Basically a serious bout of flu and an ice storm. He’s had his hands full. But he’ll be back Thursday, and we can start the final run of this remodel!
We’re getting our carpenter back! [long story]
by CJ | Mar 12, 2018 | Journal | 8 comments
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I know that feeling of celebration, of “Yay! He’ll be back and progress will recommence!” Between major, East Coast snow storms (another is barreling down on Massachusetts tonight — Currently a foot+ of snow is anticipated here); awaiting plumber availability and then building inspector availability, we see our contractor once every couple weeks to once a week.
He was at the house bright and early this “Spring Forward” Daylight Savings Time Monday of 7:30. When I came home this evening, cement board had appeared on a wall and a half of the bathroom. Odd not to be looking at 100 year old, brown studs and orange insulation foam on the outer wall but I can get used to the new look and hope for even newer views. We’ll see if he is back again this week—it all depends on the snow and if he gets called away to do emergency repairs on customers’ homes… Or his own, like the past two storms.
Enjoy the changes in the kitchen!
Sympathy for those on the nor’easter coast and the norwester coast. 🙂 Down here on the Third Coast / Gulf Coast, at least where I am, we’re getting our last hurrah of chilly, wet weather before it turns to hot, wet weather 😉 after Easter. — Easter is always our last chance for a freeze or frost, and I don’t think we’re in for one this year. After that, we have our very brief bout of spring mild temps and lots of intermittent showers and sunshine, followed by torrid, humid (“muggy!” is humid) summer weather. — In which one shall be most glad of air conditioning that works, and the chance at the apartment complex pool. — And in which, when it gets over 100 for several days (as it has for the last several years), one shall contemplate that perhaps it was not merely the availability of woven cloth or a cultural attitude towards the body, but a simple, practical need to stay cool, which led to all those ancients running around in little or nothing. — Because, when one was without air conditioning and the temps were in the 90s and 100’s in one’s former house, well, one reconsidered the concepts of modesty and naturism, at least while within one’s home, and definitelyy for sleeping. Hahaha!
It’s in the 60’s and 70’s this week and next, and 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s for lows. That is either normal or warmer than usual, for here, for this time of year. Our weather can vary a lot, due to proximity to the coast.
—–
I happened to remember a book which is probably lost or else still in storage, America B.C. by Barry Fell. This was a mid-size paperback my dad found on one bookstore visit, back when I was, oh, late high school or early college age. The book claims to prove evidence in archaeology and language remnants, for pre-Columbian contact from Phoenician and Egyptian and Celt-Iberians, from way back prior to Greek ascendancy, in North America, and claims this is where the “Brazil” and possibly “Atlantis” legends came from, early trade routes, following the coasts and trade winds and currents, with the early Americas. And it claims there were settlers from Europe, the Mediterranean and Middle East, and Northern Africa, in North America, who left behind settlers, descendants. There are some fairly compelling language comparisons, which is the oddest, and to me, maybe the most believable bit of the thesis. There are photos of various rock inscriptions which might or might not have more modern origins, or might be genuine, and which have European and Middle Eastern analogues.
And…well, I don’t really know what I think of it, except that I found it an interesting theory, whether it is the historical truth or not. I don’t know enough about it, in terms of archaeological evidence, to say it’s true. But the linguistic examples were…hard to explain otherwise, and close enough to make me wonder. — My dad said he didn’t know either, but found it interesting, all the same, as at least a possibility that things like that might have happened. (Me: Maybe.)
If there’s further academic work that would back that up, as being more than a wild, pet theory, then I’d be interested in knowing that, and maybe reading up on it.
Be it noted, at the start of several chapters in the paperback were tastefully done artist’s drawings of early Bronze Age people, sometimes nude, and conveniently good-looking rather than more average. But these are all in typical daily living poses, artful. Just so, in case people are interested in the book, that doesn’t catch them by unwanted surprise.
—–
I’ve been wondering lately: I did not really know until fairly recently, that pretty much everything we have much archaeological evidence for, and absolutely everything we have linguistic evidence for, dates from the Bronze Age and after. Very little is from the Neolithic and Paleolithic. Every language and culture we know about historically, and most via archaeology, and certainly every one (lang. and culture) still in existence today — dates back to the Bronze Age or after.
