The Gauls are Celtic people and Celtic languages still exist and are spoken in Europe, particularly in Ireland, England, Wales, France, Spain, and a few other places. It is an Indo-European language that evolved from the language level of development (third articulation) the people who migrated out of Black Africa around 40,000 BCE had reached. They stayed on the Iranian plateau till after the Ice Age and started migrating from there around 12-10,000 BCE. They reached Western Europe circa 5,000 BCE. But these Indo-Europeans, as differentiated from their direct cousins the Indo-Aryans, had developed some kind of common language, Indo-European or close to it, and they left behind them in their migration or migrations some people and linguistic communication on Indo-European languages that developed in various regions or territories. Contacts and various alliances brought Indo-Europeans in collaboration and at times conflict, with many agglutinative languages of the Turkic older family established in Europe since 50,000 BCE. They took various routes to get to Europe where several Old European Turkic languages have survived till today like Saami, Finnish, Estonian, and a few more in northern Russia, plus the Hungarians who arrived where they still are around the 7th century AD. And we must keep in mind Basque, of course. These contacts, at times conflicts, of one-fourth of the final population of Europe after the Indo-European migration, meaning the Indo-Europeans only represented 25% of the European population a couple of thousand years BCE, and they still only represent 25% of our DNA, with all the Old European Turkic populations (75% of the final European population and our DNA today) produced a differentiation in various groups of European languages. This implied a diversification of Indo-European if there ever was only one matrix, which I doubt, in big families: Celtic languages; Romance languages; Germanic Languages which include Scandinavian languages, except the agglutinative Saami, Finnish, and Estonian that are agglutinative; Slav languages (including Polish); and Baltic Languages including Lithuanian and Latvian. One last thing. The Celts have had a writing system based on an alphabet of 20 letters for a good 3,000 years. the Ogham writing system that was preserved and slightly expanded by the Benedictines in the 5th century AD in Ireland. The letters of this alphabet are the first sounds of twenty trees that only existed all of them together within a limited territory in Germany, in the Rhine valley, around where Stuttgart and Frankfurt now stand. Did the Gauls use this alphabet? Have a good trip back to our distant roots that too many people have forgotten.
1. 1
Where Did Gaulish Language Come From?
Good Question
Jacques Coulardeau vs Xavier Rouard
Retrospective vs Prospective
The true story of Asterix the Gaul and Balkan peoples from
Central Asia to Europe
La véritable histoire d’Astérix le Gaulois et des peuples des
Balkans de l’Asie centrale vers l’Europe
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370158415_The_true_story_of_Asterix_the
_Gaul_and_Balkan_peoples_from_Central_Asia_to_Europe
April 2023
Preprints and early-stage research may not have been peer-reviewed yet. I am just going to peer review
it in a minute.
Xavier Rouard, Bachelor of Business Administration
Second Counsellor at French Embassy in Pristina, Kosovo
https://xavierrouard.academia.edu/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Xavier-Rouard
2. 2
BIOGRAPHY
diplomat, linguist, and independent researcher. Fields of interest: Gaulish language, Slavic
languages, Indo-European languages, Dravidian languages, Secret services in the Cold War. My
work was published on Sciences-Faits-Histoires.com, Academia Letters, and Scientific Culture
(https://sci-cult.com/wp-content/uploads/8.1/8_1_2_Rouard.pdf).
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Languages and
Linguistics
Neolithic Europe
Etymology
Ancient Indo-European
Languages
Indo-European Studies
Neolithic Archaeology
Slavic Languages
Balkan prehistory
Southeast Asian
Studies
Anatolian Studies
Dravidian Linguistics
Comparative Linguistics
Sanskrit
Finno-Ugric languages
Kartvelian Languages
Ancient DNA Research
Indo-Iranian Linguistics
Iranian Archaeology
Gaulish language
Economic History
Slovene History
Comparative Religion
Claude Hagège
Secret Services
Historical Linguistics
more
AFFILIATIONS
University of Rouen (France), Slavic languages, Alumnus
Description
Based on my study DID INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES STEM FROM A TRANSEURASIAN
LANGUAGE? AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH, published in Scientific Culture in January
2022 and on my profiles on Academia and RG, I will relate to you the true story of Asterix the
Gaul and Balkan peoples from Central Asia to Europe.
Excerpt/Extrait
La véritable histoire d’Astérix le Gaulois et des peuples des Balkans
de l’Asie centrale vers l’Europe
Sur la base de mon étude LES LANGUES INDO-EUROPEENNES SONT-ELLES ISSUES
D’UNE LANGUE ORIGINELLETRANSEURASIENNE ? UNE APPROCHE
INTERDISCIPLINAIRE, publiée dans Scientific Culture en janvier 2022 et sur mes profils sur
Academia et RG, je vais vous raconter la véritable histoire des migrations d’Astérix le Gaulois et
des peuples des Balkans de l’Asie centrale vers l’Europe.
3. 3
1/ Etudes linguistiques
Selon Kassian (2021), les langues eurasiennes sont issues d’une langue eurasienne
originelle, qui incluait les langues samoyèdes et s’est séparée entre -18.000 et -8.000. Cela est
cohérent avec Pagel-Atkinson (2013), postulant que les sept familles linguistiques eurasiennes
forment une macro-famille linguistique qui a évolué d’un ancêtre commun il y a environ 15.000
ans, dont le foyer originel était situé en Asie centrale et duquel le dravidien, le kartvélien et la
basque se sont séparés en premiers, suivis de l’indo-européen il y a environ 8.700 ans, ce qui
contredit la théorie des Kourganes, qui postule une formation bien plus récente du PIE.
Il existe deux théories principales pour le peuplement de l’Europe et la formation des
langues indo-européennes. La théorie conventionnelle, celle des Kourganes, place le foyer
originel des langues indo-européennes dans les steppes pontiques vers -6.000. Une théorie
alternative lie la formation des langues indo-européennes à l’arrivée de l’agriculture en Europe
depuis l’Anatolie il y a 8.000 à 9.500 ans. Cette théorie me semble mieux à même d’expliquer la
formation des langues archaïques des Balkans, et plus globalement des langues archaïques
européennes.
