Wednesday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“Sex and religion are closer than either might prefer.”

             Saint Thomas More

The Americas are about 9,000 miles long north/south from the Arctic ocean to Patagonia and about 2,800 miles east/west from the Pacific to the Atlantic. This means that the prime domestic agricultural area in prehistory was between about 20 degrees south latitude and 20 degree north latitude. This is relatively small area compared to the landmass of the combined Americas and limits the expansion of the knowledge of agriculture. However, the Eurasian continent is a solid landmass from the English channel to the Pacific ocean, a distance of about 9,000 miles. A hell of a lot more of this land is within the agricultural zone than the Americas and the knowledge can be disseminated more easily. For reasons that I do not yet understand, civilization including agriculture as we know it began in “The Fertile Crescent” about 8,000BC. This area is from the northern end of the Persian gulf, up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and west to present day Syria, Jordan, Israel and southeastern Turkey. It is easy to understand how easily it would be to spread knowledge both east and west from there via trade routes to Egypt and India not to mention marine trade on the Mediterranean sea. The people in the Fertile Crescent were also the first to have domesticated terrestrial mammals, meaning goats, sheep and cattle. By the way a terrestrial mammal means a land animal rather than marine mammals like whales and dolphins. One particular fact that makes me wonder is why the Inca in the Andes had terrestrial mammals like llamas, alpaca and several others that could be pack animals, food and a source for fur and just 1,200 miles away the land of the Maya had none of the above. The reason these animals never were able to migrate to Mexico was the Central American jungles. The animals just could not stand the heat and humidity. But 95% of the world's cotton is descendants of a plant that was cultivated in the Mexican highlands by the Maya. Not only cotton, but corn, several types of beans, squash and yams were also cultivated by them and were distributed to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors. The knowledge of these crops made it to the Native Americans in the American southwest also. This knowledge did not migrate east because of the great plains and Texas which was considered non-arable lands at the time. In spite of California being a present day bread basket, at the time the lands there were not considered arable and the agricultural knowledge initiated by the Maya never made it that far. It was not until the progression of fertilization and irrigation that California came into its own. Speaking of the Inca in South America and the Maya in Mexico and Central America. The Inca had a few magnificent structures, Machu Picchu and Tiahuanaco for example, and they existed for thousands of years undiscovered by the rest of the world. Perhaps it was because of the fact that they lived at higher elevations in the Andes. They had nothing to compare with the stunning Maya cities and structures even though they existed in approximately the same time period. As a matter of fact, the Olmec, Maya and Aztec existed at a time when people no more than 800 mile north (Native Americans) were living a nomadic existence and were just basic hunter/gatherer units that lived very spartan lives. At the same time the Inca were smelting gold and silver, turning emerald stones into jewelry, building structures that required engineering in the higher elevations of the Andes while 600 miles east in the Amazon river basin people were eating each other for the protein. How is all of this possible? What spark of ingenuity and drive arrived at certain parts of the globe and not others? According to archaeology there are remains of Mayan villages on the Pacific coast of Mexico that date back to about 2,000BC. That, my friends, is about 600 years before Moses left Egypt. From those villages the Maya progressed and built enormous cities complete with multiple pyramids, water control for use by the inhabitants for consumption and irrigation not to mention a well thought out infrastructure among many other things. Where did all these idea come from that did not occur except a very few places on the planet? Not only that, they did all of this without any instrumentation or draft animals. How the hell did the Aztecs build the Pyramid of the Sun that has a larger “footprint” than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and build it by hand? How the hell did they move those great stones? In my opinion they had to have learned the knowledge of basic tools like the lever, pulley or inclined plane. It is believed that the Egyptian pyramids were built using the inclined plane or ramps....why not the Aztecs also? The difference is the Egyptians had one of the largest ports on the Mediterranean and was able to gather information about many things from trading vessels coming and going throughout the Mediterranean. The Inca, Olmec, Maya and the Aztecs had no such exchange of information from anywhere with anyone...they did it on their own. To me it is a miracle...or they had help that we know nothing about.

     This Date in History   May 13

1568 On this date the forces of Scotsman James Stewart and his Protestant army met the army of Catholics led by Mary Queen of Scots in the suburbs of Glasgow called Landside. James delivered a flank attack with his hidden cavalry and swept the Catholics from the field. Mary fled to England and sought protection form her cousin Queen Elizabeth I and is welcomed. Both Mary and Elizabeth are blood kin descendants of Tudor King Henry VIII. We all know about Henry VIII and all his wives so I will not go into it. When Mary was just six days old she became the Queen of the Scots upon the death of her father James V, King of Scotland. Upon reaching adolescence she was sent to France to be educated in the ways of royalty as was the custom in those days. While in France she met and married the French dauphin, the next in line for the French throne. And sure enough he became the Francis II, the King of France in 1559. Unfortunately Francis II died a year later and Mary returned to Scotland to claim the throne. In 1565 Mary married her cousin Lord Darnley also a Tudor which strengthened her claim on the English throne. Needless to say Queen Elizabeth was not pleased. However, two years later Lord Darnley was killed in a mysterious explosion. Three months later Mary married James Hepburn, the earl of Bothwell. Upon this obvious lack of class by Mary, the Scottish lords raise almighty hell and accuse Bothwell of killing Lord Darnley so he can have Mary. In fact the nobles laid so much heat on Mary that she was forced to abdicate and be imprisoned in favor of her son James who would be known as James VI. She escaped prison and raised an army of Catholics to try to take the crown back by force. It was then that her army was beaten at Landside and she booked to England. In 1586 Mary was found to be involved in a Catholic plot to kill Protestant Queen Elizabeth so that the next in line, Mary, a Catholic, would rise to the throne of England. Elizabeth had Mary captured, tried, convicted and sentenced to death. In 1587 Mary lost her head (literally) at Fotheringay Castle. Her son James VI just cooled his heels in Scotland where he was already King waiting for Queen Elizabeth to die and they he would become the King of England also. Sure enough, Elizabeth died in 1603 and James VI of Scotland became James I, King of Great Britain, meaning the king of Scotland, England and Ireland.

    Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow