Research that could set humanity back 20,000 years!

[Cruel2BKind]

My AV is a piece of Mochica pottery. The Andean people were very fond of erotic ceramics, mostly for fun. The one I have here is a drinking vessel, and I'm sure you can figure out where you drink from. If you're in Boston any time, Harvard's Peabody Museum has the largest collection in North America, but I must warn you: while the exhibit includes a few hundred pieces, only one of those on public display is sexual, and that's a spoon position couple where you can't really see the details. For a public viewing of the erotic pieces, you'll have to head to Peru.

Of course, if you want to prove that "Older" doesn't mean "less intelligent," just take a look at Jimmy Johnson - the dumb walk among us. (Note: we're talking about modern humans' origins over 200,000 years ago, and he responds with some drivel about his relationship to the Egyptian Pharoahs of no more than 5,000 years ago).

And then there's one of my favourite archaeological sites, Terra Amata, in Nice, on the Riviera. Some 380,000 years ago, our nomadic ancestors (we call them at that time "Homo erectus) spent time on the Mediterranean beach. They built huts there, and, since the sand blows over everything each year, we know they returned to the same huts for years in a row (one hut was occupied for twenty years straight). And, from the pollen found in their coprolites, we can also tell that they spent two weeks there every late soring/early summer. Now you try to tell me that people who get to spend two weeks on the Riviera every summer aren't the same as us.

And it is "maize;" "corn" is a British term referring to any farmed grains. The famous (or infamous) "Corn Laws" of Great Britain had nothing to do with maize. By the way, we have hundreds of terms in English that come from Native American languages, most of them from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and most of them are referrents to foodstuffs. "Aguahaca," for example, gives us "avocado," and, if you add "mole" - Nahuatl for "sauce" - you get our term "guacamole," or "avocado sauce." Do you like "xocolotl?" "Chocolate" is one of our favourite adopted foods. Easy, then, to know what "tomatl' becomes in English.

I loved my professor. He was a stickler for opening our eyes.

He also went into fits of rage whenever anyone referred to an American Bison as a 'Buffalo'

The greatest thing I ever learned in his class was the massive misconception about the founding of America.

Dr. Shermer taught about all early humans (he only started the timeline at homo sapiens) but he specialized in North American Prehistory. The way he put it (roughly) was thus.

"Ever since elementary school, your teachers have been lying to you. Maybe not on purpose. But they have been. Since you were a kindergardener, you've been learning that Columbus was a Big Damn Hero who discovered America. That 'Indians' *snort of rage* were pushed back from their lands easy as pie because whitey had superior weapons and technology. That Native Americans were simple scattered hunter-gatherers stuck in a primitive state that allowed them to be conquered"

The population of America before Whitey came along, was over fifteen times what it was after he came. Smallpox was the only thing that made America what it is today. This continent was a thriving center of trade, with a kingdom, and cities, and our version of the pyramids, the monk mound, made of 2.6 billion pounds of earth carted there from every corner of america. Then smallpox came. The epidemic wiped out over ninety percent of the population, and indeed, left them in the scattered hunter-gatherer state that your first-grade teachers blabbed on about.

The tribes that our founding fathers had to fight tooth and nail against? The bloody wars and massacares that surrounded the expansion? That was from about six percent of the original population. The only reason that we are here, that whitey won, was because we were so Filthy."


I loved Dr. Shermer. He had such a way with words.

 

[Thefamiliar]

You're quite welcome, Familiar. I seem to be Lit's resident anthropologist. At least no one else has admitted to it.

Btw, I added a bit of info on Border Cave itself to the post.

Good to know. Its a uniuqe interst, I haven't run into many with indepth knowledge of it.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Neither are you.

A 98 pound pussy has more of a chance than a 300 pound tub of lard.

I prefer to call it CINDERELLA FAT, cuz at midnite it all turns to dick. Your mullet cant do that.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I loved my professor. He was a stickler for opening our eyes.

He also went into fits of rage whenever anyone referred to an American Bison as a 'Buffalo'

The greatest thing I ever learned in his class was the massive misconception about the founding of America.

Dr. Shermer taught about all early humans (he only started the timeline at homo sapiens) but he specialized in North American Prehistory. The way he put it (roughly) was thus.