La formation de l’indo-européen dans cette région pourrait également être attestée par
l’intéressante langue burushaski du Nord du Pakistan qui, selon Witzel (2012) mélange des traits
des langues dravidiennes, du sanskrit et des langues caucasiennes et partage la numération
vigésimale avec le dravidien, le caucasien, le basque et le celte, qui a laissé des traces en
français (vimsati, vingt en dravidien, pourrait même avoir donné vingt en français). Greenhill
(2012) place le burushaski entre le kannada, langue dravidienne, l’hindi, les langues
caucasiennes et le basque, ce qui soutient son caractère archaïque. Mosenkis souligne aussi
les liens du burushaski, qu’il juge très archaïque, avec les langues sino-caucasiennes et indo-
européennes comme l’arménien, le phrygien et les langues paléo-balkaniques. Boc et al. (2010)
souligne les liens entre les langues celtes et indo-iraniennes, slaves et indo-iraniennes et slaves
et celtes, estimant que cela pourrait attester d’une ascendance commune bien plus proche entre
ces familles linguistiques que généralement considérée ou d’une migration intensive des
ancêtres des locuteurs de ces langues.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370158417_La_veritable_histoire_d'Asterix_le_Gaul
ois_et_des_peuples_des_Balkans_de_l'Asie_centrale_vers_l'Europe [accessed Apr 26, 2023].
The true story of Asterix the Gaul and Balkan peoples from Central
Asia to Europe
Based on my study DID INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES STEM FROM A TRANSEURASIAN
LANGUAGE? AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH, published in Scientific Culture in January
2022 and on my profiles on Academia and RG, I will relate to you the true story of Asterix the
Gaul and Balkan peoples from Central Asia to Europe.
4. 4
1/ Linguistic studies
According to Kassian (2021), Eurasian languages stem from an original Eurasian
language, which included Samoyedic languages and split between 18,000 and 8,000 BC. This
is consistent with Pagel-Atkinson (2013), postulating that the seven language families of Eurasia
form a linguistic superfamily that evolved from a common ancestor around 15,000 years ago,
with a homeland in Central Asia, from which Dravidian, Kartvelian, and Basque were the first to
separate, followed by PIE around 8,700 years ago, which contradicts the theory of Kurgans,
postulating a much later formation of PIE.
There are two main theories for the peopling of Europe and the formation of Indo-
European languages. The conventional theory of Kurgans places the original homeland of Indo-
European languages in the Pontic steppes around 6.000 BC. An alternative theory links the
formation of Indo-European languages to the arrival of agriculture in Europe from Anatolia 8.000
to 9.500 years ago. This theory seems to me more suitable to explain the formation of archaic
Balkan languages, and more globally of archaic European languages. Albanian would for
instance be linked to Hittite from Anatolia.
The formation of Indo-European in this region could be also attested by the interesting
Burushaski language of Northern Pakistan which, according to Witzel (2012) mixes features from
Dravidian, Sanskrit, and Caucasian languages and shares the vigesimal numeration with
Dravidian, Caucasian, Basque and Celtic, which left traces in French (vimsati, twenty in Dravidian,
could even have given “vingt,” twenty in French). Greenhill (2012) places Burushaski between
Kannada, a Dravidian language, Hindi, Caucasian languages, and Basque which supports its
archaic character. Mosenkis also underlines the links of Burushaski, which he considers very
archaic, with Sino-Caucasian and Indo-European languages like Armenian, Phrygian, and paleo-
Balkan languages. Boc et al. (2010) underline the links between Celtic and Indo-Iranian, Slavic
and Indo-Iranian, and Slavic and Celtic, considering that this may be the evidence of a much
closer common ancestry between these language families than generally thought or of an
intensive migration of the ancestors of the involved nations.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370158415_The_true_story_of_Asterix_the_Gaul_and_Balkan
_peoples_from_Central_Asia_to_Europe [accessed Apr 26, 2023].
5. 5
THE HORNED (NON-)HORSES OF INDO-EUROPEANS AND THE PROBLEM OF CELTS’
AND GERMANS’ ORIGIN, Semenenko, Aleksandr Andreyevich, Journal Agrarian
history n°5, 2021
ABSTRACT
The paper focuses on the study of Indo-European cults of the horned ‘horse’ i.e., the horse
transformed ritually into another horned animal (either a bull or a goat or a deer) using a special
mask with horns. It combines the exploration of the data on the horned (non-)horses of Asian Indo-
Europeans of Iran, India, and Middle and Central Asia (Pamir, Kazakhstan, and Russian and
Mongolian Altai regions) and European Indo-Europeans of the Atlantic, Northern, and Central
Europe. The cult of the bull-horned horse of the Greco-Iranian rulers (the first two Seleucid tzars and
several Bactrian kings) is derived from the archaic cult of the horned ‘horse’ of Indo-Europeans of
Middle Asia and India. Celtic and German cults of the horned (non-)horses originate from Middle or
Central Asian ones thus pointing at the Middle or Central Asian, Afghanistan or South Asian
homeland of Celts and Germans.
6. 6
MY CONTRIBUTION OR PEER REVIEW
Dear Xavier Rouard,
I read your article and here are my remarks, as fast and short as possible.
1- No reference to before the Peak of the Ace Age generally dated at 19,000 BCE with
about 10,000 years centered on that peak from 24,000 BCE to 14,000 BCE. Only one
mention of the Gravettians in your text but it remains a side element. The Gravettians were
in Central-Eastern Europe circa 30,000 BCE.
2- It is not clear whether “-12,000” means 12,000 BCE or 12,000 BP which would be
circa 10,000 BCE. This is an irritating element with some archaeologists who use “before
present” dates which means an unclear reference since it increases every year by one year.
They could use other “zero” years, but it has to be a fixed point in time.
