Steven R. Fischer Livres

The book delves into Steven Roger Fischer's groundbreaking achievements in deciphering two significant ancient scripts: the Rongorongo of Easter Island and the Phaistos Disk from Crete. Fischer's work revealed that the Rongorongo was not just a mnemonic tool but was used for creative writing, while his decipherment of the Phaistos Disk unlocked the ancient Minoan language's connection to Mycenaean Greek. This narrative highlights Fischer's exceptional contributions to the field of epigraphy and his status as a leading figure among glyphbreakers.

This wide-ranging study of the Pacific Islands provides a dynamic and provocative account of the peopling of the Pacific, and its broad impact on world history.

From the earliest scratches on stone and bone to the languages of computers and the internet, A History of Writing offers an investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world. Illustrated with numerous examples, this book offers a global overview in a format that everyone can follow. Steven Roger Fischer also reveals his own discoveries made since the early 1980s, making it a useful reference for students and specialists as well as a delightful read for lovers of the written word everywhere.

It is tempting to take the tremendous rate of contemporary linguistic change for granted. What is required, in fact, is a radical reinterpretation of what language is. Steven Roger Fischer charts the history of language from the times of Homo erectus, Neanderthal humans and Homo sapiens through to the nineteenth century, when the science of linguistics was developed, as he analyses the emergence of language as a science and its development as a written form. He considers the rise of pidgin, creole, jargon and slang, as well as the effects radio and television, propaganda, advertising and the media are having on language today. Originally published in 1999, this new format edition, which includes a new preface by the author, also shows how digital media will continue to reshape and re-invent the ways in which we communicate.

Famed for its breathtaking isolation, Easter Island was a verdant South-Sea idyll when a small canoeful of Polynesians arrived in c AD 700. Centuries later the island's statues were famous throughout the world. This book presents a comprehensive history of Easter Island, its people and their extraordinary story.

From the earliest scratches on stone and bone to the languages of computers and the internet, this title offers an investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world. It focuses on the emergence of complete writing systems in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC. schovat popis

Takes in a wonderful diversity of things."-Nature. Now available in paperback, this final volume in the trilogy Language/Writing/Reading traces the complete story of reading from the time when symbols first acquired meaning through to the electronic texts of the digital age.

Our planet hosts over a million islands. From Britain to Japan, Mauritius to Manhattan, they are small living geological, biological and cultural laboratories. This title reveals how since time began islands have been one of the primary birthplaces for plants, animals and proto-humans.

Delve in to the Scholastica Psykana in this great novel from Black Library Suffer not the witch to live, unless by their service they might earn redemption. This is the creed of the scholastica psykana, a brutal foundry in which those with psychic power might be taught to serve. On the eve of her sanctioning as a primaris psyker within these very halls, Glavia Aerand, former captain of the Cadian 900th Regiment, receives a startling premonition – one concerning her old unit and a dangerous psychic artefact hidden on the planet where they are deployed. After a reunion she never expected – or wanted – Aerand finds herself mired in a vicious campaign on the psychically active world of Visage, where the shallow seas and endless fogs are rumoured to swallow the souls of the dead. Haunted by growing suspicions of her new commander and the manifestations of the sinister relic, Aerand must trust in her new-found abilities to keep her former comrades alive, and confront an ancient threat that could consume Visage entirely.

Crete's celebrated Phaistos Disk, discovered in 1908 and dated to ca. 1600 B.C., will seemingly forever be that «permanent thorn in the flesh of Minoan epigraphists.» Yet a comprehensive internal analysis of its 241 pictographic characters in the 61 inward-spiraling «fields» or sign groupings reveals an unmistakable and describable linguistic structure, which, in conjunction with cognate script comparisons, prevails a retrieval of the pictograms' underlying sound values. The present study concentrates on this intricate step-by-step process of internal analysis and phonetic retrieval.