Posts Tagged ‘History’

Justified Coercion: The Purpose of Law and Legal Systems / 4

February 28, 2026

This essay is the fourth in a series and follows on from the essay on Natural Law:

The Skeptical Case Against Natural Law / 1

The Fallacy of Universalism / 2

The Skeptical Case against the UN Declaration of Human Rights / 3

Justified Coercion: The Purpose of Law and Legal Systems / 4

Introduction

A human legal system, in a strict, historical and anthropological sense, is a structured set of rules (laws) backed by some recognized authority and enforcement mechanism for a society to manage and regulate behaviour among its members. Law emerges wherever human societies have needed (and need) predictable patterns of conduct, conflict resolution, resource allocation, and exercise of power. (The exercise of power is when one person orders and effects the behaviour of others in accordance with instructions.) Law is a tool for social control and and effects this by social behaviour management even if some may flinch at the word control. Even the interactions in small gatherings of people (say 3 or 4 in a family group) are sufficient to give rise to laws. A semblance of laws is discernible even among animals which live in groups and where the complexity of interactions leads to rules (lion prides, baboon troops or even hunting gangs of orcas). Neither laws nor legal systems have anything absolute or universal or even objective about them. If all societies had behaviourally identical members there would be no need for any social management or any laws. It is the inherent diversity of human behaviour which means that in every society the behaviour of some will not be desirable as viewed by others. Those who have assumed the task of managing societies (by whatever means) need – in performance of their task – to limit behavioural friction among members to a level which is compatible with the satisfactory functioning of that society.

In his classic 1935 paper Cohen introduced his critique of “transcendental nonsense” which necessarily appears in the philosophy of all legal systems. Transcendental nonsense and the functional approach, Felix S. Cohen, Columbia Law Review, Vol. 35, No. 6 (Jun., 1935), pp. 809-849 (41 pages)

Cohen used the term to mock a style of traditional legal reasoning that treats abstract legal concepts (e.g. “property rights”, “corporate personality”, “contract”, “title”, “fairness”, or “due process”) as if they are real, independent, almost supernatural entities with their own inherent logical properties and existence separate from human behavior, social facts, or observable consequences. He saw that transcendental nonsense decided cases by manipulating these disembodied concepts and deducing results from their supposed “internal” logical relationships, rather than by openly examining the actual social effects, policy consequences, human behaviors, or empirical realities the decision would produce. These are concepts which cannot be assessed against any verifiable reality.  By using transcendental, Cohen was referencing philosophical transcendentalism where reasoning tries to deduce truths from abstract, a priori categories rather than from empirical consequences. By using the word nonsense, he meant that such reasoning produces arguments that sound logical but do not actually resolve real social problems or explain what courts are doing in practice. In addition to his specific example of a corporation, other examples of transcendental nonsense include legal personalities, property as an absolute natural thing, sovereignty, doctrines of jurisdiction, formal contract freedom and many other legal fictions.

The purpose and practice of human laws and legal systems is shrouded in a thick fog of various kinds of nonsense. But what Cohen described as transcendental nonsense, is just a part of what I would call metaphysical nonsense.  Here we find all the sanctimonious trappings which always appear as justifications of laws and legal systems (which are not verifiable against reality but may have other collateral benefits). These include viewing legal systems as a grand pursuit of Justice, or a reflection of Natural Law, or for the upholding of righteousness or as the sacrament of a sacred contract between the governor and the governed. These descriptions are intellectually comfortable and purport to be of high moral standing but they are functionally fraudulent and intentionally self-serving. If we strip away the pomp of high-ceilinged paneled courtrooms, the archaic robes, and the sanctimonious rhetoric of “fairness,” we find a far more visceral reality. At its core, a legal system is a tool for behavioural management and is designed to contain social disorder (a social entropy) through the threat or actual application of force. Its fundamental purpose is not the attainment of a moral ideal, but the maintenance of social stability through coercion, or the threat of coercion, as deemed to be necessary.

