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Education Part 1 - The Problem Of Psychiatric Drugs

2011-10-29T04:26:00.000+05:00

To understand why psychiatric drugs have become a problem in the educational system of the United States first it is important to understand what it is these drugs are meant to control and why.

Understanding why drugs are so popular (from PBS)...

It is tempting to view this pattern as suggesting that the ADHD diagnosis provides teachers with a new technique for regaining control of the classroom in a world where many of the traditional methods of control have been eliminated. Drugs have replaced the reprimand.

But it seems to me that the real problem may be that the concept of compulsory, cookie-cutter education needs rethinking. In spite of the rhetoric in schools of education about the importance of taking into account the individual needs of the children in a classroom, the current system of public education is designed to make that nearly impossible. State curriculum guidelines and requirements, coupled with further requirements from the local community, prevent teachers from making any serious effort to tailor materials and assignments to the differing abilities and dispositions of individual children. Nor is there any mechanism, of the sort one would find in a school-choice-based system of education, for parents to seek out schools tailored to the temperaments and capabilities of their children. Instead, it becomes necessary to find ways of making children able to perform in the environment as they find it. And, in late twentieth-century America, when it is difficult or inconvenient to change the environment, we don't think twice about changing the brain of the person who has to live in it. The rise in consumption of Ritalin is only one manifestation of this cultural practice. Consider Prozac or, in previous decades, Valium.

None of this should be taken to suggest that there are no cases of genuine brain damage or dysfunction that require medical intervention. There have always been diseases of the brain, as of any other organ, and they should be treated as such. But difference does not automatically equal disease. Is changing the child's brain chemistry, by prescribing Ritalin-like drugs, really the most appropriate response to the child who doesn't perform well in the modern school environment? Perhaps it's time we asked ourselves whether the fact that so many children can't learn well in our schools is a reflection on the schools, not the children.Read more

Cevin Soling says public schools have been transformed into prisons because of an overdependence on security. (05:39)...

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Notes:

1. Author of 'The War on Kids'

2. Schools started as a model to train people for military

3. Then, with the industrial revolution, the school model was based on the factory model (repetitious and boring job)

4. Latest model he compares to prison because of the harshness of the rules. For example; one school fired a bunch of kindergarderners for using thier fingers as guns in a cop and robbers game. And it is common to handcuff kids for spitballs (something that is an integral part of Archie comics and even cartoons) - Soling says that this shows a zero tolerance attitude to any kind of misbehavious and this is similar to the prison model.

Trailer to the movie to provide an overview...

The extremeness of some of the school policies...

Notes:

1. Many of the shooters are on Ritalin. Why is there such a high correlation between Ritalin and mental problems?

2. Drug companies market drugs for kids.

3. Messing with our childrens brain in the name of psychiatric help...

The modern problem of 'psychiatric labels' to which aspects of modern education psychology seems to be tied to (from Psychology Today)...

I have been thinking a good deal about normality lately. It's a concern in the medical world. The complaint is that doctors are abusing the privilege implied in Jack's query, to define the normal. Ordinary sadness, critics say, has been engulfed by depression. Boyishness stands in the shadow of attention deficits. Social phobia has engineered a hostile takeover of shyness.

A spate of popular books—The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder by Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield, The Last Normal Child by Lawrence H. Diller, and Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness by Christopher Lane—challenge what they believe is psychiatry's narrowing of the normal. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that in any given year, over a quarter of Americans—and over a lifetime, half of us—suffer a mental disorder.

The fate of normality is very much in the balance. The American Psychiatric Association is now revising its diagnostic and statistical manual—the next version, DSM-V, should preview in 2011 and become official the following year. It may, indeed, be that as labels proliferate, mental disorders will annex ever more territory. But claims of a psychiatric power grab are overstated. The real force behind a proliferation of labels is the increasing ability of technology to see us as we've never been seen before. Still, the notion of a shift in the normal invites unease: To constrain normality is to induce conformity. To expand diagnosis is to induce anxiety. Is anyone really well?

It's a short hop from critiquing narrowed normalcy to claiming that we are an overmedicated nation. As Lane writes, "We've narrowed healthy behavior so dramatically that our quirks and eccentricities—the normal emotional range of adolescence and adulthood—have become problems we fear and expect drugs to fix." Psychiatry's critics also complain that doctors medicate patients who meet no diagnosis, who practice what I have dubbed "cosmetic psychopharmacology," to move a person from one normal, but disfavored personality state, like humility and diffidence, to another normal, but rewarded state, like self-assertion.

Labels matter even when medication has no role in treatment. A wife complains that her husband lacks empathy. Does he have Asperger's syndrome, a lesser variant of autism, or is he simply one of those guys who "don't get it," who simply don't see social interactions as ordinarily perceptive women do?

Diagnosis, however loose, can bring relief, along with a plan for addressing the problem at hand. Parents who might have once thought of a child as slow or eccentric now see him as having dyslexia or Asperger's syndrome—and then notice similar tendencies in themselves. But there's no evidence that the proliferation of diagnoses has done harm to our identity. Is dyslexia worse than what it replaced: the accusation, say, that a child is stupid and lazy? (Read More)

More about modern psychiatric/psychological labels...

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Notes:

1. Redefining mental health can be very profitable

2. The world expects the west's science to be good

3. Problems with dugs for depression

Given how much relabeling/reframing/repacking is going on for the definitions of mental disease, theories like the following are bound to increase...

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Psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi believes that mental illness can foster great leadership, but the Republican presidential candidates are too "normal."

New York Times did a review: What Befits a Leader in Hard Times? An Intimate Knowledge of Insanity

The premise of Dr. Nassir Ghaemi’s book about leadership and mental illness is simple. It need not be reiterated as frequently as Dr. Ghaemi repeats it. But he begins “A First-Rate Madness” by writing, “This book argues that in at least one vitally important circumstance insanity produces good results and sanity is a problem.” To put it only a shade differently: “When our world is in tumult, mentally ill leaders function best.” Or: “In the storm of crisis, complete sanity can steer us astray, while some insanity brings us to port.”

The quick survey of the field of education and psychiatrists/psychology makes it clear that no one is qualified to be prescribing powerful drugs on a long-term basis to anyone much less children whose brains are still forming. As an adult if you want to experiment with drugs that is one thing, but to give them to kids is just plain wrong. If you are not yet convinced, here is a small collection of evidence:

One study that looks at just one of the angles of ADD/ADHD misdiagnosis...

Nearly 1 million children in the United States are potentially misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder simply because they are the youngest -- and most immature -- in their kindergarten class, according to new research by a Michigan State University economist.

From Salon.com: "Anatomy of an Epidemic": The hidden damage of psychiatric drugs...

What about stimulants used to treat ADHD. How effective are they?
These stimulants alter behavior in a way that teachers can appreciate. They subdue finger-tapping and disruptive symptoms. But in the 1990s, the National Institute of Mental Health started looking to see if things like Ritalin were benefiting kids with ADHD, and to this day they have no evidence that this drug treatment improves long-term functioning in any domain -- the ADHD symptoms, lower delinquency rates, better performance at school, et cetera. Then the NIMH studied whether these drugs provide a long-term benefit, and they found that after three years, being on medication is actually a marker of deterioration. Some patients’ growth has been stunted, their ADHD symptoms have worsened. William Pelham, from the State University of New York at Buffalo and one of the principal investigators in that study, said, "We need to confess to parents that we’ve found no benefit." None. And we think that with drugs, the benefits should outweigh the risks.

What's so risky about Ritalin?
For one, a significant percentage -- between 10 and 25 percent -- of kids prescribed medication for ADHD will have a manic episode or psychotic episode and deteriorate in such a way that they’re diagnosed with bipolar disorder. A similar study in 2000 on pediatric bipolar disorder reported that 84 percent of the children treated for bipolar illness -- at the Luci Bini Mood Disorders Clinic in New York -- had been previously exposed to psychiatric medications. The author, Gianni Faeda, wrote, "Strikingly, in fewer than 10 percent of the cases was diagnosis of bipolar disorder considered initially." The reality is that until children were medicated with stimulants and antidepressants, you didn't see juvenile bipolar mania.

But if these studies are so groundbreaking, why have they gone unreported in the media?
Because the NIMH didn’t announce it. Just as they didn’t announce the 2007 outcome study for schizophrenia patients. In that study, the recovery rate was 40 percent for those off meds, but only 5 percent for those on meds. I checked all the NIMH press releases for 2007, and found no release on this study. I found no announcement of it in any American Psychiatric Association publication or textbook. Not a single newspaper published an account of the study. And that’s because the psychiatric establishment -- the NIMH, the APA, even the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy organization -- did not put out any press release about it or try to alert the media in any way.

Are you suggesting that psychiatrists are beholden to pharmaceutical companies?
Not exactly, although most of the leading academic psychiatrists act as consultants, advisors and speakers for them. The problem is that psychiatry, starting in 1980 with the publication of the DSM-III, decided to tell the public that psychiatric disorders were biological ailments, and that its drugs were safe and effective treatments for those ailments. If it suddenly announces to the public that a long-term NIMH-funded study found that the 15-year recovery rate for schizophrenia patients was 40 percent for those off meds and 5 percent for those on meds, then that story begins to fall apart. By not reporting the results, psychiatry maintains the image of its drugs in the public mind, and the value of psychiatrists in today’s therapy marketplace.

So do you think psychiatric drugs should be used at all?
I think they should be used in a selective, cautious manner. It should be understood that they’re not fixing any chemical imbalances. And honestly, they should be used on a short-term basis. But beyond this, I think we should look at programs that are getting very good results. This is what I love about Keropudas Hospital’s program in Finland. They have 20 years of great results treating newly psychotic patients. They see if patients can get better without the use of meds, and if they can’t, then they try them. It’s a best-use model, not a no-use or anti-med model. It fits with our studies done in the 1970s that found if you use this model, you get better outcomes, and a good number of people get better and go on with their lives.

Miscellaneous Information on the Side Effects of Ritalin...

U.S. DEPT. OF JUSTICE: “Of particular concern is that ADHD literature prepared for public consumption does not address the potential or actual abuse of methylphenidate. Instead, methylphenidate is routinely portrayed as a benign, mild substance that is not associated with abuse or serious side effects. In reality, however, the scientific literature indicates that methylphenidate [Ritalin] shares the same abuse potential as other Schedule II stimulants. Further, case reports document that methylphenidate abuse can lead to tolerance and severe psychological dependence.”

Ritalin (methylphenidate) is an amphetamine-like prescription stimulant commonly used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children and adults.

Many think Ritalin (methylphenidate) is safe, or mild, because so many children use it. However, the government classifies the psychoactive drug with cocaine and morphine because it is highly addictive.

Long-Term Effects of Ritalin: Changes in Brain Development

Ongoing research shows early-life use of Ritalin (methylphenidate) has complex effects that endure later into life. A study published in Biological Psychiatry suggests that exposure of Ritalin in youth may later disrupt development of brain cells in the hippocampus, region of the brain critical to memory, spatial navigation, and behaviorial inhibition. Damage can lead to memory problems, disorientation and depression in adulthood.

Ritalin is a Schedule II Substance, which means Ritalin has a "high potential for abuse" that "may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence," and the federal government sets limits on the amount of these amphetamine drugs that may be manufactured each year.

A review of 20-years of scientific literature on using stimulant medications, including Ritalin, to treat children with ADD and ADHD found a consensus: there is no documented long-term benefit (academic achievement or pro-social behavior) in using psychoactive drugs.

Abrupt cessation of stimulant drugs such as Ritalin can cause extreme fatigue and severe, even suicidal, depression in adult patients.

The question of whether methylphenidate (Ritalin) impairs creativity in children;

Ritalin may have subtle impacts on cognitive and intellectual processes. Both parents and researchers have noticed that children taking Ritalin sometimes answer questions in ways that seem overly compliant or narrow, suggesting the drug might restrict creative thinking. One study found hyperactive children taking Ritalin offered less varied answers to open-ended questions.

How much do the “neuro-enhancing” drugs really help? And there's the question of what we mean by “smarter.”

The psycho-stimulants help students bear down on their work, but with odd effects. One college student says he spends “too much time researching a paper rather than actually writing it.” Another student looked back at papers he'd written while on Adderall and found them verbose: “I'd produce two pages on something that could be said in a couple of sentences.”

Could enhancing one kind of thinking exact a toll on others?

All these questions need proper scientific answers, but for now much of the discussion is taking place furtively, among an increasing number of Americans who are performing daily experiments on their own brains (or their children's brains)

A few links that seal the case for, abolishing psychiatric drugs being administered to children...

How drug companies' PR tactics skew the presentation of medical research

How flimsy research gets inferior drugs to market

Dr. Jeffrey Schaler Professor of Psychology describes psychiatry as a pseudo Science.

Xanax Addiction from ABC News

Anti-Psychiatry.Org

Psychiatrists On Psychiatry

Bad Effects of taking Psychiatric Drugs

Psychiatric treatments impair the function of the brain and mind.

PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS: Cure or Quackery?

Why Psychiatry Should Be Abolished as a Medical Specialty

Why I Never Recommend Psychiatric Medications

School Support for ADHD Children May Be Missing the Mark: Inattention, Not Hyperactivity, Is Associated With Educational Failure

Depression is not a one-size-fits-all condition.

A simple alternative to giving kids drugs (unfortunately for drug company shareholders, it's extremely cheap)...

Moment of Zen... Dogs get their first antidepressant drug approved...

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The Fragmentation of Knowledge Part 1 [Or, The case against over-specialization in theory based academics]

2011-07-28T19:54:00.001+05:00

Historically, knowledge has always been approached from a holistic perspective. The Ancient Greeks studied every field of knowledge and put together theories after careful thought on all the evidence and theories they had on the world around them (this applies to Democritus, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle amongst others). In fact, it has been shown that the word they used which is often translated as 'virtue' (i.e. the word Arete) actually has meanings along the lines of 'Excellence' with the idea that a person should seek excellence in all aspects of life(shown in the Ancient Greeks approach to knowledge and ideas on living life)

Yet, in todays 'modern' academic world, from which all our theories on the structure of the worlds cultures and economy come from, is heavily fragmented into specialized fields of knowledge. This leads to problems in comming to agreement about simple facts and theories making progress on the more intricate theories and studies almost impossible (except by a tiny group of degree holders which tend to be called 'alternative' and relegated to the edges of mainstream science and media).

During the renaissance the scholars studied every field of knowledge. In fact, major break-throughs in science tended to come from individuals not directly linked to science for most of the history of science. It was only when the math became so complicated that specialized mathematical skills were required that 'lay men's' theories about the specific implication of mathematical formula became useless. For contradicting religious doctrine many Renaissance age scholars learned the hard way to avoid to contradict the church and over time an agreement was reach between the church and the new form of specialized knowledge that came to be known as 'scientists'. The agreement was simple, scientists will focus on observable phenomenon and avoid studying matters of faith and religious belief. So the modern enlightenment, or reemergence of ancient knowledge, began crippled. It's why I think A. N. Whitehead, (Process and Reality, 1929), is right when he says that all of modern western philosophical thought is a footnote to the works of Plato."The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato". It had to be. Plato could consider fields of knowledge that became socially and culturally unacceptable from about the 1700's to today's extremely fragmented state of academia, creating a type of scholar which gives scholarship a bad name.

