19.656 a review on the ancient Olmecs?

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 656.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
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                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 06:45:07 +0000
         From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
         Subject: a review on the ancient Olmecs?

[forwarded from Prof. Dr. Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk, Russia]

Dear colleagues of the Humanist List, please advise me where can one
publish a review on the ancient Olmecs? Which archaeological or
ethnographic journal can consider for publication my review on the
Olmecs? I've written a short review on the book on the ancient
American Indian Olmec culture, published in Russian. Can you advise
me where to publish it? Could you advise me some useful emails? Do
you know the e-mail addresses of the European or American editors of
journals on archaelogy or ethnography, that is, if you cannot publish
it? Looking forward to hearing from you soon to
yutamb_at_mail.ru Remain yours sincerely Prof. Dr. Yuri Tambovtsev,
Novosibirsk, Russia
REVIEW ON THE BOOK:
TABAREV, Andrei Vladimirovich. Drevnie Olmeki (Ancient Olmecs: History and
Problems of Investigation). - Novosibirsk: Institute of Archaeology
and Ethnography
SBRAS Press, 2005. - 143 pages. ISBN 5-7803-0138-7
(Press of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian
Branch of the
Russian Academy of Sciences, Lavrentev prospect 17, Novosibirsk-90, 630090,
Russia).
     The author of the book, Prof. Dr. Andrei Vladimirovich Tabarev,
is a well-known
archeologist in Russia and the USA. He is the head leading researcher
of the stone age
in the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch
of the Russian
Academy of Sciences. His ideas on the development the ancient
American cultures are
supported by his American colleagues. The foreword of the book on the
ancient Olmecs
is written by Dr. Michael D. Coe, Professor Emeritus of Yale
University (USA). He
recommends the book by Andrei V. Tabarev as one of the best about the Olmec
civilization of Mesoamerica. It is prepared and published with the
support of the
Foundation for the Advancement of the Mesoamerica Studies of the USA.
Unfortunately, it is rather seldom that the publications of Russian
scholars are supported
by American funds. Therefore many of them remain unpublished.
     It is interesting to note that in some of his other publications
A. V. Tabarev gives
parallels between the traditions of the Siberian peoples and those of
the American
Indians (e.g. Tabarev, 2004; Borodovsky and Tabarev, 2005).
     The publication of this book in Russian may allow to compare the
strange animal style
of the art of the Siberian peoples (Mansi, Hanty, Ket, Oroch, Orok,
Hakas, Altai-Kizhi,
etc.) with that of the ancient Olmec sculptures showing the strange
beings who combine
feline features with those of humans. The Siberian peoples also
combine the animal
features with human features.
     In this case, we can think of the theory of the famous Russian
archeologist Aleksei
Pavlovich Okladnikov, who put forward the hypothesis in 1938 that the American
Indians came to America from Siberia some ten thousand years ago by
the Bering ice
bridge (Okladnikov, 1938). Consequently, they brought their arts and
languages. The
articulatory base of every language is very conservative, therefore
they preserved their
articulation habits which can be seen through the data on the
frequency of occurrence of
phonemes in the speech sound chain in a language. We computed 22 of
the languages of
the Americas and received the frequency of the phonemic occurrence in speech
(Tambovtsev, 2001). After that we used the methods of mathematical
linguistics to
compare the data on Siberian languages to those of the American
Indian languages
(Tambovtsev, 2003). The results obtained were quite interesting.
     The publication of the material on the ancient Olmecs may
stimulate the comparisons
of different sorts. It may help us to understand the link between the
peoples of Siberia
and American Indians.
     Andrei V. Tabarev gives much material for thinking when he
discusses in detail the
previous (p.21 -60) and contemporary (p.61 - 62) stages of the
research of the Olmecs.
The author gives the full list of the Russian investigators of the
Olmec culture (D. D.
Belyaev, G. G. Ershova, V. I. Gulyaev, A. A. Sidorov, R. V. Kinzhalov, Yu. V.
Knorozov, V. M. Masson, etc.). For many linguists and myself it would
be interesting to
state what language did the Olmecs speak. Was it different or similar
to the known
American Indian languages? Or at least how did it sound? In this
case, ancient Egyptian
is luckier than the language of the Olmecs. Due to the parallel texts
in ancient Egyptian
and Old Greek we can see how it was pronounced.
     The publication of this book in Russian is very important since
American studies are
not widely spread in Russia. It is the first book for the students of
archeology and
ethnography of this sort in Russian.
The book has an extensive list of literature on archeology and
ethnology. It is
recommended as the text book for the university students of archeology and
ethnography.
REFERENCES
Borodovsky and Tabarev, 2005 - Borodovsky, A. P. and Tabarev A.
V. Scalping in
North America and Western Siberia: the archaelogical evidence. - IN:
Archeology,
Ethnography and Anthropology of Euroasia, # 1 (21), 2005, p. 87 - 96.
Okladnikov, 1938 - OKLADNIKOV, Aleksej Pavlovich. Arheologicheskie dannye o
drevnejshej istorii Pribajkal'ja. [ Archaeological data on the
ancient history of the Baikal
area]. - In: Vestnik Drevnej Istorii, #1 (2), 1938, p. 224 - 260.
Tabarev, 2004 - TABAREV, Andrei Vladimorovich. Indejtsy severnoj
Ameriki [Indians
of the North America]. - Novosibirsk: Novosibirsk Pedagogical
University, 2004. - 35
pages.
Tambovtsev, 2001 - TAMBOVTSEV, Yuri Alekseevich. Nekotorye teoreticheskie
polozhenija tipologii uporjadochennosti fonem v zvukovoj tsepochke jazyka i
kompendium statisticheskih harakteristik osnovnyh grupp soglasnyh fonem. [Some
theoretical foundations of typology of the orderliness of phonemes in
the language
sound chain and the compendium of the statisticak characteristics of the basic
consonantal groups]. - Novosibirsk: Novosibirskij klassicheskij
institut. 2001. -130
pages.
Tambovtsev, 2003 - TAMBOVTSEV, Yuri Alekseevich. Tipologija
funktsionirovanija
fonem v zvukovoj tsepochke indoevropejskih, paleoaziatskih,
uralo-altaiskih i drugih
jazykov mira: kompaktnost' podgrupp, grupp, semej i drugih jazykovyh taksonov.
[Typology of functioning of phonemes in the language sound chain of
Indo-European,
Paleo-Asiatic, Uralo-Altaic, and other world languages: compactness
of the subgroups,
groups, families and other language taxa]. - Novosibirsk: Sibirskij
nezavisimyj institut,
2003. - 143 pages.
Reviewed by Prof. Dr.Yuri Tambovtsev,
Dept of English and Linguistics of KF-NPU,
P.O. Box 104, Novosibirsk-123, 630123.
yutamb_at_mail.ru

Dr Willard McCarty | Reader in Humanities Computing | Centre for
Computing in the Humanities | King's College London | Kay House, 7
Arundel Street | London WC2R 3DX | U.K. | +44 (0)20 7848-2784 fax:
-2980 || willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
Received on Wed Mar 15 2006 - 02:04:38 EST