Everything is physical. One could trade in quantum bits and they would still be physical. The problem is accounting and the desire people have for particular things. Then its a matter of fairness and access. Electronic money replacing cash would create new ways of corrupting currency exchanges, and make accounting increasingly challenging, while advantages would implict flow to those operating the electronic exchange media.
Every bit of data, each piece of information, is associated with a real object. Vedral's 'Decoding the Universe' might help explain that. One can disagree about the Universe being simply information, or D.N.A. as a quantum computer in biological form, in fact there are numerous or an infinite number of ways to construct accounting and representational structures yet they are all associated with a temporal physical structure. Christians believe God donates a spiriutual element-perhaps of conduct-yet that is not an economic element.
Philosophically one may argue about what real objects are, and equally one may differ about the meaning of words and of course history too. I enjoy reading linguistic-analytic philosophy occassionally. I have Quine's Philosophy of Logic and Kripke's Naming and Neccessity as ongoing projects.
Concepts of causality and cash, or causality and war, and a classification system of human social conflicts in wars and non-wars such can be duplicitous. Sophism in conflict definitions such as a Vietnam Conflict, a War on Poverty, A War on Cancer, A War on Drugs, The Korean Conflict, The War in Iraq and so forth are linguistic things different than the things for-themselves. Philosophers of language and logic try to keep that awareness that language is one thing, and things in themselves quite another.
One might read Quine's Ontological Relativity' and discover a synopsis of how language has differnet sets or lexcions in various circumstances. Much language is about translating terms and meanings from one lexicon to another often without success, for many social lexical sets have inherent presumptions and constants that render the data value and words rather inflexably.
Some Christians may find it difficult to understand why everything in the Universal is physical. There are not two natures of substance, yet there may be a class of emergent characteristic that can be considered a qualitatively different genre of substance.
People commonly use water and ice as an example of qualitatively different materials made from same element. Of course because H2o is also partly made of the temperature of the Universe and the local temperature, it is rather disinegenuous to say that water or ice are made simply from water or ice.
Life is an emergent characteristic of inanimate matter. The complexity of the arrangement of the materials of life allow it to support the complex phenomenology of mind.Mind is fundamentally different than matter although each has the same fundamental base elements.
To declare that everything is physical, is just to offer an opinion of monism. Monism is a philosophical opinion that all things are of one basic substance in different configurations. Logic demands that sort of statement from living beings. Yet it is like saying that all things are A. It is saying that all things are of set A, and nothing that exists is not a member of set A.
So a Chriistian might say-whoah! what about the spiritual? God we stipulate is pure spirit and transcends the physical and all existing things. No scientific investigation or theory will ever comprehend God. People are physical, God is spiritual, yet people are created in the likeness of God-how so?
The emergent characteristic of mind in sentient life is how. Mind is a physically-based version of spirit, yet not spirit. If Christians of faith receive the Holy Spirit and God in dwells them, that is as close as humans get to the spiritual. God can transcend and inhabit any should willing to accept the atoning grace of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the cross as payment for his own original sin nature (of being physical and temporal).
11/19/10
What Would Abe Lincoln Do?
Abe Lincoln would get down in the pit and wrestle the crocodiles. He was a leader that like Reagan sought to enrich all ordinary Americans.
When General Meade defeated Robert E. Lee's Army of Virginia the tide had been turned in the civil war. The effort to make men free-in the United States, and to prevent southern state's officers from riding into Northern states to extradite escaped slaves had been reinforced and when Lincoln appointed Grant to lead the Army starting with the Wilderness campaign and to Cold Harbor a year of intensive war setting precidents for later wars was cast.
Lincoln as the first Republican President was not for lawlesness-he did after all order the largest mass hanging in U.S. history. I would imagine that wealthy drug using musicians would not have been people he admired.
Nevertheless Lincoln supported the pioneer ethic of hard work and self-help. Unfortunately in a spoilt society where networks and non-work are given disproportionate compensation, social position counts for far more than work. Sure there are still surgeons, soldiers and painters working honestly, yet unlike European Jews of yore scrimping to become petite burgeois and own their own small business and save capital, todays middle class have huge SUVs, houses and debt. They disregard the poor and kow tow to the rich and doom the poor and middle class in the process. They are trained to spend and consume and have no savings.
Lincoln was a nationalist rather than a globalist like all good U.S. President working for the people, and would not have approved tax cuts for the rich or the middle class in order to pay down the national debt directly. He would have secured our borders against illegal immigration so the U.S. poor could be more financially free to get jobs and better wages through negotiation and scarcity of labor.
Today some politicians even talk about ending the T.S.A. to let private security firms perhaps based in Dubai or Mecca guard the nation's security-you betcha, corporatism seeking to subvert Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and Pat Buchanan again.
When General Meade defeated Robert E. Lee's Army of Virginia the tide had been turned in the civil war. The effort to make men free-in the United States, and to prevent southern state's officers from riding into Northern states to extradite escaped slaves had been reinforced and when Lincoln appointed Grant to lead the Army starting with the Wilderness campaign and to Cold Harbor a year of intensive war setting precidents for later wars was cast.
Lincoln as the first Republican President was not for lawlesness-he did after all order the largest mass hanging in U.S. history. I would imagine that wealthy drug using musicians would not have been people he admired.
Nevertheless Lincoln supported the pioneer ethic of hard work and self-help. Unfortunately in a spoilt society where networks and non-work are given disproportionate compensation, social position counts for far more than work. Sure there are still surgeons, soldiers and painters working honestly, yet unlike European Jews of yore scrimping to become petite burgeois and own their own small business and save capital, todays middle class have huge SUVs, houses and debt. They disregard the poor and kow tow to the rich and doom the poor and middle class in the process. They are trained to spend and consume and have no savings.
Lincoln was a nationalist rather than a globalist like all good U.S. President working for the people, and would not have approved tax cuts for the rich or the middle class in order to pay down the national debt directly. He would have secured our borders against illegal immigration so the U.S. poor could be more financially free to get jobs and better wages through negotiation and scarcity of labor.
Today some politicians even talk about ending the T.S.A. to let private security firms perhaps based in Dubai or Mecca guard the nation's security-you betcha, corporatism seeking to subvert Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and Pat Buchanan again.
11/17/10
Money; Whence it Came From and Where it Went (J.K. Galbraith)
Its been a while since I read Galbraith's book. I will probably only make a brief mention of it's content. I believe it was published about 1975 or so. It will lack the history of the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama era of Wall Street financial perfidy.
http://www.amazon.com/Money-Whence-Came-Where-Went/dp/0395198437
The history of money is quite interesting. Did you know there was a real John Law who worked for Louis the 16th (I believe it was the 16th)? He made all these land deals to prop up the monarchy that eventually collapsed and he was figuratively tarred and feathered.
Galbraith, who was in charge of U.S. economics for Roosevelt during the second world war, was a student of John Maynard Keynes, yet of course Galbraith wasn't an idiotic supply-sider.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith#Money_:_Whence_It_Came.2C_Where_It_Went_.281975.29
Galbraith explains Gresham's law-bad money follows good. Early in U.S. history when anyone could mint their own currency, and there were hundreds, some obviously weren't good. Yet Gresham's law is about imitation of successful economic strategies that are debased.
Galbraith explained that all the gold ever found would fit in one large supertanker ship. Much of it has been melted down and recast numerous times, and not too much lost.
Money was originally just a trade good, and when civilization developed a standard trade good of value became obvious; if the king of Mycenae had a gold coin of a particular weight then it would be worth the same as that of the King of Troy. Egoism of the day had the rulers image put on a coin, and greedy rulers would debase their currency putting dross weight inside a gold wrapped shell (does America have any real copper in pennies any more?).
Currency of money as an abstract items became a reflection of the complexity of an economy and of trade more than the thing itself. Nixon took America off the Gold Standard, and so today we see phenomena like quantitative easing or 'minting' of 600 billions of dollars by the Fed up ahead.
Monetary theory as contemplated by Von Mises and Freedman, seeks to determine what real capital value is. Money in some way is supposed to be associated with real capital value, so it obviously becomes more difficult to determine what value is when it is not plain and simple like wheat in a silo and no complications other that immediate supply and demand.
When a variety of global networks own various items, and fuel from OPEC nations is essential for transport as well as production of commodities and manufactured items, the effort to set a given value is difficult to isolate.
