What is the Prophecy that Indigenous of Many Lands shared in Oral -Fireside Chats?

“The souls of these first people would return in bodies of all different colors: red, white, yellow and black. Together and unified, like the colors of the rainbow, these people would teach all of the peoples of the world how to have love and reverence for Mother Earth, of whose very stuff we human beings are also made.”

“The Elders would serve as mnemonic pegs to each other. They will be speaking individually uninterrupted in a circle one after another. When each Elder spoke they were conscious that other Elders would serve as ‘peer reviewer’ [and so] they did not delve into subject matter that would be questionable. They did joke with each other and they told stories, some true and some a bit exaggerated but in the end the result was a collective memory. This is the part which is exciting because when each Elder arrived they brought with them a piece of the knowledge puzzle. They had to reach back to the teachings of their parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents. These teachings were shared in the circle and these constituted a reconnaissance of collective memory and knowledge. In the end the Elders left with a knowledge that was built by the collectivity.”

Stephen J. Augustine

Hereditary Chief and Keptin of the Mi’kmaq Grand Council

Oral societies record and document their histories in complex and sophisticated ways, including performative practices such as dancing and drumming. Although most oral societies, Aboriginal or otherwise, have now adopted the written word as a tool for documentation, expression and communication, many still depend on oral traditions and greatly value the oral transmission of knowledge as an intrinsic aspect of their cultures and societies.

Furthermore, discussions of oral history have occasionally been framed in oversimplistic oppositional binaries: oral/writing, uncivilized/civilized, subjective/objective. Critics wary of oral history tend to frame oral history as subjective and biased, in comparison to writing’s presumed rationality and objectivity. In Western contexts, authors of written documents tend to be received automatically as authorities on their subjects and what is written down is taken as fact. Such assumptions ignore the fact that authors of written documents bring their own experiences, agendas and biases to their work—that is, they are subjective.

http://lightningmedicinecloud.com/legend.html

In the United States what are the stories?

The Native Americans see the birth of a white buffalo calf as the most significant of prophetic signs, equivalent to the weeping statues, bleeding icons, and crosses of light that are becoming prevalent within the Christian churches today. Where the Christian faithful who visit these signs see them as a renewal of God’s ongoing relationship with humanity, so do the Native Americans see the white buffalo calf as the sign to begin life’s sacred hoop.

“The arrival of the white buffalo is like the second coming of Christ,” says Floyd Hand Looks For Buffalo, an Oglala Medicine Man from Pine Ridge, South Dakota. “It will bring about purity of mind, body, and spirit and ; unify all nations—black, red, yellow, and white.” He sees the birth of a white calf as an omen because they happen in the most unexpected places and often among the poorest people in the nation. The birth of the sacred white buffalo provides those within the Native American community with a sense of hope and an indication that good times are to come.

The telling of a story from one culture to another is complex; without living in the culture, we miss much of the story’s significance. However, it can still have meaning for us if we take the time to learn about the philosophy of the culture from which it came, perhaps meditating or reflecting on its place in our own lives.

http://lightningmedicinecloud.com/legend.html

https://www.facebook.com/Nassim.Haramein.official/videos/577821675975795/

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http://www.whitewolfpack.com/2018/03/blue-whale-appears-to-blow-rainbow-heart.html?fbclid=IwAR1vdz1z3y_xa8LQ7cd_bSwuENcl2TMf74yP88jB_oBtOKs0Bh6s5L2C1Xo

From: https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/oral_traditions/

Oral history and oral tradition

Some experts and scholars differentiate between oral history and oral tradition, but some do not. Anthropologist and historian Jan Vansina distinguishes the two as follows:¹¹

The sources of oral historians are reminiscences, hearsay, or eyewitness accounts about events and situations which are contemporary, that is, which occurred during the lifetime of the informants. This differs from oral traditions in that oral traditions are no longer contemporary. They have passed from mouth to mouth, for a period beyond the lifetime of the informants . . .

Vansina adds that oral traditions may be “spoken, sung, or called out on musical instruments only” and although they are passed down from a generation or more ago, they are not necessarily about the past nor are they necessarily narratives.¹² Vansina, however, has worked principally with oral societies in Africa. The ways in which oral societies around the world organize and understand their narratives vary.

This includes variation among First Nations’ historiographies. Stephen J. Augustine of the Mi’kmaq nation does not discern a difference between oral tradition and oral history: “When I consider the question of difference in my own Mi’kmaq language I cannot find any difference or reason why there should be a difference between oral tradition and oral history.”¹³ Some scholars have suggested that taking Aboriginal oral histories out of their native languages and fitting them into English terms such as legend, history, or story, and their corresponding concepts, may create artificial divisions.¹⁴ Stó:l? historian Naxaxahlts’i describes some of the different types of histories as understood by the Stó:l?. Sxwóxwiyam refers to creation stories, or, as Naxaxahlts’i puts it, “the stories about when Xexa:ls, the Transformers, travelled to our land to make the world right.” Sqwelsqwel on the other hand, refers to family history, or “the family’s truth.”¹⁵ Other Aboriginal groups have their own terminology for such narratives.

Anthropologist Bruce Miller uses the term oral narratives to encompass all of these meanings and to sidestep the oral tradition/oral history dichotomy, which he argues may present a false or overly simplistic division based on Western understandings. For Miller, by applying the term oral narratives, scholars can move beyond a superficial treatment of oral histories, and view them as both histories that are memorized and performed, and intellectual exercises of oral historiography informed by the agency of oral historians.¹⁶

Recording oral narratives

Oral history has been increasingly recognized in academia as a valuable contribution to the historical record. Interviews were and are recorded, transcribed, reread, and analyzed. Yet oral historian Alessandro Portelli cautions that the transcript is not the oral narrative and should not be seen as such. Transcription by its very nature must adhere to the rules and regulations of its written language—punctuation marks, for example, that give a sense of the way something was said but do not account for the rhythm or the melody of one’s voice or the variations in diction that emphasize different points or feelings. Portelli believes that narratives convey meaning that  “can only be perceived by listening, not by reading,” and that simply reading a transcript “flattens the emotional content.”¹⁸ In addition, a written document allows no immediate feedback—there is no opportunity for dialogue or spontaneity. Audio or audiovisual recordings can present similar problems—principally, that certain contexts might not translate.

Aboriginal oral histories within a legal context

It happened at a meeting between an Indian community in northwest British Columbia and some government officials. The officials claimed the land for the government. The natives were astonished by the claim. They couldn’t understand what these relative newcomers were talking about. Finally one of the elders put what was bothering them in the form of a question. “If this is your land,” he asked, “where are your stories?

J. Edward Chamberlin, If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?

The use of oral histories as evidence in the court of law has become a topic of much discussion and debate in Canada. Perhaps the most famous example of oral history within a legal context is the provincial supreme court case Delgamuukw v. British Columbia. Delgamuukw was the first case in which the court accepted oral history as evidence, even though Justice Allen McEachern ended up dismissing this evidence as unreliable.