The functional purpose of law

To try and understand the purpose of any legal system, we must first define what a law is at its most basic, operational level. A man-made law is a tool to elicit desired behaviour. It is a formulation of prohibited (or occasionally compulsory) behavior, coupled with a specific enumeration of penalties for those found in breach. Any higher-level description that omits the threat of force is not a definition of law, but a definition of advice. For a law to be “useful” in a functionalist sense, it must exist in a state of tension. Behavior that humans are physiologically incapable of performing, such as flying, requires no legal prohibition. Conversely, behavior that all humans invariably comply with, such as breathing, requires no legal mandate. Therefore, the only “useful” laws are those that address behaviour that people are both capable of doing and inclined to do, yet which the societal power wishes to suppress for the sake of order. It is in the nature of human association that minority behaviour that gives offense to a majority is discouraged and even suppressed. It is very rare (and impractical) for majority behaviour to be suppressed by a minority.

This leads to a central paradox. A law that is never broken is redundant, as it reflects a pre-existing social or biological certainty, but a law that is never complied with is futile, as it represents a failure of societal power. The “success” of a law is found in the middle ground as that which permits a “judicious” amount of unwanted behaviour (crime or civil disruption or civil conflict for example). The societal power acknowledges that a certain section of society will always oppose its dictates.  The purpose of their law is to coerce a sufficient number of these dissenters so that the disruption they cause remains within manageable bounds. No legal system ever has the objective of achieving complete compliance with the law. “Just enough” compliance is the name of the game. As long as enough criminals are held accountable others may go unchecked. As long as the limited number of cases that the legal system system deals with is seen to be “fair and just” then the quest for “fair and just” for all cases can quietly be ignored.

If the purpose of law is primarily management of social behaviour (via coercion), why do we then invest so much energy in the “camouflage” of purpose by invoking majesty, sanctity, divinity, royalty, and honour? They are all, of course, metaphysical nonsense and invented, artificial, empirically unverifiable concepts. But in their sanctimony and appeal to metaphysics they do provide crucial psychological sustenance for human legal systems. They are principally cosmetic in nature though many people invest form with imaginary substance. The reality of societies is that raw force is expensive. A societal power that must place many policemen on every street corner to ensure compliance will eventually go bankrupt or collapse under the weight of its own friction. The “sanctity” of the legal system serves as a social lubricant. By imbuing the law with a sense of metaphysical justice or fairness, the societal power achieves a psychological victory that force alone cannot buy. When a citizen obeys a law because they believe it is right, or because they respect and accept the authority of the court or the majesty of the law, the cost of enforcement drops to zero. The robes and the wigs and the collars and the gavels may be steeped in tradition but their main function is to imply that law and the legal system is supra-human. Metaphysical. Majestic. Even Divine. This theatre in a circus serves to camouflage the messy, coercive, necessary code running silently in the background. Legal systems and law are tools for threatening, and doing, harm to some as deemed necessary for the greater good.

The transcendental illusions

Much of the metaphysical nonsense is sanctimonious packaging. It exists to create justifications in the form of moral illusions for imbuing a false notion of high purpose and of easing the conscience of individual practitioners in being party to doing harm. It is difficult for a person to spend their life suppressing the impulses of their fellow humans if they see themselves as a mere bully. By framing their work as serving justice, they are granted a moral alibi and a place in heaven. They are no longer crass individuals exercising or threatening harm. Instead they are elevated to be instruments of an abstract, higher Good. This depersonalization is essential for the sustenance of the system. In a legal system cloaked in theism and honor, the enforcers use sanctimony to create a moral subsidy. Practitioners adopt the illusion of great moral significance into their own actions as a way of increasing worth and job satisfaction. Young lawyers and police are often recruited on the premise that they are protecting the innocent or upholding the Right. This belief allows them to perform tasks that would otherwise be psychologically damaging (levying penalties, seizing property, depriving people of liberty, enforcing evictions and even inflicting pain). If the system were stripped of its false camouflage, the cost would also include a psychological tax. To recruit a person to be an admitted instrument of raw coercion, would need to compensate for the perceived social stigma and the internal mental stress. Public servants would seem more like mercenaries. When the system is wrapped in apparent sanctimony, it attracts, and above all retains, people who value stability and order. These individuals are often more reliable and less prone to individual corruption because they believe they serve a Higher Power (be it God, The Law, or The Constitution). The trappings (the robes, the ritual, the language, the architecture, the pondus) also serve to clothe the practitioners with the paraphernalia. the trappings of a high calling with metaphysical goals. Not unlike the priests of suspect religions. When a judge says, “It is the law that sentences you,” they are distancing their own humanity from the act of coercion. This depersonalization is a vital retention strategy. The “sanctimony” allows the practitioner to remain “cold” and functional over a forty-year career.

