I've been taking to a young geneticist from New Zealand, at the beach in Formentera. She agreed with me, analyzing and comparing genetic codes for Yemeni 'pricky pears' tree and Mexican one, we should know from where proceed the plant, that way solving some historical mysteries:
- Were Aztecs and more extensively, all American Indians, too stupid to squash an insect (cochineal) between fingers to get bright red color ?
- How comes in the fresco representing Mexico city, the eagle looks more Roman (very similar to a one found in Merida, Spain) than Quetzacoalt? How comes it does not look like graphically the Aztecs bird representations?
- How comes the Spanish Royal color was of Arab origin? By Charles Quint's times, Spain wanted to be dissociated from its Arab past, so they wished a cochineal of their own offering a red color they could call truly Spanish.
- How comes there are no prickly pears in Amazonian forests, nowadays dominated by plants grown by pre-colombian?
- How comes in America, it does not grow on the sea level when it expanded so well in Mediterraneo at sea level it was used by Muslim sailors as an amer to know if you've already been in the place?
- How comes Napoleon III, 19th c. dreaming of an imperial army in red trousers (without being aware he transformed his soldiers in easy targets) and wishing to provoke in Mexico a commercial earthquake, refurbishing the old 'traditional' and 'historical' cochineal production on prickly pears tree, he had to both reintroduce cochineal and prickly pears tree in Mexico?
-How comes in Spanish 'prickly pears is called "higo de Barbarie" (North African fig) and not "higo de Chiapas"(Mexican fig)? Sure, officially Spaniards thought they were in India.
- The roman eagle eating snakes in 1900 years old https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2478904/Roman-sculpture-eagle-devouring-serpent-unearthed-London.html. Is the Mexico eagle eating snakes a more modern version, only 500 years old? https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/roman-eagle-mexican-eagle-clutching-the-snake-plaque.html . The ring of a roman legionary showing an eagle eating a snake.
All this, solved with only two genetics analyzes.
Nice work. I have an apology to make, Fred, about your claims on European slavery. Evidence is that in Italy many people had slaves during Renaissance. So, possibly elsewhere. Mainly it seems other Europeans.
Dear Stanley Wilkin slavery in Europe was the basis for Roman Empire and it propagated in all European societies: none refused to have slaves. After Rome's destruction, probably due to unhealthy life conditions for slaves that favored the apparition of malaria, another great time for European slavery were crusades and slaves were all the defeated and later on, all non-Christian. Christian begun the intensive slavery trade. One proof, for example, is the name of the patriach of Grimaldi family (reigning in Monaco): Canela, that came back from middle East with crusaders, as a slave. The motto for Monaco kingdom: "The robe doesn't make the monk" is cited in Topography and General History of Algiers as the renegade's favorite motto, meaning they could always come back from where they came just changing clothes.
Slavery long preceded the Roman Empire but certainly formed its economic basis. Workers in mines were of course slaves. Femqale slaves were always used sexually, etc, as they were in the USA. But I was talking about 15th c4entury Rome and Venice. High marks in European culture with low ideals it seems.
The canal de Marly, a monstrous pharaonic work to bring Eure water to Versailles, so the king Louis XIV could show up, was built on human deaths: thousands of slaves killed building a canal and it wasn't enough criminals in France to do it. So they went on buying slaves (Malta was the big Christian market, St-John's Knights were centuries-used to deal with slaves trade). And the Marly thing never worked out and slaves had been murdered for nothing. Louis XIV published his horrendous 'code noir', inhuman laws for slaves, allowing marking them or killing them at work, that further on, through Louisiana, gave step and arguments to segregation in United States.
Stanley Wilkin But the Italian case is specially interesting because, without clearly recognizing them, they allowed those savant slaves that knew Latin they had forgotten, to prosper in the society, and more, to become teachers for the elite, that way deeply transforming optics because later on the student princes, becoming Kings, couldn't behave anymore as brute ignorant. What gave step to the openness of Renaissance, to which had participated many savant slaves, engineers, artists, translaters, etc. In France, it wasn't the case; you couldn't become a king of France if you had been a slave and slaves were so widely used as cows to mill the grain that it was some saying in France: "to be sent to the mill" (being given an heavy inhuman task). The expression disappeared with French Revolution, when supposedly all equals. Until Napoleon set back slavery some years later.
i am actually appalled to know all this! I could, as an historian, understand slavery in the New World if regret it, but its continuance in early modern Europe/ghastly!!! Still I know of none in the UK...
hum! You just miss 400.000 UK slave owners, officially registered... https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/ The good thing is UK did compensate slaves brought from Africa. But it's understandable why no other country did so, because it almost totally bankrupt the economy of the country (only worth with 2011 subprime crisis). What means: it was a lot of slaves in the UK.
Fred, no there had been laws against that and general public disapproval. Probably in Jamaica.
Some lords were totally against the idea to pay back the slaves, that lazy stupid people just thinking in music and dancing... see that caricature... all the information is on the web page, from College of London...
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