Evening star., 1941-03-06
Of Stors, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science Progress
In Laboratory, Field
And Study
BIZ Thomas X. Henry.

| here say may go down IN history with the
translation of the Rosetta stone which
opened up the language of ancient Egypt
more than a century ago-has just been
| reported to the Pan-American Science
Congress here by Connecticut fire
insurance executive, Benjamin Lee
Whorf.
The writing of the Indians who built
up in Central America early in the
Christian era one of the worlds great
original civilizations hitherto has baffled
scholars who have been able to interpret
only various calendar and number signs.
Words and sentences have been unin-
telligible.
The Maya wrote in sequence of for
malized pictures such as a snake, a bird.
a lizard, feather. Actually they were
neither pictures nor letters, Mr.. Whorf
explains, but letters in the process Of
evolving out of pictures, much the same
as were the Egyptian hieroglyphics.
knowledge of the Mayan word snake, u
for instance, would give no clue to the
| syllable expressed by the snake letter.
The letter would not mean SNAKE" but
some sound suggested by snake" to
the unknown ancestors of the Maya, and
probably the association already has been
| lost by the man who actually did the
writing, just as few people are aware
that when they write capital A they
are drawing an upside-down picture of
bulls head.
One trouble has been that there has
haoy, M ,,auru, 0Docotfo AR
Whorf says, although there is essentially
an equivalent Of 1t which has been neg
lected. This stone, found at the mouth
of the Nile in 1899, contained "hiero-
glyphics" used in Egyptian manuscripts
and the same royal proclamation, al
though not an exact translation, in
Greek. BY means Of this stone the
French scholar Champollion was able
in a few years to read ancient Egyptian.
Mr.. Whorf hopes to accomplish the same
for the ancient Mayan.
The Maya language, essentially the
same as at the time of the conquest,
still is spoken in Yucatan. Mr.. Whorf is
familiar with it, as well as several closely
related Indian dialects. In the same
tic, the language of a large part of
modern Egypt. Moreover, he found a
fairly comprehensive Mayan dictionary
prepared by a Spanish friar in the 10th
century.
Most important of all, he reports, was
his little Rosetta stone" which he
literally had to assemble himself-instead
of having 1t handed to him as the
Egyptian stone was handed to Champol-
lion by Napoleon. From Mayan monu-
ments scholars have been able to deduce
the carved symbols which stood for
the directions, the names of the gods,
the colors, and several animals. In some
manuscripts pictures of the creatures
were drawn beside the sequence of letter
symbols which denoted their names.
There remained the laborious task of
checking these symbols against the
Mayan words and determining their
phonetic values. The job has required
five or six years.
Says Mr.. Whorf: "The Mayas used
small, picture-like signs to represent
sounds, or fractions of utterances, usuallv
syllable or less in extent, and combined
these signs so that the combined frac-
tions of utterances outlined the total
utterance of word or sentence. The
sign itself was of no moment"
The Mayan language contained several
hundred of these letters, he points out,
and the Interpretation of only % Of
them, however laborious. can be con-
sidered only as foothold. When the
Job is completed, however, it will be pos
sible to read Mayan literature wherever
it is encountered and the secrets of their
civilization will be revealed.
Government proposals to place some
of the essential minerals and vitamins
in flour apparently have aroused some
opposition in some parts Of the country
due to an unfortunate name for one of
the substances.
This is nicotine acid, one of the
vitamin B complex, which has remark
able effect in clearing up both clinical
and sub-clinical symptoms of the wide
spread deficiency disease, pellagra and
which, in minimum quantities, is essen
tial to life itself.
First objection is to nicotine" The
vitamin was first isolated from nicotine.
1t now is made synthetically. But the
name has an unfortunate association.
For several generations teachers and
preachers have stressed the evils of
nicotine" the deadly poison in tobacco.
A dog will drop dead if drop of 1t
is placed on his tongue.
Nicotine acid, of course, is not nico-
tine. 1t has absolutely no poisonous
properties whatever. There is carbon in
prussic acid, perhaps the most deadly
poison known to man. There is also
carbon in sugar. The carbon, in both
cases, is identical. 1t would be just as
sensible to decry sugar as a poison
because prussic acid kills people.
The second objection is to acid
associated in the public mind with some
thing sour and with corrosive properties.
at will eat through the Innings of our
stomachs," they are saying in some rural
communities.
Actually the vitamin is not quite so
acid as is orange juice.
/