I believe it is important for citizens to have a material currency to trade for themselves freely, without being controlled by financial networks directly. It is also something of a reality check objectively upon the honesty of the advantaged currency traders and manipulators.
Value theory is a social element, perhaps a democratically elected element that is achieved via social momentum and limited citizen input determining social values. It is a philosophical activity with many points of view, and ecological economics of low entropy, low pollution, stable population are minority opinions today in the globalist expansive sprawl of power, avarice and control thoughtlessly reducing the health of the planet and its potential carrying capacity for human life.
--------------------------------------------------
post-script
Money hasn't much intrinsic value any longer. It is more about power and the desire to control properties that is the problem. A medium of social exchange is just one tool of economic activity.
Formerly and still, wars of conquest are fought to expropriate resources and social power.
Value theory may deem anything valuable. My books for instance, could become socially valued this Christmas, and I could sell millions. Then if a depression occurred, and no more could be printed existing copies could become more valuable than gold (invest now in several copies from www.lulu.com/garycgibson).
Seriously though, a theory of social conflict is not reasonably reducible to money. That may be a proximal cause of crime such as in 'Crime and Punishment', yet there are larger social structures and causes for crime besides money-even in Dostoyevsky's book.
An intermediate tool of social exchange reflecting value of what money is about. To ossify or institutionalize money in the hands of an elite would not eliminate the tool of social exchange,it would just eliminate economic activity in which individuals set their own values for which they would exchange money.
Electronic money already exists for the convenience of the advantaged. The poor haven't access to such things, and electronics aren't worth a damn in many circumstances of the outdoor life. Even rechargable batteries freeze at low temperature for instance.
Increasing rather than decreasing the mediums of social value would be a good way to go. Currency banks for Christians in a priesthood of believers for work, church attendance and participation in liturgy and readings from the Bible-that is a way to go.
There could be other social networks created to provide real social value for people-a sort oof turbo craigs list and exchange bank combine, that would allow a storing of work and exchange credits without money. Yet money is just a concept of an objective social exchange unit.
One wants and honest and impartial social exchange unit for work effort of course, yet people are disputacious and disagree about what is of value, and who should receive value units for various activities. A communitarian approach might create several alternative social value compilation structures so individuals would have more resources to draw upon in lean time.
http://www.amazon.com/Money-Whence-Came-Where-Went/dp/0395198437
The history of money is quite interesting. Did you know there was a real John Law who worked for Louis the 16th (I believe it was the 16th)? He made all these land deals to prop up the monarchy that eventually collapsed and he was figuratively tarred and feathered.
Galbraith, who was in charge of U.S. economics for Roosevelt during the second world war, was a student of John Maynard Keynes, yet of course Galbraith wasn't an idiotic supply-sider.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith#Money_:_Whence_It_Came.2C_Where_It_Went_.281975.29
Galbraith explains Gresham's law-bad money follows good. Early in U.S. history when anyone could mint their own currency, and there were hundreds, some obviously weren't good. Yet Gresham's law is about imitation of successful economic strategies that are debased.
Galbraith explained that all the gold ever found would fit in one large supertanker ship. Much of it has been melted down and recast numerous times, and not too much lost.
Money was originally just a trade good, and when civilization developed a standard trade good of value became obvious; if the king of Mycenae had a gold coin of a particular weight then it would be worth the same as that of the King of Troy. Egoism of the day had the rulers image put on a coin, and greedy rulers would debase their currency putting dross weight inside a gold wrapped shell (does America have any real copper in pennies any more?).
Currency of money as an abstract items became a reflection of the complexity of an economy and of trade more than the thing itself. Nixon took America off the Gold Standard, and so today we see phenomena like quantitative easing or 'minting' of 600 billions of dollars by the Fed up ahead.
Monetary theory as contemplated by Von Mises and Freedman, seeks to determine what real capital value is. Money in some way is supposed to be associated with real capital value, so it obviously becomes more difficult to determine what value is when it is not plain and simple like wheat in a silo and no complications other that immediate supply and demand.
When a variety of global networks own various items, and fuel from OPEC nations is essential for transport as well as production of commodities and manufactured items, the effort to set a given value is difficult to isolate.
I believe it is important for citizens to have a material currency to trade for themselves freely, without being controlled by financial networks directly. It is also something of a reality check objectively upon the honesty of the advantaged currency traders and manipulators.
Value theory is a social element, perhaps a democratically elected element that is achieved via social momentum and limited citizen input determining social values. It is a philosophical activity with many points of view, and ecological economics of low entropy, low pollution, stable population are minority opinions today in the globalist expansive sprawl of power, avarice and control thoughtlessly reducing the health of the planet and its potential carrying capacity for human life.
--------------------------------------------------
post-script
Money hasn't much intrinsic value any longer. It is more about power and the desire to control properties that is the problem. A medium of social exchange is just one tool of economic activity.
Formerly and still, wars of conquest are fought to expropriate resources and social power.
Value theory may deem anything valuable. My books for instance, could become socially valued this Christmas, and I could sell millions. Then if a depression occurred, and no more could be printed existing copies could become more valuable than gold (invest now in several copies from www.lulu.com/garycgibson).
Seriously though, a theory of social conflict is not reasonably reducible to money. That may be a proximal cause of crime such as in 'Crime and Punishment', yet there are larger social structures and causes for crime besides money-even in Dostoyevsky's book.
An intermediate tool of social exchange reflecting value of what money is about. To ossify or institutionalize money in the hands of an elite would not eliminate the tool of social exchange,it would just eliminate economic activity in which individuals set their own values for which they would exchange money.
Electronic money already exists for the convenience of the advantaged. The poor haven't access to such things, and electronics aren't worth a damn in many circumstances of the outdoor life. Even rechargable batteries freeze at low temperature for instance.
Increasing rather than decreasing the mediums of social value would be a good way to go. Currency banks for Christians in a priesthood of believers for work, church attendance and participation in liturgy and readings from the Bible-that is a way to go.
There could be other social networks created to provide real social value for people-a sort oof turbo craigs list and exchange bank combine, that would allow a storing of work and exchange credits without money. Yet money is just a concept of an objective social exchange unit.
One wants and honest and impartial social exchange unit for work effort of course, yet people are disputacious and disagree about what is of value, and who should receive value units for various activities. A communitarian approach might create several alternative social value compilation structures so individuals would have more resources to draw upon in lean time.
11/16/10
Napolitano- "Next Generation of Security" Changes (Crotch Touchy Feely Searches)
In order to increase security in a 'next generation' ad campaign for personal body searches including breast and genital touch screening, Homeland Security Head Janet Napolitano has taken a step backward into history as a great leap forward.
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20101115_6606.php?oref=rss
The Next Generation has a nice youthful sound to it--the old is always bad and new is better. High tech personal genital massages may be a sour grapes way to get a homosexual hold on things after the putsch to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell failed- for now.
Intelligent, innovative leaders discover new ways to improve service rather than to degrade it and just call it new. If the Obama Administration has dumb lawyers (there are far too many Democrat lawyer-politicians already) and expects innovative, creative leaders it has a lesson to learn at the polls again.
The either a full body imaging scan or the personal groin and anus fell as an innovation coincides with the Arnold's exit from His Governatorship. It was the 1989 movie 'Total Recall' that had the full body-imaging scene at a spaceport bound for Mars. This next generation of perverse and invasive government quankery substituting for clever innovation will not prevent aircraft demolition if the jihadists are really serious though.
Alexander Solzshenitsyn described a method that inmates used to smuggle items in and out of serious prisons (or perhaps it was a French author). A sealed tube called a plan was inserted up the ass of a convict. If a high quality plastic explosive and detonator were inserted in a plan of a boarding jihadist, no touchy feely inspection would discover the secreted bomb. A federal inspector would need to put on the rubber glove of security to be assured, and that goes double for women passengers.
Plainly an alternative, new next generation for assuring airplane security should be developed--and federal T.S.A. inspectors should not molest children.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-security-20101117,0,4648575.story
I disagree with the concept that a market oriented economy requires the reduction of individual human rights in order to process through-put of mass most efficiently. Airlines could not even be in business without public tax support for airports, air traffic controllers and security--it is an example of a corporatist-socialist subsidized transportation mode that displaces other competition.
