̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Turkey

Last chance to record archaic Greek language ‘heading for extinction’

ta385 — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 06:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��initiative, led by Professor Ioanna Sitaridou (Queens' College and Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics), contributes to the UN’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-32), which aims ‘to draw global attention on the critical situation of many indigenous languages and to mobilise stakeholders and resources for their preservation, revitalization and promotion.’

Romeyka is thought to have only a couple of thousand native speakers left in Turkey’s Trabzon region, but the precise number is hard to calculate especially because of the fact that there are also a large number of heritage speakers in the diaspora and the ongoing language shift to Turkish.

Romeyka does not have a writing system and has been transmitted only orally. Extensive contact with Turkish, the absence of support mechanisms to facilitate intergenerational transmission, socio-cultural stigma, and migration have all taken their toll on Romeyka. A high proportion of native speakers in Trabzon are over 65 years of age and fewer young people are learning the language.

̽��ֱ��newly launched trilingual Crowdsourcing Romeyka platform invites members of the public from anywhere in the world to upload audio recordings of Romeyka being spoken.

“Speech crowdsourcing is a new tool which helps speakers build a repository of spoken data for their endangered languages while allowing researchers to document these languages, but also motivating speakers to appreciate their own linguistic heritage. At the same time, by creating a permanent monument of their language, it can help speakers achieve acknowledgement of their identity from people outside of their speech community,” said Professor Sitaridou, who has been studying Romeyka for the last 16 years.

̽��ֱ��innovative tool is designed by a Harvard undergraduate in Computer Science, Mr Matthew Nazari, himself a heritage speaker of Aramaic. Together they hope that this new tool will also pave the way for the production of language materials in a naturalistic learning environment away from the classroom, but based instead around everyday use, orality, and community.

To coincide with the platform’s launch, Sitaridou is unveiling major new findings about the language’s development and grammar at an exhibition in Greece (details below).

Sitaridou’s most important findings include the conclusion that Romeyka descends from Hellenistic Greek not Medieval Greek, making it distinct from other Modern Greek dialects. “Romeyka is a sister, rather than a daughter, of Modern Greek,” said Sitaridou, Professor of Spanish and Historical Linguistics. “Essentially this analysis unsettles the claim that Modern Greek is an isolate language”.

Over the last 150 years, only four fieldworkers have collected data on Romeyka in Trabzon. By engaging with local communities, particularly female speakers, Sitaridou has amassed the largest collection of audio and video data in existence collected monolingually and amounting to more than 29GB of ethically sourced data, and has authored 21 peer-reviewed publications. A YouTube film about Sitaridou’s fieldwork has received 723,000 views to-date.

Grammar and a new phylogeny for Greek

Sitaridou’s analysis of the Romeyka infinitive is key. All other Greek dialects known today have stopped using the infinitive found in ancient Greek. So speakers of Modern Greek would say I want that I go instead of I want to go. But, in Romeyka, the infinitive lives on and Sitaridou has observed uncontroversial proof that this Ancient Greek infinitive can be dated back to Hellenistic Greek due to its preservation in a structure which became obsolete by early Mediaeval times in all other Greek varieties, but continued to be used in Romeyka while also undergoing a cross-linguistically rare mutation to a negative item.

Sitaridou’s findings have significant implications for our understanding of the evolution of Greek, because they suggest that there is more than one Greek language on a par with the Romance languages (which all derived out of Vulgar Latin rather than out of each other).

Historical context and new field work sites

̽��ֱ��roots of the Greek presence in the Black Sea are steeped in myth: from the journey of Jason and the Argonauts to Colchis, to the Amazons. But what we know is that the Greeks began to spread around the Black Sea from approximately the 6th Century BCE. Ionians founded Miletus, which, in turn, founded Sinope, which, eventually, colonized Trebizond. In the Pontus, the language of the first Greek colonizers of Trebizond was the Ionic Greek of Sinope.

In the 4th Century BCE, the passage of Alexander the Great’s army contributed to the creation of another Greek-speaking centre, to the South of Pontus, at Cappadocia. It is possible that from Cappadocia, Greek may have also spread northwards towards Pontus.

However, the decisive phase for the expansion of the Greek language seems to be Christianization. ̽��ֱ��inhabitants of Pontus were among the first converts and are mentioned in the New Testament. ̽��ֱ��Soumela monastery was founded in 386 CE, around 20 years after the region officially adopted Christianity. ̽��ֱ��fall of Trebizond to the Ottomans in 1461 led to the city becoming majority Muslim.

Professor Sitaridou said: “Conversion to Islam across Asia Minor was usually accompanied by a linguistic shift to Turkish, but communities in the valleys retained Romeyka. And because of Islamisation, they retained some archaic features while the Greek-speaking communities who remained Christian grew closer to Modern Greek, especially because of extensive schooling in Greek in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Recently, Professor Sitaridou started field working in a new site, Tonya, where no other field worker has ever reached, only to reveal significant grammatical variation between the valleys indicating different Islamisation onset. In a publication to appear soon, it is argued that both the syntax of subordination and negation systems in Tonya show different patterns and thus diachronic development from the Çaykara variety.

In 1923, under the Greco-Turkish population exchange, Greek-speaking Christians of Pontus were forced to leave Turkey and relocate to Greece while Romeyka-speaking Muslim communities in the Trabzon area remained in their homeland as they professed Islam, explaining why this Greek variety is still spoken in small enclaves in the region. Since 1923 and until very recently the two speech communities were oblivious of each other’s existence.

