Kiritimati,
an atoll in the Pacific ocean, is part of the Republic of Kiribati.
Formerly known as the Christmas Islands, the atoll was first sighted on
Christmas Eve in 1777 by the English navigator Captain James
Cook, hence its corrupted name pronounced in the Gilbertese language
Kiritimati *
(1) is situated squarely on the
Equator,
and it is internationally significant for many reasons. Besides being the
largest land area of any atoll in the world, Kiritimati atoll is
uniquely located on the longitude that separates geographically the West
from
the East. The atoll sits on the 180º line of longitude
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and is the imaginary line known as
the International Date Line *
(2) which
separates two consecutive calendar days.
In this capacity
it is also the first inhabited place on Earth to experience the New Year
each year. As a consequence, the atoll is considered the point of reference
par excellence in Celestial navigation (known as Astronavigation.)
It is no wonder that
in the early 1950s, the atoll was Wernher von Braun's first
choice for a launching site for manned spacecraft.
For the purpose of
our subject matter, lets hypothesize that an individual is straddling
the exact spot on the dividing line i.e. (which I name the Kiritimati
line ) having one foot in the West and the other
in the East .
This individual could
then boast to be standing simultaneously in the West and in the
East
and could switch instantaneously with an amazing ease from one side to
the other. Since each side technically belongs to either the realm of the
Eastern world or the Western world, this individual then would be naturally
awe-inspired at a feat, where these two different parallel universes
*
(3) virtually
meet and share virtually many similarities.
Is there then a probability
for the existence of a parallel universe mimicking or diverging from our
own? Is this a theory which could be eminently testable even if it contained
unobservable entities within it? I think there is a way to put this
to a test in the field of historical linguistics, where the reader can
be the judge of the investigated results.
This test has to
with etymologies of words in languages with a long written history.
As we all know, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words
change from culture to culture over time. The following is a succinct history
of this field known as Comparative Linguistics
In 1786,
Sir William Jones, an English judge stationed in India, had the revelation
that Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, the ancient language
of India, had sprung from a common source. Jones also proposed that the
Celtic and Germanic languages, along with Old Persian, 
probably belonged to the same language family.
William Jones, though
fluent in the
Classical Arabic language, purposely excluded it from
his proposal, because to him it was not relevant. We now know that
this mega-language family, called Indo-European, encompasses most
of the languages of Europe and extends into southwestern Asia. His comparative
approach became one of the key tools of subsequent linguistic analysis.
Indo-European etymologists
apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information
about languages that are too old for any direct information (such as writing)
to be known. The problem is that these etymologists only analyze what they
thought are related languages using a technique known as the comparative
method, which allegedly helped them in making inferences about their shared
parent language and its vocabulary.
In my opinion,
following this path they ended up with convoluted results befitting
a pseudo science. This series is an attempt to expose these contradictions
and to set the record straight.
Although scientists
in different fields may have different vocabularies and perspectives, they
all share a way of thinking which is essential to scientific knowledge:
All exhibit "what-if" thinking.
This kind of thinking
in hypothetical situations keeps a scientist open-minded. it prevents
him/her from ignoring or not collecting data which may result in exculpatory
evidence. This kind of attitude keeps scientist thoroughly prepared, and
prevents them from ignoring alternative theories of the evidence which
will surely arise in the counter evidences. This investigation will attempt
to prove that adversarial system of evidences relies on thinking in hypothetical,
examining each possibility, and looking at all the angles, because we expect
proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
In the quest to uncover
and dispute many of the Indo-European conclusions, a problem arose: which
selected words were to begin this investigation? This was quickly solved
by simply randomly picking up key words, often introduced by the members
themselves in their messages. For example, lately our forum spoke
of a recent rush of "harassment" incidents in Cairo. This
prompted the idea to deal with buzz words such as "harass",
and to investigate their potential connection with the Arabic Language.
On West side
is the English word and on the East side of the hypothetical
"Kiritimati dividing line" is its Classical Arabic equivalent
in a parallel linguistic universe.
The reader will be
invited to discriminate between the real world and the other world of science
fiction and decide for himself or herself, which is which.
Ishinan |
