Fossil Legends of the First Americans

A genuine treasure

 

It's no secret that I'm mighty fond of dinosaurs, and equally fond of the First Nations people. I've been fascinated with both since childhood. And by the grace of the Almighty I came across this gem, Fossil Legends of the First Americans. Now, I'm a cheapskate. I keep Amazon afloat cuz I binge buy Kindle ebooks by the bucketload, but they're also cheap. I usually scope the one dollar ones. Given my meager budget, I have to. But when I came across this, I couldn't just buy a digital copy. I had to own a physical copy, to have it sit on my shelf. It cost a lot more, but it was worth it.

Adrienne Mayor, who I wasn't familiar with before picking this up, has swiftly become one of my new favorite scholars, and I have since purchased many of her other works. She goes into illustrious detail examining the folklore, history and legends of the various American tribes going back as far as records possible go and connects them materially and theoretically with the abundance of fossils of the land and how they influenced the First Nations. 

The results are nothing short of breathtaking. Nor is she a simple armchair scholar that looks down her nose upon getting her hands dirty. Besides braving the paper jungles of ancient manuscripts, she has collected a wealth of first hand information from living members of various tribes, really trying to get down to the roots of things. She isn't someone who lets her pet theories and preconceived notions get in the way of objectivity and reality. She gets deep into the heart of things to find facts and genuine truth.

Her research here helps us realize that despite many of the thoughts of early scientists, the First Nations people didn't look at the various bones and relics of the earth with mute lack of understanding, but instead were utterly fascinated by them and often recognized them as being the ancestors of animals they already knew, especially in the case of Pleistocene-era mammals. Those they didn't recognize they sought to understand and fit within their legends and understanding of the world. Remarkably, many of them came to understand that our world had phases, eras where man was absent but other animals of great and terrible power roamed, until cataclysm removed them and paved the way for modern man and animals. 

In many ways they were actually ahead of the scientists that came to study the bones after them. And their intimate knowledge of wildlife and their habits gave them a unique insight to how they might have behaved and helped them solve mysteries that baffled academics for years. One example was that of fossilized tunnels in a corkscrew shape, what they called Devil's Corkscrews. Paleontologists of the day were stumped. What could have formed these strange formations in the earth? Well, the locals had figured that out a long time ago: they were made by burrowing rodents, specifically the ancestors of beaver.

The numerous skeletons of massive sea lizards and remnants of pterosaurs gave rise to the idea of ancient sea serpents and thunder birds. The massive skulls and tusks of ancient mammoths in salt licks and rivers seeded the ideas of massive river monsters. Mammoth femurs, which look remarkably like human femurs, gave rise to the tales of ancient human giants. And yet for many these weren't static things to be observed and left alone. Many tribes felt that these remnants were great medicine and often used as charms and fetishes to give them power or protect them. Little wonder why! Equally interesting is how some were even ingested by those who were sick. Now, I'd known that the Chinese for millennia had ingested dinosaur bones as a medicine, but this was new! In fact, apparently Europeans had ingested them also. Who else has been eating fossils? What's even more remarkable is that they actually work! Evidently the density of calcium and minerals makes them a wonder for boosting the system. Bones and other pieces of the past were used as tools, burnishing pottery, withdrawing poisons, and a host of other usages.

The lore surrounding the fossils is utterly fascinating, and every group had a different history and flavor to them. Unfortunately, this book also highlights how much we could have known, as infinitely more than is recorded here was lost through the wars, famine and just plain unjust treatment and suppression of their myths. For history junkies like me it's like slapping a sunburn. But there's also hope for the future.

Now this book isn't for everyone, but if you are someone who follows my humble page here, then you're probably the kind of person who would enjoy it. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It's amazing work and well worth a spot on any bookshelf. 

My Stance and My Stand

I honestly try to not get too political here, but I feel that it's time to share my own two-bit opinion. 

Now hold onto your butts, cuz these might seem contradictory, but I want to make a greater point which will become clearer as I go along.

I support black people AND police. I oppose riots and police brutality. I support peaceful protest and civil disobedience, but I also support law and order. I support individual rights and police reform.

Now at first that might not seem to grand a statement, except I've noticed a nasty pattern in online memes and news stations that put all these things at odds. I'm awfully frustrated with the news and these memes because it makes things a zero sum game. They frame it so that if you support protections for citizens then you HAVE to hate police. But if you support police then you're a racist who wants an oppressive regime. They present the situation as if you care about one group, then you have to be in opposition to the other. I saw a meme the other day that annoyed me because it was manipulative.

