No, no, the other one.
Author: Jennifer Mugrage
I'm a wife, mother, Christian, closet Luddite, Neanderthal advocate, incurable book hound.
I'm also the author of The Scattering Trilogy, which is set in 10,000 B.C. Buy, read, pass it on!
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The “Oldest Dutch Art”
… is zigzags carved onto a possibly 13,500-year-old bison bone retrieved from Doggerland.
Retrieved by Dutch fishermen.
“The oldest Dutch art,” haha, get it?
Doggerland was a fertile area inhabited by people when sea levels were much lower. It lay under what is now the North Sea. Unlike the map in the linked article, some maps show it being a vast lowland area essentially joining England with what is today Scandanavia. These maps also often show England joined to France and Ireland. Europe’s current rivers are just the headwaters of a larger river system. Of course, no one knows exactly what it would have looked like, but it’s fun to speculate.
On an evolutionary timescale, Doggerland was inhabited over millennia, millennia ago. On a young earth/catastrophic flood timescale, it could have been settled over decades or centuries by people dispersing after the flood, when the climate was cool and rainy, large glaciers formed rapidly, and sea levels were consequently much lower, exposing land bridges all over the world that facilitated humanity’s dispersion. There could have been a relatively short period of time (a few centuries?) before the climate stabilized, the glaciers melted, and sea levels rose, marooning people wherever they had ended up.
As a Dutch person myself, I think it’s incredibly clever that they call this the “oldest Dutch work of art.” I mean, given that the Dutch have reclaimed a good part of their country from the sea, why don’t we just go ahead and let them have as much of Doggerland as they can manage?
However, I disagree with some of the experts in the article that the only possible use we can imagine for zigzags is artistic or “ritual.” Following Richard M. Rudgley, other possible are uses are a calendar, music, or some other kind of scientific notation.
Quote: Man, That’s Cold
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way
from The Cremation of Sam McGee, by Robert W. Service
over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold
it stabbed like a driven nail.
I’m considering committing to the position that this is the best poem ever written.
Guys, My Oldest Is 16
Here he is enjoying sushi on his 16th birthday.
I love this photo because it captures something about him … nerdy, techy, fit, into all things Japanese.
I also love the gritty urban look of this photo.
Naturally, I had to edit it so that his image is blurred and his privacy somewhat protected. (Guess who helped me find out where I could edit it? That’s right)
The other cool thing is this: We live in rural southeastern Idaho. You would think, all that’s available to eat out here is prickly pear, river fish, beef, and potatoes. But no, thanks to the fact that we live in this once-great empire that is falling into ruins but is still incredibly wealthy, we can drive less than an hour and get sushi. In Idaho. As this new year begins, that’s something I’m thankful for. Such convenience and prosperity certainly make it easier to raise this lovely young man. Who is, of course, another gift for which I’m incredibly thankful.
Altai Throat Singing
The Altai mountains are in central Asia, north of the Himalayas, around the area where countries such as China, Mongolia, Russia, and Kazakstan meet. They are not too far from the stompin’ grounds of the horse-riding Central Asian tribes such as the Scythians and Parthians, part of the same culture area that gave rise to the early Indo-Europeans with their kurgans, before they moved west into Europe proper. That’s why these guys look sort of European and sort of Asian. People who live here have looked like this for thousands of years.
The Altai mountains are an old range of mountains (left over from Pangea?), not created by whatever event caused the Himalayas. Hence, they are low and rolling. I had to (lightly) research this part of the world when I went to write The Long Guest. My characters called them the Gentle Mountains. They had a lodge there for some years before moving on to the Gobi desert (which possibly didn’t actually exist in the immediate post-flood years in which my story is set, but we will ignore that. Onward!)
I thought this was a perfect video to share on a winter’s day. Are these people cool or what? I love how he warms up for throat singing by making horse noises.
As with many cultures, my imagination is very attracted to their way of life, but I would probably hate it if I had to actually live that way, not being tough enough.
Enjoy the Stuff: New Year’s Advice from Doug Wilson
“And Jesus answered and said, ‘Verily, I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29 – 30)
Now there is a certain kind of compromised Christian for whom the first part of this passage (v. 29) is the “hard saying.” The cares of this world do choke out spiritual interest. But there is another kind of Christian, the pious, otherworldly kind, for whom the hard saying is actually found in v. 30. It is as hard to give house and lands to some Christians as it is to take them away from others.
Imagine a glorious mansion on one hundred acres on a scenic stretch of the Oregon coast, and then imagine yourself having been assigned the task of giving it to an otherworldly prayer warrior. The Lord wanted him to be in a position to paint some glorious water colors, but only after conducting his prayer walks on the beach. He nevertheless was struggling with the whole concept because the guilt made it difficult to hold the brush.
The challenge is this: how can we hold things in the palm of our hand without those things themselves growing hands that can hold us in a death grip? The Lord promised that we could handle serpents and not be bitten (Mark 16:18), and mammon is certainly one of those serpents.
American Milk and Honey, pp. 151 – 153
A Very Sane UFOlogist
Gary Bates, interviewed by Jon Harris on Conversations That Matter, is the most sane and humane UFOlogist you could hope to meet.
That Time John Calvin Got Guilted into Moving to Geneva
There was a detour sign on [Calvin’s] road from Paris to Strasbourg. Francis I and Charles V were in the opening stages of their third major war. Armies sprawled across the roads forbade passage. Calvin bent his way southward by Geneva … He went to an inn, planning to spend one restful night and be gone. But … there was knock on the door of Calvin’s chamber, and an importunate caller entered, who felt himself commissioned to remake the scholar into a leader. This was, of course, Guillaume Farel, the venturesome, big-voiced, red-haired little evangelist and controversialist … Farel and his associates were intent on reconstruction [in Geneva] and had taken some significant steps in the ordering of discipline, worship, and education. [W]hen [he found out] that Calvin had come for the night, Farel eagerly sought him out, resolved in to enlist him in the Geneva work.
The interview was both dramatic and historically momentous. Farel was twenty years Calvin’s senior, and a man of flaming zeal. Calvin longed for the library and the study; to Farel this would be a desertion of the cause of the Lord.
“If you refuse,” he thundered, “to devote yourself with us to the work … God will condemn you.”
Calvin later testified that he had been terrified and shaken by Farel’s dreadful adjuration, and had felt as if God from on high had laid His hand upon him.
John T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism, pp. 131 – 136
Happy New Year! Don’t let anybody guilt you into any historically significant moves!
Latest View of Big Southern Butte
Can you spot it?
This wasn’t done from a photograph, as you can tell by the lack of detail. It wasn’t done plein-air either, but it was closer to a plein-air painting.
A few weeks ago, after I had gone outside to feed the hens, I was greeted by this scene. The sun hadn’t yet reached our homestead, but it was striking the hills up northaway. I stood there for a few moments memorizing the colors and thinking about how I would paint it. Then, over the course of the next week, whenever I had a chance I would add to the painting. I painted only when there was natural light in the studio. Pretend plein-air, if you will.
Let me show you my process …
Step 1: cover the canvas in light green for the sky and light grey for the predawn snow.
Step 2: add BSB and its mountain friends in appropriate dawn colors.
Step 3: the lava fields near them have not yet been hit by the sun, so they are navy blue.
Step 4: add stripes of cloud, just as they looked on that morning.
And finally, add distant trees, canal edge, ploughed-up snowy field with tire tracks, and black road with tire tracks in the snow.
Merry Christmas!
Out of Babel Books 