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Before Scandinavia: These Could Be The First Skiers (China)
Christian Science Monitor ^ | March 15, 2006 | Robert Marquand

Posted on 03/18/2006 2:39:45 PM PST by blam

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To: muawiyah

Yikes! good thing you aren't a diabetic! (I am)

Scandinavian Porphyria? Link plaese. In fact freep it to me, I have to run.


61 posted on 03/18/2006 6:10:01 PM PST by Nathan Zachary
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To: muawiyah

Oh, I read that the people who worked in the cinnamon 'factory' during the 1918 flu pandemic never got sick.


62 posted on 03/18/2006 6:10:01 PM PST by blam
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To: blam
Probably dropped his blood sugar so low he exhibited a hypoglycemic reaction.

I'd see the doctor about that.

63 posted on 03/18/2006 6:11:44 PM PST by muawiyah (-)
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To: Nathan Zachary

Type II ~ for a couple of years. I keep it in control with exercise, diet and cinnamon. The cinnamon, by itself, is good for 50 points in my case. Different people handle it differently.


64 posted on 03/18/2006 6:13:47 PM PST by muawiyah (-)
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To: muawiyah
"On the other hand, we found a European style stone arrow head (actually a spear point) in the tailings of a well drilled on our land in Indianapolis".

I was just in Indianapolis, I spent Christmas with my sister in Carmel.

65 posted on 03/18/2006 6:14:33 PM PST by blam
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To: blam; FairOpinion; Ernest_at_the_Beach; StayAt HomeMother; 24Karet; 3AngelaD; asp1; ...
Thanks Blam.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
Gods, Graves, Glyphs PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

66 posted on 03/18/2006 8:06:55 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Yes indeed, Civ updated his profile and links pages again, on Monday, March 6, 2006.)
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To: blam; FairOpinion; Ernest_at_the_Beach; StayAt HomeMother; 24Karet; 3AngelaD; asp1; ...
Thanks Blam.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
Gods, Graves, Glyphs PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

67 posted on 03/18/2006 8:14:00 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Yes indeed, Civ updated his profile and links pages again, on Monday, March 6, 2006.)
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Whoops! Dunno how that happened.


68 posted on 03/18/2006 8:16:33 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Yes indeed, Civ updated his profile and links pages again, on Monday, March 6, 2006.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Speaking of skiing. Remember Picabo Street (pronounced peekaboo)the American skier?

She's a Registered Nurse now at a Pittsburg hospital--but they won't let her answer the phone because she'd say "Picabo ICU."


69 posted on 03/18/2006 8:28:53 PM PST by wildbill
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To: wildbill

Interesting. Rod Stewart's musical career was kinda in limbo for quite a few years, but he'd invested in a chain of Canadian diners, the Every Picture Tells a Story Donut Shops.


70 posted on 03/18/2006 8:38:22 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Yes indeed, Civ updated his profile and links pages again, on Monday, March 6, 2006.)
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To: blam

Interesting article.


71 posted on 03/18/2006 9:46:30 PM PST by Dustbunny (Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers)
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To: blam
Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF)
72 posted on 03/18/2006 10:08:25 PM PST by Dustbunny (Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers)
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To: blam
The History of Eating Utensils!!!

Bless your heart. Right up my alley. You're a good man. LOL!

73 posted on 03/18/2006 11:36:56 PM PST by lizma
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To: dagnabbit
"Move over Bode...
2008 edition Trivial Pursuit question: "Name the overrated wastrel hyped for the 2006 Winter Olympics, currently employed as blood donor".

My first thought was 'Vaughn Bode skied??'
I promise not to name any others on FR who might remember Dead Bone or Junkwaffel.

74 posted on 03/19/2006 1:33:52 AM PST by norton
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To: Nathan Zachary; blam
[Nope. Bonafide Caucasians. Victor Mair, in his excellent book, The Tarim Mummies, quotes an Indian archaeologist (N Narain) as believing that all Europeans descended from this region.]

It doesn't square well with evolutionist theory either.

Please support this claim. We'll wait.

They do not agree that micro evolution (adaptation) could account for the different outward apearances of humans.

Sure they do, since that's exactly how "evolutionists" *do* account for such differences. Please don't pontificate on things you clearly don't have a clue about.

75 posted on 03/19/2006 1:45:37 AM PST by Ichneumon
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To: blam

Interesting article, except the Christian Science Monitor has it all wrong.

The chinese never claimed to have invented skiing.

http://silkworms.chinesetriad.org/?p=283


76 posted on 03/19/2006 1:00:40 PM PST by cmdjing
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To: cmdjing; SunkenCiv
Thanks.

UniversityChinese Skiers and the Western Media Filter

Robert Marquand of the Christian Science Monitor has another article on “ancient Chinese skiers” in the Altay region of Xinjiang.
It’s a good article mainly focused on pro skier Nils Larsen who has gone out to the Altay region, which straddles Xinjiang and Mongolia, and checked out the herdsmens skis himself.
It also details the differences between Altaic skiing and Scandanavian skiing - wider skis with animal skin lining the bottom for grip which require far more boot and pole work to maneuver. But towards the end, Robert Marquand repeats what I can now confidently say is a bit of misinformation that has lodged itself firmly in the China narrative of Western media:

On Jan. 25, days before the ancient-skiing contest, China’s state-run news service Xinhua announced that China had essentially invented skiing.

