"According to a report in The Guardian, an international team of researchers suggests that Neanderthals and other early hominins may have had the ability to hibernate. Juan-Luis Arsuaga of Complutense University of Madrid and Antonis Bartsiokas of Democritus University of Thrace say that lesions on 400,000-year-old Neanderthal fossils recovered from Atapuerca’s Sima de los Huesos cave resemble those seen on the remains of hibernating mammals. Such lesions are caused by disruptions in bone development brought on by limited food and reduced metabolic states." Source: Archaeology.
Comment:The argument here assumes that mammals couldn't have survived the winters in this region at the time. If that's true, however, it seems more likely that early humans would have simply migrated to an area with a more moderate climate where game was available. Needless to say, the idea that they went into hibernation seems like pure speculation and other experts have argued that the lesions in the skeletal remains could have a number of causes.
The suggestion that early hominins could hibernate is original, though. I'll give the researchers that. These days, of course, the concept of human hibernation is mostly used in science fiction to get around the problem of space travel. Being able to hibernate would be useful in other ways, too. Considering the way 2020 played out, I would have gladly gone into hibernation for the whole year if that had been possible.
William Tyndale & The War For The English Bible
The execution of the Protestant scholar, William Tyndale, who was condemned for heresy then strangled to death and burned at the stake in 1536 AD, tells me everything I need to know about the nature of the early Catholic church. It was a sadistic, totalitarian organization that maintained its grip on its flock through terror and mystification.
Tyndale, a leader in the Protestant Reformation, was condemned partly because he was the first to translate the Bible into English from the Greek and Hebrew texts. The King James Bible drew heavily on Tyndale's [partial?] translation. "One estimate suggests that the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale's and the Old Testament 76%," according to Wikipedia.
Translating the Bible into English was something the Catholic church couldn't permit. If ordinary people could read the Bible for themselves Rome would lose its monopoly on the faith, not to mention a lot of its secular power, so the church had to make sure it controlled the message.
Translations of the Bible had to be carefully restricted and regulated. Latin versions were OK because only the churchmen and elites could read Latin, but the last thing the church wanted was an English version that the plebs might actually be able to understand and interpret for themselves. The first English translations of the New Testament had to be printed overseas and were apparently smuggled into England in bales of cotton. At the time, these were probably the most dangerous books in the world to possess. Note: Even possessing a Bible is still dangerous in some places.
The Daring Mission of William Tyndale, Steven J. Lawson (2014)
During Tyndale's lifetime, Rome didn't want people being able to think for themselves. As far as the church was concerned, the best way to fleece the sheep was to keep them in a state of illiteracy, ignorance and passive obedience. It was a particularly insidious form of social control reinforced with bloody punishments for "heresy." Imagine living under a regime where you have to obey laws written in a language you can't understand. That's what the situation was like, but in the case of the medieval church lawbreakers not only faced burning at the stake but eternal damnation.
The church's policy was a form of mushroom management. It's no wonder that the peasants eventually revolted. The war for the English Bible was similar in some ways to Prohibition in America where high-quality booze -- the "real stuff" -- had to be smuggled into the country from Canada and the Caribbean. The church didn't have any more chance of containing the thirst for knowledge during the Reformation than the US government had of containing the thirst for liquor during Prohibition, and the democratization of knowledge exploded with the invention of the printing press:
"In the early days of the Reformation, the revolutionary potential of bulk printing took princes and papacy alike by surprise. In the period from 1518 to 1524, the publication of books in Germany alone skyrocketed sevenfold; between 1518 and 1520, Luther's tracts were distributed in 300,000 printed copies." (Wikipedia)
William Tyndale was a key figure in the war for the English Bible. The eventual publication of the King James Bible, based partly on Tyndale's work and authorized by the Church of England, itself a reaction against Catholic corruption, was a victory for free thought.
Posted at 06:59 AM in Ancient Literature, Books, Catholic Church, Christianity, Commentary, Culture, Medieval, Religion, Videos | Permalink