The “divinity” and “pomp” of the law is a cost-saving measure in the labor market. It allows the state to recruit high-quality, stable, and disciplined “mechanics” at a fraction of the price of mercenaries, while shielding them from the psychological consequences of their own coercive actions.

The primary purpose is social stability

In this functionalist framework, the “goodness” of a legal system is decoupled from morality. A “good” system is not one that eliminates crime. To do that would require a level of surveillance so total and a cost so high that the society would cease to function. Rather, a “good” system is one that allows some necessary social friction and yet maintains a level of equilibrium judged necessary by the societal powers. The system monitors social friction and adjusts its coercive output accordingly. It allows for a certain amount of undetected crime and a certain number of unjust decisions, provided these outliers do not threaten the overall perception of order. If a law becomes too difficult to enforce (such as by the prohibition of a widely practised behaviour), a “good” (rational) system will eventually abandon it, not because the behavior has become “moral,” but because the cost of coercion exceeds the benefit of stability. In a system or thermodynamic sense social entropy is a measure of disorder in the system. In this perspective the legal system is essentially a tool for managing social entropy. In any collection of eight billion unique individuals, the natural state is chaos. The legal system is the energy expended to keep that chaos at bay. It is in the nature of every adversarial court judgement that one party is favoured and the other penalized. The penalty always involves the doing of some form of explicit harm to the disfavoured party and may, in civil cases, involve some real benefit to the other party. Some of the transcendental and metaphysical nonsense helps the losing party to accept, even if reluctantly, the institutional harm imposed upon him. The law threatens the doing of harm (and thus coerces) and every application of a legal judgement does always involve the doing of harm to the losing party. A modern state is characterized by its effective monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a territory. The access to superior force is the necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for any legal system to function. Without this the system is advisory rather than legal. Advisory or normative systems rely on persuasion, reputation, or voluntary adherence. Legal systems rely on the availability of institutional enforcement backed, at the final resort, by coercive power. But force alone does not generate a legal system. That requires an institutionalized, routine, rule-bound deployment of structured coercive capacity rather than the discretionary use of raw force.

The “rights” we cherish are not inalienable truths. There is a pretense, but no real attempt, of legal systems pursuing absolute justice or absolute fairness (even if they could exist which they don’t).  Over 60% of a thousand murderers every day go free. The global society finds that not unacceptable. Over 85% of car theft does not lead to any prosecution. Society (with its insurance industry and the high cost of apprehending petty criminals) finds this not unacceptable. Most car thieves get away with it. A quest for absolute fairness never comes into play. The 40% of murderers who get caught and are held accountable might even think it unfair that 60% go free. The law and the legal system need not do more than enough (and only just enough), to convince the general citizenry to remain productive, cooperative, and, most importantly, compliant. It does not need to do any more for societal needs. More is often pretended to as part of the metaphysical camouflage.

Conclusion

I am left with a somewhat cynical but logical conclusion that for a legal system to be truly “good” (meaning effective and sustainable), it must camouflage its own nature to protect its own functionality. If a system were to be perfectly transparent, if the judge were to say, “I am taking your property because it serves the current stability of the state to do so”, the illusion of legitimacy would shatter. The coerced minority would no longer feel they had “lost a fair trial”; they would feel they were victims of a hostile power, and they would act accordingly. The “Justified Coercion” of the title is therefore not a moral justification, but a functional one. The coercion is “justified” only in the sense that it is required for the machine of society to continue turning. The purpose of the legal system is to manage the inevitable conflict between individual desire and social necessity, using just enough force to keep the peace and just enough “sanctimony” to make that force palatable.

