AMERIKA BEGAN AS A MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY

New research reveals that America's oldest tombstone came from Belgium and belonged to an English knight

by Sandee Oster , Phys.org

Jamestown Knight's tombstone. Credit: Jamestown Rediscovery (Preservation Virginia) in 

International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s10761-024-00756-4

Jamestown, Virginia, was founded in 1607 and was the first English permanent settlement in America. It has been the subject of many archaeological and historical analyses, including a recent study by Prof. Markus M. Key and Rebecca K. Rossi, which set out to determine the provenance of Jamestown's black "marble" knight's tombstone. What they determined was unexpected, says Prof. Key.

"For the past decade, I have been interested in determining the provenance of lithic artifacts using fossils contained within them. While working on the following project, determining the provenance of colonial black 'marble' tombstones from the Chesapeake Bay region, U.S.

"We found that the oldest tombstone was the knight's tombstone in Jamestown from 1627. The particular historical archaeological question we were trying to answer was: How extensive was the trade network in the Chesapeake Bay during colonial times?

"Little did we realize that colonists were ordering black marble tombstones from Belgium like we order items from Amazon, just a lot slower."

During the 17th century, affluent English colonists often memorialized themselves and their wealth with impressive tombstones. In the Chesapeake Bay region, these were often black "marble" tombstones. The Jamestown knight's tombstone was one such example.

Placed in the Jamestown Church in 1627, it remained in situ until it was relocated in the 1640s due to construction at the southern entrance. In 1907, the broken tombstone was rediscovered, repaired and placed in the present-day Memorial Church chancel.

Despite its name, the tombstone was not made of marble but rather of black limestone. In historical documents, any stone capable of being polished was often referred to as "marble."

The tombstone had carved depressions, indicating it had once held brass inlays. These were likely destroyed during Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. The inlays included a shield, which may have depicted a family crest, an unfurled scroll, and an armored man standing upon a pedestal, which may have once featured inscriptions.

To the right and left of the man's body were protrusions that may have indicated a sword hilt and shield, respectively. This led to the interpretation that the tombstone belonged to a knight.

Only two knights died in Jamestown during the life of the second Jamestown church (1617–1637). One was Sir Thomas West, the first resident governor of the colony. He died in 1618 during a transatlantic voyage to Jamestown. No historical or archaeological evidence could link the tombstone to Sir Thomas West.

The second knight was Sir George Yeardley. His step-grandson, Adam Thorowgood II, made a request for his own black "marble" tombstone in the 1680s, asking that it be engraved with the crest of Sir George Yeardley and the same inscription as the one on the "broken tomb." This indicated that the knight's tombstone was already broken in the 17th century, prior to its discovery in 1901.

If the tombstone was indeed Yeardley's, as the familial evidence suggests, this would make it the oldest surviving tombstone in North America. Sadly, no DNA testing could be undertaken to confirm if the bones at the original tombstone site had belonged to Yeardley,

"The part of the Jamestown Church where the knight's tomb was found has already been completely excavated by archaeologists. Unfortunately, no bones with recoverable DNA were preserved to independently test for the connection to Sir George Yeardley."

George Yeardley was born in 1588 in Southwark, England. He first came to Jamestown in 1610 after initially being shipwrecked on Bermuda. He served as captain of Lt. Governor Sir Thomas Gates's guard and later as Lt. Governor of Virginia. He returned to England in 1617, a year after which he was appointed governor of Virginia and knighted by King James I.

He returned to Jamestown and remained in his position until 1621, until a few years later, he returned to England, only to be reappointed as Lord Governor in 1626. He returned to Jamestown once more and died the following year in 1627.

For his grave, a tombstone was commissioned, but where it had come from remained a mystery. According to Prof. Key, "A 'tombstone' is a dimension stone cut (and typically engraved) for use to mark a burial site.

"Native Americans undoubtedly had earlier grave markers (perhaps made of wood that did not survive), but they were not made of carved stone. Nor did the English settlers have the technology and skills to cut and engrave tombstones; that is why they imported them."

Furthermore, Prof. Key says, "The main cost of dimension stone is typically transportation costs as the stone itself is relatively low cost, and they weigh a lot. Therefore, most dimension stone is sourced locally. Thus, one would expect the source of the knight's tombstone to be local (our first hypothesis).

"Unfortunately, Jamestown is on the coastal plain physiographic province, which lacks rocks. Therefore, the stone had to be transported to Jamestown."

To determine the provenance of the tombstone, researchers studied and identified the enclosed fossils within it. Prof. Key elaborates on why this method was chosen, "Due to the evolutionary process, biological species are much more unique through time and space than chemical elements or isotopic ratios."

The results, based on the microfossils identified (Omphalotis minima and Paraarchaediscus angulatus, and P. concavus), indicated that the tombstone had to have come from either Ireland or Belgium, as none of these species were ever found in North America.