A better type of scholar for understanding the complexity of science and the connection between the various fields of knowledge is Leonardo Da Vinci. A genuine liberal arts education with accurate textbooks could help generate more such scholars in the long-term (needs to be combined with better media influence as well).

The video below is of an interview of a modern 'ethical' philosopher. It is obvious that he believes that only he can ask and ponder the questions he has even when Stephen Colbert (a non-philosophy or economics degree holder) makes a brilliant case for the inaccuracy in one of his theories. (Note: This overspecialization of knowledge, particularly the division of 'ethicality' from other aspects of knowledge is something that Robert Pirsirg ranted about in his book "Zen and The Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance" attributing this problem to Plato and Aristotle, which could very well be correct).

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Note that Michael's question about why baseball players get paid more than teachers is something you could explain to a 10 year old. It is easier to teach little kids than it is to throw 100 mile per hour fast balls or hit these fast balls out of the playing field. If all teachers could compete with modern baseball athletes on their level ONLY then could such a question be valid. The simple reality is that the skill that is rare gets paid more for. This is simple demand and supply economics (as Colbert points out) - Also note that I have a degree (bachelors) in economics which gives my simple explanation more weight but I prefer to use links to authoritative information as I think every writer in any field of knowledge should. Also note that he simply ignores Colbert's accurate counter response hiding behind the degree by saying roughly. ' this is a question for ethical philosophy' implying Colbert can't understand this particular field of philosophy (after all, the argument is, 'I have a degree in this, you don't'). Its not Michael's fault he doesn't know economics. It's not a requirement for knowledge (specialization begins right at the beginning at college level education and school textbooks are grossly out of date), he is illustrating a symptom of a much larger cultural problem (fragmentation of knowledge) which must be addressed and is the main point of all my blogs (the idea being to combine news media and education to create larger perspectives on modern challenges).

One of the most fragmented fields of knowledge is the one of archeology. The skills of excavation (or more accurately, patience?) have reached a new high but putting together the finds in a proper theoretical framework based on all available evidence, that has been confirmed as reliable, has broken apart to such a degree that cults seem to have formed around different theories. This seems to have made the support of various archeological theories (and evidence associated with it) a political and religious issue.

Introduction to the modern archeology problem

The type of problems in archeology revolve around one group disbelieving in historical writings if they are from a book of scripture vs. literal interpreters of the Bible vs. the archeological evidence that is actually found. The following extract of a report on a recent discovery in Israel exemplifies this problem in analysis of archeological evidence.

In a region where history, belief and ideology play such an important role, the discovery is controversial. Other archaeologists dispute the significance of the find.

Professor Israel Finkelstein, of Tel Aviv University, pointed out that the remains are not evidence of a powerful biblical state.

He said: "We are not talking about some great empire ruled from a wonderful capital, the way we look at Assyria in the 9th century B.C., or even the northern Kingdom of Israel in the 9th century B.C. We are here in a formative phase of the rise of Judah."

Finkelstein added: "Khirbet Qeiyafa does not make Judah a great empire with great armies."

Garfinkel argued that even if it was not the great empire of the bible, its existence is significant.

"What people try to do is say that the Kingdom of Judah didn't exist," he said. "What I am saying is that it existed. It's a small one, not so glorified as the Bible presented. But it doesn't mean there was nothing."

Here are a few extracts from websites of mainstream archeological theories about the age of civilization (not in line with Darwin's theory of evolution... please note that my visual explanation below of the variations of skull shapes and sizes nullifies much of the evidence cited by Darwinians. This does not mean that the theory is wrong, just that, like any scientific theory, it is a theory 'in the works' and does explain many natural phenomenon but not all archeological and observational evidence).

Website example 1: CIVILIZATION BEGINS: THE COPPER-STONE AGE, 3600-2800 B.C.

Website example 2: By 6500 B.C.E., humans secured for themselves a dependable food supply by planting crops and domesticating animals. As a result, the human population increased, food surpluses allowed for economic specialization and exchange, and the emergence of civilization was made possible.[The problem with the second theory statement is the large structures that have been found with no obvious settlement, i.e. large structures require a large population to make them. The idea of these structures being religious don't fit the evidence found thus far so shouldn't be put into that category - click here to read my theory]

The following is the more religious version of the theory of evolution (Christian source):

First, even though some people believe that evolution is correct, and that men evolved from animals, that does not make it right. People believe all kinds of things that are wrong. Humans did not "evolve," but were created specially by God (Genesis 1:26-27).

Second, the fact that a person lives in a cave has nothing to do with whether or not he or she is human. Saying that a man who lives in a cave is "half human" would be like saying a dog that lives in the house is "half human." The place where you live does not determine your "humanity."

Third, the Bible explains that people of the past lived in caves for various lengths of time, and for various reasons.

There are some attempts to bring together the religious idea of creationism with it's opposite, the theory of evolution. The basic theory tends to be along the lines of 'God create man with the capacity to evolve and change for various reasons and that is why we find so many variations of human beings in fossils'.

[Click here to read an excellent example of bringing together a faith based idea in-line with a modern scientific perspective]

Amongst some Christian religious scholars there is even an attachment to a literal interpretation of the meaning of the word "day" in the first two books of Genesis. Amongst the more reasonable and open minded this can be countered with a New Testament quote, "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." 2 Peter 3:8

First set of evidence supporting the case that a PhD in the field of theoretical archeology is useless:

Here are some extremely strong pieces of evidence (some might say indisputable evidence) that the age of civilization being older than some would like to believe...

The following are extracts from a previous blog posts to show the various evidence there is that proves that civilization goes back further than school/college textbook...

"The so-called Harappa stage of the great cities of Mohenjo-daro, Chanhu-daro, and Harappa (c. 2500-1200/1000 B.C), which bursts abruptly into view, without preparation, already fully formed and showing many completely obvious signs of inspiration from the earlier high centers of the West (i.e. fertile crescent), yet undeniable signs, also, of a native Indian tradition – this too already well developed. As professor W. Norman Brown has suggested, a native Indian center (i.e., a mythogenetic zone) somewhere either in the south or in the Ganges-Jumna area would seem to be indicated, where the characteristically Indian traits, unknown at this time farther west, must have come into form. [Joseph Campbell -Primitive Mythology - Page 435]

Other interesting facts about the cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa is that the bricks used in making them are uniform, i.e. they had a system to measure and weigh stuff accurately. They had their own sewage system, public baths and the structure of the architecture suggest an egalitarian society, but there are no signs of architectural development. That means these cities arrived fully developed and then went into decline. There are no in-between cities or towns where the Mohenjodaro/Happan style of architecture is first used.

With the discovery of ancient cities off the coast of India, the sudden appearance of Mohenjodara and Harrapa makes more sense. Cities that existed before a rise in the oceans(that began at the end of the last ice age) would explain the sudden appearance of cities like Mohenjodaro and Harrapa;

"The carbon dating of 7500 BC obtained for the wooden piece recovered from the site changes the earlier held view that the first cities appeared in the Sumer Valley [in Mesopotamia] around 3000 BC," said B Sasisekaran of India's National Science Academy.

The images gathered over the past six months led to a surprising discovery - a series of well-defined geometric formations were clearly seen, spread irregularly across a nine-kilometre (five-mile) stretch, a little beneath the sea bed.

Some of them closely resemble an acropolis - or great bath - known to be characteristic of the Harappan civilisation.

The Gulf of Cambay is one of the largest tidal areas in the world - with a current of very high velocity - and so it is conceivable that the area may well have submerged an entire ancient settlement, Mr Ravindran said to the BBC.

But that isn't the only evidence of a lost civilization. The following is an abstract of a study done by Japanese scientists about an underwater structure off the coast of Japan followed by hsome pictures that show that these structures are man made (the extract below indicates that these structures date back to at least 10,000 years ago, i.e. 8,000 BC).

Abstract;Submarine research surveys using SCUBA and sonic surveys reveal detailed topography similar to submarine, pyramidal features looking like a stepped pyramid off Yonaguni in Okinawa, Japan. The site is called Iseki Point(ruins site) as a leisure diving spot. Yonaguni Submarine Pyramid(YSP) is the major structure that stands under approximately 25 meters of ocean. Essentially, it has a cliff face like the side of a stepped pyramid, and dimensions of about 290m(length) by 120m(width) by 26m(height). Flat terraces, straight walls and its surface structure of walls with scars of tool marks driven in by a wedge on the structure are identified to be artificially fabricated. Appearance and size of YSP are similar to the biggest, ancient castles such as Shuri and Nakagusuku Castles in Okinawa Island, where they are called 'gusuku'. Roads associated with drainage canals were recognized, surrounding YSP, and that a retaining wall was found along a road. The southern point of the wall is composed of huge rock fragments. Stone tools and other artifacts were discovered from the sea bottom. Those evidence strongly shows that the YSP has not been manufactured by nature. It is identifie to be man-made. The formation age is estimated to be about 10,000 years ago based on 14C and 10Be age determinations. (author abst.)

Second set of evidence supporting the case that a PhD in the field of theoretical archeology is useless:

All ancient human classifications are based on a few fossils and the variations in skull shape and size seem to be within modern day variation of our species to some extant [there is also mention of a bone here or there which is supposed to be further evidence of an evolutionary change but the main arguments are based around the skull sizes and the size of the brain that these cranial cavities could hold]

"Archaic forms of Homo sapiens first appear about 500,000 years ago. The term covers a divers...e group of skulls which have features of both Homo erectus and modern humans. The brain size is larger than erectus and smaller than most modern humans, averaging about 1200 cc, and the skull is more rounded than in erectus. The skeleton and teeth are usually less robust than erectus, but more robust than modern humans. Many still have large brow ridges and receding foreheads and chins. There is no clear dividing line between late erectus and archaic sapiens, and many fossils between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago are difficult to classify as one or the other. "

Here is a graphic example of this theory (the one on the right is supposed to be Neanderthal)...

Is there a scientific theory to explain the huge variation in skull shapes and sizes in ancient humans and modern humans (of the various races)?

Yes, for Neanderthals in particular but it applies to all theories connecting humans to apes and other species through skull sizes, for example: pygmies will have smaller heads than a gorilla but its doesn't mean a gorilla is smarter, ...

ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2007) — Chance, not natural selection, best explains why the modern human skull looks so different from that of its Neanderthal relative, according to a new study led by Tim Weaver, assistant professor of anthropology at UC

"For 150 years, scientists have tried to decipher why Neanderthal skulls are different from those of modern humans," Weaver said. "Most accounts have emphasized natural selection and the possible adaptive value of either Neanderthal or modern human traits. We show that instead, random changes over the past 500,000 years or so – since Neanderthals and modern humans became isolated from each other – are the best explanation for these differences."

Weaver and his colleagues compared cranial measurements of 2,524 modern human skulls and 20 Neanderthal specimens, then contrasted those results with genetic information from a separate sample of 1,056 modern humans.

The scientists concluded that Neanderthals did not develop their protruding mid-faces as an adaptation to icy Pleistocene weather or the demands of using teeth as tools, and the retracted faces of modern humans are not an adaptation for language, as some anthropologists have proposed.

Instead, random "genetic drift" is the likeliest reason for these skull differences.

Problem with this skull size and shape theory is that these variations occur even today, yet according to archeologists we are supposed to be one species of humans of different races while the humans of the past are supposed to look like apes.

Take a look at examples of individuals with different skull sizes, both in one race and accross different races. You can carry out these observations across many segments of modern populations and you will find these variations in skull size and shape are very common.

In the following video compare the skull size of the basketball player with his countrymen...

The following images show the same and different races side by side with the same basketball player showing clearly the variation in skull shape and size varies, that, according to some archeologist theories, should make these individuals of a 'different species of pre-historic, ape-like humans'.

Image source

It should be obvious from the above images that skull shape and size is highly variable even in our time of 'homo sapian sapians' making that argument for a different human species untenable.

Third set of evidence supporting the case that a PhD in the field of theoretical archeology is useless:

There is clear evidence of ritual in Neanderthal burial sites but even more fascinating is the ancient wooden spears that have been found. We all know that apes don't use spears or go on hunts, therefore the skulls etc. found from 400,000 years ago must belong to humans.

Video Evidence for Neanderthal Burials

About Neanderthal burial site: "the idea of the earth as mother and of burial as a re-entry into the womb for rebirth appears to have recommended itself to at least some of the communities of mankind at an extremely early date. The earliest unmistakable evidences of ritual and therewith of mythological thought yet found have been the grave burials of Homo neanderthalensis, a remote predecessor of our species, whose period is perhaps to be dated as early as 200,000 – 75000 B.C. Neanderthal skeletons have been found interred with supplies (suggesting the idea of another life), accompanied by animal sacrifice (wild ox, bison, and wild goat), with attention to an east-west axis (the path of the sun, which is reborn from the same earth in which the dead are placed), in flexed position (as though within the womb), or in a sleeping posture – in one case with pillow of chips of flint. Sleep and death, awakening and resurrection, the grave as a return to the mother for rebirth; but whether Homo neanderthalensis thought the next awakening would be here again or in some world to come (or even both together) we do not know." Joseph Campbell's Primitive Mythology page 66

Evidence for ritual and hunting in ancient humans

More evidence for ritual in ancient humans

How artists perception influence their drawings of ancient humans (Neanderthal example)
[Note: If archeologists will stop calling ancient humans 'ape look alikes' then the artist drawings of ancient humans with ape-like feature will stop.]

More evidence for hunting with wooden spears in ancient times

Fourth set of evidence supporting the case that a PhD in the field of theoretical archeology is useless:

In my last post on archeologists, I suggested that petroglyphs of Mammoths could have been of actual observations (as even Native American tribes have reported sighting them). The following is more evidence of how animals can survive in small pockets into times when they are supposed to be extinct. The point here is that given that petroglyphs and eye-witness evidence archeologists shouldn't believe that mammoths definitely went extinct around 10,000 years ago as there is enough evidence to leave the extinction date for mammoths open ended as mammoths could easily have survived in the northern cold land mass of Canada into more modern times. The following are links to examples of animals thought to be extinct that were later found to be very much alive.

1. A "surprisingly healthy" population of rare snow leopards has been discovered in the remote northeastern stretches of Afghanistan, one of the few areas largely unaffected by the near decade-long war in the country.

2. Toad rediscovered

3. New Indian frogs and new species of amphibians

4. 14 species of rediscovered animals rediscovered that were thought to be extinct
[including a dwarf elephant!]

This is the end of this post on the fragmentation of knowledge, Or, The case against over-specialization in theory based academics.

Prelude to a new article series on education

2011-07-16T02:35:00.001+05:00

The modern form of scientific thought and analysis emerged from the philosophy of the Ancient Greeks and their writings. Which were passed down through the Dark Ages by the Universities of the Middle East from their Golden Age (every region has a Golden Age and it appears to be continuously moving west, its next stop is China and India, again).

The mechanism at work is the importing of technological and creative ideas. This same process was at work when there was an idea flow from Europe to the New World. In this example, from France to the newly developed, and still developing (industrially), United States;

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Wednesday July 13, 2011 - Colbert Report: David McCullough
David McCullough discusses his book "The Greater Journey" about young Americans moving to Paris in the 19th century.