To view the law through this functional lens is to see it as a tool. It is an artefact, a social construct rather than a sacred text. In many ways it is not dissimilar to a religion. But that is because every religion, is about controlling the social behaviour of its members. We must judge law not by how “just” it is in some abstract, transcendental sense, but by how well it performs its cold, rational task of behaviour coordination and suppression. The legal system is a necessary evil of the human condition; a complex, expensive, and often deceptive engine built to ensure that our collective life remains “manageable.” By stripping away the false camouflage of Natural Law and universal morality, we gain the clarity to evaluate our laws for what they truly are; the tools of a species that has learned that it is better for their societies to be managed than to be “free” in a state of anarchy and chaos.

There is no righteousness or divinity or sanctity in laws and there are no such things as Natural Law or Divine Law.

Not unrelated:

On the nature and purpose of law

Laws are made to be broken

Why cannot a concept of tort or “product liability”apply to scientists?

 

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The UK grooming gangs have been active for at least 40 years

January 5, 2025

I am surprised at the denial we see now. The UK Pakistani-British grooming gangs have been active for over 40 years. The scandal has even made it past the Wikipedia political correctness police.

Wikipedia:

The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal consists of the organised child sexual abuse of girls that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Northern England, from the late 1980s until 2013[9] and the failure of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period.[10] Researcher Angie Heal, who was hired by local officials and warned them about child exploitation occurring between 2002 and 2007, has since described it as the “biggest child protection scandal in UK history”,[11] with one report estimating that 1,400 girls, primarily from care home backgrounds, were abused by “grooming gangs” between 1997 and 2013.[9] Evidence of the abuse was first noted in the early 1990s, when care home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers.[12] From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16.[13]

In the first half of the 80s I used to travel regularly to the Grimethorpe/Doncaster/ Bradford area and recall first hearing vague pub gossip about gangs exploiting young girls who were in care by creating and feeding their drug habits. But it was just gossip then. It was at a time when it was taboo to say anything negative about the immigrant community. Truth be damned. It was only in the 90s that some few journalists began writing about this. Council politicians, social workers, policemen and the politically correct fraternity did not just turn a blind eye. The girls were mainly “white trash” and “in care” after all. They actively protected the perpetrators and demonised the victims. The current groomers are not new immigrants with a culture gap. They are second-generation, but brought up in their multiculturally allowed grooming culture.

So why the hand-wringing and surprise now.

I told you so.

I wrote this post almost 11 years ago:

A “society” – to be a society – can be multi-ethnic but not multicultural

A “culture” is both the glue that binds any society of humans and lubricates the interactions within that society. It applies as well to a family or an association or a sports club or a company or a geographic area (say a country). The culture of any sub-society – a sub-culture – must be subordinated to that of the larger society it is  – or wants to be – part of.

Of course one can have – if one wishes – many different cultures within different sub-societies in a single geographic area. But if these sub-cultures are not subordinated to a larger culture then the sub-societies cannot – because it becomes a fatal contradiction – make up any larger society. Multiculturalism dooms that geographical area to inevitably be a splintered and fractured “greater” society – if at all.

The politically correct “multiculturalism” followed in Europe in recent times has effectively preserved and maintained each ethnic group in its own cultural silo and – inanely – made a virtue out of preventing the evolution of any overriding, common culture. This has been the fundamental, “do-gooding” blunder of the socialist/liberal “democrats” all through Europe. Creating a society of the future with a common culture as the glue has been sacrificed in a quest for some imagined God of Many Cultures. For an immigrant – anywhere – how could it be more important to keep the language of his past rather than to learn the language of his future? The “do-gooders” have prioritised living in the past to creating and living in a new future.

Hence Rotherham and Bradford or Kreuzberg or Rosengård or Les Bosquets,

Multi-ethnic communities particularly need both a glue and a lubricating medium. And that has to be an overriding common – new – culture and not some mish-mash, immiscible collection of sub-cultures – each within its own silo, insulated and held separate from all others.

  1. Multi-ethnic societies are inevitable around the world.
  2. A single society has a single culture.
  3. To have many cultures in one area – which are not subordinated to a larger culture (values) – is to exclude a single society.
  4. Promoting multiculturalism is to promote the fracturing of that area into many immiscible (inevitably ethnic) societies.

Multi-ethnicity – especially – requires a mono-culture to be a society at all.

Multi-ethnic and multi-cultural is separatism and serves to ensure that a single society will never be established.

and again 8 years ago ..

