Technology of the Gods.

You are using it this instant!

Technology of the Gods.

You are using it this instant!

Many indigenous peoples in North America have a similar saying in their native tongues, that ‘words must be chewed (eaten)’, in order to assess their meaning. Recently I have been chewing on some words.

With the exception of the Judeans, not the Jews, we have a statement that 'the gods gave us language', arising at every one of the contact points between ancient humans, and space aliens. All of these contact points were the centers of major civilizations on earth. The Judeans already had language when they were conquered by the El in their home in the area of S. Yemen, and driven north along the Red Sea to arrive in Judea.

The Judeans, the Essenes, the conquered 12 tribes, were speaking & writing 'first tongue' or what is also called proto-Hebrew. Jews speak yiddish which is the teutonic transliteration of their language into the Hebrew alphabet, but they don't speak or read Hebrew. The Jews were in Khazaria (greater Ukraine) when the Space Aliens took over Earth during the Invasion phase of human history. Then, much later, they connected their lineage to the Judeans for political convenience, and back filled this with Yiddish to prop up the claim.

It is worth noting in passing, and putting aside this interesting diversion until later, that proto-Hebrew appears also in North America, being found in trail marking descriptions on rocks, and in caves, through out the West, and down into Mexico. It appears in the same letter forms as proto-Hebrew found throughout the Middle East, and as far north as present day Iran.

We find these contact points with Space Aliens on all continents, with the exception of Antarctica, though this is likely just due to the result of the information control by the government.

In India, it is said that the ‘devas’, aka ‘gods’, gave language to humans by Brahma. In Europe, the Teutonic tribes, said that ‘Wotan’ debated with the other ‘gods’ in the pantheon about the wisdom of gifting humans with language, and writing. While Wotan was inclined to do so, the other gods were a bit skittish about the idea, as it would allow for humans to ‘retrieve their past’. Another aspect of the debate was around the nature of the writing used by the gods themselves, that was determined to be ‘too powerful’ for the human mind, so a ‘lesser form’ was provided that humans ‘might adapt’ to it first. Hmmm?

Meso-American languages are a diverse group of languages spoken by various indigenous peoples in Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America. These languages have rich histories and diverse origins, and their mythologies and creation stories offer unique perspectives on their own origins.

For example, the Nahuatl language, which is spoken by the Nahua people in Mexico, has creation myths that describe the origins of the universe and the creation of humanity. According to these myths, the universe was created by a god named Ometeotl, who later split into two deities: Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl. These two deities created the first humans, who were given language and taught how to cultivate the land. It is noted in their myth, that there was a ‘dispute’ between the two deities, over the issue of providing humans with language. Omecihuatl won the argument by stating that the ‘goal’ was a ‘more perfect creation than previous’, which defeated the argument provided that ‘script’ would lead humans astray by providing ‘ill thought’ from the past.

Similarly, the Maya language, which is spoken by the Maya people in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras, has creation myths that describe the origins of the universe and the creation of the first humans. According to these myths, the gods created the world and the first humans from maize dough. In this mythos, we find that ‘writing’, is also called ‘stamping’, as the ‘gods’ were seen to ‘stamp writing into clay such that words formed from the earth’.

According to Maori mythology, the Maori language originated from the gods and was brought to the world by the god Tane. Tane is known as the god of the forest, and he is considered one of the most important gods in Maori mythology.

The story goes that Tane went to the heavens to retrieve three baskets of knowledge from the god of wisdom, Tawhiri-matea. The baskets contained knowledge of the spiritual world, knowledge of the natural world, and knowledge of the supernatural world. Tane then brought the baskets back to the world and shared the knowledge with humans.

Maori is a very unique language. The grammar and structure of Maori are intimately connected with Time, as it is experienced by humans. There are even features that differentiate Time as experienced by ‘lesser animate matter’, and animals within the language. Other unique forms of ‘codification of qualifications’ include:

Verb Prefixes: In Maori, verbs are preceded by prefixes that indicate the tense, aspect, and mood of the verb. For example, the prefix "ka" indicates future tense, while "i" indicates past tense. This means that the tense of a sentence can be indicated by the prefix alone, without the need for additional words or inflections.

Dual Number: Maori has a dual number, which means that words can be singular, dual, or plural. This is different from English, which only has singular and plural forms. The dual number is used when referring to exactly two things, such as two people or two objects.

Emphatic Particles: Maori has a number of particles that can be added to sentences to add emphasis or emotion. For example, the particle "nei" can be added to a sentence to indicate that something is happening right now, while the particle "rawa" can be added to indicate that something is very intense or extreme.

No Gender: Unlike many other languages, Maori does not have grammatical gender. This means that there are no masculine or feminine noun forms, and there are no gender-specific pronouns. Instead, the same words are used for all genders.

The Maori language has interesting features connecting it to Meso American languages.

