Day: April 24, 2021

Things That Never Existed

The weekend is a good time to step away from the silliness of the news…..so I try to do just that from time to time…..

Some channels on the “boob tube” make a living selling the idea that some things are out there and waiting to be found and exploited…..things like El Dorado, the Round Table, and so on…..

But let’s look at a few of the things that did not exist….

Everyone loves a good story, but not everyone loves history. So what is a frustrated historian or museum curator to do when folks just aren’t interested? They make things up, of course.

Yes, it turns out history is just bursting with little bits of fiction someone threw in for flavor at some point. Of course, misunderstanding and good old-fashioned ignorance played their parts, but at the end of the day, we are left with a “history” littered with landmines of utter nonsense. Take for instance . . .

https://listverse.com/2017/03/19/10-of-historys-most-iconic-things-that-never-existed/

I disagree with the premise that the “Gardens” never existed…..my studies leads me to believe that they did but not in Babylon but further North in the Assyrian empire…..

I also disagree with the “Babel” thingy….it was a large structure in Sumeria known as a ziggurat, a stepped tower…. the inflated height was most likely literary license for the book.

I wrote about this awhile back…..https://lobotero.com/2016/12/11/hanging-gardens-of-babylon/

More things that never existed…..https://www.toptenz.net/more-famous-things-that-never-actually-existed.php

Then this from the Smithsonian on the Tower…..https://aleteia.org/2017/05/02/evidence-that-tower-of-babel-really-existed-is-discovered/

https://www.livius.org/articles/place/babylon/etemenanki/

Do you have any thoughts on these?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Armenian Genocide?

One hundred and six years Armenians have been waiting.

During the night of 23–24 April 1915, at the orders of Talat Pasha, hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders—including many of Talat’s former political allies—were rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire. This order, intended to eliminate the Armenian leadership and anyone capable of organizing resistance, resulted in the torture and eventually murder of most of those arrested, who were forced to confess to a nonexistent Armenian conspiracy against the empire.

And so it began!

And some say 1.5 million Armenians died on this  removal.

Since the end of World War One the Armenians have been trying to get acknowledgement of the atrocities that were committed against the Armenian people…

For those that are scratching their heads over that statement…..https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/timestopics/topics_armeniangenocide.html

For a hundred years American presidents have given the situation lip service….appears the Pres. Biden is about to change from lip service to action…..

As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to declare the slaughter of more than a million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire a genocide but failed to do so as president. President Biden made the same promise on the campaign trail, and sources tell the New York Times and CNN that he plans to keep it. The Times‘ sources say Biden plans to make the announcement on Saturday, when Armenians worldwide will mark the 106th anniversary of the beginning of a series of massacres and forced marches that killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenians, mostly in what is now Turkey. Measures recognizing the 1915-1923 killings as genocide passed the Senate unanimously and the House by a 405-11 vote in 2019.

If Biden does use the word genocide, it will be certain to anger Turkey, which maintains that the killings were not genocide and estimates the number of deaths at 300,000. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said this week that “if the United States wants to worsen ties, the decision is theirs.” Insiders say that while Biden might still change his mind before Saturday’s declaration, he has apparently decided that demonstrating America’s commitment to human rights is worth potentially damaging ties with Turkey. Dozens of other countries, most of them in Europe, have already declared that what happened was genocide.

Turkey will get all butt hurt over this decision by Biden…..and how will that effect the situation in the Middle East….is the next question.

Biden wants to show that the US stands up for human rights….well except in Israel….I say stand up for human rights for all or sit the Hell down and shut up.

But will this acknowledgement by the US be enough?

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”