And in other news

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,360121,00.html

So now the latest theory is that Stonehenge was a burial site.  Ok, I can see the stones as large gravemarkers and especially when you go through the whole thing of how they line up with the stars, sun, etc. 

What I love when I read these stories are the attempts to understand a people we have no real records of.  One of the greatest things I ever read was written many years ago and it was a supposedly archeaological study conducted a few thousand years from now of a culture who uncovered a bathroom of our times.  I can’t remember all of the items and how they were represented but it went along the lines that the throne (toliet) seat was a sign of power and the container on the back of the throne was a place for tributes to be placed.  I can’t remember the religous significance of the bathtub but I remember the bath stopper on a chain was seen as an amulet.  Oh and the plunger was a scepter.  You can let your imagination go wild from here.  But it goes to show the possibilities of how a future culture could totally misunderstand what we use today and what it is for.  So when I read these studies by archaeologists, I love them because they could be right or they could be so far from the truth.  And the great thing is that we won’t know.

 

I love stories like this

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/05/30/brazil.tribes/index.html

Researchers have produced aerial photos of jungle dwellers who they say are among the few remaining peoples on Earth who have had no contact with the outside world.

It is not known to which tribe the individuals photographed belong.

Taken from a small airplane, the photos show men outside thatched communal huts, necks craned upward, pointing bows toward the air in a remote corner of the Amazonian rainforest.

The National Indian Foundation, a government agency in Brazil, published the photos Thursday on its Web site. It tracks “uncontacted tribes” — indigenous groups that are thought to have had no contact with outsiders — and seeks to protect them from encroachment.

More than 100 uncontacted tribes remain worldwide, and about half live in the remote reaches of the Amazonian rainforest in Peru or Brazil, near the recently photographed tribe, according to Survival International, a nonprofit group that advocates for the rights of indigenous people.

Of course some anthropologist is going to want to study these people, someone is going to want to make a movie about them, yadada.  But I love the idea that there are people still untouched by what we call civilization.  I hope somehow we manage to leave them alone.  Their lives are certainly better off if we do.  And yes I did love the movie The Last of the Dogmen.