Preservation of heritage languages and why it matters

Speakers are still reluctant to identify Romeyka as one of their languages since, for Turkish nationalists, speaking Greek goes against the very fundamentals of one’s belonging. From a Greek nationalist perspective, these varieties are deemed ‘contaminated’ and/or disruptive to the ideology of one single Greek language spoken uninterruptedly since antiquity, as Sitaridou explains in an article which is about to be published by the Laz Institute in Istanbul.

In Greece, Turkey and beyond, Sitaridou has used her research to raise awareness of Romeyka, stimulate language preservation efforts and enhance attitudes. In Greece, for instance, Sitaridou co-introduced a pioneering new course on Pontic Greek at the Democritus ̽��ֱ�� of Thrace since the number of speakers of Pontic Greek is also dwindling.

“Raising the status of minority and heritage languages is crucial to social cohesion, not just in this region, but all over the world,” Professor Sitaridou said. “When speakers can speak their home languages they feel 'seen' and thus they feel more connected to the rest of the society; on the other hand, not speaking the heritage or minority languages creates some form of trauma which in fact undermines the integration which linguistic assimilation takes pride in achieving”.

̽��ֱ��same ethos traverses a new AHRC-funded project about the documentation of a critically endangered language, Sri Lanka Portuguese, among Afrodescent communities in north-western Sri Lanka. Sitaridou will be documenting and analysing manja, the only remaining linguistic and cultural expression of African heritage for these communities.

A Romeyka speaker's view

It is rare for Romeyka speakers to discuss their language publicly. Reflecting on her interactions with Professor Sitaridou, one such speaker, Mrs Havva Sarı, said:

“For me, it is very sad that the Romeyka language is lost, and it is also sad that young people do not speak it. We can only express ourselves with this language. Our jokes, our cries, and our folk songs are all in the Romeyka language. I raised my children in this language because I did not have another language. I would love for them to teach this language to their children, but everyone goes to the cities. They settled down and married people from different cultures. My children's children cannot speak the Romeyka language anymore, which makes me very sad.”

“I was very happy that there was someone from a different country who showed interest in the Romeyka language. It means that our language is very valuable. Ioanna, who did this research, communicated with me in the same language. I love her like a daughter.”

Exhibition at Mohamed Ali’s historical House in Kavala

̽��ֱ��Romeyka exhibition runs at the MOHA Research Centre in Kavala, Greece, from 29 March to 28 April 2024.

̽��ֱ��exhibition features previously unpublished archival material from Exeter College, Oxford and photographic material from British School of Athens which give us a glimpse into the Greek-speaking communities and language in the southern Black Sea shores 110 years ago taken by R M Dawkins, one of the first field workers in the area. This is combined with photographs and video material from Professor Sitaridou’s own fieldwork, interspersed with panels and audio material to communicate her linguistic findings.

̽��ֱ��exhibition aims to generate further reflections on endangered heritages, fragmented and shared identities and collective memory as well as helping us get a better grasp of multilingualism, localised experiences, intergenerational stories of co-existence and displacement, diasporic selves and language loss, and alternative modalities of being and belonging both in Greece and Turkey.

A new data crowdsourcing platform aims to preserve the sound of Romeyka, an endangered millennia-old variety of Greek. Experts consider the language to be a linguistic goldmine and a living bridge to the ancient world.

Raising the status of minority and heritage languages is crucial to social cohesion, not just in this region, but all over the world

Professor Ioanna Sitaridou

Professor Ioanna Sitaridou (right) with a 100 year-old Romeyka speaker in Turkey's Trabzon region.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Saving Turkey's Children

sjr81 — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 08:20:09 +0000

Exiled by Hitler, Albert Eckstein turned his medical expertise to saving Turkey's poorest children from the curse of infant mortality.

Postgraduate Pioneers 2017 #4

ta385 — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 11:07:45 +0000

Fourth in the series is Yesim Yaprak Yildiz, a sociologist exploring the relationship between political violence, truth and reconciliation with a focus on Turkey.

My research sets out to

My passion is to understand the relationship between truth and justice, more specifically whether revelation of truth about an atrocity would lead to justice. I set out to answer this question by examining the social and political effects of public confessions of state officials on past atrocities against civilians. I focus on Turkey and state violence against the Kurds in the 1990s.

My motivation

I have been working on human rights violations in Turkey, particularly on torture and impunity, for over ten years. Turkey’s failure to account for the collective political violence in its history has been one of the main reasons which motivated me to pursue a PhD on this topic. Questioning approaches that establish a linear link between confession, truth and justice, I have sought to understand the workings of power in the confessional form of truth telling.

Day-to-day

I am currently in the final year of my PhD so I spend most of my time either at the library or at home writing my thesis. When I visit the department to meet my supervisor and fellow PhD students, I usually study at the ‘Attic’, the study space provided for PhD students in the department. It provides quite an appealing atmosphere thanks to student initiatives including writing groups and coffee breaks. Due to my part-time job at the Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study at ̽��ֱ�� of London, I also commute between London and Cambridge.

My best days

Cambridge is a unique place not only to indulge in solitary intellectual work but also to socialize with fellow academics in a wide range of events. As one of the conveners of the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network, a research group at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, I also organise seminars on performance and performativity related themes. One of the seminars I recently organised featured Professor Leigh Payne from the ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford. It was a particularly special occasion for me as I decided to study confessions after I heard her talk at a workshop in Denmark.

