Mexico / Spain
An anchor thought to be from one of Hernán Cortés ships may in fact be a part of the “lost fleet” that was scuttled on the orders of the Conquistador.
Exactly 500 years since the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico, we know the outcome for the indigenous populations. Not only did Cortés overthrow the Aztec king, but most of the Maya, Aztec, and other populations were wiped out as new diseases swept across the land. The central Americans, like their southern counterparts, had no immunity to the diseases that were so rife in Europe, and smallpox and syphilis have been attributed as the most likely candidates. Millions of natives died in just a few years.
As the article says, the arrival of the Spanish changed history, and while we recoil in horror at the brutality of the genocide, and the invaluable texts that the Spanish burned in the name of religion and which are lost forever, on the flip side mass sacrifice was outlawed. Instead of hearts being ripped out, people were tortured to death if they didn’t conform to Christianity. Quite frankly, I’m not sure which is worse…
India
An extremely rare find in an Indus Valley cemetery in Haryana state, northwest India, has excited archaeologists due to the couple’s unusual position.
Not only were the couple tall for the time, but the fact they “died at the same time” and were buried facing each other is very rare indeed. Of course, it is unknown if the couple were related in any way, and their approximate 10-year age difference is also very interesting since modern Indians tend to marry within a similar age range, usually a couple of years.
There is no mention of DNA tests, so the fact the couple were found in 2016 makes one question why that has not been carried out to date. Hopefully, if DNA tests are carried out, this will determine whether the couple were related in some way. If not, then they may have been a married couple, but then one would have to question how they died at the same time. No evidence of illness or a violent death is evident in the skeletons, so this makes the find even more intriguing.
A point to note for those familiar with the Indus Valley culture is that this site – Rakhigarhi in Haryana – is now even bigger than Mohenjo-Daro, which was previously the biggest known Indus Valley site, a massive city with an equally large population.
The World
This is one of the questions I’ve been asking for many a decade.
Since I do not believe the out-of-Africa theory of human evolution, one of those questions is why we have lost hair, not gained it. Think about it – if we left Africa and moved north into colder climates, one would expect us to gain more fur, not lose it.
It is the opposite of what we would expect, and certainly this does not fall in line with Darwinian evolution. What evolutionary mechanism could possibly work to help us to freeze to death instead of keeping warm?
And the outcome of this is that we have had to hunt mega fauna and other animals, not only to eat but to provide skins for us to wear, ensuring the extinction of some species, although hunting isn’t necessarily the primary cause of those extinctions.
And there are other questions too – why do females have less hair than males, generally? Why do males grow a beard and not females? And if humans have lost fur because they originated in Africa, because of the heat, then what about all the other primates?
Anyway, over to the “experts”…
But don’t expect any answers. It seems they are clutching at straws… or fur in this case.
