Comments on: An automated ‘time machine’ to reconstruct ancient languages

By: Chasseurnoir

Chasseurnoir — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:21:03 +0000

NakedApe, Could you give me the name of this religious sect ? or where do you have found it ? I’m a student in liguistic

Thank you

By: willard van de bogart

willard van de bogart — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 02:51:48 +0000

Could you provide the info on that program. I would like to watch it.

By: NakedApe

NakedApe — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 17:48:14 +0000

I watched a program about India and how there is a religious sect which has chants in a language so ancient that it may date to the very rise of human language. The monks are religious :) about preserving the integrity of this language even though they don’t understand it. Wouldn’t it be awesome to study this language, which may date back 40-50 K years, and gain a much better understanding of the roots of our evolutionary success. Mind boggling!

By: WLGJR

WLGJR — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 07:40:41 +0000

Will the “Proto-Sapiens” language have any *magic* effect?
E.G. In the SF novel Snow Crash, it is hypothesized that the Sumerian
language is the *default* language of Homo Sapiens species.

But Sumerian is not really that *universal*, when compared to the Proto-Sapiens language.

If occurences similar to that depicted in Snow Crash happen in real life, I guess *Proto-Sapiens* would be a more likely language to be spoken.

Uncovering Proto-Sapiens will pose dangers as well. If there are living (spoken natural languages) languages that, by coincidence, are *very* similar to the Proto-Sapiens (Austronesian Languages and some sub-Saharan African languages, the latter I suppose will be more likely because H. Sapiens originiated in, according to paleoanthropologists, Olduvai Gorge, which is in Africa), the speakers of these languages would be called “primitive” or even “un-evolved”, which of course violates the Golden Rule of PC (Political Correctness).

By: WLGJR

WLGJR — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 07:30:30 +0000

Uh… Since the Voynich manuscript is of an unknown language, so is not directly related to what this new language algorithm complex does (this one takes in known languages, complete with vocabularies, and reonstruct *not necessarily accurately* the ancestral language).

looked it up on the Wikipedia, though, thanks for mentioning. Very fascinating. I suggest try Rongo Rongo as well.

I imagine that, if a AI has sufficient knowledge about human culture AND cryptography, it can decipher many (now) undecipherable ancient languages. (But I also think, to decipher successfully, the orignial text has to be long and monotonal (in content) enough so that the AI can *make sense* of the text.
E.G. The Rosetta Stone was sufficiently large and contain almost fully the “midsection” (the simplified Egyptian version). It is thanks to this that the archaeologists could decipher ancient Egyptian (or Kemet-ese, “Kemet” being the ancient Egyptians’ own name for their civilization).
This will probably have (but must be limited compare to human cultures) value in deciphering alien transmissions. I remember an excellent Hugo (or was it Nebula?) short novel written about an alien transmission.
Full of ambiguity is what we must expect when we decode an alien transmission for the first time.

By: John Coghlan

John Coghlan — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 01:17:58 +0000

For one thing, we can decode ancient scripts better and understand humanity better. We can find out more about the late prehistoric period. Had we not studied the death of the Polynesian culture on Easter Island, we would not have understood the environmental collapse of that people. As well, we would not have had writers such as Jared Diamond to write books warning us of certain kinds of environmental collapse. Now that IS very relevant to the modern world.

By: WLGJR

WLGJR — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:44:18 +0000

BTW, eldras, what you have written is a masterpiece!
Thanks for sharing, I enjoy reading it.

By: WLGJR

WLGJR — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:07:01 +0000

If we gather enough information (after we *suturate* the whole universe, like Kurzweil predicted) from an universe-wide array of detectors/data-collectors, we may be able to reconstruct the totality of the universe’s history, and perhaps even the previous universe(s) (ones that exist prior to the Big Bang).
But will the future-beings have spare computing powers to run these simulations? Or will they be more concerned with survival (into the Deep Time, through extending the universe’s lifespan and preventing Heat Death/Big Crunch/Big Rip or other Cosmic Eschatons) and spend no energy running such simulations?

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 08:42:20 +0000

Quantum archaeology is… seriously freaky.

By: WLGJR

WLGJR — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 03:55:37 +0000

Which in my opinion is (political correctness-wise) a more befitting Lingua Franca for the world than English, Esperanto and other European languages.
But for many practical purposes it would inevitably borrow a large number of words from European languages, so let’s stick to English anyways.

By: aus

aus — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 01:57:46 +0000

I’ve stated before that I think highly advanced computer simulations will serve as “virtual time machines” in the future.

By: WLGJR

WLGJR — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 01:03:17 +0000

Hans Moravec talked about “Ancestor Simulation”.
With this invention we can reconstruct our ancestors and their cultural details better.

By: Dennis R.

Dennis R. — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:41:11 +0000

I don’t understand the need. Without a written language and no current native speakers, this doesn’t seem to have any useful purpose. Why re-create a language no one speaks? Why not spend more effort on creating simultaneous translation of current languages? We’d be better off being able to communicate with contemporaries who speak different languages now than hypothesizing what long-dead communities might have said.
I applaud the thinking that went into this invention. I don’t see much value in how it’s being applied.

By: eldras

eldras — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:26:18 +0000

I salute this struggle. I’ve been hobbying in the area of historical data reconstruction for a while in Quantum Archaeology on the forums, and formally here:

https://sites.google.com/site/quantumarchaeology/

By: FinitDeMorte

FinitDeMorte — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:42:56 +0000

Turn this thing loose on the Voynich Manuscript!

By: WLGJR

WLGJR — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:40:24 +0000

I think if would be great if the researchers use the new application to reconstruct the “Proto-Sapiens” language, the hypothetical ancestral language of all humanity.

By: Camaxtli

Camaxtli — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:29:28 +0000

This is an amazing tool. I look forward to the information linguistics researchers, archeologists and anthropologists uncover with it.