I hope my work will lead to

I want to contribute to the academic literature on political violence, truth and reconciliation, and thereby inform decision makers, scholars and broader public on some specific aspects of achieving and keeping peace by addressing the need for justice. More importantly, I hope my research will make people reflect on the roots of denial not only caused by forms of silencing but also by certain forms of speech.

While I am planning to pursue an academic career, I would like to continue working in grassroots movements and NGOs on human rights violations. My future projects will involve both elements of research and art. Through interactive and creative projects, I aim to reflect upon alternative ways of working through the past.

It had to be Cambridge because

̽��ֱ��best part of studying at Cambridge has been its fulfilling and vibrant intellectual environment. In addition to the wide-ranging academic events featuring renowned scholars and research methods courses, I also had the chance to attend a short film making course which enhanced my digital story-telling skills. I have been very lucky to have an inspiring environment in the department thanks to the encouragement and support of my supervisor, Professor Patrick Baert.

With our Postgraduate Open Day fast-approaching (3 November), we introduce five PhD students who are already making waves at Cambridge.

I'm planning to pursue an academic career while continuing to work in grassroots movements and NGOs on human rights violations.

Yesim Yaprak Yildiz

Postgraduate Open Day

For more information about the ̽��ֱ��'s Postgraduate Open Day on 3rd November 2017 and to book to attend, please click here.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Can the Revolution in Kurdish Syria succeed?

fpjl2 — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 16:29:02 +0000

Since the descent into civil war in Syria, revolutionary forces have seized control of the Kurdish region of Rojava. ̽��ֱ��mainstream media has been quick to publicise who the revolutionary forces in Rojava are fighting against: the brutality of Islamic State (IS); but what they are fighting for is often neglected. In December of 2014, we had the chance to visit the region as part of an academic delegation. ̽��ֱ��purpose of our trip was to assess the strengths, challenges and vulnerabilities of the revolutionary project under way (read the Delegation’s Joint Statement here).

Rojava is the de facto autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria. It consists of three cantons: Afrîn in the west, Kobanê in the centre, and Cizîre in the east. It is, for the most part, isolated and surrounded by hostile forces. However – despite the brutal war with IS, the painful embargo of Turkey and the even more painful embargo of Barzani and his Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq – systems of self-governance and democratic autonomous rule have been established in Rojava, and are radically transforming social and political relations in an emancipatory direction.

As Saleh Muslim, co-president of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) representing the independent communities of Rojava, explained in an interview in November 2014: “[We are engaged in the construction of] radical democracy: to mobilize people to organize themselves and to defend themselves by means of peoples armies like the Peoples Defense Unit (YPG) and Women’s Defense Unit (YPJ). We are practicing this model of self-rule and self-organization without the state as we speak. Democratic autonomy is about the long term. It is about people understanding and exercising their rights. To get society to become politicized: that is the core of building democratic autonomy.”

At the forefront of this politicization is gender equality and women’s empowerment, with equal representation and active participation of women in all political and social circles. “We [have] established a model of co-presidency – each political entity always has both a female and a male president – and a quota of 40% gender representation in order to enforce gender equality throughout all forms of public life and political representation,” explains Saleh Muslim.

̽��ֱ��revolutionary forces in Rojava are not fighting for an independent nation state, but advocating a system they call democratic confederalism: one of citizenry-led self-governance through the formation of neighbourhood-level people’s councils, town councils, open assemblies, and cooperatives. These self-governing instruments allow for the participation of diverse political, ethnic, and religious groups, promoting consensus-led decision-making. Combined with local academies aimed at politicising and educating the population, these structures of self-governance give the populace the ability to raise and solve their own problems.

During our nine day trip to Cizîre canton, we visited rural towns as well as cities, where we met with representatives and members of schools, cooperatives, women's academies, security forces, political parties, and the self-government in charge of economic development, healthcare, and foreign affairs.

Throughout the visit, we witnessed discipline, revolutionary commitment and impressive collective mobilisation of the population in Cizîre. Despite the isolation and difficult conditions, a perseverance and even confidence seemed to dominate the collective mood among representatives and members of all the diverse groups we met. This collective optimism and willingness to sacrifice was in the pursuit of an admirable ideological program and genuine steps towards collective emancipation. We were particularly struck by the emphasis on education, politicization, and a consciousness-raising of the general population in accordance with a grass-roots democratic transformation of social and property relations.

Images by Jeff Miley. Click on images to enlarge.

An obvious and striking strength of the revolution clearly on display throughout our trip were the strides towards gender emancipation. Our meetings with government representatives, members of academies, women’s militias, and people’s councils all demonstrated that women’s empowerment is not mere programmatic window-dressing but is in fact being implemented. This, in the context of the Middle East and in sharp contrast to both the IS as well as the KRG, was most impressive.

Another feature of the programmatic agenda we found admirable was the insistence by the revolutionary government in Rojava that it is committed to a broader struggle for a democratic Syria, and in fact a democratic Middle East, capable of accommodating cultural, ethnic and religious diversity through democratic confederalism. In this vein, we witnessed proactive attempts by the revolutionary forces to include ethnic and religious minorities into the struggle underway in Rojava, including the institutionalisation of positive discrimination, quotas, and self-organisation of minority groups, such as the Syriac community – which even formed their own militias.