Historical evidence suggests Belgium is the likely source, as Belgium has been the most common source of the Lower Carboniferous "black" marble for centuries, from Roman times through to the present. It was particularly popular among the wealthy in England during Yeardley's life.

He and other Virginian colonists would have been very aware of the latest fashions in England and would likely try to replicate them in the colonies.

The research, published in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology, provides new insights into the extent of trade networks at Chesapeake Bay during colonial times and into the lengths some colonists went to in order to obtain goods and materials not available to them in their new homes.

More information: M. M. Key et al, Sourcing the Early Colonial Knight's Black "Marble" Tombstone at Jamestown, Virginia, USA, International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s10761-024-00756-4

© 2024 Science X Network

Jamestown DNA helps solve a 400-year-old mystery and unexpectedly reveals a family secret

"Jamestown will be lost": Climate change threatens to sink historic colony

Kris Van Cleave -


Jamestown, Virginia — More than 400 years after the first European settlers arrived, Jamestown, Virginia, is struggling to survive the ravages of climate change.

"We are concerned that if we don't take action, Jamestown will be lost," said Elizabeth Kostelny, who runs Preservation Virginia, the nonprofit overseeing the colony's original 22 acres along the James River.

Kostelny, who is racing to save it from rising water, said America will lose "part of its soul" if the site sinks.

"Jamestown's incredibly important," she told CBS News. "It tells a national story about our persistence, our democracy and the beginnings of our race relations."

The Jamestown colony marked the start of representative government in the new world. It's also where Pocahontas married John Rolfe. And it remains the site of archeological history, hidden and waiting to be unearthed. Kostelny said she finds things of significance at the site "every single day."

Jamestown races to protect colony from climate change



"Jamestown holds supreme in terms of world heritage. This place is in our minds where you draw a line in the sand about sea level rise, climate change and cultural heritage," David Givens, director of archeology at Jamestown Rediscovery, told CBS News.

That line in the sand starts with shoring up the 1904 seawall along the river bank with 96,000 tons of granite to help deflect the force of ever-strengthening storms.

The river has risen more than 18 inches in the last century. So-called 100-year storms now hit every five years. But the biggest threat to Jamestown isn't the rising river. It's a swamp that's literally devouring history as it grows.

"We have [water] from both sides, below, above. We're getting attacked from all sides," Michael Lavin, who is leading Jamestown's fight against climate change, told CBS News. "We're going to have to raise buildings, raise roads, do salvage archaeology, put in berms, pump systems to truly save Jamestown."

Saving the site will likely require raising tens of millions of dollars over the next five years to keep this American treasure from being washed away.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for JAMESTOWN 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2007/04/jamestown-birth-of-capitalism.html

Jamestown; the beginning of Globalization

Recent archeology at Jamestown reveals that globalization begins with the creation of the colony. They were producing trade goods for the indigenous peoples, who had already had contact with other explorers previously.

A trade economy was being introduced into North America with Jamestown. Export trade would come later with the growing of tobacco, but the original settlement was reliant upon production of trade goods with the native population.

Which may be why the indigenous peoples were not later enslaved for the tobacco farms since they were trading partners.

Instead African slaves were used because of their experience growing tobacco like crops.

And thus Globalization is the outgrowth of the Jamestown colony and its role in Atlantic History.

Historians Eye Jamestown's Legacy on 400th Anniversary

JEFFREY BROWN: And we explore our growing understanding of Jamestown now with Karen Kupperman, professor of history at New York University. She's written widely about early American settlements and is author of "The Jamestown Project."

Karen Kupperman, who were these people? And what does the new archaeology tell us about their experience?

KAREN KUPPERMAN, History Professor, New York University: Well, as the piece said, there were around about 100 men and boys. There were several boys at Jamestown, and they played very important roles, actually.

And they came, I think, principally to set up a trade post. I think that was what they were hoping to do. I don't think the English initially thought in terms of colonization. Colonization was very, very expensive. And in the English case, every expedition, every ship had to be paid for by private investment.

So the investors were looking to find a product in America that they could get in trade with the Indians and keep a very small, permanent contingent here, I think.

JEFFREY BROWN: And what about their experience is new? What has changed in our thinking, in your thinking about this?

KAREN KUPPERMAN: Well, the archaeology is extremely important, because it shows us, as Bill Kelso said, that the colonists are, from the beginning, engaged in really purposeful activity. They're making products that the Indians want. They brought sheets of copper with them, and they're actually making items to Indian specifications.

And the archaeologists have not only found evidence of that within the fort, but they've also found Jamestown made items in Powhatan's capital, at Werowocomoco, for example. So there's evidence of all kinds of activity that's going on. So they really are, through trial and error, trying to build the kind of economic base that the company was asking them to.

