Popular Science March 1928
"Swastika May Trace Races to Lost Pacific Continent"
Many thousands of years ago there stood in the Pacific Ocean a continent where thrived a remarkable civilization. In a tremendous earth upheaval the continent vanished, swallowed by the waters. But before the catastrophe, adventurers from that lost land drifted to other continents and left their marks.
Such is the fascinating theory advanced by Col. James Churchward, of India, to explain the origin of mysterious symbols found carved and painted on rocks.
Most famous of the symbols is the swastika cross found on rocks in America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. In North America the rock writings, or petroglyphs, have been generally attributed to comparatively recent tribes of Indians. Colonel Churchward, however, contends that many of them are very ancient, and that their original source was the lost continent. With the aid of key symbols discovered in India, he claims ability to translate some of the mysterious writings.
Interest in tracing the family tree of modern man has been heightened by the recent statement of Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, noted anthropologist, that the low-browed grisly Neanderthal man, who lived 40,000 years ago, may have been our direct ancestor, instead of a distant cousin of a different species. The belief has been that this prehistoric race was exterminated by the later Cro-Magnon men and left no descendants, however Dr. Hrdlicka finds new evidence that he formed a definite link in the long chain of human evolution.
Conclusion
What clearly comes out from this examination is the fact that:
In the past, when "European linguists" wanted to come up with a word for a concept, they started by describing the concept using a Turkish word or expression. Once the definition is complete and satisfactory, the resulting Turkish word or phrase is anagrammatized in various ways so that each version can be fitted into anyone of the so-called "European" languages in accordance with pre-selected forms. This process most likely was the same for manufacturing words for the so-called "Semitic" languages. The resulting concoction is presented as being a word of an "old" Indo-European or Semitic source, of course with no mention of the Turkish source. No one would know what went on or how that word was invented as the process has never been revealed before as as they are revealed in these pages now. Thus all linguists, and of course also the public at large, are kept in the dark and very "happy" indeed! The provided etymologies appear tidy and convincing but in fact are falsehoods embellished with sophistry. In one way, the process has been very cleverly executed by the word-manufacturers for the "European and Semitic" languages. On the other hand, it is nothing less than "stealing", that is, from one mother/father language (i.e., Turkish) and "robbery" of the civilization expressed in that language. In this secret stealing process, they assign the linguistic material usurped from Turkish to other groups who have been presenting themselves to the world as "civilized" and "all knowing" while portraying the ancient Turkic world as "primitive" and "barbar". This is a sneaky way of "switching the tables!"
My only interpretation is that Mr. Kaya believes that Turkish people are the original advanced civilization from which all other cultures copied, and that the evidence is in the scrambled words in other languages that have been stolen from the Turkish. Never mind that the spelling of words (in any language) change over time or that the derivation of some words can be traced to other sources, there is no refuting the words or theories of Polat Kaya in his mind. I laud Mr. Kaya's adherence to his beliefs but with all due respect - the random application of the anagramation of words with such a small sample size does not provide conclusive proof of what essentially appears to be a racist viewpoint.
Were Mr. Kaya able to show that a significant number of words in a significant number of languages could be derived in this manner from ancient Turkish from spellings that were originally used when the word was 'stolen' - then maybe he has a point. Until such evidence is produced however, I am unable to regard the anagramation of stolen Turkish words to be credible.
Until the posting in April 2010 dealing with the word 'knucklehead' - Mr. Kaya had provided examples that added to his evidence.
With the analysis of the word, 'knucklehead' Polat Kaya demonstrates that any word can be scrambled and made to resemble an ancient Turkish word according to the 'Word Detective'. According to the cited document, the word was created in WW2 and I don't think it likely that some GIs thought to steal a word from Turkish after a hard day fighting for their lives. Pardon the pun, but 'knucklehead' was just one example too many.
I sent an email to the original posting and Mr. Kaya replied. Subsequently I sent an email to Mr. Kaya and the moderated mailing list to redirect the question to the issue of the age of the word 'knucklehead.' His reply was more-or-less the same as the previous reply and contained the following:
Polat Kaya: I have written about words that are more than 2000 years old and still shown that they were manufactured from Turkish. The "70 years" you keep talking about has no bearing on the anagrammatization process. So this argument of yours is faulty. I can see that you have a problem in accepting what I am demonstrating - but that is your problem - definitely not mine!
On the other hand, for the person(s) doing the anagrammatizing, it is a totally different story. Someone can take an ancient (or recent) word or phrase, restructure the text as he pleases, come up with a word in a new format - and assign it a meaning that comes from the phrase it was fabricated from - and claim it as his own. The thief knows that if he steals a word or an expression
in this manner from Turkish, no one will notice this "theft" or even know the difference - because what is stolen is not a physical object. Therefore nothing appears to be "missing". Words are not like a jacket or a car. If my jacket or car is stolen, I will sense it because something physical that I use daily is missing! It is not like that with words and phrases. No one can sense that behind closed doors, someone is manipulating Turkish words to fabricate new words for English - or other languages. It is because of this invulnerability that the anagrammatizer does the "theft" and gets away with it. This is the motivation why he does what he does best. Even the "car" thief would change at least the color of the stolen car in order to make it unrecognizable. Anagrammatizing a word or phrase is like repainting the stolen car but it is very difficult for 'linguists' to recognize this alteration and make a linguistic connection between the fabricated word and its source text. That is the very reason that 'anagramatizing' is the perfect linguistic stealing technique. Countles numbers of IE words have been manufactured on this basis from Turkish words and phrases - old and new.
As one follower of my writings, you know that I have also shown that many words from Greek, Latin, English and other so-called "Indo-European" (IE) languages have also been fabricated in this manner. So far, I have heard objections, but without any valid and rational explanation proving me wrong. I am afraid you are no exception. But, I am glad that you are raising your voice, but, I must also say that your rational is "no rational" as it lacks logic. I am afraid in the make up of languages and together with it in many other subjects the world people has been conned like children by few very secretive working organization, most likely by the religious ones throughout the history.
I have also provided him the opportunity to examine this presentation before it is published. His reply is here.
I am still interested in collecting any information that corroborates James Churchward's writings on the Great Uighur Empire, however I have no reason to consult Polat Kaya's data.
Have a great day,
Jack Churchward
Clearwater, Florida
btw, with the chance that these postings about the word 'knucklehead' could be deleted, the following PDFs of the pages can be referenced:
Original Posting
My reply and Mr. Kaya's reply (my reply was not distributed to the list, but included as part of his response.)
My 2nd reply and Mr. Kaya's reply (my reply was not distributed to the list, but included as part of his response.)
Mr. Kaya's reply to this blog posting, prior to it being posted. Please note that the posting is/was unchanged from the original that Mr. Kaya viewed.