New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America

From todays Independent.

A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.

When I read articles like this I often wonder what  Christian fundamentalists think about it, do they chuckle and shake their heads safe in the knowledge that the earth is only 6000 years old?

So I decided to look into why they believe that the earth is 6000 years old and I found this:

The date that many Christian fundamentalists believe the earth was created on is based on a chronology of Biblical events prepared by a seventeenth-century Irish bishop, James Ussher.

The chronology first appeared in The Annals of the Old Testament, a monumental work first published in London in the summer of 1650. In 1654, Ussher added a part two which took his history through Rome’s destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The project, which produced 2,000 pages in Latin, occupied twenty years of Ussher’s life. Ussher lived through momentous times, having been born during the reign of Elizabeth and dying, in 1656, under Cromwell. He was a talented fast-track scholar who entered Trinity College in Dublin at the early age of thirteen, became an ordained priest by the age of twenty, and a professor at Trinity by twenty-seven. In 1625, Ussher became the head of the Anglo-Irish Church in Ireland. 

As a Protestant bishop in a Catholic land, Ussher’s obsession with providing an accurate Biblical history stemmed from a desire to establish the superiority of the scholarship practiced by the clergy of his reformed faith over that of the Jesuits, the resolutely intellectual Roman Catholic order. (Ussher had absolutely nothing good to say about “papists” and their “superstitious” faith and “erroneous” doctrine.) Ussher committed himself to establishing a date for Creation that could withstand any challenge. He located and studied thousands of ancient books and manuscripts, written in many different languages. By the time of his death, he had amassed a library of over 10,000 volumes. 

The date forever tied to Bishop Ussher appears in the first paragraph of the first page of The Annals. Ussher wrote: “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth, which beginning of time, according to this chronology, occurred at the beginning of the night which preceded the 23^rd of October in the year 710 of the Julian period.” In the right margin of the page, Ussher computes the date in “Christian” time as 4004 BC.

So now I know.

ANCHSoon after

British boxers fight at Munich press conference.

From various newspapers:

Dereck Chisora believed David Haye glassed him during their disgraceful brawl. Haye, with a glass bottle in his right hand, punched Chisora. Drink spilled on to Chisora's shirt and the end of the bottle appeared to catch his chin. Women screamed as more members of both camps joined the fray involving the two British heavyweight boxers, and huge men lurched around the room, scattering bottles, tables and chairs.

Dereck Chisora's promoter Frank Warren described his client's brawl with David Haye as "ugly, horrible, disgraceful and an embarrassment for British boxing".

"It's brought the sport into a bad light, which is a great shame for all the fighters that do behave, and 99 per cent of them do behave and carry a lot of honour into the sport.

"I would say they were total idiots. 


So this brawl has cast in a bad light the noble art of punching someone in the head until they suffer brain damage. My guess is that it has also significantly increased the amount of money Frank Warren will make from the eventual contest between these ’total idiots’.

Russia and China use veto to block UN security council resolution.

Russia and China have vetoed a UN security council resolution calling for the Syrian president to step down, provoking a furious reaction.

All 13 other members of the council, including the US, France and Britain, voted in favour of the resolution, which backed an Arab peace plan aimed at stopping the violence in Syria. Russia and China blocked the resolution because of what they perceived to be a potential violation of Syria's sovereignty, which could allow for military intervention or regime change.

American UN envoy Susan Rice described the veto on Saturday as "shameful", saying Russia and China aimed to "sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant".

"Any further bloodshed that flows will be on their hands," she said.

I fail to see the advantage either long term or short term for the Russians and Chinese continuing support of Assad because it is inevitable that he will go the same way as Mussolini and George Formby and eventually he’ll be seen hanging around a lamppost. (See my previous post re exit plans.)

It’s good to see the United States indignant regarding the continuing abuse by the Syrian government of its citizens and continuing human rights abuses. But before the US gets all 'holier than thou' it’s worth noting that since 1972 the United States has been the single, solitary veto on 42 Security Council resolutions condemning Israeli violations of international law or human rights.