[Paleopsych] more random heresies

[Werbos, Dr. Paul J.]

At 03:23 PM 9/24/2004 -0700, Steve wrote:
>What are your best candidates for future heresies?

There heresies so far are things I take seriously, whatever the level of 
probability
I attach.

But... since you ask... as I think back... on the periphery of my memory...
there are a couple more, which I have no special attachment to...

I inserted the word "Helgoland" at the last moment before.

More than 40 years ago, when I lived near the northwest border of Philadelphia,
I found a book on the legend of Atlantic in the Chestnut Hill Public Library.
I borrowed it, and remember even now a few interesting parts. I don't BELIEVE
in what it said -- but it did seem fairly reasonable, and I have tended to 
think it
is more likely to be true than other versions I have heard. Among the key 
ideas:
people had said Plato must be totally wrong, because of the contradiction 
between an "island"
and a nation 3,000-miles wide; he pointed out how "Venice" and "Rome" were 
used in earlier
history to refer both to a capital and to the land/empire ruled from it. 
And he had a story about flooding about
1200BC linked to the Hellenic migration, and various other things. He 
located the island around Hegloland
(or was it Helioland?), and island off Denmark -- and I seem to recall a 
successful digging up of stuff from under the water.

The Orthodox view is that either the legend had no foundation at all, or 
that the island was somewhere far away.

A couple of years ago, I was musing about this, and wondered why none of 
the logic in the book seemed
to have penetrated the mainstream, whose arguments seemed a bit shallower 
to me, and less connected to
what we now know about "megalithic civilization." But Google gives us all a 
new kind of archeology,
recovering  what was once the lost past. And so I recovered the story. 
(Though the citation is buried deep
in my files again and I don't remember it...)

In essence, the guy was highly respected but politically incorrect. To put 
it gently -- like Von Braun.
But with Von Braun, people who needed rockets could distinguish the 
messenger from the message.
In this case, people did not feel a need for the truth enough to overcome 
their personal and political antipathies.
There was actually far more substance behind his theory than I saw in the 
old book... and it has not been entirely
lost... but there have been limits to people outside of Germany overcoming 
barriers to even paying attention to it.

His story fits very nicely with what has been learned about the big 
Stonehenge in Salem New Hampshire,
carbon dated to many thousands of years ago. (Not Salem, Mass.!). That 
Stonehenge was a neat place to visit,
just off the highway, going from around Boston to the White Mountains. To 
me, it did not have the feeling
of a rice and beans culture, of a bloodthirsty Mayan-style priest, or of an 
unknown superscience.
(Common myths in our culture today regarding that culture.) Rather... I 
would imagine a culture there
dominated by explorers, reaching out with a kind of vigor across unknown 
oceans, through surrounding
uncertainty and often darkness, but holding steady to their path of growth, 
looking far out to the stars to guide them and
define who they were.

================================================

Another, more recent deviant view of past history....

not mine, but something I have heard here and there, I forget where...
that the Neanderthals really weren't all just killed off. That there was 
enough crossfertility
that the pattern was far more complex. And that Neanderthals genes exist to 
this day
in concentrated pools -- maybe living Neanderthals, in effect... in places 
like Basque country and the Caucasus.
With perhaps even ancient languages...

I **REALLY** don't feel a lot of attachment to this picture, but it  makes some
kind of rough sense to me, and it certainly deviates from the usual 
certainties...

=====================================

By the way, I have no plans to go off thinking about how to generate 
negative free energy.
We have enough things to sort out a little closer to our horizon of 
knowledge. And a lot
of people need help in learning how to tie their shoes, so to speak...
time-consuming, but it's clear that we could be in real trouble if there is not
more appreciation of what is already crystal clear, related to energy 
technologies
already in hand based on universally accepted principles.

Best of luck,

    Paul