In other words, we have hardly any clues what there was in human language and culture, anywhere on the planet, before the Bronze Age. All we have are some artifacts, stone, bone, wood, potshards, occasional rare textiles, pigments, cave paintings, rare instances of leather or of preserved remains…almost nothing earlier than the Bronze Age to tell us what people were like back then, in the tens of thousands of years prior, going back to the last Ice Age and the disappearance or merger of other human-like people / species other than our own Homo sapiens.
But that’s an enormous gap of 20K to 25K or more years, in which our recorded, written, known history fragments could fit — multiple times over, and still have plenty of room left over. Somewhere in there, human beings, and other almost-human-like or not-so-ape-like beings, certain our own human branch and possibly others, had spoken language, culture, cave paintings, the beginnings of folk knowledge of the world around them…through the disappearance of (most or all) other hominids (except persistent stories of wild, hairy, man-like creatures, elves, and so on) — stories of strange creatures, other real creatures that did die out too — all the way up to the discovery of agriculture, settlement, the beginnings of pottery and metallurgy, and all sorts of things, and oh yeah, this little trick called written symbols for words, syllables, speech-sounds…ideas. More than cave art or paintings on hides, to serve as memory-aids and illustrations to help the oral tradition to tell the tales of the tribe around the campfire, but actual writing…and recorded history…and the start of civilizations.
So…about 35K years since the last Ice Age. Compared to about 6K to 10K or so of any written records known of, any accounts of the people back then, recorded in their own words.
That’s a heckuva lot of unknown people, all moving around, discovering and inventing, cooperating, merging, trading, fighting and recombining or wiping out or conquering (leading to more recombining, wanted or not)…. So much could be there. Entire civilizations. Whole language and cultural groups. Religions. Early natural world knowledge, however superstitious or scientific or incomplete. Whole racial groups too.
Hmm, and just how is it that, world-wide, there are stories of faerie-like beings or elves or giants, or those wild, hairy ape-men? (Yeti, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Wild Men of China, Woodwoses or Wild Men in Europe, etc.) — What about all that? Or why do we have worldwide tales of things like dragons or other “fabulous beasts” ? — How much of that is from stories of actual human-like and ape-like beings or actual prehistoric birds and mammals (and dinosaurs?) that survived up until they could remain in oral tradition carried down to the present day? How much of that is sheer human imagination inventing the same sorts of things for stories and beliefs, versus what some people way back in there actually witnessed, dealt with?
I mean, I wonder, for instance: It seems like there could be room for other racial types or physical details to exist; although if so, are they submerged, overwhelmed, only rarely popping up nowadays? There are remnants in our prehistoric past that do pop up more than most of us realize (more body hair, small tails, other pre-human features that can show up). — So why not other things? Skin color or patterns? “Pointy ears” would really only be a slight variation on ear shape, and we have all sorts of variations in the size and shape of facial and other bodily features, both as “racial/ethnic” markers and within those racial types, not considered as such, just unusual or ordinary. So what all is in our prehistory, physically and in terms of very human things like spoken languages, sign languages, skills and arts and crafts, lore, ideas…there must be a ton we don’t know is there…and maybe, just maybe, some of it is still preserved in spots, waiting to be found, to show us pieces of what human beings were, across the planet, from the last Ice Age up through modern times.
There’s a huge amount we’ll never know. What can we find out, though?
What if, right now, somewhere out there, are the relics of some large-scale civilizations, or some little city-state that flourished for a time? How many of those were wiped out because they didn’t have enough pieces of the puzzle of civilization, long enough to keep them together, before natural disasters or human warring overcame them? And isn’t that a lesson for us now? Because over that many thousands and tens of thousands of years, there had to be little pockets or big groups who discovered or invented this bit or that bit, and likely someone from there passed those bits on to someone else…or maybe they couldn’t, and it was done independently where it did survive.
