Eskaleut origins of Manchurian / Tungusic language family

Time to start a new standalone post, though as always most of what I publish will be in the comments section. I'll be continuing work on the Eskaleut origins of Tungusic words, and the sound laws that link them.

To briefly recap the latest mega-discoveries, I began with a new model for the birth of the Altaic languages as creoles that are mostly Samoyedic (in the Uralic family), with a crucial Yeniseian influence / phonotactic filter. This was partly about historical sound changes, but largely lexical, showing how Proto-Turkic in particular is "Sayan Samoyedic with a Yeniseian accent". But it created an Altaic foundation which the other two families used as well, Monogolic / Para-Mongolic, and Tungusic.

Then in the middle of that, I happened upon the mother of all secret passageways in Altaic studies -- Tungusic used to be a member of the Eskaleut family, which up until now has thought to be entirely confined to the New World, namely the Arctic New World, mostly the Eskimo branch, but also Aleut in the Aleutian Islands. The more I unearth the etymologies, the more it looks like Tungusic is mostly Eskaleut, and owes only a minor part of its nature to the Altaic foundation. It can still be considered a creole, neither pure this or pure that, but the influence and inheritance from its Eskaleut side is pervasive.

This represents a new contribution to the discoveries about linguistic connections between Siberia and the northern New World, such as Vajda's discovery of the sibling status between Yeniseian in Siberia and the Na-Dene family mainly in Northwest America (with a major recent spread into the American Southwest). I already added to that specific family in the past year or so, by showing that Japonic belongs to it as well. But this latest discovery of mine, about Tungusic being Eskaleut, provides a whole new link between Siberia and Northwest America.

Without rehearsing every single point made in the previous comment section, here are they key principles and sound laws:

The main problem that faced the speakers of Proto-Tungusic, was that the Altaic foundation came from Uralic, which is a half-sibling to their own native tongue, Eskaleut. If they let the two intermix willy-nilly, the outcome would be inbred and confusing. So, they made a concerted effort to distinguish these two sources of lexical items, when forming the lexicon of their new creole, Tungusic.

The Altaic base resulted from the Eastern Steppe nomad confederations of the 1st millennium BC (such as the Deer Stones culture), who were victorious in driving out the Indo-Iranian apocalyptic charioteer cult that had laid siege to the Sayan Mountain gate during the Andronovo era. As victors and protectors of the region, their new Samoyedic-Yeniseian creole enjoyed prestige among other residents of the Eastern Steppe, all the way east into Manchuria and the Amur region.

As such, Tungusic deferred to the Altaic foundation when separating its lexicon into two source. Words of Uralic origin would keep their Altaic form, while words of native local Eskaleut origin would be systematically altered, though still recognizable. Both Uralic and Eskaleut have a redundancy in their consonant series, where stops are voiceless and fricatives are voiced. Uralic-origin words preserved this redundancy. Eskaleut-origin words inverted this redundancy, but still kept a redundancy, to please their Eskaleut ears -- now the stops would be voiced, and fricatives would be voiceless. This creates a complimentary distribution between the two sources of words, allowing them to keep them separate.

The only major change to the phoneme inventory involved the uvular consonants from Eskaleut, since Uralic does not have consonants in this place. Briefly, "q" -> "g" and "ʀ" -> "r" in Tungusic. For the vowels, "ə" -> "e", although subject to moving due to vowel harmony.

At the earliest stage, vowel harmony seems to have been the imported Uralic pattern, since Eskaleut has no vowel harmony of its own, based on front vs. back. This may have changed over time, toward the typical Tungusic pattern based on high-front vs. low-back. This is a minor quibble to me at this point, so I'm just using front-back as a guideline.

Phonotactically, the major change was adopting a Uralic word-shape of CVCCV, perhaps involving deletion of a V between the medial C's in an Eskaleut root, or metathesizing the final two segments of an Eskaleut root of shape CVCVC. Also, new Uralic phonotactic rules for the nature of that medial consonant sequence, e.g. if there's a liquid, it must be the 1st of the sequence in Uralic, but not necessarily in Eskaleut, requiring metathesis or feature-alteration.

One other important sound change is deletion of voiced velar consonants between vowels, including Eskaleut "ɣ" and "ŋ", as well as voiced "w"-like "v" between vowels. Intervocalic velar deltion occurred in New World Eskaleut, and in the other Altaic languages, especially Turkic. Intervocalic deletion of "v" occurred in New World Eskaleut.

