A new discovery has released the shocking news that Neanderthals buried their dead, released as this thought hadn't occurred to us before, which is odd as we've uncovered at least one Neanderthal grave with the deceased covered in flowers before.
Here's more shocking news. Neanderthals were people.
We're unfortunately in a "splitter" era in terms of linnean classifications. There have always been two such groups for such things, one being lumpers who hold that species are big groups with a fair amount of diversity, and splitters who hold the opposite.
I'm a lumper as they are correct.
The classic definition of a species is when two members of the same genus can breed and reproduce. We're well aware that's the case with "our species" and Neanderthals, as most Europeans and now, we've learned, some Africans are packing around Neaderthal DNA.
But we should have known that all along and indeed some biologist and archeologist long held that. And in fact at one time our species was referred to as Homo Sapien Sapien; Cro-Magnon man as Homo Sapien Archiac (or something like that) and Neanderthals as Homo Sapien Neaderthalensis. Looked at that way, there was one species that had at least three subspecies, maybe more, but those are the ones we knew about.
And that definition is correct.
So now we've confirmed, not discovered that Neanderthals buried their dead. Of course they did. We already know that due to some of the injuries they had, and recovered from, they cared for their injured as well.
They were simply people after all. Every bit as smart or dull witted as we are.
More significantly burying the dead implies that they knew of an afterlife. Their art may imply that as well. Which likewise shouldn't surprise us.
The overall problem, however, is that distinguishing between hemp and marijuana isn't really completely possible overall, as the difference between the two is somewhat like the difference between wolves and wolfy dogs. Is that a dog, or a wolf? It's hard to tell
Which leads me to a science item, having nothing to do with hemp or marijuana, but oddly illustrating the point in a way.
Scientists, last year, but only revealed within the last week or so, discovered an 18,000 year old puppy in a lump of frozen mud in Siberia. It's very well preserved. It's a male.
They've sequenced its genes and can't tell if its a wolf, or a dog.
That's not really that surprising, and this conundrum has happened before with really old canine remains. Early dogs were nearly wolves. The first canines that hung out in human camps were wolves. Shoot, for all we know the very first canine to be incorporated into a human society as a pet may have been a wolf puppy.
Now, that doesn't argue, as some folks will do, that humans should keep wolves as pets. Wolves are a wild animal and even if acclimated to humans it doesn't make them a pet. They're still wolves. But the distance between the first dog and wolves isn't a very far distance. At some point, that distance must have been nearly non existent.
I'm not really going to comment in depth about this story, but rather comment on something completely tangential to it.
First, the headline from the Washington Post:
Nine members of Mormon family with U.S. citizenship killed in attack in northern Mexico; Trump offers military support
Put in Wilson in place of Trump, and this story could have appeared in a 1919 issue of the Post, or certainly a 1916 issue.
This is an awful tragedy. It appears to be a case of mistaken identify visited upon a group of people in a most violent way. Chances are, we're only reading about it in the U.S. because those killed were dual citizens of the United States and Mexico and had extremely close connections with the United States. Had they been simply regular Mexican citizens we'd likely not be reading that much about it.
None of which diminishes the tragedy.
Mormons have had a fairly long presence in Mexico. We last read about that here in the context of Mormon agricultural communities in Mexico coming under distress during the Mexican Revolution. Poncho Villa seems to have uniquely disliked them for some known reason. Maybe it was because they were closely connected with the U.S, maybe its because their religion was strange to him even though he was an irreligious man, maybe its just because they were different, or maybe it was because Villa was basically unstable. At any rate, many of them fled to the United States during that period, although some remain. I'm uncertain about these folks, but they were in the right Mexican state to have been descendants of those earlier colonies.
Anyhow, this blog has focused intensely on the 1915 to 1920 time period, and its often ran real time century delayed items from the 1916 raid on Columbus, New Mexico forward. Those have slowed up a lot recently (and readership has accordingly dropped off), but something like this reminds us, in a very tragic way, that the past is still with us. Indeed, the present is merely a developed past.
I've tried to get this topic rolling here a couple of times, without much luck (as I'm the only one who stops in here). None the less, here's another go at it:
If you can log in at SMH, please post an answer. If not, think about giving one here!
My prior efforts here:
I'm taking a bit of a poll, out of curiosity. It's decidedly unscientific, of course. Anyhow, of those people who stop in here (mostly just me, of course) how many have been in a career where they worked with animals.
