Today it was reported that some archaeologists, working in Egypt, have discovered a shaft which led down to a small room. There were several sarcophagai in the room, and they have mummys in them--at least one has, 'cos the lid's ajar and they can see the body. Maybe they took the pharohs away and put them in safe-keeping so's the thieves wouldn't smash them up?

It will be interesting to see what they can learn about these mummies. I know that for the longest time they only buried kings in the Valley of Kings (I think that's where they found the mummies), but after awhile even commoners got buried there.

I'm wondering how they'll go about exhibiting their discoveries without essentially looting the tomb in the name of science. I enjoyed the King Tut exhibit when it came through, and from what I know they weren't disrespectful of the deceased (insofar as they could), but there was still the idea that this was stuff out of somebody's grave.

how many years have to pass before it changes from grave robbing to archeology?or is it just a case of how much interest there is/how much knowledge to be gained?

I got to thinking about it and I think it has to do with intention. Grave robbing is for personal gain while archaeology is for knowledge. I hope whatever artifacts they find stay in Egypt. They belong to the people of Egypt, and nobody has the right to cart the goods off without permission regardless of the intent. I live in America and know that if somebody from another found, say, a collection of Benjamin Franklin's unpublished works and carted them off to another country, I'd feel like someone had just robbed my house. I have no problem with historic artifacts touring the world, but I feel they should left in their native or intended lands.

I'm just funny that way.

I know how you feel, Oxygen. Imagine America in 3-4000 years from now--the ruins of ancient cities everywhere, and people going about finding the tombs of famous Americans and trying to interpret the history of America from the scraps that remain. How accurate a picture would they gain from the excercise?

I was watching a documentary on the sculpting of Mt. Rushmore, and part of the original plan was to have the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights carved into the stone. The mountain wasn't big enough for the original design, so the plan was amended to move it into a chamber behind the monument. Assuming they could translate the language, I think that would have been a great idea to go through with. Safe from the elements, while paper deteriorates the stone should last pretty much forever (barring outside influences like nuclear bombs or Taliban types blasting ancient monuments into nothingness).

If future archaeologists do find documents of America, I hope they find originals. When the Victorians took hold of society, everything got whitewashed into saintly purity. While I don't doubt that quite a few of these people had some decent morals, I do doubt that they were the uber-Boy Scouts tradition cracks them up to be. The whitewashing lasted until around the 70's or so, when the axe swung to the other extreme, portraying these guys as argumentative hypocrites.

I've been forunate enough to read contemporary accounts of our early leaders written by the people around them. They're fascinating and often humorous for their being so candid. For example, they never told us in school that George Washington was a complete strikeout with the ladies. He was funny, refined and could dance well, but he was one of those guys that the girls wanted to be "just friends" with. Only Martha Custis found him to be worth more than a passing glance, so she set him up big time. George was heading to a young lady's house and got as far as the gate when Martha, who just happened to be nearby, popped up with a "watch doin'?" attitude. When he explained his intentions, she told him that the lady was already seeing someone. George knew how his luck ran with unattached girls, so an attached one was hopeless. He turned to take his leave and Martha continued walking with him. The rest is history. For the record, the young lady in question was unattached. (Legend has it that George never told a lie. They never said anything about Martha. ;))

There were other stories about women of the period whom history would have us believe were quiet, docile little homebodies who sat about in their parlors awaiting gentlemen callers. On the contrary, they were as driven and capable as any woman today. I'd hate to think that future generations might write these women off as no more than breeders and household ornaments.

Indeed so, Oxygen--we take an enormous amount for granted, and never (or hardly ever) talk about it. Thereby, how much history disappears, more by neglect than by any other method? Living history slips away through our fingers by way of unasked or unanswered questions, unheard replies, careless or non-recording. Our easy assuptions of this generation or century are the great historical insights of a hundred or a thousand years from now. Imagine spending even only a month in the year 1006 AD, and think how much that personal contact could increase our knowledge of so-called dull everyday life of that period--material that nobody ever thought to record because everyone at the time thought, 'well, everyone knows that anyway.'

