Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 3:53 pm
John:
I read Berry Fell’s and Gloria Farley’s books many years ago. They have always been in the back of my mind and colored many of the things I have read about NA history and archaeology since.
Berry Fell saw Ogham all over NA. At least from the Atlantic to the continental divide. I do not recall if there were any Pacific coast examples.
Gloria Farley documented and photographed numerous examples of the script in common with pictographs through out the NA west, but primarily in the Arkansas River watershed.
Others have documented it up the Ohio as far a West Virginia.
This is what grabbed my attention when I saw that there was a hand signal version of the script. I had never heard of it in any the descriptions of the script from either side of the Atlantic. The tie in to the Indian sign language was automatic.
I realize that the existence of Ogham script in NA is somewhat controversial. It upsets a lot of long held ideas as to when and by whom travel to and from NA from Europe, Britain, and Scandinavia began. But, like Los Lunas NM, the physical evidence is still there.
Fell and Farley are undoubtedly considered “fringe” by many. Particularly the Smithsonian, which you seem to have some kind of relationship with. I do not want this to seem like a personal attack, but an organization that old, with the political involvement it has had, the strong willed leaders it has had, and the relative lack of oversight it has enjoyed, must have a lot of skeletons (both figurative and literally) in it’s many closets. The conspiracy theories surrounding it are legend.
So, I guess I am saying that I do not expect a Masters Thesis to have been written on the similarities. Any comparison study, if one was ever done, would have most likely been done in and for the fringe market.
I mentioned Gloria Farley in the DNA thread. That was because of what she saw as clear Phoenician, Egyptian, and Carthaginian symbols in the pictographs she documented. The Ogham script in those same pictographs, if contemporary, would suggest a real cosmopolitan group of travelers.
And they would have been a real long way away from home. It would have made sense to make friends with the locals. Teaching the leaders and Shamans a way to communicate with each other despite spoken language differences would, I expect, go a long way in ensuring safe passage through what could have been very dangerous territory.
How is that for running a theory up the flag post?
Anybody want to salute it?
Or shoot at it?
I read Berry Fell’s and Gloria Farley’s books many years ago. They have always been in the back of my mind and colored many of the things I have read about NA history and archaeology since.
Berry Fell saw Ogham all over NA. At least from the Atlantic to the continental divide. I do not recall if there were any Pacific coast examples.
Gloria Farley documented and photographed numerous examples of the script in common with pictographs through out the NA west, but primarily in the Arkansas River watershed.
Others have documented it up the Ohio as far a West Virginia.
This is what grabbed my attention when I saw that there was a hand signal version of the script. I had never heard of it in any the descriptions of the script from either side of the Atlantic. The tie in to the Indian sign language was automatic.
I realize that the existence of Ogham script in NA is somewhat controversial. It upsets a lot of long held ideas as to when and by whom travel to and from NA from Europe, Britain, and Scandinavia began. But, like Los Lunas NM, the physical evidence is still there.
Fell and Farley are undoubtedly considered “fringe” by many. Particularly the Smithsonian, which you seem to have some kind of relationship with. I do not want this to seem like a personal attack, but an organization that old, with the political involvement it has had, the strong willed leaders it has had, and the relative lack of oversight it has enjoyed, must have a lot of skeletons (both figurative and literally) in it’s many closets. The conspiracy theories surrounding it are legend.
So, I guess I am saying that I do not expect a Masters Thesis to have been written on the similarities. Any comparison study, if one was ever done, would have most likely been done in and for the fringe market.
I mentioned Gloria Farley in the DNA thread. That was because of what she saw as clear Phoenician, Egyptian, and Carthaginian symbols in the pictographs she documented. The Ogham script in those same pictographs, if contemporary, would suggest a real cosmopolitan group of travelers.
And they would have been a real long way away from home. It would have made sense to make friends with the locals. Teaching the leaders and Shamans a way to communicate with each other despite spoken language differences would, I expect, go a long way in ensuring safe passage through what could have been very dangerous territory.
How is that for running a theory up the flag post?
Anybody want to salute it?
Or shoot at it?