The idea that the public should get used to strangers handling/processing their privates routinely may be fine for the Harvard globalists that view humanity as a commodity for most efficient allocation to concentrate wealth for an elite, yet some should dissent from this further expropriation of human privacy in a world moving toward a degraded condition economically, environmentally and sociologically.
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20101115_6606.php?oref=rss
The Next Generation has a nice youthful sound to it--the old is always bad and new is better. High tech personal genital massages may be a sour grapes way to get a homosexual hold on things after the putsch to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell failed- for now.
Intelligent, innovative leaders discover new ways to improve service rather than to degrade it and just call it new. If the Obama Administration has dumb lawyers (there are far too many Democrat lawyer-politicians already) and expects innovative, creative leaders it has a lesson to learn at the polls again.
The either a full body imaging scan or the personal groin and anus fell as an innovation coincides with the Arnold's exit from His Governatorship. It was the 1989 movie 'Total Recall' that had the full body-imaging scene at a spaceport bound for Mars. This next generation of perverse and invasive government quankery substituting for clever innovation will not prevent aircraft demolition if the jihadists are really serious though.
Alexander Solzshenitsyn described a method that inmates used to smuggle items in and out of serious prisons (or perhaps it was a French author). A sealed tube called a plan was inserted up the ass of a convict. If a high quality plastic explosive and detonator were inserted in a plan of a boarding jihadist, no touchy feely inspection would discover the secreted bomb. A federal inspector would need to put on the rubber glove of security to be assured, and that goes double for women passengers.
Plainly an alternative, new next generation for assuring airplane security should be developed--and federal T.S.A. inspectors should not molest children.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-security-20101117,0,4648575.story
I disagree with the concept that a market oriented economy requires the reduction of individual human rights in order to process through-put of mass most efficiently. Airlines could not even be in business without public tax support for airports, air traffic controllers and security--it is an example of a corporatist-socialist subsidized transportation mode that displaces other competition.
The idea that the public should get used to strangers handling/processing their privates routinely may be fine for the Harvard globalists that view humanity as a commodity for most efficient allocation to concentrate wealth for an elite, yet some should dissent from this further expropriation of human privacy in a world moving toward a degraded condition economically, environmentally and sociologically.
11/15/10
Secret Government T.S.A. Inspection Plans A & B (political humor)
The U.S. Federal government airport security screening by the T.S.A. is heavily politically biased and costly for taxpayers. It is a service enabling the rich to fly without concern of becoming detonated and blasted to oblivion in mid-flight. Sikhs and some Muslims are exempt from becoming naked before federal inspectors for religious reasons, and other issues arise.
Our political advisor has obtained a secret N.S.A. contingency plan from the Main Government Planning Logic Computer on plans A and B for screening airport passengers such that everyone will be happy except for taxpayers.
Those passengers willing to pass trough the x-ray vision voyeur pleasuring device will receive complete privacy in the new system. They will just go to a room, strip and send their clothing out in a box on a conveyor belt to be rifled and poked through with only modest laughing and joking about the undergarments (not in the passenger’s presence). The passenger will then go alone into the special screening x-ray vision room, where he or she or gender neutral will be deloused and inspected from a distance by a reformed felon employed by the T.S.A. in Washington D.C. in the distance inspection room full of rehabilitated felons being paid for what they enjoy-watching images of naked people through a window. The Main Government Computer will also watch these people passing through the line. In effect these voyeurs will be acting as doctors viewing X-Rays or whatever noble thing it may be compared to rather than baser sorts of comparison. This federal procedure will trouble none. No T.S.A. employee will be smirking at the passengers as they pass through his or her screening machine on the spot.
The alternative T.S.A. method for those wishing to keep their personal privacy and dignity is the pat-down. The personal pat down is in four lines; two for heterosexuals, one for queers, and another for children.
Each pat down line will be designed to make each passenger comfortable with soft music and soft touches by attractive members of the appropriate gender or gender neutral. Unfortunately none could be found for the children's inspection line, so the government has again hired convicted felons rehabilitated for that task.
The U.S. Government is spending billions and billions of dollars to keep Americans safe and to stimulate the economy simultaneously. Instead of allowing plain Spenserian capitalist natural selection to determine which aircraft should become the nightly news, it is resorting to crunching personal privacy to assure security on common carriers.
A better policy than those suggested in plan A and plan B by the Main Government political computer would be to improve national transportation infrastructure and let airlines pay for their own security while banning anyone from entering the United States that is not willing to be stripped naked and hung by the heels for inspection. If the planes blow up leaving thee U.S.A., well, there are insurance corporations after all.
http://sikhism.about.com/od/culture/a/Culture.htm
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/cair-tsa-can-only-pat-down-muslim-women%E2%80%99s-head-neck/
Our political advisor has obtained a secret N.S.A. contingency plan from the Main Government Planning Logic Computer on plans A and B for screening airport passengers such that everyone will be happy except for taxpayers.
Those passengers willing to pass trough the x-ray vision voyeur pleasuring device will receive complete privacy in the new system. They will just go to a room, strip and send their clothing out in a box on a conveyor belt to be rifled and poked through with only modest laughing and joking about the undergarments (not in the passenger’s presence). The passenger will then go alone into the special screening x-ray vision room, where he or she or gender neutral will be deloused and inspected from a distance by a reformed felon employed by the T.S.A. in Washington D.C. in the distance inspection room full of rehabilitated felons being paid for what they enjoy-watching images of naked people through a window. The Main Government Computer will also watch these people passing through the line. In effect these voyeurs will be acting as doctors viewing X-Rays or whatever noble thing it may be compared to rather than baser sorts of comparison. This federal procedure will trouble none. No T.S.A. employee will be smirking at the passengers as they pass through his or her screening machine on the spot.
The alternative T.S.A. method for those wishing to keep their personal privacy and dignity is the pat-down. The personal pat down is in four lines; two for heterosexuals, one for queers, and another for children.
Each pat down line will be designed to make each passenger comfortable with soft music and soft touches by attractive members of the appropriate gender or gender neutral. Unfortunately none could be found for the children's inspection line, so the government has again hired convicted felons rehabilitated for that task.
The U.S. Government is spending billions and billions of dollars to keep Americans safe and to stimulate the economy simultaneously. Instead of allowing plain Spenserian capitalist natural selection to determine which aircraft should become the nightly news, it is resorting to crunching personal privacy to assure security on common carriers.
A better policy than those suggested in plan A and plan B by the Main Government political computer would be to improve national transportation infrastructure and let airlines pay for their own security while banning anyone from entering the United States that is not willing to be stripped naked and hung by the heels for inspection. If the planes blow up leaving thee U.S.A., well, there are insurance corporations after all.
http://sikhism.about.com/od/culture/a/Culture.htm
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/cair-tsa-can-only-pat-down-muslim-women%E2%80%99s-head-neck/
Cohokia & The Albs; The Irish in Pre-Columbian America
In concluding the reading of Pauketat's excellent book on the first North American civilization; Cahokia, I got a few ideas useful for addition to my project of musing about possible pre-Columbian journeys of Irish voyagers named Albs by the author Farley Mowatt in his book ‘The Farfarers'. I definitely recommend reading ‘Cahokia’ by Timothy Pauketat. It is put together to unfold like a mystery evolving from just digging in the dirt to a verbal reconstruction of much of the civilization. It is a history of American archeology of the Midwest as well. Archeology is something of a small world perhaps.
There is virtually no evidence known of Irish journeys in America before Columbus I should hasten to add, or there is almost none beyond Mowatt's logical and possible induction of evidence of the Irish hotly pursued by Vikings over stations in the North Atlantic and on to New Foundland. The Cohokian history of an explosion of civilization growth and disappearance at St. Louis in a civilization of mound and pyramid builders that played a sport called chunky (I'll bet Bill Clinton in Hangover 2 would have been a star in Cohokia too) between 1050 and 1250 a.d. provides tantalizing ideas of a cultural contact by voyaging Albs with their currach skin boats down the St. Lawrence Sea way, over the great Lakes and through Wisconsin and the Gottshall Rock shelter area and along rivers finally allowing portage to the Mississippi and Cohokia. With interesting petroglyphs at Wrangell Alaska at 54 degrees North latitude identical to those of Newgrange Ireland at 54 degrees north latitude, each from the late Neolithic, I am a little motivated to discover possible traces of Irish journeys across America from New Foundland to Wrangell Alaska in the pre-Columbian era.