"Ever since elementary school, your teachers have been lying to you. Maybe not on purpose. But they have been. Since you were a kindergardener, you've been learning that Columbus was a Big Damn Hero who discovered America. That 'Indians' *snort of rage* were pushed back from their lands easy as pie because whitey had superior weapons and technology. That Native Americans were simple scattered hunter-gatherers stuck in a primitive state that allowed them to be conquered"

The population of America before Whitey came along, was over fifteen times what it was after he came. Smallpox was the only thing that made America what it is today. This continent was a thriving center of trade, with a kingdom, and cities, and our version of the pyramids, the monk mound, made of 2.6 billion pounds of earth carted there from every corner of america. Then smallpox came. The epidemic wiped out over ninety percent of the population, and indeed, left them in the scattered hunter-gatherer state that your first-grade teachers blabbed on about.

The tribes that our founding fathers had to fight tooth and nail against? The bloody wars and massacares that surrounded the expansion? That was from about six percent of the original population. The only reason that we are here, that whitey won, was because we were so Filthy."


I loved Dr. Shermer. He had such a way with words.

We really weren't any filthier than whitey; it just that whitey had come to a bit of a truce with smallpox. It wasn't genetic, either, as Jared Diamond would have us believe, but cutlural. Whitey had his share of smallpox epidemics, and they wiped out many palefaces in Europe. By the time they discovered there was a world they didn't know about, they had learned to isolate the sick, have them tended by people who had survived the pox (they didn't know about the immune system, but they did know that those who survived smallpox didn't get it again), and burn their belongings to restrict contagion. By the mid-1700s, they had developed vaccination with cowpox to create immunity to the disease.

We didn't get much of a chance to respond. Whole villages would become sick at the same time, and there was no one well enough to tend to them. One can survive smallpox, but the chance of doing so diminishes when no one can even bring you water. Dehydration doesn't help the survival rate. And then, as the people died, there was that expanding population of whitey, hanging around like turkey vultures, just waiting to claim the now-vacant land. And, of course, where the smallpox didn't succeed, there was the cavalry, a bunch of psycopaths still thirsting for blood after the Civil War, tomake sure the Great Plains became available.

We were as many as 150,000,000 before the Euros got the depopulation ball rolling; 300 years later, the new Americans expected us to be extinct in a generation. Tough luck; we're back.

 

[R. Richard]

From what has been discussed, it appears that inhuman behavior may have preceeded human behavior and seems to still be ongoing in this board.
I have detected what seems to be a misconception. In the dim pasts of 40,000 years ago or whatever, there were very probably two races in Africa. The Negro race is well known. However, IMNTHO there was a second race, the Bushmen (sometimes called San.) The bushmen were the color of an apricot and were obviously not Negro. The Bushmen did have some Negro tyoe features, including peppercorn hair. However, if you saw a pure Bushman, you would instantly know that the Bushman was not a Negro. It has been speculated that a light skinned race developed around the south cape of Africa. The Sourh cape is in a Mediterranean climate zone and might well have developed a light skinned race. Nowadays, most of the Bushmen are a mixture of Bushman and Negro, due to interbreeding with the Negros who came down from the North and forced the Bushmen into the Kalahari.
The Bushmen of the 20th century were almost pure hunters, with very little gathering. It was almost impossible for a European to keep up with the little hunters and not too much study was done. In addition, the support of a non-hunter, by the Bushmen would have severly strained the limited resources of the Bushmen. (The Bushmen had incredible vision, necessary to hunt in the flat land of the Kalahari, with some of the Bushmen able to discern the moons of Jupiter, with the naked eye, Thus even a rifle armed European couldn't have hunted down enough game to suport himself.)

 

[topace]

If they used Carbon-14 (or any other type of half-isotope) dating, I doubt the date is accurate.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

RR...

Race is a division we impart to people; actual human physical.genetic variation is much more complex than the typological notions of race arising from Platonic idealism. Even those who do think race is a biologically real category, though, would have a minimum of three "dark-skinned races" in Africa: The Bushmen, the Negro, and the Pygmy. Most racial typologists would also add an East African non-Bantu-speaking group to that.

But more to your other point...The Bushmen have been extensively studied and learned from by westerners for quite a while. The classic monograph - The !Kung Bushmen of the Kalhari is over 60 years old, now, and that's just the first of the modern studies. In addition, approximately 90% of the calories in their diet comes from gathering/foraging; nuts and tubers are their staples.

40,000 years ago is not "the dim past;" in fact we have lots of information from that period. 4,000,000 is a bit dimmer. And Bantu (by the way, "Bantu" refers to a language family, not a "race") expansion southward has taken place in the past 1,000 years. It is part of a population expansion that began about 2,000 years ago, when the Bantu-speaking peoples of the west coast of Africa began to use iron tools. They were fishermen and farmers, and the new technology increased their productivity, which increased their reproduction, which resulted in population expansion.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

If they used Carbon-14 (or any other type of half-isotope) dating, I doubt the date is accurate.