3- No mention of before the Gravettians, hence of Genevieve von Petzinger’s The First
Signs. Some references to books that are nearly one century old, or even more are also
surprising when we know archaeology has discovered more over the last ten years than
over the two or three centuries before ten years ago. China is typical with the new alliance
launched last year or so in the whole of Asia to boost archaeology in Asia. We know so little
about Asia, apart from the opium wars and the levitating Tibetan Buddhists.
4- To set the origin of language in the time-period and the space-territory considered by
your article is very limited in interest. What were the human migrations from the Black African
nest or nests to the whole world? Three vast migrations can be identified all before the Peak
of the Ice Age. The reduction of the migrations of Homo Sapiens to various migrations from
here or there, but NOT FROM BLACK AFRICA, after the Peak of the Ice Age is not scientific,
and what’s more it covers up a rejection of the BLACK AFRICAN origin of human language,
7. 7
and we have to drop the approach about the origin of particular languages to speak of the
origin of human language because then we can speak of the phylogeny of language in three
stages with three articulations despite Martinet and Chomsky who only consider two such
articulations: to be binary is so simple. These primordial migrations started around 250,000
BCE at least (beads in Morocco dated at 300,000 BCE).
5- To base the linguistic approach on words, even utilitarian words like the article “le” is
fictitious. It is old-fashioned because we know language is not a set of words but a rich
architecture with three levels: phonetic rotation of vowels and consonants; the morphology
of complex phonetic units (often called words, though…, despite what Zellig Harris said for
my own approach and absent from Rouard’s essay, but it only concerned phonetics); and
thirdly, the syntax of the semantic complex construction with the basic morphological units.
What’s more, it is absurd in a way because Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen proved
long ago that all languages have only one nest in Black Africa, and this is based on a
comparative lexical approach based on a set of one hundred or more basic words that have
the same roots and meanings in all languages, even the languages that are not tri-
consonantal root languages. So, no surprise if in all languages of this world, there are some
common universal roots like “water” or “father.”
6- The use of genetics is off the point because any linguist who is a linguist and not a
biologist knows there is no gene of language because language was developed by Homo
Sapiens based on genetic mutations selected naturally to enable them to become the long
distance fast bipedal runner he is, and based on his experience once he got down or out of
the forest into the savannah. The haplogroups you refer to are genetic and have evolved by
general evolution laws that are biological and haphazard anyway and selected by sexual
reproduction. That’s where it would be interesting to follow Darwin on that: sexual
reproduction that takes two individuals. The male can be replaced at any time by any other
male for fertilization. No need to have any permanence in the relationship. A woman cannot
because the pregnancy and the birth are entirely carried by her and the newborn will be
breastfed for 18 months, and women from age 13 to life expectancy 29 will have to be
pregnant every 18 months at the most, making the birth of the next child correspond to the
weaning of the previous one, if he has survived. And that will enable the community to
produce two or three individuals who will fulfill a full life expectancy of 29 years so that the
community will grow and will be able to expand, to migrate. Note culture does not migrate
alone. It is carried by people. I am, of course, speaking of the humanity that had a life
expectancy of 29 years, which was true for ancient communities starting with the emergence
of Homo Sapiens 300,000 years ago, or BCE as to that, and for the laborious classes up to
the 19th century.
7- The population of Europe starting circa 50,000 BCE is not scrutinized. Where did they
come from? What language did they speak? Theo Vennemann genannt Nierfeld answers
the second question: Turkic languages (and Basque is the Turkic language that survived
the Ice Age due to the regrouping of all at least western, European people in the vast Basque
country that included then the whole left bank of the Garonne plus the Garonne’s valley itself.
I learned that for the first time from Jacques Teyssier in Bordeaux (Université Bordeaux III
Michel de Montaigne) in 1970-1973. I have answered the first question and this third
migration out of Black Africa, the second migration out of Black Africa in my first book on the
language of Cro-Magnon, and the first wave of it covered the whole of Europe from the
Middle East, plus the Caucasus, plus all the territories around the Caspian see, of course,
the Urals and the whole of Russia and most of Scandinavia, plus the whole of Siberian but
sharing it with the populations of the first migration out of Black Africa that covered the whole
of Asia, with some sharing when the second migration out of Black Africa, first wave, arrived.
8. 8
Around 50,000 BCE the whole world outside Africa, meaning America was excluded, but
Australia was concerned, was speaking languages of two big families, agglutinative Turkic
languages and isolating character languages. Note by then the Semitic languages were all
contained in northern Africa and the Sahara: they were the first migration out of Black Africa
and thy migrated probably around 250,000 BCE. Note the second wave of the second
migration out of Black Africa around 40,000 BCE remained on the Iranian plateau and will
move down from it only after the Peak of the Ice Age when the Ice Age was finished. But
then the logic changed since only the communities that had survived were still there and
they were probably vastly isolated and had developed some common languages, community
by community knowing that the original three migrations and the original three language
families (with the fourth one with the second wave of the third migration, Indo-European and
Indo-Aryan languages) could borrow words, at times maybe some morphological elements
or even syntactic elements, with some survivals from older articulations and some
“announcements” of what would come later in the phylogeny of language. That phylogeny
is a continuous phenomenon and each state in this long process is the result of the evolution
of the previous state (within each particular language or group of languages). Thus, there is
no real origin of any language. Any language derived and still derives from what it was before,
what the concerned speakers spoke before. It is the retrospective method that tries to
reconstruct past states of a language from the present state that is wrong, first because it
cannot go beyond 15,000 years backward, and second because language evolves
prospectively and not retrospectively. Just try to make Turkic Medea go back to what she
was before her elopement or kidnapping by Jason with the Golden Fleece.
8- The population of Asia is totally ignored reducing A2sia to a little part of Eurasia.
That’s a regrettable bias.
9- Contacts with the Neanderthals and the Denisovans are totally ignored. Too long to
enter into details.
10- Julien d’Huy and his master Jean Loïc le Quellec are totally ignored, with Julien
d’Huy’s study on the myths of the two Americas being connected to Southeast Asia for South
America and Siberia for North America. And remember Siberia is divided between the
agglutinative Turkic languages on the one hand, and the isolating Sino-Tibetan or Tibeto-
Burman languages on the other hand.
