Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

tu quoque in calalo

A link in the commentary over at Languagehat’s entry on Bulgarian Linear A lead me to an essay entitled “Algonquins, Egyptians, & Uto-Aztecs” by Emeritus Professor of History Cyclone Covey of Wake Forest University. The first paragraph begs the reader to lay on:

If Algoquins descend from Paleo-Indians past many-millennia gaps, Morris Swadesh 12,000-15,000 years later could not have recognized the language they brought with them as genetically related to Indo-European, which spread from the “nuclear zone”—West Zagros mountains to East Turkey meadows—with agriculture in the ritual language of the regulating Goddess-religion and could not have reached America until long after a Bering land bridge went under. We have to relinquish our taboo against ancient sea passage but by no means Paleo-Indian chase of mammoths and mastodons during the last glacier—or before. Blocking downcoast passage, the glacier guided amblers to central Canada before they could feasibly turn south. Two Sichuan exploration teams, one tracing mountains, the other rivers, took that route all the way to Central America or farther, traditionally ca.2210-2180 B.C. before and during the “legendary” Xia Dynasty that preceded the “legendary” Shang.

And the last paragraph bids adieu in like manner:

It has grown unnecessary to belabor transpacific stylistic identity. You will see this ancient Geometric anew in nearly any East Asian restaurant of recent immigrants to the U.S. Bird’s discoveries—devoid of Egyptian parallels—suggest that the Akkadian-inscribed grain-measuring bowl found on the Bolivian bank of Lake Titicaca; “Mycenaean” stirrup-vases with goateed effigy heads Ruth Verrill took for Sargon I; and 3rd millennium holdovers of Shumerian she found in Quechua diffused with Egyptian elements via Indonesian, Chinese, or Central Asian migrants in the 1st millennium A.D.

In between, it goes on like this for seven (web) pages. I found the style reminiscent of my favorite medieval writer, Geoffrey of Monmouth. Your mileage may vary; try it out for yourself.