We know the at Viking settlements at Greenland flourished and then disappeared on the east side and continued a while later on the west perhaps until 1100 a.d. Within Mowatt's theory these settlements would have been earlier colonized by Albs who then moved further west in pursuit of better fishing and hunting of furs and to escape Viking predation. This time paradigm fits rather well with the arrival at Cohokia by a few Albs as early as 1050, for these were explorers and voyaging parties ahead of a more substantive population that at some point remained behind-possibly in New Foundland.
Pauketat in writing about the archeology of Cohokia made several points that could be taken up into support of the theory that Albs stimulated the rise of Cohokian civilization. A rival theory is that Cohokian cultural development and architecture, religion and games were stimulated by Meso-American ideas from civilizations in Mexico. There is virtually no physical evidence of Mexican civilization trade artifacts in the Mississippian civilization though. The evidence offered to support the influence of Olmecs, Toltecs or other Meso-American people is largely cultural, and those traces are scant although perhaps more substantial than those offered for the Albs/Irish. Since I don’t know of anyone beside myself looking in that direction, I will offer a couple more ideas that seem fairly obvious. Reinforcement of ideas supporting a search for Irish pre-Columbian presence in North America could be useful to others also investigating the topic in order to reduce redundancy of effort and to point out what information is available.
The ghost men at the Gottshall rock shelter look like white men. The figures were painted on the wall maybe in the 11th century, and could be pictures of well put together Irishmen without shirts today. Of course they are wearing leather skull helmets. Actually that reminds me of white guys in sado-masochistic gay bar apparel from what I have seen on TV. Well, the 11th century was a rough era. A pair of shirtless, muscular round eyed white guys with black leather skull helmets along a north south flowing river that could be a way to the Mississippi river drainage and the future Cohokia. It is known that Cohokia influenced the Ho-Chunk peoples living in Wisconsin heavily.
Perhaps the Albs had some cultural knowledge of Egyptian pyramids. Assuredly the Albs had knowledge of walled fortress and mass human warrior assaults with clubs, maces and such. The rapid rise of pyramids at Cohokia, and the use of clubs for mass human sacrifices (line up 130 people, club the and let them fall face down in a burial ditch-some of these people were not killed, and awoke to claw with their fingers at the dirt walls while buried alive-archeologist found their bony fingers in such array at Cohokia) are a pair of cultural concepts that seem starkly counter-cultural to the prior people of Cohokia.
Old Cohokia was in fact completely razed to make way for the New Cohokian civilization built upon the old village. Seldom do people agree for urban renewal of such scale voluntarily. A few Albs or possibly Aztecs entering to take over might have the political power to order such a destruction and reconstruction.
If one considers what a party of Albs would have encountered journeying over the great lakes, to Wisconsin and on to Cohokia, it is easy to imagine that they might have been regarded as ghosts or ghost goods from the underworld. If they were few in number at least they would have presented no military threat, and might instead have been a guaranteed promotion for anyone finding them and introducing the mysterious strangers to the community. If the Albs were few in number and were able to organize a new military tactical method to the Cohokians and eventually across the plains an explanation for the rise and fairly quick fall of Cohokia is created.
The Cohokians had a matrilineal culture and the Albs a patrilineal culture. That alone could have made for a cultural transition of a swift scale, although then matrilineal society did continue the effect for a takeover of military and religious leadership in the male role would have been quick. One could theorize that matrilineal societies occur when promiscuity obscures pale parentage and female parentage is more dependable.
At Crow Creek in Lakota territory in the late 20t century archeologist unearthed a village massacre of more than 800 people. The Lakota were offended by the discovery that such atrocity had ever occurred in their nation. Dating from the 14th century I believe, the story as retold in Pauketat’s book as best I recall (I haven’t a photographic memory), had a defense ditch and palisade being constructed and partly finished at the time of the attack. The attackers killed men women and children clubbing them efficiently with a stick and carved stone shaped something like a mace. This sort of infantry storm the wall and kill everything in the way tactic before burning the village is not found in America Indian archeology before Cohokia (outside perhaps Meso-America). That blood curdling battle method would not have been at all uncommon to Celtic-Alban-Brit-Jute melees in the British Isles and on the continent. Military tactics imported from Europe via the Albs and perhaps Vikings may have disseminated though North America.
Cohokian warriors had thick clothing used as armor for infantry battle storming and shields in addition to the vicious mace-clubs. This war uniform is uncharacteristic of prior North American tribal custom, yet mundane for European. Aztecs had a special mace made of obsidian with a cluster or flower of sharp blades meant for reducing a human skull or vulnerable body part, and obsidian was obtainable from Yellowstone, yet nothing like this is found in Cohokia. Such a war of the flowers club would not have been known to the Albs.
One might wonder where artifacts are of Alban or perhaps Viking tools of war in North America. Unfortunately I am not knowledgeable enough by half to compare possible Alban tools after they left an Iron and Bronze Age environment for the wilds of the west, New Foundland and America. It is interesting that flint was not used for arrowheads before Cohokia, and there were just a pair o sites where flint could be obtained readily. Flint arrowheads and larger chipped knife blades could have been suggested by Albs as well as by Meso-American travelers.
A mystery attending to the sudden fall of Cohokia in the 13th century is the abandonment of the Mississippi Valley of much of its population for the subsequent two hundred years. That is as interesting as the point that the supernova of 1054 a.d. that put a star in the daytime sky about as bright as Venus, nearly coincided with the rise of Cohokia. If albs voyaging in North America appeared in Cohokia as ghosts from the underworld along with the appearance of the supernova, they might have had a very powerful mojo for the construction of Cohokian civilization and the construction of the vast chunky field for sports competition in which the game was a metaphor for the male-female cycle of life. Perhaps genetic research may reveal something of traces of Albs in the future of Cohokian and plains archeology.
There is virtually no evidence known of Irish journeys in America before Columbus I should hasten to add, or there is almost none beyond Mowatt's logical and possible induction of evidence of the Irish hotly pursued by Vikings over stations in the North Atlantic and on to New Foundland. The Cohokian history of an explosion of civilization growth and disappearance at St. Louis in a civilization of mound and pyramid builders that played a sport called chunky (I'll bet Bill Clinton in Hangover 2 would have been a star in Cohokia too) between 1050 and 1250 a.d. provides tantalizing ideas of a cultural contact by voyaging Albs with their currach skin boats down the St. Lawrence Sea way, over the great Lakes and through Wisconsin and the Gottshall Rock shelter area and along rivers finally allowing portage to the Mississippi and Cohokia. With interesting petroglyphs at Wrangell Alaska at 54 degrees North latitude identical to those of Newgrange Ireland at 54 degrees north latitude, each from the late Neolithic, I am a little motivated to discover possible traces of Irish journeys across America from New Foundland to Wrangell Alaska in the pre-Columbian era.
We know the at Viking settlements at Greenland flourished and then disappeared on the east side and continued a while later on the west perhaps until 1100 a.d. Within Mowatt's theory these settlements would have been earlier colonized by Albs who then moved further west in pursuit of better fishing and hunting of furs and to escape Viking predation. This time paradigm fits rather well with the arrival at Cohokia by a few Albs as early as 1050, for these were explorers and voyaging parties ahead of a more substantive population that at some point remained behind-possibly in New Foundland.
Pauketat in writing about the archeology of Cohokia made several points that could be taken up into support of the theory that Albs stimulated the rise of Cohokian civilization. A rival theory is that Cohokian cultural development and architecture, religion and games were stimulated by Meso-American ideas from civilizations in Mexico. There is virtually no physical evidence of Mexican civilization trade artifacts in the Mississippian civilization though. The evidence offered to support the influence of Olmecs, Toltecs or other Meso-American people is largely cultural, and those traces are scant although perhaps more substantial than those offered for the Albs/Irish. Since I don’t know of anyone beside myself looking in that direction, I will offer a couple more ideas that seem fairly obvious. Reinforcement of ideas supporting a search for Irish pre-Columbian presence in North America could be useful to others also investigating the topic in order to reduce redundancy of effort and to point out what information is available.
The ghost men at the Gottshall rock shelter look like white men. The figures were painted on the wall maybe in the 11th century, and could be pictures of well put together Irishmen without shirts today. Of course they are wearing leather skull helmets. Actually that reminds me of white guys in sado-masochistic gay bar apparel from what I have seen on TV. Well, the 11th century was a rough era. A pair of shirtless, muscular round eyed white guys with black leather skull helmets along a north south flowing river that could be a way to the Mississippi river drainage and the future Cohokia. It is known that Cohokia influenced the Ho-Chunk peoples living in Wisconsin heavily.
