They took the language of the Hittites, a people that existed during the time the war may have been fought, and modern Greek, and traced the changes in the words from Hittite to Homeric to modern. It is precisely how they measure the genetic history of humans, going back and seeing how and when genes alter over time.
For example, they looked at cognates, words derived from ancestral words. There is "water" in English, "wasser" in German, "vatten" in Swedish, all cognates emanating from "wator" in proto-German. However, the Old English "hund" later became "hound" but eventually was replaced by "dog," not a cognate.
"I'm an evolutionary theorist," Pagel said. "I study language because it's such a remarkable culturally transmitted replicator. It replicates with a fidelity that's just astonishing."
By documenting the regularity of the linguistic mutations, Pagel and the others have given a timeline to the story of Helen and the men who died for her -- genetics meets the classics.
See what we're tweeting about
24 Comments
Add CommentInteresting. The same technique may be used to find out when the Pentateuch (the Torah) was written. There are enough samples of Sumerian, Akkadian, Canaanite, and Paleo-Hebrew available to apply the same research method. Worth doing, in my opinion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn genetics there is a not unreasonable assumption that random mutations occur at a roughly constant rate. That seems rather unlikely for languages I would have thought.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a retired Sanskrit instructor I would like to see this technique applied to India's two national epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana; ditto for the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat helps a lot, I alway was told that it was from 800BCE. can now rest in peace.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that's already been done.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe look forward to the Swadesh shift results for other sacred texts, like Dianetics & The Book of Mormon
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you're going to copy a story, at least copy it accurately. The codex illustrated is AD, not BC.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd the original?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for the article and the linguistic methodology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLanguages are not really that different, generalized over a population over time. There is no one authority that changes or preserves language (as much as certain institutions would like to believe otherwise), so the evolution of a language occurs organically, rather than deliberately or teleologically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo...why did they use Hittite instead of, you know, Linear B? Which is Mycenean Greek?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, I would like to disagree on this as a student of Indian scriptures - Vedas and Shastras, which are only 2,500 to 2,000 year old. Iliad may be at the most 2,500 year old.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis technique could determine the age of Indian writings. Son far they were all constrained by the boundaries set by Bible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm puzzled by the repeated use of the word "wrote" to describe the composition of the Iliad by Homer. I have always understood that poetic epics such as the Iliad or the Odyssey were created, memorized and embellished spoken performances. Homer (an alias referring to his having been a hostage), if he existed, surely never wrote these down—especially because he was blind! Any written versions must have significantly post-dated their actual composition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA propos: 'hound' vs. 'dog': This is a tell-tale sign of Scandinavian immigrants who brought their own 'dogs' with them, relegating the old word 'hound' to specific 'hunting' dogs; German, in contrast, which was never invaded by Scandinavians, retained its old word 'Hund'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWords truly tell the evolutionary history of a language and the lifestyle of the people that shaped it!
The comparison is pretty obvious for any linguist I think. Already a quarter of a centuries ago I incorporated the metaphore of languages being like the seeds that carry the memory of a species as I argued in favor of a different model of citizenship you will find in www.institutosimoneweil.net in Spanish and English under "Guide to an Ecological Model of Citizenshíp"... Also visit www.mama-doc.com if you find the time for some poetry and stuff...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe comparison is pretty obvious for any linguist I think. Already a quarter of a century ago I incorporated the metaphore of languages being like the seeds that carry the memory of a species as I argued in favor of a different model of citizenship you will find in www.institutosimoneweil.net in Spanish and English under "Guide to an Ecological Model of Citizenshíp"...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor poetry and stuff try us out at www.mama-doc.com
I wonder why the word for dog is still "Hund" in German.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMorris Swadesh developed a method called glottochronology based on his lists using methods like those described here. Linguists debated their usefulness back in the 1970s and it remains controversial. Check glottochronoly in Wikipedia for a quick introduction to a large body of work and debate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this15.sunnystrobe answered my question. Thanks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPublication date? This was oral tradition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had understood that Homer (not Simpson) was a blind storyteller, who recited the Illiad by heart, if that is so, he could have gotten it from someone else like Gilgamesh became Noah on a copyright violation affair some years ago, if that is so, and someone took his time to write it after Homer, then the earliest time to trace it is when the writer sat down and wrote it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthen, you'd need an original, because copying texts was done by hand, and that means someone might have updated an expresion or made a mistake here or there, adding to the evolution of the language.
Since Dianetics was written in the modern era the only linguistic drift you may find is the absence of moronic emoticons and internet shorthand. As far as the Book of Mormon, whether it is true or made up by a bunch of horny young men as an excuse to practice polygamy, it reads like a book translated in the early to mid 1800s. A translation is going to read like the time period it was translated in simply because that is what translators do. If you can find the original golden plates and check them then you may get something useful out of it in regards to date of original creation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am much more interested in pre-Constantine versions of the Bible stories and the Vedas and similar such scriptures from a variety of religions.
I would also like to see the Pastafarian Menus translated into Sanskrit just because it would be cool.
Compare the King James Bible with a modern translation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAround four hundred years has caused many changes.
One of the problems with time travel would be understanding the language.
Dickens and Jane Austen are easy to read. Shakespeare is sometimes a problem, and Chaucer is very difficult.
Anything earlier is like a foreign language.