Comment: The Vatican has come a long way since the days of Pope Stephen VI, who famously put the rotting corpse of his predecessor on trial then had his body dragged through the streets and tossed into the Tiber river. Stephen was probably crazy but comparing him to the timid and nauseatingly woke Pope Francis just shows how feeble the church has become over the last thousand years or so. I'm sure that Francis talking about how sad he is about Hagia Sofia is really going to impress the Turks. The pope can't do anything to change the situation, of course, but it's hard to believe that this is the same Catholic church that launched the crusades.
Or maybe it is. This isn't the first time that the Vatican has thrown Hagia Sophia to the wolves:
"... this is the second time in the history of Hagia Sophia that a global appeal has been made for its protection, and unfortunately Rome prefers not to get involved. As it did in 1453 when, despite Byzantine appeals for help, the army never arrived from the West, allowing Mehmed II to eventually conquer Constantinople and, of course, Hagia Sophia, which he converted into a mosque." Source: Orthodox Times.
"Today, 560 years later, unfortunately, history repeats itself."
"A massive four-alarm blaze which tore through a more than century-old vacant church building in Santa Ana last week has been deemed an arson." Source: CBSN Los Angeles (May 14, 2020).
Santa Ana, CA. May 7, 2020.
More recently (July 11,2020), the Catholic News Agency reported that "A Florida man has been arrested after he reportedly admitted to crashing a minivan into a Catholic Church and then setting it on fire."
Video posted July 11.
In San Gabriel, CA, "A fire early Saturday destroyed the rooftop and most of the interior of a [249-year-old] Catholic church in California that was undergoing renovation to mark its upcoming 250th anniversary celebration." Source: AP (July 11, 2020).
"...The cause of the fire was under investigation, [fire captain] Negrete said. He said the recent toppling of monuments to Junipero Serra, the founder of the California mission system who has long been a symbol of oppression among Indigenous activists, will be a factor in the investigation."
Odds are that this was another arson.
On Feb. 11, 2020, Fox News reported that "A Florida man is behind bars after he tackled a deacon in the middle of a Saturday evening Mass."
This lunatic may have been off his meds.
On May 21, 2020, "A north Mississippi church that filed a lawsuit about a month ago questioning the city’s restrictions on gatherings burned to the ground with a disturbing, misspelled message scribbled just before its steps: 'Bet you stay home now you hypokrites.'" Source: Washington Post.
"First Pentecostal Church in Holly Springs, which sits at the border with southern Tennessee, collapsed into smoldering ashes and rubble early Wednesday after an explosion ignited the sanctuary, Fox 13 Memphis reported."
These are only a few of the attacks on churches in the US which have occurred in 2020. There have been several highly publicized church-shootings in recent years as well. The problem has been getting bad enough to become a Homeland Security concern:
""On May 20, 2019, in a response to 'recent attacks against synagogues, churches, temples, and mosques,' then-Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan requested that the Homeland Security Advisory Council convene a Subcommittee 'Focused on the security of faith-based organizations around the country.'" Source: DHS (PDF)
The government can't do much of anything, of course. We are rapidly reaching the point where churches will have to be turned into fortified compounds with metal detectors, CCTV cameras and 24-hour security. In some places, congregations are already packing heat.
Back in 2002, a Warsaw paleontologist taking a vacation in Crete stumbled across a series of what appeared to be extremely ancient human footprints. According to the Greek Reporter (July 2020), "What he discovered along the Mediterranean shores of the town of Trachilos would rock his world and send some researchers who were convinced that humans evolved solely in Africa, into angry denial, resulting in many of them casting aspersions on his jaw-dropping find."
After examining the prints, a team of experts "came to the conclusion that indeed, the impressions had been made by ancient human ancestors 5.6 million years ago, making them by far the oldest footprints ever discovered in Europe."
This created a big stink, of course, because it directly challenged the orthodox Out of Africa theory:
"When Gierliński [the paleontologist who made the discovery] and his team tried to publish the study, they received harsh criticism due to the findings going against the widely accepted hypothesis of early hominins or primates evolving in Africa alone. According to the study, the Trachilos footprints may represent an early hominin or primate species with that may have evolved hominin-like feet independently, outside of Africa. This suggests the possibility of convergent evolution. The theory of convergent evolution suggests the possibility of two or more different species adapting similar traits and characteristics to each other, resulting in a similar species. However, the theory is not well supported in this case, as there is no concrete evidence to suggest the theory results in perfect copies of traits or a whole species. As convergent evolution is not scientifically supported, there were doubts if the tracks were footprints at all. This resulted in rejections from many scientific journals when offered to publish the study's findings. " (Wikipedia)
The above paragraph is kind of slippery. Note how it starts off by saying that convergent evolution "is not well supported in this case" and then makes the flat statement that "as convergent evolution is not scientifically supported, there were doubts if the tracks were footprints at all." In other words, "not well supported" morphed into "not scientifically supported" in the space of one sentence.
