0049 Chapter three concerns the topics of linguistic common origin and taxonomy.

From this examination, so far, I speculate (riffing off of Farrell’s speculations) that the normal context of an ideology of a common tongue_3a derives from an actual translation stone_2a, which converts one language to another so well that it_2amaintains the potential for ‘technical work and group cohesion’_1a. 

0050 So, to me, the question that chapter three addresses asks, “Is this ideology built into our brains, bodies and bones?”

What_2a is required for the normal context of a common language_3a to manifest the potential of  ‘the technical and group cohesion offered by one people_1a?

Would a translator stone_2a do the trick?

0051 Here is a picture of what I am talking about.

0052 Farrell starts with the earliest scientific formulation that the coincidence of one language and one people is bound through time.

The first language family to be identified is the Indo-European.  Wonderful social science is accomplished by Edward Sapir (1884-1939 AD), Alfredo Trombetti (1866-1929) and others.  All Indo-European languages trace back through time to one proto-Indo-European people. 

After that, further attempts at classifying language families are resisted for years

0053 Why?

Well, I suppose that it must be due to a “translator’s stone issue” of some sort.

As it turns out, many Indo-European languages are written, as well as oral.  So, writings, preserved through time, independently corroborate the similarities and differences identified by linguists.  In effect, writing independently verifies changes in phonetics and semantics over time.  Writing operates as a psychometric “translator’s stone”.

0054 In the 1960s, Joseph Greenberg refashions the (writing-focused) translator’s stone into an exercise of pattern recognition and statistics.  Farrell offers samples demonstrating the exercise.  Our gestalt-tendencies allow instant recognition of patterns that are then validated using statistical methods.  What are the chances that this pattern would be recognized and not any other?  Greenberg identifies language families as gigantic as Indo-European.  Indeed, even families of families can be discerned with his new translator stone… er… I mean to say, “methodology”.

Merritt Ruhlen, Greenberg’s student, publishes the crown publication in 1994, bringing the coincidence of language and ethnos (Russian for “a people lacking explicit abstractions indicating that they are a people”) all the way back to the origin of our species.

(Ethnos? See Looking at Michael Millerman’s Chapter (2022) “…Dimensions of Dugin’s Populism” appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in late February 2023.)

0055 So, if hominins fashion a common tongue at the start of our own species, then what do our ancestors talk in the times prior to say, 250,000 years ago?

The answer, according to Razie Mah, is hand talk.  Speech is added to hand talk at the start of our own species.  Humans practice hand-speech talk for, say, 240,000 years, and now, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

Hmmm. I suppose that a Tower of Babel Moment may be hidden in that hypothesis.

0056 But, a hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk Tower of Babel Moment is not what Genesis 11 reports.

Genesis 11 reports something very different.  Genesis 11 reports the conviction that one language means one people and, if everyone holds that conviction, then a civilization can accomplish whatever it sets out to do.

If the people really speak different languages, all that one needs is a topogram that maps one language onto the others, and visa versa, in order to establish that all belong to a common tongue and therefore constitute one people.

0057 Yes, the correlation between language and people, our talk-tradition and ourselves, is woven, by evolution, into the fabric of our being, so much that if we believe that we practice a common tongue, even though we obviously do not, then we are transubstantiated into one people.

0058 Farrell comes to the verge of articulating this realization, but does not.

Why?

He forges a path for others to follow.  The connection between a common language and genetic affiliation smells too sweet for him to realize that the flower produces a seed and that the seed may germinate into an illusion.  The mind-independent reality of the translator’s stone substantiates the mind-dependent reality that we all share a common tongue and therefore, are one people.

Others, following his path, can pause and say, “Hey, this may sound crazy, but what if the link between talk tradition and people is built into our very constitution, and what if all someone has to do is convince us that we have the same language, then we are caught, hook line and sinker, by the illusion that we are one people?”

Here is a picture.

0059 And now, an irony.

The Akkadian language, the language that most likely associates to Nimrod, the mighty you-know-what, belongs to the Semitic family of spoken languages, which is as impressive as the Indo-European.

The Sumerian language, the language that most likely associates to the ones who concocted the Tower of Bab-ilim story, is a linguistic isolate.  An “isolate”?  Yes, Sumerian is unrelated to any family of languages.

0060 This is an embarrassing topic for students of ancient Mesopotamian civilization.

So, experts rarely mention the fact.

After all, why would Sumerian be an linguistic isolate?

And, what would that fact have to do the formation of civilization of southern Mesopotamian?

Who knows?

So, who cares?

The stone that the builders reject, becomes the cornerstone of a new foundation.