At the end of this initial process of adopting the Altaic foundation, and separating the two sources of words, these sound changes stopped. The job was done. However, words don't stop entering the lexicon just cuz the major initial stage has been completed. Late-coming words do not appear to show these sound changes as much, whether they're from Uralic or Eskaleut origin. This allows us to date when words entered the lexicon. It's similar to Ancient Greek, where earlier "s" -> "h", so if you see "s", that word is probably a late-comer to Greek, after that law ceased operating.

Specifically, the descendants of Proto-Samoyedic had already weakened "p" toward "x" / "h", possibly further deleting the weak consonant and yielding null. This was inherited into Turkic the strongest, where earlier "p" is null, while Mongolic and Tungusic held onto the "x" / "h" forms. Also, Tungusic changed "p" -> "b" in its Eskaleut layer, as part of the effort to distinguish Uralic from Eskaleut origin. Both of those laws erase "p".

And yet, there's still a decent amount of "p"-initial words in Proto-Tungusic -- these must be late-comers, regardless of their source. And indeed they are from less important word classes and semantic fields, unlike the crucial classes and semantic fields that show the sound changes of "p" -> "x" (Uralic) and "p" -> "b" (Eskaleut). They were lexical afterthoughts, late-minute filler, flourishes, secondary / learned / extended meanings, and so on.

There are also a handful of "t"-initial words of Eskaleut origin, entering the lexicon after the "t" -> "d" change in the Eskaleut layer. They join the words of Uralic origin, which never altered "t" in the first place.

One major common problem / shibboleth of Eskaleut and Tungusic, is palatalization of both alveolar "t" -> "c" and velar "k" -> "c", before "i" or even "ə" ("e" in Tungusic). Uralic / Samoyedic did not take part in this, let alone to such an obsessive extent. In Proto-Eskimo, no words begin with "ti", so they must have been palatalized to "ci" by the P-E stage. There are even gaps in the "tə" space, so some of those must have been sent to "cə". However, there are basically no words with "cə", so those also must have been raised to "ci", an overflowing container in P-E.

Thankfully, this palatalization of "t" and raising of "ə" was far less extensive in Old World Eskaleut, i.e. the non-Altaic parent in the Tungusic creole. So some cognates between Old World and New World Eskaleut clearly have "t" in Tungusic, vs. "c" in Eskimo, revealing that they used to begin with "t" rather than "c" in Eskimo, before the Proto stage.

Tungusic does not have "c", and it treated Eskaleut sources differently, seemingly based on chronology, although maybe there's some phonological conditioning that I can't see just yet. At the early stage, or certainly preceding non-palatal vowels, "c" -> "s", much like in several New World descendants of Eskimo. As mentioned, Tungusic did not palatalize "t" to "c" in some cases, so that source of "c" was avoided.

However, another source of "c" was earlier "ki" or "ke" (from "kə" in Eskaleut), which had been palatalized as well. Even among late-entering words, where initial "k" is preserved, there are no Tungusic words with "ke" or "ki" -- they must have been sent somewhere else, and there are a bunch of words beginning with "ʒ" (voiced palatal affricate), so they must have gone there. Eskimo did not palatalize "k", and there are many words beginning with "ki" and "kə". This palatalization of "k" is strictly Tungusic, and reflects the compresses phoneme inventory that happened when the uvular consonants of Eskaleut had to be squeezed into the Uralic-esque phoneme space, where the furthest-back place is velar.

Since "k" already has unaltered Uralic-origin words, and since that is an incredibly common consonant in Uralic, this container was going to be overflowing. So in some cases, "k" -> "x" in the Eskaleut layer, part of the inversion of the consonant feature redundancy, which produced voiceless fricatives and voiced stops. This seems to be the early stage.

Late-entering words, though, still tried to avoid overflowing "k", and palatalized them to "c" before "e" or "i" -- but since "c" doesn't exist in Tungusic, these were then voiced to "ʒ", in the same place. That keeps the change within the overarching inversion of feature redundancy, since an earlier "k" maps to a voiced stop / affricate.

