A common Euro-Asian language?

The idea of all languages having a common forebear is not a new idea (the Tower of Babel for example and has been considered by linguistic researchers for decades) but new research suggests that many languages spoken by people in Europe, Asia and America descend from a common language spoken during the Ice Ages 15,000 years ago.

Researchers have long used cognates (words that have a common etymological origin) as a kind of lingustic "DNA" to reconstruct ancient proto-words and have traced some common words back as far as 9000 years ago. This ancient Indo-European language later gave rise to languages like English, French, Hindi and Russian.

This is pretty much accepted, what is more controversial is tracing language back further. Some say this is too far back to meaningfully trace language roots as too many words would have changed over time. However researchers at Reading University have used statistical modelling to identify very common words have survived for thousands of years and which are shared across a number of ancient proto-languages across Europe and Asia linking Indo-European to other language groups like Altaic and Inuit-Yupik. Words which have survived include "I" and "We" (which might be no surprise) but also common are words like "bark" and "ashes". This is more surprising but then we should consider the cultural importance of such words to humans in the Stone Age.

A visitor

It is a nice day here today so i am doing some gardening. As i was doing so one of the neighbours' cats decided to pay me a visit. Unfortunately she was unable to help with any weeding.

The 6th Spitfire

My latest model project, a Supermarine Spitfire F22, has now been completed and very nice it looks too. As its the 6th Spitfire i've done to date i thought i would photo them all together.

Spitfire F22

Project 044 is my latest model kit project, and its another Spitfire. This variant, which i believe is the 6th Spitfire i have done to date, is a Mark F22 which was one of the last variants of the iconic fighter. Painting is nearly finished, and since the photo was taken i have attached the canopy and prop.

The voice of Alexander Graham Bell heard at last

Despite the fact his inventions like the telephone have helped billions of people hear other voices (and record voices and sounds) no one knew what Alexander Graham Bell's own voice sounded like (apart from people who knew him of course).

Now one of the earliest wax disc recordings from 1885, which comes complete with a written transcript by Bell, has been scanned using a non-invasive optical sound recovery process and audio extracted by calculating how a stylus would move through the grooves of the disc.

More details of the optical scanning can be seen here.

Peas (and other vegetables)

My pea crop is doing well, they have shot up really quickly. At current rate i might have to start thinking about planting them in the garden in a week or so. I am still preparing the plot they will be in. The soil for the raised bed was dug up from an adjacent plot leaving a trench. I have put grass cuttings in the trench and intend to top it with compost and potash. That should be fairly fertile ground then. As well as the peas i have tomato and radish germination too.