In this court case, the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en peoples argued that they had Aboriginal title to the lands in British Columbia that make up their traditional territories. In order to prove their title, they had to provide evidence that they had occupied their territories for thousands of years. Without written documents to make their case, Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs presented their oral histories in the form of narratives, dances, speeches and songs.

Their testimony, however, fell on deaf ears, and while he accepted their oral history as evidence, Justice Allen McEachern concluded that it held no weight. In his now infamous ruling, he concluded that the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en’s ancestors were a “people without culture,” who had “no written language, no horses or wheeled vehicles.”¹⁹ He even cited 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes to support his views, calling the lives of the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en’s ancestors “nasty, brutish, and short.”

The case did not end there. On appeal, the Gitskan and Wet’suwet’en won a precedent-setting victory for oral history to be given weight as legal evidence. Chief Justice Lamar of the Supreme Court of Canada concluded,

The laws of evidence must be adapted in order that [oral] evidence can be accommodated and placed on an equal footing with the types of historical evidence that courts are familiar with, which largely consists of historical documents. . . . To quote Dickson C.J., given that most aboriginal societies “did not keep written records,” the failure to do so would “impose an impossible burden of proof” on aboriginal peoples, and “render nugatory” any rights that they have (Simon v. The Queen, [1985] 2 S.C.R. 387, at p. 408). This process must be undertaken on a case-by-case basis.

After Delgamuukw, a number of court cases have further defined how to interpret oral histories as evidence in court. In Squamish Indian Band v. Canada (2001 FCT 480) and R. v. Ironeagle (2000 2 CNLR 163), the court accepted oral histories as evidence but stipulated that the weight given to oral histories must be determined in relation to how they are regarded within their own societies. In her ruling in the Squamish case, Justice Simpson also noted that she might not have given the oral histories that were presented before her much weight if she had found written records that held the same information which she could use instead. Simpson further noted that the oral histories were “sometimes contradictory.” Legal scholar Drew Mildon uses Simpson’s ruling as an example of how a judge’s “doubt and skepticism” challenges the very nature of oral history: “[Oral] evidence may be deemed inadmissible. . . . simply because there is other evidence available [to use instead]. Lastly, it is characterized as contradictory (which one assumes never happens in written history.)”²⁰

In 2002, the Tsilhqot’in took the province of British Columbia to court to assert title to their lands. Justice David Vickers found that the oral histories presented to him by members of the Tsilhqot’in Nation were sufficient to prove their Aboriginal title. He also rejected the Crown’s claims that oral tradition was unreliable or should be measured against written documents, as it was equally impossible to determine the accuracy of historic fieldnotes or, more specifically in the Tsilhqot’in case, a 1900 ethnography on the “Chilcotin Indians.”²¹ More broadly, Vickers observed that “disrespect for Aboriginal people is a consistent theme in the historical documents.”²²

Delgamuukw and subsequent court cases have forced Western legal systems to reconsider the validity of Aboriginal oral traditions and their continued significance and relevance in Aboriginal societies and cultures. The Canadian legal system has begun to make adjustments to incorporate this reality, though courts still struggle to fairly consider evidence that is from a different cultural context without forcing it into a Western framework. Reception to oral history in mainstream Canadian society has begun to grow too. As law professor John Borrows suggests in the title to his article on the subject, perhaps the courts as well as mainstream society are now “listening for a change.”²³

By Erin Hanson.

Recommended resources

Archibald, Jo-ann (Q’um Q’um Xiiem). Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body and Spirit. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008.

Basso, Keith. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

Borrows, John. “Listening for a Change: The Courts and Oral Tradition.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 39, no. 1 (2001), 1–38.

Canada. Indian and Northern Affairs. “Oral Narratives and Aboriginal Pasts—An Interdisciplinary Review of the Literatures on Oral Traditions and Oral Histories.” http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ai/rs/pubs/re/orl/orl-eng.asp

Chamberlain, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: A.A. Knopf Canada, 2003.

Cruikshank, Julie. Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and Social Imagination. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005.

 —- The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon Territory. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998.

—- “Oral Tradition and Oral History: Reviewing Some Issues.” Canadian Historical Review 75, no. 3 (1994): 403–18.

—- “Invention of Anthropology in British Columbia’s Supreme Court: Oral Tradition as Evidence in Delgamuukw v. B.C.”[as per BC Studies website] BC Studies 95 (Autumn 1992):25–42.

Hulan, Renée, and Renate Eigenbrod, eds. Aboriginal Oral Traditions: Theory, Practice, Ethics. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2008.

Hymes, Dell. “In Vain I Tried to Tell You”: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981.

Murray, Laura J, and Keren Rice, eds. Talking on the Page: Editing Aboriginal Texts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.

Napoleon, Val. “Delgamuukw: A Legal Straightjacket for Oral Histories?” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 20, no. 2 (2005): 123–55.

Ridington, Robin, and Jillian Ridington. When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Voices, and Representations. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

Tonkin, Elizabeth. Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. “Oral History.” In Stolen Lands, Broken Promises: Researching the Indian Land Question (2^nd ed.)Vancouver: Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, 2005. 109-119.

Endnotes

¹  Stephen J. Augustine, “Oral Histories and Oral Traditions,” in Aboriginal Oral Traditions: Theory, Practice, Ethics, ed. Renée Hulan and Renate Eigenbrod (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2008), 2–3.

²  Hulan and Eigenbrod, 7.

³  Albert “Sonny” McHalsie (Naxaxalht’i), “We Have to Take Care of Everything That Belongs to Us,” in Be of Good Mind: Essays on the Coast Salish, ed. Bruce Granville Miller (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 82.

⁴  Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), ix–xiii.

⁵   Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, vol. 1, Looking Forward, Looking Back (Ottawa: The Commission, 1996), 33.

⁶  Bruce Miller, personal correspondence with Erin Hanson, August 13, 2010.

⁷  John Borrows, “Listening for a Change: The Courts and Oral Tradition,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 39, no. 1 (2001): 10.

⁸  Wendy C. Wickwire, “To See Ourselves as the Other’s Other: Nlaka’pamux Contact Narratives.” Canadian Historical Review 75, no. 1 (1994):19.

⁹  Keith Thor Carlson, ed., A Stó:l?–Coast Salish Historical Atlas ^{(Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2001), 6.}

¹⁰  For in-depth explorations of the connections between landscapes, people and their oral traditions, see, for example, Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996); and Julie Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and Social Imagination (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005). See our bibliography, above, for other relevant resources.

¹¹  Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition As History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 12–13.

¹²  Ibid.

¹³  Augustine, 3.

¹⁴  Drew Mildon, “A Bad Connection: First Nations’ Oral Evidence and the Listening Ear of the Courts,” in Aboriginal Oral Traditions: Theory, Practice, Ethics, 90.

¹⁵  McHalsie (Naxaxalhts’i), 92.

¹⁶  See, for example, Bruce Miller, Oral Narratives on Trial (Vancouver: UBC Press, forthcoming.)

