4est_4est_Gump
Run Forrest! RUN!
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2011
- Posts
- 89,007
"Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive,” the little man insisted, in a pout. “Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business: You didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” The little man had never created anything, and his intellectual virginity was intact, never having suffered the violation of an original thought. Even his nonsense was derivative, in this case lifted from another little someone of no special distinction: “You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.”
None of that is in fact true.
The truth is, that little man and that little woman — they are the marauding bands.
...
But there is a mystery in the bellies of ancient Britons: wheat. The seabed at Bouldnor Cliff, near the Isle of Wight, was dry land 8,000 years ago. It was, as National Geographic reports, occupied by hunter-gatherers who were not just hunter-gatherers: The area was the site of a boat-building facility. (Boat-builders are a friend to the entire human race.) In addition to the hazelnuts that they cooked — the ancient charred shells of which have been uncovered by archaeologists — these Mesolithic boat-builders also ate wheat, probably in the form of flour. This is strange, in that wheat cultivation was unknown in Britain at the time, the arrival of agriculture still being some thousands of years away. So, where did the wheat come from?
The answer is suggested by the stone tools the boat-builders used: Like the wheat they ate, they were thousands of years ahead of what was found in the rest of Britain at the time. (Again, by some 2,000 years: Imagine opening a previously unknown trapdoor in the tomb of Jesus and discovering an iPhone in the basement.) The ancient British boat-builders seemed to have known already what their descendants must begrudgingly admit: If you want industry, look to England, and if you want dinner, look to France.
The wheat and the stone tools are very much like what was found across the water in France, where a Neolithic cultural group was well on its way toward producing the first baguette. (Neolithic sounds like it should always mean ancient and primitive, but the Neolithic people were ages ahead of their Mesolithic cousins across the channel.) The timeline, though obviously rough, is an interesting one: Wheat first came to be cultivated in the Fertile Crescent about 10,000 years ago. Within 2,000 years, it had made its way into the diets of the coastal boat-builders of ancient Britain — but it would take another 2,000 years before the rest of Britain started catching on. Why?
Trade. Free trade — glorious, unregulated, anarchic, Stone Age free trade enabling the massive division of labor that along with language is the most important thing separating human culture from chimpanzee culture.
...
None of that is in fact true.
The truth is, that little man and that little woman — they are the marauding bands.
...
But there is a mystery in the bellies of ancient Britons: wheat. The seabed at Bouldnor Cliff, near the Isle of Wight, was dry land 8,000 years ago. It was, as National Geographic reports, occupied by hunter-gatherers who were not just hunter-gatherers: The area was the site of a boat-building facility. (Boat-builders are a friend to the entire human race.) In addition to the hazelnuts that they cooked — the ancient charred shells of which have been uncovered by archaeologists — these Mesolithic boat-builders also ate wheat, probably in the form of flour. This is strange, in that wheat cultivation was unknown in Britain at the time, the arrival of agriculture still being some thousands of years away. So, where did the wheat come from?
The answer is suggested by the stone tools the boat-builders used: Like the wheat they ate, they were thousands of years ahead of what was found in the rest of Britain at the time. (Again, by some 2,000 years: Imagine opening a previously unknown trapdoor in the tomb of Jesus and discovering an iPhone in the basement.) The ancient British boat-builders seemed to have known already what their descendants must begrudgingly admit: If you want industry, look to England, and if you want dinner, look to France.
The wheat and the stone tools are very much like what was found across the water in France, where a Neolithic cultural group was well on its way toward producing the first baguette. (Neolithic sounds like it should always mean ancient and primitive, but the Neolithic people were ages ahead of their Mesolithic cousins across the channel.) The timeline, though obviously rough, is an interesting one: Wheat first came to be cultivated in the Fertile Crescent about 10,000 years ago. Within 2,000 years, it had made its way into the diets of the coastal boat-builders of ancient Britain — but it would take another 2,000 years before the rest of Britain started catching on. Why?
Trade. Free trade — glorious, unregulated, anarchic, Stone Age free trade enabling the massive division of labor that along with language is the most important thing separating human culture from chimpanzee culture.
...
Kevin D. Williamson
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/414880/print
Do ships navigate a nation's highways?
And why the hell did they name I-70, as it runs through Kansas, the submariners highway?
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