11- We should explore the phylogeny of language in three stages around three
articulations that have to be in one single phylogenic order. But too long to get into details.
And if we take writing into account, we have to wonder if all the geometric figures you find
in caves (all over the world) or on rock faces are not the first symbolic representations of a
discourse that they accompany, or if they are entoptics that do not short-circuit the previous
remark. Is writing an entoptic development? There, Von Petzinger is a good starting point,
but most old books, including Marshack, have to be reexamined critically. The lunar cycles
Marshack speaks of are, in fact, menstrual cycles because it is a lot more vital to observe
these menstrual cycles to produce the 10 to 12 pregnancies of every woman in sixteen years.
12- Conclusion: that is why I very critically consider what has been produced by the
mostly institutionalized sexist and racist (both by not mentioning Black Africa and women)
anthropology, archaeology, and even linguistics. So, you can see why Astérix leaves me as
cold as the North Pole ice sheet. Maybe that’s why it is melting, I mean Astérix is heating
the planet with all his magical fighting. Note in those days, the normal Gaulish woman had
to produce 10 to 12 pregnancies in 16 years, and I cannot say children are overwhelmingly
present next to Astérix, and pregnancy or delivery or taking care of children, including
9. 9
breastfeeding, are not exactly central in these comic books. All elements without which we
cannot even visualize what life was like circa 250,000 BCE in Black Africa just before the
first migration started. And they did speak then because no migration of any importance was
possible without planning, managing, and discussing every single element. At least, Stephen
Mithen in his Singing Neanderthals envisaged a language before Homo Sapiens, though
mostly based on body language and tonal production but with some simple calls slightly
more developed than those of monkeys and apes, since Neanderthals had not gone through
the mutations that produced Homo Sapiens from Homo Ergaster.
I have thus proofread this “contribution” and will upload it. As you know my latest study
on Çatalhöyük in Anatolia (25,000 words) will be presented in Romania, and I am catching
up on Göbekli Tepe. And I am far from having reached the end of this trail that has to be
blazed step by step after step. By the way, I do not produce complete and exhaustive
bibliographies because with the Internet and AI we can, with the machine, get such
bibliographies, even better than anything we can or could humanly produce with our own
hands. But do not use ChatGPT for this task, because it will systematically exclude what
would be statistically “non-significant” for it, meaning what would stand at a very low level of
probability.
Billy Porter declared, yesterday night, on PBS that poetry produces critical minds. I am
afraid in the field of archaeology and with ChatGPT to increase the result, only dominant
ideas can survive. Look how Biden reveals, by not trusting his Vice President to run in the
next election, how vain he is and let’s say subconsciously biased as for sex/gender and race.
And ChatGPT would tell him at 82 next year his probability of a heart attack is so close to
the maximum that it would be wise not to run. When you reach a certain age, you cannot
run anymore, you can only jog, and on a gentle down-going slope. True enough, jogging
against overweight Trump may be difficult for Trump who is out of sorts and training, as for
jogging.
We live in a society of institutionalized biases, many biases.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
The cosmos is infinite & in constant reconstruction: Xibalba vs Wak Chaan
11. 11
DISCUSSION OR RATHER RUNNING
COMMENTARY
Jacques Coulardeau vs Xavier Rouard
Retrospective vs Prospective
Xavier Rouard’s comments to Jacques Coulardeau’s review of The true story of Asterix
the Gaul and Balkan peoples from Central Asia to Europe - La véritable histoire d’Astérix le
Gaulois et des peuples des Balkans de l’Asie centrale vers l’Europe
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370158415_The_true_story_of_Asterix_the_Gau
l_and_Balkan_peoples_from_Central_Asia_to_EuropeApril 2023
CRISS-CROSSING CRUX
Jacques Coulardeau: No reference to before the Peak of the Ace Age generally
dated at 19,000 BCE with about 10,000 years centered on that peak from 24,000 BCE to
14,000 BCE. Only one mention of the Gravettians in your text but it remains a side element.
The Gravettians were in Central-Eastern Europe circa 30,000 BCE.
Xavier Rouard: the goal of my study is to assess lexical and grammatical
concordances between Eurasian languages, as well as between ancient scripts, and to
demonstrate the pertinence of the theory that Eurasian languages stemmed from a single
original common Eurasian language. That’s why I didn’t go farther back in time than 24,000
BCE, as you can hardly say which languages were spoken earlier.
JACQUES COULARDEAU: It is not clear whether “-12,000” means 12,000 BCE or
12,000 BP which would be circa 10,000 BCE. This is an irritating element with some
archaeologists who use “before present” dates which means an unclear reference since it
increases every year by one year. They could use other “zero” years, but it has to be a fixed
point in time.
12. 12
XAVIER ROUARD: I already corrected this point in the French version of my paper,
replacing -12.000 with 12.000 ANE. In the English version, all mentioned dates were already
quoted BCE.
JACQUES COULARDEAU: No mention of before the Gravettians, hence of
Genevieve von Petzinger’s The First Signs. Some references to books that are nearly one
century old, or even more are also surprising when we know archaeology has discovered
more over the last ten years than over the two or three centuries before ten years ago. China
is typical with the new alliance launched last year or so in the whole of Asia to boost
archaeology in Asia. We know so little about Asia, apart from the opium wars and the
levitating Tibetan Buddhists.
XAVIER ROUARD: As I wrote previously, I didn’t go farther back in time than 24,000
BCE as it is difficult to say which languages were spoken before. Genevieve von Petzinger’s
The First Signs is interesting, but I limited myself to signs of languages that are documented.
Ancient books are also interesting to study because their conclusions are often supported
by recent studies, although the authors didn’t have the tools we now have. I included China
in the latest version of my study as linguistic concordances are supported by the discovery
of Celtic-type mummies in Xinjiang and genetic concordances between the French and
Uigur peoples.