¹⁷  Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in The Oral History Reader, 34.

¹⁸  Ibid., 34–5.

¹⁹  Delgamuukw v. British Columbia [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010, par. 13.

²⁰  Ibid., par. 87.

²¹  Tsihlqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2007 BSCS 1700, par. 177,  http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/Jdb-txt/SC/07/17/2007BCSC1700.pdf

²²  Ibid., par. 194.

²³  Borrows.

 These fifteen psychological facts will help you become a better person to be in a relationship with!

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1. the Dunning-Kruger effect in 1999 two social psychologists discovered something about intelligent people they rarely think they’re smart in fact they often rank themselves way below average on the other hand people with low intelligence do the exact opposite they almost always overestimate their rank by a longshot the Dunning-Kruger effect basically proves the old adage ignorance is bliss lets say you’re trying to learn how to draw when you finish your first drawing you’ll probably think you’re great at it but once you practice and realize how much you don’t know you won’t think you’re very good anymore this is why people with low intelligence often rate themselves so highly they don understand how little they know just look at the man who inspired Dunning and Kruger’s original experiment he decided to put lemon juice on his face in order to rob banks since lemon juice is used to make invisible ink believed he was complete invisible to the bank’s cameras of course thatwasn’t true just had high expectations and no knowledge so he thought of himself as agenius

2. number two remember remembering what’s your earliest memory you might remember playing with your parents in the park or one of your first birthdays but can you actually rememberthat far back neuro scientists recentlydiscovered that your memory works a lotdifferently than most people think whenyou think back to that early memory yourmind isn’t jumping back in time it’sremembering the last time you rememberedin other words your memory is likeplaying telephone every time you reremember something it changes a littlebit more eventually you won’t be able totell what actually happened and what youadded along the way

number three music changes perception the type of music you listen to actually affects how you viewthe world around youwe all know that music can change yourmood an upbeat song can leave youfeeling on top of the world while a sadone can send you into a downward spiralbut that’s not alla 2011 study looked at whether or notmusic could affect the way you perceive your environment subjects were asked to identify happy and sad faces while different songs played turns out people struggle to recognize happy faces duringsad songs and vice versa the music was making them see things that weren’tthere it created something called aperceptual expectation when you hear onething through your ears your brain willexpect to see something similar through your eyes this is why music can improvea workout or help after a breakup itsets the tone by creating thatperceptual expectation

• “ Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” – Plato.

number four foreign language logic we all make bad decisions but what if I told you that you could think more rationally if youdo it in another language a study fromthe University of Chicago found thatpeople make more logical choices when using a second language our reasoningskills are divided into two parts one issystematic and logical while the otheris unconscious and emotional when youuse your first language you let thatemotional side take over your biases andknee-jerk reactions cloud your judgmentwhen you use a less natural languagethat rational side steps in you’reforced to put more thought into what yousay next time you’re about to accept anew job or make a big purchase frame itin a different language then you’ll knowwhether or not it’s actually a good idea

number five singing reduces anxietysinging in the car or shower is a greatway to fend off anxiety and depressionlet’s say you’re driving into workyou’re about to give the most importantpresentation of your life naturallyyou’re a nervous wreck so how can youkeep yourself calm turn on your favoritesong and sing as loud as you canit sounds ridiculous but singing floodsyour brain with endorphins and oxytocinboth of them relieve stress and improveyour mood they make you feel comfortablewhile keeping your heartrate andcortisollevels low and don’t worry you don’thave to be good even if you’re the worstsinger in the world like me belting itcan reduce anxiety and turn your dayaround

number six rejection hurtsimagine you made a new friend over theweekend but when you ask them to hangout a few days later they blow you offwhat does that feel like to your brainyou might as well have been punched inthe face that’s because our brainsprocess emotional and physical pain thesame way both kinds of pain release thesame chemicals and activate the sameareas if you’ve ever wondered why socialrejection hurts so much this is why

number seven canonical perspective haveyou ever thought about how things lookin your memory in the 1980’spsychologists discovered that weremember almost all objects from thecanonical perspective that means we seethings from the side and slightly aboveif you don’t believe me try and draw acup did you draw one circle as thoughyou were looking down on it or did youdraw it from the side and add an angleso you could just barely see inside wellthere are a few individual exceptionsyou unconsciously see most objects fromthe exact same vantage point

numbereight evolving anxiety about 15 yearsago a study found that the average highschool student was as anxious as theaverage psychiatric patient in the 1950sover the last few decades mental healthconditions like anxiety and mooddisorders have become increasinglycommon in fact they’re treated as anormal thing if that study wereconducted today I’m sure the numberswould be through the roof as humanitybecomes more disconnected stress andscared it’s more important than ever topay attention to your mental health

number nine the negativity genewhat if negativity wasn’t a choice a2013 study found that some people aregenetically predisposed to negativethoughts this means you automaticallyreact with stronger negative emotions inthat study researchers looked at howpeople with this gene reacted to variousimageswhile most people enjoy pictures ofwaterfalls and beaches people with thenegativity gene found them dangerous andalarming when shown a picture of acrowded room they honed in on angry orsad faces so if you’re a naturallynegative or cautious person you may havebeen born that way

number 10healthy sarcasm being sarcastic canactually improve the health of yourbrain while sarcasm can be insultingit’s one of the most common signs ofintelligence sarcastic people tend to bequick witty and creative their sarcasmmay make them unlikable but they excelat thinking outside the boxbiologically sarcastic comments requirequite a bit of brain function you haveto instantly understand tone meaning andperspective then spin them in a way thatmakes something funny this is whysarcastic people are so good atunderstanding abstract concepts andsolving complex problems

number eleventhe power of sunlight have you evernoticed you feel down when you’ve beeninside all day but when you walk outsideyour mood instantly changes sunlightisn’t just good for your bones it canactually prevent mood disorders likedepression the vitamin D you get fromthe Sun acts as a mood stabilizer andreleases pleasurable hormones in yourbrain this is why people in countrieswith less sunlight are more likely to bedepressed all you need is 10 minutes ofdirect sunlight to literally andfiguratively brighten up your world

number 12dopamine addiction why is it so easy tostare at your phone for hours on end arecent study found that texting andsocial media trigger the release ofdopamine in your brain dopamine iscommonly associated with pleasure butthat isn’t why you can’t put your phonedown dopamine plays another importantroleit controls desire it tells you when youwant something and compels you to get itthis is what pushes you to keep talkingclicking or scrolling each time you dodopamine sends more pleasure signals tothe brain it’s a dangerous cycle becausethe longer you let it go on theharder it is to break

number 13 the oversleepers paradox after sleeping for 10or 11 hours how do you feelyou gave your brain plenty of time torelax and detoxify yet somehow you feeltired almost like you didn’t sleepenough sleeping too much is just asdetrimental as not sleeping enough itwill leave you feeling foggy andfatigued because it throws off yourbiological clock imagine you’re tryingto do a flipif you don’t flip enough you fall butwhen you flip too much the same thinghappens you have to hit it just rightsleeping works the same way the only wayto avoid feeling tired is to sleep theperfect amount

number 14 reading fasterhave you ever wondered why newspapersuse such thin columns years agopublishers figured out that people likedshorter lines people were more likely tokeep reading so newspapers kept theirlines between 30 and 50 characters sincewe like short lines better shouldn’t weread them faster toopsychologists recently discovered theopposite short lines make us read slower100 characters is actually the idealline length even though it’s double ortriple what most newspapers andmagazines use

number 15 mood sicknessbeing in a bad mood isn’t just hard onyour brain it can significantly impactyour physical health our bodies andbrains are inexplicably tied togetherwhen one suffers the other does too sowhen you’re feeling unhappy you mighthave aches inflammation and lower immunefunction so if you can try to find waysto improve your mental state everysingle day happiness is a big part ofbeing healthythank you for watching Top think and besure to subscribe because moreincredible content is on the way

