April 29, 2007
Researchers have long debated what happened when the indigenous Neanderthals of Europe met "modern humans" arriving from Africa starting some 40,000 years ago. The end result was the disappearance of the Neanderthals, but what happened during the roughly 10,000 years that the two human species shared a land?A new review of the fossil record from that period has come up with a provocative conclusion: The two groups saw each other as kindred spirits and, when conditions were right, they mated.
How often this happened will never be known, but paleoanthropologist Erik Trinkaus says it probably occurred more often than is generally imagined.
In his latest work, published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Trinkaus, of Washington University in St. Louis, analyzed prehistoric fossil remains from various parts of Europe. He concluded that a significant number have attributes associated with both Neanderthals and the modern humans who replaced them.
"Given the data we now have, it would be highly improbable to argue there is no Neanderthal contribution to the early European population that came out of Africa," Trinkaus said. "I believe there was continuous breeding between the two for some period of time.
"Both groups would seem to us dirty and smelly but, cleaned up, we would understand both to be human. There's good reason to think that they did as well."
The conclusion, one of the strongest to date in this debate, remains controversial, and it has potentially broad implications. It suggests, for instance, that humans today should still have some Neanderthal genes. It also means that the unanswered question of why the Neanderthals died out is even more puzzling -- because under this scenario they were quite capable of living successfully alongside the more modern newcomers.
Don't like this conclusion? Don't worry -- in the next few years there will be a new study claiming exactly the opposite, as has been the case for decades whenever a groundbreaking study of this question is published.
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April 28, 2007
One hundred fifty years ago, a glorious September morning in the Utah mountains morphed into Mormonism's darkest hour when a militia opened fire on a wagon train, leaving more than 120 men, women and children dead in a flowery field.Now the "Mountain Meadows Massacre" is becoming more than a subject of somber reflection within tight-knit Mormon circles. Two new films and a forthcoming book aim to tell the nation what happened, why and -- perhaps most important -- whether the revered Mormon prophet Brigham Young ordered the killing.
At stake are not just the details of a tragic moment in pioneer history. For the 5.8 million Americans who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon church is officially known, the integrity of one of their most important heroes hangs in the balance. For others, the depictions stand to forge new impressions of a controversial religious minority that has known both violent persecution and substantial influence across its tumultuous 180-year history.
"As a society, we are definitely at a crossroads" in terms of rethinking Mormonism, says Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. "This is a huge moment, because it's a very important religion."
There are three projects in the works. One, a movie, depicts the events sensationally and stakes out the position that this was an act inspired by, if not ordered by, Brigham Young. The second, a PBS documentary, tries to contextualize what happened and does not, in so far as I can tell, really take a clear position on Young's involvement. And an upcoming book by three Mormon historians takes the official Mormon position that Young had nothing to do with the events of that morning at all -- and that he tried to stop it.
What is the answer? In the end, I suspect the PBS documentary may do a great service by contextualizing the events, coming as they did as a part of the "Mormon War" in Utah. And personally, I doubt that Young actually ordered these murders -- but I do suspect that his words, like those of Henry II in the case of Thomas a Becket, could legitimately have been taken by some of his more loyal followers as an implicit call for these events. As such, one might fairly impute an indirect moral responsibility to the Mormon leader, though perhaps not the sort that those who claim he directed the massacre would insist upon. But regardless, the events of September 11, 1857 remain a blot upon the history of the LDS Church -- and will likely continue to be a source of controversy.
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April 26, 2007
The letter from George Washington is pasted between poetry and party invitations, stuffed into a dusty scrapbook amid jokes and cutouts of handsome men, and all the highlights of a lucky little girlÂ’s life.It was written in May 1787 and addressed to Jacob Morris, grandfather of Julia Kean, the precocious 10-year-old who started the brown leather scrapbook in 1826 and put the letter under a portrait of the nationÂ’s first president.
The letter is just 111 words long, a scant two paragraphs, but it mentions a rival of Washington, Horatio Gates, and includes enough hints of intrigue to whet the appetite of scholars. They learned of the letterÂ’s discovery only recently, after it was found among the private papers of one of New JerseyÂ’s most prominent families.
What a neat treasure to find -- and the words of the letter are significant, written during the Constitutional Convention over which George Washington presided.
“The happiness of this Country depend much upon the deliberations of the federal Convention which is now sitting,” reads the second paragraph of the quill-and-ink letter. “It, however, can only lay the foundation — the community at large must raise the edifice.”
Indeed -- the Constitution is mere paper unless We, the People, build and maintain the structure it designs. Have we lived up to that responsibility in the 220 years since that great man wrote those words?
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April 21, 2007
The attack on Mexican troops at the Battle of San Jacinto came at just the right time and place 171 years ago today, leading to a Texian victory that secured independence from Mexico.
* * * Texian troops were defeated by Mexican troops at the Alamo on March 6, 1836.
Another major blow came on March 27, when more than 350 Texian soldiers at Goliad who had surrendered were massacred.
Then came the Battle of San Jacinto.
* * * "The battle only took 18 minutes so you can literally take an 18-minute walk and feel the battle," he said. "The Alamo takes a lot of attention, but this is where we won it."
And the world -- in particular the destiny of the United States and Mexico -- was forever changed in those 18 minutes.
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April 15, 2007
SNOWS are melting in central Afghanistan and roads to the town of Bamiyan have reopened after unseasonal rain - meaning work on restoring the giant Buddha statues destroyed by the Taleban can resume.Piles of rubble lie below two gaping niches in the red-brown cliff facing the town where the statues had stood since the sixth century until the Taleban brought them down in 2001, branding them unIslamic.
