As a sailor, with a ‘think outside the box’ kind of attitude, it seems obvious to me that people traveled across the oceans and explore the world a very long time before Columbus.
I first contracted this particular affliction, when someone gave me a book by Barry Fell. But, now days if you Google it, you can find a great deal. Try Googling:
Scientists Debate Who Sailed to the New World First
But, you can spend days reading about that stuff.
The reason I interrupted you today, was that I found, what I consider to be a very important quote from this next link. You will notice that the page it refers to, is full of typos. It was computer transcribed from a tape, and no one proofread it. Like ‘tire,’ where they meant ‘the.’ I felt right at home.
“You see, people sometimes bring to our attention things that are uncomfortable to think about and that lead to uncomfortable conclusions. And if we cannot explain them away, the thing to do is simply to ignore them. The question is, how long can we keep ignoring them?”
If it were not quite so long, I would embroider it onto a piece of cloth and mount it on the wall.
I think it applies to global warming, which IMHO is absolutely not debatable, but we can argue about whether humans have anything to do with it or not. It can apply to health care. Like taking a couple of capsules of dried nettles, works so much better to control my hayfever, than the drug company antihistamines, and have no side effects. Like, when I sprained my back quite badly, and I was in a lot of pain, my chiropractor fixed it, literally as fast as you can snap your fingers. But Western Medicine, says that we need several days of bed rest, some muscle relaxants, and some pain pills. And, be aware that there may be permanent damage.
There are far too many things being carefully ignored these days for me to list them all. Make your own list.
Dave’s commandments:
Number one, Love.
Number two, Keep An Open Mind. And then, be careful what you ignore.
And to reverse Gandhi’s quote, Number three, ‘Learn as if you were to live forever.’
Number four,’Live as if you were to die tomorrow.’
See also
http://www.chinese.tcu.edu/www_chinese3_tcu_edu.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man
And MANY more.
All the while, be sure to keep an open mind. Humans make mistakes. Humans falsified data. And many researchers forget that humans have a sense of humor.
I remember reading about an anthropologist, who was gathering information about the belief system of people that lived on a remote island in the Pacific.
In this two-way exchange, a native thought it ridiculous that the white person believe that human gestation was nine months.
The native said, “How in the world can you say that that is true? Vaea’s wife just had a baby last week. But Vaea returned from a 14 month ocean voyage, yesterday.”
The anthropologist realized that he was having his leg pulled, just before the native began to get a big grin.
The person relaying this story assumes that much of the data that scientists collect in this manner may be byproducts of a sense of humor.
Another story is about an anthropologist in the American Southwest, who had found a very old Indian, that knew a lot about ‘the old ways.’ He was literally of fountain of knowledge.
But, sometimes when he was asked a question, he would excuse himself and go inside his lodging for a few minutes, and then come back with the answer. Did he have to pee often? Prostrate trouble?
To shorten the story, the punchline was that ‘wise old Indian’ was referring to a well-worn copy of a tome, written by the very same anthropologist, many years ago. His method was discovered, when he brought the book out on the porch and suggested, “You seem very interested in our people. I really appreciate that. You honor us. You should buy a copy of this book. I refer to it all the time.”
Namaste
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