Art and Art Handling : Moving Art, e.g. Large Stone Objects : You Have to Understand the Object

art and art handling

"Art handling is all about balance, understanding the physical presence of the object/ Art and recognizing how to touch it."

Guardian: Men from Britain and Ireland are Descended Mostly from Ancient Farmers and the R1b Haplogroup is shared with Continental Europe & Chad

Most British men are descended from ancient farmers. Ian Sample, science correspondent for The Guardian. Sample writes:

"The first farmers to arrive in Britain outbred the native hunter-gatherer men and have left their mark in modern males' Y chromosome....

... more than 60% of British men, and nearly all of those in Ireland, can trace their Y chromosome back to the agricultural revolution....

The farmers' Y chromosome becomes more common in the west of England and reaches a national peak of 78% in Cornwall, scientists found.....

Men with surnames including Titchmarsh and Haythornthwaite are among the most likely to carry the farmers' Y chromosome, known as R1b1b2. The Y chromosome is passed down the male line only, from father to son.

Researchers led by Jobling collected DNA samples from more than 2,500 men across Europe. Around 80% of the men had the R1b1b2 type of Y chromosome, making it the most common lineage on the continent."

Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA) has been described as follows in the Wikipedia:

"In human genetics, Haplogroup R1b is the most frequently occurring Y-chromosome haplogroup in Western Europe. R1b is also present at lower frequencies throughout Eastern Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, and parts of North Africa. R1b is also very common amongst speakers of Chadic languages in Sub-Saharan Africa. [emphasis added]

Within Europe, which has been much studied, R1b's frequency is highest in the populations of Atlantic Europe and, due to European emigration, in North America, South America, and Australia. In Ireland and the Basque Country its frequency exceeds 90% and approaches 100% in Western Ireland. The incidence of R1b is 70% or more in parts of northern and western England, northern Spain, northern Portugal, western France, Wales, Scotland. R1b's incidence declines gradually with distance from these areas but it is still common across the central areas of Europe. For example, R1b is the most frequent haplogroup in Germany, but not in neighboring Poland."

The Chadic connection is intriguing and suggests to this author the possibility of an influx of European blood into this region through ancient seafarers - for the oldest boats found in Africa are in the Chad region.

It is hard to explain the high incidence of R1b among Chadic speakers by presuming a land route, along which there is no evidence of R1b migration.

We give little credence to the land route solution proposed recently in Viktor Černý et al., Migration of Chadic speaking pastoralists within Africa based on population structure of Chad Basin and phylogeography of mitochondrial L3f haplogroup, BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2009, 9:63 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-9-63, who write in their conclusion, based only on mitochondrial (mtDNA, female) rather than Y-haploptype (male) evidence, that:

"We provide genetic support for an Early Holocene migration within Africa. A high-resolution phylogeny of haplogroup L3f based on whole mitochondrial genome sequences shows several clades that are unevenly distributed throughout Africa and Near East. Specifically, clade L3f3 is geographically limited to the Chad Basin where it reaches high frequencies especially in Chadic-speaking groups while almost absent in Niger-Congo and Nilo- Saharan people. Within the Afro-Asiatic language phylum, the Chadic branch is linguistically close to the East African Cushitic branch although they are separated by ~2,000 km of territory in which different Semitic and Nilo-Saharan peoples live today. We show that only northern Cushitic groups from Ethiopia and Somalia are genetically close to Chadic populations. Thus, the archaeologically and linguistically supported route of proto-Chadic pastoralists via Wadi Howar to the Chad Basin may have genetic support. Moreover, our molecular genetic date for the Chadic-specific L3f3 clade is consistent with the suggested Holocene dispersal."

A similar conclusion is found via Nature.com in the Europpean Journal of Human Genetics, which abstracts the idea as follows:

"European Journal of Human Genetics (6 January 2010) | doi:10.1038/ejhg.2009.231

Human Y chromosome haplogroup R-V88: a paternal genetic record of early mid Holocene trans-Saharan connections and the spread of Chadic languages

by Fulvio Cruciani , Beniamino Trombetta , Daniele Sellitto , Andrea Massaia , Giovanni Destro-Bisol , Elizabeth Watson , Eliane Beraud Colomb , Jean-Michel Dugoujon , Pedro Moral & Rosaria Scozzari