Critics used this convergent-evolution stuff to reject the paper, but what they were really outraged about was the fact that someone had raised the possibility that their sacred Out of Africa theory might be wrong.
As far as I can tell, it's still unclear what these impressions really are. They could be human footprints or the prints of another species of hominin -- an ape, perhaps, with more human-like feet than other apes (this works the other way around as well) -- and it's possible that they aren't prints at all. Whatever the case, this discovery triggered an incredibly hostile reaction all too typical of the way science works these days:
"In an interview at the CBC News, researchers claimed that while they were trying to publish their work about the footprints at high-profile publications they got 'ferociously aggressive responses', criticism and rejection from reviewers and editors. According to the researchers 'Basically, it wasn't a true peer review process at all,' 'They were just trying to shut us down.' [emphasis added] After multiple rejections from other publications, the study was eventually published in the journal, 'Proceedings of the Geologists' Association.'" (Wikipedia)
The response to the Trachilos Footprints was a typical example of what I guess you could call the Cancel Culture in science. If someone challenges the received wisdom in any way the standard procedure is to attack them viciously and try to shut them down. This isn't science. It's a system that attempts to silence "dissent" by intimidation and the hyper-emotional, "ferociously aggressive responses" in this case were very revealing about the orthodoxy the gatekeepers are trying to protect. They believe in the Out of Africa theory for emotional reasons; that's why they got so outraged. The bottom line here is that the sacrosanct peer-review process is broken, at least in certain fields, but that's not exactly a new development. I've always thought that peer review is highly overrated.
"Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, which was nearly totally lost to fire in April 2019, will be rebuilt as it was, the French government says, defying the calls of modernist architects to seize the opportunity to give the medieval masterpiece a glass and steel overhaul." Source: Breitbart.
"The French government has condoned a 3,000-page report by the National Commission for Heritage and Architecture calling for a full and faithful rebuild of Notre Dame cathedral, in a move which French newspaper Le Mondenotes will annoy 'the concrete lobby and iron lovers'."
Comment: This is good news for a change, but there's still no word on what caused the fire in the first place. The last I heard, investigators were saying that the conflagration was probably set off by either a cigarette or an electrical fault, but that was just guesswork as far as I can tell. I'm not sure they even know where the fire started.
"Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Friday that the Hagia Sophia, one of the architectural wonders of the world, would be reopened for Muslim worship as a mosque, sparking fury in the Christian community and neighbouring Greece." Source: AFP.
"His declaration came after a top Turkish court revoked the sixth-century Byzantine monument's status as a museum, clearing the way for it to be turned back into a mosque."
Note: Catherine of Alexandria probably never existed:
"Donald Attwater (English Catholic author, 1892-1977) dismisses what he calls the 'legend' of Saint Catherine, arguing for a lack of any 'positive evidence that she ever existed outside the mind of some Greek writer who first composed what he intended to be simply an edifying romance.' Harold Davis writes that 'assiduous research has failed to identify Catherine with any historical personage' and has theorized that Catherine was an invention inspired to provide a counterpart to the story of the slightly later pagan philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 350–370 – 415 CE)." (Wikipedia)
According to the UNESCO World Heritage List, "The [Greek Orthodox] monastery of St Catherine stands at the foot of Mount Horeb where, the Old Testament records, Moses received the Tablets of the Law. The mountain is known and revered by Muslims as Jebel Musa. The entire area is sacred to three world religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism." The monastery is controlled by "the autonomous Church of Sinai."
Even though St. Catherine's was named after a (probably) fictitious saint, this is still a remarkable and very old institution:
"Built between 548 and 565, the monastery is one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world. The site contains the world's oldest continually operating library [next video], possessing many unique books including the Syriac Sinaiticus and, until 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus."
The incredible library filmed on a potato.
