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.
One point that Israel Finkelstein noted in his book was that from the earliest point in history, villages which later became "Israelite" did not have pig bones in their garbage middens. Unlike Moabite or Aramaean sites which did have such bones. Thus, the prohibition against pork seems to have been a defining characteristic.
Now, this could be because the earliest proto-Israelites (I'm using Dever's term...Finkelstein does not seem to buy it) were sheep and goat herders exclusively and had no capability/desire to expand to pigs. In any case, it seems to have come about several centuries after any so-called Moses would have lived.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
<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?>
Yep. And it would hardly be worth going into now, but for the *fact* that the brave heart, strong right arm, sword in hand... no longer cuts it.
so- the religions that were designed to pander to that power structure are gaining in numbers- numbers of neurotics, while the remaining sentient beings wonder what to do about it.
Nietzsche, "the Birth of Tragedy" chap VIII
"It is a sure sign of the death of a religion when its mythic presuppositions become systematized, under the severe, rational eyes of an orthodox dogmatism, into a ready sum of historical events, and when people begin timidly defending the veracity of myth but at the same time resist its natural continuance- when the feeling for myth withers and its place is taken by a religion claiming historical foundations."
Thus the hypocrisy of the clerical leadership, and the willingness to use violence in the name of religions that say they preach peace.
The politician's protestations of faith remind me of "Thou protest too much". Under the best of conditions, the disempowerment of the warrior class that has been so free for so long to loot, would be messy.
Its almost kharmic, that where the logistics needed to support vast armies was first developed in the late bronze age, is now where its most supportive religion is challenged with even greater military force... which, of all things, and this really wigs the bastards out, includes *women*.
For reasons that have to do with bandwidth and intelligibility, the military uses women at the microphones, perhaps also part of the tradition we've always had for women switchboard operators. But in any case, it gives the Moslems the idea our whole damn army is run by women cause that's who they hear giving orders.
So- back to profit. The modern women now know how to use modern weapons to defend their investments. This leaves the Jihadim in a zero sum game where they can only attack the assets of each other.
Like Nietzsche also said, their concept of god is dead. But they dont even know it. The Almighty Dollar is taking over. And if you look at the genuine silver item, you see *Her* image on it.
Any god watching me hasta be bored, and needs to get a life.
How about “Out of Africa” BY BOAT 900,000 years ago!
This is from today’s news page;
MINERVA JULY/AUGUST 2007 (VOL 18.4)
Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D. and Dr Sean Kingsley
For decades archaeologists have rightly respected the Neolithic period c. 8500 BC as a revolutionary era of the most profound change, when the wiring of mankind’s brain shifted from transient hunter-gathering to permanent settlement in farming communities. Hearths, temples, articulated burials, whistling ‘wheat’ fields and security replaced the uncertain ravages of seasonal running with the pack. Or so stereotypes maintain.
Now, from the remote shores of Budrinna on Lake Fezzan in Libya, and Melka Konture on the banks of the River Awash in Ethiopia, a series of stunning discoveries are set to challenge the originality of the Neolithic Revolution. After 39 years of surveys and excavations, Professor Helmut Ziegert of Hamburg University presents his results as a world exclusive in Minerva (pp. 8-9). In both African locations he has discovered huts and sedentary village life dating between an astonishing 400,000 and 200,000 Before Present - if correct, literally a quantum leap in our understanding of man’s evolution. Near aquatic resources, and not alongside agricultural fields, Professor Ziegert contests that our ancestors settled down for the first time in small communities of 40-50 people.
This sensation just scratches the surface of one of prehistory’s most incredible revelations: from Choukoutien in China to Bilzingsleben in Germany, Ziegert claims to have identified 35 other Lower Palaeolithic villages with comparable huts and even cemeteries. A pattern prevails. After decades of fieldwork and contemplation, Helmut Ziegert is convinced that future discoveries will uphold his conclusions. His discoveries have nothing to do with luck, he maintains, but are a matter of applying problem-oriented research. Where evolutionary biologists have typically hunted ancestral humans bones exclusively to understand adaptations to mankind - missing links - as an archaeologist Professor Ziegert has asked more specific, holistic questions of the wider evidence.
At the heart of this new Lower Palaeolithic ‘out of Africa’ village theory are two world-changing ideas. First, that Homo erectus, Upright Man, had far more modernistic tendencies than previously believed; and second, that as unique as the farming villages of Jericho in the West Bank and Catalhoyük in Turkey are, their occupants were not the brains behind the origins of sedentism. The innovative capacity of Homo erectus has challenged scholars for decades and remains a scholarly cauldron. Anthropologists such as Richard Leakey have long insisted that Upright Man was socially more akin to modern humans than to his primitive predecessors because the increased cranial capacity coincided with more sophisticated tool technology. Other scientists contend that Homo erectus was sufficiently advanced to have even mastered maritime transport. Yet both this assertion and the very idea that he ever got to grips with controlled fire are still considered controversial.
