Open Thread

Open Thread - 12-15-23 - To the Victor Belong the Spoils

The history of mankind is basically a timeline of war, from the first empires to the present. Many great civilizations, cultures, histories and knowledge down through the centuries have been lost to war. There are many examples of the victors erasing a peoples existence and replacing it with their concept of national identity. For example, The Old Testament is full of war, genocide and slaughter. History books are chronicles of war with intermittent smatterings of peace and prosperity. How much knowledge has been lost to the scourge of war? We will never know what the world has missed or how different it may have been because of the antiquities that were conquered and lost forever.

If the victor rewrites history in its favor, how can we trust anything that has been handed down to us, considering the possibility that the other side of the story may have been lost or altered for all of posterity? How much knowledge has been lost due to war, and the rewriting of history. The Library of Alexandria is just one example of ancient histories and knowledge lost to conflict. What knowledge and wisdom was lost forever in that fire of conflict? We'll never know.

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Attribution: Sanjiv Banga
Larger image at Pexels Creative Commons

Open Thread - Thurs 14 Dec 2023 - Dogs! Part I

Dogs, Dogs, Dogs - Wow

I thought I'd present a few bits of knowledge I've gotten from one of the papers in the book on dogs I'm very slowly reading. The book's in pdf format, for some reason that makes it slower to read - I guess because I can't read it in bed before I go to sleep! The book is entitled Dogs, Past and Present: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. It's very, very academic - each article has like 4-10 pages of bibliography! Smile I found it at Archaeopress, a publisher in England where I frequently get books about archaeology for my research. The book is available as a pdf through open access, which is an English/British library system which allows online access to research publications; it's sort of like going to the library on your computer at home.

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Jaska would sweep the floor, or do the scrapping, if she had thumbs! She's a big help!

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