Note: The manuscript shown in the video above is the Ashtiname of Muhammed, "also known as the Covenant or Testament (Testamentum) of Muhammad (the Islamic Prophet) ... a document which is a charter or writ ratified by the Islamic Prophet Muhammad granting protection and other privileges to the followers of Jesus the Nazarene, given to the Christian monks of Saint Catherine's Monastery. It is sealed with an imprint representing Muhammad's hand."
The manuscript may be inauthentic. According to Wikipedia, "Since the 19th century, several aspects of the Ashtiname, notably the list of witnesses, have been questioned by scholars. There are similarities to other documents granted to other religious communities in the Near East. One example is Muhammad's alleged letter to the Christians of Najran, which first came to light in 878 in a monastery in Iraq and whose text is preserved in the Chronicle of Seert." It doesn't really matter, though, because even if the Ashtiname is a forgery -- something I don't think anyone is claiming -- it's still a priceless artifact from the period.
Recently renovated, the library at St. Catherine's was re-opened in 2017.
The manuscripts and books in the monastery's library go way back:
"When Egeria visited the Sinai in 383-384, she wrote approvingly of the way the monks read to her the scriptural accounts concerning the various events that had taken place there. Thus we can speak of manuscripts at Sinai in the fourth century. It is written of Saint John Climacus that, while living as a hermit, he spent much time in prayer and in the copying of books. This is evidence of manuscript production at Sinai in the sixth century. The library at the Holy Monastery of Sinai is thus the inheritor of texts and of traditions that date to the earliest years of a monastic presence in the Sinai. In earlier times, manuscripts were kept in three different places: in the north wall of the monastery, in the vicinity of the church, and in a central location where the texts were accessible." Source: The Sinai Monastery website.
Research has also revealed that some of the manuscripts in the library contain "hidden manuscripts" which were erased in order to reuse the parchment they were written on.
"The Sinai manuscripts comprise the oldest and most important Christian monastic library collection. Of its 3,300 manuscripts, two-thirds are in Greek. The rest are principally in Arabic, Syriac, Georgian, and Slavonic, through there are other manuscripts in Polish, Hebrew, Ethiopian, Armenian, Latin, and Persian. The New Finds correspond to these languages, and are stored adjacent to the library. The library also contains an important archive, containing letters, account books, charters, and other documents." Source: The Sinai Monastery website.
"...The most famous manuscript is the fourth century Codex Sinaiticus, of which the monastery retains twelve pages and some twenty-four fragments."
Comment: I'm not a Christian, but St. Catherine's and its library are priceless historical treasures which must be protected at all costs. The monastery has already been the target of at least one attempted terrorist attack back in 2015 and as far as I can tell the Islamic State vermin are still waging a sporadic insurgency in the Sinai. I hate to say it, but if the situation deteriorates the Church of Sinai (which controls the monastery) should consider moving the library to a safer location, preferably somewhere out of the country.
Comment: Never mind all the sensationalism about "conspiracies." This is a good overview of the glacial-transport theory describing where the stones used in the construction of Stonehenge may have come from.
"Sledge dogs are much older and have adapted to Arctic conditions much earlier than previously thought. In a new study from the QIMMEQ project, researchers from the University of Copenhagen show that ancestors of modern sledge dogs have worked and lived with humans for over 9,500 years." Source: Science Daily.
"...In addition to advancing the common understanding of the origin of sledge dogs, the new study also teaches the researchers more about the differences between sledge dogs and other dogs. Sledge dogs do not have the same genetic adaptations to a sugar and starch rich diet that other dogs have. On the other hand, they have adaptations to high-fat diets, with mechanisms that are similar to those described for polar bears and Arctic people."
Video from 2017. Note the mention of artwork discovered on the formations.
"The Yonaguni-jima Kaitei Chikei, literally translated as 'Yonaguni Island Submarine Topography,' is an underwater mystery off the coast of the Ryukyu Islands, Japan. The massive underwater rock formation is speculated to have existed for more than 10,000 years, but whether the formation is completely man-made, entirely natural, or has been altered by human hands is still up for debate." Source: Atlas Obscura.
Many sources matter-of-factly describe the formations of the Yonaguni Monument as the ruins of an advanced prehistoric city which sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago. For instance, see the book Underworld by Graham Hancock, author of the classic work of alternate history "Fingerprints Of The Gods." This theory was first put forward by the Japanese professor and marine geologist Masaaki Kimura who began studying the monument in 1992 (the formation was first discovered by local divers in the 1980s).
Video from 2015.