THE RACE ISSUE

There’s No Scientific Basis for Race—It’s a Made-Up Label

It’s been used to define and separate people for millennia. But the concept of race is not grounded in genetics.

The four letters of the genetic code —A, C, G, and T—are projected onto Ryan Lingarmillar, a Ugandan. DNA reveals what skin color obscures: We all have African ancestors.12 MINUTE READBY ELIZABETH KOLBERTPHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBIN HAMMOND

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This story is part of The Race Issue, a special issue of National Geographic that explores how race defines, separates, and unites us. Tell us your story with#IDefineMe. 

IN THE FIRST half of the 19th century, one of America’s most prominent scientists was a doctor named Samuel Morton. Morton lived in Philadelphia, and he collected skulls.

He wasn’t choosy about his suppliers. He accepted skulls scavenged from battlefields and snatched from catacombs. One of his most famous craniums belonged to an Irishman who’d been sent as a convict to Tasmania (and ultimately hanged for killing and eating other convicts). With each skull Morton performed the same procedure: He stuffed it with pepper seeds—later he switched to lead shot—which he then decanted to ascertain the volume of the braincase.

Morton believed that people could be divided into five races and that these represented separate acts of creation. The races had distinct characters, which corresponded to their place in a divinely determined hierarchy. Morton’s “craniometry” showed, he claimed, that whites, or “Caucasians,” were the most intelligent of the races. East Asians—Morton used the term “Mongolian”—though “ingenious” and “susceptible of cultivation,” were one step down. Next came Southeast Asians, followed by Native Americans. Blacks, or “Ethiopians,” were at the bottom. In the decades before the Civil War, Morton’s ideas were quickly taken up by the defenders of slavery.

This story helps launch a series about racial, ethnic, and religious groups and their changing roles in 21st-century life. The series runs through 2018 and will include coverage of Muslims, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans.

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“He had a lot of influence, particularly in the South,” says Paul Wolff Mitchell, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania who is showing me the skull collection, now housed at the Penn Museum. We’re standing over the braincase of a particularly large-headed Dutchman who helped inflate Morton’s estimate of Caucasian capacities. When Morton died, in 1851, the Charleston Medical Journal in South Carolina praised him for “giving to the negro his true position as an inferior race.”

Today Morton is known as the father of scientific racism. So many of the horrors of the past few centuries can be traced to the idea that one race is inferior to another that a tour of his collection is a haunting experience. To an uncomfortable degree we still live with Morton’s legacy: Racial distinctions continue to shape our politics, our neighborhoods, and our sense of self.

This is the case even though what science actually has to tell us about race is just the opposite of what Morton contended.

Morton thought he’d identified immutable and inherited differences among people, but at the time he was working—shortly before Charles Darwin put forth his theory of evolution and long before the discovery of DNA—scientists had no idea how traits were passed on. Researchers who have since looked at people at the genetic level now say that the whole category of race is misconceived. Indeed, when scientists set out to assemble the first complete human genome, which was a composite of several individuals, they deliberately gathered samples from people who self-identified as members of different races. In June 2000, when the results were announced at a White House ceremony, Craig Venter, a pioneer of DNA sequencing, observed, “The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis.”

Over the past few decades, genetic research has revealed two deep truths about people. The first is that all humans are closely related—more closely related than all chimps, even though there are many more humans around today. Everyone has the same collection of genes, but with the exception of identical twins, everyone has slightly different versions of some of them. Studies of this genetic diversity have allowed scientists to reconstruct a kind of family tree of human populations. That has revealed the second deep truth: In a very real sense, all people alive today are Africans.

Our species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa—no one is sure of the exact time or place. The most recent fossil find, from Morocco, suggests that anatomically modern human features began appearing as long as 300,000 years ago. For the next 200,000 years or so, we remained in Africa, but already during that period, groups began to move to different parts of the continent and become isolated from one another—in effect founding new populations.

ANCIENT FLOWS

OF DARK AND LIGHT

Many genes affect how melanin colors human skin. The genes

predate humanity; some occur in mice and fish. Variations in

four of them—mutations that flip a gene from darkening to

lightening or vice versa—explain much of the skin-color

diversity in Africa. As our ancestors spread across the Earth,

different mutations proved beneficial at different latitudes

and were passed on.

Papua New Guineans, Ethiopians, Hadza, and Tanzanians

Sub-Saharan Africans (except the San), South Asians, and Australo-Melanesians

East Africans, Hadza, San, South Asians, and Australo-Melanesians

Gene variants associated

with dark pigmentation

Africans and East Asians

SLC24A5

DDB1

996,000 years ago

345,000 years ago

Dark-to-light mutation

Dark-to-light mutation

Light-to-dark mutation

Light-to-dark mutation

MFSD12

HERC2

250,000 years ago

Gene variants associated

with light pigmentation

29,000 years ago

Europeans and South Asians

Europeans, East Asians, Indians, and Native Americans

Europeans, San, East Asians, and Africans

Europeans, San, and East Asians

Light skin has many origins

Genetic mutation

Responding to the sun

~300,000 years ago

A key gene mutation promoting lighter skin

(SLC24A5) occurred 29,000 years ago in Asia

and later spread into Europe. But Africa is the

source of other gene variants that contribute

to lighter skin in populations around the

world (DDB1, MFSD12, and HERC2).

Genes randomly mutate

over time. Beneficial

mutations tend to be

passed on to offspring

and to spread through

a population.

Dark skin is favored in the tropics because

it shields tissue from dangerous UV rays.

In regions with less sun, lighter skin allows

the body to absorb enough UV rays to

synthesize vitamin D, which is needed for

healthy bones and immune systems.

Anatomically

modern human

features emerge in

Africa.JASON TREAT AND RYAN T. WILLIAMS, NGM STAFF 
SOURCE: SARAH TISHKOFF, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

In humans, as in all species, genetic changes are the result of random mutations—tiny tweaks to DNA, the code of life. Mutations occur at a more or less constant rate, so the longer a group persists, handing down its genes generation after generation, the more tweaks these genes will accumulate. Meanwhile, the longer two groups are separated, the more distinctive tweaks they will acquire.