Abstract

Although human Y chromosomes belonging to haplogroup R1b are quite rare in Africa, being found mainly in Asia and Europe, a group of chromosomes within the paragroup R-P25|[ast]| are found concentrated in the central-western part of the African continent, where they can be detected at frequencies as high as 95|[percnt]|. Phylogenetic evidence and coalescence time estimates suggest that R-P25|[ast]| chromosomes (or their phylogenetic ancestor) may have been carried to Africa by an Asia-to-Africa back migration in prehistoric times. Here, we describe six new mutations that define the relationships among the African R-P25|[ast]| Y chromosomes and between these African chromosomes and earlier reported R-P25 Eurasian sub-lineages. The incorporation of these new mutations into a phylogeny of the R1b haplogroup led to the identification of a new clade (R1b1a or R-V88) encompassing all the African R-P25|[ast]| and about half of the few European|[sol]|west Asian R-P25|[ast]| chromosomes. A worldwide phylogeographic analysis of the R1b haplogroup provided strong support to the Asia-to-Africa back-migration hypothesis. The analysis of the distribution of the R-V88 haplogroup in >1800 males from 69 African populations revealed a striking genetic contiguity between the Chadic-speaking peoples from the central Sahel and several other Afroasiatic-speaking groups from North Africa. The R-V88 coalescence time was estimated at 9200–5600|[thinsp]|kya, in the early mid Holocene. We suggest that R-V88 is a paternal genetic record of the proposed mid-Holocene migration of proto-Chadic Afroasiatic speakers through the Central Sahara into the Lake Chad Basin, and geomorphological evidence is consistent with this view. European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication, 6 January 2010; doi:10.1038/ejhg.2009.231."

The R1b haplogroup contradicts the above analysis, because the R1b haplogroup is otherwise strongest in Europe, and not in Africa.

Quite the contrary, the high presence of the R1b haplogroup in Chadic language speakers helps to draw attention to the megaliths of the Central African Republic and raises again the question of who put them there and when. We allege that these were European seafarers in ancient days. See Scribd, Das Tanum System – ein alteuropäisch-afrikanisches Vermessungssystem? DOC, pp.34 et seq.

At the John Hawks Blog in the posting The worm in the fruit of the mitochondrial DNA tree
he writes:

"François Balloux (2009) has a polemic in the online access area of Heredity presenting references about mtDNA selection, and arguing that the use of this single genetic marker is no longer warranted without support from other loci.

Yay! I've been saying that both here, and in peer-reviewed articles, for several years. I think serious workers know that one gene is not enough; two genes (mtDNA and Y chromosome, for example) aren't enough -- we have to integrate information across every possible source, genetic, skeletal, and anthropological, to really test hypotheses about the past."

At Dieneke's Anthropology Blog, Aaron - in our view correctly - wrote in the comments:

"From what I remember the study found trace amounts of U5 and U6 in North Cameroon, and the rest the female lines were L1, L2..etc Linguistics is a whole other can of worms, but the data supports northern origins of this ethnic group."

Haplogroup U (mtDNA) is described as follows:

"U5 had a common ancestor with its sister group, U6. What's interesting is that U5 and U6 are "sister mtDNA groups" with a common ancestor in N. Africa. Each mtDNA group has a sister group. A large proportion of Canary Islander are U6. The medieval Guanches of the Canary Islands also had U6. There was a lot of interbreeding in paleolithic times between U5 and U6. The Berbers are high in U6 mtDNA today.

Haplogroup U6 is a group of people who descend from a woman in the Haplogroup R branch of the Genographic tree. It is common (around 10% of the people) [1] in North Africa and the Canary Islands. It is also found in the Iberian peninsula and British islands due to ancient gene flow from North Africa."

The Peopling of the World via the Journey of Mankind : A Virtual Global Journey at the Bradshaw Foundation via an Animated Map

John Hawks Weblog has it right:

"It is really not worth looking at, but I couldn't stop laughing, so I have to point it out....

This is what we get when there is not enough critical science of human dispersals. We're not seeing history here, we're making it up."

Many conceivable maps of human migrations can be made based on the genetic and climatological evidence currently available. The map-animated virtual global journey at the Bradshaw Foundation Journey of Mankind : The Peopling of the World is one admirable attempt - at least from the graphics side - to provide such a map.

However, the graphics are where the fun ends - and the erroneous content begins, especially because of all the overstretched and unsupported climatological - and other - hypotheses....

Especially disturbing in terms of the available evidence is the idea that mankind first moved up the Nile Valley out of Africa - and then allegedly became extinct. A new subsequent group of humans - luckily kept in reserve in Africa in the interim - then allegedly reached Asia and Europe via the Arabian peninsula in a topographically navigational miracle and from there spread throughout the globe. A very unlikely scenario.

