Poem - Finally! A Reason to Move to Antarctica

Finally! A Reason to Move to Antarctica

(In case you needed one)

Well early last morning I jumped out of bed

About the same time a drone was flyin over my head

I've yet to get used to lookin up in the sky

Where instead of the sun there's a hoverin spy

So I jumped on my roof and was shakin my fist

They thought I was a terror of a terrorist

Before I could blow on my terrorist whistle

They took their best shot with a Hellfire missile

So I yelled down quick to alert my spouse

That she better hurry up and get out of the house

Then I picked up the dog an ran for the cat

When about that time the missile went splat

Well it blew up the house and it blew up my cool

And it made a big hole in the old swimmin pool

Then it shut down the gas and blew out the lights

And was downright uncivil bout my old civil rights

So I went to the court and I pleaded my case

Said drones are a danger to the whole human race

Not to mention my dog or my terrified cat

Who won't leave our tree, now what about that?

Bout all they could do was offer me a tissue

Seems it's a national security issue

Besides, the judge said while shakin his head

Those drones are real safe so ya shoulda stayed in bed

There isn't any problem with drones when they fly

You shouldn't be lookin up there in the sky

It's your own damn fault if you're shakin your fist

Why anybody'd think you was a terrorist

So we're sorry bout your house but we think it be best

If you went on back home 'fore you're under arrest

(Oh, about your stuff, we think it's a shame

But some kid thought it was a video game)

So I went back home and I looked all around

But all I could see was a hole in the ground

So I picked up the dog and the cat and the wife

We jumped in our van and drove for our life

Drove all night and we drove all day

Bout all we could think was to get far away

Bout as far as we could by natural law

So we drove all the way to Antarctica

Now you'd think we'd be cold but I think it's nice

With bein surrounded by all of this ice

Thinkin bout drones used to make me a fool

But down here it's easier keepin my cool

And if blowin things up is the government goal

We already got us an ozone hole

So we're sendin this card from way down below

Where the missiles don't shoot and the drones don't go.

© 2012 John P. Wilson

The Importance of Pedro Alvares Cabral

In Brazil, Pedro Alvares Cabral is lionized as the discoverer of the country and the person who claimed Brazil for Portugal. Cabral was the fleet commander of a sailing expedition from Portugal to India, in 1500. Since the time of Henry the Navigator, Portuguese captains had been using a sailing technique called volta do mar, which involved sailing far to the westward in order to use the trade winds and currents (the North Atlantic Gyre as it is called) to facilitate sailing to the east. Cabral's fleet veered so far west that they sighted the coast of what would become the country of Brazil. They explored north and south along the South American coast from 22 April til 5 or 6 May of 1500 whence, having performed a Catholic mass ashore and reprovisioned their ships, they struck out eastward for the coast of Africa. Cabral never returned to the Americas. Many doubts have been raised since the 1500's as to Cabral's primacy, but Brazilians have embraced him as the discoverer, and there the matter stands.

The remains of a Roman merchant ship lie on the bottom of Guanabara Bay, the natural harbor of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, right next to Xareu rock, a submerged navigational hazard in the bay. The wreck was discovered by Robert Marx, a diver and specialist in the salvage of shipwrecks, in 1985. Any doubt about the shipwreck's provenance was removed by the actions of the Brazilian government in suppressing the find, which threatened their legal justification for claiming the country:

At the time the amphorae were confirmed to be "Roman", the large Italian faction in Brazil were extremely excited about this news. The Italian ambassador to Brazil notified the Brazilian government that, since the Romans were the first to "discover" Brazil, then all Italian immigrants should be granted immediate citizenship. There are a large number of Italian immigrants in Brazil and the government has created a tedious and costly citizenship application procedure for Italians that does not apply to Portuguese immigrants. The Brazilian government would not give in and the Italians in Brazil staged demonstrations. In response, the Brazilian government ordered all civilians off the recovery project and censored further news about the wreck hoping to diffuse the civil unrest. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1038045/posts Romans In Brazil During The Second Third Century?