Only three years ago, however, Nira Alperson of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem discovered the oldest evidence of fire management at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov on the banks of the Jordan River in Israel’s northern Galilee. The team analysed over 50,000 pieces of wood and nearly 36,000 flints from two hearths associated with a Homo erectus settlement dating back 790,000 years.
More contentiously, Robert Bednarik is convinced that Upright Man ushered in the dawn of trans-ocean travel between 900,000 and 800,000 years ago as part of a wider revolution, usually attributed to the anatomically modern Homo sapiens, that included communicating with a spoken language and eventually carving and painting art 400,000 to 300,000 Before Present. To test his theory, Bednarik built a 17.5m-long, 2.8-ton bamboo raft, Nale Tasih 4, and crossed the 29km-wide stretch of sea from the east coast of Bali to the neighbouring island of Lombok. The results have convinced Bednarik that ‘Between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, hominins are also known to have crossed to at least two islands in Europe, Corsica, and Sardinia. This is soundly demonstrated, but in addition it is possible that much earlier they managed to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. Unfortunately, that cannot be proved conclusively, because the alternative of reaching Europe by land has always existed’. Stone Age ‘seafaring appears to have been possible’, agrees anthropologist Tim Bromage of Hunter College of the City University of New York, who has identified 30cm-wide South-east Asian bamboo as providing a versatile material for building rafts with simple stone tools.
So, Professor Ziegert’s ‘Out of Africa’ aquatic model for the rise of village life in the Lower Palaeolithic does not emerge out of a cultural and intellectual void. As a veteran of over 81 archaeological surveys and excavations from Germany to Ecuador, ranging in date from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Islamic period, Ziegert is nothing if not scientifically cautious, which makes the current revelation all the more exciting. Between 2007 and 2010 he will be back in the field, returning to Budrinna and Melka Konture to fine-tune his life’s work. To delve in greater depth into the mystery of the ecology, function, structure, and economy of these villages, he plans to search out cemeteries (complementary signs of fixed settlement) and use potassium argon isotopic dating, stratigraphy, and tool typology to measure the ebb and flow of village life in this dizzy, distant prehistoric past.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
The artifacts found in the area of the cave are indicative of behavior patterns of humans who lived about 250,000 years ago, at the time of the Mousterian culture of Neanderthals in Europe.
So far studies have shown the tools of modern man in a much later period, about 170,000 years ago, in Ethiopia. The new findings are of great importance, connecting the earliest modern man to the Carmel Mountains man.
About 2 million years ago, with the movement of Homo erectus ("upright man") to Europe, Neanderthal man, a new species, developed. Prof. Israel Hershkovitz, of the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University and a codirector of the excavations, says Neanderthals were stockier than modern man, with a larger skull and more massive limbs. Another species that developed from Homo erectus from Africa was Homo sapiens ("thinking man") or us. His skull and other physical dimensions were smaller and finer than those of Neanderthal man.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
It's a wowser. This article asserts quite a few things, and will get a lot of internet discussion. I hope KB doesn't mind if I post the actual link here. It will make it easier for folks to access.
It's not my post.
It came from the news page.
As did the Hatz one.
But it is a mere 250,000 years ago in the "Isreal land bridge" theory.
This was 900,000 years ago. And by water.
I have noticed that, even today, people in the Northern Hemi seem to view the ocean as a barrier.
But those in the Southern Hemi view it as a connector. A highway.
How big does your brain have to be before you begin to fear the ocean?
The Wright brothers laid the foundations of powered flight, all that has followed are simply applications of their work.
Stevenson produced the blast pipe and multi tube boiler, all that followed in steam transport were applications of those principles.
Otto devised the first workable internal combustion engine, nothing but improvements of that basic idea have occurred since.
HE laid the ground work for everything that modern man now has, these were Newton's giants!
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
Actually, I think the article was describing the lifestyle of H. Erectus and his movement toward settled village life 400,000 yrs. ago, and his ability to travel by boat.
The extreme date of 900,000 was a reference to the work of Robert Bednarik from Australia. His work has been posted quite a few times in this forum. He's the author of "Erectus Ahoy"
I realize that Michelle posted it in the newsroom, but thanks to you for bringing it here.