It is common economic knowledge that that a country needs a strong industrial base to grow. It also needs a strong democratic base (especially in the flow of information) which can be ensured using some simple measurement tools.

I have wanted to do a thorough study on education for several years and now I think I have enough background information to begin. I'll start with the emergence of science, education and rhetoric from the Ancient Greeks.

Archeologists can explain away anything! [Mysterious Evidence of Mommoths/Mastadons in America]

2011-07-04T20:39:00.002+05:00

Recently National Geographic published an article on Gobekli Tepe and this got me wondering if I could prove that Archeologists are either so blinded by bias that they are incapable of considering evidence that goes against their beliefs (Such as the Judges in America who are sharply divided by ideology - As Jon Stewart points out, ‎"It's clear now, your politics shapes reality") OR simply don't read anything beyond their academic curriculum and their 'leaders' accepted sources of information. (You can consider this post as a part 1 in this analysis).

My first test was one of free speech. Which they passed with flying colors...

The following were my comments posted on National Geographic's facebook page:

Comment 1:

Hi, I have been studying ancient structures for many years. To assume that this is a religious site... well, lets just say, it's a really big leap. There is no evidence to support that theory except the bias of the observer. If archeologist...s take all ancient structural evidence into account many other possible theories to the origin of these structures can be discussed. http://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2011/02/ancient-mysteries-worlds-earliest.html . Given the level of the ocean the structures in the link I've posted date to over 10,000 years ago. If you take this evidence into account it is possible that these structures are a monument to the dead of the previous civilization or a clear indication to future generations that a culture, sophisticated in the formation of stone monuments, did exist.

Comment 2:

Note: the following is not bewildering if it is considered that the formation of these structures were by a people of a previous civilization who were, more or less, destroyed. In such a situation technological adeptness would decrease. (f...or example:If our civilization were destroyed how many of us could biuld a car or plane from scratch? Our technology and skills would wither til eventually we would forget all the knowledge we had previously aquired.) [Note: This has happened many times in recorded history as well, exmaple, the knowledge of the Greeks or the inheritance from the Muslims through the dark ages etc.] - "Bewilderingly, the people at Göbekli Tepe got steadily worse at temple building. The earliest rings are the biggest and most sophisticated, technically and artistically. As time went by, the pillars became smaller, simpler, and were mounted with less and less care. Finally the effort seems to have petered out altogether by 8200 B.C. Göbekli Tepe was all fall and no rise."

Comment 3:

Ooops! The above comments were meant to go with this article: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text .

[These comments were a day ago and are still up there.]

In college a religion professor once mentioned in class (Professor Richman?) that in her day archeologists needed something called 'evidence' before coming up with theories. (She was referring to the female figures found that are assumed to be Goddesses). I also think it may have been her who gave me/us the example of future archeologists digging down to our time and discovering a bunch of Barbie dolls and concluding, based on these finds, that this was the Goddess of the early twentieth century.

Anyways, all of this was just to begin my analysis of how perception and lack of reading can affect the analysis (and therefore legitimacy) of the most highly qualified PhD holder in Archeology.

As Louis L'Amour explains at the end of his fictional book, Jubal Sackett (from his Sackett series) :

"Mammoth, Mastadon etc: According to scholars mammoths died out around 6000 B.C. Nonetheless, American Indians record hunting and killing them. One such report occurs in the Bureau of ethnology report The Ponca Tribe. Returning from their "long hunt" west to the Rockies, the Poncas saw a mammoth, as well as what was probably a giant ground sloth, near what is now Niobrara, Nebraska.

David Thompson, the distinguished Hudson's Bay Co. explorer, on January 7, 1811, came upon some tracks near the Athabasca River in the northern Rockies which the Indians told him were those of the mammoth. the Indians has assured him the animal was to found there. Many Indian tribes had accounts of seeing or hunting mammoth.

Near Moab, at Hys Bottom close to the Colorado River, there is a petroglyph of a mastadon. And in the Four Corners area Flora Vista a small boy found two slabs on which were carved many glyphs, including pictures of two elephants. They have been called fakes, which is the most convenient way of getting rid of something that does not fit current beliefs."

[Note: The best analysis of the Moab petroglyph (IMO) is here... and I can't find any information on the Flora Vista elephants/mammoths on any authoritative website.]

The following is the evidence that is currently available on this topic:

The scholars have changed the date to the extinction of the mammoths to 10,000 years ago (At the time of the writing of Jubal Sackett it was at 6000 years).

Here is a carving found on a mammoth bone (from the Smithsonian):

It was heavily mineralized, which prevented standard dating, Stanford explained. But mammoths and mastodons had died out in the Americas by 13,000 years ago, so it has to be older than that. "It could be quite early," he added.

Here is some more analysis of the Moab petroglyph:

Furthermore, according to Barnes and Pendleton, in their book Canyon Country Prehistoric Indians: Their Cultures, Ruins, Artifacts and Rock Art, there are two such "mammoths" in the Moab vicinity. One is a short distance down river from Moab Valley in the Colorado River Gorge (pictured). The other is in Indian Creek Canyon within sight of US 163 to the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park. There are interesting arguments on both sides of this historic-or-prehistoric controversy that centers on these two petroglyphs.

On the prehistoric side neither petroglyph appears to be recent. Both have desert varnish built up within the chipped out parts of the glyphs. Further it is widely accepted by anthropologists and paleontologists that early American Indians hunted such large animals as giant bison, mammoths and giant sloths, and may even have brought about their extinction.

On the historic side the two mammoth petroglyphs do not appear to be much older, if any, than the many other glyphs nearby, glyphs that are clearly associated with the most recent stages of prehistoric creatures that did not even exist 2000 years ago. Paleontologists estimate that mammoths became extinct on this continent about 10,000 years ago. Further the oldest rock are so far discovered that is age-dated by inference as 8700 years old is simply a fist-sized rock with scratches on it. To date, no rock are known to be older than about 1000 years old resembles the sophistication of design and techniques that was used in making these mammoths.

This find is my favorite...

This petroglyph is so old and weathered that one can walk right by without noticing it, this is , unless the sun is shining just right. We are told that it stands out sharp in early morning or late afternoon sunlight. Evidently the lower angled rays of the sun produce better highlights and shadows on opposite walls of the peckings and enhance legibility. Unfortunately, our visit occurred about noon and even the photographs we took are hard to read. They proved to be unsuitable for reproduction but a rubbing taken on stiffener cloth with a black crayon was obviously an instant success. The original rubbing renders a petroglyph that is 18-inches wide.

How the memory of this animal came to the Track Rocks, we do not know. Either the engraving is so old that the artist was recording a mastodon or, more reasonably, it dates to a later period associated with ancient colonist from the Mediterranean who were famililar with the elephant.

Going along with the last assumption, it is interesting to note that the 1975 radio carbon dating of core samples from the Grave Creek Mound (less than 25 miles from the Track Rocks) gave a date of 200 BC for its construction. This corresponds well with the time period for the use of the Iberian-Punic script found on the tablet removed from the mound. The script also identifies people who were familiar with elephants and Carthaginians.

This Track Rocks petroglyph is not the first rendering of an elephant in America. There were many of reports of tablets, steles, petroglyphs, and sculptures depicting elephants. Wisconsin even records an enormous elephant effigy earthwork. Many of these were reported in the early 1800's, long before it was fashionable to deny the presence of ancient mariners on this continent prior to the coming of Christopher Columbus. [Note: 'fashion' may be just as much a part of modern science as it was in the past?]

Adding the above extract to the descriptions given by Native Americans that Louis L'Amour describes above and this concludes part 1 of my investigation into the legitimacy of University degrees in Modern Archeology (at least as far as theory goes, we do need some people to do those incredibly slow digs). Also, keep in mind that Canada has the largest cold land mass that is cut off from the 'old world', there is plenty of land and mountain valleys for herbivores to survive a long time in this up and down ice age of the last million years or so. [Note: There are no links to the verbal accounts that Louis L'Amour describes because it would be much harder for me to find and is probably not even online - Also, to kill off the Indians, to take their land, they had to be discredited. The perception of Indians (Native Americans) as uneducated 'savages' (and therefore lacking observation skills) is still a view amongst many, especially in academic circles who pride themselves on their university taught archeological observation skills er... I mean blinders.]

-----------------------------------------

Note to Archeologists: Ignore one piece of evidence, fine. Ignore two pieces of evidence, fine. Ignore three pieces of evidence, getting iffy. But this is getting ridiculous.

-----------------------------------------
On a side note: Some info from Ponca City (been there!) where the Ponca Tribe was sent to from Nabraska when that area was taken over and it's also where mammoth bones were found and I'm sure more bones exist (and maybe even petroglyphs?)...

Before modern settlers and Indians came to Oklahoma, the land was occupied by hunter-agriculture peoples. Near Anadarko, archeologists discovered the bones of a mammoth and several spear points. They estimate the mammoth was killed more than 11,000 years ago. The spear point was identified as belonging to an ancient group of hunters called the Clovis culture.

From 500 to 1300 AD, the Spiro Mound Builders lived in an area just west of the Arkansas/Oklahoma border. Items left in burial mounds show the Mound Builders to be skilled artists.

In the 1830s, the federal government forced the Five Civilized Tribes to leave their homelands. These tribes were living in the southeastern part of the U.S. They had to walk to Oklahoma over a trail that became known as the "Trail of Tears." Many men, women and children died during this long and treacherous trip. Once these people settled here, Oklahoma became Indian Territory.

On April 22, 1889, a cannon blast started the first Land Run. Settlers ran, rode on horseback or traveled in wagons to stake their land claims. By the end of the day, nearly 10,000 people had settled in Oklahoma City.
[Note: A great great great grandfather of mine was in on this land run - married a Cherokee, I think.]

Unedited version of 'Forgot About Dre.'

2011-07-02T17:15:00.000+05:00

Connects to the songs from the post called, "What's the difference between me and you?"

Could American psychology have a major Native American influence?

2011-05-19T01:17:00.000+05:00

In the early part of the last century there was a boy named William James Sidis who became known as a child prodigy. He entered Harvard at age 11 (as they wouldn't let him in when he was ready - at age 9) and everyone expected him to do big things. And he did. In the world of ideas. He was the first to predict the existence of black holes and wrote many books on many different topics.

How could Native American perspectives influence the early American pioneers?

The pioneers, or the people who moved west, always contained individuals who kept to themselves and made friends with the natives. They traded and made friends with many different tribes. Besides goods such as furs that these individuals would get from the natives, they also learnt their ways. These types of people are represented in the western novels written by Louis La'more.

The immigrants who came to settle and farm the land hated the natives. For territorial as well as cultural reasons. However, they respected the mountain men. Since all the immigrants were new to this strange and untamed land they had to develop new ways of living to deal with this. Ways that were different from their original land. They copied the very self assured and well established mountain men and traders.

Do you see the chain? Since these mountain men learnt from the natives and the new immigrants learnt from the mountain men, the ideas being absorbed by the new people to this land (and the founding fathers) were from the people that most considered to be ‘savages’.

In fact, the cowboy gunslinger is the western version of a native american warrior. Both are calm upto the very moment of battle. When they stike it’s sudden and decisive. Both have a code of honor. The perfect example for this kind of man, which is honored in American society (and rightly so) can be seen in the Louis La'more books.

Here are some quotes by Native Americans that exemplify their steadfast perspective on individuality, freedom and equality - concepts as much a part of America and it's founding fathers, as it once was a part of the Natives who lived there. Notice the continuity in perspectives from Native Americans to modern Americans (the other side of the American mind set is inherited from the Old World and is beyond the scope of this post).

All birds, even those of the same species, are not alike, and it is the same with animals and with human beings. The reason Wakan Tanka does not make two birds, or animals, or human beings exactly alike is because each is placed here by WakanTanka to be an independent individuality and to rely upon itself. - Shooter Teton Sioux

If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace.....Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.......Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade....where I choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself, and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty. - Chief Joseph, Nez Perce

I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are,
But rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man. - Sun Bear of the Chippewa Tribe

All birds, even those of the same species, are not alike, and it is the same with animals and with human beings. The reason Wakan Tanka does not make two birds, or animals, or human beings exactly alike is because each is placed here by WakanTanka to be an independent individuality and to rely upon itself. - Shooter Teton Sioux

When a child my mother taught me the legends of our people; taught me of the sun and sky, the moon and stars, the clouds and storms. She also taught me to kneel and pray to Usen for strength, health, wisdom, and protection. We never prayed against any person, but if we had aught against any individual we ourselves took vengeance. We were taught that Usen does not care for the petty quarrels of men. - Geronimo [Goyathlay], Chiracahua Apache

Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations. - Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux Chief

If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself. - Minquass

Sharing and giving are the ways of God. – Sauk

Man's law changes with his understanding of man. Only the laws of the spirit remain always the same. - Crow

Man has responsibility, not power. - Tuscarora

Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins. - Cheyenne

Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance. - Lakota

What's the difference between me and you?

2011-05-07T04:55:00.000+05:00

Added to my collection which consists of this post, this one and this one.

Interlude: Reflection of Cultural Perspectives Through Gardening

2011-05-03T02:18:00.000+05:00

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The few Native Americans who traveled to England in the early days of colonization were horrified by the English sense of gardening. They came from a lifetime of living in nature...

Then they saw something along the lines of this...

You can understand how it could be mind boggling to a person from a primitive culture to see garden art in a culture so far away from their own cultural perception. Such differences often lead to demonization in environments that are highly emotionally charged.

Images: Neanderthals - Proof that the artist's perception influences his or her art

2011-04-19T17:23:00.001+05:00

I mentioned in the earliest evidence of ritual and myth part 1 how Neanderthals seem to be seen differently by each artist based on their preconceptions. This post gathers together more evidence to support that theory. First, my favorite. I call this one the Klingon version of Neanderthals.

For over 150 years, researchers have been puzzled by the extinction of Neanderthals.

Here is an updated collection of images from the minds of various people;

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

Example 5:

This one isn't a piece of art, it's evidence from a DNA test which is mind blowing:

Some Neandertals may have had red hair and pale skin, just as some modern humans do, according to a new genetic study.

The traits were likely more common in European Neandertals (often spelled Neanderthals), just as they are often seen in modern humans of European descent.

[Edit - 19 April '11: The woman in this video (Jenna Lee) fits the above description for neanderthals, so I thought I would add her as a possible example of a neanderthal woman - keeping in mind that the genetics from those times have been diluted quite a bit. (Note to Jenna Lee: It's a compliment, they had cities too)]

The Real Slim Shady By Eminem UNCENSORED

2011-04-19T16:22:00.000+05:00

The earliest evidence of ritual and myth part 2

2011-04-19T16:14:00.001+05:00

OK. I posted the video about Neanderthal Burial Caves here, which was 17 days ago. So if any historians/archeologists have read it then they have had enough time to either put the pieces together or to block out the thought from their heads... in a desperate (though probably unconscious) attempt to save their non-existent careers.

I guess the most obvious (and also the stupidest) defense an archeologist could come up with has to do with the shape of the skulls (I say 'archeologist' but they tend to roam in packs, like boy/girl groups).

