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To: PuTiDaMo
"Mhmm, did it also mention the dating and location of the site of this Tocharian A paper discovery? And what was the chapter and/or page number where all this was mentioned in the book"

In the book, The Tarim Mummies, about two thirds the way down page 321: "The oldest archaeological find of paper employed as a writing medium for writing dates to about AD 110 and our major source of early paper documents is, not suprisingly, the desiccating sands of the Tarim Basin."

Earlier on this same page it says that the Chinese were the earliest users of paper and that it was used for "clothes, hats, belts, armour, packing material, paper handkerchiefs, toilet paper, wallpaper, kites, currency(9th century), cards, umbrellas and etc. - and the Chinese were invariably the earliest to utilize them."

Later this evening I will look in my book, The Mummies Of Urumchi, for the source of the exact quote.

26 posted on 05/10/2007 1:02:05 PM PDT by blam
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To: blam

"The oldest archaeological find of paper employed as a writing medium for writing dates to about AD 110 and our major source of early paper documents is, not suprisingly, the desiccating sands of the Tarim Basin."
Ah, I see. Thanks. But it does not mention that a Tocharian script was written on the paper, let alone Tocharian A. If Tocharian A was really written on this paper, even a 110 CE paper, many in Indo-European linguistic studies would be a-flurry with excitement at finding examples of Tocharian script that predate known Tocharian writing by almost half a millennium. By 110 CE, though, the Han Dynasty had a well-established presence in the Tarim Basin, so it is quite likely that this paper was inscribed with ancient Hanzi.

Besides, Mallory and Mair technically claim this as the earliest discovery of paper used as a writing medium, not of paper per se - which according to the third source I quoted earlier is much older than 110 CE. Nor do they mention that it was found with any of the mummies. When you wrote that "the oldest paper ever found was found with this area", I thought you were talking about the oldest paper of any use, not just writing paper.

Actually, even the claim that the first paper writing dates to 110 CE no longer holds, because the second source I quoted earlier mentions a discovery of paper dating to 8 BCE in an ancient Han garrison, with specifically Chinese character script written on it.

This would mean that, regardless of what script was written on the 110 CE paper, the oldest discovery of paper used as a writing medium dates to 8 BCE, and the oldest paper writing was in Han Chinese characters.
27 posted on 05/11/2007 2:43:56 AM PDT by PuTiDaMo
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