It showed a couple looking at a broken window, commenting how it was so injust for it to be broken, while behind them an officer is kneeling on the neck of a cuffed black man. How is that manipulative you ask? It's showing people care more about property than human life you might say. On it's face, sure. But here's the thing: It's saying that if you care about one thing, then you can't care about the other. I care about BOTH. I want police officers to get the right training and responses so that they can handle a situation appropriately and not unnecessarily harm citizens, and at the same time oppose violent mobs destroying people's lives. 

That's why I'm so frustrated with the media, because they tell people that they can't do both. That's patently false. It's a manipulative game they play. It's all or nothing, black and white, hot or cold, no middle ground, gray area or neutral ground for mutual understanding. In short, these media creeps are dividing us. And if they can divide us and pit us against one another, then they can control us and profit from it. 

The media and politicians seek to divide us. I seek to unite us. These memes and news cycles annoy me because I see them being shared by friends and genuinely good people. I'm not annoyed at these people, I'm annoyed that they're being manipulated into thinking that they have to choose one side or the other. It ticks me off, because the way this manipulation works, I can't say that I want police to protect small businesses from being torched without them thinking that I'm in support of police brutality and that I don't care about George Floyd. 

I'm not letting them set the terms of engagement. Instead, I will set my own: I want to protect as many people as humanly possible, regardless of skin color, orientation, income or religion. We can agree that some police officers are bad. Of course there are. No organization is perfect, some bad people getting in is inevitable. It's a sad reality, but one we have to live with and do our best to sift out the bad apples when they grow on the trees. I personally grew up with lots of officers who just wanted to help people. Heck, for awhile I considered going into Law Enforcement because I wanted to catch bad guys and save regular folks. There's a lot of good men and women in our police departments.

There's also some who are petty control freaks who desire a badge so that they can push people around and act like a high school jock with a baton and no teacher around. Yep, these creeps do get in and push people around. The solution however isn't to destroy the entire organization, but to weed them out. Law enforcement does need an overhaul in many regards. They need to be demilitarized and get back to the fundamentals of not being brute law enforcement, but of serving and protecting of the citizenry. We need to get them back to being allies of everyday folks, not petty field bureaucrats with tasers

At the same time, we can't condone mass rioting. There is a difference between civil disobedience, low level law breaking to gain sympathy and attention, and mass riots that turn a town into Escape From New York. They are happening in black neighborhoods, with the businesses, property and lives of black people being absolutely demolished. I saw a video of a black man watching his business go up in smoke. He yelled out at the crowd, on the verge of tears, yelling how he came up from the hood just like they did, demanding how this was going to solve police violence. I almost wept for him. How long had this guy worked, saving, dreaming, and sweating to own a business of his own to live life on his own terms and not be chained to a big business agenda. He was living the American dream, being his own boss, with his own work and goals, and overnight everything was gone.

Think about that, please. It's just property, some people say. Sure. But I consider respecting someone's property to be respecting them. I don't like touching anything belonging to someone else without asking for permission. I consider it to be respectful to do so. After all, they spent their hard earned money on it, and wanted it, otherwise they wouldn't have bought it. This is called empathy and The Golden Rule. I treat others how I want to be treated. 

I want these riots stopped. Good people are being hurt. What started as peaceful protests were hijacked by communist revolutionaries who want to overthrow the standing order and impose their own. I won't stand for it. I want police to be allowed to do their primary jobs, that of serving and protecting the citizenry. I want these agitators who are beating regular people black and blue arrested and prosecuted. I also want our officers held to a high standard, and to obey the laws that they swear to uphold. If they do something that's not right, I want them tried too.

You don't have to pick one or the other. There are effectively two factions of Black Lives Matter. One is genuinely concerned with protecting themselves from police brutality and seek reform through peaceful protest and seeking common ground with others. The other, by its own admission, is Marxist and seeks to overthrow and conquer. Frankly, I find them to be Antifa radicals wearing blackface. The peaceful version I support. The other I oppose to my last breath. 

To those who read this, let us find common ground and do that which will benefit us all, instead of fighting over what little divides us imposed by the media and corrupt politicians that seek to profit from our strife.