For some reason many scientists/academics are so locked up in their heads that they can’t see what is right in front of them. So, apparently, I have been sent here to show you what they are unable to see for themselves. [Note: There are some archeologists who are not educated fools... they tend to be shunned by the mainstream academics... can anyone say ‘hall of shame’?]

Before I begin with the earliest evidence of ritual and myth part 2 I thought I should first take care of the obvious.

The following is a comparison between ‘human’ (i.e. ‘Homo sapian sapiens) and Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalis) skulls

This is a picture of Dwayne Johnson, also known as The Rock

This is a picture of Jackie Chan

Compare the skull size of Dwayen Johnson and Jackie Chan... and ask yourself...are they different sizes? The answer should be fairly obvious (I hope).

If we are to believe the nonsense that is coming out of the mouths of modern academics about Neanderthals (and with it early human history) then we would have to name Dwayne Johnson’s species Homo Rockathalis and Jackie Chan’s species Homo Chanathalis. Since the one with the bigger skull is the supposed to be the dumb one that means that Rockathalis is a dumb species (Note to The Rock: This is what the academics are saying not me). While Chanathalis is the smart one that has learned how to speak and cook.

Decide for yourselves if you want to believe all the papers and papers of theories based on tiny differences in the shape of the rare skulls we find in our archeological record.

Moving on. Here is the video again:

Images in the video in order:

Skeleton in a position of rest (i.e. burial with stuff to take to the afterlife)

A Boomerang!

"We do not know what the hunting methods of these Neanderthalis can have been. There was a great disparity between the size of their weapons and the animals that were their prey. The bow and arrow had not yet been invented, but the boomerang, or throwing stick, apparently had." Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell page 371

A carved figurine!

Bone based jewelry

Here is a picture of shell based jewelry:

Hand axe ‘blade’

From Primitive Mythology Page 66

"the idea of the earth as mother and of burial as a re-entry into the womb for rebirth appears to have recommended itself to at least some of the communities of mankind at an extremely early date. The earliest unmistakable evidences of ritual and therewith of mythological thought yet found have been the grave burials of Homo neanderthalensis, a remote predecessor of our species, whose period is perhaps to be dated as early as 200,000 – 75000 B.C. Neanderthal skeletons have been found interred with supplies (suggesting the idea of another life), accompanied by animal sacrifice (wild ox, bison, and wild goat), with attention to an east-west axis (the path of the sun, which is reborn from the same earth in which the dead are placed), in flexed position (as though within the womb), or in a sleeping posture – in one case with pillow of chips of flint. Sleep and death, awakening and resurrection, the grave as a return to the mother for rebirth; but whether Homo neanderthalensis thought the next awakening would be here again or in some world to come (or even both together) we do not know."

Note on cannibalism:

"Neanderthal Man may have practiced some form of ritual cannibalism in connection with an early version of the headhunt; and if so, ... this grim cult might reasonably be proposed as the earliest religious rite of the human species." Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell page 394

From National Geographic:

"Struggling for survival, Neanderthals turned to cannibalism—even brain-eating—some 43,000 years ago, says a new study of mutilated bones discovered in a Spanish cave. ... The new research supports previous studies that have suggested that Neanderthals turned to cannibalism to stave off starvation when times got tough."

I think the idea that Neanderthals may have engaged in cannibalism out of desperation rather than as a regular part of their culture makes sense. In cannibalism was normal then we would find thousands of skulls not occasional ones.

Also there is this little piece of evidence that suggests they were eating grains (i.e. they could cook and so had access to a greater variety of food than just what they could get with their wooden clubs):

Hunter, gatherer, vegetarian masterchef?

Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables, a new study of Neanderthal remains reveals.

Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in the teeth of the remains.

The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Images: Could Ancient Swastikas Have Actually Been Boomerangs?

2011-04-19T11:14:00.000+05:00

The diffusion of swastikas across the planet is an old story...

This one is from Oklahoma...

Engraved design on conch drinking cup from Craig Mound, Spiro with four Piasa figures (part snake, cat, and bird) arranged in swastika around a central circle and cross.

This one is from India...

This one is from Hitler..

This is what Aborigine boomerangs look like...

[Note: Also notice the boomerang next to the child in the Neanderthal Burial Cave video]

Finally, check out these modern sports boomerangs...

Example 1

Example 2

Questions to ask yourself:

Could the boomerang have been an old weapon that came in many forms including that of a swastika? Could bows and arrows have made this an obsolete weapon?

Had to add this to my Dr. Dre collection...

2011-04-17T20:25:00.001+05:00

The following video is one of Dr. Dre's newer songs.

[Edit: 18th April '11]

Lyrics from here with some corrections.

Roll up, wait a minute
Let me put some kush up in it
Roll up, wait a minute
Let me put some kush up in it
Roll up, wait a minute
Let me put some kush up in it
Roll up, wait a minute
Let me put some kush up in it

[Dr. Dre]

Now this that puff puff pass shit
That Cheech and Chong glass shit
Blunts to the head, kush spillin’ no mattress
Speed boat traffic, bitches automatic
Cross that line, fuck around and get yo ass kicked
We roll shit that burn slow as fucking malasis
Probably won’t pass it, smoke it till the last hit
Down to the ashes, Mary J. a bad bitch
Andre 3001 another classic
Go ahead ask him bitches, bout “how I be smokin’ out”
Party all night, yea its goin’ down
Order rounds, we smokin’ quarter pounds of that good stuff
O yea we smokin’ all night
Yea puff puff pass that shit right here
Nigga, better than my last batch, caramel complexion and her ass black
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale,

[Akon]

I know you tryna get high
Type of shit that have ya leaning sideways
Make her work for this suicide
Holla at me cuz I got it all day
No need to fly to Jamaica
Quarter ganja, we can get the same thing
You want that bom bom biggy, holla at my niggi right here in LA
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale

Hold up, wait a minute
Let me put some beats! up in it
Hold up, wait a minute
Let me put some beats up in it

[Snoop Dogg]

Still I am
Tighter than the pants on Will.I.Am
Backthrow, back still, I have a pound in my backpack
Next to where the swishas at, smokin’ presidential
Got some bubba, I give me that
Need it for my cataracts
Four hoes, and I’m the pimp, in my Cadillac
You can tell them Cali back
Matter fact, they a know, this aint Dro
Get a whiff of that
No it aint no seeds in my sack
You aint never gottta ask dawg
What he smokin’ on?
Shit kush till my mind gone
What you think Im on
Eyes low, Im blown
High as a muthafucka, aint no question bout it
Niggas say smoke me out, yea I really doubt it
c' Im Bob Marley reincarnated, so faded
So If you want it
You know yo nigga homie,
You can put it in a zag or a blunt and get blunted

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale

[Akon]

I know you tryna get high
Type of shit that have ya leaning sideways
Make her work for this suicide
Holla at me cuz I got it all day
No need to fly to Jamaica
Quarter ganja, we can get the same thing
You want that bom bom biggy, holla at my niggi right here in LA
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale

We get that kush, we blow on the best smoke
Inhale slow, no choke
Make yo ass choke
Hold up wait a minute
You can go put it back
Cuz what you got in yo sack boy, it aint that
Aint that Kush, we blow on the best smoke
Inhale slow, no choke
Make yo ass choke

(inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale)

Never Say Never - by Justin Bieber and Jaden Smith

2011-04-15T05:53:00.000+05:00

Like many kids growing up I was a big fan of the movie Karate Kid. So, of course, when the remake came out I watched it as soon as it came on on video. And it is better than the originals. Possibly because it is more suited to our time, or our evolving tastes in movies (this doesn't apply to those who hated the movie...there must be some who do). Anyways, My first post on music by a favorite musician was here. This is my second.

History: More evidence for hunting with wooden spears in ancient times

2011-04-05T09:07:00.000+05:00

In an earlier post I wrote about the idea that wooden objects probably came before objects made out of bone and stone. Wood is easier to work with than stone so it makes sense that wood would be mankind's first work material. To really drive this home I pointed out that if we can find primitive cultures today that still used wood as their main work material for living then that would make a useful model for how primitive cultures and societies in the past must have operated (got this idea for comparison from Campbell).

Here is a long spear or 'dart' like object that was found in melting ice (and thus got bent);

Then, once again, consider the 400,000 year old spears found in Germany:

Little is known about the organic component of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic technologies, particular with respect to wooden tools. Here I describe some wooden throwing spears about 400,000 years old that were discovered in 1995 at the Pleistocene site at Schöningen, Germany. They are thought to be the oldest complete hunting weapons so far discovered to have been used by humans. Found in association with stone tools and the butchered remains of more than ten horses, the spears strongly suggest that systematic hunting, involving foresight, planning and the use of appropriate technology, was part of the behavioural repertoire of pre-modern hominids. The use of sophisticated spears as early as the Middle Pleistocene may mean that many current theories on early human behaviour and culture must be revised.

After going over the evidence above (including the stuff I wrote about earlier), then watch this video with one simple question...how hard would it have been to hunt with wooden spears in our deep deep past?

Prelude to Part 2 of "The earliest evidence of ritual and myth"

2011-04-02T12:23:00.000+05:00

Yet another blog! Short posts on culture and society from mainstream media

2011-04-02T03:22:00.000+05:00

There is so much going on that I decided to set up another blog just so people can keep up with the amazing world of scholarship and research. So I have created a new blog on which I will be posting video clips from mainstream media that are part of the world wide discussion on culture and society.

To bulk up this short post I thought I would add a video from Jimmy Fallon of an interview with James Marsden who was born in the same state as me!

New blog: Fox News In Context

2011-03-31T03:22:00.000+05:00

Fox news is a mix of journalism and opinion that seems to be dictated by a script, from time to time, written by someone else (Rove?). As a consequence over time Fox news seems to have become the voice of the top echelons of the Republican party.

I have been watching Fox News, on and off, over the last few days and it is most definitely conservative in opinion, however that's good (free speech remember?).

The Daily Show - Moment of Zen - Grandchildren Listen to Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I don't agree with all the views and yet a few do make some sense (Except for Glenn Beck as I will just explain). but most importantly I like the anchors and enjoy thier comments (not so much where Hannity is concerned but I support his right to express his views - Note that if you remove Beck from the line up then Hannity is aggressive but not scary. The scary part comes from believing Glenn Becks nonsense).

If you watch the journalism and then some of the random stuff that gets said I think it's obvious that in some cases the news and opinion show anchors are being told what to say. You also have to keep in mind that ideological terrorists such as Glenn Beck have not only an influence on the American public but also on Fox news anchors and journalists and - amazingly - you can see Glenn Beck's ideas spread through the entire American media/news network. That is why when I want to hear peaceful, balanced journalism I watch BBC World News.

Anyways, on to my new blog: Fox News In Context

Joseph Campbell puts culture and society in perspective

2011-03-30T01:33:00.000+05:00

The following video is a narration by Joseph Campbell that appears at the beginning of "The Power Of Myth, Part 3". In this video clip Campbell provides some perspective about the world we live in from our origins as tribes of hunters and gatherers, through the beautiful prehistoric caves found in France, to the difference between modern life and prehistoric life.

The ancient cultures were very different from ours yet it is from our deep past that the structures of our psychology are supposed to derive. Also, Joseph Campbell mentions that the visions of the Shamans must be of the same structure as the dreams we experience in our sleep. Joseph Campbell is referring to the observation made by Jung that dreams often contain symbolism which transcends the social experiences of the person dreaming. In other words, people from one culture have had dreams in the symbolism of another culture without any prior familiarity with that culture.

More on Shamans and Shamanism: Shamans have probably been around for many millennia as Joseph Campbell as stated in his analysis of the symbol of the yogi on ancient seals found at Mohenjo-daro, "the yogi, as a higher transformation of the shamanistic techniques and experiences of ecstasis [ecstasy]"(Primitive Mythology page 437). In other words yoga has probably developed from the accumulated knowledge (including psychological descriptions such as 'spirits' - see archetypes - and techniques to help people that sounds allot like hypnosis) of generations of shamans that led to whatever form it had in the Indian subcontinent around 2000 BC (to which time the following image of a seal with a yogi on it is from).

The form of yoga practiced now derives from the format outlined in the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali dated to around 200-500 BC. The passed down, accumulated, knowledge of the tribes in the orient through their line of Shamans, settled in the basin and mountains of China from whom Qigong and the other arts such as acupressure must come from. In other words, every culture must have had their own Shamans or 'Myth Keepers'. Some more compassionate while others may have been more aggressive, each adapted to his/her own culture and time. In fact, I think it is safe to say that the Shaman must have been the world's first professional getting paid for services (such as healing or chasing away 'spirits') by gifts of meat, or fruits or whatever was of value in the culture the Shaman was from. Such payment is common in our time, in primitive cultures, as well and may have a long history, even the Indian culture has a whole tradition of ascetics living off of the villages nearby and spending their time doing yoga...could this be a remnant of an ancient culture with shamanistic roots? Anyways, getting back to Joseph Campbell, here is what he has written about one of the seals found in Mohenjodaro that must have been a remnant of the ancient Saraswati civilization. [Note: I say 'remnant' because of the evidence of ancient cities I outlined earlier]

The following extract is from Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell page 435

"The so-called Harappa stage of the great cities of Mohenjo-daro, Chanhu-daro, and Harappa (c. 2500-1200/1000 B.C), which bursts abruptly into view, without preparation, already fully formed and showing many completely obvious signs of inspiration from the earlier high centers of the West (i.e. fertile crescent), yet undeniable signs, also, of a native Indian tradition – this too already well developed. As professor W. Norman Brown has suggested, a native Indian center (i.e., a mythogenetic zone) somewhere either in the south or in the Ganges-Jumna area would seem to be indicated, where the characteristically Indian traits, unknown at this time farther west, must have come into form. For on two of the stamp-seals of the period we find figures seated on low thrones in the meditating yoga posture."

"One of these is flanked by two kneeling worshipers and rearing serpents, while the other, with two gazelles reposing beneath his seat, is surrounded by four wild beasts – a water buffalo, rhinoceros, elephant, and tiger. It is well known that precisely these compositions are associated in later Hindu and Buddhist art both with the god Shiva and with the Buddha. One can only suppose that the practice of yoga must have already been developed and associated with the concept of heightened state of consciousness, not only worthy of worship but also capable of quelling and fascinating the animal world – like the music of Orpheus in the later tradition of the Greeks."

An interesting fact is that this ancient seal, from a city that has been dead for around 3000 years, has some amazing similarities between later Hindu, Buddhist and Greek mythology.

"The seated yogi among the beasts wears on his head a curious headdress with a high crown and two immense horns, which, as Heinrich Zimmer has pointed out, resembles to a striking degree on of the so-called "Three Jewels" (symbolizing the Buddha, the doctrine, and the order of the Buddha’s followers), which in the form of a kind of trident. The Hindu god Shiva carries a trident also; and among the Greeks, as we know, this same sign was the attribute of Poseidon (Neptune), the god of the watery deep." Primitive Mythology page 436

History: The earliest evidence of ritual and myth part 1

2011-03-26T05:45:00.000+05:00

Joseph Campbell writes in Primitive Mythology:

In Dreachenloch and Wildermannlisloch little walls of stone, up to 32 inches high, formed a kind of bin, within which a number of cave-bear skulls had been carefully arranged. Some of these skulls had little stones arranged around them; others were set on slabs; one, very carefully placed, had the long bones of a cave bear (no doubt its own) placed beneath its snout, another had the long bones pushed through the orbits of its eyes.

