The weekend and it begins….(my poem for the day)…..
Since I love some history and I try to be fair to all parts of the planet…..I have a couple of stories about the continent of Africa…..that reminds me of line from a movie…”It is Africa…No one cares about Africa”….for the most part it is true. Americans care little about the continent….so I try to write about it as often as I can especially when I find something that I think will interest my readers.
Ever see the movie “Sahara”? It is a story about some guys searching for a civil war ironclad shipwreck in the desert…..may not be as far fetched as one would think……
Miners have been pulling diamonds from a vast area of Namibia’s Namib Desert called the Sperrgebiet (or “forbidden territory”) for more than a century. But in 2008, workers hunting for diamonds where the desert meets the Atlantic Ocean found something even more precious: the likely remains of the Bom Jesus, a Portuguese sailing ship that disappeared some 500 years ago on its way to India. It’s a discovery, per recent coverage by News.com.au, that solved “one of the biggest maritime mysteries.” Also, says archaeologist Dieter Noli, it’s the oldest shipwreck ever found in sub-Saharan Africa. And there’s treasure as well: Included in the find were some 2,000 gold coins from Spain and Portugal, according to Gainesville News. Upon unearthing the site of the shipwreck, per CNN, workers found pieces of metal, wood, and what looked like pipes.
Not sure what they had found, they called in Noli. “It just looked like a disturbed beach,” he told CNN earlier this month, “but lying on it were bits and pieces.” Among those were a centuries-old musket and an elephant tusk. “I thought, ‘Oh, no no, this is definitely a shipwreck,'” Noli says. Ultimately, in addition to the gold, workers recovered cannons (the pipes), navigational instruments, tons of copper ingots, swords, and a lot more—some 5,438 artifacts. Not much of the actual structure of the ship remains. But archaeologists have matched the cargo with that of the Bom Jesus (which means the “Good Jesus”) based on details found in a 16th-century book that lists the ship as lost. The stretch of coastline is known for storms. Speaking to CNN, Noli speculates that the Bom Jesus “came in, it hit a rock, and it leaned over.
Then back in the day Southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa were some of the earliest evidence of humans…..there has been new evidence that it goes back some 20,000 years ago……
THE last Ice Age made much of the globe uninhabitable, but there were oases – or refugia – where people 20,000 years ago were able to cluster and survive. Researchers at the University of Huddersfield, who specialise in the analysis of human DNA, have found new evidence that there was one or more of these shelters in what is now Southern Arabia.
Once the Ice Age receded – with the onset of the Late Glacial period about 15,000 years ago – the people of this refugium then dispersed and populated Arabia and the Horn of Africa, and might also have migrated further afield.
Read on and learn something….even it is the weekend….it is never too late to learn a thing or two…..
Your history lesson is complete….now go enjoy your weekend and feel a little smarter…..you are welcome.
As per usual this will be my only post of the day…..Have a day, my friends.
Good post, my friend. I read the book, Sahara, if it is the Clive Cussler novel. He wrote about many ships he’s researched and found over the years. Great stories… It doesn’t surprise me we continue to find evidence from earlier times which force us to reevaluate what we know… We humans do have a tendency to think we know a lot more than we actually do…. but, that’s for another time.
Missed some posts of late, but, I’ll be by more often; feeling a little better after my trip fatigue…
See ya; have a great weekend… See if you can’t do some reading up, & maybe beat your granddaughter at chess…
gigoid
The movie was great…..made a lot of sense….glad you are better and granddaughter was interested in talking today so we blew off the games for the day….chuq
I will bet there are lots of human remains to be found in that area of the world … probably mostly headless.
Hahaha!
You are in good form.. oh, the ripening wanderer…
We once had a world ruled by the bees….alas,it collapsed.
🙁
That world we once had that was ruled by bees was the bees knees, wasn’t it? That world collapsed because one group of alien bees swarmed in and overwhelmed the native bees. (After they chopped most of their heads off for being non-bee-leavers!).
Still on form! 😉
“War does not determine who is right – only who is left.”
Bertrand Russell
Bertrans Russel has been dead for years. He is not politically correct for today.
dear chuq…having had a ‘bad’ day yesterday……I laid low…my legs were held in a vice like grip….. like walking through wet concrete carrying an elephant..
No more walks to the sea for me…until this disc has settled. 🙁
good post.
thanx
Thanx my friend….be safe and be well chuq
Gee, Pennie — I hope you are feeling better today.
I am as long as I do not walk for longer than 20 mins….a sad state of affairs…as I love walking for miles.
Thank you, oh, wanderer…
If it is of any help to you to know, I myself am going to try to take up a cane and get out of the house for the first time since my diagnosis and try to walk around a few blocks to see if it stirs up any pain or not. I will let you know how it comes out. In the meantime I am glad that you are able to do your 20 minute walks even though I wish things were better for you. Keep in touch because … I care!
John I tried to reply to your Memorial comment and it went somewhere I cannot find it….so here I go…..thanx for the kind words….and I understand…it took me 5 years to come back all the way….thanx to you for your service also….
I apologize….this got put in my trash bin for some reason…..How did the walk go?
The walk went well, thank you … I have been pain free for about three days now … things may be looking up … I have been such a wuss about it all …
Pain can be debilitating….unbearable at times…does not make you a wuss just in pain and coping….
Your generosity is luminous with goodness
I just try to do what I can for a friend….please take care