Perhaps the Albs had some cultural knowledge of Egyptian pyramids. Assuredly the Albs had knowledge of walled fortress and mass human warrior assaults with clubs, maces and such. The rapid rise of pyramids at Cohokia, and the use of clubs for mass human sacrifices (line up 130 people, club the and let them fall face down in a burial ditch-some of these people were not killed, and awoke to claw with their fingers at the dirt walls while buried alive-archeologist found their bony fingers in such array at Cohokia) are a pair of cultural concepts that seem starkly counter-cultural to the prior people of Cohokia.
Old Cohokia was in fact completely razed to make way for the New Cohokian civilization built upon the old village. Seldom do people agree for urban renewal of such scale voluntarily. A few Albs or possibly Aztecs entering to take over might have the political power to order such a destruction and reconstruction.
If one considers what a party of Albs would have encountered journeying over the great lakes, to Wisconsin and on to Cohokia, it is easy to imagine that they might have been regarded as ghosts or ghost goods from the underworld. If they were few in number at least they would have presented no military threat, and might instead have been a guaranteed promotion for anyone finding them and introducing the mysterious strangers to the community. If the Albs were few in number and were able to organize a new military tactical method to the Cohokians and eventually across the plains an explanation for the rise and fairly quick fall of Cohokia is created.
The Cohokians had a matrilineal culture and the Albs a patrilineal culture. That alone could have made for a cultural transition of a swift scale, although then matrilineal society did continue the effect for a takeover of military and religious leadership in the male role would have been quick. One could theorize that matrilineal societies occur when promiscuity obscures pale parentage and female parentage is more dependable.
At Crow Creek in Lakota territory in the late 20t century archeologist unearthed a village massacre of more than 800 people. The Lakota were offended by the discovery that such atrocity had ever occurred in their nation. Dating from the 14th century I believe, the story as retold in Pauketat’s book as best I recall (I haven’t a photographic memory), had a defense ditch and palisade being constructed and partly finished at the time of the attack. The attackers killed men women and children clubbing them efficiently with a stick and carved stone shaped something like a mace. This sort of infantry storm the wall and kill everything in the way tactic before burning the village is not found in America Indian archeology before Cohokia (outside perhaps Meso-America). That blood curdling battle method would not have been at all uncommon to Celtic-Alban-Brit-Jute melees in the British Isles and on the continent. Military tactics imported from Europe via the Albs and perhaps Vikings may have disseminated though North America.
Cohokian warriors had thick clothing used as armor for infantry battle storming and shields in addition to the vicious mace-clubs. This war uniform is uncharacteristic of prior North American tribal custom, yet mundane for European. Aztecs had a special mace made of obsidian with a cluster or flower of sharp blades meant for reducing a human skull or vulnerable body part, and obsidian was obtainable from Yellowstone, yet nothing like this is found in Cohokia. Such a war of the flowers club would not have been known to the Albs.
One might wonder where artifacts are of Alban or perhaps Viking tools of war in North America. Unfortunately I am not knowledgeable enough by half to compare possible Alban tools after they left an Iron and Bronze Age environment for the wilds of the west, New Foundland and America. It is interesting that flint was not used for arrowheads before Cohokia, and there were just a pair o sites where flint could be obtained readily. Flint arrowheads and larger chipped knife blades could have been suggested by Albs as well as by Meso-American travelers.
A mystery attending to the sudden fall of Cohokia in the 13th century is the abandonment of the Mississippi Valley of much of its population for the subsequent two hundred years. That is as interesting as the point that the supernova of 1054 a.d. that put a star in the daytime sky about as bright as Venus, nearly coincided with the rise of Cohokia. If albs voyaging in North America appeared in Cohokia as ghosts from the underworld along with the appearance of the supernova, they might have had a very powerful mojo for the construction of Cohokian civilization and the construction of the vast chunky field for sports competition in which the game was a metaphor for the male-female cycle of life. Perhaps genetic research may reveal something of traces of Albs in the future of Cohokian and plains archeology.
11/13/10
About Cohokia's Implicitly Eschatological Social Structure
There are many threads to study for clues to the circumstances of history that have led to the end of civilizations. Select historians have on occasion sought for a methodical abstraction of factors in end of civilization studies. Abstraction of factors causing the end of civilization could lead to the development of research analysis devices to prevent the end of the present civilization.
Perhaps the effort of historians like Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler amongst others to discover historical cycles is wasted. Though cycles of growth, decay and collapse of civilization may seem to exist because of common historical courses providing the appearance of a cycle, it may be illusory, and abstract analysis thus extracts significant yet not historically determinative events.
The mystery of the Red Horned man revolving around the burial at Mound 72 at Cohokia is such an indicator event of history that may lead or mislead abstract analysis of end of civilization interpretations.
Cohokia was the mysterious pinnacle of pre-Columbian American civilization within the area that would become the United States. Located in the Mississippi flood plain in the area of present day St. Louis, Cohokia was a civilization comparable to those of ancient Mesopotamia. With tens of thousands of people living in an advanced society that exploded into construction suddenly about the year 1050 its phase of being lasted only a couple of hundred years. It some respects the mysteries surrounding the decline and fall of Cohokia resemble those of the rise and potential fall of the modern day United States of America.
Reading an excellent book on Cohokia by the scholar Timothy Pauketat, the archeological history of Cohokia is uncovered methodically. Eventually we reach the circumstances of the excavation and explanation of the fabulous mound 72 and its contents that were laid out so carefully with site of the central plaza and the 130 foot tall pyramid known today as Monks Mound.
What may be learned and abstracted from the contents of mound 72-a vast ceremonial burial with hundreds of bodies of social class selections cast in human sacrifice to honor the pair of headless male twins buried on top of each other at the center, within a Toynbean context providing evidence for the end of civilization at Cohokia is entirely speculative. Philosophy is often a speculative endeavor however, with that we are comfortable enough.
Philosophy before the rise of science commonly was the speculative art of cosmology, government, being, thought and mind. Parmenides of ancient Greece was an excellent theoretician who would be comfortable with contemporary cosmological contemplations about space and what the Universe exists in. Aristotle developed classical logic and categories for scientific thought. Philosophy continued as a developer of science until philosopher scientists such as Isaac Newton continued on with science as a more specialized branch. Then philosophy largely turned toward subjective analysis and epistemology as its essential concerns.
Heraclitus and Parmenides of ancient Greece were also interested in theory of mind, and that continuity of philosophical work continued until the 20th century with Jean Paul Sartre writing existential works developing rationalist exposition begun by Rene' Descartes. Since Leibnitz and later Frege developed symbolic logic, philosophy has moved further toward analytic philosophical analysis of language and the subjective relation to the objective or real world. Faith of course is a bridge by the subjective to the objective and temporal world with a belief that the Creator of the Objective and subjective experience content will recreate and resurrect the individual soul.
We return to the topic of the Red Horned man at the heart of the mystery of mound 72 at Cohokia. Seemingly the burial events of the headless twin men surrounded by four headless and handles men in another cluster, with an intricate pit of 53 young women sacrificed with their heads on brings us to wonder of the symbolism and meaning of the event that occurred as a special process at Cohokia. Because the sacrificial motif was constructed at the permanent core of the short lived civilization it is important to know what the meaning was of the bodies placed within view of the Temple at the top of the 3rdlargest pyramid built in pre-Colombian America.
Cave paintings from Wisconsin and in Cohokia provide clues to the identity of the headless male VIPs. One was probably the Red Horn and the other his alter ego.
Cohokia was a matriarchal society that evolved in social power perhaps through developing the sports game of chunky that spread over much f the range of the eventual United States. Chunky fields and equipment made in Cohokia were as common as NFL stadiums of today-or more so.
Cohokia may have developed its owner from the architectural and astronomical creativity that made the civilization boom from a simple agrarian foundation alternatively. Perhaps wandering pre-Columbian travelers from Europe or New Foundland arrived with special knowledge, or a few people from Meso-America arrived with development plans.
Mound 72 occurs within a tremendous Woodhenge of ancient cypress logs. The layout of corpses and clumps of special arrowheads within pointing north west and south east were made to coincide with the annual solstices This is not unlike the Irish mound at Newgrange and numerous other sites in the Americas. The burials are a rich and lavish affair for the time, with tens of thousands of beads in a cape coat included along with valuable shells.