JEFFREY BROWN: Annette Gordon-Reed is professor of law at New York Law School and professor of history at Rutgers University. She's the author of "The Hemings Family of Monticello: An American Story of Slavery.

" Annette Gordon-Reed, what jumps out at you about it, particularly picking up on that, the economic seed here that was born at Jamestown?

ANNETTE GORDON-REED, New York University Law School: Well, really, in 1619, of course, you get the first Africans who come to Jamestown. And there are different theories about what their first role was, but certainly it was the beginning of Africans being involved in the cultivation of tobacco, which, of course, begins the slave society in Virginia, and that spreads across the United States, or what was not the United States at that time, but in the American colonies.

Premiere of NOVA documentary on Werowocomoco/Jamestown

Work of William and Mary students and faculty figure prominently in “Pocahontas Revealed,” an episode of the PBS program NOVA, to be broadcast Tuesday, May 8.

“Pocahontas Revealed” focuses on discoveries and revelations that have come to light since the 2003 discovery of Werowocomoco, home of Pocahontas and the capital town of her father, Powhatan. Excavation of the York River Werowocomoco site, on the farm of Bob and Lynn Ripley, continues to yield new information about Powhatan, his people, and their relationship with the Jamestown colonists.

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Ancient DNA reveals Indigenous dog lineages found at Jamestown, Virginia

Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

image: 

An aerial view of James Island and James Fort. The Jamestown colony was established in Tsenacomoco, the Algonquian name for the Powhatan chiefdom in the tidewater areas of the Chesapeake Bay and later became the Commonwealth of Virginia.

view more 

Credit: Jamestown Rediscovery

Previous scientific studies have indicated that North American dog lineages were replaced with European ones between 1492 and the present day. To better understand the timing of this replacement, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Iowa sequenced mitochondrial DNA from archaeological dogs. Their findings suggest a complex social history of dogs during the early colonial period. 

Europeans and Native Americans valued their dogs as companion animals, using them for similar work and as symbols of identity. Consequently, the dogs reflected the tension between European and Indigenous cultures—the settlers described Indigenous dogs as mongrels to emphasize the perception that Indigenous people did not breed or own their dogs. Indigenous peoples identified European dogs as a direct threat to their existence and took measures to limit the use of European dogs. 

“Previous studies had suggested that there were a lot of Indigenous dogs in the continental United States and that they were eradicated,” said Ariane Thomas, a recent PhD graduate of anthropology at the University of Iowa. “We wanted to understand what that entailed: when it happened, were they culled, was it the competition with European dogs, or was it disease?”

The researchers focused on the Jamestown colony in Virginia due to the number of canid remains available at the site and the evidence of Indigenous influence. They worked with Jamestown Rediscovery to identify and analyze 181 canid bones that represented at least 16 individual dogs. Of these, the team selected 22 remains that spanned multiple time points of the early settlement at Jamestown, between 1607 and 1619. They extracted the DNA at the ancient DNA lab in the Core Facilities of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. The researchers then sequenced the data at the Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center at Illinois to better understand the ancestry of these dogs.

“This project is a great example of the type of team science that we use at IGB, where people from diverse fields come together to answer questions through the use of complementary skill sets,” said Alida de Flamingh, a postdoctoral researcher in the Malhi (CIS/GSP/IGOH/GNDP) lab. 

Based on body size estimates alone, the team discovered that most of the Jamestown dogs weighed between 22-39 lbs, comparable to modern-day beagles or schnauzers. Furthermore, many of the dog bones showed traces of human-inflicted damage, including burning and cut marks. 

“The cut marks and other butchery marks we found on them show that some of these dogs were eaten. It implies that when the colonists came over, they didn’t have enough food and they had to rely on the Indigenous dogs in the area,” Thomas said.

Additionally, the DNA sequences demonstrated that at least six of the dogs showed evidence of Indigenous North American ancestry. “Our results show that there were Indigenous dogs in the area and they weren’t immediately eradicated when the Europeans arrived,” Thomas said.

Although the identification of dogs with Indigenous ancestry is not surprising, the results suggest that the colonists and Indigenous tribes may have traded dogs and likely had little concern with possible interbreeding. The researchers are interested in expanding to other sites and obtaining more high-quality DNA samples and reconstructions of dog body size to shed light on whether these dogs had full Indigenous ancestry or whether they were the product of mating with European dogs.  

The study “The Dogs of Tsenacomoco: Ancient DNA Reveals the Presence of Local Dogs at Jamestown Colony in the Early Seventeenth Century” was published in American Antiquity and can be found at 10.1017/aaq.2024.25. The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Iowa.

---

Journal

American Antiquity

DOI

10.1017/aaq.2024.25 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

The Dogs of Tsenacomoco: Ancient DNA Reveals the Presence of Local Dogs at Jamestown Colony in the Early Seventeenth Century

Gore Kulture

No not Al Gore.

