Do We Really Know Where We Came From?

Michael Reese. (if you know, Chicago)

but my memory is sooo good, I remember going to the Senior Prom ..with my Dad...and coming home with my Mom.....                . .           .    Joke!

I'm predicting a great day with Neanderthals and interbreeding  at the forefront of the conversation. 

"For half of Africa we really have no fossil record to speak of, so I
think it’s quite likely there were surviving archaic forms living
alongside modern humans.”  We have evidence of such here in the Village.  I am not naming names.

Road Yacht:  Can you remember who was crowned prom queen?

All I'm reading is, it's still Work In Progress....

...and don't you believe it! The Neanderthals did not die out! I divorced one!

Haha Spring!
No big mystery where we come from, it's all to do with storks and gooseberry bushes.
Now, breakfast ..... Big jug of coffee and a nice little cheese omlette and a chunk of wholemeal bread with Welsh butter.

haze, there you go again -- making me hungry.

Hazel, is there a difference between butter-butter and welsh butter?

Spring ~ You'd have to do a taste comparison test. I think our local butter from happy cows tastes better than supermarket butter. Our cattle graze mostly on pasture that has a breeze - or sometimes a howling gale - blowing in from the sea, so the grass is ready salted. It adds flavour to the milk, and the meat of Welsh Black cattle, a small, strong breed, is very tasty. It might even persuade you to eat steak again!

Spring Fragrance, I can attest to it -- Welsh butter is better, much, much better, than the butter available in The Colonies.

Also, Spring Fragrance, if you are eating that Welsh butter spread thick atop scones and with strawberry jam and accompanied by real brewed hot tea you will be in Heaven on earth.

Thanks, Lotlot.

Spring- At least you had the good sense to divorce a Neanderthal.  I'm still dating them.

Hazel=makes me want to go to where you live and have dinner with you.Salted grass, interesting, yum!!

Now you've done it. A mild interest in coffee has turned into ravenous hunger and not just for anything....I can't have the divine butter but I can bake a scone.
Butter is probably my favorite ingredient and it does vary tremendously. I am able to get Danish butter in my local store and its a wonderful luxurious occasional indulgence.

oh! Hazel, lotlot...that sounds so good! I googled to see if welsh butter is available here...just trying...of course not, but I did find a link for the Welsh who have settled here...

http://www.welshaustralian.com/

Julia!...lol....that doesn't give me much hope!

The connections are clearly made in the revealing movie The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones fill in the genetic blanks. How did they connect the dots of time? Well I will let Mr. Spacely explain-"I spent a fortune romancing General Blackhole just to get that secret contract to the Interstellar Lunar Probe. Nobody else knew it existed, but are they using Spacely Sprockets? No! They're using Cogswell Cogs!" important moment when Wilma tells Jane "I love your dress" ah the Family of Man...uh...Womankind. DNA (do not assume)? Coffeeeeeee

If quality ladies such as those who populatef the EyE are, however temporarily, attracted to Neanderthals, maybe there is a chance for us hummings! Yaaaaaa!

oh Spring!!!!! ~ the picture up top of the link you just posted is of the Snowndon mountain range and was taken about 2 miles from my home. Told you it's beautiful.
 

And as a reformed Neanderthal in the spirit of post modernist Phil Donahue era of expressing one's former cave man latent desires I can now admit I had the hots for Betty Rubble. Does Barney have a carry permit for that Bam Bam Stick?

oh nice Hazel! I gathered that "Y CYMRY" means "the Welsh" .....how do you ever pronounce anything like that!? There's not a single vowel. Does using the English alphabet make any phonetic sense? Transcribed Chinese characters into Latin script is called Hanyu pinyin and it at least makes phonetic sense.

George George you're king of the jungle in my books :))
Personally, I think all the gents here are highly evolved

RY, i spent a lot of time at Michael Reese. I felt bad when they demolished it even though my memories were not happy ones...

Spring ~ the Welsh alphabet! The letter Y is pronounced as a U as in umberella. There is no Z. Two FFs say F, one F says V, so Ex1, Trevor is Trefor in Welsh. The old guy over the road remembers going to school and being mystified, as he could spell his name in Welsh HUW, but the teacher said it should bt HUGH ~ I suppose we all have our eccentricities.

Well, so far, nobody seems very enthused about the origins of the human race. I went to school with Doctor Leakey's kids - he of the Rift Valley discoveries of human remains. Of course, as a child, I had no idea of the significance of his work. All I remember of him is he told some very funny jokes.

Hazel, I'm interested...but I'm just sitting here in shock and disbelief because Mommy told me I was a wonderful gift from a tomato patch and here you are talking about cranberry bushes ...  wow.  I better let my daughter in on this. <wink>

...and I'm watching "Hoarders:  Buried Alive" oh lord in heaven.  HAZEL, do you get a version of that show over in the UK?  It's like watching a very bad car crash go from bad to worse and you know nothing good is going to come of it no matter what.... 

