This is definitely a little different. At this point, who knows anything about efficiencies? Now it is merely original and exciting looking. It does make an interesting clip, so enjoy.
Maybe it will amount to something.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Artificial Corneas Now Ready
This development immediately available and swiftly eliminates a huge pool of the blind. The news could not be better and will soon allow for replacement of partially failing corneas which describe a large secondary pool of the blind.
We do not eliminate blindness but we certainly reduce the numbers by millions.
We are beginning down the road of general tissue replacement and complete restoration with plastics and stem cell based structures. It is timely to suggest that anyone suffering damage can look forward today with a realistic hope that repair may well be possible inside of even ten years. These type of fixes do not suffer the restraints of a new drug because the materials are already cleared. It is necessary only to develop the protocols and basic ideas.
We are even close, it appears, to replacing nerves. (do not hold your breath on that one – it has exhausted false optimism for decades)
June 2nd, 2010 by Aaron Saenz
An artificial cornea (prototype shown here) could restore sight to thousands starting this year.
An expansive EU project to produce an artificial corneahas found success thanks to the work of Joachim Storsberg of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP in Germany
Corneal blindness affects millions around the world. According to the WHO, about 5 million cases of blindness in the world (as of 2001) were a result of corneal damage or dystrophy. We’ve seen several high-tech approaches to fighting corneal blindness including theapplication of embryonic stem cells to generate new tissue. For most of those affected around the world, however, corneal transplants represent the surest and most accessible treatment for their condition. A readily accessible, easily made artificial cornea is a huge boon to corneal transplants.
More than one hundred thousand patients wait for corneal transplants each year (~40k in EU, another 40k in the US
In order to work in the human body, an artificial cornea has to meet some rather stringent requirements. First, it has to bond to the human eye around its edge, but stay unclouded by cells in its center. To that end, Storsberg took a widely used opthalmological polymer (found often in intraocular lenses) and adapted it with other special polymers around the edges. Combined with the application of a growth factor protein, the modified edge promoted cell growth around the periphery of the implant and secured it in place using the body’s own cells. The center of the artificial cornea, however, does not promote cell growth and remains clear so that it can be seen through. The artificial cornea also has to move freely with the eyelid and balance moisture on its faces. The polymer Storsberg chose is hydrophobic, allowing tears to lubricate the surface and provide the correct moisture on both of its sides.
Storsberg’s work was part of a larger EU funded endeavor, the Artificial Cornea Project, which sought to create a non-human based replacement for damaged corneas. The Artificial Cornea Project took three years, and the work of many collaborators around the continent, to produce the new implant. Miro GMBH handled the actual production of the material. Animal trials in pigs and rabbits were successful and lead to the first human uses in 2009. Those early human cases showed enough success to get EU approval for the device and the artificial cornea is expected to see its first widespread use sometime in 2010. That’s very exciting news. This project has not only succeeded, but the fruits of its labor are about to be (readily?) available to patients throughout the EU very soon.
A non-degrading piece of plastic permanently grown into your eye does not sound like the most elegant solution to the problem of corneal blindness, especially when regeneration of tissue through stem cells is on the horizon. But the artificial cornea is a solution which is (almost) available NOW. That’s immensely important. As with so many other current endeavors in medicine, curing blindness is likely to see a staged series of solutions using various emergent technologies. Artificial materials and implants in the near term, autologous stem cells in the far term, and DNA based solutions in the very far term. We need all of these solutions to help transition into a time when blindness is no more of medical hurdle than a broken bone. I wish nothing but the best of luck to Storsberg and the rest of the large team from the Artificiail Cornea Project. With their help I think we are continuing our journey towards an age when medicine can regenerate or replace absolutely any part of your body. Check off “building new eyes” on the list of requirements for immortality.
Silver Bull Rising
This item comes from a broker and should cautiously be interpreted since we are pushing product. However, the technicals are completely different from several years ago when the balance of the photo industry surplus was been worked off.
The mining industry should have been unloading inventories over the past two years and will find it much harder to sell into a rising market. They are also unlikely to expand hedging operations.
