Book & site list

[Mick Harper]

Yes, this is all a great problem, some of it covered over on the AEL as well. On the one hand we have more and more of these 'giant coincidences', which require more and more stupendous interventions by Ancient Man, but on the other we run into the problem of "the more you look, the more you find" which is so prevalent in conspiracy theories. I don't know how to reconcile all this but generally we take the view that as long as original material is being generated -- as opposed to the repetitious glee of conspiracy theorists -- we won't be going too far wrong.

[Boreades]

Bubbling under at #25 in Amazon Best Sellers in Prehistoric Archaeology

A Neolithic Universe, by (our very own) Jonathan M Morris

With over two hundred and fifty illustrations & photographs and more than two hundred notes cross-referencing to some seventy reference works, this edition of describes a new interpretation of some North European monuments, including Stonehenge, based the idea that they represent an accumulation of knowledge about the cosmos.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Neolithic-Univ ... 0956861733

[Boreades]

Brethren, rejoice!

I bring you glad tidings of comfort and joy about Saint Sheila (of this parish).

For it was none other than herself, Sheila McGregor, who provided us with Word Lists / Radical Linguistics and Decoding The Past.

Which was much admired and enjoyed on this forum. Some of us knew she had been living in France, but then she disappeared from view (or so it seemed) and wasn't replying to emails. The trail had run cold. One might have assumed the worst, but (praise the Lord, miracles of miracles), she has arisen from the dead. And in the grandest of styles, with a 12 volume book series, with seven published so far!

"Culture and Language" is the name of her magnum opus series.

Vol. 1: Word-Lists
This volume challenges Proto-Indo-European linguistic theory. Using the Table of Equivalent Consonants (TEC), the author finds that many words in use today in Europe can be traced back much further than might be expected. Hunting and fire are major categories in all the word-lists generated by the TEC.

Vol. 2: Bones and Bonfires: Cremation Rituals at the Annats of Scotland
This study suggests strong continuities in language since the Paleolithic, taking the case of Scotland. Using every scrap of available evidence, the author reconstructs the meaning of particular places - Annats.

Vol. 3: Possibly Paleolithic: Prehistoric Survival in Highland Scotland
On the British joy of walking, and where that comes from.

Vol. 4: First Settler Theory: and the Origin of European Languages:
First Settler Theory rejects language replacement, invasion, ethnic cleansing, the wave of advance, or any other mechanisms proposed by Indo-European scholars to explain their theory. Prehistoric languages will continue to be spoken, each in its particular defined area, as long as their communities and cultures survive. Only literacy and education can influence their survival.

Vol. 5: Archaic Gaelic: Decoding a Lost Language
In this, the fifth volume in the Culture and Language Series, Sheila McGregor opens up the ancient Gaelic language of Scotland, starting from archaic words and fragments related hunting and fire. By using principles outlined in the first volume - Worldlists - in this series, these fragments of language can be deciphered and provide insights into some aspects of Palaeolithic religion in Scotland. We identify some of Europe’s oldest words and what they tell us about the beliefs and way of life of the deer-hunters who settled in Scotland at the end of the last Ice Age some fourteen thousand years ago.

Vol. 6: Flying by Night: Scottish Witches and Fairies
The historical equivalence of witches with the imaginary, pervasive Scottish ‘fairies’ is demonstrated. A more contentious perception is that the archaic Gaelic of witches’ testimonies in witch trials was the source of much confusion and creative invention. Often English recording clerks and other writers who spoke only English struggled at the 'clerical interface' to interpret what was being said in Ancient Gaelic. Some nonsensical magical belief seem to have arisen from clerks, with no Gaelic, asking questions of the illiterate witch, who had little or no English. The clerk makes his record in English, garbling the original Gaelic into phonetic English. By unpicking the weave of such mis-translations in Scottish witch trial records, the author shows, for example, how an original hunting metaphor meaning ‘as fast as possible’ was misinterpreted as evidence that witches flew by night to their meetings.

Vol. 7: Fire!: How Language Began
Indo-European scholars assume as a fact that Europe was invaded in the Neolithic by farming people who spoke Proto-Indo-European and who somehow exterminated or absorbed all the earlier hunting and herding people who occupied Europe from the Arctic Circle down to the Mediterranean. In a remarkably short time, so the story goes, this new language had evolved into Sanskrit, German, Latin, Greek and all the other related languages of Europe. The Indo-European proposal is wrong. The facts on which the Indo-European vision and all its subsidiary or derivative theories are based have never moved beyond speculation. As a basis for scientific debate they are affected by the logical fallacy one can never prove a theory by listing facts which support it.

Here endeth the reading of the list of volumes published to date.

Volume still to come:
8 : Beacon Saints
9: A pagan priesthood, the Culdees of Scotland
10: The Big Beacon Book
11: Ogam, the legacy of Ogma Sun Face
12: Picts

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08VNCZKGT? ... wt_sb_tpbk