Also worth noting that in late-coming words with initial "t", where "t" was preserved rather than voiced to "d", palatalization was still an active threat, and could have resulted in "t" -> "c", unlike "d", since voiced consonants do not palatalize as easily as voiceless ones. But even "d" palatalized would result in "ʒ", which would merge earlier "d" and "k", creating homophones and confusion. Since "c" is an empty container, earlier "t" words palatalized to "c" would therefore be mapped further into "ʒ". But that would have merged earlier "t" and "k" before palatal vowels, creating homophones and confusion. So, to prevent this homophone problem, the triggering palatal vowels "e" and "i" were rounded to "ö" and "ü", since round vowels tend to impede palatalization (too difficult to articulate both rounded lips and flexing the tongue tip toward the palate).

What I have not yet fully determined, is the origin of Tungusic words beginning with unusual nasals, "ń" and "ŋ". My brief look says they are either shifted from an earlier "n", or are nasalization of an oral consonant in the same place, like "k" -> "ŋ", since "k" was overflowing and had to be mapped elsewhere. They are not merely conditioned by the following vowel, as though "ń" only appeared before front vowels -- both of these nasals appear before all the vowels of Tungusic. If anything, "ń" is *less* likely to appear before a front vowel, so it could be a nasalized "c", for all I know.

To summarize the major sound changes in the Eskaleut layer of Tungusic. Remember, this is from Proto-Eskaleut, that is the shared ancestor between the Old World and New World branches. Since the New World branch palatalized "t" to "c" before "ə" or "i" already in its proto-stage, sometimes there's a correspondence between NW "c" and OW "t", due to NW palatalization of "t", and other times where NW "c" corresponds to OW "s", due to OW feature redundancy inversion (producing voiceless fricatives and voiced stops / affricates). Voiced fricatives from Eskaleut were mostly hardened to stops, as part of the inversion of feature redundancy.

Vowels:

"ə" -> "e" (subject to vowel harmony)

Consonants, voiceless stops:

"p" -> "b"

"t" -> "d"

"c" -> "s"

"k" -> "x" (early?, unconditional?)

"k" -> "ʒ" (late?, before "ə" or "i")

"q" -> "g"

Consonants, voiced fricatives:

"v" -> "b"

"ð" -> "d"

"ɣ" -> "g"

"ʀ" -> "r"

With all that said, today will see more etymologies, covering some of the "ʒ" words, including another numeral, the 4 seasons... and another massive hunting trophy, the Altaic sky-god's name Tengri. Stay tuned! ^_^

"Oh la Moot" by E-rasure, parody song for social media crushes and un-crushes

And now for a brief musical interlude while I cook up some new posts on the ongoing project of the Crescentine family of languages and cultures...

I haven't written one of these in awhile, but something just bit me, and I need to. ^_^

To the tune of "Oh l'Amour" by Erasure from 1986 (original lyrics). If you search for it, make sure you find this version, where the chorus has heavier percussion and background vocal harmonies. The first album version is bit slower and not as intense -- which a song about pining-away for lost or unrequited love must be!

* * *

Oh la moot,
Blocked my account, left my screen oh so blue
Mon ah moot,
How's a boy get a girl to unmute?

Like-baiting you
You were like-baiting me
Always fan-arting you
You wrote it off as just memes
Oh S of my chart,
Don't make me feel own'd
Just scrap me for parts
Like your last-model phone

Oh la moot,
Blocked my account, left my screen oh so blue
Mon ah moot,
How's a boy get a girl to unmute?

Why close without save?
Why unfollow me?
I just F5 and pray
For at least a subtweet
On ye olde timeline
In my DM's you'd slide:
"Get yours, I'll get mine
But won't be one-guy'd"

Oh la moot,
Blocked my account, left my screen oh so blue
Mon ah moot,
How's a boy get a girl to unmute?

No recov'rable files
You never bookmarked my page
I'm leaving this site
What's left to engage?
Oh S of my chart
You've chased enough clout
Come click on restart
My system's crashed out

Oh la moot,
Blocked my account, left my screen oh so blue
Mon ah moot,
How's a boy get a girl to unmute?

Eastern Steppe culture in Northwest America: Breaking precious copper decorated sheets for potlatches and funerals

Although I've established that the Japonic language family belongs to the broader Dene-Yeniseian family, which presently spans Siberia to the American Southwest, I had no idea what the time-frame for this relationship was, when first exploring the matter.