That’s the great puzzle that’s out there, and wow, is that mind-boggling and exciting.
In the Houston Museum of Natural Science, you can see (or you used to, I haven’t been recently) some reconstructions of early hominids, a few examples of various finds, and a few very nice copies or originals of archaeological finds from human and hominids — and things like a copy of the baby mammoth found preserved in arctic ice, or actual giant sharks, a very fine sculpture of an Ankylosaurus very near the front door of the museum back then, to impress kids like me. (That thing is bigger around than a VW Beetle, and nearly as tall, and surely dwarfs both elementary school kids and even most teenagers. It’s gorgeous and wonderful, and so big I don’t think they’ve ever moved it.) — Plus more besides.
So…I guess I just needed to gush a little about the wonders and questions of human prehistory. It just feels like there’s so much neat stuff we don’t know about, that might be waiting for some amateur rock hound or fossil hunter or history buff to find, some kid or some casual fan, or some dedicated undergrads or grad students, or a university team. Something. I mean, there are seven continents’ worth. Not that Antarctica is likely to have any prehistoric human civilization, or hominids, but if it ever did, that in itself would be a major finding. But that still leaves six continents and a lot of ocean island chains. It still leaves room for hominids and our own kind of humans and who know what else we don’t know is there yet. (Like recent hominid finds and prehistoric animals.) Could there be someplace where they had an early civilization, agriculture and bronze or other metals, before we know of it? Maybe. Why not? And if so, was it passed down anywhere, and if not, why not? What were they like? How did they look, what did they say, did they write any of it down? Were they even “our kind” of humans, or a cousin-species? All sorts of what-ifs.
So…wow! — Hah, and whoever finds anything will be beyond amazed when they find out just how extraordinary that telltale little obscure bit in the dirt or clay is….
OK, so I didn’t have anything to add about carpentry and home remodeling, but wow, that’s cool. Wish I could. 🙂
Ah, good old Barry Fell and America B.C. While from the entertainment point of view, it might be something else, from the archaeological point of view, the book is bunk, nonsense, falderol and more.
As a senior in Archaeology/Anthropology at the University of Vermont oh, quite a while ago, I read his and an associated book with Vermont specific claims for my final, Archaeology project. I decided to approach the book from the perspective of “let’s presume Fell and co. are indeed on to something here,” but even that perspective failed to satisfy logic and archaeological knowledge.
At this point I don’t remember the non “Celtic” bits, but I focused on Fell’s claims that Celtic colonists came to Vermont a millennium or so ago (I can’t remember his exact dates, but he liked them “early”). As he and his New England followers put it, Celts inscribed Vermont and New England’s granite rock with inscriptions using the Early Irish, Ogham alphabet (itself derived from the Latin one), but without any vowels(he might have claimed they got it straight from the Phonicians). Luckily for all those ignorant, native Indians — who apparently wouldn’t have known how otherwise —these Celts left step by step guides on how to have sex and produce babies. Fell found these inscriptions gouged at various angles on bedrock and boulders of New England.
I compared Fell’s New World ogham inscriptions with the Irish ones. The Irish have a vertical, center line off which clearly delineated combinations of chiseled strokes indicate specific letters. The Irish have vowels (and also aren’t hung up on sex). The “Vermont & New England Celts” left undifferentiated striations in rock with no organizing angle or center line. Without the notched vowels, Fell could and did translate three random, more or less parallel scratches in rock as BL (B= one stroke; L= two strokes) or the god he called Bel.
Mind you, even going with Fell’s own rules, the same three scratches could be translated as Lab, Lib, Lub,… Or BBB or Bibob or….
Myself, I concluded that Vermont geologists had a much more likely explanation: all the ogham instructions on sex are scrapes, gouges and grooves left by glaciers in the bedrock the last time they passed over on their way south.
