Iliad Written in 762BC?

[Vindex]

Fascinating analysis of language:

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/...-confirmed

[Dan Howard]

Interesting. So, even with the lowered revised chronologies, the time difference between the occurrence of the Trojan War and the time the epic was written down was a couple of centuries.

[Marja]

Based on the description in the article, it looks like glottochronology; I haven't seen the original paper. And although I'm not familiar with all the problems, I know there is a lot of criticism of glottochronology, and there have been attempts to update glottochronology to respond to the criticism.

One issue is that the time difference between Homeric Greek and Hittite depends on the date of divergence between 'classical' Indo-European and Anatolian, and that is controversial.

[Lyceum]

Based on the description in the article, it looks like glottochronology; I haven't seen the original paper. And although I'm not familiar with all the problems, I know there is a lot of criticism of glottochronology, and there have been attempts to update glottochronology to respond to the criticism.

One issue is that the time difference between Homeric Greek and Hittite depends on the date of divergence between 'classical' Indo-European and Anatolian, and that is controversial.

A sort of Bayesian filtered Glottochronology. Bingo, you know, you're fast becoming my favourite poster here. In general yes there are a lot of spurious assumptions here, its essentially overly facile and illogical. I do so like the main authors work in general though.

Glottochronology btw guys is when you take samples of texts in the same language a set time apart, you can calculate the difference/change and come up with a value, X, which can be further extrapolated however much you want to track language change. Even non-linguists should see the problem with this, language changes at a different rate in different ways and depending on analysis you can get vastly differing results. So yes its long been abandoned as a tool.

Re: Hittite vs Homeric Greek. I'm kind of impressed they went for this, its so...unsensible but daring I'm kind of...thrilled. Thing is, even if you went for a very close language within the PIE family like Sanskrit which shares augmentive secondary tenses, reduplicated perfects, grassman's operative law, similar semiotics re: core word building etc it actually tells us nothing about language change within Greek. At best it can tell us a relative difference, which we know. But honestly its useless to remark that, say, Sanskrit coalses the old vowel system yet keeps so much of everything else whereas Greek is fierce in keeping PIE vowels but ejects cases like a mother fucker due to the preference towards adverbs or that the Anatolian branch keeps laryngeals, the Indic inter-vocalic sounds, yet Greek resolves into clear vowels. Etc, etc. Especially with a kurzsprache...

Janko's thesis tbf remains the best on linguistic grounds, but linguistic ground itself is rather shaky with any this material. Incidentally there has been a wonderful recent article by Rudolf Wacther in the recent "Relative Chronology..." volume which is well worth a read, focusing on linguistic innovation.

I really hope this article, being quite basic and out there in the public, gets a few people interested both in these issues but also in picking up some Hittite. Probably about the 6/7th funnest ancient Language I know of tbh.

[Vindex]

...In general yes there are a lot of spurious assumptions here, its essentially overly facile and illogical. I do so like the main authors work in general though.


...I really hope this article, being quite basic and out there in the public, gets a few people interested both in these issues but also in picking up some Hittite...

Pardon me, but one comment seems to contradict the other, here. Perhaps it is deliberately "overly facile" to enable others to understand it and thus develop the understanding you seem wish for later in your post?

Not everyone has the same language skills, nor any opportunity to study ancient languages these days and I think any effort to open it to a wider audience should be supported not, as would appear from this, so scornfully criticised!

[Lyceum]

Hm I'm not seeing the contradiction here myself since μεν the article relies on a lot of assumptions, which most linguists - especially experts in Homeric Greek - would shy away from. Limiting its use in the academic debate where it was surely intended. Δε regardless, I hope that this receiving wider coverage will encourage people to get involved in the debate and pick up some of the more reputable studies like Janko's, via the bibliography.

[Robert Vermaat]

Glottochronology btw guys is when you take samples of texts in the same language a set time apart, you can calculate the difference/change and come up with a value, X, which can be further extrapolated however much you want to track language change. Even non-linguists should see the problem with this, language changes at a different rate in different ways and depending on analysis you can get vastly differing results.

Not to mention the possibility that parts of a text were adjusted with each new edition, thereby adding 'later' elements of language to the samples selected.

[Sean Manning]

I will have to read the paper, but note that the summary says mean 762 BCE, 95% confidence interval 1157-376 BCE. That is a wide range and includes centuries when Greek was not written and centuries when the Iliad clearly existed! And some time in the 8th century has long been a favorite date for the bulk of our Iliad.

Edit: It is Altschuler, Calude, Meade, and Pagel "Linguistic evidence supports date for Homeric epics," Bioessays doi: 10.1002/bies.201200165 (whatever that string means). Why oh why would a university press release not give the full citation?

Glottochronology btw guys is when you take samples of texts in the same language a set time apart, you can calculate the difference/change and come up with a value, X, which can be further extrapolated however much you want to track language change. Even non-linguists should see the problem with this, language changes at a different rate in different ways and depending on analysis you can get vastly differing results.

Not to mention the possibility that parts of a text were adjusted with each new edition, thereby adding 'later' elements of language to the samples selected.