For both the Maori and the native Australian languages, there was no writing provided by the ‘gods’ in delivering the spoken words. This is similar to many of the indigenous peoples of North, and South America, as well as Africa, and the Island region of the Pacific, also called as Oceania. In these languages, distinct, unique linguistic structures, and grammar provides for a style of thinking not found in peoples who do have written forms of language.

In so many of those languages that have ‘origin stories’ about their own creation, we find that these languages include a description of the origin of Earth as being ‘spoken’ into existence. In many of these civilizations, their creation myths have humans being described as ‘carved’, ‘stamped’, ‘molded’, ‘etched’, ‘written’, and ‘scripted’ into existence from the developing ‘world’.

If we just ignore the etymology maps that tie languages together as being descended from a mother tongue, we see that there were many separate grapheme representations given to humans for writing in many different areas. Many, different, separate 'alphabets'. All during same time period around planet. We have both pictograms, and ideograms, provided for recording language in some media, such as clay tablets, and early forms of paper. Several of the pictograms also including ideograms (alphabetic symbolic representations) in their graphemes. Most of the meso American & Inca/Mayan glyphs share this pattern of dual inclusion of writing script.

It is when we start looking at both the language, and its expression within the associated alphabets, that certain clues emerge revealing both conclusions, and mysteries.

The Sumerian language was spoken in ancient Sumer, a civilization that existed in Mesopotamia. Today it is called Iraq, but then was much larger than the current nation. Sumerian was wide spread in the region from around 4000 BCE to 2000 BCE.

The self origin story of the Sumerian language is that the language was created by the god Enki, who was known as the god of wisdom and knowledge. Enki also had a reputation as a bad tempered fellow who was known for complaining about being ‘over worked’. Getting some way into Sumerian was my first encounter with the ‘gods’ expressing irritation at their work loads.

According to the myth, Enki created the Sumerian language as a necessity for the Annunaki (the ‘gods’ in collective), and it was discussed, then sold to the humans as a ‘gift’. The language was said to be sacred, and it was believed to have a divine power that could be used to communicate with the gods, and to access spiritual knowledge, and understanding.

It was also really good for record keeping. The Sumerian language shares, very oddly, many characteristics expressed by the programming language ‘Lisp’, in that Sumerian is seemingly designed for list processing. It has many features of list handling that are expressed only in our civilization in large scale database management work.

The Sumerians were also known for their use of cuneiform writing, which is one of the earliest known writing systems in the world. Cuneiform appears in Sumer around 3200 BCE and was used to write the Sumerian language, as well as several other languages that were spoken in Mesopotamia at the time. This first appearance of Cuneiform is a restricted version that includes about one third of the final form of over 600 elements, making Cuneiform one of the most complicated languages on the planet in any age.

According to Sumerian mythology, the god Enki, even while being overworked, gave the knowledge of writing to the people of Sumer as a way to record their history, laws, and religious beliefs. The mythology goes so far as to discuss Enki creating special classes of humans as the first ‘scribes’. This first form of writing was created by pushing into wet clay tablets using a reed stylus that had specifically shaped points. While cuneiform evolved over time to include more complex forms of writing, such as ideograms and phonetic signs, the core of it related to this ‘punching’ technique of the actual ‘scripting’.

The name "cuneiform" comes from the Latin word "cuneus," which means "wedge." Cuneiform writing is created by making wedge-shaped impressions in clay tablets using a stylus or reed. Many of them. Lots of many of them. In very complex patterns. Little punches into the clay, distributed within a grid form that was put over the clay as a guide to the ‘writing’ of cuneiform.

A large component of the remnant cuneiform tablets that we find are inventories. Long lists of stuff. With ownership attached by long lists of names, presumably of humans, though this is not certain.

Cuneiform was used to write several languages that were spoken in Mesopotamia, including Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian. It was used for a wide range of purposes, including record-keeping, literature, religious texts, and legal documents.

The cuneiform script consists of over 600 signs, which can represent words, syllables, or individual sounds. Some signs have multiple meanings depending on their context, and many signs were used to represent both logograms (words) and phonetic elements (sounds).

Cuneiform writing is so complex, it is very very difficult for humans to read. Yes, easily ‘written’, with the grid in place, but once removed, the tablets become labor of days to decipher. In fact, the process of understanding them is a process of deciphering, rather than reading. Entirely different eye muscles, and brain activity.

It’s almost as though cuneiform was not made to be read by humans. Hmmm?

Cuneiform writing was originally used exclusively for accounting and record-keeping purposes, but over time it evolved to include a wide range of literary and religious texts. Some of the most famous examples of cuneiform writing include the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Code of Hammurabi, and the Enuma Elish creation myth.