Gore as in Grand Guignol as in a specific sub genre of horror movies; slasher films, blood and guts movies like Saw, Hostile, etc.

The Peculiar Charms of the Grand Guignol

by Gideon Lester

"At one performance, six people passed out when an actress, whose eyeball was just gouged out, re-entered the stage, revealing a gooey, blood-encrusted hole in her skull. Backstage, the actors themselves calculated their success according to the evening's faintings. During one play that ended with a realistic blood transfusion, a record was set: fifteen playgoers had lost consciousness. Between sketches, the cobble-stoned alley outside the theatre was frequented by hyperventilating couples and vomiting individuals."

-- Mel Gordon, The Grand Guignol:
theatre of fear and terror.

We can go back to Shakespeare to find the first real case of Grand Guignol in theatre;

Titus Andronicus is a play with "14 killings, 9 of them on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or 2 or 3, depending on how you count), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity and 1 of cannibalism--an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one for every 97 lines."

We seem to have moved from a rash of horror films to gore films in four short years. The gore phenomena is specific to the current mass culture we are experiencing.

We have seen an increase in horror films, just as we did during the depression and again during the Viet Nam war, horror films reflect the need for social catharsis during times of cultural stress.

The Gore film on the other hand was an underground phenomena, much like Grand Guignol. It first appeared not in film but in the fifties as crime and horror comics.

It existed since the early sixties, as a b-film phenomena in particular the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, but became popular in the eighties with the works of Stuart Gordon and Sam Raimi. It expanded in the nineties with the work of Clive Barker, in particular the Hellraiser series, now coming to the small screen as a computer game.

But these were horror movies, there was gore, but there was also humour, atmosphere, the gore was incidental, there to frighten you as much as the thing that jumps out of the dark.

But today the movies are Gore for gore's sake. In that they hearken back to Herschell Gordon Lewis work and Romero's Night of the Living Dead. But unlike them they are major studio releases, a popular film phenomena on the big screen and the producers of the goriest of the gore films; Saw I, II and III are Canadian.

It is reflective of the current social crisis of sociopathology that is in the headlines. Man kills and BBQs girlfriend

Take for instance the Picton murder case and its Edmonton counter part the serial killing of prostitutes, or this recent Edmonton case that was in the news for weeks;

Michael Briscoe, acquitted in the rape and murder of Nina Courtepatte, is haunted by his failure to intervene and try to save her when she was brutally attacked 2 years ago

Edmonton, with its record-high murder rate, is quickly losing its reputation as a safe city.

But it's not just the creeping crime wave that's spooking people. It's the grim reality that we are now known for one of the most odious killings in the country.

Malls are supposed to be places where young people hang out, shop and flirt - not where a strikingly pretty 13-year-old girl is chosen at random to be raped and slaughtered for kicks.

I fear we are raising a society of sociopaths - kids who are so adrift, amoral and inured to violence that they have become completely indifferent to evil. They are drawn to it, it seems, out of twisted curiosity and sheer boredom.

How else to explain how a group of young people could lure Nina Courtepatte from West Edmonton Mall on the pretext of inviting her to a party, only to rape her and beat her to death on a golf course?

Brutality, savagery, gore, and cannibalism all underlie Grand Guignol and the Gore film today, as it does the headlines in your daily paper.

AN ALCOHOLIC who strangled his friend and then told police he did it so he could be sent to prison to exact revenge on a cannibal killer who murdered his girlfriend, was yesterday jailed for life. Alan Taylor said he never got over the murder of Julie Paterson, who was beheaded and partially eaten by psychopath David Harker in 1998.

New Delhi, Mar 22: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday gave a clean chit to Mohinder Singh Pandher, co-accused in the gruesome Nithari serial killings in the outskirts of Delhi. CBI blamed his servant for the macabre killings and also confirmed cannibalism in him. It said Pandher's servant Surinder Koli was a psychopath and blamed him for the killings

A religious cult leader who raped, murdered and ate at least three women in Papua New Guinea has been captured by a group of villagers.

Steven Tari, 35, who called himself the "black Jesus" was beaten by locals from the village of Matepi before being handed over to police.

The failed bible student had gathered around six thousand followers as he travelled through mountain villages promising disciples gifts from heaven if they joined his congregation.

But communities discovered he was indulging in cannibalism, sacrificing young women, drinking their blood and eating their flesh.

The Gore phenomena begins with Slaughter of the Lambs, and its overwhelming popularity. It is about the brutality of a serial killer who skins his victims, and the anti-hero is a cannibal; Dr. Hannibal Lecter. It coincides disturbingly with pig farmer Robert Pictons brutal murder and dismemberment of women in Vancouver, and its implication of cannibalism.

The disturbing fact is that our fascination with the Picton case is the same as our fascination with Dr. Lecter. Cannibalism being the final taboo leading to the mass media phenomena of Hannibal the Cannibal.

