JUD EVANS:
Regarding the *Viking axe* and my resignation from the Paraguayan  Ecultura Project. It was not so much the fact that (as you point out) it is possible there were variant types of axes from the Viking period,  (though the Glaswegian experts did not mention such variants) it was the fact that the axe was *verified* as Viking by the Paraguayan guy who had no expertise in such a specialist matter.

GARY C. MOORE:
You are perfectly right and I came to the same judgment immediately. But it is not the Paraguayan who *counts* but rather the behavior of the *real* authority. That the Vikings discovered North America was a hoax until, finally, in the 1990s [I think] someone actually broke down and looked into a perfectly obvious, easily accessible site at Diex aux Meadows in New Foundland, Canada.

    Now, the *reputable* archeologists have known about the Viking tales since at least the beginning of the 19th century. The discovery late in the 20th century of a map showing part of North America stimulated things retardedly. But my primary point is, Why did they not go look in perfectly obvious places to begin with? All Schielemann had was the ILIAD and NO scholastic education, all self taught, and look at all he found!!!!!!! AND! --- archeologists had been digging around in Mesopotamia for fifty years before him.

     George Hancock’s point is that, Why do not archeologists use information from other soundly grounded disciplines like geology, instead of utterly ignoring them? You would think archeologists, especially those working for decades literally with limestone, would know all about it. But they do not mention it even when the question is raised. Rather, they attack the credentials of the person making the claim and say he is quoting things out of context KNOWING very few people have the abilities to FURTHER check out that contention or even have the interest to do so.

   Now, there are problems with Hancock. He takes his project with almost religious fervor. This is unfortunate, but psychologically understandable when *serious* scholars do not listen to him. But that is not what we need to judge him for, but for the unassailable facts he dredges up [such as the obviously human formed huge building stones off Dwarka, Gujurat, India, and the problem of the maps which now has been shown by numerous different people and *respected* scholars completely independently and ignorant, or at least it seems so, of Graham Hancock’s efforts. Some of their conclusions disagree - but this seems purely in degree - but all agree there was a very old source for the Portuguese maps the Portuguese reported themselves as being based on older maps many times from Asia. These are solid, verified starting points from which amateur archeologists may or may not make verifiable connections. But like Schielemann they can GO and SEE with their physical EYES whereas their detractors universally refer to books and articles, and the pitifully few times they actually GO to SEE for themselves either say maybe . . . Or nothing at all, or even worse. Hancock says there is evidence of deliberate destruction he pointed out in several different instances at Malta -- which is the only place I know of he has made that claim. So it is hardly habitual.

    There is also the problem of Ockham’s Razor. Supposedly the simplest answer is most likely to be true. And say there is *nothing to it* is certainly a *simple* answer. But what one HAS to do, from our inexpert point of view, is take facts already solidly established like there were numerous land bridges during glaciation periods, therefore for MANY thousands of years dry land where there is ocean now, and wonder if people lived there. Supposedly this has now been proven for sure in the Black Sea. Supposedly a stone age village was just recently discovered off the shores of Israel. So, would it not be a reasonable hypothesis there might well be whole civilizations built on dry land near ancient sea shores during glaciation and even post-glaciation [since the refilling of the seas took about 20,000 years -- in spurts, not continuously, a certified fact] which would give you a MINIMAL period of about 25,000 years whereas archeologists claim *real* civilization only existed for the last 4,500 years going to 6,000 years POSSIBLY in Mesopotamia.

    FOOTNOTE: The latest cave with cave paintings was discovered by a French scuba diver prowling around the underwater caves of southern France. It is ONLY accessible from underwater.


