Posted on 11/22/2012 12:06:23 AM PST by LibWhacker
What makes a species go may not be good for the individuals in that species.
But never mind, if you'd read the whole piece you might wonder why I challenged Darwinian evolution.
Epigenetics explains why your livers grow to different sizes.
On the other hand, the Jews in Babylon ~ on and off again part of Persia, produced intellectual works in literature comparable to what the Greeks were doing ~ and surpassed the Greeks ~ and also trudged along the pathways to authority sufficiently so that their works survived.
BTW, the greater body of Athenian literature was destroyed ~ we know of it through stories about it, and the few snippets that survived.
We have added tremendous amounts of information. A significant portion of that is noise, not signal.
Not all information is knowledge, under the best circumstances, and much of what passes for information is incorrect.
What we are lacking is the ability as a culture to filter the information to gain knowledge, and the moral and philosophical basis to use the knowledge to derive wisdom.
The ability to throw more paint at a wall does not an artist make.
OK,you have piqued my curiosity about Azerbaijan in the 5th century BC. I know almost nothing about that country except that it is close to Persia and Turkey.
What did they do which equals the golden age of Greece?
Now the Jews in captivity we know a little more about, especially from Daniel. Babylon and Nineveh.
Zorastrianism was brought in early.
BTW, there's a type of ear called an Armenoid Ear ~ and a nose called an Armenoid Nose. Today both are widespread in the Middle East ~ back in the day even the Hebrews didn't have either!
These folks are also held to be responsible for founding the Median Empire although they are NOT the Medes.
Think of them as a pretty doggone important bunch of people but subject to repeated cultural disaster which has led to them being identified as OTHER PEOPLE!
Thor Hyerdahl worked up an alternative reading of the rather strange stories about Odin found in ancient Norwegian literature. It was his thesis that a group of Azerbaijanis, under the leadership of a guy named Odin, tried to avoid further military service as auxiliaries in the Roman armies so they WENT NORTH TO SCANDINAVIA in the first century BC or thereabouts.
Hyerdahl pointed to a sort of hat and some other features that would be peculiar to these Azerbaijanis and the Norwegians at the time.
Then, one day somebody found a cave in Azerbaijan that showed drawings of the cap and other items of peculiar design that showed up in Norway in the First Century AD.
More recently DNA analysis has shown the presence of Indians in Scotland in ancient times, so it's hardly a surprise to find Azeris wandering off to Norway. They had the horse, iron work, etc.
Way back in the good old days my main Middle Eastern history professor (dr.jwadeh at indiana university) used to use the Azeris as an example of a LOST CIVILIZATION about which we know everything, but we have no idea why since all their stuff is somewhere else. He was the world's foremost expert in the Kurds ~ that is, the Medes.
“No. Culture and learning are in decline, not intelligence, which is innate.”
Perhaps that explains it. Then again, a culture which does not encourage the rigorous application of innate intelligence will seem like the innate intelligence does not exist.
Living overseas for a time, I spoke Spanish fluently as a young boy. I never used it after I returned to the US, and lost it completely.
point is, unexercised, certain aspects of intelligence are indistinguishable from not having possessed the intellect to begin with.
THAT is what we are suffering from - a culture that does not value the effort of pushing one’s intellect to the limit.
Further, the use of automation has also diminished human intellectual accomplishment over time. I look at all the discovery of the past couple hundred years - these folks knew math - they did it in their heads, or on paper. Look at Maxwell, Faraday, Gauss or any of the namesakes of our systems of physical units today - and you find astounding genius in comparison with the “educated class” today.
I think that has something to do with it too.
Thanks, that is more than interesting.
I have always had a bit of curiosity about Finland, they seem so different from other people in the same area. Some of their words even sound Japanese.
Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are closely related languages. This is a result of history. The Sa'ami languages are NOT closely related as languages go, but they are far more ancient than Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian or the various Indo-European dialects like English, German, Romanian and Tocharian.
For a very long time there's been a debate about whether or not the Sa'ami languages were just variations on Finnish, or had their own source ~ maybe somewhere in the far east. In those days the greatest scientists on earth thought all the Sa'ami originated in the East ~ mostly because of differences in their cheekbones and their eyes ~ like Blond Mongols!
DNA revealed the Sa'ami to be wholly European in origin ~ just the first people to leave the Western European refugia as the Big Ice began melting. They went due North and presumably were heavy into seafood. Eventually they spent the next 19,000 years fairly isolated from other Europeans and retained many features that make them look like the Eastern peoples who split off from the Europeans between 58,000 and 35,000 years back (even the Chinese are not genetically isolated from Europeans more than 35,000 years.)
There was one "meeting" with an outside population about 7,000 to 8,000 years ago so the Eastern Sa'ami managed to pick up some Eastern European DNA ~ and with that managed to introduce some Sa'ami linguistic elements into the blends that ultimately became Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish. Later contact with the Mongols added yet more words to their vocabulary in the 1300s BTW. But even before then, the current thesis is that Sa'ami languages probably lent many of the basic grammatical terms to the less developed Eastern European and Asiatic languages. NOTE: that was all going on before there were any clearly identifiable Indo-European languages.
Within the context of the period from 8,000 years back until about 560 AD, much of the basic Eastern Sa'ami language base got transmitted to East Central Siberia ~ where all the American Indians, East Asians, Japanese, etc. originate. This is in the plains North of the Gobi ~ prime hunting area in the aftermath of the Ice Age.
Not much credit was given to the idea that the Sa'ami actually got that far themselves ~ so the anthropologists had hypothetical East Asian hunters trudging back and forth across the Steppes swapping tusks with the Sa'ami and getting dried reindeer meat in return.
Then within the last 10 years DNA studies revealed a gene sequence called the X-Factor present exclusively in the Sa'ami. Then they found the X-Factor in the Chippewa, then the Cherokee, then the Iroquois, Delaware, Fulbe (in Africa), the Berber (in North Africa), and voila, the Yakuts Sakha in East Central Siberia.
The Yakuts Sakha have a written record recently translated that reports on their recurring invasions of Eastern India, and their returns to Siberia ~ depending on climate, how upset the native got, and so forth, they were there ~ one of their most famous members is known as Buddha. That's why he looks pretty Asian!
About 535 the climate in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern Asia, and a wide variety of other places turned very bad and a Dark Age began in the affected places. Economies collapsed elsewhere.
That's when the Yakuts Sakha traveled East and conquered much of Korea, and much of Japan ~ however, the war in Japan lasted until the 1500s.
I don't think the noble classes in Japan have had their DNA checked for the X-Factor gene sequence, but I wouldn't bet against it being there.
The Yakuts Sakha imposed their Turcic language on Korea and Japan. It has strong elements of the other better known Mongolian languages, but there are Sa'ami words in there ~ just like there are Sa'ami words in all the Indo-European dialects, and all the other Uralic or Altaic languages, particularly Finnish.
Beyond that it's hard to say why lake Inari means a type of sushi in Japanese ~ but it may have to do with FISH.
Thank you. That is extremely interesting.
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