“Multiculturalism” always gives fractured and segregated societies

It seems obvious. Multi-ethnic societies, even with well -developed sub-cultures, work very well under an over-riding common culture. In fact the over-riding common culture is dynamic and takes on parts of the various sub-cultures. But societies with parallel cultures with no over-riding common culture can only give a fractured society. It  prevents any common culture developing and inevitably gives ethnic segregation. For over 5 decades, these parallel cultures have been promoted by the liberal, social-democratic, do-gooding, misguided elite of Europe.

It is not at all surprising that the cities of Europe now have segregated and have no-go ghettos which consider themselves outside of the main society and not subject to the rules and behaviour expected in that society.

Well, I did tell you so.

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Why I see race as a brute fact which needs no social construction

October 23, 2024

One of the modern delusions promoted by behavioural apologists is that race is a social construct. Yet the same people tend to be those promoting “affirmative action” which is a kind of reverse discrimination based on the races which they don’t see existing!

I see race as brute fact of existence which originates in ancestry/genetics and not in social engineering.

Why evolution is true

…. if races/ethnic groups can be diagnosed with over 99% accuracy by using information from many bits of the genome, then the statement “Race and ethnicity are social constructs, without scientific or biological meaning” is simply wrong. Race and ethnicity, even when diagnosed by individuals themselves, do have scientific biological meaning: namely, they tell us about an individual’s ancestry and where their ancestors probably came from. This is true in the U.S. (this paper) or worldwide (the Rosenberg et al. paper). Further, if you look on a finer scale, as Novembre et al. did, you can even diagnose what part of Europe a European’s ancestors came from (it’s not perfect, of course, but it’s pretty good).

  • All visible physical characteristics used to create classification clusters for a race are real and due to ancestry/genetics.
  • The physical attributes are brute facts and social construction is of no relevance in their reality.
  • A tall person is a tall person because of his height and calling him tall needs no social construct to be invoked. Social engineering does not move a short person into the ranks of the tall race.
  • A “child” is a child because of age and “children” are real and not some artificial social construct.
  • A black person – irrespective of the hue of his skin – of black ancestry is a black person whatever any social construct may pretend.
  • Being blonde or blue-eyed or having curly hair are all characteristics determined by ancestry/genetics. They are never a social construction.
  • An Indian of Indian ancestry is a member of the Indian race whatever else any social school may pretend.
  • A Chinese of Chinese ancestry is of the Chinese race whatever any social mumbo-jumbo may pretend.
  • Blackness or Indianness or Chineseness, which are represented by the cluster of visible physical attributes typical of being a member of the black race, the Indian race or the Chinese race, are brute facts of existence and are not socially engineered.
  • Social engineering does not create the physical attributes of people. There is no physical characteristic used in describing race which is not genetic (Skin colour, hair colour and appearance, eye-colour and shape, height and width, ….). Race is never based on clustering according to social characteristics (even if happiness and truthfulness surveys are reported by country).
  • That some races of man have been repressed, abused, exploited and badly treated by other races of men is also brute fact.
  • The existence of the races themselves is brute fact and not a social construct. The social behaviour or misbehaviour of some races to other races – historically and now – are social constructs.
  • Addressing past misbehviour against some races is itself a tacit acknowledgement of the existence of the races.

The races of man are a useful, practical classification of clusters of visible, physical attributes manifested by people at any given time. It is rooted in the primal survival traits of “we” and “them”. It is a convenient classification by how people look. And how they look is genetic not social. The clustering may change over time but rather slowly across generations. The races were slightly different in Roman times but not so very different. There were surely races 100,000 years ago but those would have looked very different to the races we recognize today. At any given time the races recognized are generally based on easily distinguishable characteristics, all of which are a consequence of ancestry/genetics. Whether members of some races are treated well or badly by members of other races may well be of social concern. But the existence of the races is not caused by social construction.

Race is a brute fact and needs no social construction to exist. Or to put it another way, social construction adds no value to the definition of races which have been established by ancestry/genetics.

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Without Hitler, Israel would probably not exist

April 8, 2018

History is causal.

Above all, it is existential.

“What would have been if …..?” can never be more than a thought experiment. Wishing away horrific events in the past is not just pointless, it is a form of denial of “what is”.  Being proud of past generations or apologising for their actions are both equally inane.