As cuneiform evolved, it added, but did not replace, many new forms that resemble ideograms, and other phonetic symbols. There are exemplary periods of ‘jumps’ in the evolution of cuneiform that speak to the in adequacy of the script form to do work of actually recording, and then reading back, accurately, the information. Of what use is a script that is not able to be read? There are historical references to battles in which the Scribe class was captured, or killed, thus causing problems for the social order as they could no longer read/recover past knowledge. We see that over time, and with the evolution of the Cuneiform into more ‘alphabetic’, or ideogramatic forms, this issue lessened.

Again, noting that the god Enki gave humans cuneiform, it wasn’t such a good fit, and we had to adapt it for actual use.

The actions of reading scripts, that is reading recorded language, have two linked goals, speed, and accuracy. We find that neither of these are provided by ideograms, vertical reading systems, nor pictogram systems.

Cuneiform, in my opinion, was indeed ‘given’ to humanity, but is a machine readable language. It is terribly difficult to read the original cuneiform for humans. Worse than deciphering ideogram languages by far. There are no ‘cheat sheets’, or other aids to use with cuneiform, and it is difficult to see how it became the mainstay repository of business information, but it did.

Another language and writing system that, while it is clearly human readable, is quite elegant, very sophisticated, yet is extremely ‘odd’ in that it is terrible to write with it. This is Sanskrit. This script form is a true alphabet. Indeed a very sophisticated one with the usual ‘gift of the gods’ origin story, but with very unique characteristics that separate it from all other scripts.

Some of these characteristics are not so favorable. Sanskrit is very slow to write, but very fast to read. It is difficult to write, involving complexity of both finger, and wrist movement that are more demanding than even ideographic scripts. Yet it is a true alphabet. It has been ‘written’ in Sanskrit that Sanskrit is easier ‘chiseled in stone, than inked to paper’.

Sanskrit, the language, describes itself as the ‘perfected language’, and the ‘perfect script’. The language forms in terms of grammar, syntax, context, and more, are fascinating, but underlying all their ‘beautiful complexity’, the written language is very elegant for reading.

Unlike the Roman alphabet we use here, where you can cover up the bottom half of the sentence and still your eyes will naturally trace across the top half of the letters, and they will still make sense to you, Sanskrit reads from the bottom half. Same process, different location on the words.

In reading either the Roman alphabet, or Sanskrit, the medial, and saccades muscle groups of the eye are used.

Saccade muscles are a group of muscles that control eye movements during rapid, involuntary eye movements called saccades. Saccades are quick movements of the eyes from one point to another, and they are a normal part of eye movement during activities such as reading, scanning, and searching.

The primary muscles involved in saccades are the six extra-ocular muscles, which attach to the outer surface of the eye, and control its movement in different directions. These muscles include the medial rectus, lateral rectus, superior rectus, inferior rectus, superior oblique, and inferior oblique muscles. In reading, the medical rectus is particularly well exercised. Think of that feeling in the back of your eyes, after a long session of reading. Those are, most likely, the medials that are complaining.

During a saccade, the brain sends signals to these muscles to move the eyes quickly from one point to another. The movement is coordinated so that both eyes move together and align on the new target. The saccade muscles work in concert with other muscles that control eye movements, such as the smooth pursuit muscles that track moving objects and the vergence muscles that help the eyes converge and diverge to focus on objects at different distances.

During a saccade, the eyes are providing the up-take of the information from some level of the script. This differs with people based on their training in reading, and their native, ocular muscle development. Reading is not a technology that is either easily acquired, nor used, with many people.

Sanskrit, as with the Roman alphabet, uses the ‘scanning/looping’ reading method, only in the case of Sanskrit, the scanning is along the bottom edge. For many reasons having to do with ocular ‘point setting’, this is actually easier on the eye muscles than reading from the Roman (or Cyrillic) alphabet.

It is worth noting that readable scripts vary by the individual. So finding fonts, sizes, and script forms that suit your eyes will enable the muscles to work less, and provide more for you.

Examining language, and alphabet forms found in humanity, it seems, in my opinion, that a case can be made that both Cuneiform, and Sanskrit, have ‘machine readable/printable’ aspects designed into them.

Cuneiform, absent the later stage evolutionary additions, seems ideal as a machine-to-machine information form. In fact its presentation shares much with QR codes and other embedded information grapheme forms.

Sanskrit, on the other hand, appears to be a display language for communicating to humans. It is easier, by a significant fraction of energy involved, to read Sanskrit over Roman alphabet. Perhaps in most people this would be a 25% savings in energy expended to information obtained. It would vary by skill with the saccadic experience. However, again, Sanskrit is so terrible to ‘write’, especially with speed, that it begs the question as to whether its first forms were machine produced for us by the ‘gods’.

Of course, you will recognize that we will be revisiting this subject in the future.

Now, onto your personal technology gift from the ‘gods’….

शुभं पठनम्

Happy Reading!