JUD EVANS:
There were other worries. No sample representations of the *so-called* runic lettering were provided. You probably know how difficult it is to scratch rounded letters of any alphabet on wood (because of the grain) or stone (because of its hardness)? It is quite easy to push up or pull down a sharp intrument (knife, sharp instrument, stylus etc) to form straight or diagonal lines and that is why so many ancient scripts (from all over the world) look the same. If they had been serious they would have submitted the marks to experts in Stockholm for verification. I got the feeling it was all about attracting tourists and they were willing to cut corners ignore and not worry to much about historical veracity in doing so. Once, in Istanbul, in the Hagia Sophia, built as the new Cathedral of Constantinople by the Emperor Justinian and now a mosque) led by a guide, I was taken up a narrow winding staircase high up to a landing which looked down upon the kneeling faithful far below. There, incised into a bannister-rail, was some Varanger (Viking) letters left by an expatriate Scandinavian bodyguard of a past Byzantine emperor..  The Varangian Guard was a foreign mercenary force and the elite of the Byzantine infantry. It was comprised principally of Vikings, Nordic, Slavic and Germanic peoples. Well disciplined and loyal, as long as they were well paid. Although most of them brought their own weapons with them when entering the Emperor's service, they did gradually adopt Byzantine military dress and equipment. Their most characteristic weapon was a heavy axe, hence their designation as pelekyforos froura, the "axe-bearing guard".

GARY C. MOORE:

    One last point: It is not whether an *amateur* historian or archeologist makes a valid main thesis but whether the evidence he uses, even from thoroughly disreputable sources [Hume often said, in his HISTORY OF ENGLANF, My source is disreputable but it is the only source I have.], if there are certified facts you already know to substantiate at least PART of the story. With Graham Hancock’s THE SIGN AND THE SEAL about the Arc of the Covenant being in a church in Ethiopia where no one is allowed to see it, I knew many of the things he pinned history on, Heliopolis, Elephantine Island, and most fabulous of all the Falashas practicing Judaism from before the destruction of the temple [but which destruction?]. In HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL, the point for me was NOT was there really a blood line from Jesus BUT whether someone from the middle of the Dark Ages [500 to 700 AD] that believed or disseminated the belief that there was -- for political reasons that effected European history then and possibly, here and there, since - no matter how disreputable the original source, something which the authors explicitly stated. I really do not believe there were Vikings in Paraguay, but, considering everything else I have learned at least it is a real -- though distant, and possiblt pointless - possibility.

    P. S. I have started watch a PBS documentary about China discovering America in 1421. Along with academics, they interview the NUMEROUS and relatively well financed amateur archeological societies located in just about every Chinese town and city. They know their own history to a degree most American professors of Chinese history - this is simply my impression - do not. There is absolutely nothing like this in the United States even for American history. But I hear the United Kingdom is very different? More like the Chinese?

As to recent activity, I have been reading a great deal on ancient Japan, stimulated by Graham Hancock's book UNDERWORLD, and have discovered the world's oldest ongoing culture, the Jomon, that have now become the Ainu. Dating at least from 16,000 years ago and originally inhabiting the whole of modern Japan from southern Rykyuyus to Hokaido, there are only 24,000 official Ainus left in Hokaido Island, being forced there not only from the south by forcible Japanese assimulation but thrown out of the Kirile and Sakhalin Islands by the Russians in 1945.

JUD EVANS:
It is a very interesting period and as a general geographical area has long been of interest to me. Years ago, examining photographs and drawings of the Ainu, I gained the impression that they were of the same stock as the Australian aborigines - it was something to do with the brow formation and the elongated jawbones.

En passant the feelings expressed in Richard's most excellent recent poem *What I Could Have Been* were reflected in/for me as a young man in my dream of becoming a professional [academic] linguist and proving a connection between Korean and the Turkic languages. T'was at that time that I became interested in the Ainu language, which like European Basque has long thought to be a language isolate.