  • Without prophets, gods would not exist
  • Without the rise of the Roman Empire, we wouldn’t have highways
  • Without the fall of the Roman Empire, we wouldn’t have Ferraris today
  • Without the European colonisation of the Americas, native Americans would still be primitive hunter gatherers
  • Without the European colonisation of the Americas, Asian cuisine (horror of horrors) would not include chillies
  • Without the colonisation of Australia, the aborigines would be either extinct or speaking Chinese,
  • Without British colonisation, the Indian sub-continent would be a mishmash of little warring kingdoms,
  • Without Hitler, Israel would probably not exist today.

Apologising for what previous generations or your ancestors may have done makes no sense.

If you must apologise, apologise for what your children and your descendants may do.

 

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Camel stories in the Old Testament were made up and long after the purported events

February 4, 2014

I suppose there are some who still believe that the stories of the Old Testament are not just fables and are an historical account.  As fables they are almost as well known as the stories of the brother’s Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson. But they are not at all a bad bunch of stories – though I always thought that a father offering up his son as a sacrifice was a sign of an evil man and not of any kind of faith to be admired. And even as a child I felt that neither the cowardly Abraham nor his tyrannical God came out of that story very well. And the grown-up son (Isaac) who allowed himself to be bound up to satisfy a demented father only comes out as an idiot.

In any event I cannot remember that I ever thought the stories were factual accounts or were anything other than fiction (which itself makes me wonder at what age we come to separate fact from fiction). To “prove” that fiction about the long dead past is not factual is, of course, trying to prove a negative. Researchers have now shown that at the purported time of the Age of the Patriarchs (supposedly 2000 – 1500 BCE), camels did not exist in the purported habitat of the purported Patriarchs (Abraham, Joseph and Jacob). I find it interesting that camels  were actually moved up from Arabia to the Levant apparently to help with a change of copper mining technology. But it is of little relevance to proving or disproving the fictions embodied in the fables of the Old Testament.

Finding Israel’s First Camels

Camels are mentioned as pack animals in the biblical stories of Abraham, Joseph, and Jacob. But archaeologists have shown that camels were not domesticated in the Land of Israel until centuries after the Age of the Patriarchs (2000-1500 BCE). In addition to challenging the Bible’s historicity, this anachronism is direct proof that the text was compiled well after the events it describes.

Now Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef and Dr. Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University‘sDepartment of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures have used radiocarbon dating to pinpoint the moment when domesticated camels arrived in the southern Levant, pushing the estimate from the 12th to the 9th century BCE.  …. 

Archaeologists have established that camels were probably domesticated in the Arabian Peninsula for use as pack animals sometime towards the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. In the southern Levant, where Israel is located, the oldest known domesticated camel bones are from the Aravah Valley, which runs along the Israeli-Jordanian border from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea and was an ancient center of copper production. At a 2009 dig, Dr. Ben-Yosef dated an Aravah Valley copper smelting camp where the domesticated camel bones were found to the 11th to 9th century BCE. In 2013, he led another dig in the area.

To determine exactly when domesticated camels appeared in the southern Levant, Dr. Sapir-Hen and Dr. Ben-Yosef used radiocarbon dating and other techniques to analyze the findings of these digs as well as several others done in the valley. In all the digs, they found that camel bones were unearthed almost exclusively in archaeological layers dating from the last third of the 10th century BCE or later — centuries after the patriarchs lived and decades after the Kingdom of David, according to the Bible. The few camel bones found in earlier archaeological layers probably belonged to wild camels, which archaeologists think were in the southern Levant from the Neolithic period or even earlier. Notably, all the sites active in the 9th century in the Arava Valley had camel bones, but none of the sites that were active earlier contained them.

The appearance of domesticated camels in the Aravah Valley appears to coincide with dramatic changes in the local copper mining operation. Many of the mines and smelting sites were shut down; those that remained active began using more centralized labor and sophisticated technology, according to the archaeological evidence. The researchers say the ancient Egyptians may have imposed these changes — and brought in domesticated camels — after conquering the area in a military campaign mentioned in both biblical and Egyptian sources.

