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Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

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Re: Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

#81

Post by sametmax »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #75
sametmax wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You might only discover that something had value in hindsight. I completely agree. But we have data about many, many languages, lost and current. The chances that those newly discovered ones bring something more than "oh that's nice and interesting" on the table are quite weak. > Who knows what we could've learned from the destroyed works of the library of Alexandria? This is a totally different scale. As I say, we…

"But we have data about many, many languages, lost and current. The chances that those newly discovered ones bring something more than "oh that's nice and interesting" on the table are quite weak." I can imagine someone saying this in the early 20th century. And then the decipherment of Hittite and discovery of Tocharian completely rewrote the history of the Near East and Central Asia. Just a few years ago, Werner an…

I don't mean it's not valuable. I mean that which should always balance the cost instead of jumping on it.

Re: Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

#82

Post by nradov »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #64
damnfine wrote: post #2

Can we crowdfund a militia to protect and secure archives for digitizing in conflict zones? We are losing too much priceless history to fools over ego.

Or we could fund adventurer archeologists like Indiana Jones to protect the artifacts by stealing them. Either way, we've probably stepped off into the realm of unworkable fiction.

Indiana Jones aside, people actually used to do that. Check out the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. German archeologists excavated and disassembled large artifacts. They kind of "stole" the artifacts, although it wasn't technically illegal at the time.

http://www.egyptian-museum-berlin.com/c01.php

Re: Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

#83

Post by nradov »

FroshKiller wrote: post #38
lucozade wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is a gem of nationalist thought. When the Bamiyan buddhas were dynamited, exactly whose culture were the Taliban "preserving"? It is entirely reasonable to believe that culture and history have an importance independent of petty, local squabbles. Crowd funding militia may well be questionable but to demean the sentiment as colonialist is pointlessly insulting.

I don't think you understand what nationalism is. I admit that my reply could be read as a tacit endorsement of tribalism, but there's nothing nationalist about it. You should not presuppose that conflicts are "petty, local squabbles." Minimizing language like that reinforces the mindset that the mighty are justified in interfering in the sovereign destiny of a people. Anyway, my reply was thoughtful, not pointlessly…

"People" don't have sovereign destiny. Only states are sovereign, and even then there are limits to sovereignty.

Re: Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

#85

Post by weberc2 »

cm2187 wrote: post #30
damnfine wrote: post #2

Can we crowdfund a militia to protect and secure archives for digitizing in conflict zones? We are losing too much priceless history to fools over ego.

It's actually an interesting debate. Do we care more about a book or a statue than a human life? Shouldn't these resources be protecting the populations first before worrying about books?

Well, the west (you know, those "evil, colonialist, world police"?) already does a lot to protect people from terrorism already, but protecting people from terrorism is quite a lot more costly and morally complicated (well, some people manage to conflate "combatting terrorism" with "racially motivated colonialism" anyway) than protecting artifacts. Protecting artifacts is intractable for reasons of international law and national sovereignty.

Re: Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

#86

Post by synicalx »

damnfine wrote: post #2

Can we crowdfund a militia to protect and secure archives for digitizing in conflict zones? We are losing too much priceless history to fools over ego.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... 2017 as a comment.

First tier is a group of local farmers with rusty AK's, but the stretch goal is a team of operators from Academi. If you chip in more than $50 you get your name removed from the list of backers on the off chance that this turns into some sort of international incident when the militia joins ISIS or the Academi team massacre a nearby village.

Re: Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

#87

Post by kwhitefoot »

FroshKiller wrote: post #40
Majestic121 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point about invasion and imperialism, but I strongly disagree with your opinion that people from a country "own" the culture of this country. National cultures and cultural artifacts are part of the human culture as a whole, and as such they belong to mankind. There's hardly any good justification to destroy pieces of human culture, and misplaced nationalism definitely is not of them.

The idea that all cultures belong to "mankind" is grease for the wheels of appropriation. People have a right to choose what they share with others. There's a certain phrase that people from my county use to express surprise and approval. It isn't widely known. When I use it around neighbors, they know what I'm conveying, and it identifies us as kindred. I could tell you what it is, and you might like it. You might e…

I think that is the first time I have seen shibboleth used in a neutral way.

Everywhere else I have seen it used there has always been an implication that the making of distinctions like this was negative.

I'm not making a value judgement here, it just struck me as unusual.

Re: Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

#88

Post by pbhjpbhj »

FroshKiller wrote: post #53
FroshKiller wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss this bit? "The transmission of culture between peoples should be based on a mutual interest in sharing and learning, not some sense of global entitlement."

I don't want to be rude, pbhjpbhj, but I'm honestly not sure how to respond to that. I don't think I'm the right person to have that talk with you, and even if I am, this certainly doesn't seem like the right place or time.

Fair enough.

Though I'm interested if you can give specifics, like tell us what culture you identify with primarily and what aspects of that culture you want to keep for only people you identify as 'in' (belonging, if you will).

Maybe expand and show what you're foregoing from other cultures, like if you're not Chinese so avoid cultivated rice, or whatever.

Re: Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

#89

Post by panglott »

logfromblammo wrote: post #80
FroshKiller wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" as outsiders only lose the potential of having that culture shared with us. If your co-worker wrecks his car, you haven't lost the ability to drive it. You never had it. He might have chosen to let you drive it, or he might have chosen to let you ride in it, but you haven't lost anything just because the car might have been useful to you. Sympathy is the appropriate response. Being ready to help people defend th…

Culture is a consensus. It just so happens that the region of culture nearest to me values the practice of sifting through obscure, niche, or distant sub-cultures for stuff that may be temporarily adopted in isolation, yielding social status points for the discoverer and early adopters. The destruction of cultural artifacts previously unknown by the local mainstream is thus deplored, not because it had any real intri…

Just because you don't care about some old book doesn't mean that it has value to noone. One of the books found in the monastery was a thousand-year-old document written in Caucasian Albanian, for which there is no other documentation than short stone inscriptions. The Udi people speak a descendent of this language, but their language community is under severe threat. Something like this would probably be very important to a community trying to save its cultural traditions! Not to mention the historians and humanists who can often glean some amazing insights from the scanty evidence left to us by history. The last printed-out Hitler Pepe meme might be very revealing to a far-future historian trying to understand our times.

Cultural traditions are exactly those things that generation after generation of a community has seen the value of preserving.

Re: Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

#90

Post by logfromblammo »

panglott wrote: post #89
logfromblammo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culture is a consensus. It just so happens that the region of culture nearest to me values the practice of sifting through obscure, niche, or distant sub-cultures for stuff that may be temporarily adopted in isolation, yielding social status points for the discoverer and early adopters. The destruction of cultural artifacts previously unknown by the local mainstream is thus deplored, not because it had any real intri…

Just because you don't care about some old book doesn't mean that it has value to noone. One of the books found in the monastery was a thousand-year-old document written in Caucasian Albanian, for which there is no other documentation than short stone inscriptions. The Udi people speak a descendent of this language, but their language community is under severe threat. Something like this would probably be very import…

The point is that I can't decide what other people should value culturally. And I certainly shouldn't send in mercenaries to "secure cultural artifacts".

It would be acceptable to offer to buy the ones you intend to preserve, or to donate to a museum to preserve the ones they see as important. Archaeology at gunpoint isn't good for the artifacts, isn't good for the people who had them, and isn't good for the people that take them. The best you could do in that vein would be to create a new cultural artifact featuring an adventurer-archaeologist that pilfers the important artifact you would like to preserve as the main plot MacGuffin. And to not make it about stupid crystal-skulled aliens.

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