Q&A: Dead Languages Reveal a Lost World [ interview with Gonzalo Rubio ]

LiveScience ^ | Thursday, December 28, 2010 | Clara Moskowitz

[SunkenCiv]

Gonzalo Rubio spends his days reading dead languages that haven't been spoken for thousands of years. An assyriologist at Pennsylvania State University, Rubio studies the world's very first written languages, Sumerian and Akkadian, which were used in ancient Mesopotamia (an area covering modern-day Iraq).

Sumerian appeared first, almost 5,000 years ago around the year 3,100 B.C. This writing was scratched into soft clay tablets with a pointed reed that had been cut into a wedge shape. Archaeologists call this first writing "cuneiform," from the Latin "cuneus," meaning wedge.

Sumerian and Akkadian were the languages of the ancient Mesopotamian civilization, which flourished during the Bronze Age in a region often called the Cradle of Civilization, because it gave birth to the world's first complex urban cultures. Here not only written languages, but important advances in science, mathematics, art and politics were developed. Rubio talked to LiveScience about what these ancient people's leftover love poetry and sales receipts reveal about a lost world...

LiveScience: Do you think ancient Mesopotamians were very different from people today?

Rubio: No, not at all. The idiom used to convey one's experience may be conditioned by one's culture and context. But we all have similar fears and desires. Reading Mesopotamian letters, for instance, often opens a window into the daily life of people whose aspirations, likes and dislikes are not different from ours. It is true that some authors have talked about a dramatic difference in perception or in the nature of awareness between ancient cultures and civilizations and ours; but I strongly believe that such assumptions are mostly ethnocentric nonsense.

[SunkenCiv]

The interviewee can also be found (with the name a bit wrong) in this topic:

• Key To An Ancient Tongue [2002]

[SunkenCiv]

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[JRandomFreeper]

Some of the Roman 'postcards' found in Britain were amazing. Folks griping about other folks not writing. Requests for socks and underwear. Everything you see in letters from basic training today.

/johnny

[Verginius Rufus]

Some fuzzy math in the article. 3100 BC is not “almost 5,000 years ago.”

[Bhoy]

thanks for post. always like these.

[OneWingedShark]

Sure it is.

The 3100 BC [Before Christ] adds to the 2010 AD [Year of Our Lord] to yield 5110, which is ‘almost’/’around’/’about’ 5000.

[JoeProBono]

Ancient Mesopotamia :: Building the Temple of Warka in the Time of Urukh

[Ciexyz]

Bet this guy dreams of being Indiana Jones as he ruminates over scratchings about crop yields.

[JoeProBono]

Ancient Mesopotamia :: Building the Temple of Warka in the Time of Urukh

[wildbill]

(Postcard found in dig of Segedunum (Walls End)fort of Hadrian’s Wall)

Dear Iohannes:
I don’t know how to write this letter, but I have found someone else...

[Vaduz]

How many are in a Mesopotamia?.

[Verginius Rufus]

Yes, it’s around 5000 years, but I take “almost” to mean less than.

[WoofDog123]

philology interests me greatly, this is a neat article.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks WD123!

[colorado tanker]

Sumerian appeared first, almost 5,000 years ago

So, Andy Rooney started out as a Sumerian curmudgeon columnist?