Cohokia was an oddity for the land that would become the United States. It was the first known, actual civilization amidst a land of more rural and levelheaded people without such an extravagant cosmology-human sacrifice and cult worship focus in honor surrounding the matrilineal political-social structure. I should say that if Cohokian development was stimulated by the arrival of knowledgeable Albs, the demise of the society following their deaths (few in number) or merger into the Cohokian race was inevitable as the knowledge brought had been spent and was not reinforced or added to by the parent society very distant. A two hundred fifty-year life span of Cohokia would be about right, yet their may darker and other answers to the mysterious rise and falloff the first American civilization.
The Red Horned man was known as he who-wears-human- hands for earrings. Some suspect that there was a real historical person that inspired these mythic legends around tribes from the Iowa/Sioux to the Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin and others. The description of the talking heads in Pauketat’s book and faces that appeared on the suspended ears, hands or heads of the Red Horn man read like something that could have been in Ken Kesey’s ‘The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test’ set in Vietnam instead of Missouri. The Red Horn man’s alter ego brother-he-who-spits-seeds is also a mystery.
One might initially interpret the Red Horn man as some kind of horny, sex crazed ultra warrior-killer. Because of his evening star alter ego twin that spits seeds, we might think of him as a horny butch bisexual warrior of demonic power. As Christians we might be reminded of the prophecies regarding the big horn and little horns of the Biblical prophecy. As Americans we might be reminded of the demise of George Armstrong Custer and his twice awarded medal of honor brother at the Indian battle of the Little Big Horn, and perhaps also reminded of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky blue dress seed spitting saga in the line of four bad Presidents of the United Sates slumping the U.S. economy and the present era of a federal effort to homosexualize the military under Defense Secretary Gates with such apposite morphology for the effort.
In the matriarchal political hierarchy of Cohokia the concept of two headless, witless, hedonist male objects of fetish sacrificed as the role of males as chunky players and impregnators of female rulers gains credibility as an end of civilization cycle. Toynbee and other historians have noted the rise of female power in politics and an end of civilization phenomena. Though the U.S. House of Representatives had Nancy Pelosi as the Majority Speaker and Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State simultaneously until the last election Nov. 2nd, that does not comprise a hierarchy of matrilineal supremacy for itself and the year 2012 may pass without and end of civilization event in the United States.
It is interesting to compare the expansion of homosexual marriage polities and witless males, sports like chunky and football in Oregon, Massachusetts and elsewhere with that of Cohokia and the end of civilization. Red Horn and his brother may not at all represent bisexual gloriousness actualized as manhood pets of a matriarchal Cohokian polity. Like many ruling elites of other societies the Cohokian elites occasionally purged rivals to fill an office opening. The burial of so many young women surrounding the headless males may have been a process of eliminating a rival female ruling line for political ascendency. Maybe the twins buried at the center were simply symbolic service studs sacrificed as compensation for the unfortunate women dispatched to the bureaucratic hierarchy of the underworld.
Payton Manning playing for the Indianapolis Colts may be the all-time best quarterback in football history, yet that does not bring us to the all time Red Horn and his twin of the dark side at Mound 72. Payton does have a brother playing for the Giants of New York, and Giants figure large in the Red Horn mythos warring against the good. One wonders if national geography helps develop the construction of recurrent mythologies in discontiguous social structures.
Recurrent elements of the end of civilization may not be found in the pyramid at Cholulu or that of Cohokia, but within our own subjective and thoughtless over-use of natural resources while games playing and stupidly devoted to cultic bureaucratic political structures.
Determinist disasters in European, Chinese and other civilizations may provide insights to how the end of the first American civilization at Cohokia may hold clues to patterns for the approaching of the second America civilization if any.
The end of the second American civilization could occur as early as the 2012 election season if we place credibility in economic and deficit forecasts, reliance on foreign fossil fuels, illegal immigration, La Migra’s control of just 23% of the U.S.-Mexico border or the Mayan calendar’s conclusion in 2012. On the bright side, Mayan language was spoken by the designers of the Gregorian calendar.
http://www.hotcakencyclopedia.com/ho.Gottschall.html cave paintings and a new interpretation of Red Horn & Brother
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popol_Vuh Mayan epic. compare similarities of the brotherss to Red Horn and his brother.
Perhaps the effort of historians like Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler amongst others to discover historical cycles is wasted. Though cycles of growth, decay and collapse of civilization may seem to exist because of common historical courses providing the appearance of a cycle, it may be illusory, and abstract analysis thus extracts significant yet not historically determinative events.
The mystery of the Red Horned man revolving around the burial at Mound 72 at Cohokia is such an indicator event of history that may lead or mislead abstract analysis of end of civilization interpretations.
Cohokia was the mysterious pinnacle of pre-Columbian American civilization within the area that would become the United States. Located in the Mississippi flood plain in the area of present day St. Louis, Cohokia was a civilization comparable to those of ancient Mesopotamia. With tens of thousands of people living in an advanced society that exploded into construction suddenly about the year 1050 its phase of being lasted only a couple of hundred years. It some respects the mysteries surrounding the decline and fall of Cohokia resemble those of the rise and potential fall of the modern day United States of America.
Reading an excellent book on Cohokia by the scholar Timothy Pauketat, the archeological history of Cohokia is uncovered methodically. Eventually we reach the circumstances of the excavation and explanation of the fabulous mound 72 and its contents that were laid out so carefully with site of the central plaza and the 130 foot tall pyramid known today as Monks Mound.
What may be learned and abstracted from the contents of mound 72-a vast ceremonial burial with hundreds of bodies of social class selections cast in human sacrifice to honor the pair of headless male twins buried on top of each other at the center, within a Toynbean context providing evidence for the end of civilization at Cohokia is entirely speculative. Philosophy is often a speculative endeavor however, with that we are comfortable enough.
Philosophy before the rise of science commonly was the speculative art of cosmology, government, being, thought and mind. Parmenides of ancient Greece was an excellent theoretician who would be comfortable with contemporary cosmological contemplations about space and what the Universe exists in. Aristotle developed classical logic and categories for scientific thought. Philosophy continued as a developer of science until philosopher scientists such as Isaac Newton continued on with science as a more specialized branch. Then philosophy largely turned toward subjective analysis and epistemology as its essential concerns.
Heraclitus and Parmenides of ancient Greece were also interested in theory of mind, and that continuity of philosophical work continued until the 20th century with Jean Paul Sartre writing existential works developing rationalist exposition begun by Rene' Descartes. Since Leibnitz and later Frege developed symbolic logic, philosophy has moved further toward analytic philosophical analysis of language and the subjective relation to the objective or real world. Faith of course is a bridge by the subjective to the objective and temporal world with a belief that the Creator of the Objective and subjective experience content will recreate and resurrect the individual soul.
We return to the topic of the Red Horned man at the heart of the mystery of mound 72 at Cohokia. Seemingly the burial events of the headless twin men surrounded by four headless and handles men in another cluster, with an intricate pit of 53 young women sacrificed with their heads on brings us to wonder of the symbolism and meaning of the event that occurred as a special process at Cohokia. Because the sacrificial motif was constructed at the permanent core of the short lived civilization it is important to know what the meaning was of the bodies placed within view of the Temple at the top of the 3rdlargest pyramid built in pre-Colombian America.
Cave paintings from Wisconsin and in Cohokia provide clues to the identity of the headless male VIPs. One was probably the Red Horn and the other his alter ego.
Cohokia was a matriarchal society that evolved in social power perhaps through developing the sports game of chunky that spread over much f the range of the eventual United States. Chunky fields and equipment made in Cohokia were as common as NFL stadiums of today-or more so.
Cohokia may have developed its owner from the architectural and astronomical creativity that made the civilization boom from a simple agrarian foundation alternatively. Perhaps wandering pre-Columbian travelers from Europe or New Foundland arrived with special knowledge, or a few people from Meso-America arrived with development plans.
Mound 72 occurs within a tremendous Woodhenge of ancient cypress logs. The layout of corpses and clumps of special arrowheads within pointing north west and south east were made to coincide with the annual solstices This is not unlike the Irish mound at Newgrange and numerous other sites in the Americas. The burials are a rich and lavish affair for the time, with tens of thousands of beads in a cape coat included along with valuable shells.
