Tag: history

Nameless Portraits on a Colossal Scale

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Life is full of unanswered questions. Like, why did I once pay money to watch Tentacles? But there are bigger mysteries than that.

In the hot, steamy country around the Gulf of Mexico, in Vera Cruz, in Tabasco, there flourished long ago a civilization we call “Olmec.” That was the name given to them by people who came along much, much later. We have no idea what these people called themselves.

According to archeologists’ best guess, Olmec civilization lasted from 1500 to 400 B.C., approximately. The Olmecs had writing, but they didn’t leave many inscriptions and most of these haven’t been deciphered yet. So we know nothing of their history, their famous people, their beliefs, or their customs. We don’t know the name of even one Olmec. They do seem to have invented the ancient Mesoamerican ball game that was still being played by the Maya and the Aztecs a thousand years after the Olmec civilization disappeared.

But did the Olmec people disappear with it?

The most tantalizing remains of this civilization are 17 colossal stone heads, the biggest of them weighing almost 50 tons, all of them made sometime well before 900 B.C. The Olmecs didn’t use the wheel and had no beasts of burden, so how they transported these enormous stones is a mystery as yet unsolved. That they could do this very difficult work proves that they had skills and resources worthy of a great civilization–even if we don’t know what they were.

The cool thing about these gigantic heads is that they seem to be portraits of real people. No two are alike. Each face has its own expression, its own distinctive features. The Wikipedia article shows all 17 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmec_colossal_heads ).

Who were these men? Rulers? Gods? Ballgame stars? Epic heroes? Nobody knows. Some of them smile at us; some of them frown. It’s as if they know we’ll never know the answer.

There are people living in the Olmec lands today who seem to resemble the stone portraits. So it may be that the Olmec people survived the dissolution of their civilization, even if all knowledge of it became lost.

What will remain, someday, of our own global humanist civilization?

The stone heads of our day are still attached to the leaders’ and the wise men’s shoulders.

In Search of Merlin

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Because I will soon be reviewing, for the Chalcedon Foundation, a series of novels about Merlin, I thought it’d be a good thing to renew my acquaintance with him.

Nowadays, thanks to public education and cultural decay, there are people who wouldn’t know Merlin from Liberace. Nevertheless, 1,500 years from his lifetime, he’s still famous enough for people to be writing books about him.

Who was Merlin? He was King Arthur’s teacher, protector, adviser, and magician. If you play a lot of video games and watch movies based on comic books, you probably don’t know who King Arthur was, either. Suffice it to say that, at a time when heathenism had just about wholly overwhelmed the island of Britain, some 1,500 years ago, somebody fought the pagan invaders, stopped them, and made it possible for the Christian faith not only to survive, but to convert the invaders within 100 years. That somebody was King Arthur. And preserving England as a Christian country had a profound effect upon all of world history.

So, OK, Merlin is important. But who was he? Tracking him down is almost impossible. The time he lived in was turbulent. People were too busy trying to stay alive, never mind writing accurate history.

Starting with someone who believed Merlin actually existed, I returned to Merlin by Norma Lorre Goodrich (1988). She is controversial because she believed Arthur and Merlin were real persons, whose lives and careers were truthfully described by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a 12th century writer nicknamed “BS Artist” by just about every scholar but Goodrich.

Professor Goodrich does make ingenious and sometimes convincing arguments. But it is so hard to find out “what really happened” in history! You could break your heart, trying. And then she comes out with this–after you’ve read 213 pages of her book:

“Nobody seems to know to this day, despite all the progress in linguistics and anthropology, why in this ancient world of King Arthur young married women were so frequently beheaded by their husbands as soon as they became pregnant.” Period. No footnote. No attribution. No support from any other source. Just “Here it is, take my word for it.”

Is this just an eruption of off-the-wall feminism? The more you read Professor Goodrich, the more you catch her making these weird observations without backing them up. I recall in another book of hers she said something like, “The Holy Grail was last seen in World War II.” Really? By who? Where? What happened to it? But the sentence ends with a period, and after that comes not another word of explanation.

How are we supposed to find out what really happened, when the people we rely on to tell us are wackos?

Then again, maybe a highly-educated loose cannon like Professor Goodrich is precisely the kind of historian Merlin would choose to write his biography.

I’ll betcha his soul is laughing at us from heaven. Betcha he is.

 

D-Day: What Were We Fighting For?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

June 6, 1944–Tens of thousands of American, British, Canadian, and Polish soldiers swarm onto the beaches of Normandy in a bloody  battle that will bring about the end of Nazi Germany–a criminal regime founded on socialism, “science,” state supremacy, and racial hatred, all mixed together in a cauldron stirred by Hitler.

June 6, 2014–The European Central Bank announces a new policy of “negative interest”: if another bank puts money in the ECB, it will earn interest of minus 0.1% ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/05/less-than-zero-europ-introduces-negative-interest-rates-to-save-its-economy/ ). According to the Washington Post article, “Charging banks to park cash at the ECB” is supposed to inspire those banks to lend the money instead, and perk up Europe’s sagging economy.

There is no truth to the report that when New York Mayor Warren “Bill DeBlasio” Wilhelm Jr. heard about negative interest, he suffered a seizure of envy that caused his head to spin around a full 360 degrees.

Yes, boys–you overthrew National Socialism to make the world safe for Euro-socialism. We Americans fought for our current right to be ruled–not “governed”: that word would imply some measure of lawfulness–by low-lifes, racists, thieves, liars, Juan Peron wannabes, and homosexual supremacists.

But it’s not your fault that subsequent generations–like mine–have failed you. Your courage defeated the evil of your age in history.

We today bow down to evil.

P.S.–The link to the Washington Post story does not work. I have no idea why not. Sorry!

Oh, No! It’s Columbus Day!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

This is the day when libs ‘n’ progs of all stripes lament and bewail Christopher Columbus‘ discovery of America in 1492. Teachers’ unions make sure the kiddies learn what a total calamity this was. Oh, alas! If only the Aztecs and the Mayas could have gone on doing human sacrifices! Oh, if only there were no United States! You’ve heard it all before.

Then again, maybe a great Chinese fleet discovered America in 1421, as described in a book titled 1421, by Gavin Menzies. His findings are controversial, but it could’ve happened. Chinese ships of that era made it to East Africa and Europe; they could’ve reached America.

On the other hand, since 1964, Oct. 9 has been officially recognized by the U.S. government as “Leif Erikson Day.” Oops, it slipped past me this year. Around 1000 A.D., Icelander Leif Erikson, son of Eric the Red, visited a place he called “Vinland.” Archeologists have found the remains of Norse settlements in Newfoundland.

There is no day to celebrate Some Poor Devil of a Carthaginian Mariner Who Got Blown Off Course and Wound Up Here, circa 300 B.C.

The point is, America was probably discovered more than once; and even if it hadn’t been, it would have been discovered eventually. And pinhead college professors and other left-wing dummkopfs would still be crying their eyes out.

I have no problem with that. Whatever makes them cry, has got to be good.