For a much more likely version of human migrations, see the National Geographic Genographic Project. And even there, great caution is advised. Too many details still need to be unraveled.

Archaeologists claim discovery of oldest Hebrew writing - Yahoo! News

Archaeologists claim discovery of oldest Hebrew writing - Yahoo! News

tehran times : Earth sink imperils Zoroaster’s Kaba

tehran times : Earth sink imperils Zoroaster’s Kaba

The Star of Bethlehem 32 B.C.

The book review New Book on the Star of Bethlehem and Birth Chart of Jesus » The Horoscopic Astrology Blog is by Chris Brennan who writes:

"A book just came out in which the author proposes a new theory about the Star of Bethlehem and the birth chart of Jesus.The book is aptly titled The Star of Bethlehem. It was written by a Swiss astrologer named Dieter Koch, who is primarily known for his work with the company Astrodienst, as a co-author of the widely used Swiss Ephemeris....He rightly emphasizes the importance that was ascribed to planets making a helical rising in ancient astrology, and then later adds another dimension to the argument when he takes the statement that the star “stopped” over the place of Jesus’ birth as an indication that the relevant star stationed around the time the Magi arrived in Bethlehem. (pg. 57)

Eventually he unveils the crux of his argument, which is essentially that:“Jesus was born at a heliacal rising of Venus!” (pg. 59)"

In our opinion, that theory of Koch is without substance. As Nigel Henbest writes in What was the Star of Bethlehem?

"Was Venus the Star of Bethlehem? Almost certainly not - Venus makes such regular appearances as the "Morning Star" and the "Evening Star" that people observing the heavens even thousands of years ago would have been familiar with it. The Christmas Star must have been a celestial event that was truly out-of-the-ordinary....Chinese astronomers were logging their own observations of the sky at the time, and reported no brilliant supernovae. They did, however, record two bright comets. The first was Halley's Comet, which swings close by the Sun roughly every 76 years.... But the ancient Chinese saw Halley swinging by in 12 BC - too early for the birth of Jesus.The Chinese reported another celestial visitor early in 5 BC - a"broom star" on the borders of the constellations Aquarius and Capricornus. Though some astronomers think this was a nova - an explosion on a dwarf star - Colin Humphreys, a scientist at Cambridge University, argues that it was a comet. And Humphreys is convinced that this tailed wonder was the Star of Bethlehem. The Chinese records show that the celestial visitor was visible for 70 days - long enough to guide the Magi to Bethlehem. In this case, Jesus was born in the spring of 5 BC. "

Postings by others on the topic of the Star of Bethlehem discuss yet other theories:

The Star of Bethlehem, again at Bad Astronomy discusses a theory that the Star of Bethlehem was the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus - we do not buy that at all.

Colin Humphreys, The Star of Bethlehem, Science and Christian Belief , Vol 5, (October 1995): 83-101, suggests that the Star of Bethlehem was a comet - and that is the theory which we regard to be correct - but which comet and when?

All previous efforts to identify a comet around the era currently assigned to Christ are for naught, because there is a ca. 28-year error in current chronology - see the links below - so that what we regard as the "birth" of Christ was actually his death:

The Era of Jesus: Questions in Modern Calendration
Law, Evidence and Archaeology: Errors in Biblical Chronology
Law, Evidence and Archaeology: Errors in Biblical Chronology II

The result is then that we are looking for a comet around ca. 30 B.C. rather than 0 B.C. and there is indeed such a comet which fits the Biblical account perfectly, having appeared in February in 32 BC and appearing in the heaven's at Ying Shih, which extends into Capricorn, the traditional area of Christ's birth.

See John Williams, Observations of comets, from B. C. 611 to A. D. 1640 (1871), where he writes about the Chinese observation of a comet that appears 50th in his list and was observed in February 32 B.C.:

50 B.C. 32. February.In the reign of Ching Te, the 1st year of the epoch Keen Che, the 1st moon, there was a comet in Ying Shih : its colour was a bluish white. It was from 60 to 70 cubits in length, and about i cubit in width. [emphasis added]

As written in a review of Williams work, Ying Shih is described as follows:

"Ying Shih, or as it is more usually denominated Shih, is one of the 28 stellar divisions determined by [alpha], [beta] and other stars in Pegasus, extending north and south from Cygnus to Piscis Australis, and east and west 17 degrees, and comprising parts of our signs Capricornus and Aquarius."

