Sunday: Time

Update:  Cue the X-Files music.  If you’re in  Central NJ, consider taking in the free concert at Duke Island Park tonight where the entertainment will be Al Stewart.  Maybe he will sing The Year of the Cat? Bring your cat chow and picnic .

Well, I’m back from vacation and resting comfortably.  On Friday, I decided to take a boogie board out on the waves, just like I did when I was a kid in Hawaii when I spent the whole day shooting curls.  East coast waves?  Hah!  Piece of cake, said I.  So, I paddled out beyond the breakers and rode one of those little suckers in where it made short shrift of me, tossed me like laundry in a washing machine and spit me up on the beach after dragging me for awhile.  I have a nice big abrasion on my left knee and I’m still shaking sand out of my hair.

I got up early today to download the latest mega update from apple because, gosh darn, once the whole block starts playing with their browser, the intertubez get all clogged and the DSL doesn’t work so well.  Half a gig later, I took the new browser out for a test drive to check the wifi update and started site hopping.  I landed in the middle east at a place called Hamoukar.

It’s a city that was destroyed by warfare about 5500 years ago.  The discovery of this city is rewriting the history of the development of ancient civilization as is Gobekli Tepe in eastern Turkey.  Gobekli Tepe is thought to be the oldest temple/shrine complex in the world.  Carbon dating puts it at about 11,000 years old.  The site is located at the top of a mountain near Sanliurfa, one of the proposed sites of Ur of the Chaldees where Abraham might have come from.  What’s cool about Gobekli Tepe is that it may be the biblical “garden of Eden”.  The theory goes that the shrine was built by neolithic hunter gatherers in an area of the fertile crescent that is very close to the site of the first domesticated wheat.  (Genetics have confirmed a nearby mountain as the site of the wheat)  So, archaeologists propose that the hunter gatherer societies in the area banded together to protect the source of the cereal and in the process, they built this temple complex.  Its construction coincides with the dawn of farming and animal husbandry.  It also moves the location of civilization from the area around Babylon to an area much more north and east.

A weird thing happened with Gobekli Tepe.  At about 8000 BC, someone wheelbarrowed in tons of dirt and debris and covered the whole thing up.  The site is only 1.5% excavated so far and is expected to yield some major discoveries.  But back to Hamoukar.  The place was destroyed by warfare, possibly over the obsidian trade.  Obsidian was quarried in the area and mass production of obsidian tools went on in Hamoukar.  Unlike downstream cities in Iraq, the area benefitted from local rainfall so irrigation was not necessary.  The city arose from its obsidian production and trade.  No one knows the circumstances behind the warfare or the fire that destroyed some of the buildings that have been uncovered.

And, no one may find out for a long time. Like Gobeckli Tepe, the site remains covered.  As it turns out, Hamoukar is located only 8 miles from the Syrian-Iraqi border and excavation was interrupted by the Iraq War.  It just isn’t safe for the archaeological team from the University of Chicago to go there. So, on top of stopping stem-cell research in the US, rewriting government funded science and denying global warming for eight years, the excavation of our history has also been put on hold by the Bush administration.  Granted, it might be a little thing for the University of Chicago at Hamoukar but the Germans are going gangbusters at Gobekli Tepe.  Call me sensitive but I hate to see our institutions of learning and research take a backseat to any other country in the world.  It offends my “We’re Number One!” American self image.  (Not to mention that the youtube videos are all in German which I feel I *should* understand but simply don’t.  Go figure, Barack.)

Anyway, maybe we can right what’s wrong with the country in the next 5 weeks.  There is a lot of activity going on in the next couple of weeks that should keep us busy.

Tonight: Alegre, she of the DailyKos Strike fame, will be on NO WE WON’T PUMA radio with Sheri Tag.  That show is a lot of fun and a great place to hear from other PUMAs.  I plan to sit on my hands tonight and let other callers phone in.  The more the merrier!  Also, check out Alegre’s Corner for more interesting reads.

Later this week, PUMAs and other interested parties will be meeting in Seneca Falls, New York to celebrate the 160th Anniversary of the First Women’s Rights Conference.  Heidi Li of The Denver Group will be using this opportunity to work for a fair, transparent and open convention in Denver, as well as to continue to pay off Clinton’s campaign debt.  The Finger Lakes area of NY is beautiful this time of year and there are a lot of state parks with campsites if you are interested in combining a cause with a mini-vacation.

The first PUMA conference is still in the planning stages but is tentatively scheduled for August 8-10 in DC.  More information as the plans solidify.

What are you doing with your time?