Aha! Good to know! — It’s been too long since I last saw the book or read much in it. I want to read it and compare what he says are the ogham inscriptions with, hey, Wiki and other web sources show what actual Gaelic ogham was, to see if at least the letters match in any real way. (it sounds like it’s too nonsensical.) I also want to look at his claimed example comparisons with I think it was somehow Zuñi or other Southwestern Desert languages, but at the time I’d last looked through, I wondered how any B.C. Phoenicians, Celt-Iberians, Vikings (vastly different time periods, centuries apart) were supposed to have made it that far into the North American interior, even if you posit they went into the Gulf of Mexico or followed the Caribbean island chains inland. It didn’t make enough sense to me, and yet a couple of the claimed language samples might work, _if_ either the Indian or the “European or African” samples were really as claimed. So I was skeptical. — I had thought he was claiming his “New England” “ogham” examples were following the way ogham works, with a centerline for writing either vertical or horizontal, and so on. But if he’s ignoring / omitting vowels, hmm…. Because Celtic ogham, Germanic runes, and Etruscan, Latin, and Greek flavors of the early Greek/Roman/Etruscan alphabet (before the Greek and Latin alphabets diverged) all agree on having the Greek innovation of separate letters for vowels. (It looks to me like Germanic runes grew out of a modified early version of that alphabet, and then ogham takes the basic idea and uses an independent cipher or simple plan, one to five strokes per up, down, both, or dotted / notched letters, plus a few extras (forfeda) thrown in when the plan didn’t quite fit well enough. Heh. But they all ran with the idea of vowels, compared to Phoenician, which only had consonants and omitted vowels.
So it’s interesting, but hmm, I’m glad to have a better opinion on it, because, for one of the most basic points, his theory would imply that either there was continuous, regular trade route contacts between the Old World and New World, over a period of several centuries, thousands of years back in antiquity, or else it happened in several stages, losing and regaining contact. But the implication seemed to be continuous, and…that doesn’t work. If there had been, there would be historical records _somewhere_ throughout Greek, Latin, Celtic, Germanic, Phoenician, Hebrew / Aramaic / Assyrian / etc. Middle Eastern, and Egyptian, and northern African history and mythology / legends, oral epic poetry — saying how these great heroes went over to the other lands and did great deeds, fought monsters, battled other tribes, wooed their women (or men) and so on. — And if there was that contact, there should also be lots of epic oral stories in Indian tribes’ lore about how they had mighty deeds, came over to those lands, wooed their women and men, etc…. and linguistic remnants and cultural commonalities, and less of a separation in technology and lore and cultural norms…a whole lot of things that would match more closely. (For example, despite large cultural and language differences between Europe, Asia, and Africa, they all knew about each other to some extent, they traded and warred and went adventuring and loved, er, more or less, and knowledge of metals and pottery and many other things got copied back and forth, to some degree. I realize it was incomplete and independently developed too, and then cross-fertilized, but the point being, it seems like there was a degree of contact. So if there was much contact with the Americas, then that should show. — On the other hand, it does seem like there could have been some amount of contact. People made it along the island chains in the Asian Pacific and across the Bering land bridge and then open water, and from Iceland to Greenland, or directly from the Viking north to Greenland (all centuries apart) but they did…so there could have been some contact with the American continents, _but_ — It might have been so sparse that the native Americans subsumed any non-native explorers, who were at a roughly equally primitive state.
Or, well, it doesn’t fit well enough to make it fit, basically, so I’m glad to have some better, actually trained and educated opinion on it. (I wonder, specifically, what trained Semitic, Egyptologist, and ancient Celtic / Gaelic / Irish linguistic scholars, and Native American lignuist scholars, would have to say about the few more concrete examples he gives, claiming they’re related. That would be a test from another valid angle, and if it doesn’t fit enough, then, boom, that does it from two angles.)
I’m OK with good theories being good science. I can accept that someone can put together things in what seems like a theory, but if it doesn’t hold water, it’s a cracked pot. That said, someone could also put pieces together wrong, when the separate pieces could have grains of fact and truth to them, which, if so, would merit someone disassembling the pieces and finding out what’s really connected to what, and what belongs to some other puzzle picture entirely.
That’s part of it: established science has made errors in theories before, and has had to revise them when hey, the real world proved it ain’t necessarily so.
