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THE FIRST EUROPEAN – NOT ENTIRELY HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS – 35,000 BC

A British forensic scientist, Dr. Richard Neaves, has recreated the head of one of the earliest modern human ( some differences in brain case and teeth)  hunter-gathers from fossil remains, in the same manner of reconstructing the identity of homicide victims.

His recreation offers a tantalising glimpse into life before the dawn of civilisation. It also shows the close links between the first European settlers and their immediate African ancestors. To sculpt the head, Mr Neave called on his years of experience recreating the appearance of murder victims as well as using careful measurements of bone. It was made for the BBC2 series The Incredible Human Journey. This will follow the evolution of humans from the cradle of Africa to the waves of migrations that saw Homo sapiens colonise the globe.

….’Richard creates skulls of much more recent humans and he’s used to looking at differences between populations. ‘He said the skull doesn’t look European or Asian or African. It looks like a mixture of all of them. ‘That’s probably what you’d expect of someone among the earliest populations to come to Europe

As with the example of Kennewick Man, efforts at forensic paleo-anthropogy shatter modern racial assumptions regarding our earliest ancestors, regardless of whether those assumptions emanate from archaic stereotypes or modern PC ideology. Kennewick Man bore little or no resemblance to Amerinidian tribal groups that he long preceded, and Native American activists responded to the startling archaeological find  by attempting to have the remains seized, scientific analysis of them banned and the site bulldozed. The “First European”in turn, looks nothing like the Aryan mythology of the Nazis or 19th century European racialist agitators. Instead, he appears somewhat like an Africanized Yul Brynner.

These reconstructions demolish our casual, self-referentially anachronistic, projections of our own demographic groups backward in time. We want to see ourselves in the people “back then” just like we wish to imagine that kind of continuity in a far-flung future. I’m dubous that we will look like “us” 100,00 or 250,00 years in the future and wonder if such a  people will even acknowledge their kinship with us any more than we do with Homo Habilis.

Ok – who among this heavily GenX audience can name these relatively obscure characters?:

My esteemed colleague Dan of tdaxp recently suggested making use of the micropublishing service Nimble to put the Osinga Roundtable on Science, Strategy and War at Chicago Boyz  into dead-tree, published format. This was seconded via email by another blogfriend who did not participate in the roundtable but would like a hard copy for his own purposes. If I were to set about doing this, I’d envision trying to get permission to include a few related pieces from outside the scope of the roundtable contributions that would extend and enrich the reader’s understanding of John Boyd and give them a book that, while slim in size, would still be substantive and tightly focused.

Before I embark on getting the ball rolling with the  interested parties, is there a desire out there for such a book ? Assuming I get everyone’s buy-in and permission, the cost would run around $17 + , more or less, plus whatever Nimble might charge for shipping and handling. 

Let’s assume that Senator Barack Obama wins a narrow but clear majority of Democratic primary votes and delegates but Senator Hillary Clinton nevertheless captures the nomination by prying away just enough insider superdelegates through a series of shady, oleaginous, backroom deals.

Do African-Americans and twentysomething white liberals rebel? Do Democrats close ranks through gritted teeth ? Does Obama accept the Veep slot? Do Democratic-leaning independents go for McCain? What ?

A few things I’ve been wondering….

Would Global Warming attract nearly the same level of interest among environmentalist activists and Hollywood celebrities if the most effective proposed policy solutions had a free market bent ?

If you were to run a country going to war would you rather be in charge of Iran or the United States? Iran or Israel ? China or Taiwan?

If independents and third party wannabes are correct that the country really needs an effective and competitive major third party, why are they historically unable to propose any set of original programmatic ideas that the Republicans and Democrats cannot steal ?

If the EU has genuinely changed the twenty century-long warlike character  of Europeans to apathetic, bureaucratic, declinists why does the idea of Germany with nuclear weapons still give everyone pause ?

Or for that matter, who’s up for the Japanese Prime Minister announcing a successful test of a hydrogen bomb ? If you’re not but you are also ok on a nuclear Iran, can you give an intellectually credible explanation as to the difference?

What government entitlement programs that you personally benefit from should people be prepared to live without ?

To what degree is opposition to the death penalty rooted in opposition to the concepts of individual accountability and punishment ? To what degree is gun-control a repudiation of the right to self-defense ?

If you are pro-Life, why should a woman who happens to be pregnant have to take into account your personal religious beliefs before her baby is born but not afterward when making life-altering medical decisions on behalf of her minor child?

If the rich should pay more taxes, who counts as “rich” ? Why is your arbitrary figure plucked out of the air better than mine or anybody else’s ?

How many laws regulating the legal profession are ever proposed ? How many are passed ?

If the U.S government has friendly but non-committal diplomatic relations (minimal or no conflict) with another state, does that constitute “support” for the regime or ” non-intervention” ?

If multiculturalists are correct that that the non-Western cultures are of greater moral stature than the oppressive West, then why did none of the non-Western cultures ever practice multiculturalism ?