Lord of the Rings is not pagan

Jack Posobiec has revived a scholarly argument about the paganism of Tolkien's work. It is not entirely a stupid argument. Posobiec (and del Arroz) should know, however, that this argument has already been had. The pagans lost.

Lord of the Rings is to be understood as Mel Gibson intended Apocalypto. This is a world before Christ, and before the Flood; a Hyborean age if you will (the canon Unwin maps even look similar to Howard's). Gibson's "Icon" production-company, in the Maya world, had a pregnant character appeal to a blessed Mother-Virgin. She does not know Mary, but she still knows deep down she intercedes.

As such, no Tolkien character can refer to Scripture - unless that Scripture be the Silmarillion. The characters can, however, prefigure Douay-Rheims and the Vulgate. Aragorn heals the sick of Gondor as will the secret Markan messiah. Samwise calls upon Elbereth to retrieve the elven rope. One can go on and on here: down to Mairon's presence as the twentieth-century war engineer, doing Melkor's will perhaps against his own instinct. (Mairon - Sauron - consciously had spread a Melkor cult in Anadûnê; but I suspect that from malice, because Númenor stood in Sauron's way.)

As to del Arroz, he has shifted to defending Posobiec from himself. My thought is that Vox Day needs to wrangle his 'tard.

Here comes the Neander diversity

HBDChick alerted us to Charoula M. Fotiadou, Jesper Borre Pedersen, Hélène Rougier, and Cosimo Posth: a "diversification" event within the Neander community of Europe ~63kBC during Marine Isotope ("MIS")-3. That doesn't mean their genetics were becoming more diverse, through intermarriage with their neighbours. Oh no.

This is a demic replacement of mtDNA lineages, in favour of one lineage: an Aquitanian lineage, to be exact.

That means the Neanders of Aquitaine went out to conquer those neighbours' land, after which that group's women followed their warriors. What happened to those ex-neighbours, seems about what happened to the Omanis of Zanzibar in Africa Addio. Nice to know it's not just us "sapiens" doing it - to our Neander relatives, or to each other this time.

The victorious Aquitanians - "Mousterian", in material culture - carried on carryin' on for another 20ky. They saw off the Neronian colony and, 43kBC, even Bacho Kiro. But also 43kBC, came the Laschamps flip and the Châtelperronians; the Neanders subsequently endured three millennia of population decline. Generally thought to be Sapiens' first (successful) "Cro-Magnon" intrusion.

Ge'ez and Armenian

Armenian in typescript today looks like it could be modern Cyrillic. But it is not. Cyrillic is pretty much an update of Byzantine Greek to fit the Slavic voice, with maybe a few nods to Latin (like the Cyrillic D), and (some say) old-school takings from runes and Glagolitic. Armenian by contrast looks like a cypher.

Apparently - I didn't know - some observers thought old Armenian looked like Ethiopic. But false-friends abound; even some Linear B can be abused to look like Greek with sufficient wishful-thinking. But lately announced, someone's run it through AI.

If we are to believe this, we must ask: why. The Hayots "Armenian" language is enough like Greek (or like old Bactrian for that matter) you'd think that, if you lived there and you were sick of the Pahlavi system, you'd just use some assemblage of Greek and Bactrian, analogous to what the Slavs would use. Like the Copts abandoned their serviceable-for-centuries Demotic, for that Greek alphabet; and Egyptian was nothing like Greek or Bactrian or Armenian in-between.

Here is one point: politics. The Iranian overlords REALLY did not like Greek, nor Latin for that matter. Armenians seen writing in the western scripts would be accused of western sympathy. The Sasanians further made a push to Aryanise the culture; they tolerated the 'Iraq as Aniran but not Armenia. Bactria kept its Greek alphabet basically because it's Afghanistan, which half the time the Sasanians abandoned to the Huns. The Romans when and where in charge simply didn't care as much; they'd just say "learn Greek bro".

For Armenian patriots, a None Of The Above script had to do. Aramaic scripts were available, like that used for Hebrew; but they went in the wrong direction and were designed for Semitic languages which do not include Armenian. As none-of-the-above, anyone looking for inspiration might have to go afield. Hey, like to where Glagolitic was used! - except by now these Armenians were Christians. To the Holy Land it was, then.

