Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00674)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> a bunch of linguist/anthropologists in the
> early 19th centuries posited that similarities in language implied
> similarities in ancestry.

Specifically they were trying to solve the problrm of reconstructing 
prehistoric history using language as an artifact. Thus the legend 
that Abraham hailed from Chaldea receives support from the fact that 
a people who spoke a Semitic tongue left artifacts in that part of 
the world but did not leave anything resembling a history.

Max Mueller and colleagues argued that the conquerors of northern 
India migrated west to conquer Europe as well - a theory which is 
found in HPB's books. In more recent times that theory has been 
dumped in favor of another which says a people who spoke the Indo-
European language originated in Anatolia (Turkey) and migrated into 
Europe and northern India from that point. Indo-European is 
supposedly the predecessor of Sanskrit. This is different from the 
earlier Mueller hypothesis which Blavatsky used. I am not familiar 
enough with the theory to comment on its validity or nonvalidity, but 
it should be noted Anatolia is where Noah's ark is believed to have 
come to rest, so there may be a religious motivation behind these 
modifications of the earlier theory. Blavatsky also believed the 
Aryan conquerors came down after the Flood, but she accepted Bailly's 
theory that the most logical place for a group of survivors to be 
found was Tibet, which because of its elevation, would have remained 
dry during a general submersion.

I mention all this because, whether or not one accepts what Blavatsky 
has to say, she is easier to read and understad if you understand the 
background, which she leaves to us to find out for ourselves.