the vocal apparatus and the subsequent shapes of lips, tongue, teeth etc. are intimately related to hand gesture, and word meaning. Spoken words are more than just meanings, they are graphic representations of concepts. One can use the clues given by the letters used and often guess at the meaning of foreign words using this principle. The rules aren't hard and fast, but there is enough correlation, that the theory cannot be discarded. I will refer to this theory repeatedly throughout the book to illustrate its importance. Building on the motor theory, I have begun assembling what I call an Alphabetic Lexicon of the English language. While we know that there have been letter shifts, and replacements throughout the history of language, I believe it is possible to assign a set of concepts to each of the letters of the alphabet. Using this concept list, one can guess the meaning of an English word, by referring to the list of concepts related to each of the component letters.	The theory is far from developed, and this book is merely the genesis of the idea, but I think you will find it interesting at least. At various stages throughout the work, I will do word studies. In these studies we will look at words in different ways, and by doing so, learn something of the thought of the people who first used the word. Sometimes we will look at letter combinations over the course of dozens of words, and relate the words to each other. Other times we will look at synonyms, and examine how the same meaning or concept came to be represented by completely different letter patterns. At all times we will compare words across languages and language families to get a more complete picture of either the words itself, or the concept expressed, or the differences in culture that lead to different connotations of the word. There will be some eyeopeners, such as the relationship between the words queen, count and that other 'C' word that resembles count, and sounds like the first syllable of country. These words are not similar by accident. It is not my intention to dredge up endless profanities and give etymologies, but in this particular circumstance, the relationship suggested itself after researching the words for number, quantity, counting etc. When I later did a word study on the various words for women used around the world, I found myself staring this word in the face again. Perhaps reading my findings may help to take the stigma from an otherwise useful and meaningful word.

Speaking of count, there will be another huge section on the words used around the world for numbers. We will learn about counting methods, (fingers, tally sticks, body counting), and the relationship between the words for numbers and etymological relatives of those words. In other words, what does two mean, apart from the number? What concepts are irrevocably related to twoness? How are the words for these concepts related to the words for two? Do these correspondences carry into other languages and language families? If so, can we formulate universal rules or laws for language construction? All humanity is related in having to come to terms with seasons, and time measurement. Looking at the various calendar and time systems used throughout history, and the words used within these systems, will help us to better understand the thought processes of Neolithic humanity, in addition to taking the mystery out of megaliths such as Stonehenge. When we understand the problems encountered by our ancestors, we can apply reasoning, and see why they would take the time and effort to build them. Demystifying the motives will help us to understand the practical aspects of these monuments, without resorting to mumbo-jumbo, and little-green-men.	We use various alphabets around the world to represent words. Are there relationships between the shapes used in different systems and the concepts expressed? How did letters acquire their current shapes? What systems of language representation predated the use of modern alphabets? Are there universally applied symbols for certain concepts? We will look at the symbols we use today, and the development of their meanings. We will look at petroglyphs and other surviving symbologies, such as cave art, and see if there are certain rules we can apply. We will also look at cave-art for its great beauty as well, and perhaps get a look at the mind of primitive humanity from another angle. How do symbols relate to words and concepts? Is there a motor theory link, involving either the hand and arm movements needed to create the symbols, or the eye movements needed to perceive them? I take an almost universally found symbol, the spiral, and speculate on its meaning. At all times, I try to apply practicality to my speculations. Why make the symbols at all? What was to be gained? Was it art for art's sake, or were there meanings attached? Were these cave paintings stone-age blogs? Were they the neolithic version of a powerpoint presentation, used for instruction at a hunting conference? Were they merely decoration, made to while away long winter days? Were they used as part of some mystic rite intended to ensure success of the tribe?

What do we use symbols for? Has this changed throughout history, or are there certain cultural constants? What is there in modern society that would survive a collapse of that society, and be available for study by people 1000, or 10000 years from now? Most books would have turned to dust, unless somehow protected from the elements. Many paint pigments will have faded and flaked away. Even many tombstones a few hundred years old are nearly illegible. Those things we choose to commit to a more durable medium are instructive. Why would ancient humanity be much different? I am certain that a great many illustrations, maps etc. that were commited to less durable or more exposed media are now lost to us. Certainly early humanity, if capable of producing such masterpieces as those found on the difficult surfaces of cave walls of France, would have created comparable or even greater works on wood, or deerhide that while easier to work with, would have long since decayed. Can we speculate? Can we extrapolate from this cave art, a system of symbols that had more immediate usage? What is a spiral but a measure of days? Each ever larger loop indicating another day of journey from one hunting camp to the next. Symbols within the spiral could indicate travel along riverbanks, or crossings. The direction of the spiral could indicate east or west (with or against the sun) Certain other symbols could indicate north or south, or changes of direction.	Someone trying out a new route, would record progress on the deerhide at the end of each day's travel. That deerhide would be a valuable artifact to the tribe. If it were of particular value, it might be chosen to be immortalized on a cave wall. Copies could be made as required. Why do we continually try to assign mystical motives to the works of the ancients? This is not to say that they weren't superstitious, or worshipful, but merely to point out the fact that they were not always driven by these motives, any more than modern humanity. What will archaeologists thousands of years from now make of all the elevator control plates missing the number 13? We can see that superstition finds its way into durable symbolic media used today, but not all durable symbolic media. The lack of the number 13 will certainly puzzle future archaeologists. If they manage to piece together the purpose of the plates, they will be no nearer to solving the mystery.

External Links - Online Etymology Dictionary - - Wikipedia -	Internal Links