The cave in Germany, Petershohle, near Velden, which was explored by Konrad Hormann from 1916 to 1922, had closet like niches in the walls, which contained five cave-bear skulls – and once again the leg bones.

Now the cave bear, it must be told, for all its size, was not an extremely dangerous beast. In the first place, it was not carnivorous but herbivorous, and in the second place, like all bears it had to go to sleep in the winter. But during the ice age the winters were long. The bears would go into the caves to sleep and, while there, could be readily killed. In fact, a tribe of men living in the front part of a cave with a couple of sleeping bears in the rear would have had there a kind of living deep freeze. (Page 339)

The following article show us a little about the evidence we have of cave bears;

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2010) — The cave bear started to become extinct in Europe 24,000 years ago, but until now the cause was unknown. An international team of scientists has analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences from 17 new fossil samples, and compared these with the modern brown bear. The results show that the decline of the cave bear started 50,000 years ago, and was caused more by human expansion than by climate change.

There is evidence that one species of bear has survived over another simply because they didn't live in caves as a normal part of their behavior pattern. Could this be because of the ancient cave bear cult that hunted this species of bear to extinction?

"The present day brown bear did not suffer the same fate and has survived until today for one simple reason -- brown bears did not depend so heavily on the cave habitat, which was becoming degraded, and this is why they did not follow the same pattern as the cave bears.

"Brown bears rely on less specific shelters for hibernation. In fact, their fossil remains are not very numerous in cave deposits," the Galician researcher says. The definitive extinction of the cave bear "broadly" coincides with the last cooling of the climate during the Pleistocene (between 25,000 and 18,000 years ago), which may have led to a reduction in shelter and the vegetation that the animals fed on.

The cave bear inhabited Europe during the Late Pleistocene and became definitively extinct around 24,000 years ago, although it held out for a few thousand years longer in some areas, such as the north west of the Iberian Peninsula, than in other places. This ursid was a large animal, weighing 500 kg on average, and was largely a herbivore. The bear hibernated in the depths of limestone caves, where the remains of individuals that died during hibernation slowly accumulated over time."

This suggests the possibility that if there was a ritual being played out in the ancient tribes of hunting the cave bear then there would be a large continuum of this culture with obvious signs of thier passing. And there is:

Vestiges of a circumpolar Paleolithic cult of the bear have been identified throughout the arctic, from Finland and Northern Russia, across Siberia and Alaska, to Labrador and Hudson Bay: among the Finns and Lapps, Ostyaks and Vogul, Orotchi of the Amur river region, Gilyaks, Goldi, and peoples of Kamchatka; the Nootka, Tlingit, Kwakiutl, and others of the Northwest American Coast; and the Algonquins of the Northeast. And so here is a northern circumpolar hunting continuum in counterpoise to tha broad equatorial planting belt which we traced from Sudan to the Amazon in Part Two. And just as there a certain depth of time was indicated, going back to perhaps c. 7500 B.C., the dawn of the proto-neolithic, so here too there is a depth in time – but how very much greater! For in the high Alps, in the neighborhood of St. Gallen, and again in Germany, some thirty miles northwest of Nurnberg, near Velden, a series of caves containing the ceremonial arranged skulls of a number of cave bears have been discovered, dating from the period (it is almost incredible!) of Neanderthal Man.(Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology page 339)

Here we come to the amazing possibility that neanderthals could be another species of human beings. Well, its kind of implied in the earliest signs of culture that there might be a continuous cultural continuum from ancient times to our own age but this is the first evidence we have of geniune culture and mythological thought. Before I begin my analysis of the evidence of deep thought in some human species, that may have been our evolutionary cousins, I would like to point out one simple fact; Whatever an artist's preconceptions of the neanderthal lifestyle and intelligence may be it is likely that this perspective gets reflected into their illustrations of neanderthals. Consider the following portrayals of ancient Neanderthal Man.

Politics: An introduction to my new blog

2011-03-26T04:31:00.000+05:00

What if one day you had a dream, sorta like this...

Could opinion shows backed by various sources have hijacked the image of innocent journalists?

It's possible. I was watching Fox News last night and Glenn Beck came on and was very entertaining. However, he touched upon many areas of information that can be confusing so I thought I would start a blog to help people put the words of Glenn Beck into perspective and not apply them to the rest of the Fox News broadcast.

Check out this interview that helps put Glenn Beck in context of a Fox News broadcast cycle

The Daily Show - Bret Baier
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Now check out my first post, on my new blog..."An Analysis of Glenn Beck's Theories" (Rated R). Enjoy!

Music: Our oldest flutes and a little about banjo music

2011-03-23T02:07:00.000+05:00

I have mentioned in the previous post how fashioning materials out of wood must have come before stone and provided some examples. The same could be true for bone. In fact, our oldest archeological finds include a 40,000 year old flute!

A vulture-bone flute discovered in a European cave is likely the world's oldest recognizable musical instrument and pushes back humanity's musical roots

If flutes were being made out of bone 40,000 years ago then certainly the wooden flutes must have arrived on the music scene sooner. After all, wooden flutes have been in continuous use throughout recorded history in several cultures and societies. Consider the common reeds that grow in many riverbeds. They can easily be fashioned into a flute and could not possibly last in our archeological record except by some lucky chance.

Water Reed Native American Flute

I also mentioned in my last post how it could be possible for a person to make a guitar like object with easily perishable items like a wooden box and animal hair. Take the example of a banjo, as Steve Martin explains:

Although any guitar or banjo like object of the deep past would have varied in form and uses from region to region and culture and culture (if indeed any such instrument existed at all) the music itself would vary in style and sound. However, it is possible to imagine that maybe in the deep past little banjo and/or flute groups could have existed. Anyways, the following example is of a group using a string based musical instrument:

What if this hypothetical musical group of the past had singers for ritualistic or just plain social reasons?

History: The earliest evidence of culture

2011-03-18T16:15:00.000+05:00

When Archeologists do their digs looking for artifacts or fossils, they can only find what is made of stone or is preserved somehow as a fossil or frozen in ice. Accordingly we now have the most extensive collection of stone tools and weapons going back far into antiquity. This has led some to believe that stone was the only material all human races have ever used or maybe just the first material that we mastered which has led to the term ‘stone age’. Joseph Campbell mentions that wood is probably the oldest material humans have ever used as it’s easily available and is still used almost exclusively by hunter-gatherer groups that have survived to our age. It is also the easiest to re-use in another construction or for burning (firewood) and it is easily lost from our historical (archeological) record through decay.[note: can’t find the exact quote but have some more recent authoritive evidence] Could our earliest houses, weapons and even jewelry have been made of wood? After all, we don’t need stone to make an arrow or a spear.

Our recent archeological discoveries are simply mind-blowing and though there is currently no evidence of wooden jewelry or wooden musical instruments (how difficult would it be to make a wooden lute/guitar with a box and some appropriately prepared animal hair?) from our deep deep past, we may yet find some as the following presentation of evidence and examples will show.

Wood does decay but it also gets preserved by accident. First take a look at this 10,000 year old wooden spear-like object found in some melting ice:

Craig Lee, of the University of Colorado Boulder, holds a 10,000-year-old atlatl dart that had been frozen in an ice sheet near Yellowstone National Park. The dart was straight when it was entombed and became bowed from the melting and barely survived being snapped in half by a passing animal. What looked like a small branch that blew off a tree during a storm turned out to be an ancient wooden hunting weapon wielded by Paleo Indians. The 10,000-year-old atlatl dart was discovered in a melting patch of ice high in the Rocky Mountains close to Yellowstone National Park.

Next consider the wooden spears found even longer ago (400,000 years!)

Gamble cites wooden spears found preserved in a bog at Schöningen, Germany, and are associated with horse bones. Dated to 400,000 years ago, the spears provide the first hard evidence of human hunting and are weighted at the ends to be thrown like a javelin.

"I just wonder whether the Schöningen spears were ever used. Yes, there are horses at the site, but are the tips of the spears damaged? You'd think spears like that would break after they'd been jammed in a few horses," muses Gamble. For heidelbergensis, tools and hunting weapons may have played an important role in social display, one that we don't yet fully understand and may even border on ritual.

"They may have been more interested in making things as a demonstration of who they were and what was important to them. Killing horses was probably something they did once a week," Gamble remarks.

"It is very hard to get colleagues to accept evidence of ritual for early humans," says Bermúdez de Castro. BBC

To say there are signs of ritual or culture is one thing but to actually begin to describe how they must have performed a possible ritual is a little absurd. To compare with modern tribes in some way to draw some logical conclusions about possible meanings of the rituals or possible lifestyles of ancient humans is more appropriate.

No matter what we now know that ancient man did use wood in hunting and probably in other spheres of life. Since wood is easiest to form or build with it is possible that every stone advance came after a development that was earlier and based in wood.

For example, check out this hunter-gatherer group, their 'huts' are made solely of wood and leaves;

They are not living in caves, (though I’m sure if they were facing horrible weather they would lose their housing and end up in any caves available to them) and their little thatched houses would rot away with time so that people living 10,000 years from now would find no evidence of them, plus if there is any change in environmental or geographical conditions they would provide great firewood. With the rise and fall of the ice ages (and local catastrophes that must have been associated with large changes in weather throughout history) such evidence of human culture would be completely wiped out.

The article explains;

Because humans lived as hunter-gatherers for 95 percent of their species' history, current foraging societies provide the best window for viewing human social evolution, according to the authors. Given that, the researchers focused on co-residence patterns among more than 5,000 individuals from 32 present-day foraging societies around the globe, including the Gunwinggu, Labrador Inuit, Mbuti, Apache, Aka, Ache, Agta and Vedda.

A major point in the study is that foraging bands contain several individuals completely unconnected by kinship or marriage ties, yet include males with a vested interest in the offspring of daughters, sisters and wives.

"The increase in human network size over other primates may explain why humans evolved an emphasis on social learning that results in cultural transmission," said Hill. "Likewise, the unique composition of human ancestral groups promotes cooperation among large groups of non-kin, something extremely rare in nature."

The group's findings appear in the paper "Co-Residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure." It is the first published analyses of adult co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies based on census data rather than post-marital residence typologies, Hill noted.

Notice how flexible these groups of human are. They aren’t bound to a small tribe for life but rather a system of tribes that together form a large social system. Here we find a modern counterpart to what an ancient culture of small hunter-gatherer groups could look like.

In fact, even in the large cultural groupings of the North American Apaches or Sioux or Cherokee we can see possible echoes of an ancient system of cultural organization that maximized the resources of the land and the practice of the hunt by forming small groups that could live together without adversely affecting their food supply. They use stone but notice how much of their technology revolves around wood. At the same time these North American hunter-gatherers would have large social meetings where two or more small tribes celebrate some event. Could this be a practice that is natural to any human culture going back through the millennia?

What about the hunt? To hunt you need to track animal footprints, understand its habits, prepare a trap or have some skill in killing it effectively and have the ability to communicate this body of knowledge to youngsters, i.e. language. The Apache teach the whole role a youngster is expected to play using stories which we call their 'religion' or mythology. Every primitive tribe has such stories that explain and train the young ones. Why not ancient humans?

The theme of language and the hints of the existence of a human culture and society can be been clearly in the development of the hand ax, as Campbell explains;

Olduvai Handaxe

Indeed, some excavations (for example, those of L. S. B. Leakey at Olduvai Gorge in the north of Tanganyika) have revealed in perfect sequence every stage of the evolution of the hand ax from the pebble tools of man’s first beginnings to the finely finished, really elegant axes of the period of the Neanderthal. And if the view into the depth of the well of time that we obtained in the South of France was great, this of Olduvai is simply beyond speech. But what is even more amazing than the profundity of the prehistoric past here illustrated is the broad diffusion over the face of the earth of exactly the same ax forms as those of Paleolithic East Africa. As Dr. Carleton S. Coon has remarked: “During the quarter of a million years when man made these tools, the styles changed very little, but what changes were made are to be seen everywhere… This means that human beings who lived half a million years ago were able to teach their young skills that they had learned from their fathers in most minute detail, as living Australians and Bushmen do. Such teaching requires both speech and a firm discipline, and the uniformity of hand-ax styles over wide areas means that members of neighboring groups must have met together at stated intervals to perform together acts that require the use of these objects. In short, human society was already a reality when the hand-ax choppers of the world had begun to turn out a uniform product.

All of which speaks volumes for the force and reach of diffusion in the primitive world.

Moreover, what is perhaps more remarkable still is that some of the most beautiful of the symmetrically chipped hand axes of this period are as much as two feet long, a size too cumbersome for practical use; the only possible conclusion being that they must have served some ceremonial function . Professor Coon has suggested that such axes were not practical tools but sacred objects, comparable to the ceremonial tools and weapons of later days, “used only seasonally, when wild food was abundant enough to support hundreds of persons at one place and one time. Then the old men,” he supposes, “would cut the meat for the assembled multitude with some of these heavy and magnificent tools,” after which, like the magically powerful tjurungas of the Australians, the sacred implements would be stored in some holy place. Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell, Page 364

Giant Stone Axes

In Campbell’s time the debate of when the human species first appeared on our planet was considered to be about a half a million years ago.

The African finds that have most recently stirred the halls of science are roughly (very roughly) dated at the commencement of the Pleistocene or Ice Age, circa 600,000 B.C.; and at the Fifth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, held at the University of Pennsylvania in 1956, Dr. Raymond Dart of Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa, showed a convincing series of slides in which the implements of this pre-lithic (pre-Stone Age) culture were illustrated. These included the lower jaw bones of large antelopes, which had been cut in half to be used as saws and knives; gazelle horns with part of the skull attached, which showed distinct signs of wear and tear use, possibly as digging tool; and a great number of ape-man palates with the teeth worn down – human palates being used to this day as scrapers by some of the natives of the area. Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell, Page 359

In our time evidence of the use of jaw bones of animals to cut and eat meat (indicating the hunt was developed) goes back even further. The following extracts bring Joseph Campbell’s archeological survey up to date. The last article I’m presenting in full as I think that it represents the border of our current archeological acceptance of the existence of a species that has the distinct behavior patterns that can be called human. Hunting (involving tool making such as wooden spears, the need for speech for communication of the techniques of the hunt and passing on of the art of the hunt – i.e. how to make the spears/arrows(?) or just a way to trap an animal and drop rocks on it or push it over a cliff), walking upright and taking care of the members of the tribe. Lucy, whose people are at the forefront of archeological theory as the possible first humans, was found in the geological layer indicating an age of about 3 million years.

From About.com
The Stone Age (known to scholars as the Paleolithic era) in human prehistory is the name given to the period between about 2.5 million and 20,000 years ago. It begins with the earliest human-like behaviors of crude stone tool manufacture, and ends with fully modern human hunting and gathering societies. The Paleolithic is the earliest archaeology; anything older is paleontology. Today scholars divide the Paleolithic into three categories, more or less as follows.