By analyzing the genes of present-day Africans, researchers have concluded that the Khoe-San, who now live in southern Africa, represent one of the oldest branches of the human family tree. The Pygmies of central Africa also have a very long history as a distinct group. What this means is that the deepest splits in the human family aren’t between what are usually thought of as different races—whites, say, or blacks or Asians or Native Americans. They’re between African populations such as the Khoe-San and the Pygmies, who spent tens of thousands of years separated from one another even before humans left Africa.TODAY’SPOPULAR STORIES

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All non-Africans today, the genetics tells us, are descended from a few thousand humans who left Africa maybe 60,000 years ago. These migrants were most closely related to groups that today live in East Africa, including the Hadza of Tanzania. Because they were just a small subset of Africa’s population, the migrants took with them only a fraction of its genetic diversity.

Somewhere along the way, perhaps in the Middle East, the travelers met and had sex with another human species, the Neanderthals; farther east they encountered yet another, the Denisovans. It’s believed that both species evolved in Eurasia from a hominin that had migrated out of Africa much earlier. Some scientists also believe the exodus 60,000 years ago was actually the second wave of modern humans to leave Africa. If so, judging from our genomes today, the second wave swamped the first.

In what was, relatively speaking, a great rush, the offspring of all these migrants dispersed around the world. By 50,000 years ago they had reached Australia. By 45,000 years ago they’d settled in Siberia, and by 15,000 years ago they’d reached South America. As they moved into different parts of the world, they formed new groups that became geographically isolated from one another and, in the process, acquired their own distinctive set of genetic mutations.

Most of these tweaks were neither helpful nor harmful. But occasionally a mutation arose that turned out to be advantageous in a new setting. Under the pressure of natural selection, it spread quickly through the local population. At high altitudes, for instance, oxygen levels are low, so for people moving into the Ethiopian highlands, Tibet, or the Andean Altiplano, there was a premium on mutations that helped them cope with the rarefied air. Similarly, Inuit people, who adopted a marine-based diet high in fatty acids, have genetic tweaks that helped them adapt to it.

Sometimes it’s clear that natural selection has favored a mutation, but it’s not clear why. Such is the case with a variant of a gene called EDAR (pronounced ee-dar). Most people of East Asian and Native American ancestry possess at least one copy of the variant, known as 370A, and many possess two. But it’s rare among people of African and European descent.

At the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, geneticist Yana Kamberov has equipped mice with the East Asian variant of EDAR in hopes of understanding what it does. “They’re cute, aren’t they?” she says, opening the cage to show me. The mice look ordinary, with sleek brown coats and shiny black eyes. But examined under a microscope, they are different from their equally cute cousins in subtle yet significant ways. Their hair strands are thicker; their sweat glands are more numerous; and the fat pads around their mammary glands are smaller.

Kamberov’s mice help explain why some East Asians and Native Americans have thicker hair and more sweat glands. (EDAR’s effect on human breasts is unclear.) But they don’t provide an evolutionary reason. Perhaps, Kamberov speculates, the ancestors of contemporary East Asians at some point encountered climate conditions that made more sweat glands useful. Or maybe thicker hair helped them ward off parasites. Or it could be that 370Aproduced other benefits she’s yet to discover and the changes she has identified were, in effect, just tagalongs. Genetics frequently works like this: A tiny tweak can have many disparate effects. Only one may be useful—and it may outlive the conditions that made it so, the way families hand down old photos long past the point when anyone remembers who’s in them.

“Unless you have a time machine, you’re not going to know,” Kamberov sighs.

THERE’S MORE DIVERSITY IN AFRICA THAN ON ALL THE OTHER CONTINENTS COMBINED.

That’s because modern humans originated in Africa and have lived there the longest. They’ve had time to evolve enormous genetic diversity—which extends to skin color. Researchers who study it sometimes use Africa’s linguistic diversity—it has more than 2,000 languages (see map below)—as a guide. Photographer Robin Hammond followed their lead, visiting five representative language communities. His portraits span the color spectrum from Neilton Vaalbooi (top left in photo grid above), a Khoe-San boy from South Africa, to Akatorot Yelle (bottom right), a Turkana girl from Kenya. “There is no homogeneous African race,” says geneticist Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania. “It doesn’t exist.” The prehistoric humans who left Africa some 60,000 years ago—giving rise over time to the other peoples of the world—reflected only a fraction of Africa’s diversity.1. Neilton Vaalbooi (N), 2. Petrus Vaalbooi (N), 3. Khadar Abdullahi (S), 4. Sadam Abdirisak (S), 5. Askania Saidi (H), 6. Mohamed Ali (S), 7. Helena Hamisi (H), 8. Kooli Naperit (T), 9. David Vaalbooi (N), 10. Sisipho Menze (X), 11. Ayub Abdullahi (S), 12. Bianca Springbok (N), 13. Xolani Mantyi (X), 14. Makaranga Pandisha (H), 15. Erinyok Eyen (T), 16. Isaac Adams (N), 17. Chahida van Neel (N), 18. Griet Seekoei (N), 19. Siphelo Mzondo (X), 20. Piega Mukoa (H), 21. Zacharia Sanga (H), 22. Tulisa Ngxukuma (X), 23. Johanna Koper (N), 24. Abdhllahi Mohamed (S), 25. Monwabisi Makoma (X), 26. Gelmesa Robe (S), 27. Palanjo Kaunda (H), 28. Abdhllahi Said (S), 29. Ejore Elipan Abong (T), 30. Akatorot Yelle (T)

Language diversity of continental Africa

Each dot represents a distinct language.

SAHARA

Somali

(S)

Turkana

(T)

Hadza

(H)

*N u is one of

many Khoe-San

languages.

N u* (N)

Xhosa (X)

NGM MAPS. SOURCES: GLOTTOLOG 3.1, MAX PLANCK

INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY;

SARAH TISHKOFF, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA;

BRENNA HENN, STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY, NEW

YORK; RICHARD E.W. BERL, COLORADO

STATE UNIVERSITY

DNA is often compared to a text, with the letters standing for chemical bases—A for adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine, and T for thymine. The human genome consists of three billion base pairs—page after page of A’s, C’s, G’s, and T’s—divided into roughly 20,000 genes. The tweak that gives East Asians thicker hair is a single base change in a single gene, from a T to a C.

Similarly, the mutation that’s most responsible for giving Europeans lighter skin is a single tweak in a gene known as SLC24A5, which consists of roughly 20,000 base pairs. In one position, where most sub-Saharan Africans have a G, Europeans have an A. About a decade ago a pathologist and geneticist named Keith Cheng, at Penn State College of Medicine, discovered the mutation by studying zebrafish that had been bred to have lighter stripes. The fish, it turned out, possessed a mutation in a pigment gene analogous to the one that is mutated in Europeans.

