Landslide At Mt. Etna Generated A Large Tsunami In The Mediterranean Sea Nearly 8,000 Years Ago

Science Daily ^ | 11-28-2006 | American Geophysical Union

[Fred Nerks]

"...the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided;......."

http://www.grisda.org/origins/12041.htm

[Fred Nerks]

Little is known of the Sicans' literature or mythology. Developed some time before 1200 BC, the Phoenician alphabet was used in some form in early Etruscan and Greek, and also influenced the writing systems of Hebrew and Aramaic. The only known alphabet of the Sicanians was essentially Phoenician. It would not be inappropriate to postulate that an identifiably "Sicanian" culture existed in many parts of Sicily by 1600 BC; it certainly existed before the presumed date of arrival of the Elymians and Sicels a few centuries later. To place this in a wider Mediterranean context, the Biblical Book of Exodus (a point of reference for Jews, Christians and Muslims) describes events involving Moses and Ramses II in Egypt around 1300 BC, though the work itself was written sometime afterward. It is difficult to overlook the frequency with which Greek and Roman writers mention the Sicanians --among them Appollodorus, Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, Homer, Strabo, Pausanias and Ovid. Indeed, one of the Greeks' earliest names for Sicily was "Sikania." In his Histories, Herodotus mentions the Sicanian city of Kamikos (near present-day Sant'Angelo Muxaro in the Agrigento area), and the legendary Sicanian king Kokalos figures in the myth of Daedalus and Icarus. Sicanian architecture was simpler than that of the Phoenicians and Greeks. Few standing structures survive from the Sicanian culture, but the so-called "Temple of Diana" (shown here) overlooking Cefalù was built upon an older Sicanian temple to their own goddess of the hunt --analogous to the Phoenician Astarte, Greek Artemis and Roman Diana.

http://www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art141.htm

[SunkenCiv]

Strombolian... great... now I'm hungry for a stromboli...

[SunkenCiv]

Diodorus wrote later (Roman times I think) so he must have been recording a then-current tradition, x number of years before such and such a king, I'll try to check that out later on (Diodorus' surviving work is pretty large if memory serves, probably is online somewhere).

"the Phoenician alphabet was used in some form in early Etruscan and Greek, and also influenced the writing systems of Hebrew and Aramaic. The only known alphabet of the Sicanians was essentially Phoenician."

This may wind up in the epigraphy and language header of the digest this week. :')

[Fred Nerks]

Diodorus online:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=diod.+9.1.1

The king of Sicily? Might have been Kokalos.

http://www.greecetravel.com/greekmyths/crete2.htm

[Fred Nerks]

Diodorus online:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=diod.+9.1.1

The king of Sicily? Might have been Kokalos.

http://www.greecetravel.com/greekmyths/crete2.htm

[Fred Nerks]

sorry about the double post...

[SunkenCiv]

No harm done, sometimes those doubles just appear by themselves. :')

I thought there might be some stuff on Sicanian in the usual spots, but there wasn't, alas:

http://www.ethnologue.com/family_index.asp

http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws_atoz.html

[SunkenCiv]

Oscan was an Indo-European tongue spoken in S Italy:

http://www.ancientscripts.com/oscan.html

[Fred Nerks]

There is little evidence that the Sicanians ever made wide use of any written language before the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet (shown here with the Greek and Early Roman alphabets), which they wrote from right to left. (Mycenean script has been found on some pieces of pottery.) On a pre-historic level, it seems probable that they were descended, for the most part, from Sicily's Bronze Age inhabitants. Indeed, the Sicans probably represented the main group descended from these first indigenous Sicilians. The theory of the Sicanians' Iberian origin is supported by a rather few linguistic factors thought to be shared with early Iberian tongues, though the evidence is hardly conclusive...

http://www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art141.htm

[gondramB]

>>What's a "large" tsunami?<<

In this case a Tsunami generated by enough falling rock to bury New York City in Rock as deep as the Empire state Building is tall.

[gondramB]

>>I would use miles as units for that size tidal wave. It would eliminate confusion in reporting as zeros, houses, cattle, and coastlines are lost in the urgency of the moment. 1/2 mile. That's where the metric system comes up short: 'Did he say millimeters or kilometers?'<<

Yep, good for visuals... but metrics (and the subset called SI units) sure do make math easier.

[RightWhale]

Metric makes mistakes easier. I have never noticed that metric makes arithmetic easier. I have noticed that it makes not a bit of difference for practical purposes.

[gondramB]

>.Metric makes mistakes easier. I have never noticed that metric makes arithmetic easier. I have noticed that it makes not a bit of difference for practical purposes.<<

I guess it depends on what math you do - because with metric measurments you use powers of 10. Its a lot easier to for me to divide by 10 than by 12, for example.

[RightWhale]

Maybe so, but in reality it is highly unusual to divide by ten. Life should be so simple, but it isn't.

[muawiyah]

Particularly since a tsunami might well measure from a micron to more than a kilometer in height. Differentiation by means of the American Standard system eliminates any mental confusion.

Or, we could simply start learning to say in our finest Texicanrican "Muy Bigo, eh?

[RebelTex]

"Ah, I remember it well. It was a Tuesday, it was raining and I was waiting for a stop light to change....."

No, no - that was days later.  Really -

It was a dark and stormy (Saturday) night when a blast of hot wind from hell hit me square in the face.  I knew then that something hugh and series was up.  Little did I know what the world was soon about to find out - that Mohammed farted his first Koranic verse.  I braced myself for the coming tsunami, for I knew that out of the destruction and rubble would be born the First Crusade.

;^D

[RebelTex]

"And we're just now hearing about it?"

What? You expect the MSM to cover a small insignificant thing like a 200 foot tsunami???

;^D

[SunkenCiv]

Etna Awakes With Storm Of Fire And Lava
The Telegraph (UK) | 7-18-2006 | Malcomb Moore
Posted on 07/17/2006 9:43:31 PM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1667532/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Ancient Crash, Epic Wave (not the Etna thing)
NY Times | November 14, 2006 | SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Posted on 11/14/2006 7:07:33 AM EST by Pharmboy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1738251/posts