Richard Rudgely (was Re: Conlang T Shirt)

BPJ>>>>>>
At 09:02 +0100 28.10.1999, Paul Bennett wrote:
[snip]
>  Is anyone
>else familiar with the pottery marks and other signs collected by Rudgely
>(spelling?) and entitled "Old European"?  It's similar to Iberian and
>Phonecian
>and (partly) to Indus.  [snip]
No, but it sounds awesomely cool.  Can you give me the reference?
<<<<<<

It's from

Rudgely, Richard - 1999? (maybe 1998); Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age.

Don't mention this book in sci.anthropology.paleo, you'll get severely barracked
and hooted at. :)  Rudgely has done a good job of producing what I'd call an
interesting piece of speculative conhistory, couched in pop-sci terms and
phrasing, and therefore is immensely deprecated by "real" scientists.
Admittedly, he doesn't do too much "hard science", picking and choosing the
evidence to support his thoeries, but he covers quite a lot of ground in a
chatty, but easy to read, style.  As long as you don't take it *too* seriously,
it makes a fascinating read, and is almost single-handedly behind the Wenetaic,
Meina'naghua and S[aghwaad<zi cultures.

Plus - on a conlangish note - it's fun to laugh like a drain at his severe
mishandling of Nostratic (I've never seen anyone try so hard to make something
look good while managing to actually make it look foolish.  Except maybe me! :-)

What he does to recreate this script is to list the symbol inventory of a number
of "undeciphered" rune-like scripts, along with some pre-script symbols, and
point out the vast numbers of correspondences between the forms of the glyphs
used.  Probably among the least "strict" bit of science in the book, but
intriguing.





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