JACQUES COULARDEAU: To set the origin of language in the time-period and
the space-territory considered by your article is very limited in interest. What were the human
migrations from the Black African nest or nests to the whole world? Three vast migrations
can be identified all before the Peak of the Ice Age. The reduction of the migrations of Homo
Sapiens to various migrations from here or there, but NOT FROM BLACK AFRICA, after the
Peak of the Ice Age is not scientific, and what’s more it covers up a rejection of the
BLACKAFRICAN origin of human language, and we have to drop the approach about the
origin of particular languages to speak of the origin of human language because then we
can speak of the phylogeny of language in three stages with three articulations despite
Martinet and Chomsky who only consider two such articulations: to be binary is so simple.
13. 13
These primordial migrations started around 250,000 BCE at least (beads in Morocco dated
at 300,000 BCE).
XAVIER ROUARD: I am fully aware that the first migrations to Eurasia came from
Africa, and I am not rejecting the African origin of the human language. However, you can
hardly say which languages were spoken so far back in time, and linguistic studies including
African languages I read are not much convincing, therefore I limited my study to Eurasian
languages, as it goes beyond the scope of my study.
HOT AIR AND BINARY DIVISION
JACQUES COULARDEAU: To base the linguistic approach on words, even
utilitarian words like the article “le” is fictitious. It is old-fashioned because we know language
is not a set of words but a rich architecture with three levels: phonetic rotation of vowels and
consonants; the morphology of complex phonetic units (often called words, though...,
despite what Zellig Harris said for my own approach and absent from Rouard’s essay, but it
only concerned phonetics); and thirdly, the syntax of the semantic complex construction with
the basic morphological units. What’s more, it is absurd in a way because Joseph Greenberg
and Merritt Ruhlen proved long ago that all languages have only one nest in Black Africa,
and this is based on a comparative lexical approach based on a set of one hundred or more
basic words that have the same roots and meanings in all languages, even the languages
that are not tri-consonantal root languages. So, no surprise if in all languages of this world,
there are some common universal roots like “water” or “father.”
XAVIER ROUARD: I didn’t base my approach only on words, but also on grammar
and scripts, mainly with a view to the origin of Gaulish. You certainly worked more on
phonetics than I did. I read with interest Merritt Ruhlen’s papers and other papers about the
Mother tongue.
JACQUES COULARDEAU: The use of genetics is off the point because any
linguist who is a linguist and not a biologist knows there is no gene of language because
language was developed by Homo Sapiens based on genetic mutations selected naturally
to enable them to become the long distance fast bipedal runner he is, and based on his
experience once he got down or out of the forest into the savannah. The haplogroups you
refer to are genetic and have evolved by general evolution laws that are biological and
haphazard anyway and selected by sexual reproduction. That’s where it would be interesting
to follow Darwin on that: sexual reproduction that takes two individuals. The male can be
replaced at any time by any other male for fertilization. No need to have any permanence in
14. 14
the relationship. A woman cannot because the pregnancy and the birth are entirely carried
by her and the newborn will be breastfed for 18 months, and women from age 13 to life
expectancy 29 will have to be pregnant sesquiannually, every 18 months, at the most,
making the birth of the next child correspond to the weaning of the previous one, if he has
survived. And that will enable the community to produce two or three individuals who will
fulfill a full life expectancy of 29 years so that the community will grow and will be able to
expand, to migrate. Note culture does not migrate alone. It is carried by people. I am, of
course, speaking of the humanity that had a life expectancy of 29 years, which was true for
ancient communities starting with the emergence of Homo Sapiens 300,000 years ago, or
BCE as to that, and for the laborious classes up to the 19th century.
XAVIER ROUARD: I can’t follow you on this point. Genetic studies I am quoting in
my study as Tarkhnishvili (2014) clearly show a link between genetics and languages, as
concerns, in particular, Kartvelian and Dravidian languages.
IT/HE/SHE/THEY DOES/DO FLY OVER CRUCIAL DHAMMA
JACQUES COULARDEAU: The population of Europe starting circa 50,000 BCE is
not scrutinized. Where did they come from? What language did they speak? Theo
Vennemann genannt Nierfeld answers the second question: Turkic languages (and Basque
is the Turkic language that survived the Ice Age due to the regrouping of all at least western,
European people in the vast Basque country that included then the whole left bank of the
Garonne plus the Garonne’s valley itself. I learned that for the first time from Jacques
Teyssier in Bordeaux (Université Bordeaux III Michel de Montaigne) in 1970-1973. I have
answered the first question and this third migration out of Black Africa, the second migration
out of Black Africa in my first book on the language of Cro-Magnon, and the first wave of it
covered the whole of Europe from the Middle East, plus the Caucasus, plus all the territories
around the Caspian see, of course, the Urals and the whole of Russia and most of
Scandinavia, plus the whole of Siberian but sharing it with the populations of the first
migration out of Black Africa that covered the whole of Asia, with some sharing when the
second migration out of Black Africa, first wave, arrived. Around 50,000 BCE the whole world
outside Africa, meaning America was excluded, but Australia was concerned, was speaking
languages of two big families, agglutinative Turkic languages and isolating character
15. 15
languages. Note by then the Semitic languages were all contained in northern Africa and
the Sahara: they were the first migration out of Black Africa, and they migrated probably
around 250,000 BCE.
XAVIER ROUARD: I read with interest the presentation of your book on Cro-
Magnon’s language, but I still wonder how you can say that the language spoken around
50.000 BCE was Turkic. From studies I read, Including Lahovary (1963), Basque is closer
linked to Dravidian, as well as Kartvelian languages, as I could see during my stay in Georgia.
Turkish is generally considered to have appeared later than these languages.
JACQUES COULARDEAU: Note the second wave of the second migration out of
Black Africa around 40,000 BCE remained on the Iranian plateau and will move down from
it only after the Peak of the Ice Age when the Ice Age was finished. But then the logic
changed since only the communities that had survived were still there and they were
probably vastly isolated and had developed some common languages, community by
community knowing that the original three migrations and the original three language
families (with the fourth one with the second wave of the third migration, Indo-European and
Indo-Aryan languages) could borrow words, at times maybe some morphological elements
or even syntactic elements, with some survivals from older articulations and some
“announcements” of what would come later in the phylogeny of language. That phylogeny
is a continuous phenomenon and each state in this long process is the result of the evolution
of the previous state (within each particular language or group of languages). Thus, there is
no real origin of any language. Any language derived and still derives from what it was before,
what the concerned speakers spoke before. It is the retrospective method that tries to
reconstruct past states of a language from the present state that is wrong, first because it
cannot go beyond 15,000 years backward, and second because language evolves
prospectively and not retrospectively. Just try to make Turkic Medea go back to what she
was before her elopement or kidnapping by Jason with the Golden Fleece.