That said, the integration of the local Arab population into the revolutionary project remains a critical challenge, as does coordination and the formation of alliances with groups outside of the three cantons. Extra-Kurdish coordination and alliances are certainly prerequisites for ensuring the survival of the revolution in the medium and long term and are especially critical if democratic confederalism is to spread across Syria and the Middle East. Such a task is as difficult as it is urgent. It is crucial that the revolutionary authorities do everything in their power to assuage Arab fears of a Greater Kurdistan agenda, and include them in this struggle. Avoiding a Kurdish-centric version of history, literature and even the temptation to push for a Kurdish-only language educational system will help prevent the alienation of ethnic and religious minorities.

Revolutionary symbols (e.g. flags, maps, posters) are particularly important when it comes to integrating ethnic and religious minorities, as well as publicising the revolution across the world. More inclusive imagery would certainly facilitate the task of winning support and sympathy – both in the Middle East and more globally. References beyond the Kurdish movement were strikingly absent from the symbols we saw. ̽��ֱ��positive side of the Kurdish revolutionary symbols cannot be ignored and certainly plays a significant role in facilitating the mobilisation of the Kurdish population. However, at the same time it is likely to alienate non-Kurds and Kurds who might misidentify the struggle as one for a Greater Kurdistan.

Listen to Jeff Miley's talk on Rojava and the Kurdish revolutionary movement

Our biggest concern is that the revolution will be compromised – if not sacrificed – by broader geopolitical games. ̽��ֱ��current close alliance between the KRG and the United States, and the recent US-led airstrikes in Syria, fuel the suspicions of many – especially Sunni Arabs – that the Kurds are but pawns to yet another imperialist intervention in the region in pursuit of oil.

̽��ֱ��politics of divide and conquer employed by the imperialist powers have a long, bloody and effective history in the Middle East and beyond. This sad reality reinforces how crucial it is to build alliances, and to transcend the Kurdish nationalist imaginary within the ranks of the movement. Indeed, one of the principal strengths of IS has been its ability to mobilise militants both locally and globally in seemingly implacable opposition to imperialist powers.

It is especially important for the Kurdish revolution to appeal to the Turkish left, and to encourage them to denounce and fight against the crippling embargo enforced by the Turkish state on Rojava. ̽��ֱ��effects of and challenges created by the embargo were all too evident with respect to the basic health needs of the population we encountered. Unexpectedly, it was not a lack of medical expertise but rather a lack of medicine and medical equipment that most threatens population health.

̽��ֱ��effects of the embargo also reach beyond the immediate needs of the population in Rojava. ̽��ֱ��environmental toll was evident, most notably in the oil-seeped soil around the rigs. Given the circumstances, it is certainly understandable and indeed inevitable that the revolutionary authorities are nearly exclusively preoccupied with the tasks of providing for immediate energy and food needs of the population while searching for financial assistance to keep the revolutionary project afloat. Nevertheless, the revolution offers a unique opportunity to carefully establish an environmentally sustainable and democratically managed economy.

In the broader context of tyranny, violence, and political upheaval rocking many countries in the Middle East, it is highly unlikely that problems can be understood in isolation or solved on a country-by-country basis. One of the best things about the model of democratic confederalism institutionalized in Rojava is that it is potentially applicable to the entire region – a region, it should be recalled, the borders of which were largely drawn in illegitimate fashion by imperialist forces a century ago. ̽��ֱ��sins of Imperialism have yet to be forgotten in the region.

Democratic confederalism, however, is not about dissolving state borders, but transcending them. At the same time, it allows for the construction of a local, participatory democratic alternative to tyrannical states. Indeed, the model of democratic confederalism promises to help foster peace throughout the region, from the Israeli-Palestine conflict, through Turkey, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, etc. If only this democratic revolution could spread.

̽��ֱ��long siege on Kobanê, facilitated by the criminal complicity of the Turkish state, constituted not just an assault on the Kurdish people but on a revolutionary democratic project. ̽��ֱ��region is being torn asunder in a destructive process protagonized by a variety of reactionary brands of political Islam. ̽��ֱ��revolutionary project of Rojava, based on democratic participation, gender emancipation, and multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and even multi-national accommodation, represents a third way, perhaps the only way, for achieving a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. For these reasons the recent liberation of Kobanê should be hailed by progressives, indeed, by all advocates of peace, freedom and democracy around the world.

Watch Sociology PhD Candidate and Kurdish activist Dilar Dirik's talk on the Kurdish Women's Movement at the New World Summit in Brussels last year.

We can but hope, argue sociologist Dr Jeff Miley and Gates Scholar Johanna Riha, who here summarise some of their observations following a recent field visit to Rojava in northern Syria, and give a brief overview of the political and social ideologies underpinning the Kurdish revolution.

Democratic confederalism is not about dissolving state borders, but transcending them. At the same time, it allows for the construction of a local, participatory democratic alternative to tyrannical states

Jeff Miley

Deliberations among a Local Women's Council in Qamişlo, Rojava

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Yes

Prehistoric ‘book keeping’ continued long after invention of writing

fpjl2 — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 09:48:59 +0000

An archaeological dig in southeast Turkey has uncovered a large number of clay tokens that were used as records of trade until the advent of writing, or so it had been believed.

But the new find of tokens dates from a time when writing was commonplace – thousands of years after it was previously assumed this technology had become obsolete. Researchers compare it to the continued use of pens in the age of the word processor.

̽��ֱ��tokens – small clay pieces in a range of simple shapes – are thought to have been used as a rudimentary bookkeeping system in prehistoric times.

One theory is that different types of tokens represented units of various commodities such as livestock and grain. These would be exchanged and later sealed in more clay as a permanent record of the trade – essentially, the world’s first contract.

