Brians Blog: Palenque

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Palenque

Palenque is a well known, Mesoamerican archeological site in the Mexican state of Chiapas. It has a stela on a structure referred to as the House D Pier. Here is a photo and two drawings of the stela (or bas-relief).

This drawing is by Merle Greene Robertson from Maya Cosmos page 274, by Freidel, Schele & Parker.

This drawing of the stela is even older. It is from the 1784 Antonio del Rio Expedition and can be found here.

The really interesting thing about this stela is that it dates from 700 AD, or about 800 years before Columbus discovered the Americas (Yes, I know they weren't lost to the people who lived in the Americas.) and brought Catholicism to the New World.

Maya Cosmos describes the stela as Pakal, the king dressed as First Father and a woman dressed as First Mother, performing the snake dance.

Contrast and compare this with Genesis Chapter 3:

1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. 6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. 7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. 8 And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. 9 And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 13 And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

In Christendom, we know First Father as Adam and First Mother as Eve and the snake is, of course, Lucifer or Satan.

So how did the Mayans know of these very Christian symbols and teachings 800 years before European contact? One word - diffusionism.

Diffusionism, is the concept that people migrate and spread ideas and cultures over potentially large distances - a sort of globalism that goes far back into history and even farther back into pre-history.

Curiously enough, the Book of Mormon has two major accounts of diffusionism that predate Columbus and can provide a possible explanation for this stela. One account was the Nephites that came to the Americas from Jerusalem in 600 BC and the other is the Jaredites that came from the land of Babel to the Americas even earlier. Both accounts, in particular, mention that their respective groups brought with them a written record of the book of Genesis (See 1 Nephi 5:11 & Ether 1:3).

Even more interesting, my college anthropology 101 professor didn't have an explanation for Palenque, which he never even brought up. I guess it wasn't in the syllabus, even though his area of expertise was Mesoamerica, where he had conducted digs and had them published in the National Geographic Magazine.

I assume he must have known about this stela. He just didn't ever bother to mention it to us as he denigrated the religion department as believing that Adam lived in a red brick house!

That's the beauty of teaching undergrads - they can't call the professors' lapses of omission or commission to account, since they are mere intellectual infants themselves. I discovered this stela myself, many years after my anthropology 101 class!

I wonder how many other stelas, engravings, hieroglyphics, writings, etc. there are around the world like this that attest to diffusionism, like that evidenced in the Book of Mormon?

Just don't expect any help from an anthropologist!

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Culture

The self-educated individual – confident in his gender, his heritage, his religion, and the traditional culture that he seeks to project into the future – stands as a threat to the very existence of the state: He does not need its ministrations.

Where then to begin the creation of capitalist culture? The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward the realization of a capitalist culture….

Terry Hulsey

I would add:

The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward preserving traditional culture.

Delusionists

The delusionists are those who believe that the current system can be reformed, made more efficient, streamlined. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies act on market-like incentives. The delusionists believe that those in government bureaucracy can be convinced to reduce their role and influence. The delusionists believe that the president is in control of the bureaucracies. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies are led by good people just trying to do the right thing. The delusionists believe that individuals, acting as central planners, are even capable of identifying the right thing to do.

Bionic Mosquito

The State

"A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats." - Walter Lippmann

Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

"The logic of compulsory schooling in the middle of a democracy is a contradiction of the original national charter; it breaks the contract of the Bill of Rights, using as its justification the excuse that kids can't learn any other way, that they can't be trusted with responsibility. The truth is exactly the opposite: unless they are trusted with responsibility they cannot learn much, and under the thumb of central compulsion the lessons they do learn are bad ones."

John Taylor Gatto, "A Different Kind of Teacher", pg. 193-194

Robert P. Murphy

In particular, the market interest rate coordinates the "intertemporal" (i.e., across-time) activities of investors, businesses, and consumers. If consumers become more future oriented and want to reduce consumption in the near term in order to provide more for later years, what happens in the free market is that the increased savings push down interest rates, which then signal entrepreneurs to borrow more and invest in longer projects. Thus resources (such as labor, oil, steel, and machine time) get redirected away from present goods, like TVs and sports cars, and the freed-up resources flow into capital or investment goods like tractors and cargo ships.