Citing newly discovered Altaic regional cave paintings of four hunters on boards with poles in their hands, chasing cattle and horses - the Xinhua story proposed that “Chinese were adept skiers in the Old Stone Age,” and that skiing originated there 100 to 200 centuries ago.

In a previous post I addressed a Reuters article dated January 24th that began with “Cliff paintings of hunters of rugged remote northwestern China appear to prove that Chinese were adept skiers in the Old Stone Age, Xinhua News Agency said on Monday.”

Except on Monday, January 23rd, the only English language Chinese article I say was this one at People’s Daily Online which did not make any Chinese claim, but instead cautiously said ” Contents of ancient cliff paintings in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have been verified as human hunting while skiing and, therefore, archeologists prove the Altay region to be a place of skiing some 100 to 200 centuries ago.”
The next day, Reuters cast this as a “Chinese claim” even though the original Chinese English-language article didn’t refer to any skiing whatsoever as “Chinese”.

Now Robert Marquand is quoting a January 25th article from Xinhua, which was in fact this one which reprinted, as Chinese media often does, the Reuters article verbatim. Marquand says the article was printed “just days before the ancient skiing contest”, which is true, but it was another example of the Chinese media plagiarizing foreign media (as part of what I believe to be a silly plan to increase China’s internet English media presence by sheer volume of material) rather than an example of China promulgating some all encompassing nationalist view of history within its borders.

Marquand is a good journalist, but the job of informing the U.S. and Western public on China is still dominated by China Watchers, the gatekeeper experts of the press and academia.
It’s downright sloppy and counterproductive to rely on Chinese historical nationalism as a given - it starts down the slippery slope of stereotype, which in turn dangerously invites alliteration.
This was actually an example of a Chinese press article, the original, taking a neutral viewpoint on the questions of national borders, sovereignty and identity. But since we’re all so used to China making too much of these issues, those of us who write about China risk doing exactly what Reuters and the Christian Science Monitor have done here: being blind to when they actually got something right.
It’s a disservice to the Chinese journalists and politicians who do care about getting historical facts right more than plugging a nationalist agenda, and a failure to promote better cross-cultural communication.
I can sympathize a little more with Chinese who feel they are unfairly maligned in the Western press when I read things like this, and I wonder if Western journalists will ever throw off the stereotypical memes used about China (e.g. “This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Cultural Revolution!”, “Gosh, Shanghai is Really Modern!”, “Ohmigod, China is a Bird Flu/Andromeda Strain Breeding Petridish!”, and so on).
I also wonder if the Chinese media will ever get a handle on the idea that their foreign language media is supposed to have, theoretically, an audience whom they have to respond to (foreign correspondents might be a good place to start), and finally how many foreign correspondents in China really know Chinese.
Metanoiac recently got to ask some the media elite from both sides about these issues, and he was unimpressed.

It sometimes becomes a bad habit when living in China that you’ve heard the same tired lines from so many people about the same issues on which you disagree, and you begin to anticipate the words “China has 5000 years of history”, “Taiwan is a part of China”, “it hurts the feelings of the Chinese people”, and all those other stale cliches that make us roll our eyes and, in rare extreme cases, bitch all night about it while getting progressively more drunk.
And then invariably there comes a time when that kneejerk instinct kicks in and we don’t listen to a Chinese person because it sounded like they were about to deliver another old chestnut, when in fact they ended up saying something far more interesting.
But we don’t hear it, because we stopped listening before they even began, thanks to fatigue and cynicism wrought by China’s very real suppression of independent thought, particularly on issues such as history.
The repetition of this claim that Xinhua made another sweeping nationalist proclamation seems driven by that same set of assumptions, because China correspondents have to guard against that dulling of wits even more than your average expat.

77 posted on 03/19/2006 3:50:30 PM PST by blam
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To: Nathan Zachary
What WE DO see evidence of, is a sudden onslaught of ice instantly killing and burying a tropical region.

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA!

78 posted on 03/20/2006 12:02:28 PM PST by balrog666 (Irrational beliefs inspire irrational posts.)
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To: muawiyah
However, most of the ancestors of today's European people (and American Indians and East Asians) lived in an area to the NW of Greater India. This was an ice-free zone and gave tremendous access to big game.

Are you speaking of the Caucasus mountains?
IIRC, there was a large "pocket" of ice-free land during the last glacial period situated in the Caucasus mountain range..

79 posted on 03/20/2006 2:56:53 PM PST by Drammach (In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king..)
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To: Drammach
Ukraine, NE of Ukraine, and out on the Steppes.

The Caucusus mountains are much farther South, and they would have been glaciated during the last glacial peak. Any part the Caucusus mountains played happened long after the "development" of the European people in Asia.

80 posted on 03/20/2006 3:09:36 PM PST by muawiyah (-)
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