XAVIER ROUARD: My opinion is that Eurasian languages originated on the Iranian
plateau. You are right that the retrospective method I am using can’t go much farther back
than around 15,000 years backward, but I am curious how you can document earlier
languages.
GOLDEN SHADOWS IN RETROSPECT
JACQUES COULARDEAU: The population of Asia is totally ignored reducing Asia
to a little part of Eurasia. That’s a regrettable bias.
16. 16
XAVIER ROUARD: My theory puts, on the contrary, the origin of Eurasian languages
in Central Asia and underlines the importance of Dravidian and Burushaski in the formation
of Eurasian languages, as well as links with Chinese, Mongol, and even Japanese. It seems
to me much more convincing than the Pontic fable of the origin of IE languages.
JACQUES COULARDEAU: Contacts with the Neanderthals and the Denisovans
are totally ignored. Too long to enter into details.
XAVIER ROUARD: I am aware of contacts with Neanderthals and Denisovans, but
who knows which languages they were speaking?
ROYAL BLUE ALL OVER
JACQUES COULARDEAU: Julien d’Huy and his master Jean Loïc le Quellec are
totally ignored, with Julien d’Huy’s study on the myths of the two Americas being connected
to Southeast Asia for South America and Siberia for North America. And remember Siberia
is divided between the agglutinative Turkic languages on the one hand, and the isolating
Sino-Tibetan or Tibeto-Burman languages on the other hand.
XAVIER ROUARD: To my knowledge, migrations to America started from Central
Asia and Siberia. I could also find linguistic concordances between the original Eurasian
language and the languages of North and South America, but I didn’t investigate further, as
it goes beyond the main goal of my study.
JACQUES COULARDEAU: We should explore the phylogeny of language in three
stages around three articulations that have to be in one single phylogenic order. But too long
to get into details. And if we take writing into account, we have to wonder if all the geometric
figures you find in caves (all over the world) or on rock faces are not the first symbolic
representations of a discourse that they accompany, or if they are entoptics that do not short-
circuit the previous remark. Is writing an entoptic development? There, Von Petzinger is a
good starting point, but most old books, including Marshack, have to be reexamined critically.
The lunar cycles Marshack speaks of are, in fact, menstrual cycles because it is a lot more
vital to observe these menstrual cycles to produce the 10 to 12 pregnancies of every woman
in sixteen years.
XAVIER ROUARD: I can agree with you about the interest in signs found in caves,
but it is difficult to say if they were a kind of writing and what they meant, even if the script
of the cave of Le Mas d’Azil in France is quite interesting.
17. 17
FAKE UDERZO: THE COLLAR WAS INVENTED BY THE BENEDICTINES
IN THE 11TH
CENTURY → DEBATE
JACQUES COULARDEAU’s conclusion: that is why I very critically consider what
has been produced by the mostly institutionalized sexist and racist (both by not mentioning
Black Africa and women) anthropology, archaeology, and even linguistics. So, you can see
why Astérix leaves me as cold as the North Pole ice sheet. Maybe that’s why it is melting, I
mean Astérix is heating the planet with all his magical fighting. Note in those days, the
normal Gaulish woman had to produce 10 to 12 pregnancies in 16 years, and I cannot say
children are overwhelmingly present next to Astérix, and pregnancy or delivery or taking
care of children, including breastfeeding, are not exactly central in these comic books. All
elements without which we cannot even visualize what life was like circa 250,000 BCE in
Black Africa just before the first migration started. And they did speak then because no
migration of any importance was possible without planning, managing, and discussing every
single element. At least, Stephen Mithen in his Singing Neanderthals envisaged a language
before Homo Sapiens, though mostly based on body language and tonal production but with
some simple calls slightly more developed than those of monkeys and apes, since
Neanderthals had not gone through the mutations that produced Homo Sapiens from Homo
Ergaster. I have thus proofread this “contribution” and will upload it. As you know my latest
study on Çatalhöyük in Anatolia (25,000 words) will be presented in Romania, and I am
catching up on Göbekli Tepe. And I am far from having reached the end of this trail that has
to be blazed step by step after step.
XAVIER ROUARD: Thanks for your review of my study. I have no doubt that people
coming from Black Africa were speaking, or that people settled in Europe around 50.000
BCE were speaking, but I wonder how you can document the languages they were speaking
so far back in time, as well as which language Neanderthals were speaking. For this reason,
I limited the scope of this study to what can be attested by archaeology, history, religion,
and genetics. Astérix is no more than a wink to tell the true story of the Gauls from Central
Asia to Europe from my point of view. By the way, I found yesterday another study about
Celtic being a primary branch of the Turanian language. I agree with you on the importance
of Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU & Xavier ROUARD
18. 18
(PDF) Jacques Coulardeau vs Xavier Rouard Retrospective vs prospective. Available from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370376671_Jacques_Coulardeau_vs_Xavi
er_Rouard_Retrospective_vs_prospective [accessed Apr 29, 2023].
RESEARCH IS HUNTING THE SNARK, DIXIT LEWIS CAROLL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCPcDzBvnEc
19. 19
ROUARD COULARDEAU GAULISH ASTÉRIX
DISCUSSION STRING ON RESEARCHGATE.NET
Report starting on Sunday, April 30, 2023, 13:40
•
Jacques Coulardeau
There it could be.
File: Rouard Gaulois - Debate.docx
•
Xavier Rouard
That could be it, I added my comments.
File: RouardGaulois-Debate.docx
•
Jacques Coulardeau
I do not understand since the two documents are twice my original file and not the
expanded one, and where are your comments then? I attach the expanded file.
