Nicht nur von der Zerstörungswut der Taliban sondern auch vom Kapitalismus bedroht:

Salvage Excavations at Buddhist Monastery in Afghanistan (Archaeology News)

„Filmmaker Brent Huffman wants to document the historic significance of the Buddhist monastery site at Mes Aynak, which sits on top of massive copper reserves, in an attempt to save it—or at least record what happens to it. Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines sold the rights to the copper to the China Metallurgical Group four years ago, but time is running out and archaeologists could be forced to leave the site as early as June.“

Hirse: für SklavInnen, PlebejerInnen und andere Tiere

gefunden auf LiveScience durch Archaeology Magazine, neue Forschungsergebnisse werfen enthüllen, als was antike Autoren, welche der in aller Regel der herrschenden Klasse Roms angehörten, die Armen ansahen: als Hirse fressende Tiere:

„There were also differences among people living within Rome. Individuals buried in the mausoleum at Casa Bertone (a relatively high-class spot, at least for commoners), ate less millet than those buried in the simple cemetery surrounding Casa Bertone’s mausoleum. Meanwhile, those buried in the farther-flung Castellaccio Europarco cemetery ate more millet than anyone at Casa Bertone, suggesting they were less well-off than those living closer to or within the city walls.

Historical texts dismiss millet as animal feed or a famine food, Killgrove said, but the researcher’s findings suggest that plenty of ordinary Romans depended on the easy-to-grow grain. One man, whose isotope ratios showed him to be a major millet consumer, was likely an immigrant, later research revealed. He may have been a recent arrival to Rome when he died, carrying the signs of his country diet with him. Or perhaps he kept eating the food he was used to, even after arriving in the city.“

Weltuntergang um einige Tage verschoben!

gefunden auf Live Science:

Another hiccup for Mayan doomsday believers: Although many scholars agree that Dec. 21 is the proper date on our calendar matching the end of the 13th b’ak’tun, there is some uncertainty over this, because some Mayan calendar units may have clicked over at sunset and others at sunrise. Some researchers have suggested that Dec. 23 or 24 may be a more accurate fit, Witschey said. Either way, however, the Maya would not have been running for their doomsday bunkers.

„You’ll get up in the morning and go forward, and the Maya cycles will have clicked over another day,“ Witschey said.

mehr zum Thema hier, hier und hier

Mehr zum Weltuntergang am 21. Dezember 2012

The Mayan apocalypse: why is everyone in such a fever about it? (Guardian)

„As predicted by the Mayans? Actually, as predicted by absolutely no Mayan prophecies ever, but by quite a few very silly people who aren’t aware that when a calendar comes to an end – even an ancient Mayan one – you just need to pop out and buy a new calendar.“

Zum Weltuntergang am 21. Dezember 2012

die nachfolgend dokumentierte Meldung stammt von World War 4 Report:

Mexico bans Maya ceremony at ancestral temples

New Age tourists will be flocking to Mexico’s Yucatan Penninsula this week for the „end of the Maya calendar“ (sic). But Yucatecan Maya elder José Manrique Esquivel protests that he and his followers will be barred from performing ceremonies at the peninsula’s ancient Maya sites. „We would like to do these ceremonies in the archaeological sites, but unfortunately they won’t let us enter,“ Esquivel told the AP. „It makes us angry, but that’s the way it is… We perform our rituals in patios, in fields, in vacant lots, wherever we can.“ Francisco de Anda, press director for the government’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), offers two reasons for the ban: „In part it is for visitor safety, and also for preservation of the sites, especially on dates when there are massive numbers of visitors… Many of the groups that want to hold ceremonies bring braziers and want to burn incense, and that simply isn’t allowed.“

Comments Intercontinental Cry:

Of course that’s just the excuse. The government would much rather keep the Maya on the sidelines since they are orchestrating a massive commercial spectacle for tens of thousands of people, many of whom are are clinging to delusional hopes and irrational fears about what’s going to happen at the end of 13 Baktun–December 21, 2012.

However, the Maya are still going to be allowed to visit the sites along with the tourists, but they will likely have to pay to get in, just like everyone else.

Meanwhile, as the Maya proceed with their ceremonies, shops in a Siberian city continue to sell Apocalypse kits; Beijing residents are stocking up on crackers, bottled water, and life preservers; in southwest France, the town of Bugarch prepares for a possible deluge of visitors who believe that a mountain could save them from the end of the world; and all the big corporate media services happily continue to spread the mania–all of which stems from little more than basic ignorance toward Indigenous perceptions and realities.