Mr. Marx said he nonetheless went diving and found that the spot where objects had been close to the mud surface was now covered by a large mound. He added that other Government officials then told him: ''Brazilians don't care about the past. And they don't want to replace Cabral as the discoverer.'' The New York Times Science Section, June 25, 1985, UNDERWATER EXPLORING IS BANNED IN BRAZIL

Here is the 'smoking gun' which the skeptics defending The New Archaeology keep asking for. How strange it is that they seem to have forgotten about it.

Here it should be noted that the Papal Bulls which implemented the “Doctrine of Discovery” conferred discovery rights only on Christians. Considering that a recovered piece of amphora was dated to 19BC, it seems doubtful that any Christians were included in the Roman crew. Indeed it is likely that Christianity didn't even exist at the time of the voyage.

On The New Archaeology in the Americas

"Anthropological hypotheses based on migration and interaction were deposed in much the same way they came into vogue, with a massive backlash ending in a temporary ban on their application in archaeological explanations." - Polynesians in America, Chapter 2, pp 14.

And so we continue with the politics of colonialism, with the continuation of the destruction of the history and identity of indigenous peoples. 

From the Spanish conquest forward, the western European conquerors have systematically eradicated the histories kept by Native Americans. This has been done in the name of promoting whichever European paradigm of the prehistory of the Americas was popular at the time. Archaeologists have been charged with selecting evidence from the material remains to support the then-current paradigm. Skeptics have been charged with debunking, discrediting and, perhaps, even destroying evidence which does not seem to support the then-current paradigm.

A prize granted to conquerors by that very act is the license to write the histories. Rarely do conquerors suffer historians to cast them in anything but an heroic light  Likewise, the integration of conquered peoples into the new order proceeds most smoothly if the slate of their former life and culture is wiped clean. To that end, existing histories of conquered peoples are expunged. This is why anthropologists and archaeologists discourage the study of cultural history. Conquered peoples are encouraged to suppose that their ancestors just sprouted in situ, with no antecedents of significance.

In the case of the Americas, it seems to be that cultural historical evidences (which have so far escaped the skeptical ax) point mostly to places in the eastern hemisphere which are NOT in western Europe. This is also something that the western European conquerors don't care to advertise. One western European locale that does frequently pop up is (God help us!) Ireland. Imagine how popular THAT is with the British!

A cache of Clovis points

This entry is prompted by an article in the July 2014 issue of The Mammoth Trumpet (Volume 29, Number 3), the archaeology magazine published quarterly by Texas A&M University, titled Hogeye Secrets. The article opens: "A cache of pristine Clovis bifaces unearthed by a commercial sand-mining operation in central Texas in 2003 drew Texas A&M archaeologists Mike Waters and Tom Jennings into investigating the discovery. It proved to be a godsend, for the 52 unused bifaces, in varying stages of completion, show lithics analysts the sequence of operations Clovis knappers performed as they crafted tools needed for survival at the end of the last Ice Age." In an accompanying picture we see one of the afore-mentioned archaeologists indicating the sand pile wherein the bifaces were discovered.

Sand pile? Reading further we discover that a workman noticed one or more bifaces in a bucket-load of sand which he was hauling from a sand pit. Over the next several months, most of the cache of Clovis points was recovered from a previously excavated pile of sand as it was processed. One of the steps in processing was to heat the sand to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. We are also told that "A few were also found in earlier piles of rejected material, and Jones was given one biface by another employee."

Hmmm. The article continues by informing us that part of the collection (those belonging to Farris) were bought and sold by various collectors, before being returned to the collection in 2005.

Some difficulties come to mind:

• The blades were not recovered in situ. Further, they were processed on a conveyor belt from which they were rejected as (not surprisingly) too big.
• Many if not all were heated to 500 degrees F before being recovered.
• Many passed through the hands of (undocumented?) collectors before being included in the collection.
• Some roaming about the internet reveals the existence of a substantial community of modern day flint knappers, many of whom seem confident that they can make reproductions indistinguishable from genuine artifacts of the various traditions.
• There appears to be some trade in such reproductions, for profit.