……. The arrival of domesticated camels promoted trade between Israel and exotic locations unreachable before, according to the researchers; the camels can travel over much longer distances than the donkeys and mules that preceded them. By the seventh century BCE, trade routes like the Incense Road stretched all the way from Africa through Israel to India. Camels opened Israel up to the world beyond the vast deserts, researchers say, profoundly altering its economic and social history.

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DNA evidence shows farming was not indigenous but was imported into Europe from the East

November 10, 2010

A new paper published in PLoS Biology today uses “high precision ancient DNA methods” to  create a detailed genetic picture of one of the first farming communities in Europe (from central Germany) which reveals that this ancient farming population was radically different to the nomadic populations already present in Europe.

Haak W, Balanovsky O, Sanchez JJ, Koshel S, Zaporozhchenko V, et al. (2010) Ancient DNA from European Early Neolithic Farmers Reveals Their Near Eastern Affinities. PLoS Biol 8(11): e1000536. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000536

The hunter-gatherers of Europe it seems did not change rapidly to become farmers. The farmers moved in (invaded?) from the near east and some 8,000 years ago gradually dominated the scene. From Science Daily:

A team of international researchers led by ancient DNA experts from the University of Adelaide has resolved the longstanding issue of the origins of the people who introduced farming to Europe some 8000 years ago. A detailed genetic study of one of the first farming communities in Europe, from central Germany, reveals marked similarities with populations living in the Ancient Near East (modern-day Turkey, Iraq and other countries) rather than those from Europe.

Project leader Professor Alan Cooper, Director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) at the University of Adelaide, says: “This overturns current thinking, which accepts that the first European farming populations were constructed largely from existing populations of hunter-gatherers, who had either rapidly learned to farm or interbred with the invaders.”

“We have finally resolved the question of who the first farmers in Europe were — invaders with revolutionary new ideas, rather than populations of Stone Age hunter-gatherers who already existed in the area,” says lead author Dr Wolfgang Haak, Senior Research Associate with ACAD at the University of Adelaide. “We have also been able to use genetic signatures to identify a potential route from the Near East and Anatolia, where farming evolved around 11,000 years ago, via south-eastern Europe and the Carpathian Basin (today’s Hungary) into Central Europe,” Dr Haak says.

The Author summary:

The transition from a hunter–gatherer existence to a sedentary farming-based lifestyle has had key consequences for human groups around the world and has profoundly shaped human societies. Originating in the Near East around 11,000 y ago, an agricultural lifestyle subsequently spread across Europe during the New Stone Age (Neolithic). Whether it was mediated by incoming farmers or driven by the transmission of innovative ideas and techniques remains a subject of continuing debate in archaeology, anthropology, and human population genetics. Ancient DNA from the earliest farmers can provide a direct view of the genetic diversity of these populations in the earliest Neolithic. Here, we compare Neolithic haplogroups and their diversity to a large database of extant European and Eurasian populations. We identified Neolithic haplotypes that left clear traces in modern populations, and the data suggest a route for the migrating farmers that extends from the Near East and Anatolia into Central Europe. When compared to indigenous hunter–gatherer populations, the unique and characteristic genetic signature of the early farmers suggests a significant demographic input from the Near East during the onset of farming in Europe.

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“Wiglesdor” found: Gateway to the Viking Empire

August 29, 2010

The Danevirke is a system of Danish fortifications inSchleswig-Holstein (Northern Germany). This important linear defensive earthwork was constructed across the neck of the Cimbrian peninsula during Denmark’s Viking Age.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Map_danavirki.JPG/800px-Map_danavirki.JPG
The Danevirke (shown in red) on the 16th-century Carta Marina

For a century, archeologists have been looking for a gate ( the “Woiglesdor”) through a wall built by the Vikings in northern Europe. This summer, it was found. Researchers now believe the extensive barrier was built to protect an important trading route.

Archeologists have now taken a closer look at part of the construction — a three-meter-thick (10 feet) wall from the 8th century near Hedeby (known as Haithabu in German). It is constructed entirely out of stones collected from the surrounding region. Some of them are only as big as a fist, while others weigh as much as 100 kilograms (220 pounds). “The Vikings collected millions of rocks,” says archeologist Astrid Tummuscheit, who works for the state archeology office of Schleswig-Holstein.