File: Rouard Gaulois - Debate.docx
•
Jacques Coulardeau
the file should be 16 pages long. Apparently, the one I sent first was the original file only
8 pages long.
•
Xavier Rouard
I see you found my comments, but I don't see the point to include a picture of Biden and
Trump. I send you a picture from Astérix, it would be more to the point to illustrate Astérix.
File: Screenshot 2023-04-22 at ...x and the Griffin.pdf.png
20. 20
•
Jacques Coulardeau
CORRECTED AND NEW LAYOUT. I hope this time it will be Astérix fine. Why Biden
Trump? Because all debates are make-believe stage production. To understand the
language of Cro-Magnon, who I still call Cro-Magnon, and not anything else as Andrew
Collins would like us to do, you need to have a whole culture in linguistic phylogeny. The
migrations took place at three points in this phylogeny, every time one articulation was fully
reached, hence at three dates within the first 250,000 years of what we consider the 350,000,
give or take 20,000, years necessary for Homo Sapiens to emerge. All the Homo Sapiens
of this third migration out of Black Africa, the first wave, the agglutinative third articulation,
possessed (some of them) and circulated (all of them) this specific method to produce
blades as Andrew Collins insists without seeing the logic of this fact because they left with
it since it has been attested in Blombos around 75,000 BCE, date when the concerned
migration left, and the agglutinative Turkic heritage is still there: the descendants are still, all
of them speaking Turkic agglutinative languages, including Mongolian, Uyghur, the Uralian
languages and the Finno-Ugrian languages, with the special case of Hungarian which
migrated from the North (Russia, Finland), to what is today Hungary somewhere around the
7th century BCE. You should register for the conference in Romania next November. I will
present the sexual bias of archaeologists and anthropologists and what it prevented them
to see. See the second attached file.
Files: conference 2023.docx & Rouard Gaulois - Debate.docx
•
Xavier Rouard
OK, thanks Jacques.
Good night,
Xavier
•
Xavier Rouard
Cher Jacques,
J'ai relu le papier ce matin et l'ai amélioré sur la forme. Il manquait beaucoup d'espaces
entre les mots que j'ai rajouté.
Bien cordialement,
Xavier
File: RouardGaulois-Debate(3).docx
•
Jacques Coulardeau
21. 21
It has to go through two spelling correctors anyway. Then it might become publishable.
•
Xavier Rouard
Dravidian languages are also agglutinative. And from a genetical point of view, they
seem a good candidate as a first language coming from Africa. Sengupta et al. (2006) mark
that haplogroups F and H appeared in India around 30.000 years ago and haplogroup F
gave birth to all Eurasian haplogroups. Hallast (2019) goes back even earlier in time, stating
that “the earliest split was into F and GHIJK; F is known only from East and Southeast Asia
while GHIJK and its descendants are worldwide. These descendant lineages themselves
often have more continent-specific distributions, but 11/12 GHIJK lineages originating before
50,000 years ago have distributions that include East, Southeast, or South Asia”, which
pleads for a very ancient migration from this region to Europe.
Figure 1. Map of the Dravidian languages in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nepal adapted from Ethnologue [2 Lewis
MP, Simons GF, Fennig CD. 2016 Ethnologue: languages of the world, 19th edition. Dallas, TX: SIL
International. Google Scholar]. Each polygon represents a language variety (language or dialect). Colors correspond
to subgroups (see text). The three large South I languages, Kannada, Tamil, and Malayalam are light red, while the
smaller South I languages are bright red. Languages present in the dataset used in this paper are indicated by name,
with languages with long (950 + years) literatures in bold.
(Vishnupriya Kolipakam, Fiona M. Jordan, Michael Dunn, Simon J. Greenhill, Remco Bouckaert, Russell D.
Gray, and Annemarie Verkerk, “A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family,” in Royal
Society Open Science, Volume 5 Issue 3, Published: 21 March 2018 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171504,
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171504#:~:text=Dravidian%20is%20a%20language%20family,Brahui)
%20(figure%201).
22. 22
•
Jacques Coulardeau
Here is the file corrected by Word (French and English) and Grammarly (English only).
I will not enter any debate on Dravidian, nor on the classification of agglutinative
languages according to the 36, if my memory is correct, agglutinative traits of A. Thot. All
languages of the first and second articulations have agglutinative elements at some level of
their architecture as the previews of what will happen later when human language reaches
the third articulation first phase. The languages from this third articulation first phase are all
agglutinative by phylogenesis. The languages from the third articulation second phase, Indo-
European and Indo-Aryan languages, all have agglutinative traits surviving in their
architecture. Any language contains what will come later and what has already come before.
The gestation of the baby from conception to birth is a reproduction of the whole evolution
of the human species from the origin of life to man and woman themselves. It is not because
in French we have agreement rules for adjectives (in genre and number with nouns) and for
verbs (in person, genre, and number with the "subject" of the verb) that French, Italian, or
German are agglutinative. That's the debate about Sumerian: agglutinative hence Turkic, or
synthetic hence Indo-European? I am for the latter qualification. Many others are for the
former. A linguist in Paris even told me in a conference that Pali was an agglutinative
language, though it is obviously (history and genesis) an Indo-Aryan language derived from
various Indo-Aryan languages in India and from the matrix of them all Sanskrit. Tamil is a
surviving language of the Dravidian family and Tamil is connected to Southeast Asia's
Tibeto-Burman languages which are one branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, hence
isolating languages.
I think it would be a lot more interesting to check the influence of the Denisovan language
on the people arriving from Black Africa with their isolating languages, or the matrix of them
all, around 120,000 BCE. They will survive next to them for a long time, they will integrate
their genetic elements enabling them to live at high altitudes, with little oxygen, and in the
extreme cold of the Himalayas and Tibet. In Southeast Asia and all the islands from Taiwan
to Melanesia, Indonesia, etc. (except apparently Australia and we cannot know in New
Zealand because the government has locked up all ancient archaeological elements for a
very long period) the Denisovans got integrated into the isolating communities (due to the
level of their DNA integrated into these people). We can consider that the Denisovans were
extinct after the Peak of the Ice Age and the Neanderthals were extinct long before it. But
what was the influence of the Neanderthals on the first human population of Europe, all of
them of Turkic origin and languages?