There was this great book called "Life In A Medieval Village" that was pretty fascinating for its look at everyday life in those days. I was ready to enter a completely alien world, but was surprised to find how much of it I could readily relate to. The social aspect wasn't much different from life in any small town anywhere in the world today. Friends, enemies, gossips, youth hanging out and getting to trouble, the poor old widow and the miller's family who looked in on her from time to time, the authors really made these people come to life. They had taken the village and occupants from the Domesday books, and it's pretty much the book that got me to wondering just how much things have and haven't changed. It was written so wonderfully that it was easy to become attached to these people as though they were my actual friends and neighbors...

...and then the plague hit. The shock I felt when they found the widow's body floating in the river (no evidence of foul play, they think she may have gone for water and slipped) took me off guard. Then one by one these people were either dying or leaving town. The miller's family all died (tragically, they had just had a daughter!), the wainwright fell ill and left town (way to spread it, man), the reeve died, leaving his post to his only surviving son, it was a punch to the gut. Ominously, the first morning the church bells didn't ring pretty much told the story there. The reeve's son was the last to leave town. He had managed to avoid the plague, but when he left there was this huge feeling of being alone in a village of the dead. It was a very involving book, and I was more drawn into it by the fact that nobody there was famous. They were just everyday working stiffs like the rest of us, and they still managed to leave a mark on history.

Up until that book, I had always pretty much dismissed medieval peasantry as the typical, over-simplified stereotype of the downtrodden masses. It was cool to see them behaving like any small-town population of today, going to work, knocking back a few at the bar/pub/inn after work, the girls getting together to talk about the guys, the guys watching the girls (and wondering what they're giggling about), charitable people doing their good deeds (taking food and blankets to the itinerant workers camped out in the fields), delinquents getting busted by the village posse (the reeve and five guys brought in the local hoodlums who had chased a farmer's livestock out into the nearby fields just for kicks, the alarm was raised by the itinerant workers who were in danger of being trampled).

I do wish history would pay more attention to the common man, who is, after all, the foundation of any society. A society is only embellished by heroes. It's built and supported by the infrastructure made up of us commoners.

There's a book very much like that in our local library-- I'll look it up and see if I can find the title, which slips my mind. It's about the history of an English village--with luck you might be able to get it through Amazon.

Actually, it occurred to me that all those ladies who just wanted to hang out with George Washington instead of getting serious with him must've been kicking themselves later, when he ended up as President and their husband ended up as the local tavern-keeper. :D

Hee hee! Sometimes I wonder what sort of history would be common knowledge if something like Jerry Springer or Oprah were known back then. The story of how Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson got together is worthy of a daytime soap opera complete with abusive relationships, saucy younger cousins, a handsome stranger from out of town, relatives with ulterior motives, a shooting, a murder accusation, politicians, innocent bystanders,... might make a heck of a movie!

This is so boring. I mean yeah they found some dead mummy's. Who wants to know about ancient Egyptian faggot lords?

Who wants to know about your warriors of the wasteland and their pedophile prophet?

This is so boring. I mean yeah they found some dead mummy's. Who wants to know about ancient Egyptian faggot lords?

In five thousand years time, Muslim, perhaps the only information about Islamic society will come from archaeological excavations. After all, every civilisation dies eventually, or becomes so altered by time and circumstance as to be unrecognisable. I daresay that in a few thousand years, the names of Jesus and Mohammed, Bhudda, Zoroaster and Baha Ulah will just be footnotes of history, and the religions they founded will have been superceded by others. Later prophets, different pantheons of gods, strange cultures will have taken their place. What then will anyone of those remote times know about our far-off days in the past? Next to nothing. What did we know of Sumeria, Akkad, Assyria, ancient Egypt, until the archaelogists started poking around. OK, they made a lot of mistakes and to start with they were no better than thieves--but without their work we'd be blind to the past.