Thus a move through $50 is not far fetched at all and will bring plenty of silver properties into the market.
Both Hecla (HL) and Cour D’alene (CDE) are both fairly priced at present and will respond well to a rising silver market.
It will take time for the mining industry to make up production short falls, though $50 silver will draw huge above ground silver out of India. It will make any silver deposit profitable to mine also. A $35 to $50 trading range is not unreasonable at all over the next decade.
Could Silver be the Most Financially Profitable of All Precious Metals?
Consider the following: The Federal Reserve arranged the bailout of Bear Sterns a few days just after silver hit a multi-decade high of approximately $21 an ounce.
Most people are not aware that Bear Sterns was about to have to cover an extremely large short position in silver. Bear Stearns had been betting that silver would go down, and their bet had gone "south". In turn right before the bailout, Bear Sterns was put in the situation of having to go into the public markets and buy "huge" quantities of silver to make up for this large short position.
The precious metals markets are relatively small when compared to other markets. Having to go into these markets and cover their huge short position in silver Bear Stearns would have caused silver to shoot up to $50+ per ounce . . . in addition to causing a complete loss of confidence in the U.S. dollar which would have led to substantial inflation.
Today, . . . JPMorgan still holds the short silver position which they inherited from Bear Stearns in the Fed arranged bailout.
It is common belief that JPMorgan is artificially holding silver prices down through what’s called "naked short selling"; which is the selling of “paper silver” that is not backed-up by “physical silver.”
The best evidence that JPMorgan's short position in silver is naked is by looking at the difference between what silver actually trades for on the exchanges and what people are paying for physical silver. At this point, there is approximately a 20 percent disparity.
When one looks at the percentage of its market size, the naked short position in silver today is perhaps the largest short position in any precious metal in the history of all commodities.
If this is not enough to convince you, then look at the physical silver market which is tighter today than ever. The U.S. U.S.
This means that the U.S. needs to use almost all of its silver production just to keep up with the demand for American Silver Eagle coins; since, the mint is required by law to use silver produced in the US for the production of all US silver coinage.
What is this saying? ........... JPMorgan will be eventually forced into cover its huge naked short position and it won’t be pleasant . . . unless you own silver, or assets that will appreciate when silver goes up like silver mining stocks.
Kevin McKnight
Looking for Alien DNA
I do not necessarily agree with Zecharia’s interpretation on a lot of things and as those who have worked through my postings, know that I have an even vaster interpretation that is far more plausible than what Zecharia has dug out of ancient scriptures. Scriptures by their very nature represent a narrow viewpoint and often profound ignorance. Thus we have a magnetic field exclusion vessel (MFEV) described in terms of the Bronze Age. Imagine describing a container ship with a Stone Age vocabulary. Then retranslating it back of course.
He is pinning a lot of hope on the DNA of a Sumerian noble woman. A good thought whatever the motive. However, he will run across the same problem we have with cryptids. If you do not have an example you cannot compare. I can give you a handful of Sasquatch hair and a DNA test will be ‘inconclusive’.
There is plenty of mystery with our DNA that supports the plausibility at least that he is on to something. We do not have a lack of evidence so much as a flood of inconclusive evidence there.
I do not see how he can stake anything at all on DNA tests.
My major difference with Zacharia’s work is his explanation of a twelfth planet traveling on a long elliptical orbit. On the face of it, it is physically not possible for this to actually work. Yet the observers saw something just like that. Now we are aware that the sun is traveling on a long orbit presently toward the Sirius cluster. Thus a passage through such a cluster on a 110,000 year orbit is plausible. Our viewpoint would then conform to the story handed down.
It is even plausible that an alien intervention did take place at least twice over the past 250,000 years, or at least it is no longer impossible. Nearness to an alien civilization would allow a major project of contact to be launched. Thus we cannot simply dismiss these cultural sources as some strange fantasy.
The first intervention could well have established humanity on the fast track to development approximately 250,000 years ago, the second intervention likely initiated civilized man who has since possibly triggered the crustal shift ending the Ice Age while transitioning to space based man. It certainly makes a great story line.