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBLutEJg-Jk    ;

Interesting topic of a more serious vein today. I'm not all that sure that we really want to determine with mathematical precision our precise genetic makeup. Such conclusions might cause us all a whole lot of awkwardness & embarrassment. We as societies have, after all, gone to a whole lot of trouble to convince us that WE are superior to OTHER races & cultures. All I know for sure is that the most durable survivors of plants in my garden aren't the cultivated varieties (beautiful or fruitful). Nature loves to create hybrids, who by natural selection will grow under any circumstances, without regard to pedigree or prejudice. If ever there is built a National Crabgrass Museum, I am certain that my outstanding collection will become highly coveted.....

Unh-uh! My crabgrass will take over your crabgrass Right now, in Super secret labratories, we are, making A SUPER CRAB GRASS THAT WILL TAKE OVER!   Bwa hahahahahahaha

Little Girl to Mommy~"Mommy, where did I come from?" "Well, honey...your daddy and mommy got together then we were going 'Oh, baby, oh baby' and you started growing in mommy's belly....why are you assking, sweetheart?" Little Girl~ Well, Tommy says he's from San Diego."

Christmas is nice and birthdays are cool but Tomato Time is most bodacious. Everywhere I go, people are offering up fresh tomatoes. No need to gift wrap, Nature's package is just fine. Tomato salad on tonight's menu. Got the Balsamic Vinegar ready to pour...

My tomatoes bowed to Mother Nature in surrender many weeks ago,but I've found deeee-licious heirloom ones at our local co-op market.  I may just reconsider even trying to raise them next year.......these are so wonderful and someone else watered, watched for bugs and sweated in profusion so I didn't have to!  I call that grand.  They also had beautiful green beans that didn't look like the survivors of a cat fight--- all ugly with brown scratches.  Nope. Beautifully green and perfectly tasty.

Carol- Green Beans. My mom with her sun dress pushed down between her legs to form a catchall as she strung and broke them for later simmering with a ham bone. A youth I will cherish forever. Her beauty was not a pampered one but a beauty based on natural appreciation of life and being useful to others. Whenever I can I try to buy local on all fronts. Not always an option but choice is the beauty of a free market.

Bert ~ Your 3.29 - right on.

I for one vote for the human genome project.  Africa, even pre-historic, is/was prone to devour its dead, whether on a microscopic scale or larger.  Why should we assume there HAVE to be fossils left behind?  We didn't even know about fossils 150 years ago!  For heaven's sake we didn't even know there were living fossils (i.e., the coelacanth) 75 years ago.  If we hadn't seen the dodo would we believe it existed?  Are there fossils of it?  Don't think so!  Given all of that, I vote genetics.  Besides, any fan of Jean Auel wouldn't believe intermating didn't exist.
 
And I know where I came from!  My mommy's tummy after putting her in labor on a hot Friday night in August!  Without butter, Welsh or otherwise!
 
 

Ginger~ I had never considered Welsh butter as a lubricant to aid labour, but now you come to mention it, I'll pass your suggestion on to the Welsh Milk Marketing Board! Apart from tasting good, I'm sure it has magical properties.

I don't know about the rest of you Villagers, but I know I came from Florida. I was born in Gainesville, FL, although my parents lived in a small apt. in Tamp in 1945, and my mother went home to Gainesville to be near her own mother when it was time for me to arrive : Alachua General Hospital, Jan. 23, 1945.

Other than that, I am totally unaware, and content to let the scientists battle it out for which bones are the oldest, and which tribe packed up and left Africa when....Nobody thought to make a diary, webpage, or Facebook entry to give us the exact date of the massive exodus. They could have done better.

Therefore, the whole mystery is a mystery....I refer the inquiring minds to the series of books that tell this whole story in most spellbinding form: Jean Auel's "Clan of the Cave Bear" series....I've read them all and that explanation is good enough for me. If Ayla and Jondalar could migrate as they did, what more do we need to know?

Just FYI - I spent the day at Paradise Arabians, a ranch of 150 pure bred Arabian horses in NW GA today!! Such gorgeous pastures, such exquisite animals!! Those small heads, narrow faces, long necks, slender legs and hooves, and tails held high!! We say dozens of mares and foals, a whole stable of stallions, and one tiny little one just born last night!

All are as gentle and loving as your most hugable dog, and will have you pet them, rub their velvety noses, and feed them carrots til you are exhausted. They live on a 400+ acre farm/ranch in LaFayette , GA, and the people who own it are totally welcoming, warm, friendly folks. They are for sale, for lease, or for just enjoying their elegant company. Check it out on their website:

http://paradisearabians.com/our-farm

Not on topic, except that this is the original horse breed and our ancient ancestors may have tamed a few of these.

How lovely Moose!
 