I think you should try to develop a paper for the conference in Romania in November. I
attached the presentation in a previous message. You could also present another paper at
the 13th Congress of the International Society for Applied Psycholinguistics, the full
conference, or the Symposium I organize on the teaching of foreign languages and
translation. In this case, a subject dealing with the shift from Gaulish to Gallo-Roman Latin,
and later the steamroller of Germanic languages producing Picard, Oil Language, and Oc
Language. Translating or integrating the language or languages of the conquerors? The
dilemma of the Gaulish people.
And two cases to compare this with the takeover of Indo-European languages over the
Turkic languages of Europe starting in 5,000 BCE, and the present situation with the
takeover of English over all local European languages, be they Indo-European or Turkic.
Which ones will survive like Breton or Basque to only take two examples of the previous
takeover?
Files: SymposiumTRI2023 - Release.docx & Rouard GauloisDebateCOR.pdf
23. 23
•
Xavier Rouard
Thanks, Jacques, for the paper and the explanations. The paper seems OK.
Best regards,
Xavier
•
Jacques Coulardeau
Now? what do we do? Do we publish the paper in which the discussion on this channel
should be added at the end? I just have to add a couple of messages to have it completed.
With or without the mugs. Or simply slightly reduced in size.
File: RouardGauloisRsearch.net.docx
•
Jacques Coulardeau
Here is the discussion. I suggest adding it to the end of the article per se. I can do that
tomorrow morning or evening. You are not unaware we are having some street
entertainment this year for May Day.
MAYPOLE DANCING
Yesterday night Macron shook hands with the players of the two teams, one after the
other. Toulouse players were friendly. Nantes players were mostly cool, and distant. They
lost. But no big mess in the stadium, or around actually. Tomorrow is trickier though the
police will manage flying spies, dronic spies. Finally. The picture of a hooligan breaking a
24. 24
shop window or banging on his neighbor is good enough evidence for a court if he or she
can be clearly and beyond any reasonable doubt identified. I do not understand why the
unions, all of them, got trapped in this situation and do not find a way out, at least one or
two unions. It is too late to launch a movement that could change the situation, even with
today's smartphones and social networks with any plotting software and ChatGPT to
organize the campaign. They only think of May 68, but things have changed, especially the
social composition of French society, not to speak of the world, and Ukraine is not Vietnam.
Good night. I have an appointment in Chicago right now.
Jacques
File: RouardGauloisRsearch.net.docx
•
Jacques Coulardeau
The preprint does not correspond to the discussion at all, and first of all, the remarks
you made on my contribution are not included. It is, in fact, exactly the same thing as the
version I published under the title "Astérix is a Biased Artifact." It is necessary to clean up
this situation. This preprint has to be taken down and we have to decide to make public the
full version, with or without the string of messages that have to be added, but with your
discussion of my contribution, definitely. Since I am a content Writer at Medium.com, every
article I put there, or on Academia, LinkedIn, and SlideShare, are no longer preprints but
real published articles, and Medium actually pay me every month for what I put on their site.
An average of one dollar, at times one euro a month. But then it is published. So far, I have
only published "Astérix is a Biased Artifact." It is time to wonder whether we publish the
whole file with your discussion of my contribution and then with the string of messages on
ResearchGate. To do it I will need your professional email which will be required by LinkedIn
and Academia.edu. Let me have an answer fast to clean up this confusing situation.
•
Xavier Rouard
Dear Jacques,
There are two files in
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370376671_Jacques_Coulardeau_vs_Xavier
_Rouard_Retrospective_vs_prospective and the second one includes my remarks on your
contribution. I didn't have the Word file of your contribution to be able to publish a single
paper and wanted to respond to your review of my paper. I fully agree we should publish a
single paper with our discussion. I don't know if we can substitute it for the already published
article. My mail is rouardx@gmail.com, as I am not allowed to make public my mail in
diplomatie.fr for security reasons.
Besides, as concerns Dravidian, it is not Sino-Tibetan or Tibeto-Burman.
Correspondences have been underlined with Indo-European, Altaic, Turkic, and Uralic, I
also found correspondences with Kartvelian, Iberian, and Basque.
View Research Source
25. 25
Preprint: Jacques Coulardeau vs Xavier Rouard Retrospective vs prospective
Xavier Rouard·- Jacques Coulardeau
The file is available, Preprint April 2023
•
Xavier Rouard
PS: I didn't add your file, you certainly added it, I had initially published only my
comments. You can remove it and replace it with a single file with all our comments.
•
Jacques Coulardeau
No way I thought you did it. The Artificial Intelligence of Researchgate.net did it. It even
sent me an email informing me it had added a preprint to my research. We just can't control
AI and ChatGPT behind or further on down the road to mechanicalized human life and
thought that both multiply and amplify the phenomenon. The New York Times just published
an experimental report on AI and ChatGPT: "Watch an A.I. Learn to Write by Reading
Nothing but Shakespeare." They consider six cases from Jane Austen to Harry Potter. I
downloaded two: Shakespeare and Harry Potter. The results are amazing. But the cloud is
doing that all the time and all by itself.
I will take the preprint down from my research and I suggest we work fast on the file I
will finish up right now and send you to your email address, rouardx@gmail.com in half an
hour or one hour.
Take care.
Jacques
File: ChatGPT HK & NY.docx
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
•
Xavier Rouard Author
Many thanks to @Sanket Nawaly, @Mehmoud Hamdy Abd El-Aziz, @Imdadul Haque,
@Shaker A. N. Al Jadaan, @Mohammed Abdul Kadim, @Mustafa Pehlivan, and @Sergios
Pellis for their recommendations. I would be glad to get reads and comments on this new
paper, written with Jacques Coulardeau, a prominent French linguist.
Best regards,
Xavier
•
Jacques Coulardeau Author