[Aria]

A very interesting and though provoking article.

BTW, I searched and didn't see it posted yet.

[Mercat]

Very cool. I’m not sure we can assume that the Basque and the Celts are related but generally an interesting article. One of my favorite books is The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation. I didn’t see where the article mentioned Brendan. See another of my favorite books: The Brendan Voyage. We discovered it in a folk park in Ireland where the actual boat resides. This is the story of a man and a small crew who researched and constructed a boat which only used materials available in the time of St. Brendan and tried to retrace the steps the saint sets out in his account from the sixth century. They made it to Newfoundland.

The key here is that the Irish and the Basque were fishermen and who knows of a good and serious fisherman who broadcasts his best fishing grounds.

[VanShuyten]

It’s not odd that poor outsiders who have some knowledge of sailing opted for exploration/emigration. I’m not so sure that the “love for liberty” had a lot to do with it. More likely a distaste for oppression and poverty drove this.

[Monorprise]

Western civilization remade the world with the most profound impact yet seen in Human history. Its quite sad that it should collapse to a plague self-distinctive ideology, but i suppose there is no other way such a successfully civilization could go out than to Abandon it’s own demographic foundation.

In the end nature cares nothing for control and influence if it is not used to propagate your kin.

[Tallguy]

De Gresse, it was Admiral de Grasse’s fleet that blockaded the British at Yorktown. Rochambeau was the French Army commander.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Two Underrated Peoples
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3285638/posts

[x]

Hoe zit het met de Nederlanders? Zijn ze niet onderschat genoeg?

Amazingly, these Celts and Basques may be genetically related.

I thought that was pretty much assumed. Not so much the Celts, though, more the pre-Celts. Whoever it was who occupied Europe before the Celts and Germans came, they got pushed into the far West of Europe -- Northeast Spain and the Celtic fringes of the British Isles. So it wouldn't be surprising if Basques and the Irish had some genetic material in common.

[Mack the knife]

But how did Britain get its navy??

The book “Coal: a human history” points out that as England’s population grew, they cut down almost all the trees for firewood to keep warm in the winter. People froze.

In desperation, they turned to coal for heat. It was mined in Manchester hills, taken down on rails to the harbor where it was loaded into ships.

It took 300 ships per day to supply coal to London alone. When England needed a navy, they had both men and ship building assets to draw on.

[Cronos]

In looking over the history of the past 500 years, four nations stand out for having completely and massively altered world civilization in a way that no others have, before or after: England, Spain, France, and Portugal

Since 1510, well, they are correct about these 4 but forget some others like:

• Muscowy - Moscow expanded from a small Duchy to Alaska, they absorbed much of the Finnic peoples, many Tungusic and Turkic peoples and the rest of the East Slavic peoples (Belarusyni and Ruthenians)
  
• the Manchu Empire -- they slaughtered the Dzungaria (1 million killed in a genocide), slaughtered Han Chinese and weakened China so badly that it led to the century of humiliation starting from the 1800s
  
• The Mughal Empire - this changed the composition of the Indian sub-continent, creating a unity that hadn't existed before and yet also due to Aurangzeb creating the very forces that allowed Europeans to gain a foothold in the Indian continent

Then the article compares Empires before 1510 AD and it fails there in multiple places

• Vikings -- these were never an "empire" in any sense except for Cnut's brief reign -- they were groups of warriors fighting. the Norman, Varangians, Danes etc. were separate groups
  
• The Dutch - they started the Protestant fights against Spain and Portugal and due to the Dutch specifically, Indonesia was not converted to Christianity. But they allied themselves first to the English and then perfidious Albion turned on them in the Anglo-Dutch wars, destroying any chance for a long-term influence
  
• Germany effectively colonised the USA -- there are more Americans of Germanic extraction than any other ethnic group

The article tries to talk of Spain, forgetting that Christopher Columbus was a Genovan Italian.

Modern Western Civilisation is based on Greco-Roman ideals with Germanic warrior individuality. The Celtic anarchy was subsumed under this