You know, the Chinese language is one of the oldest in the world, about 3000 years.
Originally written on oracle bones, each character of the script represented a single word, just like the hieroglypics of the Egyptians and the Mayansm and the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia......and this has always amazed me....the character for "migrate" shows walking from the WEST
 
 

Soooo, if the Cradle of Civilization was in the Tigris-Euphrates flood plain, and the original folks were of dark skinned persuasion, and some got up and left to go East (Spring's ancestors), and some went north and West, (Indo-Europeans), you gotta wonder why some dug in there and spread out all over the Middle East and Africa and just stayed there!

You'd think that if the others left and sent back scouts to say how grand it was where they were, that most of those original folks would pack up and go too! And if the Egyptians could devise such beautiful art and architecture, why didn't some of the others who went to Africa get that gene? Here they are thousands of years later with mud huts, and HIV, and overwhelming poverty. What was the difference? Some of the original travelers must have taken the brainiacs with them when they left, and gone off and left the feeble to fend for themselves. Does the human gene project explain the divergence of races and the difference in creative and original minds? "Esplain that to me, Lucy!"

Ah but Moose, our periphery vision tend to be limited to our near past. Different coloured peoples of different civilisations have had their time in history. Arabian, pre-Columbian Central America, Greece (look where it is today), India....even Ethiopia...they were so advanced they had Queens apart from Kings. Queen Sheba was one and as detailed in the bible, she brought riches of all sorts to King Solomon.  The average age of the world's great civilisations is apparently around 200 years...if one generation is about 30..that is almost 7 generations. There is alot of literature out there that argues western civilisation as we know it is already on the decline. 
 
 
What if....Original Man and his crew were wiped out in the Great Flood? The Great Flood legend is detailed in many civilisations including Australia and Asia.
http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html/
 
And the Chinese character for "boat" has eight people ... just like the survivors of Noah's Ark 
 
 

Those Damn neighbors- - they sing and dance till all hours....and have you seen their kids? ..No Repect I tells Ya....    OOG  pack! we're leaving...{this early recording was found, frozen, and when thawed, was just as shrill as originaly yelled}

Ah, yes I know the Gilgamesh saga, etc....and I am not sure all of those flood stories are referring to the same flood, but if so, the melting of the ice caps is not new, and it could happen again! Yikes! Get the arks ready, round up the desirable animals, and start freeze drying some jerky and fish!.... ( Now, you know that is a legend, not fact....Those tigers and lions and other carnivores would never have sat still without chewing up the smaller critters for 40 days!)

Oh, wait, I am 67, I probably don't have to worry about it! Avg. life expect. is about 76, but in my family (dad-58/mom-73= avg. 65.5, so I am already past my sell-by date! This will be one of those mysteries that will remain a riddle, I fear. I just can't get het up about this origin topic....So, what if all humans were originally black or from Iran....we moved on! (As Sam Kinesun said in his comedy sketch about what to give the starving folks in the deserts of Africa...."Who lives in a desert??! Send them what they need...suitcases!! So they can get the *@%# out of there!!!!)

As for Sheba...what, Ethiopia? Riches, are you kidding? Probably a pile of animal skins and some shiny rocks, although I think it says tons of gold,but those ancient assayers were too prone to exaggerate!.....Well, they did find diamonds and some gold, but how could it compare to "riches" of later times!All things being buried in time, and known only by various legends, written by some Josepheus Thomasus Grishamus who was just trying to get published and tell a good story. The part about the palaces and riches sounded good to the poor struggling shepherds who were his reading public.....No, I'd not give the height of those civilizations too much credit, afterall, look at all the barbaric practices in them. but you are right in that Sheba's line was supposed to be descended from Noah's sons.....so, from few....many. More mystery to unweave.

Yes, Greece was magnificent, but only compared to shepherds and sod hovels, and then there were Troy, Alexandria, Rome, but all fell.....and are falling....Greece is certainly in trouble, as is the financial health of most of Europe and the US....no thanks to a certain mystery man with initials BO and his Dimocrat friends. I think you are correct that the Western "civilization" is in some kind of decline, as I was listening to 99Rox today as my granddaughter insisted, and heard the most annoying and decadent lyrics and sounds ever!

I have no faith in the "end of the world" prophets....Those guys have predicted world's end before, sat on a mountain top, awaiting doom, only to awaken the next day and have to go home and do the laundry like any other day. We may be in a slump, but I see it as 2 steps forward and 1 step back (sliding), picture Sisyphus.....dang that boulder! Perhaps after Nov. 2012 we can get that rock moving uphill again!

Mooseloop---you can't leave us!  Where else will I (and nachista and Rusty) turn for horse talk?  I am totally GREEN with envy!  I LOVE Arabians (was looking for one when the Friesian info came to my attention).  What the heck...maybe I'll get one of each!  Gotta love Arabians...they are so intelligent (and playful)!