Now when the Federal Reserve artificially reduces interest rates below their free-market level, it sends a false message to entrepreneurs. Firms begin expanding as if consumers have increased their savings, but in fact consumers have reduced their savings (due to the lower interest rates). Businesses that churn out durable goods, such as furnaces, cargo ships, and, yes, houses will find business booming, because these sectors respond positively to low interest rates.

On the other hand, other sectors don't need to contract, because (unlike the scenario of genuine savings) nobody is cutting back on consumption. This is precisely why the Fed-induced boom is unsustainable — real resources have not been released from consumer sectors in order to fuel the expansion of the capital sectors. Because modern economies are so complex, the charade can continue for a few years, with entrepreneurs cutting corners and "consuming capital" (i.e., postponing necessary replacement and maintenance on equipment) while both investment and consumer goods keep flowing out of the pipeline at increased rates. But the music eventually stops, since (after all) the Fed's printing of green pieces of paper doesn't really make a country wealthier. When the Fed "cuts interest rates" it isn't really creating more capital for businesses to borrow; it is instead distorting the signal that the market interest rate was trying to convey.

From mises.org

Gary North

Gary North recently wrote a great article on the politico-economic outcome caused by the anti-nuclear media forces following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami:

"Energy is the key to output. This has been true for over 200 years. To control a primary source of energy is to get rich. China will be able to buy uranium by means of its output from uranium. It will convert uranium into wealth. It will do so with the lowest energy cost-per-output ratio of any nation. Its people will find employment.

I think this has shifted the balance of economic power away from India. India will face public resistance to nuclear power. China will not. India has a lot of advantages: English, the legal system, the free flow of ideas, and a lot of motivated, well-educated people. I am not saying that India will fall behind the world. It will advance. But with respect to the job market for millions of recent arrivals from rural districts, nuclear power will give China the edge.

The anti-nuke forces will never talk about this in public. They will never say publicly, "We have delivered the world's economy into the hands of China." But they will have done just that."

Lew Rockwell - again

The beauty and glory of economic science is that it consists in a series of laws and principles that do not change according to time and place. The prescription for prosperity and stability and human economic flourishing is always and everywhere the same: freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of enterprise, freedom to trade across borders without penalty, sound money that is redeemable in something besides paper, private property rights, wages and prices that adjust by market conditions, and a legal structure that shores up these institutions rather than undermines them.

James H. Polve

“Mechanical engineers design and manufacture machines, machines to help mankind, to ease his burden and to make like more abundant. Machine work supplants slave labor and provides power far in excess of muscle power to free men from hard labor and yet provides the means to accomplish. Automobiles, airplanes, tractors, electrical and nuclear power plants, steam plants and many other similar kinds of plants and machines are typical examples of design and manufacture by the mechanical engineer. His special abilities are aimed at coupling natural laws with natural materials to produce work. He channels energy available on earth, and wherever possible in the universe, through devices into more usable forms to aid man. He can multiply man’s strength and quickness through hydraulic, pneumatic, and electrical devices. He can transport men and goods faster, further, and more efficiently than man can walk or carry. He provides for warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer. He is aided and yet constrained by the physical laws and the characteristics of resources that surround him; and yet he has made great advances to free men somewhat from the edict ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, til thou return unto the ground’ (Gen. 3:19).”

Ted Rockwell - The Best Quote Ever

That tactic, of making problems out of advantages—making sow’s ears out of silk purses, I call it—permeates the whole nuclear enterprise. The advantage that radioactivity continually and automatically gets less and less toxic every day, is converted to, “it stays toxic for thousands of years.” And this is implied to pose an unprecedented problem that humanity is not equipped to deal with. And breakable light bulbs containing mercury are called “green,” and radioactivity is called uniquely hazardous.

http://www.nucleartownhall.com/blog/townhall-qa-rickover-to-the-renaissance/

Thesis Topics for Research

How much money will UTOPIA ultimately consume? Currently they have spent $516 million. I bet the total goes over $700 million before bankruptcy is declared.
Why does lightning occur with earthquakes? Is Harold Aspden's theory about this correct?
Where was Joseph, the Carpenter when Christ was crucified? Had he already died?
What was it like to be a Christian in the 1st century, when the Apostles were still alive?
What influences Americans against nuclear power?
Chinese Trade - what was it paid with in AD 800?
History of Property Taxes in Utah. When Brigham Young said "This is the right place", there weren't any property taxes.
What determines left or right-handedness?

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Sunday, July 11, 2010

Palenque

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