David Seargent in The greatest comets in history: broom stars and celestial scimitars, Volume 725, writes:

"There seems ... to have been a comet with an exceptionally long tail in the year 32 BC., but it is mentioned - and then only briefly - in just one Chinese record. Moreover, despite noting a tail of at least 70 degrees in length, the object is described as a sparkling star, a designation more normally reserved for comets with no conspicuous tail. Maybe the tail was faint....[emphasis added]

In our view, that "sparkling star" was the Star of Bethlehem.

Aristeo Canlas Fernando writes in his REVELATION AND PROOFS - based on the Bible, accounts of the respected Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, eclipse table prepared by Fred Espanek, Jewish calendars, Jewish festivals and fasts, calendar converter of Timothy James Forsythe, moon phases by Stellafane, Pasiong Mahal (Holy Passion), and the Aristean Cycle - that JESUS CHRIST WAS BORN ON MAY 23, 33 B.C.

We agree that the birth of Jesus occurred in this era ca. 33-32 B.C. and that the Star of Bethlehem was the Comet of 32 B.C.

It may or may not be coincidence, by the way, but the oldest surviving date for the Maya Long Count also falls "in 32 BC at Chiapa de Corzo, between the Olmec and Maya zones," Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens, p.13.

Haplogroup R1b1b2

Haplogroup R1b1b2

Making Sense of the Neandertal Genome | Genome Technology | Sequencing | GenomeWeb

Making Sense of the Neandertal Genome | Genome Technology | Sequencing | GenomeWeb
by Ciara Curtin

"Ed Green fell into studying the Neandertal genome. He'd arrived at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig ready to dive into a study of alternative splicing in primates. Instead, he took on sequencing the Neandertal. '[I] just happened to be at the right place at the right time with the right skill set to look at the Neandertals as this high-throughput sequencing technology was coming online,' he says. And, of course, he says it's a really interesting project.

So far, the Neandertal Genome Project has reached a little more than one-fold coverage of the genome. The challenge now, Green says, is making sense of all that next-gen sequence data...."

National Trust locations in Britain via Street View at Google Maps

Some National Trust locations in Britain can now be viewed
via Street View at Google Maps, e.g. Avebury Stones.

I have been to Avebury and can say - at the time of this posting - that the opening scene of that link has you on the wrong side of the highway for a correct start to your journey at Avebury - at least as you start your journey when you are actually at Avebury - so click the map command to go out of Street View and then move the Street View "icon person" over on the other - left hand - side of the street, where you will then see some of the main Avebury stones and those stones that a tourist first sees when he visits the Avebury site and starts to take his walking tour. There are of course megaliths on both sides of the street, so play with your location to see as much of the stones as you can.

World Heritage Centre - World Heritage List

World Heritage Centre - World Heritage List

"The World Heritage List includes 890 properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value.

These include 689 cultural [Cultural site] , 176 natural [Natural site] and 25 mixed [Mixed site] properties in 148 States Parties. As of April 2009, 186 States Parties have ratified the World Heritage Convention."

Medieval News: Seven Ages of Britain series to begin on BBC

This is a bit "modern" for us, but should be interesting.

Medieval News: Seven Ages of Britain series to begin on BBC

"David Dimbleby charts a landmark history of Britain's greatest art and artefacts over 2,000 years, in Seven Ages Of Britain. The seven-part series of 60-minute programmes, shot in HD, begins at 9.00pm on Sunday 31 January 2010."

Tel Aviv Jaffa "Ramat" Archaeological Prehistoric Building Marks the "Dip" of the Big Dipper in the Prehistoric Survey of the Holy Land by Astronomy

The archaeological news of the past week was the spectacular discovery of a prehistoric building in the Tel Aviv - Jaffa area (Ramat Aviv)..."on the northern bank of the Yarkon River, not far from the confluence with Nahal Ayalon."