̽��ֱ��system was used in the period leading up to around 3000 BC, at which point clay tablets filled with pictorial symbols drawn using triangular-tipped reeds begin to emerge: the birth of writing, and consequently history.

From this point on in the archaeological record, the tokens dwindle and then disappear, leading to the assumption that writing quickly supplanted the token system.

However, recent excavations at Ziyaret Tepe – the site of the ancient city Tušhan, a provincial capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire – have unearthed a large quantity of tokens dating to the first millennium BC: two thousand years after ‘cuneiform’ – the earliest form of writing – emerged on clay tablets.

“Complex writing didn’t stop the use of the abacus, just as the digital age hasn’t wiped out pencils and pens,” said Dr John MacGinnis from Cambridge’s MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, who led the research.

“In fact, in a literate society there are multiple channels of recording information that can be complementary to each other. In this case both prehistoric clay tokens and cuneiform writing used together.”

̽��ֱ��tokens were discovered in the main administrative building in Tušhan’s lower town, along with many cuneiform clay tablets as well as weights and clay sealings. Over 300 tokens were found in two rooms near the back of the building that MacGinnis describes as having the character of a ‘delivery area’, perhaps an ancient loading bay.

“We think one of two things happened here. You either have information about livestock coming through here, or flocks of animals themselves. Each farmer or herder would have a bag with tokens to represent their flock,” said MacGinnis.

“ ̽��ֱ��information is travelling through these rooms in token form, and ending up inscribed onto cuneiform tablets further down the line.”

Archaeologists say that, while cuneiform writing was a more advanced accounting technology, by combining it with the flexibility of the tokens the ancient Assyrians created a record-keeping system of greater sophistication.

“ ̽��ֱ��tokens provided a system of moveable numbers that allowed for stock to be moved and accounts to be modified and updated without committing to writing; a system that doesn’t require everyone involved to be literate.”

MacGinnis believes that the new evidence points to prehistoric tokens used in conjunction with cuneiform as an empire-wide ‘admin’ system stretching right across what is now Turkey, Syria and Iraq. In its day, roughly 900 to 600 BC, the Assyrian empire was the largest the world had ever seen.

Types of tokens ranged from basic spheres, discs and triangles to tokens that resemble oxhide and bull heads.

While the majority of the cuneiform tablets found with the tokens deal with grain trades, it’s not yet known what the various tokens represent. ̽��ֱ��team say that some tokens likely stand for grain, as well as different types of livestock (such as goats and cattle), but – as they were in use at the height of the empire – tokens could have been used to represent commodities such as oil, wool and wine.

“One of my dreams is that one day we’ll dig up the tablet of an accountant who was making a meticulous inventory of goods and systems, and we will be able to crack the token system’s codes,” said MacGinnis.

“ ̽��ֱ��inventions of recording systems are milestones in the human journey, and any finds which contribute to the understanding of how they came about makes a basic contribution to mapping the progress of mankind,” he said.

An ancient token-based recording system from before the dawn of history was rendered obsolete by the birth of writing, according to popular wisdom. But now, latest excavations show that, in fact, these clay tokens were integral to administrative functions right across the Assyrian empire – millennia after this system was believed to have vanished.

̽��ֱ��inventions of recording systems are milestones in the human journey

John MacGinnis

Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project

Examples of clay book keeping tokens discovered at the dig in Turkey

Yes

Archaeologists discover lost language

bjb42 — Thu, 10 May 2012 06:00:08 +0000

Researchers working at Ziyaret Tepe, the probable site of the ancient Assyrian city of Tušhan, believe that the language may have been spoken by deportees originally from the Zagros Mountains, on the border of modern-day Iran and Iraq.

In keeping with a policy widely practised across the Assyrian Empire, these people may have been forcibly moved from their homeland and resettled in what is now south-east Turkey, where they would have been set to work building the new frontier city and farming its hinterland.

̽��ֱ��evidence for the language they spoke comes from a single clay tablet, which was preserved after it was baked in a fire that destroyed the palace in Tušhan at some point around the end of the 8^th century BCE. Inscribed with cuneiform characters, the tablet is essentially a list of the names of women who were attached to the palace and the local Assyrian administration.

Writing in the new issue of the Journal Of Near Eastern Studies, Dr John MacGinnis, from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, explains how the nature of these names has piqued the interest of researchers.

“Altogether around 60 names are preserved,” MacGinnis said. “One or two are actually Assyrian and a few more may belong to other known languages of the period, such as Luwian or Hurrian, but the great majority belong to a previously unidentified language.”

“If the theory that the speakers of this language came from western Iran is correct, then there is the potential here to complete the picture of the world’s first multi-ethnic empire. We know from existing texts that the Assyrians did conquer people from that region. Now we know that there is another language, perhaps from the same area, and maybe more evidence of its existence waiting to be discovered.”

Ziyaret Tepe is on the River Tigris in south east Turkey, and has been the subject of extensive archaeological excavations since 1997. Recent work has revealed evidence that it was probably once the site of the Assyrian frontier city of Tušhan. In particular, it is thought that the remains of a monumental building excavated on the site are those of the governor’s palace, built by the Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (883 – 859 BCE).

̽��ֱ��tablet was found in what may have been the palace’s throne room by Dr Dirk Wicke of the ̽��ֱ�� of Mainz, working as part of a team led by Professor Timothy Matney of the ̽��ֱ�� Akron, Ohio. When a conflagration destroyed the palace, perhaps around the year 700 BCE, the tablet was baked and much of its contents on the obverse side preserved.