Studying DNA extracted from ancient bones, paleogeneticists have found that the G-to-A substitution was introduced into western Europe relatively recently—about 8,000 years ago—by people migrating from the Middle East, who also brought a newfangled technology: farming. That means the people already in Europe—hunter-gatherers who created the spectacular cave paintings at Lascaux, for example—probably were not white but brown. The ancient DNA suggests that many of those dark-skinned Europeans also had blue eyes, a combination rarely seen today.

A FORMATIVE JOURNEY

As humans migrated out of Africa—in two waves, some

scientists say—they adapted to new environments in many

ways. Skin color is just one; high-­altitude populations, for

example, adapted to breathing low-oxygen air.

20,000-15,000

45,000

EUROPE

years ago

years ago

43,000

NORTH

ASIA

years ago

AMERICA

40,000

years ago

AFRICA

70,000

PACIFIC

OCEAN

years ago

200,000

years ago

SOUTH

AMERICA

AUSTRALIA

Jebel Irhoud, Morocco

15,000-12,000

years ago

Site of oldest Homo sapiens remains

(~300,000 years old)

Thousands of years ago

200

60

Present

First wave:

120,000-60,000

years ago

Second wave:

60,000-30,000

years ago

JASON TREAT AND RYAN T. WILLIAMS, NGM STAFF

SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER BAE AND OTHERS, SCIENCE, 2017

“What the genetics shows is that mixture and displacement have happened again and again and that our pictures of past ‘racial structures’ are almost always wrong,” says David Reich, a Harvard University paleogeneticist whose new book on the subject is called Who We Are and How We Got Here. There are no fixed traits associated with specific geographic locations, Reich says, because as often as isolation has created differences among populations, migration and mixing have blurred or erased them.

Across the world today, skin color is highly variable. Much of the difference correlates with latitude. Near the Equator lots of sunlight makes dark skin a useful shield against ultraviolet radiation; toward the poles, where the problem is too little sun, paler skin promotes the production of vitamin D. Several genes work together to determine skin tone, and different groups may possess any number of combinations of different tweaks. Among Africans, some people, such as the Mursi of Ethiopia, have skin that’s almost ebony, while others, such as the Khoe-San, have skin the color of copper. Many dark-skinned East Africans, researchers were surprised to learn, possess the light-skinned variant of SLC24A5. (It seems to have been introduced to Africa, just as it was to Europe, from the Middle East.) East Asians, for their part, generally have light skin but possess the dark-skinned version of the gene. Cheng has been using zebrafish to try to figure out why. “It’s not simple,” he says.

When people speak about race, usually they seem to be referring to skin color and, at the same time, to something more than skin color. This is the legacy of people such as Morton, who developed the “science” of race to suit his own prejudices and got the actual science totally wrong. Science today tells us that the visible differences between peoples are accidents of history. They reflect how our ancestors dealt with sun exposure, and not much else.

“We often have this idea that if I know your skin color, I know X, Y, and Z about you,” says Heather Norton, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Cincinnati who studies pigmentation. “So I think it can be very powerful to explain to people that all these changes we see, it’s just because I have an A in my genome and she has a G.”

YOUR WORDS CREATE YOUR EXPERIENCE OF THE MOMENT====

YOU MUST EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS AND THE FEELINGS OF ALL THOSE THAT CAME BEFORE US IN A MANNER THAT EMPOWERS +++++
NATURE

———–

NATURE IS SELF CORRECTING

YOUR NATURE WILL SELF CORRECT YOU!!!!!

Language Patterns Discriminate Mild Depression From Normal Sadness and Euthymic State

Daria Smirnova,^1,2,*Paul Cumming,³Elena Sloeva,⁴Natalia Kuvshinova,⁴Dmitry Romanov,¹ andGennadii Nosachev¹Author informationArticle notesCopyright and License informationDisclaimer

Associated Data

Supplementary MaterialsGo to:

Abstract

Objectives

Deviations from typical word use have been previously reported in clinical depression, but language patterns of mild depression (MD), as distinct from normal sadness (NS) and euthymic state, are unknown. In this study, we aimed to apply the linguistic approach as an additional diagnostic key for understanding clinical variability along the continuum of affective states.

Methods

We studied 402 written reports from 124 Russian-speaking patients and 77 healthy controls (HC), including 35 cases of NS, using hand-coding procedures. The focus of our psycholinguistic methods was on lexico-semantic [e.g., rhetorical figures (metaphors, similes)], syntactic [e.g., predominant sentence type (single-clause and multi-clause)], and lexico-grammatical [e.g., pronouns (indefinite, personal)] variables. Statistical evaluations included Cohen’s kappa for inter-rater reliability measures, a non-parametric approach (Mann–Whitney U-test and Pearson chi-square test), one-way ANOVA for between-group differences, Spearman’s and point-biserial correlations to analyze relationships between linguistic and gender variables, discriminant analysis (Wilks’ ?) of linguistic variables in relation to the affective diagnostic types, all using SPSS-22 (significant, p?<?0.05).

Results

In MD, as compared with healthy individuals, written responses were longer, demonstrated descriptive rather than analytic style, showed signs of spoken and figurative language, single-clause sentences domination over multi-clause, atypical word order, increased use of personal and indefinite pronouns, and verb use in continuous/imperfective and past tenses. In NS, as compared with HC, we found greater use of lexical repetitions, omission of words, and verbs in continuous and present tenses. MD was significantly differentiated from NS and euthymic state by linguistic variables [98.6%; Wilks’ ?(40)?=?0.009; p?<?0.001; r?=?0.992]. The highest predictors in discrimination between MD, NS, and euthymic state groups were the variables of word order (typical/atypical) (r?=??0.405), ellipses (omission of words) (r?=?0.583), colloquialisms (informal words/phrases) (r?=?0.534), verb tense (past/present/future) (r?=??0.460), verbs form (continuous/perfect) (r?=?0.345), amount of reflexive (e.g., myself)/personal (r?=?0.344), and negative (e.g., nobody)/indefinite (r?=?0.451) pronouns. The most significant between-group differences were observed in MD as compared with both NS and euthymic state.

Conclusion

MD is characterized by patterns of atypical language use distinguishing depression from NS and euthymic state, which points to a potential role of linguistic indicators in diagnosing affective states.Keywords: euthymic state, language patterns, mild depression, negative pronouns, normal sadness, past tense verbs, personal pronouns, word useGo to:

Introduction

Mild depression (MD) is a common mental state (1), observed in 15% of the adult population (2), with only 23% receiving any treatment (3). MD is mostly related to life stresses (4) and [unlike moderate and severe major depressive disorder (MDD)] is poorly responsive to antidepressant medication (1, 5, 6). Nonetheless, MD [as distinct from subthreshold, minor depression (7) or normal sadness (NS) (8, 9)] is a serious medical condition causing professional and personal disabilities (10–12). Indeed, MD is associated with unemployment in 16% of cases (13). The chronic course of mild depressive symptoms within dysthymia brings an elevated suicidality risk, compared with MDD (14). MD is often prodromal to MDD (7, 15, 16). NS in the absence of clinical depression is also frequent (29.8%) in the general population (17).