To my luck, the Jewish Journal not only carried the story but also included a photograph of the site by Assaf Peretz / Israel Antiquities Authority which I include here (enlarged to 80% of the width of the posting) because of its importance - together with the original label:


Israel Antiquities Authority workers during the archaeological excavation of the oldest building ever found in Tel Aviv, estimated to be 7,800-8,400 years old,
Jan 10, 2010. (Assaf Peretz / Israel Antiquities Authority)
I have taken that photograph and simply traced the most prominent lines of the ground plan as follows:


Note that the large room in the foreground is strangely not square and that the entire design of the "building" is somewhat peculiar for such an allegedly ancient construction. As I have discovered, this prehistoric building is part of the megalithic survey of the Holy Land by astronomy in ancient days, a survey which I deciphered some years ago and posted to several locations, including my Ancient World Blog as follows:




As you can see, given the megalithic sites known at that time, the "dip" vizi. "ladle" of the Big Dipper was missing. Ramat Aviv now fills that void, as Tel Aviv - Jaffa is located on the coast nearly halfway between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, exactly where we would expect this part of Ursa Major to be located.

In the astronomical context of my decipherment of the ancient megaliths of the Holy Land, this puts Tel Aviv - Jaffa at the location of the "Dip" of the Big Dipper.

The design of the archaeological find is a nice match for this part of Ursa Major. Note also that the large room in the foreground at Ramat Aviv also has a small megalith with marks which look like the "dip" of the Big Dipper and a "hearth" in the shape of the dip of the Big Dipper. This may be chance, but these artefacts should be investigated more carefully to make sure that I am not seeing things that are not there. In fact, it will be of interest to view the official archaeological plot of this ancient site.

And more yet. Tel Aviv is a modern city originally founded in the year 1909 as a neighbor to Jaffa (today a part of Tel Aviv). Jaffa is one of the world's oldest cities. The Wikipedia writes:

"Jaffa (Hebrew: יָפוֹ‎, About this sound Yāfō (help·info); Arabic: يَافَا‎, About this sound Yāfā (help·info); Latin: Joppe; also Japho, Joppa as transliteration from the greek "Ιόππη") is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world.[1] Jaffa is now part of Tel Aviv which is why the city's full name is Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel. The name of the city is supposed to be mentioned in the Egyptian sources and the Amarna Letters as Yapu. There are several legends about the origin of the name Jaffa. Some say it is named for Japheth, one of the sons of Noah, who built it after the Great Flood.[citation needed] The Hellenist tradition links the name to "Iopeia", which is Cassiopeia, the mother of Andromeda. Pliny the Elder associates the name with Jopa, the daughter of Aeolus, god of wind. The Arab geographer Al-Muqaddasi mentions it under the name Yaffa, which is used by Arabic speakers today."

That the name is seen to have an astronomical context is remarkable in itself, and Cassiopeia would ordinarily be a hot contender for this location, if it were not for better information provided to us by Richard Hinckley Allen in his book Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning , where he writes at page 423 about Ursa Major (the Big Dipper):

"Hebrew observers called the constellation Dōbh; Phoenician, Dub; and Arabian, Al Dubb al Akbar, the Greater Bear, — Dubhelacbar with Bayer and Dub Alacber with Chilmead, — all of these perhaps adopted from Greece. Caesius cited the "Mohammedans' " Dubbe, Dubhe, and Dubon; and Robert Browning, in his Jochanan Hakkadosh, repeated these as Dob."

What is now quite clear from the modern archaeological discovery at Tel Aviv /Jaffa
is that the name JAFFA Latin: JOPPE = DOBH, DUB, DUBB, DUBBE, DOB "Ursa Major".
DOBE in Indo-European e.g. Latvian means "hollow, cavity, hole, DIP", i.e. DIP in English.

In the ancient survey of the holy land, the city Jaffa thus arguably took its name from the "dip" in the constellation of the Great Bear.

CARNAC: In the Footsteps of France’s First Farmers

In the Footsteps of France’s First Farmers

"Carnac is a series of over 300 standing stones, spread over 4 kilometres, making up about 40 hectares. Associated excavations suggest these stone alignments are dated to between 4500 and 2500 B.C, a period that saw the beginning of sedentary existence and farming in western Europe. This makes the stones amongst the first of the monumental structures built in western Europe."

On the astronomical content of the sacred landscape of Cusco in Inka times by Giulio Magli

On the astronomical content of the sacred landscape of Cusco in Inka times by Giulio Magli. This is a very good read on the hermetic principle at work in Inca culture - as above, so below.

Tools point to early Cretan arrivals and world's earliest seafaring - Times Online

Tools point to early Cretan arrivals - Times Online

Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent, writes:

"Evidence for the world’s earliest seafaring has emerged from an archaeological survey in Crete....

What sort of water-craft might have been used remains a matter of speculation, but it seems that our forebears were forging their way across Homer’s “wine-dark sea” tens of millennia earlier than anybody had supposed."