MacGinnis was handed the task of deciphering the tablet and has identified a total of 144 names, of which 59 can still be made out. His analysis systematically rules out not only common languages from within the Assyrian Empire, but also other languages of the time – including Egyptian, Elamite, Urartian or West Semitic. Even at its most generous, his assessment suggests that only 15 of the legible names belong to a language previously known to historians.

̽��ֱ��report also posits several theories about where this mysterious language may have come from. One notion is that it may be Shubrian – the indigenous language spoken in the Tušhan area before the Assyrians arrived. As far as historians know, Shubrian was never written down. In addition, it is believed to have been a dialect of Hurrian, which is known and does not appear to bear any resemblance to most of the names on the tablet.

Another theory is that it was the language spoken by the Mushki – a people who were migrating to Eastern Anatolia at around the time the tablet was made. This idea seems less plausible, however, as to appear on the list of the Assyrian administration, these people would either have infiltrated the Empire or been captured, and historians have evidence for neither.

More convincing is the theory that the language in question may have been spoken by a people from somewhere else in the Assyrian Empire who were forcibly moved by the administration.

This was standard practice for successive Assyrian Kings, particularly after the Empire began to expand during the 9^th century. “It was an approach which helped them to consolidate power by breaking the control of the ruling elite in newly-conquered areas,” MacGinnis said. “If people were deported to a new location, they were entirely dependent on the Assyrian administration for their well-being.”

Although historians already know that the Zagros Mountains were in a region invaded and annexed by the Assyrians, it remains, to date, the one area under Assyrian occupation for which no known language exists. That makes it tempting to link the text on the tablet to the same region. An Assyrian King, Esarhaddon, even referred to an unidentified language, Mekhranian, which supposedly hailed from the Zagros, but in practice the area was probably a patchwork of chiefdoms and more than one dialect may have been in use.

“If correct this suggests that Iran was home to previously unknown languages,” MacGinnis said. “ ̽��ֱ��immediate impression is that the names on this tablet were those of women who belonged to an isolated community. It may be, however, that there were others whom we still have to find out about.”

̽��ֱ��tablet is currently being stored in Diyarbakir, Turkey, where it is hoped that it will eventually go on public display. Dr MacGinnis’ report on its decipherment is published in the April issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

Evidence for a forgotten ancient language which dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time of the Assyrian Empire, has been found by archaeologists working in Turkey.

If the theory that the speakers of this language came from western Iran is correct, then there is the potential here to complete the picture of the world’s first multi-ethnic empire.

John MacGinnis

Detail from the tablet found at Ziyaret Tepe. Inscribed with Cuneiform characters, the tablet consists of a list of women's names, many of which appear to be from a previously unknown language.

In brief...

Archaeologists have been working at Ziyaret Tepe since 1997 and the site, in western Turkey, is widely thought to be the original site of the Assyrian frontier city of Tušhan. Zirayet Tepe, literally “pilgrimage mound”, consists of a central mound about 30 metres high, and a surrounding lower town of about 30 hectares.
̽��ֱ��tablet studied by John MacGinnis was found in what may have been the governor’s throne room in the remains of the palace on the site. It was written in Neo-Assyrian script (Cuneiform), and lists women attached to the palace. There are about 60 names and most belong to an unidentified language.
̽��ֱ��most plausible explanation is that this language is from Western Iran. We already know that the Assyrians deported people from the Zagros Mountains area of modern-day Iran, but we don't know anything about the language that they spoke. It has also been speculated that a language referred to by the Assyrian King, Esarhaddon, called Mehkranian, may be what we are seeing here.
Deportation was a common practice in the Assyrian Empire. It was an approach which helped the Assyrians to consolidate power, by breaking the control of the ruling elite in newly-conquered areas. ̽��ֱ��deportees were set to work building cities or labouring in the agricultural hinterland of these new settlements.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

What price a human kidney?

amb206 — Sat, 14 May 2011 08:00:20 +0000

There are desperately poor villages in Asia where few males between the age of 18 and 50 have two kidneys. This is not for some genetic reason; it is because these communities are so impoverished that many men have sold their kidneys in order to raise sums that are unattainable by any other means.

A public talk at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� on Saturday will draw attention to the extremely difficult and contentious issue of illegal trafficking in human organs – and encourage the audience to think about the complex ethical questions involved. It will also be the inaugural lecture in a research programme focusing on the human organ trade.

̽��ֱ��lecture Illicit Trade in Organs will be given by Dr Frank Madsen, a Danish-born criminologist who is Deputy Director of the Von Hügel Institute at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. With a distinguished career in the investigation of organised crime, he was head of intelligence at Interpol world headquarters, before working for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies as its director of corporate security.

“You can look at the subject of organ trafficking from many points of view – medical, sociological, anthropological, legal and commercial to mention just a few. And it’s an issue that we need to address from all these angles because only through interdisciplinary analysis will we understand what is a very complicated subject,” says Dr Madsen.

“As a criminologist, my starting point is the mismatch between supply and demand. There are huge waiting lists of people wanting organ transplants – and a scarcity of donated organs. In the UK, for example, in 2009-2010 there were almost 8,000 people on the list for transplants and fewer than 2,700 transplants carried out. In the USA, in April there were more than 120,000 people waiting for organs with 17 people on the list dying every day.”