The ICD-10 (18) diagnosis of MD requires four symptoms, whereas the DSM-V (19) criteria are based on seven main symptoms, and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) gives an MD diagnosis threshold for scores ranging from 7 to 17 as widely accepted by clinicians or cutoff scores from 8 to 16 as suggested by the recent severity classification of HDRS (20–23). However, depression is heterogeneous and presents with highly variable clinical symptoms, so its diagnosis cannot be made merely by the number of symptoms, but should include their detailed analysis and causal relations (24–26). Diagnosis of MD was reported to be less stable compared with diagnosis of severe depression using ICD-10 criteria and was characterized by a fair level of agreement (kappa?=?0.25) between clinicians compared with the moderate reliability in severe depression cases (kappa?=?0.53) (8, 27). The claimed high prevalence of MD is sometimes viewed with skepticism, given the questionable reliability of psychiatric diagnoses in general (28), and especially with respect to the differentiation of MD from NS (8, 29). Correct recognition of subthreshold forms of NS is based upon the number, duration, and quality of presented symptoms (30). Despite the elaboration of criteria cited above, psychiatry still lacks objective clinical tests of symptoms comparable with those routinely used in other medical disciplines (31). Affective (e.g., decreased mood) and cognitive (e.g., negative content of thoughts) components of MD and NS are mostly expressed through language, while more severe forms of depression are also recognized by a motor component (e.g., slow bodily movements). The search for objective indicators of MD vs. NS might help to increase the reliability of MD diagnosis. Andreasen and Pfohl (32) first showed that language is a specific marker of depression, and currently active study groups have concluded that an analysis of natural language processing could afford the foundation for developing objective diagnostic tests “based on dimensions of observable behavior” (33) (p. 904).

While a clinical interview remains the basic tool for diagnosing depression (34), linguistic research has demonstrated that systematic analysis of language content reliably classifies patients into appropriate diagnostic groups (35, 36). Nguyen et al. (37) report that computerized word counting techniques (38, 39) discriminate depression communities from other subgroups and also reveal strong online-language predictors of depression (40) and suicide (41). Aberrant written and spoken languages are frequently reported in patients with depression (42–46). Being a chronic affective disorder presenting either within mild depressive symptoms or with marked absence of pleasure in daily activities, dysthymia is characterized by increased speech flow, in contrast to the slowed speech typical of MDD (14). The excessive use of first-person singular pronouns (I) correlated with depression in many (22, 23, 38, 46, 47), but not all studies (48). Objective (me) and possessive (my) first-person pronouns were more frequent in speech of a group with depression, and predicted depression better than did subjective (I) pronouns (47). Elevated usage of first-person pronouns was attributed to self-focused attention or self-preoccupation (44, 47, 49). Among various measures of depressive self-focusing style, rumination (repetitions of the same, usually negative, information) has been mentioned in many studies (50–52). Other features of depression included elevated use of mental state verbs (think), words denoting causal relations (because) (53), greater use of generalizing terms (everything, always), negation (nothing, never), and words referring to ambivalent emotional states (54, 55). The increased use of discrepancy words (should), possibly reflecting enhanced aspirations for the future (56), has been discussed as a marker of improvement with therapy for depression. Together, these promising results denote that “the styles in which people use words” represent no less meaningful information than “the content of what they say” about their symptoms (38) (p. 548). Nonetheless, language phenomena are still not widely considered for psychiatric diagnosis of affective states.

In-timid-ate

You can see “timid” in the middle of intimidate, and to be timid is to be frightened or to pull back from something. When you intimidate, you frighten or make someone afraid. A pet rat might intimidate your sister’s friends, keeping them out of your fort.

THERE ARE GENETICS TO YOUR FEELINGS THAT LOCK UP YOUR SUPER POWERS!

YOUR SUPER POWERS ARE IN YOUR ENERGY FIELD!!!

MEEK MEANS – DEFENCELESS!!!

“To frighten” or “make fearful” is at the root of the verb intimidate. An animal might intimidate a smaller animal by bearing its teeth, and a person can intimidate another by threatening to do something harmful. You can be intimidated with mental or emotional bullying, as well as with something physical: “they were all good spellers, but some of them knew how to intimidate the competition into thinking they didn’t have a chance at winning the spelling bee.”Start learning this word

Think you know intimidate? Quiz yourself:

ASSESSMENT: 100 POINTSWhich of the following would most likely intimidate someone?cleaning a dirty bathroomtaking a canoe trip across a lakerunning into a bear in the woodsbuying a new pair of shoesAdd to List…Thesaurus Share It

Definitions ofintimidate1

vcompel or deter by or as if by threats

Synonyms:restrainTypes:dash, daunt, frighten away, frighten off, pall, scare, scare away, scare offcause to lose courageType of:discouragedeprive of courage or hope; take away hope from; cause to feel discouraged

vmake timid or fearful

“Her boss intimidates her”Types:hold overintimidate somebody (with a threat)ballyrag, boss around, browbeat, bully, bullyrag, hector, push around, strong-armbe bossy towardsdomineer, tyrannise, tyrannizerule or exercise power over (somebody) in a cruel and autocratic mannerType of:affright, fright, frighten, scarecause fear in

Gregg Braden

COSTA RICA’S Invisible ENERGY

The Diquis culture (sometimes spelled Diquís) was a pre-Columbian indigenous culture of Costa Rica that flourished from AD 700 to 1530.^[1] The word “diquís” means “great waters” or “great river” in the Boruca language.^[1] The Diquis formed part of the Greater Chiriquiculture that spanned from southern Costa Rica to western Panama.^[2]

The Diquis are known for stone spheres, sometimes referred to as the Diquís Spheres, an assortment of over three hundred petrospheres in Costa Rica, located on the Diquis Delta and on Isla del Caño.

The pre-Columbian history of Costa Rica extends from the establishment of the first settlers until the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the Americas.

Archaeological evidence allows us to date the arrival of the first humans to Costa Rica to between 7000 and 10,000 BC. By the second millennium BC sedentary farming communities already existed. Between 300 BC and AD 300 many communities moved from a tribal, clan-centric organization – kinship-based, rarely hierarchical and dependent on self-sustenance – to a hierarchical one, with caciques (chiefs), religious leaders or shamans, artisan specialists and so on. This social organization arose from the need to organize manufacture and trade, manage relations with other communities and plan offensive and defensive activities. These groups established broader territorial divisions to produce more food and control wider sources of raw materials.

From the 9th century certain villages grew in size, and the latter-period chiefdoms of the 16th century came to develop greater social hierarchies and major improvements in infrastructure.

A chronology of key events:

1502 – Christopher Columbus visits the area, naming it Costa Rica, (Rich Coast), but disease and resistance by the local population delay the establishment of a permanent settlement for nearly 60 years.