Lower Paleolithic (sometimes called the Early Stone Age)

The Lower Paleolithic lasted between 2.5 million-200,000 years ago (or at least according to one permutation), and it was when the Hominin ancestors of human beings, including Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo ergaster, roamed most of the earth and began making the first stone tools.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2011) — A fossilized foot bone recovered from Hadar, Ethiopia, shows that by 3.2 million years ago human ancestors walked bipedally with a modern human-like foot, a report that appears Feb. 11 in the journal Science, concludes. The fossil, a fourth metatarsal, or midfoot bone, indicates that a permanently arched foot was present in the species Australopithecus afarensis, according to the report authors, Carol Ward of the University of Missouri, together with William Kimbel and Donald Johanson, of Arizona State University'sInstitute of Human Origins.

The research helps resolve a long-standing debate between paleoanthropologists who think A. afarensis walked essentially as modern humans do and those who think this species practiced a form of locomotion intermediate between the quadrupedal tree-climbing of chimpanzees and human terrestrial bipedalism.

Ancient Cut Marks Reveal Far Earlier Origin of Butchery By Kate Wong

Researchers working in Ethiopia's remote Afar region have recovered evidence that humans began using stone tools and eating meat far earlier than previously thought. The finds—cut-marked animal bones dating to nearly 3.4 million years ago—push the origin of butchery back a stunning 800,000 years. Furthermore, these ancient butchers were not members of our own genus, Homo, but the more primitive Australopithecus, specifically A. afarensis, the species to which the celebrated Lucy fossil belongs.

Scientists have typically viewed tool use as the purview of Homo. Indeed, in 1964 Kenyan paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey and his colleagues named the earliest Homo species, H. habilis ("handy man"), for its association with stone tools. Subsequent finds have since extended the evidence of stone tool use back to between 2.5 million and 2.6 million years ago. But exactly which member of the human family made and wielded these older tools was unclear, both because no human remains turned up in direct association with the tools and animal bones, and more than one human species lived in the area at this time. The earliest example of a clear association between humans and tools dated to 2.3 million years ago, and the human remains belonged to an early Homo species.

Still, archaeologists suspected that earlier stone tools remained to be discovered, because these examples seemed too advanced to represent humanity's first foray into tool manufacture. "Nearly everyone that works with the earliest stone tool industries at between 2.3 [million] and 2.5 million years has commented on the surprisingly high level of skill and understanding that we see in these early knappers. Most have predicted that something older will be found," says archaeologist Shannon P. McPherron of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

That hunch helped motivate McPherron and his colleagues, who have been working at a site in the Afar region called Dikika—just a few kilometers from the Lucy site—to look in older geologic deposits in the area for earlier evidence of stone tool use or manufacture. They were rewarded with bones from two animals—one cow-size and another goat-size—that display cutmarks and percussion marks indicative of flesh removal and marrow extraction with stone tools. McPherron, along with Dikika Research Project leader Zeresenay Alemseged of the California Academy of Sciences and their collaborators, describe their discovery in an August 12 paper in Nature (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group).

Because the earliest Homo remains date to just 2.3 million years ago, scientists can be certain that an australopithecine made the cut marks on the 3.4-million-year-old Dikika bones. And because the only human species that is known to have lived in the Dikika area during this time period is A. afarensis, it seems reasonably certain that this species in particular butchered the bones. (The A. afarensis remains found at Dikika include a spectacularly well-preserved skeleton of a youngster, popularly dubbed "Lucy's baby.")

Australopithecines had teeth and jaws that were in many ways adapted for eating fruit, seeds and other plant foods. "[The discovery] shows that meat was added to the diet earlier than we had thought," McPherron observes, although he notes that it is difficult to say what portion of the diet was meat. "We could now be looking at an extended period of time when hominins were including meat in their diet and experimenting with the use of stone tools."

Although the Dikika finds prove that A. afarensis was using tools, whether they were fashioning implements from stone or just picking up sharp-edged rocks from the landscape and using those to carve up the carcasses remains unknown, because no stone tools have turned up at the site. Future discoveries may resolve this question. They may also reveal the extent to which Lucy and her kin relied on stone gadgetry, setting the stage for developments that would profoundly impact the course of human evolution.

"This discovery dramatically shifts the known time frame of a game-changing behavior for our ancestors,"Alemseged remarked in a prepared statement. "Tool use fundamentally altered the way our early ancestors interacted with nature, allowing them to eat new types of food and exploit new territories. It also led to tool-making—a critical step in our evolutionary path that eventually enabled such advanced technologies as airplanes, MRI machines and iPhones."

Psychology: An introduction to the use of psychology in understanding culture and society

2011-03-17T17:41:00.000+05:00

Since Joseph Campbell wrote and published his masterwork The Masks of God psychology has advanced quite a bit. Some of the phrasing of his statements will seem old and in some cases even acceptable scientific terminology has changed. So I have to do a little updating to some of his work from Primitive Mythology.

I thought I would open with one of my favorite psychological aspects of us which is how our curiosity and ability to play with material forms or ideas has probably led to all our psychological, technological and cultural achievements. [Note: All extracts below are in italics and are from Joseph Campbell’s Primitive Mythology]

Every study undertaken by Man was the genuine outcome of curiosity, a kind of game. All the data of natural science, which are responsible for Man’s domination of the world, originated in activities that were indulged in exclusively for the sake of amusement. When Benjamin Franklin drew sparks from the tail of his kite he was thinking as little of the lightning conductor as Hertz, when he investigated electrical waves, was thinking of radio transmission. Anyone who has experienced in his own person how easily the inquisitiveness of a child at play can grow into the life work of a naturalist will never doubt the fundamental similarity of games and study.

Konrad Lorenz, Primitive Mythology Page 40

I began this study out of curiosity and it has continued to fascinate me, and with all the amazing historical articles I’m working on, I hope you will enjoy reading my research as much as I enjoy putting it together.

One of the biggest debates in our time is the one of ‘Nature vs. Nurture’ which has echoes of a debate which has been going on for a while;

Jung’s idea of the “archetypes” is one of the leading theories, today, in the field of our subject. It is a development of the earlier theory of Adolf Bastian (1826-1905), who recognized, in the course of his extensive travels, the uniformity of what he termed the “elementary ideas” (Elementargedanke) of mankind. Remarking also, however, that in the various provinces of human culture these ideas are differently articulated and elaborated, he coined the term “ethnic ideas” (Volkergedanke) for the actual, local manifestations of the universal forms. Nowhere, he noted, are the “elementary ideas” to be found in a pure state, abstracted from the locally conditioned “ethnic ideas” through which they are substantialized; (page 32)

To the explorer of that time elementary ideas were of the type as the language similarities of Latin and Greek or similarity in the attributes of their gods.

Two possibilities of emphasis are implicit in this observation of Bastian. The first we may term the psychological and the second the ethnological; and these can be taken to represent, broadly, the two contrasting points of view from which scientists, scholars, and philosophers have approached our subject.(page 32)

In other words, there are two aspects in analyzing culture, the psychological aspect which we as a species have in common (which I will be explaining more of later) and the ‘ethnological’ or social ideas and training that we are raised with and with which we function in society as Campbell explains:

“First,” wrote Bastian, “the idea as such must be studied … and as second factor, the influence of climatic-geological conditions.” Only after that, as a third factor, according to his view, could the influence upon one another of the various ethnic traditions throughout the course of history be profitably surveyed. Bastian, that is to say, stressed the psychological, spontaneous aspect of culture as primary; and this approach has been the usual one of biologists, medical men, and psychologists to the present day. Briefly stated, it assumes that there is in the structure and functioning of the psyche a certain degree of spontaneity and consequent uniformity throughout the history and domain of the human species.

But on the other hand, if climate, geography, and massive social forces are to be regarded as of more moment in the shaping of the ideas, ideals, fantasies, and emotions by which men live than the innate structures and capacities of the psyche, then a diametrically contrary philosophical position must be assumed. Psychology in this case becomes a function of ethnology; or, to quote one representative authority, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, in his work on The Andaman Islanders:

A society depends for its existence on the presence in the minds of its members of a certain system of sentiments by which the conduct of the individual is regulated in conformity with the needs of society. Every feature of the social system itself and every even or object that in any way affects the well-being or the cohesion of the society becomes an object of this system of sentiments. In human society the sentiments in question are not innate but are developed in the individual by the action of the society upon him. The ceremonial customs of a society are a means by which the sentiments in question are given collective expression on appropriate occasions. The ceremonial (i.e. collective) expression of any sentiment serves both to maintain it at the requisite degree of intensity in the mind of the individual and to transmit it from one generation to another. Without such expression the sentiments involved could not exist.

It will be readily seen that in such a view the ceremonials and mythologies of the differing societies are in no sense manifestations of psychologically grounded “elementary ideas,” common to the human race, but of interests locally conditioned; and the fundamental contrast of the two approaches is surely clear.

Why I think the Japanese are going to come back stronger than before

2011-03-16T11:33:00.000+05:00

Japan has just gone through one of the worst disasters in modern history. The earthquake was so big that it increased the rate of our planets spin and the tsunami that followed was watched all over the world Live as it swept away cars and buildings. On top of all of that we are watching again Live, a nuclear factory go through turmoil (fortunately, as of this posting, the safety devices are working enough for the safety of the population) and the earthquakes continue rattling the population.

The Japanese are used to earthquakes but so many one after another has to be unnerving especially with all the destruction around them. As Japan's Prime Minister stated, "This is the worst crises since World War Two".

I'm sure I'm not the only one amazed by the Japanese stableness (or 'stoic' posture as one BBC commentator put it) in dealing with this disaster. They have been calm, orderly and dealing with each situation as it comes. This is what happened after WW2. The Japanese got themselves together and rose above the disaster to become one of the largest economic powers in under fifty years which is amazing just in and of itself.

Joseph Campbell has this to say about the Japanese people:

Japan, like England, is an island world wherein a self-understood rapport exists by nature, from top to bottom of the social order; so that whereas on the mainland clashes of race, cultures, and mutually inconsiderate classes represent practically the norm of the social history, in Japan, even in day of the most brutal disorder, the empire functioned, in the main, as an organic unit. And with such effect that today, as nowhere else in the world, one has the sense there of a permeation of the social body by a spirit essentially heroic and aristocratic, endowed with the quality of honor, which has penetrated downward from the top, while, in counter-play, the sense of wonder and delight in the numinous just mentioned [i.e. of the world around you], which is generally lost in the sophistications of a developed civilization, remains significant in the structure of life, supported from beneath by the sensibilities of the folk, yet pervading the culture spectrum to the top.

Oriental Mythylogy by Joseph Campbell page 461 - words inside the brackets [ ] are mine

The attitude described can be seen on the news. We all know a disaster of this magnitude is not something that can be handled easily by just any culture and the Japanese calmness - through continuing 6.0 aftershocks and dozens of minor quakes - is a testimony to their spirit. And a confirmation of what Joseph Campbell writes above.

Introduction to Joseph Campbell

2011-03-16T08:17:00.000+05:00

Joseph Campbell's master work The Masks of God, particularly his first volume Primitive Mythology, provides some of theories and evidential touchstones for my study into history. However, his focus was on mythology while mine is on culture and society. The following is video 1 of a 6 part series of Joseph Campbell being interviewed by Bill Moyers which is called The Power Of Myth.

Daniel Quinn’s theories on culture and civilization part 4

2011-03-10T10:26:00.000+05:00

[DQ= Daniel Quinn]

"We see it as catching up with our population while its really people catching up to extra food supply."

Here DQ is talking about how, as a culture, some people see our production of food as a means to feed our growing global population. What he does here is an inversion, saying that it's not the food production that is catching up to population but the population itself is increasing to catch up to our growing food supply. As he states;

"Totalitarian agriculture has been a disaster, mainly because it has fueled this tremendous population growth of ours - Mathis said we are always catching up with our growing population where as in fact our growing population is always growing up with our food population."

What he has noticed is called 'a correlation' in the field of statistics. For example; if you find that highly stressed out people are more likely to get colds you have just observed a correlation. To say that the stress itself caused the cold (rather than bacteria) is a statement of cause and effect NOT a correlation. Correlations are useful to get an idea of different variables that move together and provide a better understanding of the forces at work on a particular subject of study but they do not prove anything about cause and effect. DQ observes a correlation and then stretches it to a belief of cause and effect without any backing evidence (to my knowledge - I have found videos of over 2 hours of DQ talking, when I have the patience to listen to him I may go through those videos to discover if he provides any evidence... in the books of his I've read I haven't found any).

"We have a food race going on" says DQ, which he compares to the cold war, i.e. making better weapons between enemies made it an arms race so extending that analogy the only way to end the arms race was to do it like gorbechov which was to say 'we quit', thus no one to race with.

It baffles me that this guy gets away with the things he says. Anyways, lets do what he says...lets stop food production to fit the amount of population we want and let the excess die off. I'm sure this theory can't cause psychological imbalances in the already imbalanced.

"We have a 'win' on the side of food production then we have a 'win' on the side of population... thats why we are annually adding 7 million people to our population... and people have this terrible delusion that we are growing more food to feed the starving, the starving do not get fed, the starving population is a growing just like the other parts of the population are growing its a delusion, we are growing more food to grow more people."

What DQ is talking about here is a problem of economics that is better suited under the title "income inequality". People with more money can buy more food, nations with more money can buy more food. Some people take care of their populations to some extant, some don't (for whatever reasons). The choices are made by society and the distribution of economic wealth (and the power associated with it). This has nothing to do with the food supply.

The belief that increasing our food supply (which began with agriculture) also increases our population is to an extant accurate [refer to posts on Guns, Germs and Steel, Part 1 and Part 2]. Tribal people could not store as much food as an agricultural population and in most cases didn't have the types of grains that could be stored for long periods of time. Being constantly on the move to look for food doesn't help a population establish itself or grow. If we have more food we can have a larger population.

Agricultural communities (such as third world countries) tend to have very high birth rates which, historically, is normal as having a large family is helpful in the labor intensive life of farming. However, it is also a historical fact that as the economic wealth of a country increases and it moves from a mostly agrarian economy to an urban one, the birth rates drop. In the urban lifestyle, where children are meant to go to school - not to work - it makes no economic sense to have a large family (generally speaking, individuals may have different preferences but the community as a whole will cut down on kids if they have to support them).

With the increase in economic wealth in a country and the movement of jobs towards the services industries, many people have opted to have smaller families. This way they can enjoy greater economic prosperity (assuming there are child labor laws in place that are enforced or such laws have been around long enough for them to become a part of societal belief).

The following links and extracts are meant to show economic trends which disprove DQ's theories on food and population.

1. In industrialized countries there is a movement from large families to small ones:

Global population ageing is a by-product of the demographic transition in which both mortality and fertility decline from higher to lower levels. Currently, the total fertility rate is below the replacement level in practically all industrialized countries. In the less developed regions, the fertility decline started later and has proceeded faster than in the more developed regions. Yet, in all regions people are increasingly likely to survive to older ages, and once there they are tending to live longer, as the gains in life expectancy are relatively higher at older ages.

2. The drop in birth rates in industrialized (economically wealthy) countries is so large that some economists are worried that the populations are going to start shrinking. [This is called replacement level fertility]

The overall fertility rate increased 2 percent between 2005 and 2006, nudging the average number of babies being born to each woman to 2.1, according to the latest federal statistics. That marks the first time since 1971 that the rate has reached a crucial benchmark of population growth: the ability of each generation to replace itself.