If you have not, and most people will have not, how far back, if you know, do you have to go to find a person in your family who had a job working with animals. Any kind of job, farmer, rancher, artilleryman, whatever.
Nice photo showing urban draft horses. Draft horses were a huge segment of the horse population up until mid 20th Century, with some railroads owning enormous numbers for in city freighting. Urban drafts dominated the heavy horse market.
The
Manitoba Cartage & Warehousing Co. was extensively engaged in
agriculture and the breeding of Clydesdale horses. This is their award
winning six horse hitch in Toronto in 1929. Photo by Cook and Gormley.
Recently there's been some queries about the procurement of horses by the various armies early in World War One. It's popularly imagined that World War One was the end of the military horse era, but it wasn't. Millions of horses were used in the war, particularly in the role of draft animals for transport and artillery, and the procurement of horses was a really big deal.
Anyhow, while this thread doesn't really deal with the topic, directly, of the military use of horses and World War One is long enough ago now that darned near everyone who served in it has passed on, there's some interesting topics that this raises, that I'm linking in here
I was a participant in a conversation the other day when somebody volunteered an opinion I hadn't thought of, specifically regarding the practice of law. That this would end up being posted here, as a comment, I wouldn't have anticipated, but it was an interesting observation.
The specific observation was that the person making the query noted that it must have been enjoyable for some circuit riding lawyers of old to practice because of they rode. That's an interesting observation. It is true that American lawyers were sort of a mounted profession at one time, riding the circuit from town to town.At least John Adams wrote of that in sort of romantic terms. Adams liked horses and he liked riding the circuit. He actually bought his last horse, to train, while he was in his 80s.
I'm sure that not everyone who rode a circuit liked it, but what that does cause me to wonder about is the extent to which everyday life for many people once involved animals, and now does not. Now it involves pets for many people, but that's the note same thing. The circuit riding lawyers horse, the ice man's draft horse, and so on were working companions. I wonder if we haven't lost something, now that they're gone?
Epilogue 4
I've recently added a poll on this topic, for those who might find it interesting, now that there's a poll feature.
Epilogue 5
City of Houston, mounted police.
Epilogue 6
Recently this topic came up on the World War Two list in the context of armies that used mounted forces during World War Two, which is actually all of them. This is a misunderstood part of the history of the Second World War, but all armies used horses to greater or lessor degrees. In response that discussion, the bulk of which I left out, I noted this minor item in regards to the Marines on Okinawa (in addition to a lot of other items);
"Okinawa into service to a very limited extent, showing I
guess how that generation contained people who retained equine knowledge."
That brought this response from another poster:
Pat,
That's an interesting point...how widespread would
horse-knowledge be among Americans in say 1940? I would guess that a lot of
farm life was still dictated by animal power, even though tractors (I am
assuming here) had made inroads to American farm since the Model T. I have seen
video of Model T's being used in all manners on a farm (using the tires to
drive farm equipment via a belt for example).
I replied:
I'll babble on a bit as this is one of my favorite
topics.Indeed, I can probably link in
some old SMH threads on this very topic.
Automobiles actually hit the US like a storm starting
just prior to World War One.The
Model T was truly revolutionary as it was so widely affordable.Still,
horses remained a much more common means of transportation and work
"horsepower" than people imagine today.
Going back to prior to the Great War, the largest single
owners of horses in the US and Canada were the railroads.Railroads had huge numbers of heavy draft
horses, and their needs were so predominant that they dominated the draft horse
market.People today like to imagine
that heavy drafts were "farm" horses, but they were only farm horses
as farmers bread them for sale to draft users in the cities, i.e., railroads
and local transportation haulers.Farmers themselves preferred "chunks", a smaller type of draft
animal, but the numbers really began to decline in that category in the early
20th Century.Anyhow, huge numbers of
horses were actually maintained in towns by commercial users.
By WWI local haulers had started to switch to trucks, but
horses remained very common, and they continued to remain very common on in to
the 1920s. Horse use in agriculture also remained very common, even
with small gasoline engine tractors (by our standards today) making real
inroads.
The Great Depression slowed rural mechanization down a
great deal, and many farmers who would have switched to tractors chose not to
or could not afford to during the 1930s, so horses hung on in farming in a
major way.In local commercial
transportation horses greatly declined in the 1930s, but they did not disappear.You can still find horses in common use for
some sorts of urban hauling.Both my
parents, for example, could recall ice being delivered for domestic use by a
man who came with a horse drawn wagon.I
have a photo from the 1940s of the City of Montreal clearing snow with a horse
drawn snow plow, taken by my mother.