If my conjecture regarding space based man is correct, and we are likely to know soon enough, then the cultural records are remnants of histories of the all this handed down as the repopulation efforts began.
Looking for Alien DNA
Zecharia Sitchin suggests that the star-shaped symbol and 11 other dots on this Sumerian cylinder seal, known as VA243, represent the sun, moon and 10 planets — including a mysterious world known as Nibiru. He further suggests that beings from Nibiru made alterations in the human genome. Mainstream experts on Sumerian cuneiform texts say Sitchin's interpretation is wrong.
Zecharia Sitchin says he's willing to stake everything he's written about alien astronauts on DNA tests that could be performed on the 4,500-year-old remains of a high-ranking Sumerian woman. It's the latest - and possibly the last - cause celebre for a fringe celebrity.
The way Sitchin sees it, the long-dead woman's genome could contain the signature of the gods and demigods he's been talking about since 1976.
The 90-year-old Sitchin was born in the Soviet Union, grew up in Palestine and now lives in a New York
Sitchin says these aliens were the Annunaki mentioned in Sumerian scriptures, and the Nephilim mentioned in the Bible.
Needless to say, Sitchin's ideas - like those of another ancient-astronaut author, Erich von Däniken - have been roundly scorned by the scientific community. But now Sitchin is asking that very community to help him with the mystery of Queen Puabi.
Puabi's remains were unearthed from a tomb in present-day Iraq during the 1920s and 1930s, roughly the same time frame as the discovery and study of Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt London 's Natural History Museum determined that Puabi was about 40 years old when she died, and probably reigned as queen in her own right during the First Dynasty of Ur
He suggests that Puabi was an ancient demigod, genetically related to the visitors from Nibiru. What if these aliens tinkered with our DNA to enhance our intelligence - the biblical tree of knowledge of good and evil - but held back the genetic fruit from the tree of eternal life? Does the story of Adam and Eve actually refer to the aliens' tinkering?
The way Sitchin sees it, the ancient myths suggest that "whoever created us deliberately held back from us a certain thing - fruit, genes, DNA, whatever - not to give us health, longevity, and the immortality that they had. So what was it?"
Sitchin wants scientists to test the DNA from Puabi's remains, just in case it holds the answer. "Maybe by comparing her genome with ours, we would find out what are those missing genes that they deliberately did not give us," he told me. "Maybe. I cannot guarantee that, but maybe."
Zecharia Sitchin says "There Were Giants Upon the Earth" will be his last book.
That kind of talk has led Sitchin's critics to label him a pseudo-historian, a fraud or just plain wrong. But that kind of talk has also sold millions of books since the '70s. Sitchin's latest,"There Were Giants Upon the Earth," recaps all the theories he's built up over the years - the unorthodox interpretations of ancient scriptures, the planet Nibiru's eccentric travels and the existence of a superhuman space society that hopped over to our planet and sparked the ancient myths.
Sitchin claims that the ultimate fate of all those theories would be decided by the DNA tests he wants done on Queen Puabi's remains. "I'm really risking my life's work on this outcome," he said.
Michael Heiser, for one, isn't buying it. He's a scholar in biblical languages who maintains the "Sitchin Is Wrong" website, and he thinks Sitchin's DNA challenge to genetic researchers is just a lot of bluster.
"He wants them to search for something when they don't know what it looks like," Heiser told me. "It's not as if we have a known sample of alien DNA. How do you know when you sequence something, because junk DNA doesn't qualify. What's a hit? If they find anything where they say, 'Hey, we don't know what this does,' he would latch onto that. ... He would zero in on the gaps and the ambiguities."
On his website, Heiser provides in-depth discussions of the objections that have long been raised about Sitchin's writings: that the one-time journalist misreads the ancient texts, that he takes ancient myths as honest-to-goodness history and builds an outlandish cosmology around them, that he indulges in pop-culture paleo-babble.
