Yesterday, someone on my anthropology list bravely suggested one of my own pet theories (the sort so wildass, you'd never mention it in front of an academic, unless you were absurdly brave, like this fellow was) -- namely that there was an ancient cross-migration of population between the "Native Americans" (aboriginal Asians in North America) and the people of the British isles. I've always thought the similarities between Celtic and Native American iconography were striking. There are rough tool-use similarities in NAand Celtic petroglyphs, in NA and Celtic design. Between the Celtic round house and the NA ones. And even music of the Celts (can't find a decent free sample but Spotted Eagle's will give you a good comparison if you're familiar with the Celtic flute) and the original Americans (I recommend Spotted Eagle's Summer Morn for a perfect example).

Now just these items alone might well be explained as the rough similarities of traditional peoples living with tool use available, overshadowed by common human hands and a bias of human nervous systems. The use of the same iconography might be related to interaction with the wild. I would still wonder in more ambitious moments, but this coupled with ...

The fact the Native Americans of the southeast US explicitly state that "red-haired men" came across on boats to trade with them (but why should we listen to them, right?). Since red hair is unknown among Asians, obviously these fellows were at least European. When you see the similarities in clan structure, in basic weaponry, and even the Lake MicMac Indians ... and now the appearance of North African gene only seen in two places outside North Africa -- in Ireland and among Native Americans. This may be explained by the intermarriage between NAs and British settlers (my own British/Irish-American ancestors were occasionally married to Cherokee, thereby giving me my heritage), however this gene is found primarily in IRELAND. Most American Irish from the long-settlement areas were Scots-Irish.

None of this is even close to conclusive -- it's not even enough to cobble together a good theory, but it is enough to make many people wonder.

Alpha primate anthropologist, when you suggest it to them, start hurling verbal excrement because their own mainstream theories (in which they believe) are thereby threatened. Just so, this poor guy on the mailing list was set-upon. I tried to defend him, but the main guys would have nothing of it. The poor fellow ended up unsubscribing from the mailing list.

Unfortunately, science is no different than any other Alpha primate endeavor. Participants learn that over time and keep weird theories to themselves, which is why the field is "economized" to the point where only one insane theoretician (refusing to be cowed by the mainstream) every hundred years suddenly gets it right -- and we are all amazed. When you track back, you find those theories hinted at in earlier writings by less adventurous, less courageous academics. Science is then slowed down to a laborious, unnecessary crawl, which is the very thing Occam was supposed to eliminate. I often wonder if the cure for cancer, the answer to the energy crisis, and who knows what else might be found in papers once written but later tucked away because some wondering student learned to be ashamed of his capacity for awe.

We really have to start teaching our children that it's okay to think. We have Alpha primates like Penn Jillette (and if he isn't a classic Alpha male primate, I don't know what he is) howling at the screen, representing "science" (when he isn't a scientist), telling children that thinking weird theories is "dangerous". You'd think you were listening to a fundamentalist minister talking about the "wages of sin".

No, believing these things ... believing absolutely ... is dangerous. Or in the relative words of Cervantes, believing the windmills ARE giants, is madness ... but to think that they might be giants? That is the door to all science and art. It's also the name of one of my favorite movies, but that's for another blog.

We now educate children in an environment antagonistic toward intellectual curiosity and only approving of orthodoxy (which is, by its very essence, a recapitulated body of ignorance). There's no sense of agnosticism about the sacred cow "beliefs" of science, when we should hold them as intellectually debatable as any other.

On one side, we have the fundamentalist preacher, on the other, we have the fundamentalist mechanist/orthodox scientist. Both have a lot in common with each other. And the rest of us must pay the price.

Sorry for the long one today.

Remember the olden days when your story (over which you had labored for sometimes months on end) was cut open by one of those intently critical reviewers -- in the same review zine where someone else's creative typing attempt is reviewed, but only in terms of another reviewer's less critical golden praise? Remember the net effect that your zine looked worse than the creative typist's? Remember how discouraging that was?

It's getting to be like that for me with post-and-praise people. I've already had my rant about that a couple of months back, but honestly, why work hard on a piece of fan fiction at all?

Yeah, yeah, I know all the stuff you're thinking and those are all the reasons I do, but it really begins to bug a body after awhile. Yeesh.