If it turned out somehow that there were early African, European, Middle Eastern, Asian people who managed to reach the Americas and back; or if native Americans got in boats or hiked glaciers and land bridges, and got to other Atlantic and Pacific continents? OK, cool, but how? It would have been fairly difficult either way. Know-how was mostly primitive and tenuous. But if they did it, then there could be something, somewhere that proves it. DNA in descendants. Langauge forms in pieces that stayed behind (words, phrases, bits of grammatical structure, idioms, something). Philosophy, religious ideas, epic tales. Metallurgy, pottery, weaving…shipbuilding…something.
So — I’m prepared to look at the book again critically and consider it likely that it’s bunkum, someone’s amateur theory that doesn’t fit quite right, or maybe really does not fit. Or might have grains of truth obscured by personal ideology or wishful thinking.
Hmm…and yeah, there were thousands or millions of native Americans from hundreds of national / tribal groups, before either Eric the Red or Columbus (re-)-discovered America. So…yeah, whatever ideas they had on how procreation happened, they didn’t really need some very, ah, enthusiastic early Celts to give ’em instructions on how to do that. Er, not that the early Celts might not have been extra enthusiastic by the time they made landfall, or that the native Americans wouldn’t have looked at some nice-looking, eager Celts and thought, hey, they look like pretty good material for a hot date! 😀
(Someone please go back a few decades and rescue my way-too-inhibited-repressed self and inform him it is OK, it might even be a good idea to go out and, ah, hunt up some like-minded young guy and sow some wild oats. Man, I wish I knew what would’ve gotten through to me back then.)
The rest of the planet does not seem to have a problem with that. At least not in the boy-girl relations. But between my family and religious upbringing, school and peer socialization, and yeah, my own personality quirks…hmm…I got a triple whammy I am still working on.
Hey, not a problem if the early explorers from either side of the Atlantic and Pacific saw each other and liked each other. Genetic diversity and true love and romance? Cool, good deal.
(Just wish I hadn’t thought I wasn’t supposed to, because “reasons.” Now I look at how I thought back then and, hmm, at least some of that was using those reasons as excuses not to try. Others of it was, well, genuine questioning, while still others were just, hmm, conditioned fear? Worry? Negatives like that and worse, that I would’ve been better off without, and that, well, no friend managed to get past any of that with me to find out otherwise, much.)
Back on-tangent from off of the tangent to the tangent (haha) —
Raesean, thank you. I’ve wondered about the book since I’d seen it. On the one hand, it was an entertaining set of ideas, but on the other, it seemed to me that there were things that ought to hold together better if there were something to it, and if there were, then it ought to gain ground among archaeo and anthro and lang. scholars, and there ought to be supporting history to back it up.
So I think, once my copy arrives, it’ll be interesting to see what I think of it now, and how a more critical reading shows what’s what. Or at least to find it entertaining in a “oh, what-if” imaginary way. Though I might also decide it’s too far-fetched or has too many personal notions and red herrings thrown in. We’ll see.
— What would be really interesting is if someone discovers something truly unexpected, and very much real, out in some field or hillside somewhere, that shows some unknown scoop of history, either people we knew about that managed something we had no idea we knew, or maybe some completely unknown group with a whole new realm of things to learn about them.
A lost Etruscan to Latin or Greek or…anything…double gloss or a language or grammar treatise might not be a bad find either.
Or, heck, proof that any of those hairy ape-men out there are whoever/whatever they might be, end not just people with very long hair and odd habits and hermit tendencies? (Or if that’s what the truth is, knowing that could be good too.)
Or…oh, who knows? — I do wish it would excite people again.Liberal arts and technical sciences are wonderful. I do not get the nonsense about cutting out either kind of subject in favor of team sports. (Hey, a healthy body and teamwork are good things, but…why not have those _and_ plenty of technical science, engineering, mathematics, arts, literature, history, music, theater…. Uh, hey, I’m all in favor of liberal arts and technical sciences. I get dismayed at the current wacky trend toward the cult of celebrity and glitz, the turning away from scientific thought toward something more…lazy or superstitious than even sincere religious searching for truth, or a lack of support for what gives people’s lives meaning in the arts. Where do they think all those movie stars and popular bands and sports stars come from? Answer: people who liked, ooh, those “liberal arts,” or liked some mix of “arts” and “sciences.” (Grumble, grumble.)