"It's been quite a long time since we've had a rate this high," said Stephanie J. Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics. "It's a milestone."

While the rising fertility rate was unwelcome news to some environmentalists, the "replacement rate" is generally considered desirable by demographers and sociologists because it means a country is producing enough young people to replace and support aging workers without population growth being so high it taxes national resources

Daniel Quinn’s theories on culture and civilization part 3

2011-02-25T22:26:00.000+05:00

Daniel Quinn insists that the agricultural societies in the Americas gave up on the 'invention' of their agricultural experiment and just returned to their previous lifestyle yet people are creatures of habit and a few centuries in a social system is not something people would just walk away from as it has already become an established way of living.

The following extracts are from Daniel Quinn's book Beyond Civilization;

We weren’t the only people in ancient times to recognize the benefits of growing all our food. Among thenotable adopters of this meme in the New World were the Maya, the Olmec, the people of Teotihuacán,the Hohokam, the Anasazi, the Aztecs, and the Inca.

What’s significant for our study of this most fundamental meme is that, by the time Europeans arrived in the New World at the end of the fifteenth century, only the latest of these civilizations, the Aztec and the Incan, were still clinging to it.

He goes on to say that the others simply abandoned agriculture because they saw it as a failed social experiment. Then he claims that no explanation of the disappearance of these cultures will never be satisfactory because of the following reasons:

No such explanation will ever be satisfactory, because we all know these things:

• The soil may be depleted here, but it’s not depleted everywhere.
• Earthquakes and hurricanes don’t last forever.
• Climatic changes can be ridden out.
• Diseases run their course.
• Insect pests come and go.
• Peasant revolts can be put down—or survived.
• Invaders can be repelled—or absorbed.

It couldn’t have been things like this that made these people quit, because look at us. These things are mere inconveniences compared to whatwe’ve faced—all these things, plus much worse: famines, wars ofevery kind, inquisitions, government by torture and assassination, endlessly rising crime, corruption, tyranny, madness, revolution, genocide, racism, social injustice, mass poverty, poisoned water, polluted air, two devastating world wars, and the prospect of nuclear holocaust, biological warfare, and extinction. We faced all that and more—and never once have been tempted to abandon our civilization.

A few counter theories; As Jared Diamond points out, the crops grown in one area can move east and west but not north and south. That is why it was impossible for cultures in the Americas to expand as the whole continental landmass is mostly north to south.

Next the spread of small pox is a lot more destructive that one can imagine...to a culture that has no immunity to it. It begins fast and spreads fast. Wherever people are grouped together diseases can spread super fast and decimate a population which means that agricultural cultures are the first to go.

If we look at the dates of European explorers visiting North America we notice that Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492 and guy named Leif Ericson may have arrived a good 500 years earlier. In other words, the spread of small pox can still account for the destruction of a variety of communities. Any neighbors would be aware of any illnesses and would avoid the area maybe even the whole style of living just to avoid death by the mysterious illness.

There are various reasons for the slow development of civilization in the Americas and the theories outlined by Jared Diamond (posted about here and here) provide a better explanation than do the theories of Daniel Quinn.

Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ Part 2 – Conquest and the Tropics

2011-02-25T19:46:00.001+05:00

In these next episodes Jared Diamond explains why the New World was conquered so easily by the Europeans. He begins with why a few hundred Spaniards were able to conquer the massive Inca civilization and walks through the various reasons from guns, to animals to the germs carried by Old Worlders for which the New Worlders had no immunity. Then he shows how expansion worked very differently in Africa for the same reasons (i.e. guns, germs and steel).

Quick overview with notes;

Conquest - Summary of show and transcript

All livestock animals in Europe came from the Fertile Crescent and this eastward expansion gave the Europeans the resources to grow on land that was more productive

In the new world there were no horses or cattle so all farming had to be done by hand-so their productivity was lower

Lamas had never been harnessed and existed only in the south

Horses, besides beats of burden, provided faster transport and thus better control of their territory and were objects of awe in the new world…an intimidating/supernatural experience for the new worlders

The real power of the conquistadors were their swords, the rapier. Guns were inaccurate though intimidating to the new worlders

[ Note: The longitude argument holds as a reason for the lack of spread of livestock and farming technique ]

12 years before Pizzaro arrived a slave with small pox was aboard a Spanish vessel that arrived in Mexico. Within days thousands were infected.

The germs decimated the local population making conquest much easier

Our diseases evolved from animals so we developed a kind of tolerance- (i.e. over the many 'plagues' in the old world, natural selection had improved the overall immunity of the old world population) new worlders had never come into contact with these germs so were extremely vulnerable

There is some debate as to how many natives were killed in the early conquest, experts estimate the new world had a population of over 20 million and up to 95% dies from old world diseases - that’s why the continent was virtually empty when the expansion inland finally began

Tropics - Summary of show and transcript

Cities and kingdoms once spread across the African continent

Europeans conquered and transplanted their cities and systems - agriculture- used railroads-

South Africa - the cape - had similar climate to Europe making it possible for comfortable colonization

Germs are the biggest killers in history- Europeans took these germs with them wherever they went which decimated populations and made colonization seem easier than it would have otherwise been

1830s thousands of Dutch farmers began to settle into Africa like in the Americas - guns had advanced by then and every settler had 2-3 guns

You couldn’t go around without your rifle - guns were a part of life and everyone had one
When they had gotten about 800 miles inland they entered the land of the zulus - a 'mighty African kingdom' who wiped out settlers nearby stopping the advance of the Europeans further inland

In a large war the Zulu were defeated by a smaller European force because of their guns

Eventually settlement continued to expand as technology grew and was implemented in Africa and the machine gun was invented - now one man could decimate a less technologically advanced civilization easily

Eventually the settlers were stopped by geography - land became impossible to plow, crops wouldn’t grow, their shoes fell apart in the mud-[their technology was not adapted to that particular geographic region]-

The settler’s livestock also started dying and they picked up malaria. The Europeans had come up against a disease that they were not immune to.

All of these reasons combined put the Europeans at a disadvantage in the same way that was previously their reason for success. Their culture had simply not evolved to survive in this environment

Small pox decimated populations in South Africa and the Americas but not further north in Africa

The imported animals had no immunity to indigenous germs

African cattle had immunity to tropical diseases and since small pox originated with cattle, and may even have originated in Africa, the population had a greater immunity but more importantly they had medicine to bestow immunity to small pox for life! So this was a problem they had encountered before

Africans had antibodies against malaria, a tropical disease that was deadly for Europeans

Africans had even evolved a culture in high and dry areas which kept them away from the wet areas where mosquitoes breed plus they lived in small communities which limits the spread of Malaria.

The Europeans did not know this and settled next to rivers where mosquitoes bred

Here guns were effective but germs were the deciding factor in holding back European expansion. [ Question: Are germs more powerful than guns in expansion of culture/civilization]

With settlement out of the question the Europeans turned instead to harvesting natural resources.

In conclusion;

Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ Part 1 – Out of Eden

2011-02-25T17:00:00.000+05:00

Jared Diamond is the author of the book ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’, which explains how some cultures can advance faster than others, how some civilizations just crumble and how one civilization can become the dominant civilization on the planet, all without using a cultures beliefs as the reason for it’s rise or fall.

National Geographic put together a 3 part documentary outlining the essentials of Jared Diamond’s theory in the book Guns, Germs and Steel. This post outlines some of the ideas presented in the videos of the documentary as an introduction to Jared’s book.

Episode 1 – Out of Eden - Summary of show and transcript

The research that led to the book Guns, Germs and Steel began because of a question posed to him by a native New Guinean while Jared was on one of his bird watching expeditions.

He was asked, "Why you white men have so much cargo and New Guineans so little?".

Cargo represents ‘things’ or more accurately ‘wealth’ which is held in high esteem in almost every culture. The ability to come up with new technology and greater wealth is respected by New Guineans and is the essential difference between a native New Guinean and a native European. So by answering this question you can explain the whole of modern civilization.

The questions are basically, ‘Why did the Europeans dominate most of the world and not some other culture or civilization?’ - ‘What is the root cause of economic inequality across cultures?’ – ‘Why have some societies advanced faster than others?’.

Jared notes that the European beliefs for their world wide dominance (i.e. racial superiority or higher intelligence for whites than other races) is not supported by his observations so he begins to look at history, geography and other factors that could explain the economic inequality at the root of the question posed to him.

After living amongst the New Guineans Jared noted that a great deal of time goes into producing the food that they need to survive. Even with all the effort put into food production by the whole community there was still a very low amount of protein in their diet which is essential for health. On top of that, none of the food could be stored for very long so there was no time for people to relax and pursue other activities. There could be no specialization as the entire community was almost constantly involved in food production.

A quick overview with video clips and notes;

First settlements were in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago - stored wheat and barley-could be stored for years

In selecting what to grow (biggest and tastiest seeds) changed plants-i.e. domesticated them

Within 1000 years most of the new villages of the fertile crescent were abandoned as the ecology of that area was too fragile to support extensive farming

People were destroying the environment, cutting trees, using up soil nutrition and over grazing.

Crops and animals from the Fertile Crescent could prosper to the east and west because of similar climate and vegetation---that latitude was suitable for expansion

High yielding crops are an advantage in farming- leads to more productive farmers

As the scale of villages increased farming became more productive

Herding begins around this time

Animals supplement grains - eat leftover grains and provide fertilizer- a package of efficiency

With large domesticated animals such as horses and ox's productivity in farming increased tremendously. It also helped in transport making controlling larger territories easier.

Most species can’t be herded

The best animals for domestication are large plant eaters but all of these cant be domesticated -Africans were never able to domesticate their elephants

South Asia - Each elephant is caught in the wild, tamed and used as a work animal--in doesn’t make sense to farm an animal that takes 15 years to mature and produce

Animals good for domestication usually give birth within a year and every year after that =high productivity

The animals need to be social both between sexes and working as a group/herd plus they have to have a hierarchal social structure so by controlling the leader you can control the herd

Animals need to get along with humans but some animals can’t be controlled in a farm environment - ex. zebras are skittish and unpredictable ...maybe that’s why they didn’t get domesticated

Out of the 148 large plant eaters of animal species available on our planet only 14 have been domesticated… 13 of the 14 animals were all from Asia, North Africa and Europe.

South America only had the Lama - North America had none/neither did New Guinea, Australia or Sub-Saharan Africa

In conclusion;

Daniel Quinn’s theories on culture and civilization part 2

2011-02-23T02:23:00.002+05:00

The following table shows the basic differences in behavior between Takers (agriculturists) and Leavers (Tribal/Primitive societies) as described in Daniel Quinn’s book ‘My Ishmael’.

Takers (Agriculturists)	Leavers(Tribal Societies)
Believe only their way is right	Don't believe only their way is right - it's right for them
The world would be better if people were better	You don't need to improve people to make their system work.
Can't develop a lifestyle that works (sustainable and inherited)	Lived in a working lifestyle for 100's of thousands of years
Everything is based on utopian ideals (government, school etc. assumes a type of person which is evolved)	Based on human nature and tradition with years of evolution of their particular tribal law.
Force others to follow their way - believe their way is best	Believe their way is best for them, others can live their own way
Annihilate others in war	Fight to show their metal and be unpredictable - not to annihilate
Get products and give products	Get support and give support
Specialization; smaller and smaller family units till the breakup of nuclear family is complete	Complete cradle to grave support
Laws prohibiting stuff - people know laws will be broken and this divided society into law breakers and upright citizens	No laws prohibiting as it doesn't take into account that humans will break laws - so the laws are to minimize the effects of damage to society
Tribal security exchanged for money - a kind of substitute for the sense of tribal community that our species evolved with for 10,000s of thousands of years.

Daniel Quinn’s theories on culture and civilization part 1

2011-02-22T18:27:00.000+05:00

Daniel Quinn is best known for his award winning book Ishmael which he wrote after a long career as an editor for various reputable publications. Since then he has expanded on those ideas outlining them in greater and greater detail which is considered to have reached it’s completion with the publication of his fictional novels.

His book Ishmael became a bestseller and won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award for its unique ideas about history, mythology, anthropology and culture. However, that was just the beginning. The ideas in his book resonated with a large number of people from various walks of life and all age groups. They have inspired the song ‘Do the Evolution’ by the music group Pearl Jam, a movie and is being used as a textbook in many schools and colleges.

After Ishmael he wrote ‘My Ishmael’ and ‘The Story of B’ (which go together as a trilogy) followed by several other books and even study guides to help teachers, available from his website.

The books Ishmael and My Ishmael are my favorites because they are engaging both in the story telling and the Socratic Method used to teach. In fact, I think these two books are a great way to introduce students to the Socratic Method which is a very effective teaching method as it forces a student to think.

The movie Instinct is about an anthropologist, Dr. Ethan Powell (Anthony Hopkins), who disappears in the Jungles of Africa for two years and when he returns commits a crime for which he is committed to a psychiatric hospital. At this hospital Dr. Theo Calder (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is assigned to his case and in the process of treating the troubled anthropologist he becomes a willing student of Dr. Powell’s unusual theories and teaching methods.

This movie is based on Daniel Quinn’s theory (who is consulted on the script – though he doesn’t believe the movie really portrays his ideas properly). In the following clip you see Dr. Powell explaining Quinn’s ideas on the difference between tribal and agricultural cultures.

(Note: Daniel Quinn sees our culture as essentially one type of agricultural system he calls ‘Takers’ while tribal societies are called ‘Leavers’ – He choose these names for their neutrality and as descriptions of the basic pattern that these two different systems follow)

In this video Dr. Powell is drawing his view of the history of mankind on his cell walls.

The theory Daniel Quinn outlines is very broad and essentially lumps together all of our agricultural civilization as one type of culture when compared to the general behavior of tribal cultures. In explaining these differences he intends to show his perspective of where our culture went wrong and how we can learn from tribal cultures to help us remake our civilization in a way that will be more sustainable. He sees our problems with pollution, poverty, education, war etc. as arising from underlying cultural behavior which is supposed to originate with the birth of agriculture.

When I first read his books, several years ago, I was very taken by his explanations and evidence. However, since then I’ve come across several instances in which his explanations and evidence are inaccurate. So this post is meant as an introduction to Daniel Quinn while the next post will outline the basic theory. After that I will look more critically at some of his claims with available evidence (this could take a while).

I have chosen Daniel Quinn’s theories as a start to my own analysis of culture as his classifications are broad and begin from the beginning of the agricultural revolution which is also considered to be the beginning of civilization itself. Also, his books are very well written and are even being used as textbooks, so in a sense, his theories represent a view that is gaining greater acceptance in popular culture i.e. it’s not particularly ‘alternative’. Finally, the number of fields of study his theories encompass make his ideas make a great starting point to analyze different fields of research and bring them together which is the purpose of this blog.

A little about rap and some Dr. Dre videos

2011-02-22T18:21:00.001+05:00

[Note 03/22/10: Every culture has its art forms and this video mention that hip hop/rap is an art form in and of itself. One thing I would like to mention is that in rap often every word has some significance...as one rapper said "Hey, I want everybody to listen to the words of this song". Keep in mind that swear words are often used as modes of expression and are not meant to be taken literally and the same goes for images describing a perspective]

The reason for the strong negative emotions surrounding rap is a complex one. However, the negative emotions surrounding these issues are societal and from 20th century western culture and I have only just begun my analysis into culture. It’ll probably be a while before I get to analyzing the politics of modern music. In the meantime I thought I would just point out the obvious, done by many before me, about how the lyrics of rap is getting more negative publicity than is fair.