Don't be ridiculous; C14 dating has been calibrated to dendrochonological dating, and all dates from C14 only are corrected to the tree rings dates, based on actual years. The correction tables are now detailed for more than 10,000 years back. Beyond that, C14 dates are always expressed with a +/- margin of variation.

 

[topace]

Don't be ridiculous; C14 dating has been calibrated to dendrochonological dating, and all dates from C14 only are corrected to the tree rings dates, based on actual years. The correction tables are now detailed for more than 10,000 years back. Beyond that, C14 dates are always expressed with a +/- margin of variation.

A lot of things can give a false Carbon-14 (or other half-isotope) date.

(Damn Chrome glitch that hides checkboxes at random!)

 

[BuckyDuckman]

I loved my professor. He was a stickler for opening our eyes.

He also went into fits of rage whenever anyone referred to an American Bison as a 'Buffalo'

The greatest thing I ever learned in his class was the massive misconception about the founding of America.

Dr. Shermer taught about all early humans (he only started the timeline at homo sapiens) but he specialized in North American Prehistory. The way he put it (roughly) was thus.

"Ever since elementary school, your teachers have been lying to you. Maybe not on purpose. But they have been. Since you were a kindergardener, you've been learning that Columbus was a Big Damn Hero who discovered America. That 'Indians' *snort of rage* were pushed back from their lands easy as pie because whitey had superior weapons and technology. That Native Americans were simple scattered hunter-gatherers stuck in a primitive state that allowed them to be conquered"

The population of America before Whitey came along, was over fifteen times what it was after he came. Smallpox was the only thing that made America what it is today. This continent was a thriving center of trade, with a kingdom, and cities, and our version of the pyramids, the monk mound, made of 2.6 billion pounds of earth carted there from every corner of america. Then smallpox came. The epidemic wiped out over ninety percent of the population, and indeed, left them in the scattered hunter-gatherer state that your first-grade teachers blabbed on about.

The tribes that our founding fathers had to fight tooth and nail against? The bloody wars and massacares that surrounded the expansion? That was from about six percent of the original population. The only reason that we are here, that whitey won, was because we were so Filthy."


I loved Dr. Shermer. He had such a way with words.

I had a Broadcast History prof way back when who put an interesting spin on the founding of America - pointing out that people who actually settled the good ol' U.S. of A were crackpots and weirdos - but mostly, religious zealots who were being prosecuted for practicing their little cult-like religion in the old country. Considering the differences between relatively advanced Europe versus the wilds of America, along with the wonderful boat ride - I guess you would have to be pretty fucked in the head to say, "Fine... We'll just move over here and do it the way we want to do it." Shades of Jonestown.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

To support Tio Naratore's point, it might be of some interest to the resident anthropology buffs to read 1491, a book which should be required reading for any American historian.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

To support Tio Naratore's point, it might be of some interest to the resident anthropology buffs to read 1491, a book which should be required reading for any American historian.

any American -the continents, not the country- and not just the historians. Thanks, Bear.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I had a Broadcast History prof way back when who put an interesting spin on the founding of America - pointing out that people who actually settled the good ol' U.S. of A were crackpots and weirdos - but mostly, religious zealots who were being prosecuted for practicing their little cult-like religion in the old country. Considering the differences between relatively advanced Europe versus the wilds of America, along with the wonderful boat ride - I guess you would have to be pretty fucked in the head to say, "Fine... We'll just move over here and do it the way we want to do it." Shades of Jonestown.

New England was settled primarily by radical Protestants, who, under Cotton Mather, saw the Native Americans as devils sent as a test by god to see if the Puritans were strong enough of character to exterminate them.

That also became, in a slightly different form, the main premise of American Historians following Frederick Turner's presentation of his "Frontier Hypothesis," which saw American strehgth of character emerging from having to fight the savages to gain "their" country.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Another interpretation of Manifest Destiny was presented to my by an Ojibway professor of Art and of American Indian Studies. Craig Stone relayed the story of a letter written by a Jesuit priest who, rather than being interested in exterminating the natives, wanted to convert them. Unfortunately, assorted plagues kept hitting the tribes he worked with and he wrote home in anguish that God was taking all his friends away. It was as though He was clearing the land so the Europeans could replace them and the priest didn't understand why the Almighty would do that.

 

[feverman]

Prince Phillip's thoughts on nationality and race

A few documented examples of Prince Phillp’s thoughts on nationality and race:

To a British trekker in Papua New Guinea, 1998: “You managed not to get eaten then?”