The larger, identified chunks of stone from the standing Buddhas have been stored or covered, but thousands of fragments and rubble lie in the open. "It's impossible to work here for at least six months of the year," said Habiba Sarabi, the governor of Bamiyan. "We hope work will resume by June."
She said reconstruction of at least one statue - the larger one, which stood 174ft tall - would begin after a request from the federal government to UNESCO.
Reconstructed bits of statue will be mixed with clay in a process called anastylosis, pieced together and bonded back on to the cliff face. It is an immense task and experts are divided on whether reconstruction is feasible or even necessary.
A team has been clearing the site of mines, but its work is not complete. Hundreds of poor people live in caves on the cliffside, and preventing encroachment into the World Heritage Site is a key issue.
Preliminary estimates of the cost of rebuilding the larger statue are £25 million, and it is debatable whether that might be better used elsewhere in the war-ravaged and impoverished nation.
Whenever work starts, it will take years - perhaps a decade - to complete. "There are at least 3,000 pieces of the larger Buddha and 1,500 from the smaller one," said Ms Sarabi.
These statues are a part of the heritage of all humanity -- their reconstruction needs to be a priority. Especially if we are to send a clear signal to the Islamists that WE WILL NOT SUBMIT!
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April 12, 2007
The Vatican and Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial got into a public spat Thursday over the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi genocide, threatening to upset fragile relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish state.Separately, church officials announced new developments Thursday in the Vatican's case to make Pius a saint. A massive dossier on Pius' virtues _ some six volumes of 3,000 pages _ was handed over to a panel of bishops and cardinals earlier this month to study, they said.
At issue in the Yad Vashem-Vatican dispute is a photograph of Pius in Yad Vashem's museum in Jerusalem with the caption: "Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest," refusing to sign a 1942 Allied condemnation of the massacre of Jews during World War II.
Pius "maintained his neutral position" with two exceptions, the caption reads, criticizing "his silence and absence of guidelines." The exceptions were appeals to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia toward the end of the war, the caption says.
The Vatican's ambassador to Israel, Monsignor Antonio Franco, confirmed Thursday that he would not attend Yad Vashem's annual memorial service for Holocaust victims next week because of the Pius photograph.
"I don't intend to go to Yad Vashem if things remain the way they do," he said.
The memorial service is traditionally attended by all foreign ambassadors to Israel or their representatives. Yad Vashem said this would mark the first case in which a foreign emissary deliberately skipped the ceremony.
Yad Vashem is "shocked and disappointed" by Franco's decision, said spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg.
I'm shocked and disappointed by Israel's decision to include a blood-libel against a man universally recognized as a friend of the Jews during the holocaust -- by both the Jews and the Nazis. I wish more ambassadors had the integrity to stay away from the memorial service in recognition that the exhibit defames a good and decent man who did more than any other world leader to safeguard those targeted for death by the Nazi genocide machine.
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April 11, 2007
Locks of 3,200-year-old hair from the pharaoh Ramses II have been unveiled at the Egyptian Museum, returned to Egypt after being stolen 30 years ago in France and put up for sale on the Internet.The small tufts of brown hair were displayed alongside pieces of linen bandages and 11 pieces of resin used in the mummification of Ramses and his son Merneptah in a glass display case. Photographers mobbed the case as Egypt's culture minister and antiquities chief showed off the returned items. The hair will eventually be displayed next to Ramses' mummy at the museum.
The theft was discovered when the pieces of hair were put up for sale on a Web site last November by a French postman, Jean-Michel Diebolt, who gave the hair a price tag of $2,600.
Diebolt is the son of a French researcher who examined the 3,200-year-old mummy when it was brought to France in 1976 for treatment to stop the spread of a rare fungus. Diebolt is being investigated in France for allegedly possessing stolen goods.
Egyptian antiquities official Ahmed Saleh traveled to Paris last week to retrieve the stolen items.
"It was wonderful mission. I felt very great when I had the lock of hair of Ramses II in my hand," said Saleh.
Ramses II, who ruled from 1270 to 1213 B.C., is one of ancient Egypt's most famous pharaohs, known for building some of its grandest monuments. Some believe him to be the pharaoh at the time of Moses.
This is clearly stolen property, by any definition. I therefore think it is proper to return the lock of hair to the Egyptians.
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April 02, 2007
On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Moses leading the Israelites through this wilderness out of slavery, Egypt’s chief archaeologist took a bus full of journalists into the North Sinai to showcase his agency’s latest discovery.It didn’t look like much — some ancient buried walls of a military fort and a few pieces of volcanic lava. The archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass, often promotes mummies and tombs and pharaonic antiquities that command international attention and high ticket prices. But this bleak landscape, broken only by electric pylons, excited him because it provided physical evidence of stories told in hieroglyphics. It was proof of accounts from antiquity.
That prompted a reporter to ask about the Exodus, and if the new evidence was linked in any way to the story of Passover. The archaeological discoveries roughly coincided with the timing of the IsraelitesÂ’ biblical flight from Egypt and the 40 years of wandering the desert in search of the Promised Land.
“Really, it’s a myth,” Dr. Hawass said of the story of the Exodus, as he stood at the foot of a wall built during what is called the New Kingdom.
Later on, they get in a dig about the lack of evidence of Jesus being in Egypt as a child (though why an obscure Jewish family would have been noted at the time is pretty obvious).
Personally, I have some qquestions about the Exodus story as handed down to us -- but don't doubt it is historically based on some smaller scale -- sort of the "George Washington and the cherry tree" effect. And since i am not a biblical literalist, that does not trouble me at all.
But I do have a question -- will there the NY Times be running articles debunking the Koran or raising questions about Muhammad during Ramadan this year? Or do they know that the response from Jews and Christians to such articles is more sedate than those of Muslims to attempts to call their faith into question?
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