Muslim- Why don't pack some C4 around your ass and blow yourself up? If you can't add anything of value to a discussion, keep your mouth shut. You're attracting flies.

There is very little documented information on how George Washington met the wealthy widow Martha Parke-Custis but it appears to have been a whirlwind courtship.
It is known that the young widow who had been able to charm her marriage challenged late father-in-law so that he did support his son's marriage to her was much sought after as a wife.

Actually, I got it straight from journals of people (mostly women, journals are an old pastime for women with a few minutes to themselves during the day and in olden days took the place of psychotherapists) who actually knew them. Most of my sources, in fact, as close to the subjects as I can get. I don't trust Victorian accounts, which as I said, are often whitewashed into saintly purity.

Another little bit of trivia is that Thomas Jefferson initially joined the rebellion as what amounted to a mommy-defiance move. It wasn't until later that he really got behind it.

Interesting--I had a lot of relatives in the American Revolution. On both sides, unfortunately--loyalists as well as patriots. As a result, post-1784, I had a lot of rels. move up to the Atlantic provinces of Canada.

I don't know how many tories were in my family tree, but I do know John Hancock is in there. Before we learned this (via my aunt who does geneaolgy), my mother used to laugh about our signatures because we were trying to outdo each other for fanciness. She always joked that we must be related to John Hancock (are signatures genetic? :) Doubt it!) So far, I've won. My first initial, "L" lends itself easily to a big dramatic sweep, while my maiden name, "Chacon" had plenty of opportunities for flourishes. When I got married my brothers didn't think I do anything with the name "Allen", so I took them to school on it! (Hee hee! Turns out my husband is a direct descendant of Ethan Allen. I have a collection of Revolution era memorabilia, but genetic material?!?!? Now THAT'S a feather in the old cap! :D I swear I didn't know it before we got married. I should have suspected. Ethan was 6'9, Will is 6'7 because he can't quite straighten all the way up due to a back injury. He may actually be 6'8 or 6'9 bolt upright.)

I wish I still had her notes on the family tree, but she needed them back and now we've lost touch. She went back to the 1500's in some cases, but I remember one name standing out from Philadelphia in 1774, that of Ann Pine. She had down that Ann married a sailor named Stephen Decatur, but didn't chase the record any further. She should have. Their son, Stephen Decatur, Jr. is second only to John Paul Jones in the annals of US Navy history, and some may argue that he deserves a higher placement in the "pantheon" because of his reforms to way the Navy treated common sailors, technological advances, work in the field of marine biology, and out-and-out courage (especially in the face of Congress...:) ). He's been my hero for many years, and it was pretty neat to learned that we're related, however distantly.

Steven Decutar helped destroy the Barbary Pirates in 1809, I hear. He has very good reasons to be world famous in America. :) Was Ethan Allen the leader of the Green Mountains Boys, (I think they were called)?

Yes, Ethan led the Green Mountain Boys. His initial interest was keeping the British governor of New York from stealing the New Hampshire land grants. There was confusion over where that territory lay, and New York took the property that had been rightfully purchased by the Vermonters and made them either buy it again or get off of it. The governors couldn't reach an agreement and were dragging their feet getting the King's judgement (they didn't want to appear incompetent), so Ethan and the boys petitioned the King themselves and were completely ignored. That's when things got ugly. The Green Mountain Boys started using terror tactics against surveyors and New York settlers who were moving onto the Grants. Governor Tryon put a reward out for Ethan and his officers, so Ethan put double the reward out for Tryon.

