Posted on 09/26/2003 5:21:12 PM PDT by foolscap
Maeve Kennedy Wednesday September 24, 2003 The Guardian
A narrow cave in a gorge in Somerset has been identified as the oldest cemetery in Britain, used by generations of people from one area in the Mendips just after the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. Scientific tests, released yesterday, showed it had been sealed and abandoned more than 6,000 years before the first stone of the pyramids of Egypt was laid. The site, Aveline's Hole, is unique in Britain and earlier than anything similar on mainland Europe.
According to legend it was found in 1797 by two boys so determined to catch the rabbit they were chasing, that they took a pickaxe to the hole in the rock it escaped through and found a cavern full of skeletons.
Some accounts say that up to 100 skeletons were found neatly laid out in rows but tourists and amateur archaeologists flocked to the site, and the bones were scattered. Hundreds were stored at Bristol University but destroyed by a bomb during the second world war. Fragments survived there and in other museum collections.
Peter Marshall of English Heritage's scientific dating service, which commissioned the first comprehensive tests on the bones, said the results were remarkable. "People in early Mesolithic Britain were creating what we can recognise as a cemetery thousands of years earlier than has previously been thought. Although late Mesolithic cemeteries have been found on the continent, none have been recognised over here," he said.
The tests showed that the men, women and children buried in the cave were small and strong and ate meat. They rarely lived to be older than 50 and were tormented with bad teeth, rheumatic pains and osteoarthritis.
HeHmm!
The last time I read an issue of Smithsonian they were advertising vacations in Montana, digging up dinosaurs!
FReegards.
BTW. If you can come up with a healthy diet for a single man who has no cooking skills but does have a toaster oven and a microwave, I'd love to hear about it.
I'm damned to cullinary and dentist hell, aren't I?
Bruce Williams (a radio financial advisor, I guess you'd call him) years ago told his listeners that he would never get behind the wheel of a car without a million-dollars of liability insurance.
What might one need today, a billion?
I don't know how many times I nearly ran someone down because some idiot pedestrian did something stupid, like darting out from between parked cars.
However careful a driver you are, accidents will happen.
Pray chance does not make a serious accident your fault--it can happen to the best of drivers.
How times have changed: Henry Ford, out for a spin in one of his first automobiles, which he tinkered together in his garage, ran some fellow over. Several bystanders and Ford had to pick the horseless carriage off the victim, who ended up under the vehicle. The guy dusted himself off and with an exchange of courtesies, went on his way. Today--could you imagine the lawsuit?
An IQ in the dull normal range, wearing lots of gold chains, and hating white people.
If you will listen to a non-expert opinion,
1. A willingness to breed, or at least a willinginess to have sex with someone of the opposite sex, damn the consequences full speed ahead.
2. After breeding, it depends on the 'climate'.
In LA you had better be able to drive like a maniac in a freeway full of maniacs or you won't reproduce very often.
In Africa you had better not be promiscuous (come to think of that it also applies in other places) and you must also avoid all those tribal wars.
There are so many different qualifications.
Also, remember what the Chinese Emporer said when his minister of state started to introduce him to his newest General.
The minister of state was going on and on and on about the General's qualifications.
The Emporer cut this short and asked one question.
"Is he lucky?"
As a boy,(ca 1950) all we ever had was canned vegetables - never fresh. To this day the only thing I can stand to eat out of a can is corn, but the peas, good lord!
Series-ly, I'm with you on the rest of it. I was beginning to have trouble with digestion when I was about forty. My doctor did some tests, had me do a food diary for two weeks and told me I should become a vegetarian. While I haven't gone that far, I have cut down the flesh-foods to two or three small servings a week. Beef and pork are pretty much off the menu except for maybe a once a year bite or two of barbecue and an In-N-Out Double Double with grilled onions when I am in California once every year or two(Gives me mean heartburn and gas every time but, hey, a guys gotta have a burger once in a while).
Lots of fresh fruits and veggies, raw or steamed, and whole grains like oatmeal and brown rice, no butter, no mayo, no cream sauces and at least three liters of water a day is the way to go. Add a little fish (I like salmon, yellowfin or orange roughie or trout if I catch it myself) or fowl (Have you seen how they process chicken?!!). More and more my meals are becoming primarily vegetarian and it seems to be working pretty well. It can be difficult though to wean yourself off meat and gravy.
damn....some things never change.
Umm, she's got to have more than bones before I'm going there.
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