Hi All
hopefully none of you noticed. I put the 24th on the blog instead of the 25th.
l.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Next Meeting - Feb 25th 2010
Next Meeting in Tony's House on Thursday 25th February 2010. Tony lives at no. 40 on the same side as our house but up towards the park.
For those that have read Lost City of Z for further reading you might enjoy "Ancient Americans" by Charles C. Mann-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Americans-Rewriting-History-World/dp/1862076170
Happy to loan my copy to anyone interested. I won it in a text competition on Newstalk a few years back (the answer was lake titicaca). The conclusions in Z were not unexpected to me because I had read Mann's book. Mann distills down all the recent archaeological evidence about the amazon (and all parts of north and south america) and comes to the same conclusions that Grann does. Many of the sources are the same for both books but Mann's book is about all of America. A popular idea of America (and part of its own myth) is that it was a great untapped wilderness until it was colonised and tamed. In fact it was teeming with life until small pox and measles wiped out almost everyone. One estimate in Ancient Americans is that as many as 95% of native americans had died within 130 years of the arrival of Europeans. once the people were gone their structures rotted went back under the forests.
also I should mention we have some Amazon pottery in the house from a trip to Belem (on the Amazon Delta) when Caitriona worked for GPA. Remind me to show it to ye the next time ye are in the house.
For those that have read Lost City of Z for further reading you might enjoy "Ancient Americans" by Charles C. Mann-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Americans-Rewriting-History-World/dp/1862076170
Happy to loan my copy to anyone interested. I won it in a text competition on Newstalk a few years back (the answer was lake titicaca). The conclusions in Z were not unexpected to me because I had read Mann's book. Mann distills down all the recent archaeological evidence about the amazon (and all parts of north and south america) and comes to the same conclusions that Grann does. Many of the sources are the same for both books but Mann's book is about all of America. A popular idea of America (and part of its own myth) is that it was a great untapped wilderness until it was colonised and tamed. In fact it was teeming with life until small pox and measles wiped out almost everyone. One estimate in Ancient Americans is that as many as 95% of native americans had died within 130 years of the arrival of Europeans. once the people were gone their structures rotted went back under the forests.
also I should mention we have some Amazon pottery in the house from a trip to Belem (on the Amazon Delta) when Caitriona worked for GPA. Remind me to show it to ye the next time ye are in the house.
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