One of the reasons (I think) for the negative emotions surrounding rap has to do with the public image surrounding Gangster Rap of the 80’s and 90’s which I’m not very familiar with (I was mostly into rock and pop at the time, if I have heard any gangster rap I would have to listen to it again to remember). The lyrics in gangster rap reflect the life of inner city youth which is in an area of low economic wealth and therefore tends to be more violent than an area of greater economic wealth. However, it has been accused of being overly violent and consequently rap has developed negative public image over the years which has become almost comical

To put the violence of rap lyrics in perspective I thought I would just make a little list of songs with violent themes from a completely different music genre that haven’t received any negative publicity.

Pardon Me I've Got Someone To Kill
by Johnny Paycheck

Early one mornin' while makin' the rounds
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down
I went right home and I went to bed I stuck that lovin' 44 beneath my head
By Johnny Cash

Lord you should've seen their frantic faces
They screamed and cried please put away that knife
I guess I'll go to hell or I'll rot here in the cell
By Wagoner Porter

But I shot a man in Reno,
Just to watch him die
By Johnny Cash

I've killed the only man I love
He would not take me for his bride
By Olivia Newton

And if I could move I'd get my gun and put her in the ground
Oh Ruby, don't take your love to town
By Kenny Rogers

She runs back down the hallway
To the bedroom door
She reaches for the pistol
Kept in the dresser drawer
Tells the lady in the mirror
He won't do this again
Cause tonight will be the last time
She'll wonder where he's been
By Garth Brooks

With that out of the way, let’s enjoy some music.

I have only owned two rap albums in my life one by Snoop Doggy Dog back in the early 90’s and the other by Dr. Dre (Chronic 2001). When I first heard the songs from Chronic 2001 on the radio I was instantly attracted to the passion in the music. Over the years, when I return to listening to music I always hunt down some songs from this album. Since I first bought the album I have a better understanding of why I like this music so much. If you listen to the lyrics you notice there is anger, love, brotherhood, loyalty, forgiveness and contains a dialogue to events in Dr. Dre’s life. That’s one of the reasons music is important in our culture as it not only sounds good but contains the life experiences of the song writers(which reflects aspects of the culture and society they come from). It’s the kind of music I like to hear so I thought I would post some of it. So here are some of my favorite songs of that album.

Ancient Mysteries: The World's Earliest Cities

2011-02-17T22:21:00.001+05:00

"Very deep." Wrote Thomas Mann at the opening of his mythologically conceived tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers. "is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?" And he then observed: "The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable." Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell page 5 [Hereafter referred to as JC1]

With this quote Joseph Campbell began his study in mythology. What I want to examine in this post is just how far back we can trace civilization, cities or even just large communities.

During Joseph Campbell’s time certain excavations (such as Catalhoyuk) had just been uncovered which was beginning to push back the horizon of when our civilization actually began. Since the discoveries were made after he had finished his books he wrote about these recent archeological finds in his forward to the book on Primitive Mythology and pointed out how these discoveries had pushed back the timelines he had outlined in this book. In addition to this, other fascinating discoveries have completely destroyed the original timeline of civilizational development outlined in Campbell’s early overview. However, this was something he expected as he noted, "there will, no doubt, be as many astonishing disclosures during the seventies and eighties as there were in the decade of the sixties."(Forward from Primitive Mythology)

With the discovery of Catalhoyuk we now have evidence of an established villages cluster of at least 10,000 people living together over hundreds of years. The village life is firmly established around 7,500 B.C. So this spreads out the cradle of civilization from the fertile crescent more towards Central Asia and it also pushes back the dates of the earliest cities. The first examples of developed pottery is actually found (rather suddenly) in catalhoyuk which suggests that its was a growing and innovative society.

With the Mesopotamian civilization firmly established in textbooks as the source of civilization everyone has heard of the later cities of Babylon and Egypt. The newer archeological finds, such as Catalhoyuk from the 1960's, haven't quite made it into school or college textbooks. However, museums seem to be catching up to the discoveries of the last century.

Next is a group of cities made of brick which seem to have materialized from nowhere;

"The so-called Harappa stage of the great cities of Mohenjo-daro, Chanhu-daro, and Harappa (c. 2500-1200/1000 B.C), which bursts abruptly into view, without preparation, already fully formed and showing many completely obvious signs of inspiration from the earlier high centers of the West (i.e. fertile crescent), yet undeniable signs, also, of a native Indian tradition – this too already well developed. As professor W. Norman Brown has suggested, a native Indian center (i.e., a mythogenetic zone) somewhere either in the south or in the Ganges-Jumna area would seem to be indicated, where the characteristically Indian traits, unknown at this time farther west, must have come into form. [JC1 - Page 435]

Other interesting facts about the cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa is that the bricks used in making them are uniform, i.e. they had a system to measure and weigh stuff accurately. They had their own sewage system, public baths and the structure of the architecture suggest an egalitarian society, but there are no signs of architectural development. That means these cities arrived fully developed and then went into decline. There are no in-between cities or towns where the Mohenjodaro/Happan style of architecture is first used.

With the discovery of ancient cities off the coast of India, the sudden appearance of Mohenjodara and Harrapa makes more sense. Cities that existed before a rise in the oceans(that began at the end of the last ice age) would explain the sudden appearance of cities like Mohenjodaro and Harrapa;

"The carbon dating of 7500 BC obtained for the wooden piece recovered from the site changes the earlier held view that the first cities appeared in the Sumer Valley [in Mesopotamia] around 3000 BC," said B Sasisekaran of India's National Science Academy.

The images gathered over the past six months led to a surprising discovery - a series of well-defined geometric formations were clearly seen, spread irregularly across a nine-kilometre (five-mile) stretch, a little beneath the sea bed.

Some of them closely resemble an acropolis - or great bath - known to be characteristic of the Harappan civilisation.

The Gulf of Cambay is one of the largest tidal areas in the world - with a current of very high velocity - and so it is conceivable that the area may well have submerged an entire ancient settlement, Mr Ravindran said to the BBC.

I have covered a bunch of evidence of underwater structures in an earlier post called Underwater Ruins. It also has a video of an Indian Archeologist who finds evidence of some underwater structures and links it to the Mahabharata which describes a city that was submerged in some long ago time with vibrant images of life in the city as well as some romanticized images of a city of gold.

For this post I'd like to show with images that there is undeniable evidence - i.e. you can see it for yourself - that there was a civilization or at least a bunch of advanced cities along the coastline before the end of the last ice age.

First a couple of images of the underwater structures off the coast of Japan covered in the earlier post.

Just looking at the above pictures, under around a hundred feet of water, isn't it obvious that the picture right above is carved while the image above that has a typical arch architecture(of a certain time).

Next take a look at these amazing pillars that were recently uncovered just short distance from Catalhoyuk called Gobekli Tepe; [Images of Gobekli Tepe and article quotes are from here]

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years.

As the archaeologists dug deeper, they unearthed pillars arranged in circles. Schmidt's team, however, found none of the telltale signs of a settlement: no cooking hearths, houses or trash pits, and none of the clay fertility figurines that litter nearby sites of about the same age. The archaeologists did find evidence of tool use, including stone hammers and blades. And because those artifacts closely resemble others from nearby sites previously carbon-dated to about 9000 B.C., Schmidt and co-workers estimate that Gobekli Tepe's stone structures are the same age. Limited carbon dating undertaken by Schmidt at the site confirms this assessment.

Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago.

Hodder is fascinated that Gobekli Tepe's pillar carvings are dominated not by edible prey like deer and cattle but by menacing creatures such as lions, spiders, snakes and scorpions. "It's a scary, fantastic world of nasty-looking beasts,"

Here is a quick comparison between two unrelated structures, yet it's interesting that both seem to have some sort of significance requiring alot of labor to create but with no signs of settlement to explain its creation. The lines drawn in the sand are the Nazca lines in Peru that covers a 37 mile stretch of land.

Finally, I managed to obtain some of the sonar images of the city found over 1000 feet down off the coast of Cuba (mentioned in 'Underwater Ruins'). Not sure where I found them as I havn't been able to find the site again. In any case, these pictures where taken by the underwater team using sonar and small submarine type cameras.

The close ups are of large cube and pyramid shaped like objects, while the sonar shows the size of the area that these structures are built around(several square miles). Unfortunately very little information is available on these structures.

I'm going to go over some other structures and their mysteries in other posts in this series. There is just something interesting I noticed is how large monolithic stones were set up in England on one side and Tibet on the other. It makes me think of a widespread cultural stream that eventually used large stones for some ritualistic or astronomical reason. Who knows(the culture no longer exists). Whats important to me is that what could have been just stones set up in a group, when looked at in terms of all the evidence, suggests a cultural influence that spread across a large expanse of territory.

A tripod like stone structure in England

On the barren windswept plains of Tibet...could this be like a tripod which has been broken?

Group rocks in England

Group of rocks in Tibet.

So far I've shown that our timeline for the beginning of our earliest cities is grossly out of date and if we take that into account we notice that there may have been a broad diffusion of ideas sometime - or many times - in the past. I will continue to look at the remains of the lost part of our history under 'Ancient Mysteries' from time to time.

What is the difference between culture and society?

2011-02-17T07:57:00.001+05:00

The first thing Id like to clear up before I begin to look at culture is that my perspective on culture is a lot broader than is normally used in everyday life(kind of anthropological). When you say England has a different culture than say, Germany what you are really referring to is ‘society’. The society is different, there is a different language, some behaviors are different etc. In other words it fits the following definitions:

Definition of SOCIETY

1: companionship or association with one's fellows : friendly or intimate intercourse : company
2: a voluntary association of individuals for common ends; especially : an organized group working together or periodically meeting because of common interests, beliefs, or profession
3a : an enduring and cooperating social group whose members have developed organized patterns of relationships through interaction with one another
b : a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests

Culture is a broader perspective and can be expanded depending on the classifications you use. Using the above example England and Germany are both Christian majority countries, they share similar economic and democratic values, they share a common ancestral language…infact that ancestral language is shared with the Indian subcontinent as well! A cultural diffusion took place around 4000 B.C. probably from the north Caucasus region as it went from semi-arid to desert. The tribes from this area spread south, west and north-west. That is why all the cultures that developed in the Mediterranean had a very similar pantheon of gods as the Hindus (for example: both Zeus and Indra throw lightning bolts). Later it was discovered that certain languages share roots and we now know that Greek, Persian, Latin, Hindi and English all originate from the same tribal group millennia ago. (You can find an overview of Indo-European Language Subfamilies here)

Each of these groups (Greeks, Hindus etc.) has different societies but they share a cultural heritage. One aspect of my study in this blog will be to examine the broadness of our cultural heritage.

Definition of CULTURE

5a : the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations
b : the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time
c : the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization
d : the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic

"For anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns." Dennis O'Neil

Just a few links about Karl Rove

2011-02-12T03:01:00.002+05:00

[Note - 13th April '11 : "Within our party, we've got to be very careful about allowing these people who are the birthers and the 9/11-deniers to get too high a profile and say too much without setting the record straight," said Rove, according to a transcript of the exchange with Bill O'Reilly from GOP12.]

[Note: Although I don't like posts of only links and vids there are a few things and people I prefer not to write about unless I absolutely have to...Rove is one of them]

News 8’s description of Rove’s discussion covering “protection of individual liberties” is particularly ironic. Dykes was arrested during a question and answer session after he asked Rove about the Downing Street memo and a record documenting a meeting between Bush and Tony Blair where the two leaders discussed painting a reconnaissance aircraft in UN colors in order to provoke Iraq. The Downing Street memo revealed that intelligence and facts were fixed by the neocon Bush regime around the policy of illegally removing Saddam Hussein from power. The document uncovered that intelligence on Iraq prior to the war was deliberately falsified and not simply mistaken as Bush and the neocons later claimed.

In response to the question, Rove told Dykes to “sit down and shut up.” Aaron was then arrested by UT Police and placed in handcuffs. He was charged with resisting arrest, although Dykes made a point to raise his arms and declare that he was not resisting arrest or posing a threat to the police. He was then transferred to the Travis County Jail where he is being held by the Austin Police.

Infowars cameraman Rob Jacobson was also detained by UT Police but released.

An hour with Fareed Zakaria, Editor of Newsweek International about his book The Post-American World.

Karl Rove, Still Lying on TV About Iraq

Prep Students Challenge Rove Speech

Card: Rove's Claim That Congress Pushed Bush To War Is Wrong

Daschle Calls Rove's Iraq War Accusation "A Joke"

Comedy relief with Stephen Colbert

The DaColbert Code - Samuel Alito

Culture & Society: images, thoughts, perspectives and music

Education Part 1 - The Problem Of Psychiatric Drugs

The Fragmentation of Knowledge Part 1 [Or, The case against over-specialization in theory based academics]

Prelude to a new article series on education

Archeologists can explain away anything! [Mysterious Evidence of Mommoths/Mastadons in America]

Unedited version of 'Forgot About Dre.'

Could American psychology have a major Native American influence?

What's the difference between me and you?

Interlude: Reflection of Cultural Perspectives Through Gardening

Images: Neanderthals - Proof that the artist's perception influences his or her art

The Real Slim Shady By Eminem UNCENSORED

The earliest evidence of ritual and myth part 2

Images: Could Ancient Swastikas Have Actually Been Boomerangs?

Had to add this to my Dr. Dre collection...

Never Say Never - by Justin Bieber and Jaden Smith

History: More evidence for hunting with wooden spears in ancient times

Prelude to Part 2 of "The earliest evidence of ritual and myth"

Yet another blog! Short posts on culture and society from mainstream media

New blog: Fox News In Context

Joseph Campbell puts culture and society in perspective

History: The earliest evidence of ritual and myth part 1

Politics: An introduction to my new blog

Music: Our oldest flutes and a little about banjo music

History: The earliest evidence of culture

Psychology: An introduction to the use of psychology in understanding culture and society

Why I think the Japanese are going to come back stronger than before

Introduction to Joseph Campbell

Daniel Quinn’s theories on culture and civilization part 4

Daniel Quinn’s theories on culture and civilization part 3

Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ Part 2 – Conquest and the Tropics

Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ Part 1 – Out of Eden

Daniel Quinn’s theories on culture and civilization part 2

Daniel Quinn’s theories on culture and civilization part 1

A little about rap and some Dr. Dre videos

Ancient Mysteries: The World's Earliest Cities

What is the difference between culture and society?

Just a few links about Karl Rove

Vice President Aaron Burr & Dick Cheney

This is the millenium of aftermath

Alan Greenspan, The IMF and The World Bank (Part 2 of 10)

Alan Greenspan, The IMF and The World Bank (Part 1 of 10)

The Candy Bombers

The Heart Of Culture and Society – The Golden Rule

Heart of Culture and Society - Wisdom

Learning and Education With The 'Socratic Method'

A Few Informational Links On Clean Energy