There was a big story behind the endless sassing that New York got from Ethan that would be worthy of no less than Robin Hood. Suffice to say, however, that Ethan got caught up in the Revolution with the promise that the New Hampshire Land Grants would be recognized as the state of Vermont when all was said and done. He apparently got on well with then-Colonel (ahem) Benedict Arnold, going so far as to make a present to Arnold of a pair of pistols. (The Boys didn't care for Arnold much and probably would have strung him up if Ethan hadn't stepped in. )

After the Revolution, Congress started jerking Ethan around about Vermont. It wasn't like there was a lot to do about it. They had already presented a state constitution to Congress and were essentially just waiting for a signature. New York and New Hampshire still wanted the land for their own states. Sensing he was about to become one the first in a long line of people to get screwed by Congress over the ages, Ethan contacted the British in Canada and started asking questions about becoming a Canadian province, God Save the King and all that. Naturally, the Brits were willing to let bygones be bygones and were all set to forgive the Green Mountain Boys.

And that's what it took to get Congress off it's ass. :D Vermont became the 14th state and the part of the Allen family that stayed in New York still think he's a booze-guzzling terrorist hillbilly who'd screw anything with a hole in it. (From the parts I've read, his autobiography is wonderfully honest. Ethan doesn't gloss over his own faults and although he admits to having been a hard-drinking, skirt-chasing good ol' boy in his younger days, there's nothing to suggest he was guilty of half the things the New York branch of the family accuses him of to this day.)

And where are the Green Mountain Boys today?
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/2697/gmb5xh.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I was thinking that a bit of the spirit of 1776 is needed in the USA right now--a revolution against the idiots in the White House who seem determined to drag America kicking and screaming into another couple of decades of useless war far away from home, for no apparent purpose and little result.

It takes more than a simple administration change. People credit the president for way more power than he actually has. For example, it's useless to ask the president to do something about abortion. It's a states' rights issue, so you have to petition your governor. Because of the diversity of ecologies, and hence environmental factors, health issues were left up to the states to deal with individually. What's good for the New England area might not be so good for the west coast. However, before you can get the governor to act, you have to get a majority of the people on your side, therefore, your first step would be to educate people to your viewpoint, get a clear majority, and then approach the powers that be. If you can't get a majority of people to back you up, then you are in the minority and must accept the majority rule. (Okay, the flaw in this is that sometimes the majority are idiots. :) Still, majority rule is the foundation of democracy, like it or not.)

To convince a president to pull out of war you have to see what steps were taken to go into the war. Congress is the biggest hurdle. Congress votes to go to war, the president carries out their wishes, which are supposed to reflect the wishes of the residents of their repsective states. PROBLEM: John Q. Public is watching "American Idol", which is obviously far more important to the future of his family than any issues that may be facing his nation. Voter apathy has allowed Congress to do pretty much whatever the hell it wants.

Which brings us to step one: We the People. If the majority of the people do not want the war, they must get off their backsides and say so, instead of waiting to be a blurb on a local TV news station that just happens to be filming near the video store they were going to. They have to contact their congressmen (do you know who yours is?) and let them know how they feel. They need to get enough people feeling their way to do the same. One person standing on a street corner with a sign saying "End the War" isn't going to do it. Neither is a hundred. Politcal activism, which is a well thought-out plan, as opposed to political reactivism, which most of what we engage in and is generally not planned and tends to just involve shouting your opinion at passing cars, is what's needed. It is, essentially, the Spirit of '76.

For an excersize, write up something like the Declaration of Independence, but instead of presenting your reasons for breaking away from a ruling power, present your reasons for ending the war. Be prepared to have it analyzed by people who may or may not be on your side, present verifiable evidence to back up your reasons (every claim in the Declaration is verifiable), and then (as we say) run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it. You never know, you just may start something. (Warning: It wasn't easy convincing the Continental Congress that independence was needed, let alone to convince today's people that the war is ready to end. They simply don't care if it isn't one of theirs getting shot at.)

It's the old problem of having 50 different countries within the borders of one country, as I've said on other threads. You can't satisfy everyone at the same time, so you may as well just try to please the closest locals. :) I don't see what was the problem with States' Rights--why didn't the Federal Govt like the idea? Too much loss of power, I guess. :rolleyes: The idea of a Declaration of Peace is a good one--I'll try writing one and see how it goes.

I can't wait to read it.