I do wonder if we are talking about Ge'ez proper, or to South Arabian and/or "Thamudic" scripts. I understand that Safaitic and Hismaic were no longer in use, but the musnads were still running strong in Saba.

Sumerian bacon

Abu Tbeirah was probably Sumerian, south of Lagash and Ur as it was. I don't know if it was a canal city, but I am pretty sure it had a wharf until 3500 BC. What we do not know, yet, is what these Sumerians named their own city.

The period is 2900–2350 BC, which is called "Early Dynastic". They don't have documents, but they do have a menu. Usually we get some clue from bones - carbon and nitrogen isotopes get skewed for seafood-eaters (which famously annoys carbon-daters); ideal would be coprolites. But marshy lower Iraq tends to be bad at preserving either; and in a city context, likely the honey wagon is taking potential copro's back to the fields. So the scholars're looking at zinc in the teeth. Of course cereals were a big part of their diet, why else live here.

A surprise, to me, is that they didn't eat fish. They ate pork, and imported other meats from the hills. As to why no fish, uh. Maybe the swamps had been drained and the only fishwater was irrigation-water, which got fertilizer-runoff. Whatever fish could survive in what is basically a sewer, I'd not recommend frying up.

Dryas platinum

ScienceDaily was breathlessly boasting they'd "solved" the Younger Dryas. What seems done instead is to rule out an option. The platinum at the time is ruled volcanic. And happened 45 years into the event.

So, no dramatic meteors. No Larcher See, neither - at least for the platinum; this was a low-metal mountain. Iceland has the metals.

The YD proper might have been from a low-metal mountain itself however. Also those Black Mats weren't addressed.

Naboth and Jezebel, at Jezreel

Last December I discussed Jehu "ben Omri", suggesting a power-struggle between the nephew and the queen. Paul Davidson had, beforehand, discussed the queen.

Most of our lore is contested between the traditions of 1 Kings in the MT, 3 Reigns in the "LXX" Greek, and the Chronicler. The Chronicler has no stake in the Jezebel lore. This whole bit in Greek would fall within the 3 Reigns 2:12ff γγ section. This survived the "kaige" revisions, revisions which hit other books at Naḥal Ḥever / R-Text. But not γγ: so our story retains early features, likely preMT. (3 Reigns 22 onward gets KAIGE'd again.)

Jezebel probably did exist. All the royals of the time would have needed strong internal relationships against Shalmaneser. Somebody was getting married to a Lebanese in Psalm 45. 1 Kings 16:31 survives uncontested in the crossover verses MT/LXX. If the Chronicler ignored this, it wouldn't matter.

Paul D is saying that had all that Jezebel / Naboth lore featured in the original, the Chronicler couldn't have ignored it like he could ignore stray 1 Kings 16:31. Somebody was spinning tales during the late Persian era. Paul D notes parallels to the Bathsheba episode... which in Greek falls in Kaige, so we haven't a "second opinion" on that. Nonetheless Paul D thinks the Bathsheba lore be early.

Michinmahuida

In the 9000s BC, Michinmahuida erupted and coated the Chilean side of Patagonia with ash. Prevailing winds pushed that cloud against the Andes so it might not have affected the planet beyond that.

It's in the news now because its ash is the floor - not ceiling - for Chile's Vermont or, in Spanish, Monte Verde. Tom Dillehay had touted this one over the 1990s as the Clovis-killer: it was, he claimed, inhabited long long before the 9000s and the Clovis culture. Proof of human expansion past the Darien Gap.

If the ash is from Michinmahuida, then this isn't true. The artifacts aren't preClovis; they are merely ignorant of Clovis. Maybe they didn't need Clovis tech down there (which has the function of Solutrean tech, famously). Also the artifacts in question are perishables: nets, wooden wall-planks, and the like. The new study claims that to the extent they look lower-tier (older), it's because they were swept down a river and buried in anoxic conditions. Which is fortunate for diggers, since that is how they were preserved from rot.

It does make stratigraphy something of a bad joke however. On any side.

Can the wood be wigglematched? At least to disprove dates around one of those elder Miyake events?