.
3000 years of Deaf History resources open online:
"Deaf People, Sign Language & Communication, in Ottoman & Modern
Turkey: observations and excerpts from 1300 to 2008, from sources in
English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin and Turkish, with introduction
and some annotation" is now open online, at:
www.independentliving.org/miles200907.html and .pdf
I have also just revised the shorter annotated bibliog, "Hittite Deaf Men in the
13th Century BC", within the context of ancient and medieval evidence of
deaf people in the Middle East, at:
www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200809.html and .pdf
In the past 12 years I was collecting historical evidence on deaf people and
sign language at Istanbul and more widely in the Ottoman empire, and in 20th
century Turkey, in several European languages. During the past year, more
sources from Turkish were added. It has also been stimulating and
informative to correspond with Ezgi Dikici, whose MA thesis, giving useful
coverage of deaf people in Turkish history, became available on the web.
I decided to put the whole collection of Ottoman textual evidence online, full
text (subject to copyright limits for the 20th century), in date order, with
introduction and annotation. More than 250 sources are cited and quoted.
The normal academic practice would have been to 'get a book out of it'. But
publishers do not like to print a book for sale and then find the entire contents
have been made freely available! Better just to put the materials online,
where millions can find them if they wish, and maybe a few hundred will
actually study them, and make up their own minds, write their own articles, or
whatever they wish.
To improve access, the webmaster has linked up a 'Quick Tour', where
readers can hop through a sample of interesting text over several centuries,
and then decide whether they want to dive in deeper. Some URLs also
appear of graphics related to deaf people in the Ottoman era. Researchers
will of course skim through the whole collection, and could probably think of
many ways to improve the annotations. I hope too that teachers at various
levels will have a dip in the sea of texts, and will pick out some that their
students can read and discuss.
There are remarkable historical treasures in Turkey, for the Deaf World and
its history, and historical sign linguistics. The archaeological evidence of
Hittite Deaf men in ancient Anatolia (Turkey) tells of probably the earliest
deaf people functioning as a team. How did those Hittite Deaf people
communicate with one another -- (i) by writing little notes in cuneiform on
soft clay tablets? (ii) by training themselves to wiggle their ears in a secret
code? (iii) by raising their hands and arms to make signs, along with
nodding their heads with eye movements and facial signals? The cuneiform
texts mentioning Deaf Hittites have not yet provided an answer to this
question – but thousands more are being dug up and deciphered, which may
eventually shed more light on the evidence already in hand!
Respectfully submitted…
M. Miles
West Midlands, UK
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