Sitchin has a different perspective, of course. The way he sees it, modern science is proving him right. "In field after field, all my conclusions - including some that seemed out of place - are being corroborated," he told me. "If you go to my website you'll see entry after entry about how a new discovery has corroborated my claims."
For example, astronomers have found that distant worlds can trace orbits far more eccentric and skewed than they expected. There's even talk that an unseen giant planet may be lurking on the edge of our own solar system. All this has made Sitchin feel more confident in claiming that the planet Nibiru, home of the Annunaki, really does exist.
You won't find any top-drawer scientists willing to pick up on Sitchin's suggestions, but that's exactly the kind of person he's looking for right now. The Natural History Museum
Sitchin told me he's checking with various research groups, including some of the researchers behind last month's Neanderthal DNA findings and the DNA analysis conducted on 4,000-year-old human hair from Greenland. "I'm offering from my minuscule family foundation to fund this, by the way, so I'm not asking them for money," Sitchin told me. "And I'm not asking them to say Sitchin is right or wrong. I'm asking them to tell the museum in London
It probably wouldn't be right for researchers to take Sitchin's money - but a TV documentary about the glittering riches of ancient Ur
Here are edited excerpts from my interview with Sitchin, followed by the statement I received via e-mail from the Natural History Museum
Cosmic Log: Studying Puabi's remains would be important whether or not something extremely peculiar is found. But if something extremely peculiar is not found? If they find that the DNA sequence for these remains is pretty ordinary?
Zecharia Sitchin: Then I will look foolish. I’m really risking my life’s work on this outcome.
Q: So you feel as if this is something that would definitely disprove your view of who these Sumerians were?
A: Well you can't really "disprove." If somebody says "I did not see so-and-so," it doesn't disprove. But probably many will say it disproves my whole life's thesis. I'm so convinced that when you find the skeletal remains of this female with three cylinder seals, one of which specifically names her as "Nin" … there’s no doubt in my mind. I’m willing to risk everything from 40 years of writing and publishing on this. Now whether I could be proven right, I don’t know.
Gold jewelry that was found next to the head of Queen Puabi was apparently assembled into an ornate headdress, as shown on this mannequin.
The results may say, we don’t find anything interesting. Maybe a difference here and there, but it looks like our DNA. I’m sure people will then say, 'OK, Sitchin’s stature has collapsed.' Whether this means so or not, I don’t know. But listen, I’m 90 years old, so what the heck. This is my final book.
This is really my challenge to the scientific community. ... I’m really challenging science to corroborate the bibles. If you want it stated in one sentence, that’s what I’m doing. Science, with its ability to do whole-genome comparisons, now has the unique opportunity to test those ancient bones. Maybe Sitchin is right. I’m not asking them to undertake it to prove me right. But I think maybe if I am right, it opens such vistas of understanding in religion, in history, in genetics, in every field, that it ought to be done.
Q: A lot of people have talked about how you’re a pseudo-historian, or you have an incorrect understanding of how the Sumerian language, how the cuneiform inscriptions should be interpreted. Does this sort of criticism make you rethink some of the things you’ve said?
A: Absolutely not. First of all, I think anybody has the right to disagree with me. If I say that this sentence means this and that, you may say, ‘No, it does not say this and that.'
There is one classic instance where I was going to the meeting of the American Oriental Society. ... I was shocked, because there was an assertion about this and that, I don't know, Sumeria and Mesopotamia . The speaker had 10 minutes, and then there are five or 10 minutes with questions and answers. Well, the speaker gets up and asserts that a certain Sumerian word may have another meaning in addition to the accepted usual meaning. The guy is afraid to overstep boundaries, so he qualifies what he says. "Well, maybe I'm suggesting..." He qualifies in 10 different ways.
He has his 10 minutes, and then there are questions and answers. Somebody gets up and calls the speaker by his first name, so they must know each other. "Jim, I'm amazed at your stupidity. How could you even come up with this notion that this word has this second meaning that you're talking about?" And he runs down the poor fellow, insulting him, and that's it. The guy doesn't have a chance to answer because there's one more question and his time is up.