Meanwhile, as the Maya proceed with their ceremonies, shops in a Siberian city continue to sell Apocalypse kits; Beijing residents are stocking up on crackers, bottled water, and life preservers; in southwest France, the town of Bugarch prepares for a possible deluge of visitors who believe that a mountain could save them from the end of the world; and all the big corporate media services happily continue to spread the mania–all of which stems from little more than basic ignorance toward Indigenous perceptions and realities.

A report on Venezuela’s El Tiempo notes that on Dec. 20, the day before the turning of the Maya calendar on the solstice, Esquivel will lead a ceremony—dubbed the Interactive Maya Cultural Exposition—in Bosque de Chapultepec, the principal park in Mexico City.

A commercial (up to $499 a pop, „plus airfare“) festival dubbed Synthesis 2012 is billed as being held „in Chichen Itza,“ but the website doesn’t make clear if it will actually be at the archeological site. Top-featured draw is „Maya Elder“ Hunbatz Men, who helped start the 2012 hoopla with the „Harmonic Convergence“ of 1987. We use quotation marks only because skeptics question his bona fides, and even his laudatory Wikipedia page betrays his ersatz embrace of New Age canards like the lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria.

Even mainstream sources are cluelessly parroting the malarky about how the Maya calendar is about to „end.“ AP writes, „The Maya didn’t say much about what would happen next, after a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count comes to an end.“ No such cycle is ending now. A cycle called a baktun, of 400 Maya years or 394 common calendar years, is ending. It is the 13th baktun (hence 5,125, tho that number isn’t eactly right in either Maya or common years), but there is no special significance to the 13th baktun. The baktuns keep going for many thousands of years according to the Maya Long Count.
We await reports from Yucatan on whether authentic Maya voices are heard amid this spectacle.

Aktuelle Lesehinweise zum Thema Urkommunismus

* Mark Kosman: Marx, Engels, Luxemburg and the Return to Primitive Communism (Infoshop)

* Bernhard Brosius: Eine Lese-Empfehlung: Dieter Reinisch (Hrsg.),“Der Urkommunismus“ (RSB)

* Book review: Primitive communism is not what it was (IKS)

Vermischtes (ergänzt)

aus der Welt der Politik:

* Zur morgigen Solidemo zum Neupack-Streik in Hamburg findet mensch Infos auf LabourNet und bei Syndikalismus

* Egypte / Tunisie : Bras de fer entre la classe ouvrière et la contre-révolution islamiste (Solidarité Ouvrière)

* Bernard Schmitt: Am gestrigen Donnerstag in Tunesien: Generalstreik abgesagt (LabourNet)

* Mass revolts in Slovenia, december 2012 (A-Infos)

* Syrie : Fondation de la section de Deraa du Courant de la Gauche révolutionnaire (ESSF)

* Völkische Deutsche okkupieren identitaire Ideologie (Publikative.org)

* Michael Löwy: Max Weber, capitalisme et liberté – « Stahlhartes Gehäuse » : l’allégorie de la cage d’acier (ESSF)

* Solidaires/CONLUTAS/CGT/ODT: Aufruf zum Internationalen Gewerkschaftstreffen, 22. – 24. März 2012 in Paris (LabourNet)

* Death rather than humiliation (LabourNet, ein Brief von zwei politischen Gefangenen in Jordanien)

aus der Welt der (kulinarischen) Archäologie:

* Art of cheese-making is 7,500 years old: Neolithic pottery fragments from Europe reveal traces of milk fats (nature)

* Iron Age Feast found in England (DiscoveryNews)

* Baltic Crusades Caused Extinctions, End to Pagan Practices (LiveScience)

* Extreme weather: the Maya and us (People’s World)

aus der Welt der Realsatire, gefunden dank in defence of lost causes:

Altbier

gefunden dank Archaeological News auf der Webseite des Daily Telegraph: Bronze age ‚microbrewery‘ discovered in Cyprus, war bestimmt lecker:

„The team excavated a two metres by two metres mud-plaster domed structure, which it says was used as a kiln to dry malt and make beer 3,500 years ago.

Beers of different flavours would have been brewed from malted barley and fermented with yeasts with an alcoholic content of around 5 per cent.

