May 10, 2024, 12:38 pm UTC |
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I must admit I find this a little improbable too. Granted Europeans have spread their genes everywhere in the last five hundred odd years, and the Arabs and Chinese have gotten around pretty good too, but it's really difficult to believe that *every* Native American, Aborigine and Sub-Saharan African has *recent* European or middle Eastern ancestry and it would have to be recent since thoby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
I wish you'd give me an example of a 'venus' figure found in a burial. Of course it is quite probable that not all figures were made for the same reason - they are after all pretty widely dispersed and very a great deal in appearance. We can never know how early men and women saw themselves and each other but I think we must guard against the all to common assumption thatby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
Not really. Competition of females with other females has nothing to do with the pecking order among males. Mind you a male who defies the 'alpha' females by favoring an inferior is likely to pay for his presumption - and that's true of humans as well as chimps. The murderous females I mentioned lived in a normal male headed troop. I don't know if they were mates of tby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
"It's peculiar that feminists have embraced this goddess stuff which seems to celebrate all the things they're arguing we should reject -- marriage, motherhood, etc." Yeah, I've noticed that too. Logically embracing the 'eternal feminine' as 'Goddess' means rejecting any other role than mother and nurturer for women. Not to mention the rejectiby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
I thought we were talking about pre-history? In any case we're comparing apples and oranges; the 'official' artwork of urbanized, specialized civilization as opposed to the 'unofficial' amateur artwork of hunter-gatherers or horticulturalists. Modern hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists make art for all kinds of reasons other than ritual, including mere dby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
"Since we have no evidence of the social structures of these people any suggestion of matriarchy seems to be at best speculative. Matriarchal cultures, as opposed to matrilinial ones, are rare as hens' teeth in the modern world." Quite right. In fact to the best of my knowledge there is no evidence of a true matriarchy ever existing anywhere. "The "Venus&qby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
*Snerk* :-D actually that's pretty close to the 19th c. explanation for the replacement of the 'primitive' matriarchy with the more 'advanced' patriarchy.by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
It isn't just 'alpha' males. Female chimpanzees have been known to kill and eat the offspring of lower ranking females. Even more interestingly observation suggests that victimized females enlist males to defend their infants against 'alpha' females. So much for female primates being nurturing, noncompetive and co-operative....by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
". And there are also goddesses carved on ivory knife handles and other ivory objects, that cannot be sex-toys or magic mushrooms." Excuse me, who says these are goddesses? why not just art? My brother is an artist and his favorite subject is the unclothed female body. I think it safe to say the female body has been an obsession and preoccupation of the male since the species bby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
We have lots of 'venus' figures found in middens, not exactly the place I'd expect to find holy icons. Cynthia Ellers suggests that these figures may have been used for some kind of healing ritual and then discarded. Nobody is saying goddesses weren't worshipped all over the world what is being questioned is the notion of a sort of monotheistic 'Goddess' reby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
This of course is part of the problem; the universality of the matriarchy and the shift to patriarchy - which is never adequately explained as according to the Feminist matriarchalists men just *loved* being marginalized second class citizens, and young women were just as happy as breeding machines and matriarchs in waiting. And everybody had lots of great sex with whoever they wanted and withby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
I have read the Eller book, among other things it mentions the interesting fact that prehistoric 'venus' figures have generally been found in middens which seems kind of an odd place to find sacred icons. And that the famous 'snake goddess' is represented by two - count 'em - *two* small figurines. The 'prehistoric matriarchy' is a recycling of a 19th cby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
Given that just about every known human culture makes and drinks some kind of alcoholic beverage this test would seem to come under the heading of 'confirming the obvious'.by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
There seems to be a determined effort in some circles to take the conflict out of history. I am reminded of the theorist who argued on one documentary that the bones found in a mass barrow burial, (near a church used, according to sources, as a fortification by Viking invaders) were actually those of monks, who as we know were customarily buried en-mass along with female sacrifices!!by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
I don't understand. Gildas - a contemporary - writes of battles, certainly the Romano-Celts *felt* like they were being invaded!by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
As usual they keep citing scholarly works a century or so out of date. Amenemhet I was certainly part Nubian - he says so himself - Sequenenre Tao may have been as well and any number of other Pharaohs, queens and other important people. 'Wretched Kush' was after all an Egyptian possession and many of its people seem to have sought their fortune in the mother country. BTW the nby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
And only goes to show how completely stupid defining yourself by the amount of melanin in your skin - or ancestry from a particular continent - really is. Technically - under the one drop rule - I'm 'black' despite a complexion that makes Casper look like he's got a healthy tan in comparison!by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
I sort of thought so - like most of his sources. Did the man read anything published after 1900???by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
Break the news gently to Dark Energy and Mr. Diop.by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
If I grasp Afrocentric thinking correctly as far as they're concerned anybody with more skin melanin than a Swedish blond is 'black'. No other factor matters.by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
That's because they have both kinds of genes and it all depends on how theys shuffle. Contrary to popular racist belief it is impossible for 'white' people with a black ancestor to produce a 'black' baby, (deep tan at best) but it is possible for people of of mixed ancestry to produce a broad spectrum of colors in a single family.by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
I guess. But what's the good of being a mutant if you haven't got any cool powers? It's so unfair ;-Dby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
Dark Energy wrote: "More than 150,000 years ago beings morphologically identical to man of today were living in the region of the great lakes at the sources of the River Nile in Africa and nowhere else." Everything I know about paleoanthropology I learned from the Discover channel but I seem to recall East Africa was the favored location for the earliest Homo Sapiens Sapiens.by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
I suspect relative isolation from outside influences and ideas is a factor as well. Thanks to the Mediterranean sea Europe was - from earliest times - in touch with the cultures of the Middle East and North Africa and with the Far East via the Silk Road. Also for cultural reasons the West was syncretic and open to alien ideas and technologies which is not true of every civilization. The West hby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
"I wouldn't go that far. We can only conjecture what could have happened had Europeans and Arabs not uprooted Africa's human potential and ciphoned its material wealth to build or promote advanced civilizations elsewhere." The African slave trade, and the trade in ostrich feathers, gold and other luxury goods, was controlled by *Africans* at least until the 19th c. cby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
Yes Egypt is an African culture, so was Carthage, but North Africans are linguistically, culturally and ethnically distinct from sub-Saharan Africans who are the people we mean when we use the word 'Black'. The Nubians of Kush adopted Egyptian gods and technology and built a kingdom that even the Romans respected, and which conquered their former conquerors. Most Africans did nby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
I knew it couldn't be you, but wondered if somebody was using your name. This thread is getting so long I'm getting lost....by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
Whoever you are you are apparently unaware that Egypt was *the* military superpower of her day conquering an empire reaching from Sudan to the Euphrates which they held successfully for several hundred years until the worm turned and the people they conquered, including the Nubians, got the upper hand. You also seem unaware that Sumer and the Indus civilization were also 'up and runnby Roxana Cooper - Ancient History
Yeah but Neanderthal is older, and everybody knows the farther back you can trace your lineage the better. ;-) If this is true then us 'Icepeople' are an older race than the 'Sun people'.by Roxana Cooper - Ancient History