It was really the immediate post war period that picked
back up the pace of mechanization in agriculture and eliminated the urban
hauling with finality. There were still regular farmers who used horse or mules
as late as the 1950s, but they were very much on the decline.A friend of mine whose father I knew fairly
well once showed me a photo taken of him using the family's mules for the very
last time, the summer he reported for basic training during the Korean
War.With his father dead, and with his
leaving for the Army, his mothers and brother decided that the time had come
for a tractor.
On the other hand, one additional thing to keep in mind
is that most town and city dwellers in the US hadn't been horse users for a very
long time. Even in the late 19th Century, when horses were common
for all uses, people in towns largely did not use them.Just too hard to keep in town.Rural people used them, but those who lived
inside a town limit tended not to, as it just wasn't practical to keep
one.Only the wealthy could afford to do
so. So, for that reason, it was really the bicycle not the automobile, that was
seen at first as a real revolution in transportation for the common man.
So, I guess to answer the question a little more
directly, with a much larger percentage of our population living on farms (or
ranches, which still use horses today), and with some ongoing urban use, horse
familiarity would have been much higher than it is today, but at the same point
in time, it would not have been common knowledge amongst most troops either.
But it was this reply by another participant I wanted to note:
My dad's and mom's families' farms in Missouri still used
horses through WWII. They didn't get tractors until well after the war.
Just the news story my 53 year old self wants to read on a Sunday morning prior to a really busy Monday morning.
RED LODGE, Mont. —
Blowing up dead animals was “just part of the deal” in the 16 seasons Nolan
Melin worked as a backcountry horse packer and trail crew member for the Forest
Service.
“You’ve got to get rid
of them,” he said matter-of-factly about a pretty unusual occurrence.
Otherwise, a dead horse
or mule might attract bears to a wilderness trail, which is dangerous for
humans and the bears.
Horse packing is a skill
few people possess in this digital, mechanized age. The profession harkens back
to a simpler time when horsepower actually involved a real horse.
In the Forest Service’s
Region 1, which encompasses 25 million acres spread across five states, there
are only eight full-time horse packers with another 25 who include that
specialty in their other duties. So that made Melin a rare breed.
Traute Parrie, retired
Beartooth District ranger, said, “When I got to the Beartooth District ranger
job, it was some combination of humbling and thrilling to realize I’d landed on
a district where we still had a permanent packer, a rare thing these days. It
spoke to the values that this district holds important.”
The reality is that it’s
also a punishing profession — lifting heavy loads as well as dealing with
horses and mules that sometime possess a mind of their own. Most horse packers
have several tales about a wild blow up, when animals bucked loose and took off
for points unknown.
“Mules are unforgiving
if you don’t understand them,” Melin said. “I love those old mules, but they
knew who was boss and who they could walk over.”
Worn out at the age of
36, after years of heavy lifting and being thrown from his mount a few times,
Melin is stepping down from his job as packer for the Beartooth Ranger District
to work in Miles City, Montana. The new job will be closer to his hometown. He
grew up on a ranch outside of Ashland.
Different people react differently to a story like this. I sent it around to a collection of friends and an older one, perhaps now approaching 70, simply lamented how this news story reports the subject as broken down at 36. There's something to that. But, for a person who loves the outdoors but who spends every day in offices, imaging an occupation outdoors with horses and mules can't help but seem, well, romantic.
March 16, 2017 Epilogue 9
I ran this earlier this week and then considered that it really ought to be added to this thread.
I know that the German Army, as well as the Austrian army, retained horses and mules in a mountain troop role. And for that matter I know why they do, so this story isn't a surprise to me.
I have to admit that from the vantage point of my office window or the deposition hall, I have to wonder if I were German or Austrian I would have opted for something like this rather than the direction I took. That's easy to say, after all, as the probable answer is probably not, given as I'm not working for the Forest Service or the Game & Fish, etc.
Still, it's hard, at least for those of us with a certain mindset, not to look at scenes like this and be a bit envious, something I'm sure that surprises others.
FWIW, horses in a military role and rural police setting role remain highly viable in certain settings are are undoubtedly underused, rather than underused.
