Eric’s World

For those of us classicists, this is a very exciting discovery (even if a few months old now). I’m just disappointed that somebody else found it, and not me. An article in the New York Times talks about the discovery of the cave sacred to the Romans. According to Roman myth, two twins, Romulus and Remus, were rescued by a she-wolf and suckled back to health in this cave. Whether or not this myth is true, the cave itself was probably the cave associated with this myth, as well as the Roman festival of the Lupercalia. celebrated on February 13-15. This old yet strange festival involved the sacrifice of dogs and goats. Then, after getting their foreheads smeared with blood, young boys would wear the goat skins, run around the Palatine Hill and hit women with strips of leather (called Februa, thus the naming of the month) thereby insuring fertility.

What else is exciting about this cave is its location under the house of the first emperor, Augustus. This confirms the notion that Augustus saw himself as the new founder of Rome by constructing his house on top of the sacred cave and connecting himself with Romulus and the festivals surrounding it.

I’m sure you all are thrilled.

Last night I was reading in Thomas Cahill’s latest book, The Mysteries of the Middle Ages, and he was talking about the different world of the Middle Ages.  People did not get to choose their profession. It was chosen by their parents, and it usually involved following the family trade or business.  “shoemakers remained shoemakers, and duchesses duchesses and fishwives fishwives, and no one entertained even a whisper of hope for an improvement of status.”

Cahill does, however, point out the possible advantage of this system.  “We fail to acknowledge, on the one hand, how full of anxiety our own society is, how its lack of assigned roles leaves so many individuals woefully isolated, permanently nervous about the random fluctuations of their fortunes. If, on the other hand, one could say, ‘I am the shoemaker of Trier, as was my father before me, as will be my son after me; I am an integral part of my community, even necessary to it; my neighbors respect me and depend on my skill,’ one could own an abiding peace that eludes all but a very few children of twenty-first century.”

I couldn’t help but see my own personal anxieties about what I was going to do with my career. I have often asked questions like these: “What am I going to study in school?  How am I going to make money?  How am I going to be respected for what I do?” et cetera.  I still often ask myself these questions, and I do have considerable anxiety on whether or not I have chosen the right path.  This is a difficulty of our own age.  Certainly, there are many things about our own time that make life easier than those of the twelfth century, but having ones own career given to oneself made other things much easier than today’s open field.  I can’t say that I truly want my career chosen for me, but this passage in this book made me think about my career anxieties, and, for a moment, I wished that our society made it clear our own destinies.

Last night as I was tending bar, I had a customer ask if I had heard of the latest discovery: the oldest city in the world in Peru. I asked him if it was older than Jericho, Jarmo, or ‘Ain Ghazal, but he didn’t know what I was talking about. Obviously he wasn’t schooled in archaeology, but I was flattered by his attempts to connect with my interests. I decided to browse and see what he was talking about. Sure enough, there was a discovery, but it wasn’t as old as the neolithic sites in the Near East.  Last month, German and Peruvian archaeologists discovered a very old Plaza in the ancient city of Casma. Carbon dating puts the ancient site around 5500 BP (Before Present, which is about 2,600-2,500 BC).   If this is true, this part of the city would make it one of the oldest cites in Peru and also in the New World (Caral is proabably slightly older, but is probably contemporary with these new findings).  The findings here and at Caral mean that there were complex societies in South America contemporary with the Old Kingdom of Egypt and the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. These settlements even have their own pyramids.  The Associated Press put out this article on the discovery.

With any luck, maybe the pumping out of carbon dioxide emissions will protect us from global cooling. Believe it or not, the climate of the earth does change. Despite Al Gore’s attempts to sensationalize and put an end to the debate on global warming, we should, I think, continue to examine the evidence and look at all of the contributing factors. One of the things that the former VP doesn’t really discuss is that bright, fiery furnace in the sky. Don’t you think that the sun might have a bit of an impact on global temperatures? Recent studies of the sun show that we are probably in greater danger of a decrease in global temperatures than an increase due to solar activity, not carbon dioxide emissions.

In addition, the stark reality is that a decrease in temperatures is a much greater risk to humanity than warming. Take the medieval warm period, for example: the world saw increased temperatures between the years 800 and 1300. The results were good for the world, such as warmer temperatures, longer growing seasons, which reduces diseases and increases food production. The result of this was a flourish of human culture. Now tell me that isn’t a good thing. The increase in temperatures were due to solar activity, not human industry.

The sun operates on an 11-year cycle, more or less, but recently, astronomers have observed that the activity on the surface of the sun have been remarkably quiet (solar flares, sun spots, etc.). This could have a much bigger impact on our climate than emission of gasses into the atmosphere. I recommend this article. Food for thought, anyway.

There was a news report today that the United States Navy has been testing a new weapon. To anyone who has played any number of shooter-style videogames or a science fiction buff, the idea of a railgun is familiar, but this sci-fi weapon is becoming a reality for the U.S. military. The railgun uses electricity rather than gunpowder to hurl a projectile over 200 nautical miles at supersonic speeds (approx. 3,700 mph or mach 5), and the gun sucks a wopping 10 megajoules for power. One of the many benefits of such a gun is that it will no longer be necessary to store huge amounts of gunpowder on board the equipped vessels, thereby eliminating the threat of an explosion on board the ship. It is always fascinating to me how technology of someone’s imagination often becomes a reality.

This is my first blog. Well, I should specify, I have blogged before on myspace, but that is largely reserved for silly things. My first blog is about my choice for my blog name: Arizona Eric.  When I moved to Arizona to study archaeology at the University of Arizona, my father said that I was going to be like Indiana Jones. Now of course, I couldn’t steal the same name. Besides, I do not have a dog named Indiana (supposedly this is where George Lucas got the idea), nor have I ever been to the state.  Arizona was much more suitable, and my name is not Jones.  So Arizona Eric it was, and for the first year of my residence in Arizona, my weekly phone-calls would begin with my dad asking, “How is Arizona Eric?”