1540 onwards – Costa Rica is part of the vice-royalty of New Spain.

1561 – Spain’s Juan de Cavallon leads the first successful colonisers into Costa Rica.

1808 – Coffee is introduced into Costa Rica from Cuba and becomes the principal crop.

1821 – Central America gains independence from Spain. A dispute ensues over whether Costa Rica should join an independent Mexico or a confederation of Central American states.

1823 – Costa Rica joins the United Provinces of Central America, which also embraces El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

1824-25 – Province of Guanacaste secedes from Nicaragua and becomes part of Costa Rica.

Independence

1838 – Costa Rica becomes fully independent.

1849-59 – Under the leadership of Juan Rafael Mora, Costa Rica takes the lead in organising Central American resistance against William Walker, the US adventurer who took over Nicaragua in 1855.ADVERTISEMENT

1859 – Mora ousted in a bloodless coup.

1870-82 – Under the leadership of Tomas Guardia Costa Rica encourages intensive foreign investment in railways.

1874 – US businessman Minor Cooper Keith introduces banana cultivation and starts the United Fruit Company.

1917 – Frederico Tinoco ousts the elected president, Alfredo Gonzalez, but is himself deposed two years later.

Socialism and civil war

1940-44 – President Rafael Angel Calderon Guradia, founder of the United Christian Socialist Party (PUSC), introduces liberal reforms, including recognition of workers’ rights and minimum wages.

1948 – Six-week civil war over a disputed presidential election result.

1949 – New constitution gives women and people of African descent the right to vote; armed forces abolished and replaced by civil guard; Jose Figueres Ferrer, co-founder of National Liberation Party (PLN), elected president and begins ambitious socialist programme, including introducing a social security system and nationalising banks.

1958-73 – Costa Rica governed by mainly conservative administrations.

1963-64 – Irazu volcano erupts, causing serious damage to agriculture.

1968 – Arenal volcano erupts, causing many casualties.

1974 – Daniel Oduber (PLN) elected president and pursues socialist policies.

Conservatism and economic deterioration

1978 – Rodrigo Carazo, a conservative, elected president amid a sharp deterioration in the economy.

1982 – Luis Alberto Monge (PLN) elected president and introduces harsh austerity programme. Meanwhile, Costa Rica comes under pressure from the US to weigh in against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

1985 – US-trained anti-guerrilla force begins operating following clashes with Sandinista troops.

1986 – Oscar Arias Sanchez (PLN) elected president on a neutral platform.

1987 – Leaders of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras sign peace plan devised by Oscar Arias Sanchez, who in turn wins the Nobel Peace Prize for the plan.

1990 – Rafael Calderon, of the centrist PUSC, elected president.

1994 – Jose Maria Figueres Olsen (PLN) elected president.

1998 – Miguel Angel Rodriguez (PUSC) elected president.

2000 – President Rodriguez and his Nicaraguan counterpart resolve long-standing dispute over navigation along San Juan river, which serves as their border.

2002 April – Abel Pacheco of the ruling Social Christian Unity Party wins a comfortable 58% of the vote in the second round of presidential elections.

2003 May – Energy and telecommunications workers strike over President Pacheco’s privatisation plans; teachers strike over problems in paying their salaries. Strikes prompt three ministers to resign.

2004 July – Three Chilean diplomats are killed by a security guard at their embassy in San Jose.

Corruption

2004 October – Mounting concern over corruption as three former presidents – Jose Maria Figueres, Miguel Angel Rodriguez and Rafael Angel Calderon – are investigated over contractor payments.

2005 January – National emergency declared as days of heavy rain lead to serious flooding along the Caribbean coast.

2006 February-March – Presidential election ends in a neck-and-neck race between Oscar Arias and Otton Solis. Mr Solis concedes defeat after a manual count and legal challenges.

2006 October – Two-day public workers strike is held in protest at proposed free trade deal with the US.

2007 May – Government says Costa Rica on course to become first voluntarily “carbon neutral” country.

2007 June – Costa Rica switches diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China in a bid to attract Chinese investment.

2007 October – National referendum narrowly decides in favour of ratifying the Central American Free Trade Agreement (Cafta).

2008 November – Chinese President Hu Jintao makes highest-level visit by a Chinese official since Costa Rica ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 2007.

2009 March – President Arias says Costa Rica to re-establish ties with Cuba, 48 years after they broken off in 1961.

2009 October – Former president Rafael Angel Calderon is sentenced to five years in jail after being convicted of corruption.

First woman president

2010 February – Costa Rica elects first woman president, Laura Chinchilla, who takes office in May.

2011 March – UN International Court of Justice orders Nicaragua and Costa Rica to keep troops back from a disputed river border.

2012 September – A powerful earthquake kills two people in the Nicoya peninsula west of San Jose, coinciding with the eruption of the San Cristobal volcano in neighbouring Nicaragua.

2013 May – Costa Rica-based Liberty Reserve, considered to be the world’s biggest online currency exchange, is shut down after its founder is arrested on suspicion of money-laundering.

2014 April – Luis Guillermo Solis wins presidential election.

2014 August – The government says it will investigate undercover US programmes to destabilise Cuba allegedly operated from Costa RIca and using its citizens.

2015 March – The last of nearly 8,000 Cuban migrants stranded for nearly four months in Costa Rica, after Nicaragua refused them passage through its territory to reach the United States, leave for El Salvador as part of a pilot programme agreed by Central American countries to allow them safe passage to the US.

2015 December – Costa Rica wins a long-standing territorial row with Nicaragua after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rules it has sovereignty over a small patch of wetlands known as Isla Portillo on the San Juan river.

2018 May – Carlos Alvarado becomes president after winning election.

• 

So that is retrograde motion. Astronomers use the term to refer to the occasional backward motion of the planets as seen in Earth’s sky. When used in this way, retrograde motion is entirely an illusion caused by the moving Earth passing the outer planets in their orbits.

Plato gave his students a major problem to work on. Their task was to find a geometric explanation for the apparent motion of the planets, especially the strange retrograde motion. One key observation: as a planet undergoes retrograde motion (drifts westward with respect to the stars), it becomes brighter.

• Saturday: named after the Roman god Saturn associated with the Titan Cronus, father of Zeus and many Olympians.

What is the importance of Saturn?

Saturn is the second-largest planet, after Mercury in our solar system. It takes a lot of time to travel through the zodiac and complete one circle, almost 28-30 years. Its influence thus cannot be negated. Saturn is the ruling planet of Aquarius and Capricorn.

original Anglo-Saxon	Sæturnesdæg
Latin	dies Saturni, “Day of Saturn”
Scandinavian	Lørdag/Lördag
old Norse laugardagr	“washing-day”
German Sonnabend	“Sunday Eve”
German Sünnavend	“Sunday Eve”
German  Samstag	Shabbat.
Hindu	selfless dedication to God & motherly-love

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Topic: Home Again ~ Never Alone when you reach out and touch Faith

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+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
Meeting ID: 137 800 298
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