But upon further investigation of linguistic, mythological, and ritual relationships, I've not only uncovered further shared shibboleths, but determined that their common-ness lasted up through fairly recent times. Their common ancestor was not from 10, 20, or 100-thousand years ago. Not every element of their cultures dates back to the exact same time-period. Still, the earliest shared cultural ancestor they have goes back no earlier than 2000 BC. And in some cases the shared ancestor only goes back to between 500 BC and 300 or so AD. They could have been in lingering contact with each other through the 1st millennium AD.

This totally blows up the notion that the culture of the New World was either brought with long-distance migration from the Old World on the order of 10s of thousands of years ago, or that it evolved only in the New World after that initial wave of migration. For some New World cultures, that's true. But for others, who speak Na-Dene languages, their bodies and haplogroups may have come over 10,000 years ago, but their present-day culture did not, nor did it evolve solely in situ after settling into the Americas. There was a transmission of Siberian culture from the Old World starting as early as 2000 BC and perhaps lasting through 500 AD.

This is a great illustration of the non-correlation between genes and culture, or between migration of bodies and migration of culture. Cultural forms can spread by contagion, from one adjacent group to the next, and so on in a chain. Group A transmits it to group B, B transmits it to C, and then C to D. The fact that it is present in A, B, C, and D does NOT show that it began with A and then A migrated through all the intervening regions, leaving it behind them at each stop. In fact, it doesn't imply that A has migrated at all -- maybe they had contact with B (without, however, migrating to replace B, just interacting with neighbors), but not C, D, or any further link in the chain. And contagion is a far faster transmission process than migration of one spreader group to all regions affected -- as the phenomenon of epidemic diseases shows.

That's not to say that cultural forms spread just like epidemic diseases -- the key difference is how "susceptible" one group is to the cultural influence of another. Pathogens don't care about cultural groups or which other groups they choose as role models vs. groups they shun / avoid. Cultural transmission is not necessarily transitive either, unlike diseases -- in some cases, A influences B, and B influences C, but C rejects the influence of A (directly). In such a case, B acts as a gatekeeper between A and C, a role that does not show up in epidemic disease transmission. This is where all of the real art-and-science of cultural transmission happens -- just saying it can spread from one adjacent group to the next is not very surprising, it's what relationships must be in place for the transmission to take place, and when it will stop.

With that big-picture in mind, let's now look at some shared cultural shibboleths in Northwest America and cultures of the Eastern Steppe, including the off-shoot that wound up in Glorious Nippon. Some of these examples are from the comments in the previous post, some are ones I discovered just in the past few days.

I'm going to try breaking these up into smaller, more digestible separate posts, instead of having a long string of 250 comments on a single post.

* * *

First, we'll start with ritual. An earlier post demonstrated that ancient Japan (starting sometime before 300 AD) shared a cultural shibboleth with the Xiongnu and the Pazyryk cultures of the Eastern Steppe (and Silla, in Korea) -- breaking precious bronze mirrors as a funeral rite, and burying them as grave goods. See that post for all the details, which begin in the 3rd section.

For the time-frame, this ritual began in the mid-1st millennium BC (Pazyryk) and lasted through the mid-1st millennium AD (Kofun-era Japan). After then, the practice seems to have faded away...

But not in Northwest America, where a strikingly similar ritual lasted up through the conquest of the frontier by the Americans. Perhaps in the Old World, gradual sedentarization and civilizing influences from China led to the abandonment of this Eastern Steppe barbarian ritual, while in Northwest America there never was a sedentary mega-state civilizing influence until the white man showed up. They certainly were not in the cultural orbit of the Aztec, Maya, or Inca empires. So perhaps the Mongolians and Japanese would still be practicing this funeral rite, if there had been no China for them to interact with...

Metallurgy was never widespread in North America before European colonization. But there was a limited amount of iron and copper production in the Northwest, where the raw material was sourced from Alaska. We'll get to the mythical or not-so-mythical legend behind that, when we look at myths!

But after they began working with copper, various groups in Northwest America, not only those speaking Na-Dene languages, began to practice a ritual of breaking precious copper ceremonial shields, sometimes as part of a funeral, although sometimes as part of a potlatch. In both occasions, though, the broken fragments were buried somehow -- either under the ground or tossed into the sea, where they sank to a watery grave.

