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Cardinal directions5/30/2023 He added that when directions were required, they were most likely handled through the use of referents, such as landmarks and other geographic land features. Thus, he concluded that universal directions were less necessary for survival in these ancient cultures. Brown and others believe that ancient small-scale societies (nomads excluded) were not particularly mobile. He noted that cardinal points are particularly useful for cultures that are highly mobile and need finely tuned information to navigate complex spaces and geographies. Additionally, Brown mentioned that is was not particularly surprising to conclude that ancient languages of the remote past lacked terms for cardinal points. Furthermore, Brown explained that distributions of genetically similar cultures and languages revealed that the use of cardinal directions are believed to be quite new relative to the dates assigned to these cultures. In doing so, he concluded that there was little evidence to support the idea that our commonly used cardinal directions and their lexical derivatives were used in these ancient languages. Brown would say, bad assumption! Brown and others have studied many ancient languages such as Indo-European, Polynesian, Mayan, Uto-Aztecan, and Finno-Ugric languages and their studies tell a different story about the evolution of the universal words for cardinal directions.Ä«rown compiled data from 127 globally distributed languages to look for evidence of cross-language references and uniformities in the lexical encoding and naming of the four directions. However, what about the Pre-European cultural use of directions? One would think that ancient cultures assigned words to cardinal points as a common means for navigation. Borealis (or septentrionalis) was replaced with north, australis (or meridionalis) with south, occidentalis with west and orientalis with east. History documents that during the migration period, the Germanic language names for cardinal directions entered the Romance languages, where they replaced the Latin names for their precedents. Primarily, I cannot help but wonder how cardinal directions developed as universal terms for direction the world over? If you are like me, you probably have a lot of questions that surround their etymology (the study of the origin of these words). As you are aware, these commonly accepted directions serve as the basis for map orientation, the compass, and other key navigational aids the world over. Cardinal directions are also referred to as cardinal points and they are defined as the universal directions of north, south, east and west. Thus, the cardinal directions remain essential elements of modern navigation. The word cardinal is synonymous with pivotal, main, and essential. In case you are wondering, cardinal directions have no history or affiliation with either the Catholic Church or the red breasted songbird.
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