Cohokia was an oddity for the land that would become the United States. It was the first known, actual civilization amidst a land of more rural and levelheaded people without such an extravagant cosmology-human sacrifice and cult worship focus in honor surrounding the matrilineal political-social structure. I should say that if Cohokian development was stimulated by the arrival of knowledgeable Albs, the demise of the society following their deaths (few in number) or merger into the Cohokian race was inevitable as the knowledge brought had been spent and was not reinforced or added to by the parent society very distant. A two hundred fifty-year life span of Cohokia would be about right, yet their may darker and other answers to the mysterious rise and falloff the first American civilization.
The Red Horned man was known as he who-wears-human- hands for earrings. Some suspect that there was a real historical person that inspired these mythic legends around tribes from the Iowa/Sioux to the Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin and others. The description of the talking heads in Pauketat’s book and faces that appeared on the suspended ears, hands or heads of the Red Horn man read like something that could have been in Ken Kesey’s ‘The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test’ set in Vietnam instead of Missouri. The Red Horn man’s alter ego brother-he-who-spits-seeds is also a mystery.
One might initially interpret the Red Horn man as some kind of horny, sex crazed ultra warrior-killer. Because of his evening star alter ego twin that spits seeds, we might think of him as a horny butch bisexual warrior of demonic power. As Christians we might be reminded of the prophecies regarding the big horn and little horns of the Biblical prophecy. As Americans we might be reminded of the demise of George Armstrong Custer and his twice awarded medal of honor brother at the Indian battle of the Little Big Horn, and perhaps also reminded of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky blue dress seed spitting saga in the line of four bad Presidents of the United Sates slumping the U.S. economy and the present era of a federal effort to homosexualize the military under Defense Secretary Gates with such apposite morphology for the effort.
In the matriarchal political hierarchy of Cohokia the concept of two headless, witless, hedonist male objects of fetish sacrificed as the role of males as chunky players and impregnators of female rulers gains credibility as an end of civilization cycle. Toynbee and other historians have noted the rise of female power in politics and an end of civilization phenomena. Though the U.S. House of Representatives had Nancy Pelosi as the Majority Speaker and Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State simultaneously until the last election Nov. 2nd, that does not comprise a hierarchy of matrilineal supremacy for itself and the year 2012 may pass without and end of civilization event in the United States.
It is interesting to compare the expansion of homosexual marriage polities and witless males, sports like chunky and football in Oregon, Massachusetts and elsewhere with that of Cohokia and the end of civilization. Red Horn and his brother may not at all represent bisexual gloriousness actualized as manhood pets of a matriarchal Cohokian polity. Like many ruling elites of other societies the Cohokian elites occasionally purged rivals to fill an office opening. The burial of so many young women surrounding the headless males may have been a process of eliminating a rival female ruling line for political ascendency. Maybe the twins buried at the center were simply symbolic service studs sacrificed as compensation for the unfortunate women dispatched to the bureaucratic hierarchy of the underworld.
Payton Manning playing for the Indianapolis Colts may be the all-time best quarterback in football history, yet that does not bring us to the all time Red Horn and his twin of the dark side at Mound 72. Payton does have a brother playing for the Giants of New York, and Giants figure large in the Red Horn mythos warring against the good. One wonders if national geography helps develop the construction of recurrent mythologies in discontiguous social structures.
Recurrent elements of the end of civilization may not be found in the pyramid at Cholulu or that of Cohokia, but within our own subjective and thoughtless over-use of natural resources while games playing and stupidly devoted to cultic bureaucratic political structures.
Determinist disasters in European, Chinese and other civilizations may provide insights to how the end of the first American civilization at Cohokia may hold clues to patterns for the approaching of the second America civilization if any.
The end of the second American civilization could occur as early as the 2012 election season if we place credibility in economic and deficit forecasts, reliance on foreign fossil fuels, illegal immigration, La Migra’s control of just 23% of the U.S.-Mexico border or the Mayan calendar’s conclusion in 2012. On the bright side, Mayan language was spoken by the designers of the Gregorian calendar.
http://www.hotcakencyclopedia.com/ho.Gottschall.html cave paintings and a new interpretation of Red Horn & Brother
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popol_Vuh Mayan epic. compare similarities of the brotherss to Red Horn and his brother.
11/12/10
Andromeda's Urban Hillbilly Crabs Attack Russia ©2010GaryCGibson fiction
For every galaxy that begins with a shimmering scintillation of light through a dust cloud flying in space pushed by the dark energy of the Universe toward a moment of light and a gathering of mass and form, there are those others formed by drawing power unto themselves rudely warping space with a clustering of dark mass drawing in every fleeing bit of matter to ithe core. The designers of the Andromeda Galaxy-Milky Way Galactic collision are such crabs of concentrated power. Increasing consumption intake of mass converted through special frillying factorization technosophistry inertia drives them forward. Motility of exoskelatons is filled with sensual cells seeking more.
Furry giant crabs. I hate these opponents of democracy. Networks of immense power drawing all free radicals into rent paying doom; they bowled the Andromeda Galaxy our way waiting patiently a few million years for the collision to happen by which time they would already have sent advance warriors to conquer and crustatiaform it. They landed at St. Petersburg last week and it’s been a war since.
The Earth world reached peak energy and coal production in 2011. A vastly inefficient economic structure controlled by a homo fossilfuelicus two-legged walking creature depleted much of the ecosphere and polluted the rest. If the marines hadn’t been relocated from southern Russia in time to fight the giant furry crabs of the Andromeda Galaxy wreaking havoc with the people’s volunteer army, we would have perhaps been scavenged ourselves; breaded boxed and shipped to the Andromeda Galaxy food processors for freezing and shipment out.
‘Nothing at Palino Prospekt Vladimir.’ My holocator gave me a view of Vladimir Boroskov and the Marines with him. He was lying in a cold canal in a dry suit camouflaged for city ambient. Boroskov was monitoring his information gathering field agent Max Mendelssohn.
The hillbilly crabs danced a jig to extra terrestrial country music whenever they filled up a packing bin of human body parts. A syncopated fiddler on the roof of hovering space craft keep the little collector crabs happy.
Quantum super-positioning materialized increasing ranks of crustaceans of power and prestige. Actualizing from super-imposed dark energy lurking in shadows of extra dimensions their exoskeletons seemed to be made of seasonal super-strings of looping iterations recurrent in optimal experiential order.
View 24. The holocator materialized a crab patrol moving on the main road to Moscow. Nothing less than a thousand foot tall commander wobbled with tatoo’d hyper-stilt legs broadcast scuttling orders in the special commercial synthetic reality voice amplified to trailing crack pincer troops. There was no point in watching further.
Racing to cut back our national economy, we could do little here to help the Russians. They had absorbed tremendous losses yet defeated Napoleon and Hitler before; thousand foot high synthy-furred crabs of Andromeda would be a challenge they would overcome alone.
Returning to quantum cable super-conductor laying sites in the United States; I actualized to watch formation of the new national energy grid that would capture photons increasing the power of the loop until it could emanate a Bose field to keep the Andromedans at bay. Down sizing the economic infrastructure while transitioning to increased quality might save our planet from the advanced elements of Andromedans until something else could be alternatized. Nothing we have I our tech kit can reverse the bowling lane we are in of the on rushing Andromeda Galaxy though. Maybe a journey to the apposite end of our galaxy would provide enough time for the civilization to think.
\\\\\\\
Furry giant crabs. I hate these opponents of democracy. Networks of immense power drawing all free radicals into rent paying doom; they bowled the Andromeda Galaxy our way waiting patiently a few million years for the collision to happen by which time they would already have sent advance warriors to conquer and crustatiaform it. They landed at St. Petersburg last week and it’s been a war since.
The Earth world reached peak energy and coal production in 2011. A vastly inefficient economic structure controlled by a homo fossilfuelicus two-legged walking creature depleted much of the ecosphere and polluted the rest. If the marines hadn’t been relocated from southern Russia in time to fight the giant furry crabs of the Andromeda Galaxy wreaking havoc with the people’s volunteer army, we would have perhaps been scavenged ourselves; breaded boxed and shipped to the Andromeda Galaxy food processors for freezing and shipment out.
‘Nothing at Palino Prospekt Vladimir.’ My holocator gave me a view of Vladimir Boroskov and the Marines with him. He was lying in a cold canal in a dry suit camouflaged for city ambient. Boroskov was monitoring his information gathering field agent Max Mendelssohn.