I'm not alone in my fascination with cannibalism — why else would there be five Hannibal Lecter movies? Soylent Green is made of people; the living dead will eat your brains at any time of dawn, day, or night; and the biggest blockbuster of 2006, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, featured droves of flesh-hungry islanders.

In fact cannibalism is American as Apple Pie. Even before the infamous Donner party case, the founders of America engaged in cannibalism and capitalism.

Jamestown aims for historic reign over Plymouth

JAMESTOWN, Va. -- The first permanent English settlement in North America has more personality than many other historic attractions.
Capt. John Smith, the pint-sized adventurer, left a breathless narrative of his exploits.
Commerce took root here, and so did tobacco and slavery.
Then there was the cannibalism.
Still, as the country prepares to commemorate Jamestown's 400th anniversary in May, many see this swampy outpost on the James River only as a coming attraction to the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth Rock about 13 years later.
New Englanders, for example, point to the Thanksgiving feast, the Pilgrims' pure pursuit of religious freedom and the Mayflower.
Jamestown, on the other hand, "is the creation story from hell," Karen Ordahl Kupperman writes in her new book, "The Jamestown Project." Conflict, disease, horrific killings and starvation are all part of the back story of Jamestown, founded in 1607 as a business venture.
But if not for Jamestown, scholars say, there may not have been a Plymouth, and we all might be speaking Spanish. The Spanish, intent on spreading Roman Catholicism, were turned away twice from the nearby Chesapeake Bay during the early years of the Protestant Jamestown settlement.
"There's no question that Jamestown throws down the gauntlet to the Spanish," said James Horn, who wrote "A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America."
Now, during an 18-month commemoration, Jamestown finally could outshine Plymouth and fully embrace what historian and writer Nathaniel Philbrick calls its proper claim as "the rightful birthing ground of America."
"Not only was the [Jamestown] settlement found more than a decade before, but the colony that developed from those beginnings was, in many ways, more quintessentially American since it was all about making money," said Mr. Philbrick, the author of "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War."

Another gore phenomena in media is the popularity of the Zombie. Zombie parties are occurring across North America. In Edmonton there is a Zombie club of folks who dress up in gory zombie costumes and wander the streets groaning and moaning.

At the University of Alabama they are offering a course on Zombies.

Do you hope that when you die, your corpse will return to life and shamble around, wreaking havoc? Have you ever wanted to taste human flesh? Or do you just want to be able to live your life without that crippling fear of someone eating your brains?

Those who said yes to any of those questions will find a kindred spirit in Sean Hoade, a UA instructor currently teaching creative writing, literature and English. In May, during the interim, he will be teaching EN 311-001, titled, Zombies! The Living Dead in Literature, Film and Culture.

Hoade said zombies are the perfect choice because they are the ultimate metaphor for human life.

"Anything that you look at," Hoade said, "the way we know people by sight but don't really know our neighbors ... race relations and class warfare - all of that is reflected in zombies. And that's why they've become so incredibly popular. [There are] zombie movies, zombie books, zombie graphic novels, so I think that it's only right for the English department to offer a class looking at all things zombie."

Hoade said the class will also discuss what zombies being reanimated corpses indicates about people's fears.

"Death is so sanitized now that [even] being around a dead body that isn't reanimated is incredibly spooky. So we're going to look at how the fear of the zombie is actually a fear not just of death, because we're all afraid of death, but a fear, actually, of the dead also."

The class won't strictly focus on the intellectual aspects of zombies. Students will also be able to participate in a variety of zombie-related activities.

"We're going to engage in mock cannibalism," Hoade said. "We're going to [have] human-flavored tofu. It's based on what people who had to resort to cannibalism, like the Donner party and that plane crash and things like that, what they said human flesh tastes like.

"I ordered putrescine, which is the chemical that dead things give off," he said. Putrescine, which is a chemical compound used by the body for cellular division, is responsible for the smell of rotting flesh.

"We're probably going to do a zombie walk, which is we're all going to get made up as zombies and walk around campus and terrorize it. I'll have to see if that's allowed. We're also going to eat Jell-O brains. [The purpose of the activities are] just to try to get into the zombie mindset ... We might go over to the graveyard and lie down on the graves."

Zombie mindset? Zombies have no brains, no minds, thats why they eat brains, they lack intelligence. Just like the folks at PETA.

The folks in charge of PETA love all of God's creatures—with a few notable exceptions. Asked by BlackBook whether the animal-rights group opposes human cannibalism, Dan Mathews, the group's outrage-provoking vice president, quips, "No, as long as the person being eaten is Anna Wintour." It's far from the first time PETA has gone after the Vogue editor in chief, whom it accuses of doing more than anyone else to keep the wearing of animal pelts in style.

The aristocracy has a history of fascination with death and haute coutoure, they go together like art and suicide.

WHEN Victoria Beckham heard that the flamboyant fashion guru, design muse and socialite Isabella Blow had attempted to kill herself in 2005 by throwing herself off a bridge in London, she remarked, "What genius!"

After school, Blow lived in a squat in London and took cleaning jobs. Then she went off to New York, where Brian Ferry, an old friend - introduced her to Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Blow hung out with artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, who wanted to know her when he saw she was wearing one pink and one purple shoe.

But for all the name-dropping, there have been two main role models in Blow's life. The first is the Duchess of Windsor, of whom a stylised portrait hangs in her hallway. "Wallis was ugly, like me, but she made the best of herself. I wish I'd lured a king." The other is Blow's aforementioned flesh-eating grandmother, Vera Delves Broughton, a photographer, explorer and big-game fisher. Until recently she held the record for catching the biggest fish in European waters (a tuna, which took 16 hours to reel in).

As for the cannibalism, Blow explains, "She was once in Papua New Guinea. She had some dinner and said, 'God, that was delicious. What was it?' It turned out to be a poor local tribesman who had been grilled up. In her Who's Who hobbies, my grandmother listed 'Once a cannibal'. Ha, ha! I'm so like her. Very wild!"

Christianity itself is based upon the disturbing concepts of cannibalism of its God and the idea of the Living Dead; the resurrection.

Or was Pope Benedict biding his time? Last week he published an Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist, Sacramentum Caritatis — The Sacrament of Love. In part it is a summary of the conclusions of the Synod of Catholic Bishops held in Rome in October 2005 — the start of the liturgical Year of the Eucharist promulgated by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II — and as such carries the authority of the whole Church. But it is also a theological tour de force showing the clarity and cogency that are particular to the writings of Joseph Ratzinger.

Sacramentum Caritatis opens with a lucid exposition of the Catholic belief on the Eucharist. The priest’s words of consecration during the Mass turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ — a transformation Pope Benedict describes as ‘a sort of “nuclear fission” which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world’.

This belief, with its connotations of cannibalism and human sacrifice, has always been hard to take. Even in Christ’s lifetime, many of his disciples, according to Saint John, regarded the idea as ‘intolerable ...and stopped going with him’. It was a defining bone of contention between Catholics at the time of the Reformation. Luther downgraded the change from transubstantiation (the bread and wine become the flesh and blood of Christ) to consubstantiation (bread and wine remain bread and wine but co-exist with the flesh and blood of Christ), and Calvin disbelieved it altogether.

The recent rash of zombie and gore films reflect a culture inundated with death. Senseless death, be it wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and through out the middle east, vast unimaginable death from starvation, mass rape and murder in Dafur, or disasters such as Tsunamis , hurricanes and earthquakes that slaughter thousands and decimate cities.

Our fears of death and the unknown are now amplified by our fear of pain. Gore movies are about pain. Blood and guts, yes but the Saw phenomena is about pain, torture and self inflicted pain.

It is Abu Gharib and Gitmo brought to the large screen. We know not what torture Arar Mehar went through, or those held in CIA black prisons. But when we watch Saw we get a gleaming, an inkling of what it feels like to be held incommunicado and tortured. For no good reason. What does the torturer want? Like those held in sensory deprivation in Gitmo, we do not know.

The horror film since its origins in the silent era was fear of the other, the monster. Today with the advent of the Gore film, the monster is us. We suffer the emotional plague of isolation and alienation in a capitalist culture out of our control and dashing headlong into oblivion.

See

Gothic Capitalism Redux

Jack the Ripper

Emotional Plague

Rape

Serial Murder

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Jamestown colonists brought donkeys, not just horses, to North America, old bones reveal

University of Florida

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An illustration of a donkey in colonilal Jamestown.

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Credit: Paula Calle Lopez, Courtesy of Jamestown Rediscovery (Preservation Virginia)

A new study published in Science Advances about centuries-old horse and donkey bones, unearthed in Jamestown, Virginia, is rewriting the story of how these animals first arrived in North America.

While written records from the earliest English explorers show that horses were among the animals brought to Virginia, the new zooarchaeological analysis of animal remains found at Jamestown is the first to show that colonists also brought donkeys to the New World.

The study also reveals a dark ending to these equids in the colony: The horses and donkeys were likely butchered and eaten during Jamestown’s infamous winter of starvation.

“There are no written records of donkeys on ship manifests and reports, yet evidence suggests they were valued as dependable work animals,” said John Krigbaum, Ph.D., professor and chair anthropology at the University of Florida. Krigbaum served as the senior author on this study alongside lead author William Taylor, Ph.D., at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The team’s work is a testament to the vast amount of information researchers can glean from just a small collection of centuries-old animal bones. With their preliminary tests, archaeologists linked the earliest parts of the settlement to the "Starving Time" winter of 1609-1610, a connection later confirmed by radiocarbon dating. The study provides an early glimpse into how and why horses and donkeys were transported and managed and how they were able to spread and establish wild populations across the continent.