In both occasions, the "coppers" or copper shields were not very utilitarian, they were symbols of status and wealth and perhaps a connection to the supernatural and to ancestral lineages. They were decorated as art-works. They were owned and traded as decorative status symbols, with some degree of otherworldly power -- just like those bronze mirrors in the Eastern Steppe.

The main difference in the New World ritual is the shape -- they are beaten smooth and are between half a foot to several feet in length, like the Old World round mirrors, but they take the form of a T-shaped shield (again, not used as an actual shield in battle). And the adornments are also local patterns. So there was some degree of syncreticization between the Old World ritual and existing Northwest American arts-and-crafts traditions.

They don't seem to be treated as magical for their ability to collect and reflect light, as though they were mini-suns, like they were in the Old World, where they played into the solar cult of the Eastern Steppe.

We can't tell if their use at potlatches is different from their Old World context, which was funerals -- perhaps the only difference is when potlatches were held in the Old World, like mainly during a funeral, whereas in Northwest America, potlatches were held outside of funeral contexts as well. But in both cases, their breaking and burial can be viewed as a form of conspicuous wealth destruction, as an honest signal of the large amount of wealth held by the leader. In this way, it's no different from human and animal sacrifice, on the same occasions (potlatch and/or funeral) -- it's the sacrifice of precious objects, which only a wealthy household owns.

However, it's not just a vague conceptual similarity like "sacrificing precious objects" -- they are made of copper, beaten smooth into a sheet, adorned as decorative objects, used in a ceremonial context rather than a valuable object that sees real-world use, and their method of sacrifice is the same -- breaking into fragments.

Most inclusion of precious objects in a funeral or other ceremony does NOT involve breaking them or rendering them worthless as utilitarian objects, or even as decorative objects. Indeed, if they were just decorative objects made from copper, they would not seem so similar to the Eastern Steppe versions -- it's the fact that they're ceremonially sacrificed by fragmentation that jumped out at me when reading about them.

All these unnecessary / arbitrary points of similarity show that it is a shared shibboleth, not just independent variations on a universal theme.

This New World ritual goes back no further than the mid-1st millennium BC, when it is observed among the Pazyryk culture in the Eastern Steppe. It was still practiced in Japan during the early Medieval era. When was it transmitted into the Pacific Northwest? Sometime after the prerequisite adoption of copper metallurgy, which was more limited regionally and occurred later in the New World.

I'm guessing sometime at the twilight of its use in Japan, or just afterwards -- when the Siberian transmitters would have still been familiar with the ritual, but since it was no longer de rigueur in Siberia, it was not emphasized as strictly to the New World adopters. It was likely transmitted by the same Siberians who taught the New Worlders about copper in general -- "Y'know, this isn't just utilitarian stuff. Where we come from, we beat it into sheets, decorate it, and break it into fragments during major ceremonies like a funeral. You guys should do that, too!"

Maybe they specifically said to make it into a round mirror, and the New Worlders said that wasn't as relevant to their local culture, and made them into shield-like shapes instead. Or maybe since the ritual was fading away in Siberia, the Siberian transmitters didn't insist on every element being preserved -- what the hell, the ritual was dying out anyway, just give them the basic understanding, which is that copper is valuable, it can be beaten into a smooth canvas for artwork, and this valuable object can be broken into fragments for a major ceremony like a funeral.

I doubt it was too much later after it died in the Old World, since hardly anyone would still remember it in order to pass it on. Probably not 1000 AD. But also not too early, since it only began in 500 BC, and it required use of copper or bronze. So perhaps more like 300 to 700 AD, though after being transmitted, lasting right up through the "present" (closing of the American frontier circa 1900). Pacific Northwest natives never had to worry what a civilization like China might think about them sacrificing people, animals, and precious mirrors, well after the Dark Ages...

UPDATE: Staying here until no longer able, WordPress and Substack will be back-up / alt sites

It looks like the work-around may be good for awhile. I'd really prefer not to leave my home of over 20 years, not to mention setting up 2 new sites.

Google *has* already abandoned Blogger and Blogspot -- no help center, impossible to reach anyone, they make changes whenever for no reason, and if they break it, you have to find a work-around or it's over. Even if you find one, they have turned from apathetic to vindictive against their own users. That's why I couldn't even leave comments after awhile -- some seething spiteful flunkie actually coded the "browser not supported" screen into the comment box itself. But I'll get to the gory details about that in a little bit.