A Customs Station, an Inn and a Bordello

(more…)

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First Allied POW escape from Singapore in 1942

August 26, 2010

“3000 Miles to Freedom” by Brig. M. M Pillai M.C.

My father died in 1988 leaving a manuscript of his escape from Singapore and his return to India after the fall of Singapore in 1942. He would have been 99 on 11th August this year.

He was the first Allied prisoner of war to escape from Changi and return to India. He used to tell us that he had travelled a thousand miles on foot, a thousand miles by boat and a thousand miles by train to make his journey of 3000 miles to freedom. In 1968 he tried to get a copy of his official debriefing report from the War Office in London to cross-check his manuscript written from memory long after the event. But he found that the report had been classified to be held secret for 50 years.

In early 2000 I found that a copy of the official report was available in the Singapore War Archives. The report had been circulated to all the Allied Armies and the Australian copy had found its way into the Singapore Archives sometime after 1992 when the material was declassified. Apparently the 50 year classification was because the report contained not only the names of people who had helped him along the way but also the names of people he felt were Japanese collaborators.

Mark Pillai as a Captain circa 1950

He was accompanied by two others; one of whom ( a medical officer) decided to settle along the way. The second was a civilian friend S. Radhakrishnan. To avoid the unneccessary hassle of getting a civilian back through Allied lines they invented the story of the “Singapore Volunteers” and passed Radhakrishnan off as an officer in this fictitious regiment. The subterfuge served to get through the Allied check-posts and later Radhakrishnan was properly commissioned into the Indian Army.

For about 6 months after his return my father had a “minder” – a brother officer from a different regiment but who came from his part of the country in Southern India – to ensure that my father’s escape was not a ruse to establish a  “sleeping” collaborator.

http://www.nas.gov.sg/1stcab/syonan/SyonanChap7.html (link updated 25th August 2013 since the original link to the National Archives of Singapore was outdated).

Australian War Memorial, Series AWM 54 Item 779/10/4, “Escape narrative of Lieut M M Pillai, Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners, and Lieut V Radhakrishnan, Singapore Volunteers – Appendix: Treatment of Civilians and Atrocities”, p.33, CD No. D2006100078.

Eventually the manuscript was checked and a publisher ( Lancer Military Publications) interested enough in an old Second World War escape story was found.

http://www.lancerpublishers.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=Pillai&osCsid=569721b13eaaa324b7b54cf34fc36de3&x=5&y=5

Three Thousand Miles to Freedom

http://www.lancerpublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=710

This is a an escape story. It is the story of escape from a Japanese Prisoner of War camp in Singapore to India across coastal waters and Malayan and Burmese jungles.

Capt Mark Pillai was a Bombay Sapper officer in Malaya when Singapore fell and the Allies surrendered. This is the story of his escape from the Changi POW camp in 1942. He was 31 years old at the time and he was accompanied by an Indian medical officer and an Indian civilian acquaintance.

It is an inspirational story of escape. Escape stories frequently tend to chronologically list events without adequately conveying the fears and apprehension or the anxiety and the hardships that soldiers endure, nor the will and inspiration they galvanise in doing so. This is a compelling story, simply told, which brings to life the meaning of escape from captivity in enemy territory in an age long gone.

It is a story of understated bravery and gallantry, where three Indians made a daily tryst with destiny over a protracted period of time, attempting as it were to do their duty as they saw it, in an effort to live to fight another day when both the big picture and the tactical situation seemed hopeless.

It is a story of hope which reveals the stubborn spirit of humanity and courage that epitomizes good soldiers anywhere when they turn adversity into opportunity and inspire others to do the same.

Mark Pillai was awarded the Military Cross by Field Marshal Archibald Wavell for his gallantry.

(more…)

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Today is Volcano day – over 1900 years after Pompeii

August 24, 2010

Dr. Erik Klemetti is reporting from Pompeii.

The eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii – and lead Pliny to write his Letters that birthed volcanology occurred (at least we think) on August 24, 79 A.D. So, eat some olives in memory of those who perished over 1,900 years ago – and hope that Naples is prepared the next time Vesuvius rumbles so that we don’t repeat “Volcano Day”.

Pompeii victim:http://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/ancient/images/sw/pompeii-victim-50657432-sw.jpg

Photo: Cast of Pompeii victim

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