In spite of more donations, the number of people joining waiting lists is likely increasingly to outstrip the supply of organs. This is explained by a rise in conditions such as diabetes mellitus and high blood pressure. “ ̽��ֱ��gap between supply and demand creates a potential market. Experience shows that the creation of so-called denied demand will inevitably create a lucrative supply chain more often than not dominated by elements that can best be described as organised crime,” says Dr Madsen.

Living organ donors selling their organs – mostly kidneys but also parts of the liver - generally come from poor countries, but not all poor countries generate donors. India, Pakistan, Moldova and Turkey are known to be markets for organs. In the most typical scenario, the donor travels to another country to meet up with the receiver and the surgeon, both of whom typically come from a third country.

This strategy allows the people involved to evade legal restraints and obtain access to acceptable operating theatres. In Sana’a in April 2010 a Jordanian trafficker was arrested as he was preparing to travel to Egypt with seven Yeminis in order to remove their kidneys. ̽��ֱ��donors were exceedingly poor and had been talked into having their organs removed.

“In many instances, those who donate their organs are promised enticing sums of money that are never delivered. This an obvious corollary of forcing any trade underground. Such exploitation should be part of any ethical consideration of the subject but mostly it is not. Another consideration often ignored is the negative consequences for donors of surgery that is not carried out under adequate conditions and without post-operation follow-up,” says Dr Madsen.

We accept the sale of our time and our skills, our energy and our creativity as part of making a living. How we view the sale of part of our physical selves is a very different matter. If we accept organ donation within families, and procedures such as surrogate motherhood, should we be prepared to change our stance on the concept of the “ownership of our body”?

“There is an instinctive repugnance at the thought of selling human body parts. But we are accustomed to going to the market place for what we desire to purchase – and especially so in developed countries. This is called the Lipmann Dichotomy – from Walter Lipmann’s quip that “Americans wish so many things that they at the same time wish to prohibit”,” says Dr Madsen.

Coercion is involved in many cases – and in some instances people have been killed so that their organs can be harvested. In South America homeless people were lured into a hospital with promises of alcohol and their lives were terminated so that their organs could be removed and sold. Those who bought or received these organs may never have known the truth about their source.

Outrage at the human organ trade – and especially its most exploitative aspects - is understandable. However, Dr Madsen urges us to reflect on the issue with honesty: “Our instinct is to condemn illegal trafficking in human organs. But you have to think: if your adored teenage daughter was dying of kidney failure and you had the chance to buy one from someone, who, for example, was very poor and therefore induced to sell a kidney, would you be tempted?"

This week’s talk is an inaugural lecture in a programme to study the human organ trade at the Von Hügel Institute, commencing in October 2011 and led by an international team of researchers. A first step will be an attempt to establish why 41% of families in the UK and 45% in the USA refuse permission for the donation of a deceased relative’s organs. “To change this attitude would not eliminate the human organ trade but it would reduce it considerably,” says Dr Madsen.

Illicit Trade in Organs will take place at Gonville and Caius College, Bateman Auditorium, on Saturday, 14 May 2011, at 4.30 pm. All welcome, no charge.

A public talk at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� on Saturday will draw attention to the growing illegal trade in human organs and invite discussion of the complex ethical issues involved.

As a criminologist, my starting point is the mismatch between supply and demand. There are huge waiting lists of people wanting organ transplants – and a scarcity of donated organs.

Dr Frank Madsen

5MAGAZINE

Men display their scars after kidney removal

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

Against all odds: archaic Greek in a modern world

bjb42 — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Until Medieval times, the area of Trabzon, on the Black Sea coast of Turkey, lay at the heart of the Greek-speaking world. ̽��ֱ��land of the legendary Amazon kingdom was colonised by the Greeks in the 8th and 7th centuries BC and was immortalised in Greek mythology as the area from which Jason and his crew of 50 Argonauts began their journey across the Black Sea on his quest for the Golden Fleece.

Remarkably, despite millennia of change in the cultural and socio-political history of the surrounding area, in this mountainous and isolated north-east corner of Asia Minor its people still speak Greek. ̽��ֱ��uniqueness of the dialect – known as Romeyka – is providing a fascinating window on language past and present, as Dr Ioanna Sitaridou, ̽��ֱ�� Lecturer in Romance Philology at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Fellow and Director of Studies in Linguistics at Queens’ College, is discovering.

On the verge of extinction

Romeyka is proving a linguistic goldmine for research because of the startling number of archaic features it shares with the Koiné (common) Greek of Hellenistic and Roman times, spoken at the height of Greek influence across Asia Minor from the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD.

‘Although Romeyka can hardly be described as anything but a Modern Greek dialect,’ explains Dr Sitaridou, ‘it preserves an impressive number of grammatical traits that add an Ancient Greek flavour to the dialect’s structure – traits that have been completely lost from other Modern Greek varieties.’

As devout Muslims, Romeyka speakers in the Trabzon area were exempt from the large-scale population exchange between Greece and Turkey following the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Using religion as the defining criterion to re-settle Christians in Greece and Muslims in Turkey, the Treaty resulted in the exchange of some two million people between the two countries. For Pontus, the result was an exodus of Greek-speaking Christians, leaving small enclaves of Greek-speaking Muslims in Turkey.