The yeast would have either been wild or produced from fruit such as grape or fig, according to the researchers.“

Nützliches

* Archaeological News from Archaeology Magazine, regelmässige Updates aus der Welt der Archäologie

* Hominid Hunting auf smithsonian.com, Neuigkeiten aus der Paläoanthropologie

Artikel zu Çatal Hüyük

aus der aktuellen Avanti: Çatal Hüyük – Stadt der Gleichheit von Bernhard Brosius:

„Çatal Hüyük zeigt uns nicht nur, dass es möglich ist, eine Klassengesellschaft zu überwinden, sondern auch, dass es möglich ist, danach eine Gesellschaft aufzubauen ohne Ausbeutung, Gewalt und Unterdrückung. So konnte der höchste damals erreichbare Lebensstandard verwirklicht werden, und zwar für alle.“

mehr hier

Zur proto-elamitischen Klassengesellschaft

offenbar ist es bei der Entzifferung der proto-elamitischen Tontafeln (3.200-2.700 v.u.Z.) aus dem heutigen Chusistan zu einem Durchbruch gekommen, gefunden auf der Webseite der BBC: Breakthrough in world’s oldest undeciphered writing … Catal Hüyük war besser:

„The world’s oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics.

This international research project is already casting light on a lost bronze age middle eastern society where enslaved workers lived on rations close to the starvation level.

…

The numbering system is also understood, making it possible to see that much of this information is about accounts of the ownership and yields from land and people. They are about property and status, not poetry.

This was a simple agricultural society, with a ruling household. Below them was a tier of powerful middle-ranking figures and further below were the majority of workers, who were treated like „cattle with names“.“

Scheiss-Salafisten zerstören neolithische Felsbilder in Marokko

aus einer AFP-Meldung:

Stone carvings in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains dating back more than 8,000 years and depicting the sun as a pagan divinity have been destroyed by Salafists, a local rights group said on Wednesday.

„These stone carvings of the sun are more than 8,000 years old. They were destroyed several days ago,“ Aboubakr Anghir, a member of the Amazigh (Berber) League for Human Rights, told AFP.

„One of the carvings, called ‚the plaque of the sun,‘ predates the arrival of the Phoenicians in Morocco,“ Anghir said.

„It lies in a well-known archaeological site in the Yakour plain south of Marrakesh, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Mount Toubkal.“

„There are several Salafist groups active in the region and it’s not the first time these pre-Islamic sites have been attacked. We have sent a message to the ministry of culture, but have not yet received a reply,“ he added.

Salafists, Muslims who adhere to a hardline Sunni interpretation of Islam similar to that practised in Saudi Arabia, which strictly prohibits „idolatry,“ have enjoyed a surge in strength in Arab Spring countries, benefiting from wider freedom.

Late on Monday, one of Tunisia’s main Sufi mausoleums was burned down in an overnight arson attack, seemingly the latest in a spate of attacks on unorthodox Sufi shrines by the country’s increasingly assertive Salafists.

In northern Mali, which is close to Morocco, radical Islamists have destroyed ancient World Heritage shrines they consider idolatrous since seizing control of the region earlier this year.:

Radical Anthropology, Nr. 6, November 2012

nach einem Jahr Wartezeit endlich wieder eine neue Radical Anthropology (pdf-Datei, 4.12 mb)

Die Artikel im Einzelnen

– Editorial: The forest and the city
– Recording Sounds of Music and Community in the Rainforest: Noel Lobley presents an interview with Louis Sarno
– Market Environmentalism and the Re-Animation of Nature: Daniel Kricheff examines the commodification of the non-human
– Radical Potential – a sideways look at the Occupy movement: Ragnhild Freng Dale explores the world of Occupy London
– The Origin of Fire: Aboriginal Australian myths decoded by Chris Knight
– Otto Gross – Anarchist Psychoanalyst: Mark Kosman introduces a revolutionary colleague of Freud
– Rebel Cities, by David Harvey: Review by Ian Fillingham
– Weaponizing Anthropology, by David Price: Review by Simon Wells
– Utopian Promise of Government: Artwork by Andrew Cooper

ältere Ausgaben der Radical Anthropology hier

Göttliches in der Jungle World

endlich einmal wieder eine spannende Diskussion in der Jungle World: Die geilsten Götter

Chris Knight: Engels hat recht!

Early human kinship was matrilineal von Chris Knight im aktuellen Weekly Worker: