Parameterization of Ancient Civilizations Using Unique Identifiers
Language is perhaps one of the most important reflections of human consciousness. The evolution of human language may have followed slow processes that leave us at the mercy of guessing when our ancestors started using languages to communicate among themselves to express emotions and concepts through sounds and gestures.
What may be even harder to answer is the question of when thought processes emerged in the minds of our ancestors. Was it acquired from without or was it induced by factors from within or from both? We will probably never know the incipient condition, how to measure such condition, or the exact time and space of its emergence until we are proven wrong by time and technology.
We are, however, able to inherit, at least partially if not wholly, our ancestors' being and characteristics through what scientific breakthrough discovered as genes that are made up of proteins in a yet not fully understood micro-structure. Nonetheless, they have left us no record that we know of that provides us information about when they started uttering clear and intelligible words, and what exactly or roughly they meant by those words. If they were intelligent enough like us today, they would probably do at least two things in parallel: first utter the words and then write down what they meant by those words lest what they inherit to their descendents would not be incomplete. Or they may not have had the luxury like us today to sit relaxed in conditioned environments, and yet not have the intelligence to go back in time and fully understand what thought processes may have gone through their minds in the non-conditioned harsh environment of their time. That would probably make them no less intelligent than us if we were to measure it in terms of the anxiety going in their minds as thought processes that helped them utter clear and intelligible words. Their descendants have been only building on their achievements of the times we do not fully know yet.
Today, there are tens of thousands of various languages spoken around the world with each language having tens of thousands of vocabularies. With no doubt, the development of such amount of vocabularies in each language must have taken thousands of years. Nonetheless, we do not have enough solid foundation about the evolution of each vocabulary in any language although we can argue well that each vocabulary is a building block that makes up the pieces of the language. That would make any language a reflection of the long history of the society that speaks it.
We can safely say that consciousness enables one to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. Taking this notion as a fundamental premise, we can take steps back into history and construct derivative premises in an attempt to chart some path for a long arduous adventure back into history. We frame these premises in terms of three consciousness measures. These measures are presumed to reflect the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. We have termed these three consciousness measures as Temporal Unique Identification (TUI), Patrilineal/Matrilineal Unique Identification (P/MUI) and Affinity Unique Identification (AUI).
TUI is a measure of uniquely identifying the past, the present and the future daily cycles. For instance, in the English language, to-day refers to the present whereas yester-day and to-morrow uniquely identify one day into the past and the future, respectively. The day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow uniquely identify a day two days into the past and the future, respectively. These unique identifiers are a composite of two or three unique words. Several other languages use unique identifiers for the day three days into the past as well as into the future. Such unique identifiers designate all the seven days of the week. We call such identifiers Complete Temporal Unique Identifiers (CTUI), whereas the rest are called Incomplete Temporal Unique Identifiers (ITUI).
Patrilineal/Matrilineal Unique Identifiers uniquely identify partilineal or matrilineal relationships. For instance, the terms father, grand-father and great grand-father are unique identifiers that go three steps into the past along patrilineal relationship. There are some languages that have up to five unique identifiers into the past along patrilineal relationship identification. What may be most interesting about this unique identifier is whether most of the earlier ancestors' unique identifiers were given for the living or the dead. If they were given for the living, which may be more likely than not, they give us a clue about the longevity of early humans.
The last one, AUI, involves the identification of relatives from both the father's as well as the mother's side. In the English language, Uncle identifies both one's father's and mother's brothers whereas Aunt identifies both one's father's as well as mother's sisters. Other languages have separate unique identifiers for Aunts on the father's side and the mother's side.
We theorize that richer and more diverse unique identifiers in a given language are a reflection of the extent of past civilization of the people who speak the language. By studying these three parameters in different languages of the world, we hope to support the quest to understand better the world's ancient civilizations. We also hope to help a better understanding of the unanswered question, in our opinion, about whether the world's languages have the same roots or parallel roots as well as whether, irrespective of the same or parallel roots, our languages have been showing convergences or divergences over the past or if there has been tendencies in both directions.