Repeated waves of emigration from Trabzon, coupled with the influence of the dominant Turkish-speaking majority, have left the dialect vulnerable to extinction (UNESCO have designated Pontic Greek as ‘definitely endangered’). ‘With as few as 5,000 speakers left in the area, before long Romeyka could be more of a heritage language than a living vernacular,’ says Dr Sitaridou. ‘With its demise would go an unparalleled opportunity to unlock how the Greek language has evolved. ’

Language cartography

Dr Sitaridou’s research project is uncovering the secrets of this little-studied dialect. Her expertise is both in syntax, which is the study of a language’s grammatical rules and sentence structure, and in how and why language changes. ‘With Romeyka, I have the most wonderful opportunity to study these two things in tandem. Not only does the dialect demonstrate elements that are proving problematic for the current linguistic theory but it also presents us with a living example of an evolving language.’

In collaboration with Professor Peter Mackridge ( ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford), who has carried out pioneering research on Pontic dialects since the 1980s, Dr Sitaridou is also working with Dr Hakan Özkan ( ̽��ֱ�� of Münster), Professor Stavroula Tsiplakou (Open ̽��ֱ�� of Cyprus), the European Dialect Syntax network (Meertens Institute) and three postgraduate students: Stergios Chatzikyriakidis, Petros Karatsareas and Dimitrios Michelioudakis.

At the core of her work are fieldtrips to villages in Pontus to map the cartography of the language – how it works, how much micro-variation there exists (known as synchrony) and how the morpho-syntactic structure has changed through time (diachrony). Information is gathered through video and audio recordings of the villagers telling stories, as well as through specially structured questionnaires that Dr Sitaridou has designed to collect the complex data needed for unpicking the structure of a language.

Window on the past

Studying language change is, in general, notoriously difficult because of the lack of living speakers who can positively tell us what they think is ungrammatical or not (in contrast to texts, from which we can only recover what is grammatical). Investigating the history of Greek is no different despite the plethora of old texts.

‘Imagine if we could speak to individuals whose grammar is closer to the language of the past; not only could we map out a new grammar of a contemporary dialect but we could also understand some forms of the language of the past. This is the opportunity that Romeyka presents us with,’ says Dr Sitaridou, who is also a member of the Cambridge Group for Endangered Languages and Cultures (CELC).

Last of the infinitives

̽��ֱ��first results of the study are already providing remarkable insights, as Dr Sitaridou announced during the first ever linguistics conference on Romeyka last March at Queens’ College, Cambridge: ‘Unlike ancient forms of Greek, use of the infinitive has been lost in all other Greek dialects known today – so speakers of Modern Greek would sayI want that I goinstead ofI want to go. But, in Romeyka, not only is the infinitive preserved, making this essentially the last Greek infinitive of the Greek-speaking world, but we also find quirky infinitival constructions that have never been observed before – only perhaps in the Romance languages are there parallel constructions.’

All the more astonishing, the results so far seem to be indicating that Romeyka is closer to Hellenistic Koiné than all other Modern Greek dialects, which are generally considered to have emerged from the later Medieval Greek spoken in the 7th to the 13th century AD.

Change ‘in real time’

Dr Sitaridou’s research is ultimately trying to pinpoint how Pontic Greek evolved. ‘We know that Greek has been continuously spoken in Pontus since ancient times and can surmise that its geographic isolation from the rest of the Greek-speaking world is an important factor in why the language is as it is today,’ says Dr Sitaridou. ‘What we don’t yet know is whether Romeyka emerged in exactly the same way as other Greek dialects but later developed its own unique characteristics which just happen to resemble archaic Greek. Or whether it developed from an earlier version of Greek in contrast to the rest of the Greek dialects and as a result of this more direct lineage, as well as its isolation from other dialects for centuries, it maintains archaic features.’

Nevertheless, Romeyka also demonstrates considerable innovation especially as a result of contact with Turkish. In this respect, Dr Sitaridou is interested in modelling what influence the contact with Turkish and Caucasian languages has had on the evolution of the dialect. Given the linguistic and socio-historic context of Romeyka, she notes that ‘in Pontus, we have near-perfect experimental conditions to assess what may be gained and what may be lost as a result of language contact.’ It is precisely these questions she will pursue further as the recipient of the prestigious Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Research Fellowship in Hellenic Studies at Princeton ̽��ֱ�� in Spring term 2011.

̽��ֱ��implications of such research are, however, far more pervasive, since understanding how language functions could provide some insight into cultural identity and people’s sense of themselves, as well as what happens when cultures connect.

Dr Sitaridou, whose own great-grandparents were from the region, believes that the linguistic evidence will help to unravel the thread of language evolution; we have yet to see whether the thread takes us all the way back to the time of Jason and the Argonauts and whether more surprises await us.

For more information, please contact Dr Ioanna Sitaridou (is269@cam.ac.uk; http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/is269).

An endangered Greek dialect spoken in Turkey has been identified by Dr Ioanna Sitaridou as a "linguistic goldmine" because of its closeness to a language spoken 2,000 years ago.

Although Romeyka can hardly be described as anything but a Modern Greek dialect, it preserves an impressive number of grammatical traits that add an Ancient Greek flavour to the dialect’s structure – traits that have been completely lost from other Modern Greek varieties. 

Dr Ioanna Sitaridou

Archaic Greek in a modern world

Dr Ioanna Sitaridou

Trabzon area of Turkey

Cambridge Group for Endangered Languages and Cultures

Linguists and anthropologists from across Cambridge have created Cambridge Group for Endangered Languages and Cultures (CELC) as a forum for researchers with common interests not just in seeking to document languages that are under threat, but also the literatures and ideas about cultural identity that they help to maintain. For more information, please visit http://groups.pwf.cam.ac.uk/celc/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes