I am amazed by the continuing debate on "pissy," if anyone cares to remember, it started when FT told Melinda she was asinine, and she responded that when he posted that to her he was acting pissy, which was quite apt under the circumstances.
techstocks.com
I have been entertaining myself by reading The Mummies of Urumchi by Dr. Elizabeth Wayland Barber, a new history/archeology book written by an expert on textiles. A number of graves circa 2000-500 B.C. have been excavated in the Uyghur region, the culture was nomadic, sheep-herding, and the people were not Asian, some blond, some with auburn hair, perhaps with blue eyes. If you look at the mummies, it's clear that they were Caucasian. Interesting coincidence with an article in the Washington Post about Kenniwick man and all that.
I have posted before how I am fascinated by the history of mankind deduced from things like textiles, pollen, pigments and wood, plain hard facts that don't benefit from the obfuscating conjecture of pseudo-historians. Not that pseudo-historians are much interested in textiles and pollen, anyway.
I wanted to be an archeologist or an anthropologist a long time ago, but was discouraged by people who pointed out that I would need a Ph.D. which seemed at the time to be unimaginable - my mother and father were the first people in their respective families to even go to college, although my father is now a D.D.S. and my mother has an MFA, but a Ph.D. just seemed so alien at the time. And everyone said that archeologists don't make much money, which seemed important at the time, but now seems irrelevant. Well, anyway. When I read books like the one I am reading, the life of the author seems so enviable.
Be that as it may, it's a great book if the subject matter is appealing to you. |