The hillbilly crabs danced a jig to extra terrestrial country music whenever they filled up a packing bin of human body parts. A syncopated fiddler on the roof of hovering space craft keep the little collector crabs happy.
Quantum super-positioning materialized increasing ranks of crustaceans of power and prestige. Actualizing from super-imposed dark energy lurking in shadows of extra dimensions their exoskeletons seemed to be made of seasonal super-strings of looping iterations recurrent in optimal experiential order.
View 24. The holocator materialized a crab patrol moving on the main road to Moscow. Nothing less than a thousand foot tall commander wobbled with tatoo’d hyper-stilt legs broadcast scuttling orders in the special commercial synthetic reality voice amplified to trailing crack pincer troops. There was no point in watching further.
Racing to cut back our national economy, we could do little here to help the Russians. They had absorbed tremendous losses yet defeated Napoleon and Hitler before; thousand foot high synthy-furred crabs of Andromeda would be a challenge they would overcome alone.
Returning to quantum cable super-conductor laying sites in the United States; I actualized to watch formation of the new national energy grid that would capture photons increasing the power of the loop until it could emanate a Bose field to keep the Andromedans at bay. Down sizing the economic infrastructure while transitioning to increased quality might save our planet from the advanced elements of Andromedans until something else could be alternatized. Nothing we have I our tech kit can reverse the bowling lane we are in of the on rushing Andromeda Galaxy though. Maybe a journey to the apposite end of our galaxy would provide enough time for the civilization to think.
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About Those Albs-Did They Travel To Mt. Alban (Mexico) via New Foundland and Minnesota?
Interesting point about Alban as an ancient name for Scotland. Mowatt believed a people named the Albs move to the British Isles first-probably before the Brits. In Alaska we may wonder if the carved spirals in the stone floor at Newgrange Ireland at 54 degrees North latitude was carved by the same culture that carved such spirals on rocks at Wrangell Alaska located also about 54 degrees north? Wrangell is located at the delta of a river cutting through the Coastal Mountains of British Columbia-U.S.A. named the Stikine. Along the hills of the Stikine are some stone shelters of small size said to be like those of Ireland and the Aran Islands formerly used as penance huts of monks.
The Albs were a shorter, darker race probably from Corsica or elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Sea from long ago. They built Earth mounds across Europe on their way to Ireland, the Orkneys, Hebrides, Iceland, Greenland and eventually New Found land.
Innis Mor in the Arran Island may have been built by Albs or Celts. It seems improbable that Celts would have developed such a back to the wall style in Galway Bay. In the photo at the hyperlink below a Black Fortress was located at the top of such a Cliff. It is still a fascinating place to visit.
One book on Irish history I read some time ago by a journalist, said that when the Celts arrived they found conquering these shorter Irish comparatively easy. Das baghd or some such talk about 'in the bag' was their regard for the Albs.
The late Neolithic was a desperate time for Alban people. Their currach boats are very similar to some Tlingit framed vessels covered with hide or animal skin. It seems probable that a scaled up version may have been used by Albs to venture abroad. When the ancient waters were full of fish, watermen and families might have survived quite some time away from land.
Mowatt seemed to think that the Albs were boaters and fishermen and moved ever west and north in search of New fishing and hunting grounds while the Vikings and Celts to a limited extent pursued them for plunder as their cities were built up.
The relatively unknown history of Albs in North America is interesting to consider. Sure, Mt. Alban of Mexico could have been named in the post-Columbian era. That was what I wondered about-did its name arise as a pre-Columbian relic in language of an Alban culture contact?
Many of the names, or most of the names of ancient sites in Mexico are named for their American developers-is Mt. Alban an exception?
Teotihuacan is certainly not an Irish name. A name for Mt. McKinley in Alaska-Tenados-is quite similar to the name of that large Island off Turkey in the Mediterranean. Sea.
The Alban currach or skin boat over a wood frame may have been a good craft for early voyaging along shores and skipping between Iceland, Greenland and down to and through the St. Lawrence Seaway. It could b e readily built and taken apart for portage'. One could paddle along the Great Lakes and walk over to Mississippi River drainage and mark twain to the delta. Turning right to travel with the sun one might end up in Vera Cruz where a cultural promotion by the locals of their visitors might have led to Mt. Alban.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currach
http://www.aran-isles.com/currach-races.php
Of course Mt. Alban could have been named by some archeologist leaving Cork with a suitcase full of Guinness-I don't know.
The Albs were a shorter, darker race probably from Corsica or elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Sea from long ago. They built Earth mounds across Europe on their way to Ireland, the Orkneys, Hebrides, Iceland, Greenland and eventually New Found land.
Innis Mor in the Arran Island may have been built by Albs or Celts. It seems improbable that Celts would have developed such a back to the wall style in Galway Bay. In the photo at the hyperlink below a Black Fortress was located at the top of such a Cliff. It is still a fascinating place to visit.
One book on Irish history I read some time ago by a journalist, said that when the Celts arrived they found conquering these shorter Irish comparatively easy. Das baghd or some such talk about 'in the bag' was their regard for the Albs.
The late Neolithic was a desperate time for Alban people. Their currach boats are very similar to some Tlingit framed vessels covered with hide or animal skin. It seems probable that a scaled up version may have been used by Albs to venture abroad. When the ancient waters were full of fish, watermen and families might have survived quite some time away from land.
Mowatt seemed to think that the Albs were boaters and fishermen and moved ever west and north in search of New fishing and hunting grounds while the Vikings and Celts to a limited extent pursued them for plunder as their cities were built up.
The relatively unknown history of Albs in North America is interesting to consider. Sure, Mt. Alban of Mexico could have been named in the post-Columbian era. That was what I wondered about-did its name arise as a pre-Columbian relic in language of an Alban culture contact?
Many of the names, or most of the names of ancient sites in Mexico are named for their American developers-is Mt. Alban an exception?
Teotihuacan is certainly not an Irish name. A name for Mt. McKinley in Alaska-Tenados-is quite similar to the name of that large Island off Turkey in the Mediterranean. Sea.
The Alban currach or skin boat over a wood frame may have been a good craft for early voyaging along shores and skipping between Iceland, Greenland and down to and through the St. Lawrence Seaway. It could b e readily built and taken apart for portage'. One could paddle along the Great Lakes and walk over to Mississippi River drainage and mark twain to the delta. Turning right to travel with the sun one might end up in Vera Cruz where a cultural promotion by the locals of their visitors might have led to Mt. Alban.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currach
http://www.aran-isles.com/currach-races.php
Of course Mt. Alban could have been named by some archeologist leaving Cork with a suitcase full of Guinness-I don't know.
11/11/10
Writing Production Seasonal Freeze
The founders had a one level society basically. They did not have hierarchical levels of corporate powers above them having destroyed the royal British aristocracy and ditched the European style corrupt feudal like manorial priesthood. Corporatopia is like the communist party cadre in a privileged elite with masses of non-party members. Americans are more like consumers ‘drowned’ in a social hierarchy for which they feel to personal responsibility as peer citizens increasingly. Just retire and live to age 100 on social security not working for the last 40 years of one’s life and import lots of legal and illegal immigrants to do the work. Cortporatopia is a political philosophy of national doom not just demographically but ecologically as well.
The retirement age should be raised to age 69 and there should be no tax cuts for the top 5%. As wealth is concentrated economic doom historically follows. One should not tax business costs, yet profits should be taxed for the rich at about a 50% rate.
The nation must lead the world toward a zero growth in resource consumption political economy rather than Obama’s concept the of ‘the best thing America can do for the world economy is to grow its own economy and consumption’. That is the classical, ignorant way of waste and high entropy that will lead the nation to an even greater crash ahead in population something like lemmings with a food and resource supply suddenly exhausted.
The retirement age should be raised to age 69 and there should be no tax cuts for the top 5%. As wealth is concentrated economic doom historically follows. One should not tax business costs, yet profits should be taxed for the rich at about a 50% rate.
The nation must lead the world toward a zero growth in resource consumption political economy rather than Obama’s concept the of ‘the best thing America can do for the world economy is to grow its own economy and consumption’. That is the classical, ignorant way of waste and high entropy that will lead the nation to an even greater crash ahead in population something like lemmings with a food and resource supply suddenly exhausted.
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