So what's the point? One guy thinks the word may have a second meaning, and the other guy calls him names for it. So what's one to do?
Q: Are there areas where you see that new evidence has come out and the view that you’ve had has changed through the years?
A: No, on the contrary, because of the evidence that is coming mostly from other fields. Let me give you an example. ... The planet Nibiru is listed in countless astronomical texts from Mesopotamia . The question was debated by scholars already in the 19th century, what planet is it? One school said, it’s another name for Mars. And another school said, it’s another name for Jupiter. Each group had their reasons to say it wasn’t Jupiter, or it wasn’t Mars. And I basically agreed with both of them: those who said it could not be Mars and those who said it could not be Jupiter.
So finally I came up with my solution, that it’s one more planet with a great elliptical orbit, etc., etc. So one of the criticisms that came out when “The 12th Planet,” my first book, was published in 1976 was that such an elliptical orbit is not possible, because in time, either the orbit would become more rounded and the planet would orbit closer to the sun, or it would be thrown out of the solar system. But to continue in an elliptical orbit, orbit after orbit after orbit, is not possible.
Now, I subscribe to all the magazines – Nature, Science, Archaeology – I’m keeping myself up to date on scientific discoveries. So now that we know about so-called extrasolar planets, the verdict is that an elliptical orbit is the norm. So a few months ago, there was a program [on TV] titled "Curse of the Yo-Yo Planet." I’m watching it, and the guy is talking about my planet! No doubt about it. He describes it, and calls it the "yo-yo planet" because it goes farther out and comes back. And when the program is over, there’s not one word mentioned about Sitchin!
Q: Yes, people have renewed the search for planets that may be out in the Oort cloud. For example, Sedna is a world that is between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud. People wonder how it got there. There is a sense that the sun may have been born in a cluster with other stars, and that gravitational attraction may have disrupted a lot of orbits. There was a study just a couple of days ago suggesting that as many as 90 percent of the comets in our solar system were actually stolen from neighboring star systems during the early stage of solar system development.
A: This is the whole reason for orbiting in the opposite direction … it comes from those very findings you’re talking about. How does one explain why not only Nibiru but some of the comets have retrograde orbits? If the solar system was just by itself created because of this swirling cloud, then how come not everything orbits in the same direction? All these findings keep corroborating what I have said.
Q: But I think some people have interpreted those remarks to suggest that a companion star or a dark planet may once again disrupt the solar system as early as 2012.
A: Don’t link me to 2012. Nothing will happen in 2012. The last time that Nibiru was in our vicinity was in the 6th century B.C. I provide information about this and sky maps and anything you want in my book “The End of Days.” But don’t link me to 2012.
Another aspect, by the way, is that if you do a search on “Annunaki” you get a million and a half websites. People use my writings and make up their own stories … I’m responsible for what I say, but not for what others say and their interpretations.
In general I think there’s a whole industry that has grown up in the media, mostly in the movies, for creating panic and fear. Who knows? “Something will happen, it’s coming.” I don’t think so.
Nothing will return. But I think ["gods" visited Earth] because of all the biblical prophecies. They created us, they gave us knowledge, but what they kept from us … I’m trying to find out through the DNA tests. Maybe it has to do with health, immortality, maybe cancer and such. We are their children, many of us are the result of their intermarriage. If Noah was like the Sumerian hero, a demigod, then we are all demigods. So they are not coming back to destroy us. They are not coming back to use us as food. I’m really shocked, shocked by this fearmongering, which is unjustified.
I do what I do and say what I say, and now I’m throwing down the gauntlet to the scientific community. You don’t have to do my genome, you have to do the genome of Nin Puabi.
Q: Another thing that people say is that you’re trying to read too much literal, actual history into something that was intended more as a myth, a story about the spiritual world. It would be as if someone was looking back from the future at our different cultures, and saying, “Well, God had to be like this because all these different cultures are telling the same story.” Whereas actually it’s the case that a common theme – for example, the Gilgamesh story or the story of a great flood – made its way into different cultures and doesn’t necessarily reflect historical reality.