To President of Nigeria, who was in national dress, 2003: “You look like you’re ready for bed!”

To Cayman Islanders: “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?”

On Ethiopian art, 1965: “It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from school art lessons.”

To Aboriginal leader William Brin, Queensland, 2002: “Do you still throw spears at each other?”

To black politician Lord Taylor of Warwick, 1999: “And what exotic part of the world do you come from?”

 

[sr71plt]

To a British trekker in Papua New Guinea, 1998: “You managed not to get eaten then?”

Michael Rockefeller would say that was quite a relevant question.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

And he wouldn't be alone . . .

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Michael Rockefeller would say that was quite a relevant question.

A lot of change between 1961 and 1998, and anyway, Michael Rockefeller disappeared after abandoning a swamped outrigger to attempt to swim to shore. His companion, Rene Wassing, stayed with the boat and was rescued the next day. It was presumed that Rockefeller had either drowned or been eaten by a crocodile. The notion that he was killed by Asmat headhunters only emerged a few years afterwards, with the suggestion that he had either been killed in revenge for the killing of some Asmat by Dutch police a few years earlier or as a result of his involvement in the ethnographic film, "Dead Birds," on Asmat ritual warfare. And Asmat warfare was ritual, for the gaining of trophy heads, not gustatory. Papuan cannibalism at the time was largely endocannibalism, with mourning ceremonies including a share of the departed relative's brains.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Which led to that horrible prion-related disease, kuru, a sort of encephalopathy that disappeared when that particular ritual stopped . . . at the suggestion of the Papuan authorities. I remember that.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Which led to that horrible prion-related disease, kuru, a sort of encephalopathy that disappeared when that particular ritual stopped . . . at the suggestion of the Papuan authorities. I remember that.

Yes, Kuru, Jacob-Kreutzfeld, and Mad Cow are all the same kind of disease.

 

[ishtat]

The Brewarrina Aboriginal fish traps in north western NSW Australia are reputed to be 40,000 years old and thus one of the oldest man made structures on earth.

Dating evidence is substantially based on the dating of adjacent very substantial middens and although I cannot find a reference I understand the dating is somewhat controversial.

The Australian aborigines are known from reliably dated remains found at Lake Mungo (a dry lake also in NSW) to have been on the Australian continent for between 40,000 and 60,000 years. This is consistent with analysis of their genetic variation placing the departure of their ancestors from Africa some 60,000 years ago.

If however, the fish traps have been accurately dated, the aboriginal ancestors walked all the way from Africa and had the technical capacity to make a sea crossing of at least 150 miles. (narrowest sea during the last ice age) by about the same time as the South African discovery.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Oldest surviving structure; that is, in pretty much the same condition as it was originally. There are older structures known through their remains.

Dating from genetics is based on a hypothetical rate of random change (mutation), and, therefore, isn't really precise. It likely gives a good approximation, but I'd like to see some estimates of variation around the dates given. At any rate, it doesn't mean they had to walk straight from Africa to Australia; there would easily be enough time for gradual expansion and colonization.

It would be hard to find a non-seagoing route for getting people across the Wallace Line, so, unless you want alien abduction as a source of human dispersal, they had to be able to cross some significant ocean territory out of sight of land. I'm more comfortable with they sailed/floated themselves there than I would be with the alien abduction hypothesis.

 

[3113]

I'm more comfortable with they sailed/floated themselves there than I would be with the alien abduction hypothesis.

Spoil sport! This is a porn site remember, and the alien abduction hypothesis gives us a lot more probing with odd objects and strange genitalia then people trying not to sink or starve as they migrate from island to island

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Spoil sport! This is a porn site remember, and the alien abduction hypothesis gives us a lot more probing with odd objects and strange genitalia then people trying not to sink or starve as they migrate from island to island

...And the mainlanders heard of these far-off islands where the males all had bifid penises. The men worried that they would be made to feel inferior by these supermales, but the women,,,Now, the women were another story...

"How might we get to these islands," a nubile virgin asked eagerly, "I would surely like to have a double for my first."

The other women laughed, thinking of how different it would be to ride a two-headed beast...

And so, with their skills in creating new things, the women on the edge of the cmainland fashioned watercraft fit to cross the wide and deep sea of the Wallace line...

(The native mammals of Australia are all marsupials, and have bifid penises. The early English settlers saw that in Virginia, focused on the only two holes close enough together, and concluded that Opossums had nasal sex.)

That a bit better, 3113?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

So 'human behavior as we know it' is defined as 'using digging sticks with perforated weights'?

Hmmm. Somehow I thought it involved watching pornography and stealing from the poor...