Suffice it to say, I sense them ultimately giving Blogspot the same treatment that Yahoo gave GeoCities -- total demolition. Slightly better-case scenario, they leave up the domain but stop the writers from putting up any new posts or comments. Either way, there's zero chance they will migrate the blogs at Blogspot to some future site, as they have nothing to move them to, unlike when they killed Google Play Music and forced users into YouTube Music. They didn't even keep their attempt at social media, Google+, so why would they keep a format that is even less utilized, like blogs?

Just cuz I have a work-around doesn't mean it'll work forever, especially given how vindictive the Google-hive has become. Even if it works, they could shut down the entire domain. So, I'm setting up 2 separate sites just in case.

The WordPress one -- The Library of Akinokure -- will be mainly for collecting entire series that I've done here, especially those that have mainly been in the comments section, so search engines can find them. That gives me several years' worth to re-publish in more coherent form. I may even go back through the archives here for series that were already in standalone post form, and back them up there as well.

Right now, I'm working on the work I've done about Japanese / Japonic belonging to the Dene-Yeniseian family of languages. Full posts will go up over there, and I'll just leave a brief remark about it in the comments section here -- in case people don't want to read an entire 500-word discovery every time, but just get the gist.

I've more or less set up the layout, though I'll be tweaking it and maybe making a new header image, etc., but you can start perusing the Japonic-Dene-Yeniseian linguistic series there right now and going forward.

The Substack one -- just "akinokure", like here -- will take longer for me to figure out what to do with, since that allows both long-form posting and a micro-blogging comment feed, like I have here. But I don't want to cannibalize this main site by putting too much on Substack. I'm thinking of using it for pictures in the micro-blog feed. Brutalist mall du jour, vintage book du jour, thrift store find du jour, that kind of thing. I don't have the layout set up yet, other than making the landing page look like this blog, so there's not much to do there yet.

The point is, I'll keep to posting here as much as I can, for as long as I can, and if anything should interfere with that, or end that, you'll be able to tell. But now, you'll have 2 alt sites to check on, to see if in fact I'm moving over there for good. For the moment, and unless I specifically say so at the alt sites, they'll remain alt and Blogspot will stay main.

I don't like posting these content-free programming notes, but I really did just receive an intense signal from Google that Blogspot will receive even less support than merely being abandoned by them. So I've had to waste a bunch of time scrambling to find a work-around, and set up alt sites just in case.

I know the American military is about to commit suicide-by-cop with another failed war in the Middle East, but I've already said pretty much everything there is to say about that, specifically about Iran, so my next post here will go into greater detail about the cyber-bureaucracy that controls so much of our online existence, how surreal it is, how to minimize our exposure to its risks, and so on. Might as well get something productive and insightful out of this whole ordeal...

URGENT: Moving blog to Substack! Still using "akinokure"

 I can't explain in detail now, but Google's tech incompetence / malice had temporarily locked me out of the Blogger dashboard and comments section. That's why I've been MIA here for a week. Fortunately I found a work-around, but I don't know how long that will last. It was nothing ideological or anything like that, purely technical, but it was insanely malicious, and I no longer have trust in Google to be a reliable guardian and steward of the Blogger / Blogspot platform.

So I am moving all blogging activities over to Substack -- same name as here, "akinokure":

https://akinokure.substack.com

I will do long-form blogging there, and they have a built-in micro-blogging feed called "Notes", which will replace my blogging in the comments section here.

I will also try to do long-term back-up of this blog at WordPress, "The Library of Akinokure":

https://libraryofakinokure.wordpress.com

That will not involve micro-blogging, or backing up random comments and observations -- the stuff that's really worth preserving. Possibly migrating the whole thing from here, over there, or maybe just a "greatest hits" compilation. We'll see.

These are all still somewhat up-in-the-air, but I have to leave this final message while I can still use this work-around. The pace will be the same over there as it has been here, depending on how inspired I am du jour.

But, it will be the same cliff-dwelling sage, the same location atop the Cliffs of Wisdom -- you'll just be taking an alternate route up the mountain. The Substack route, rather than the Blogspot route. It will still be me, and my charmingly eclectic ever-shifting range of topics! I will await you at the end of the Substack route up the mountain! ^_^