Oddness. I pressed the Submit button and got an “Error, Bad Gateway” message. So I recopied the text I’d tried to post, expecting to have to paste it in again. (It was saved in my browser’s cache of recent pages.) When I went back to do that just now, I found, huh, it took my post after all but gave the Bad Gateway message. :: shrugs ::
:: Is tempted to make a funny aside about Heechee and Gateways, then recalls he’d have to reread either book to remember the plots and characters. ::
:: Dude, my brain needs a new RAM upgrade and a new hard drive. Clearly. And a whole new library wing, I think. At least a few nice bookshelves back in the backlist stacks, please. ::
Read somewhere that according to the DNA evidence, the entire north and south American continents were populated from a base population group of 15-20 individuals who crossed over Berengia (land bridge) from Siberia. Nova had a show about a girl’s skeleton found in a cenote in Mexico along with ground sloths and other fauna from that same period. She would have been “first wave” and her people had not been in the area long, based on archeological deductions. She had a healed fracture of the forearm of a type that was caused by being grabbed and dragged off. Many female skeletons from that time period showed self-defensive fractures and violent injuries. The narrator made the comment that most female skeletons they found were young (early-late teens) and showed signs of already having had children, and that most male skeletons showed signs of violence. Theory was females were in short supply due to loss in childbirth from having babies too young and that males fought violently over them, implying raids and captures. I wonder what legacies this prehistoric “foundation” culture left in the indigenous cultures of modern day Latin and South Americas.
I’m not sure I should even claim amateur archeologist status, though I am interested. I have epistemological (theory of knowledge) problems with mainstream archeology. “Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”
I recall an article about paleolithic human spread across Asia. Not finding the rocks they based their technology on, they used bamboo, becoming if you will paleobamboo humans.
But rocks are far, far more durable than wood. Finding a wooden settlement, like Woodhenge near Stonehenge, is very difficult. But isn’t it reasonable to expect that “paleowood” (paleo-xylon) would precede paleolithic? Wood is far easier to shape, and a fire-hardened wooden arrow will do the job adequately. For small buildings, we still use wood far more than rock. It seems unreasonable to state that no wood-based ancient civilizations existed; yet given how quickly wood deteriorates, an archeologist would be mad to spend time and grant money trying to find their deeply buried and probably ambiguous remains.
Viking expeditions to the New World are well documented. Hints exist that point to other possible contacts with Mediterranean or African cultures, as well as Polynesian contact from the West. I think we need to keep an open mind.
I find the parallels between Old and New World civilizations and timing a little too much to accept as accident. Another point is that apparently no North American species were domesticated. (Dogs may have been brought from Asia.) Horses in NA were eaten and extincted, so apparently domestication is a difficult invention (or at least domestication for riding). Yet, llamas, guinea pigs, and others were domesticated in South America, and the turkey in Mexico. Parallel development or did SA get a hint?
In order to domesticate an animal, you have to (a) live with it long enough to figure out how the species works and figure out how you can divert it to your own ends, (b) see a use for it that makes it worth domesticating. Llamas make sense in mountains. It’s one thing to pack stuff on your back in relatively flat land, but in the mountains? Real bummer. Llamas are sure footed, big enough to pack substantial loads, and have a wool that can be exploited to help humans cope with mountainous climate. They’re herd animals, too, which mean they flock together instinctively making them easier to tend. Guinea pigs breed fast, don’t take up much room, can graze on forage available in the mountains, and have fur — and you can eat one in a single meal, so no food storage problems.
In North America most of the food animals were too large for people to safely handle, and thus difficult to domesticate (bison, moose, elk,) or too fast or difficult to contain (antelope, deer), and none of them were suitable for riding. The Spanish brought cattle, sheep and goats to the SW, which benefited the Native America cultures (Navajo, Hopi, etc.). The Europeans brought colonists, pigs and diseases.