A: Well, if that is the criticism, then it’s true. My answer to that is, so what? I take it literally, and others say I shouldn’t, so … I plead guilty.
Now, let me tell you, I think it was November or December of last year, a documentary filmmaker came by with a camera crew, and for three days he really pestered me to the extent that he camped outside my home. I told him, listen, leave me alone. What did he want? He was making a film about the 10 most important people alive today in the world. And I’m one of them, according to him. So I said to him, "Why do you think I’m one of them? Why give me the honor?" He said, "Because you have demythologized mythology. You have done a tremendous thing, You took the mythologies of all the peoples, you showed where they stem from. And you show step by step that this is based on a series of actual events."
So I plead guilty. That’s why mythology is so similar all over the world. Not necessarily detail by detail, name by name, event by event, but basically it reflects human recollection of past events.
Now, here's the e-mail I received from Sam Roberts, media relations manager at London 's Natural History Museum
"First, as background to the collections, The Natural History Museum UK Royal College
"The human remains in the collection are used by both NHM researchers and visiting researchers in studies to form comparative samples in a wide variety of studies including human evolution, human variation, forensic and medical studies among many more.
"I have been in touch with the relevant team and they confirmed that Zecharia Sitchin has contacted the Museum to request that it collect comparative samples from the remains of Nin Puabi (Queen Shubad). The Museum has a responsibility to safeguard and maintain its collections for scientific research. It does not routinely conduct ad hoc analysis of its collections, and requests for DNA analysis would need to be part of recognised research project. To date the Museum has not received a request from a researcher with recognised experience and skills in this field or with access to the necessary facilities required to undertake ancient DNA analysis. All research and loan requests involving human remains in the collection are subject to the relevant Museum policy and procedures, which are based on guidance set out by the UK Government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport."
In the days leading up to my interview, I heard from some Cosmic Log correspondents who thought Sitchin was totally bogus, and others who thought he just might be on to something. (The latter category probably overlaps with the estimated 32 percent of Americans who believe in UFOs.) Myself, I don't believe any of Sitchin's tales about alien astronauts or ancient demigods from the planet Nibiru. But I am intrigued by tales of Ur
A Host of Mummies
This find is another extraordinary time capsule describing ancient life ways. The river obviously provided the lifeblood of the community and kept the desert at bay likely until they chopped down the last trees. The firewood came from somewhere.
4000 years ago puts us into the middle of the Bronze age and a full thousand years earlier than the text of the bible. The quality of the clothing shows a well organized village society with good trade ties. They were not cut off somewhere in the Stone Age. On the other hand, the lack of metal in the grave goods suggests that such was far too valuable to bury.
It is worth keeping that in mind. Metal was the currency of this age. Copper much more than gold. Decoration always had less value and many things could serve besides gold for the purpose. Bronze knives and axes were practicably valuable. So they are always missing in grave sites and found mostly in accidental graves like Otzi’s.
Metal made life easier during the Bronze Age. It is overlapped throughout the Americas
A Host of Mummies, a Forest of Secrets
SYMBOLISM Archaeologists believe the hundreds of 13-foot poles at the Small River Cemetery in a desert in Xinjiang Province , China
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: March 15, 2010
In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet
The cemetery lies in what is now China
The long-vanished people have no name, because their origin and identity are still unknown. But many clues are now emerging about their ancestry, their way of life and even the language they spoke.
Their graveyard, known as Small River Cemetery No. 5, lies near a dried-up riverbed in the Tarim Basin Taklimakan Desert , a wilderness so inhospitable that later travelers along the Silk Road would edge along its northern or southern borders.
In modern times the region has been occupied by Turkish-speakingUighurs, joined in the last 50 years by Han settlers from China Urumqi
The 200 or so mummies have a distinctively Western appearance, and the Uighurs, even though they did not arrive in the region until the 10th century, have cited them to claim that the autonomous region was always theirs. Some of the mummies, including a well-preserved woman known as the Beauty of Loulan, were analyzed by Li Jin, a well-known geneticist at Fudan University, who said in 2007 that their DNA contained markers indicating an East Asian and even South Asian origin.