As I understand it, it is almost impossible to access any version of Homer older than the Alexandrian editors. Scholars can use quotes and allusions in early writers, but they are few and may have been corrected by later editors who 'knew' what Homer said. So there is a Homeric Multitext project which it intended to give scholars a plethora of Iliads and Odysseys rather than one canonical text.

[Tarbicus]

Bioessays doi: 10.1002/bies.201200165 (whatever that string means). Why oh why would a university press release not give the full citation?

That string's the citation (second result).

[Lyceum]

Glottochronology btw guys is when you take samples of texts in the same language a set time apart, you can calculate the difference/change and come up with a value, X, which can be further extrapolated however much you want to track language change. Even non-linguists should see the problem with this, language changes at a different rate in different ways and depending on analysis you can get vastly differing results.

Not to mention the possibility that parts of a text were adjusted with each new edition, thereby adding 'later' elements of language to the samples selected.

Well it depends on whether or not you see the text built up in layer by layer as the old German school does, I don't think that really passes muster nowadays. I mean obviously we have performative corruption, but that's normal in any one oral poem which somehow becomes canonical. But later dialectical forms and things like hyper-correction are remarkably few, we occasionally find marked Atticisms, errors in the use of the article and so on but not the kind of stuff you'd expect. The Homeridae (or perhaps the Chreophylidae?) did their job very damn well, Kinaethos' tampering aside.

As I understand it, it is almost impossible to access any version of Homer older than the Alexandrian editors. Scholars can use quotes and allusions in early writers, but they are few and may have been corrected by later editors who 'knew' what Homer said. So there is a Homeric Multitext project which it intended to give scholars a plethora of Iliads and Odysseys rather than one canonical text.

Hm? the article I read cited it and linked to WB.

I'm sort of confused at what you're saying here, I don't mean glottochronology requires the same text massively apart just any samples from the target language. Pre-Alexandrian well it depends on a few things, like how much an influence do you think Zenodotos had over the text? We also have some sizeable quotations and allusions. In general the papyri tradition actually resemble earlier Greek very well in prosody, accentuation and whatnot so clearly the editors had access to a living, consciously, archaising tradition. Or they somehow had access to modern Philology. So its really hard to pin point "our" version. I suspect that, overall, its markedly more aged than its first testimony.

I know some, like Skafte-Jensen, even wish to take the Alexandrian corpus back to an early Attic collation under the tyrants, make of that what you will...I think its an interesting idea but I'm probably more multiform, I see people like Aristarkhos utilising Zenodotos, the Athenian recension, live performances etc.

The Homer-multitext project does some good work but...well, that's another discussion all together! Has its moments though. I would also say that, as per comment, absolute dating is indeed tricky and quite likely unneeded overall, though like many of this generation I'm seeing a lower and lower date becoming more sensible.

[Sean Manning]

Hm? the article I read cited it and linked to WB.

You are right. It is under “more information.”

[Sean Manning]

One issue is that the time difference between Homeric Greek and Hittite depends on the date of divergence between 'classical' Indo-European and Anatolian, and that is controversial.

Yes. Reading their article, they assume that PIE was spoken in the 7th millenium BCE Anatolia, but I think 4th millenium BCE central Asia still has many supporters. I don't understand their statistical argument well enough to say how different assumptions about PIE might affect it.

The other interesting thing is that their original method gave mean 707 BCE, 95% confidence interval 1351-61 BCE. Being good Bayesians, they repeated their calculation with a prior centered on 800 BCE according to the traditional sorts of evidence. I wonder what would happen if you took mean 750 BCE, standard deviation 50 years as your prior? I am not a good enough statistician to repeat their process.

I am not certain how much this adds to our knowledge, but it is certainly a clever approach.

[Marja]

Well, I think it would be important to use more languages and dialects.

For example, do the relationships match up with different outgroups and with the addition of classic Attic Greek or Koine Greek from different periods? The different outgroups would compensate if Hittite has developed more quickly or more slowly, and if the branching between Hittite and the rest of the family has been misdated. The different Greek dialects and phases would check if the model puts them in the right time periods relative to present-day Greek.

I suppose - there is work on developing linguistic trees with the fewest borrowings. Glottochronology measures distance, but rapid change in one language can throw off branching orders. Least-borrowing methods, I believe one term was 'perfect philogenetic trees,' might be able to determine branching orders, but cannot measure distance. Perhaps using one method to determine branching order and the other to determine distance would work better than either one alone? I am not a linguist but it sounds possible...

[Lyceum]

Sorry, I wanted to quickly respond earlier but I'm preparing a paper and my would be co-author is a bit flaky on correcting proofs, so...

Well I think the origin and dispersal of PIE is something Macedon would shoot us for being off topic rightly so, but no one really goes for the Anatolian model since the evidence is so overwhelmingly against it. In fact this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jHsy4xeuoQ is quite decent in highlighting problems with that hypothesis and phylogentic reconstruction in general.

Anyway, I'll be happy to answer any questions on computational/historical/comparative linguistics and Homer, Greek philology, traditionality etc.