     Many attempts have been made to relate Japanese, Korean and Ainu via an early proto-Ainu language which is probably that of the Jomon culture of which you speak. The original Korean language has been heavily influenced by Chinese and Japanese words. Chinese writing has been known in Korea for over 2,000 years. It was used widely during the Chinese occupation of northern Korea from 108 BC to 313 AD. By the 5th century AD, the Koreans were starting to write in Classical Chinese as was Korean writing until a brilliant Korean King introduced a fantastically pure and completely phonetical alphabet for Korean called hangeul. The system is far superior to any other alphabetic system in the world (including ancient Greek.) Modern Swedish is the best European alphabet from a phonetic POV, and Russian too can only be pronounced one way. If one knows how to pronounce Korean, Swedish or Russian letters - one can in theory read the languages perfectly [though one has no idea of what the words mean.) The worst [most un-phonetic language in the world is Irish Gaelic { *ceilegh* is pronounced *kaylee* for example.} I still have two Korean friends with whom I remain in contact. One of them was my house guest some years ago, and another I travelled down to London to meet about 5 or 6 years since. (do Americans use the word *since* meaning *ago* this way?)


GARY C. MOORE:
They are the oldest pottery makers in the world and uncontestibly [but ignored] left their pottery in Peru in pre-Inca times [at an officially reported excavation site in the late
1960s] and went through a strange cultural *evolution* that built up to, in their middle period, to very relatively settled towns, then, surprizingly, went back to a foraging culture - but using the formerly settled sites as ceremonial centers.

JUD EVANS:
Might this *step backward* into foraging been as a result of *Japanese* incursion?

GARY C. MOORE:
To call them either *settled* or *hunter-gatherors* is misleading because [A] they developed a very elaborate pottery of unique and baroque design, but [B] developed from very early on a lacquer painting industry - it can only be described as such - that requires literally months of work to produce individual pieces from complex refining of laquer to multilayered application.

JUD EVANS:
I understand they decorated their earthenware with impressions made by cords.

GARY C. MOORE:
Dental studies, as well as numerous other things, have identified the Jomon with the Ainu as a NON-Mongolian *race*, and brings in question the very concept of *race* itself. They are described as *nondifferentiated* Asian, that is Asians BEFORE they broke up into distinct physical groups. They are, by the Japanese, described as
*white*, but have facial features like the Australian aborigines.

JUD EVANS:
Bingo!

GARY C. MOORE:
Originally, they supposedly came over a continuous land bridge from the Amur River area in Siberia to Sakhalin Island to Hokaido, crossed the deep 26 miles of sea between Hokaido and Honshu, the main Japanese island, and spread all the way down the Ryukyukus. Then they were expelled or assimilated [Okinawans resemble Ainu physically to some extent, and have an autonomous but Japanese type culture], being pushed up north on Honshu back to Hokaido Island by the traditional type Japanese. Official discrimination against them has only been lifted in the last couple of months.

Also I have been reading Graham Hancock about the origin of the Palaeolithic and *primitive* stone paintings by shamans using psychoactive plants and non-drug techniques, with scientifically repeatable results based on human physiology for the last 50,000 years to, essentially, create religion, the supernatural per se, discovered by Dr. David Lewis-Williams at Wittwaterstrand University in South Africa where he studied extensively the now extinct San people and compared results with anthropology around the world but most significantly with the Paleoplithic cave paintings of Europe, and whose theory has generally, now, been accepted by the academic community.

JUD EVANS:
It is interesting that psychoactive herbs have been used in almost all areas of the world in connection with religion. Might it be that in the absence of logical, scientific explanations for the cosmos, life, how it all began, what am I? , etc., there was a need for a transcendentalist portal to find answers drugs, alcohol, disorientation via whirling [dervishes etc.] ? It is strange that after a few drinks we imagine that we are more in touch with *reality* when in fact [as driving under the influence confirms] it is quite the opposite. Possibly the affects of drugs suppress the pathways that provide the most clarified form of undifferentiated consciousness and blunt our awareness of the environment both judgementally and socially. This would explain how we sometimes make complete asses of ourselves when we are drunk.

BTW. I was reading the archives of the AIT list and came across the piece you posted on the History of the Carvakas by Phil Hari Singh. I too find Hindu materialism fascinating, and I will publish it later today [under Singh] in the Athenaeum Library.