The mummies in the Small River Cemetery are, so far, the oldest discovered in the Tarim Basin Beijing University
Despite the political tensions over the mummies’ origin, the Chinese said in a report published last month in the journal BMC Biology that the people were of mixed ancestry, having both European and some Siberian genetic markers, and probably came from outside China. The team was led by Hui Zhou of Jilin University in Changchun
All the men who were analyzed had a Y chromosome that is now mostly found in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, but rarely in China Europe . Since both the Y chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA lineages are ancient, Dr. Zhou and his team conclude the European and Siberian populations probably intermarried before entering the Tarim Basin
The Small River Cemetery Tarim Basin
As the Chinese archaeologists dug through the five layers of burials, Dr. Mair recounted, they came across almost 200 poles, each 13 feet tall. Many had flat blades, painted black and red, like the oars from some great galley that had foundered beneath the waves of sand.
At the foot of each pole there were indeed boats, laid upside down and covered with cowhide. The bodies inside the boats were still wearing the clothes they had been buried in. They had felt caps with feathers tucked in the brim, uncannily resembling Tyrolean mountain hats. They wore large woolen capes with tassels and leather boots. A Bronze Age salesclerk from Victoria
Within each boat coffin were grave goods, including beautifully woven grass baskets, skillfully carved masks and bundles of ephedra, an herb that may have been used in rituals or as a medicine.
In the women’s coffins, the Chinese archaeologists encountered one or more life-size wooden phalluses laid on the body or by its side. Looking again at the shaping of the 13-foot poles that rise from the prow of each woman’s boat, the archaeologists concluded that the poles were in fact gigantic phallic symbols.
The men’s boats, on the other hand, all lay beneath the poles with bladelike tops. These were not the oars they had seemed at first sight, the Chinese archaeologists concluded, but rather symbolic vulvas that matched the opposite sex symbols above the women’s boats. “The whole of the cemetery was blanketed with blatant sexual symbolism,” Dr. Mair wrote. In his view, the “obsession with procreation” reflected the importance the community attached to fertility.
Arthur Wolf, an anthropologist at Stanford University and an expert on fertility in East Asia, said that the poles perhaps mark social status, a common theme of tombs and grave goods. “It seems that what most people want to take with them is their status, if it is anything to brag about,” he said.
Dr. Mair said the Chinese archaeologists’ interpretation of the poles as phallic symbols was “a believable analysis.” The buried people’s evident veneration of procreation could mean they were interested in both the pleasure of sex and its utility, given that it is difficult to separate the two. But they seem to have had particular respect for fertility, Dr. Mair said, because several women were buried in double-layered coffins with special grave goods.
Living in harsh surroundings, “infant mortality must have been high, so the need for procreation, particularly in light of their isolated situation, would have been great,” Dr. Mair said. Another possible risk to fertility could have arisen if the population had become in-bred. “Those women who were able to produce and rear children to adulthood would have been particularly revered,” Dr. Mair said.
Several items in the Small River Cemetery burials resemble artifacts or customs familiar in Europe , Dr. Mair noted. Boat burials were common among the Vikings. String skirts and phallic symbols have been found in Bronze Age burials of Northern Europe .
There are no known settlements near the cemetery, so the people probably lived elsewhere and reached the cemetery by boat. No woodworking tools have been found at the site, supporting the idea that the poles were carved off site.
The Tarim Basin was already quite dry when the Small River
The language spoken by the people of the Small River Cemetery Tarim Basin India and Iran
The Small River Cemetery people lived more than 2,000 years before the earliest evidence for Tokharian, but there is “a clear continuity of culture,” Dr. Mair said, in the form of people being buried with felt hats, a tradition that continued until the first few centuries A.D.
An exhibition of the Tarim Basin mummies opens March 27 at theBowers Museum in Santa Ana , Calif. — the first time that the mummies will be seen outside Asia .
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