Talk:Kafkania pebble

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BetacommandBot (talk) 23:38, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Recent NPOV edits by myself

I've recently edited this page, mostly the "forgery" section, for NPOV, as not everyone believes that the pebble is a hoax. However, I'm not the best Wikipedia editor, so if you feel you can improve my edits please do so; I just ask that no one revert my edits in their entirety as I feel that the article as I found it did not incorporate all views on the issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.48.56.129 (talk) 02:41, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Dear Anon, I have looked for scholarly sources which defend the authenticity of the Kafkania pebble, and not found any. If you can find reliable sources which support the notion that it is authentic, please bring them to our attention. Note that blogs like http://minoablog.blogspot.com/2010/06/kafkania-pebble-testament-to-strangest.html are not considered reliable sources by Wikipedia policy. And arguments like "if the find is genuine, it may have been written by a person who was originally educated in Linear A, which is known to have been written boustrephedon" are considered original research (in the form of synthesis) unless they are drawn from reliable sources themselves. Thanks for your interest in Wikipedia and in this article. --Macrakis (talk) 02:55, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

/-ōkʷs/ (-ωπς)??? This is chronologically impossible.

A small portion of the text referring to what may or may not be a name on the pebble reads as follows: "/-ōkʷs/ (-ωπς)". There is no way this is or was ever correct: (-ωπς) is transliterated as /-ōps/, not /-ōkʷs/. "Π" is the Greek letter pi, which has not been attested to represent /kʷ/ in any language, to my knowledge. Greek used Qoppa to represent this sound, as well as a combination of Kappa and Digamma, and eventually just Kappa by itself. There was a phonetic shift in the Greek language that changed /kʷ/ to /k/ (as /kʷ/ came primarily from neighboring PIE languages and fell into disuse in Greek) and /k/ to /p/, but the orthography changed with it. /kʷ/ as an independent phoneme should have been all but eliminated from the Greek language (except loanwords) before π replaced κ in uses like these.

This should rightly read as one of the following, but NOT what is currently in the article:

"/-ōkʷs/ (-ωϙς)"; or "/-ōkʷs/ (-ωκϝς)"; or "/-ōkʷs/ (-ωκς)"; or "/-ōks/ (-ωκς)"; or "/-ōps/ (-ωπς)"

This may help explain a little; external link

All that being said, I don't speak ancient or modern Greek any more than enough to order a cup of coffee and a gyro, tell the waitress I have either one or three testicles, then stare blankly like an immigrant when asked to leave the restaurant. My knowledge is theoretical in nature. So, not knowing the language's nuances, naming conventions, and shifting timeline with an absolute certainty, I don't know which of the options I offered should be here, though any one of the combinations I mentioned is technically correct for one facet or another of the Greek language. I'm going to remove the sentence in hopes that someone with more knowledge of the language will replace it with a degree of orthographic, phonological, and chronological accuracy. The entire statement is dubious at worst, uncited at best, and either way a product of incorrect translation. Yabopomonofonomopo bay (talk) 10:40, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I am charmed by your description of your Greek language skills. Note that asking an ancient Greek waitress (they had waitresses then?) for "coffee and a gyro" will get you, at best, a blank stare, and hunger. (If she were an ancient Hebrew waitress, don't ever ask for cream in the coffee that goes with your gyro.) -- Solo Owl 17:50, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Yabopomonofonomopo: As you can see in your own source, kʷ also > π under some circumstances. And there was most certainly no general shift κ > π. Moreover, there were dialectal differences that this compendium isn't likely to cover, and I do not know where to place Mycenæan Greek among those. But since the only Internet page I've found that states what you here deleted doesn't seem exactly reliable, I don't reinstate it anyway. Also, you cannot equate orthography in two entirely separate and unconnected writing systems. 83.253.28.222 (talk) 14:40, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

But yes, Solo Owl, theoretical knowledge about languages and working skills in them are two different things, and you can be expert in one while being totally lost in the other. Working skills only is the norm among general people, but theoretical knowledge only is quite common among linguists. 83.253.28.222 (talk) 15:11, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Rendering /kʷ/ as π is admittedly somewhat misleading, but makes some sense, and moreover, the OP is severely misinformed. Mycenean Greek /kʷ/ generally corresponds to π in later dialects, or in some dialects such as Attic τ when preceding high vowels, but κ is not the most common outcome at all (only in some dialects) – in fact π is by far the most frequent reflex (/kʷ/ sometimes did become /k/ even in dialects such as Attic, especially following /u/, but this development precedes Mycenaean) –, nor is /k/ even a step on the way from /kʷ/ to /p/! Moreover, Qoppa was not used to write /kʷ/ because at the time of the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet, /kʷ/ had already disappeared (as such – Arcadian appears to preserve a distinct reflex, but it is written differently and was probably also pronounced differently); rather, Qoppa was used to write /k/ preceding /u/ and /o/.

By the way, the obvious (from a phonetic point of view) intermediate step on the way from [kʷ] to [p] should be [k͡p], a doubly articulated consonant. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:52, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Testing against forgery

It seems like a test has been done in order to verify the pebbles authenticity. http://www.demokritos.gr/library/downloads/Docs/documents/Apodeltiosi/22334495_EPENDYTHS_61_2012-04-28.pdf Apparently the results are positive (for the pebble being authentic). Does anyone know if further testing has been done during these 23 months? I think we should change the section saying that it is most probably a forgery. We can keep instead a question mark, until further research is done. Fkitselis (talk) 12:34, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

It's a scan so I can't use a translator. Where was it published an who did the testing? Dougweller (talk) 13:29, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Used Abbyy Finereader which scanned it, then Bing. The lab seems to be the Laboratory of Archaeometry "Demokritos by one Giannis Maniatis: "The incised inscription is without question the premier Greek inscription of linear b writing that has been revealed to date in favor of the authenticity of find? "The way I egcharaxis not fiber enia ioc on both sides and rather have used different tools The superficial damage and soil depositions are in and out of the engravings at least on one side and nothing seems to have upset the natural-history of the Duce, "answered Mr. Maniatis. "On the other side, the effort of cleaning n engraves by conservationists after finding the object (to read the inscription) is evident, but the detailed examination and analysis in engravings after electron microscope led to the identification of old surfaces of engraves directly beneath the new cleaning All modern. indicative of the authenticity of the object ".Dougweller (talk) 13:44, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

That link is dead. Has the article been published? --Macrakis (talk) 14:27, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Kafkonia

Kafkonia "is a small village in the municipality of Ancient Olympia, Elis, Greece. It is located between the villages Pelopio and Chelidoni, 5 km north of Olympia. It is about 200m above sea level." Is it the "Kafkania" where this was found? --Error (talk) 10:09, 7 September 2023 (UTC)