Assisting Krigbaum with both the research and writing were George Kamenov, Ph.D., a senior associate in the Department of Geological Sciences, UF doctoral student Diana Quintero-Bisono and Nicolas Delsol, a former postdoctoral student at the Florida Museum of Natural History who currently works at Université Laval in Quebec.

With the species and timeframe confirmed, further tests unveiled new insights into how these animals once lived. Wear and tear on the bones showed evidence of bridling, suggesting their use as work animals. Ancient DNA and bone chemistry analysis of the isotopes in tooth enamel suggested that the donkey did not originate in Great Britain but was picked up by settlers along the route of their transatlantic journey.

“Ancient DNA points to Iberia or West Africa, which is consistent with its isotope signature, but the isotopic evidence is also consistent with Trinidad and Tobago, which is not far off the route sailed,” said Krigbaum. 

Examining the wear and tear on the samples also revealed a tragic end for many of these animals. Faced with hunger during the Starving Time and having soured their relationships with nearby indigenous people, settlers were forced to eat their animals and, in the direst situations, their dead. While we have records that horses were consumed during this time, this can also be observed with other samples, including donkey remains. “They show that adult horses were eaten, butchered and cooked or boiled, with most elements split open to extract even the minutest nutritional resources including dental pulp,” the team wrote in their study.

For Krigbaum and his colleagues, the Jamestown assemblage is just the beginning. Their next project will examine horse remains from the 16th century Spanish settlement of Puerto Real, in the Caribbean, to uncover further evidence of how horses and donkeys helped shape the earliest chapters of American history.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adw2595 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Early transatlantic movement of horses and donkeys at Jamestown

5 historical U.S. landmarks threatened by climate change

By —Tim McPhillips 

NPR Nation Jun 1, 2022 

America’s historic monuments – both natural landmarks and human-built structures – draw millions each year to witness and pay tribute to our simultaneously rich and painful heritage. But summertime, when many of us get the chance to play tourist, is also the start of hurricane and wildfire seasons – a reminder that the physical markers of our history are at risk from the effects of a changing climate.

“Historic places are primary sources, just like documents, diaries and letters. They tell us about ourselves. And they tell us about the complex and intertwined shared narrative of our country,” said Katherine Malone-France, chief preservation officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit working to preserve historic places in America.

Unless global carbon dioxide emissions are cut drastically, the Earth will sail past the 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius threshold seen as our best chance to rein in the most severe consequences of climate change. And as the temperature of the planet increases, scientists say, so will the intensity and frequency of heat waves, storms and other extreme weather events, as well as the risk to cultural treasures.

READ MORE: We have the tools to save the planet from climate change. Politics is getting in the way, new IPCC report says

Right now, these landmarks prompt visitors to “think about ourselves and our stories and our actions as part of a larger continuum. We are part of something bigger than ourselves,” Malone-France said. But losing that history to climate change means we also lose a chance at connection with “each other’s heritage and accomplishments and stories.”

Here are five historic places at serious risk.

1. Jamestown

An aerial view of Jamestown from 2016 showing the reconstructed fort walls. The western bulwark (bottom left) has already washed into the river before the 1901 seawall was constructed to halt erosion. Photo by Danny Schmidt/ Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation

When British sailors arrived in 1607 at the strip of land that would become Jamestown, Virginia, it was not an island, but a small peninsula in the James River, just up from where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. The English colonists chose it for their first permanent settlement in North America, in part for its defensive outlook to guard against Spanish forces.

At the time, the area had already been home to Indigenous people for thousands of years, and the Powhatan tribe clashed with the hostile British newcomers as they tried to form a new colony and took over more land. Jamestown is also significant for its role in the tragic history of American slavery; in 1619, the first Africans who had been captured, enslaved and brought to English-controlled North America arrived in Jamestown.

Today, low-lying Jamestown is surrounded by water. Visitors in 2022 can still see the ruins of the original British fort, as well as the town settlement that formed after the fort, operated through a partnership between the U.S. National Park Service and Historic Jamestowne, a nonprofit organization.

Depending on what climate action is taken, the Chesapeake could rise 1 to 5 feet in the coming century, according to the University of Maryland’s state sea level rise report, and data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests a 1 to 2 foot rise would submerge a significant portion of the island.

Preserving Jamestown, which is on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2022 list of Most Endangered Historic Places, is as complex and intertwined as its history, said Malone-France. Plans are already in place to rebuild seawalls, raise land, and install pumps. But “we are going to have to make decisions, too, about what we can’t save,” she added.

