European Origins

[john]

This is like trying to recreate War and Peace when all you have intact is page 424.

Every time someone finds another word or sentence they are too quick to jump up and say "Aha! Now I understand the whole novel."


No. They don't. We've barely scratched the surface.

Min -

Beautfully put.


I personally don't think we even have any intact PAGES predating maybe 40k years ago in Europe, and far less in Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas.


john

[Minimalist]

Well....War And Peace is a verrryyyy long book.

[Beagle]

This find in Vermont is pretty thought provoking. You have to think that this could be fairly close to a possible Solutrean landing, and I have never thought of early Colvis technology as being a harpoon, which makes sense for a maritime culture.

Much to consider, and back later today.

[Minimalist]

I wonder when the glaciers began to retreat in the North East?

I always thought that the solutrean points I saw were quite large. Necessary to penetrate the blubber layer of a whale or walrus? I hadn't ever given that one much thought but even 18th/19th century harpoons were designed for deep penetration.

[Digit]

Nowadays Min, Whales are killed with harpoons, that was not always the case. The harpoon was actually used to attach drags to the whale to tire it and stop it from 'sounding'. The killing was done with lances, which have no barbs. All the hapoon had to do was stay in place with the drag attached, so deep penetration was not necessary.

[Beagle]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 083107.php

The earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, which many archaeologists believed to be descended from European wild boar, were actually introduced from the Middle East by Stone Age farmers, new research suggests.

The research by an international team led by archaeologists at Durham University, which is published today in the academic journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences USA, analysed mitochondrial DNA from ancient and modern pig remains. Its findings also suggest that the migration of an expanding Middle Eastern population, who brought their ‘farming package’ of domesticated plants, animals and distinctive pottery styles with them, actually ‘kickstarted’ the local domestication of the European wild boar.

While archaeologists already know that agriculture began about 12,000 years ago in the central and western parts of the Middle East, spreading rapidly across Europe between 6,800 – 4000BC, many outstanding questions remain about the mechanisms of just how it spread. This research sheds new and important light on the actual process of the establishment of farming in Europe.

Early pig domestication in Europe.

[Digit]

A brave man who started it Beag, Boars can be very nasty indeed.

[Beagle]

It apparently spread very slowly, probably for reasons like that. They're nasty animals.

[Digit]

Over here Beag they are slaughtered at a few weeks old, and very few people have ever seen a fully grown Boar or Sow, and they can move!
We've got feral ones now and the common sense course would be to hunt them down a finish them, but the bleeding hearts brigade see them as little wriggly pink things and I'm waiting for the first conflict between man and Pig.
And of course they breed like Rabbits and I imagine the government do what it normally does, too little too late!

[daybrown]

There's a similar problem with the Ozark "Razorbacks", which foresters say do a lotta damage. I dunno. I've seen the pigs, in packs of a dozen or so, each about 30 lb. They rut in an area bout 15-25 square meters, then move on for 1/2 a km or more to do it again. And yes, they are really fast.

I read a report that along with cattle, goats, einkorn, other veggies and obsidian in the Anatolian cities, they were also running pigs up into pistachio and other nut trees in the fall to fatten up, Usta be an Ozark tradition.

If you put corn out after the snow fell, the swine would find it, and you could gradually put it out a little further down the hill every day, then finally inside your own pen. so- the swine brought into Europe were prolly some of this same line.

It kinda fuzzes the line about what "domestication is", I remember over hearing- "Oh yah. that was the year my little brother huey fell in, and the pigs ate him."

[Minimalist]

It apparently spread very slowly, probably for reasons like that. They're nasty animals.

And they're not kosher!

[Beagle]

, each about 30 lb.

I'll bet you meant 300 lbs. Especially for an Arkansas Razorback. And I quite agree that the word domestication is used very broadly. Especially with pigs.

[Beagle]

And they're not kosher!

This is a case for the Mosaic law being a healthy thing. Until the advent of modern farming, pigs were often full of parasites - bad ones.

[daybrown]

No, I meant 30. I dunno if they were young, or some escaped Vietnamese potbellies, which is what they looked like. I've heard of monster swine on the loose, but not actually seen any evidence for it in my SE end of the Ozarks.

20 years, a hunt club re-introduced Elk. I didnt know until I saw one, In a pasture with Herfords. Humongous. but there's so much woods, even something as big as this can disappear in it in a few seconds.

Regarding Koshur, Natl Geo did a nice spread on Ashkalar, the capital city of the Philistines. And when you look at what they dug up, you realize it was the Hebrews who were, as we now say, "philistine". Classic Orwellian.

So- instead of the "sons of Abraham", we have a multicultural multiethnic city, with shines for Egyptian, Babylonian, Phoenician, or whatever spiritual traditions. With a very active seafood industry (non-koshur), the scraps and entrails of which were used to feed swine (ditto). With an active community of artists producing religious iconography (cant have that either).

And when you consider the jingoism, it kinda begs for a psychological and sociological re-assessment of the whole cosmology and the 'nuclear family values' of these racist bastards who wiped out one of the important port cities that was also a terminal for the Silk Road.

Ashkalar was one of the richest targets around.

[john]

No, I meant 30. I dunno if they were young, or some escaped Vietnamese potbellies, which is what they looked like. I've heard of monster swine on the loose, but not actually seen any evidence for it in my SE end of the Ozarks.

20 years, a hunt club re-introduced Elk. I didnt know until I saw one, In a pasture with Herfords. Humongous. but there's so much woods, even something as big as this can disappear in it in a few seconds.

Regarding Koshur, Natl Geo did a nice spread on Ashkalar, the capital city of the Philistines. And when you look at what they dug up, you realize it was the Hebrews who were, as we now say, "philistine". Classic Orwellian.

So- instead of the "sons of Abraham", we have a multicultural multiethnic city, with shines for Egyptian, Babylonian, Phoenician, or whatever spiritual traditions. With a very active seafood industry (non-koshur), the scraps and entrails of which were used to feed swine (ditto). With an active community of artists producing religious iconography (cant have that either).

And when you consider the jingoism, it kinda begs for a psychological and sociological re-assessment of the whole cosmology and the 'nuclear family values' of these racist bastards who wiped out one of the important port cities that was also a terminal for the Silk Road.

Ashkalar was one of the richest targets around.

Religion can now take the back seat.

Let's talk profit.

Cash to be had for the taking; ok, so an independent armed force wipes out a city.

It repeats again and again and again..................


Yes?



john