After exploring the monument for around twenty years, Kimura "remains convinced that the site was carved thousands of years ago, when the land mass was above water. According to Kimura the Yonaguni’s numerous right angles, strategically placed holes and aesthetic triangles are signs of human alteration. He also claims that carvings exist on the monuments, resembling Kaida script. He believes that a pyramid, castles, roads, monuments and a stadium can be identified within the structure – which for him is evidence that the monument is what remains of the Lost Continent of Mu, the Japanese equivalent to Atlantis." (Atlas Obscura)
Note: Mu was also the home of the dreaded Ghatanothoa, an elder god so hideous that anyone who saw him (or an image of him, no matter how small) was instantly petrified, their skin turned to leather and bone while their brains remained alive and conscious forever. For more information on Ghatanothoa, see Out of the Aeons by H.P. Lovecraft.
The Yonaguni Monument could be part of a prehistoric city, I guess. It doesn't look natural to me -- there are two many straight lines and right angles and structures that definitely resemble loose blocks, stairs and what could be terraces or plazas -- but Kimura loses me when he claims that the monument originally stood on the Lost Continent of Mu. I'd like to believe in Mu and I suppose it's possible that lost continents once existed, but it would be nice to have some evidence other than ambiguous formations on the bottom of the sea.
Even if the monument is artificial, there are no signs (as far as I know) that it was ever inhabited. The top video mentions that artwork was discovered in the submerged "ruins," and Kimura claims in the next video that "tools and engraved stones" were discovered there, but I haven't been able to verify that these tools and engravings actually exist. The engravings may just be scratches in the rocks. To the best of my knowledge, no artifacts of any kind have ever been discovered in the Yonaguni Monument. In contrast, divers exploring the very real sunken town of Baiae off the coast of Italy have found all sorts of Roman statuary, mosaics, etc., lying around on the bottom of the Gulf of Naples. There doesn't seem to be anything like that in this enigmatic site off the coast of Japan.
Mainstream archaeologists and other experts call Kimura's "sunken city" pseudoarchaeology, and they're probably right. If you believe the geologists, anyway, this bizarre formation may not be all that bizarre after all:
"Some of those who have studied the formation, such as geologist Robert Schoch of Boston University, state that it is most likely natural. Schoch observed the sandstones that make up the Yonaguni formation to 'contain numerous well-defined, parallel bedding planes along which the layers easily separate. The rocks of this group are also criss-crossed by numerous sets of parallel, vertically oriented joints in the rock. These joints are natural, parallel fractures by which the rectangular formations seen in the area likely formed. Yonaguni lies in an earthquake-prone region; such earthquakes tend to fracture the rocks in a regular manner.' He also observes that there are similar formations on the northeast coast of Yonaguni. John Anthony West also reaches the same conclusion. Schoch also believes that the 'drawings' identified by Kimura are natural scratches on the rocks, and suggests that the 'walls' are simply natural horizontal platforms which fell into a vertical position when rock below them eroded, and the alleged roads are simply channels in the rock." (Wikipedia)
Stonehenge was extensively reconstructed back in the Fifties. There's no doubt about that. According to English Heritage, "This major engineering project and associated excavations began in 1958 and continued into 1959. [Archaeologists Richard Atkinson, Stuart Piggott and J F S Stone] together oversaw the archaeological work. The trilithon was re-erected from the position where it had lain for 161 years. An upright and a lintel forming part of the outer circle were also put back into position. One of the large sarsens of the inner horseshoe was set in concrete and a large hollow at its base infilled. The sarsen bases were set in concrete to prevent future movement. Finally, six fallen bluestones were lifted and straightened."
These photos are used to support a conspiracy theory that Stonehenge is a fake built in the 20th Century. I have no idea how widespread this conspiracy theory is, but I can see how someone who didn't know anything about the megalith could come to that conclusion after seeing pictures of the stones being raised with cranes and so on. I wasn't aware of the reconstruction myself until a little while ago and when I first saw the photos it was kind of startling. Luckily we have old photographs and artwork that prove that Stonehenge actually existed before the megalith was partially rebuilt. And people have been studying the site since the 17th century, at least.
The 1950s reconstruction wasn't even the first to take place. According to Wikipedia, "William Gowland oversaw the first major restoration of the monument in 1901 which involved the straightening and concrete setting of sarsen stone number 56 which was in danger of falling. In straightening the stone he moved it about half a metre from its original position."
