[Stones] Some stones in Vermont, USA

[Ric]

"The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge"
   
  yes, that's what so many people just do not appreciate, when a language dies, thousands of years of unique world-perception goes with it; and with that, crucial insights - which not only enrich global culture, but could perhaps someday preserve the human race from ultimate folly, in this present age of urban super-tec?
   
  apart from fragmentary material concerns - and possibly a place-name here and there? -  nothing survives from the Avebury complex culture - what i would give for a handful of collected 'Avebury words' - it would be like having a lexical dna from over four millennia ago
   
  all the more reason to raise as many Avebury stones as still exist: silent, buried underground - who knows what might turn up in the accurately repositioned sarsen, after prolonged study throughout the seasons and hours of sunlight from dawn to dusk: a face, a symbol, a mute message to posterity from the vanished megalithic builders ~ who knows?
   
  ric
  

David Shugarts <David.Shugarts at AzimuthComm.com> wrote:
  

The point about language is also dead-on. I was in contact with one college staff who are in the habit of going out and saving languages. That is, they have found cases where, say, the last remaining 30 speakers of the language are being over-run by a more dominant culture, and they go out and record the lexicon of the language, just so that scholars will have something to work with. In some cases, this may also be the first time the language has been written as well. Invariably, though, the languages themselves face certain extinction in their own cultural context. This page tells more: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/dharris2/endangered.php

--Dave Shugarts
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