2. Ponce Historic Zone

Catedral de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, Plaza Munoz Rivera, in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress

The Ponce Historic Zone, which made the National Trust’s 2020 most endangered list, is a collection of more than 1,000 structures in Puerto Rico’s second-largest city, ranging from schools to businesses to civic buildings.. According to Malone-France, this architectural treasure trove represents a “rich combination of cultural resources that tell the stories of Puerto Rico and its history.”

But buildings erected in the 1800s are not equipped to handle the storms of today and beyond. Hurricane Maria made landfall on the island in September 2017 as a Category 4 storm. Ponce, located on the southern coast, got 5 to 10 inches of rain and was struck by wind gusts nearing 100 miles per hour, damaging many of the buildings. Earthquakes that have rattled the island have also taken a toll.

Investment in these buildings is needed now, before the next direct hit from a hurricane, Malone-France said. “We have to do even more preparation in our preservation because the storms that impact places like Ponce, they are incredibly unpredictable. But we know that they are not going to stop.”

For this city, that means mapping the existing edifices, then working to improve resiliency against high winds, as well as improving drainage systems.

3. Boston Harbor Islands

Boston Light, located in Boston Harbor. Photo by Boston Harbor Now

The islands that are located in Boston Harbor are a sacred site of commemoration for Indigenous Americans and, Malone-France said, “the most intact Native American archeological landscape within the city.” According to the U.S. National Park Service, Indigienous people lived on the islands from spring until late fall, fishing, hunting and planting crops before European colonizers arrived. As European settlers arrived and took over more land, they forced an unknown number of Native people to relocate to the islands in the 1670s. There, they were kept captive and many died of starvation.

Decades later, colonists built the Boston Light, the first lighthouse in North America, on Little Brewster Island. During the Revolutionary war, it was a target of both American and British forces and was completely destroyed in 1776 before being rebuilt in 1783.

Today, the islands still serve a key environmental purpose, helping shield the inner Boston Harbor from large waves rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean. But storms and sea level rise are chipping away the coast, taking history with it.
According to Mallone-France, “The threat to the Boston Harbor Islands really comes from storm surges, which are intensifying, which means that coastal erosion is intensifying.”

In response, Boston has developed an “archeology climate plan,” to survey and manage the harbor’s archeological assets, while working to find solutions for restoring the islands’ coastlines.

4. Olivewood Cemetery

Photo courtesy Descendants of Olivewood

Houston’s oldest plotted Black cemetery, Olivewood, was incorporated in 1875, 10 years after the end of chattel slavery in Texas. Buried there are many prominent figures from the community, including some who had been enslaved.

“They are the graves of Black citizens who built Houston and who were critical to its history and its development,” Malone-France said. The cemetery is also listed as UNESCO Site of Memory on the Slave Route Project, which recogonizes places associated with the international slave trade.

The Descendants of Olivewood, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the grounds, has worked to restore and maintain the cemetery for over 30 years. But the land and the gravesites face rising threats of erosion caused by storms and flooding, which is why the National Trust for Historic Preservation highlighted it as a most endangered place this year.

“First, they had to fight against the fact that it had been neglected and overgrown,” Malone-France said about the group dedicated to Olivewood. “Then they had to fight against encroaching development all around it… Now they are facing increasingly severe storms, whether they are single storms like Hurricane Harvey or a succession of smaller, more severe storms.”

An increase in the frequency and severity of wet weather poses a unique risk for Olivewood Cemetery, Malone-France said. “These storms put graves under water for significant periods of time. They deposited silt and other erosion throughout the cemetery, and they damage the tombstones and other markers.”

5. New Mexico monuments

Bandelier National Monument. Photo by Sally King/ NPS

In Bandelier National Monument, around 40 miles northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, evidence of human habitation dates back 11,000 years. More recently, Ancestral Puebolans lived there until about 1550, when they moved on to other areas, due in part to severe drought, according to the National Park Service. Today, 23 Indigenous tribes consider it to be tribal or ancestral land.

It’s not water or storms that most endanger this landscape, but wildfires fueled by extreme heat and drought. While wildfire is a natural part of the ecosystem in the American West, climate change is driving conditions for more frequent, severe fires. As of late May, nearly the entire state of New Mexico was experiencing severe or exceptional drought, and that has helped lead to one of the worst fire years in the state’s history.

To the east of Bandelier, the state’s largest wildfire – sparked by a prescribed burn – has been spreading for almost two months, and has destroyed more than 315,000 acres. In late April, the park was shut down due to danger from the Cerro Pelado fire, which is now 95 percent contained.

While it can take years to notice rising sea levels, wildfires are unpredictable and fast-moving.

“We’re going to have to let landscapes change and evolve in sensitive ways,” Malone-France said, and preserving monuments like Bandelier is about being good stewards of the land.

The first step, she added, is to “make sure we understand the full extent of the resources that are threatened.” From there, investments and changes, like cutting firebreaks and clearing understory growth in forests, can help protect cultural landscapes from fires.