It's obvious that Stonehenge wasn't built in the 1950s. It's also obvious that the site has been extensively restored and doesn't correspond exactly to its original design. The megalith has been patched up with concrete in places and some of the stones aren't aligned precisely. These errors in alignment might be small, but they introduce a margin of error into theories about the purpose of the site that rely on precise measurements. For instance, archaeoastronomers have argued that Stonehenge was a kind of ancient observatory and some of them have used computers to measure the alignments between the different features of the monolith. The accuracy of these studies has to be questioned if the stones aren't in their original positions.
Purists say that Stonehenge should have been left in its true remaining state, but I can't see the logic in this. The pre-1954 site was in bad shape, to say the least. Half of the megalith was basically just a pile of rubble. The reconstruction may not have been appropriate by modern standards, but it sounds like the site was rebuilt by experts as accurately as possible so I'm not sure what harm the work caused. What's the point in "preserving" the damage caused by weather and the passage of time? The modern Stonehenge probably looks a lot more like the original now and the repair work helped to preserve the site.
What The Trachilos Footprints Revealed About The Peer Review Process
Video from 2019.
Back in 2002, a Warsaw paleontologist taking a vacation in Crete stumbled across a series of what appeared to be extremely ancient human footprints. According to the Greek Reporter (July 2020), "What he discovered along the Mediterranean shores of the town of Trachilos would rock his world and send some researchers who were convinced that humans evolved solely in Africa, into angry denial, resulting in many of them casting aspersions on his jaw-dropping find."
After examining the prints, a team of experts "came to the conclusion that indeed, the impressions had been made by ancient human ancestors 5.6 million years ago, making them by far the oldest footprints ever discovered in Europe."
This created a big stink, of course, because it directly challenged the orthodox Out of Africa theory:
"When Gierliński [the paleontologist who made the discovery] and his team tried to publish the study, they received harsh criticism due to the findings going against the widely accepted hypothesis of early hominins or primates evolving in Africa alone. According to the study, the Trachilos footprints may represent an early hominin or primate species with that may have evolved hominin-like feet independently, outside of Africa. This suggests the possibility of convergent evolution. The theory of convergent evolution suggests the possibility of two or more different species adapting similar traits and characteristics to each other, resulting in a similar species. However, the theory is not well supported in this case, as there is no concrete evidence to suggest the theory results in perfect copies of traits or a whole species. As convergent evolution is not scientifically supported, there were doubts if the tracks were footprints at all. This resulted in rejections from many scientific journals when offered to publish the study's findings. " (Wikipedia)
The above paragraph is kind of slippery. Note how it starts off by saying that convergent evolution "is not well supported in this case" and then makes the flat statement that "as convergent evolution is not scientifically supported, there were doubts if the tracks were footprints at all." In other words, "not well supported" morphed into "not scientifically supported" in the space of one sentence.
Critics used this convergent-evolution stuff to reject the paper, but what they were really outraged about was the fact that someone had raised the possibility that their sacred Out of Africa theory might be wrong.
As far as I can tell, it's still unclear what these impressions really are. They could be human footprints or the prints of another species of hominin -- an ape, perhaps, with more human-like feet than other apes (this works the other way around as well) -- and it's possible that they aren't prints at all. Whatever the case, this discovery triggered an incredibly hostile reaction all too typical of the way science works these days:
"In an interview at the CBC News, researchers claimed that while they were trying to publish their work about the footprints at high-profile publications they got 'ferociously aggressive responses', criticism and rejection from reviewers and editors. According to the researchers 'Basically, it wasn't a true peer review process at all,' 'They were just trying to shut us down.' [emphasis added] After multiple rejections from other publications, the study was eventually published in the journal, 'Proceedings of the Geologists' Association.'" (Wikipedia)
The response to the Trachilos Footprints was a typical example of what I guess you could call the Cancel Culture in science. If someone challenges the received wisdom in any way the standard procedure is to attack them viciously and try to shut them down. This isn't science. It's a system that attempts to silence "dissent" by intimidation and the hyper-emotional, "ferociously aggressive responses" in this case were very revealing about the orthodoxy the gatekeepers are trying to protect. They believe in the Out of Africa theory for emotional reasons; that's why they got so outraged. The bottom line here is that the sacrosanct peer-review process is broken, at least in certain fields, but that's not exactly a new development. I've always thought that peer review is highly overrated.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Commentary, Culture, Current Affairs, Evolution, Prehistory, Science, Videos | Permalink