Quotations and notes from "Lost Kingdom" - The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation - From 1470 to the Present, by Serhii Plokhy
"Despite what one reads < > and hears in official pronouncements, Russia < > is a relatively young state. Its history as an independent polity begins < > in the 1470s, when Ivan III, the first ruler of the Grand Duchy of Moscow < > challenged the suzerainty of the Mongol khans."
"By 1480, Ivan had successfully established his sovereignty over the lands of Mongol Rus' < > By 1490, Ivan's chancellery had begun to use the Kyivan descent of Muscovite princes as grounds to extend his claim < > to Kyiv itself."
More chronology:
"The Time of Troubles came to an end in 1613, when the Assembly of the Land elected the sixteen-year-old Mikhail Romanov to the Muscovite throne."
"During Catherine's long reign of almost thirty-five years{1762-1796}, the formation of the imperial Russian nation begun under Peter I and Elizabeth took on new impetus and new characteristics."
"What seemed to be the end of Russia in September 1812 - the surrender of Moscow to the French army - turned out to be the beginning of the end of Napoleon's empire."
"Nicholas's Easter 1915 visit to Galicia was filmed by a Russian crew < > It was a symbolic high point in the long campaign of Russian nationalists to gather the lands of the former Kyivan Rus', construct a big Russian nation, including Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, and bring together monarchy, religion, and nation in the service of the state." However:
"In May 1915, barely a month after the tsar's triumphal entrance into Lviv, the Germans < > began their attack on the Russian armies in Galicia < > By the end of September the Russian armies had lost most of Galicia, a good part of Volhynia, all of Poland, western Belarus, and most of the Baltic provinces."
{by} "February 1917 < > The socialists created a soviet{council} that became the real power in the city{Petrograd}, making the tsarist government all but irrelevant."
"The most confusing aspect of the term "Russian Revolution" is that it obscures what actually took place in the multiethnic Russian Empire - a revolution of nations, of which the Russians were only one."
"The road to the formation of the Soviet Union began in April 1922..." An international conference took place in Genoa, Italy. "It was a major coup for the Bolshevik government, which had now been recognized for the first time as the legitimate successor to what remained of the Russian Empire. Diplomatic recognition would follow, starting with Britain and France in 1924; the United States didn't follow suit until 1933."
"Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953. < > He was mourned not just as the head of government but also as the leader of working people throughout the world."
Sunday, January 14, 2018
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Experimental Blog # 220
Comments on "Archaeology - The Essential Guide to Our Human Past" by Paul Bahn, the editor, and 13 additional authors.
The editor, Paul Bahn, apparently wrote about 15 pages of this overwhelming 555 page book. But there are 13 other additional authors: 6 men and 7 women. It seems that the 7 women authors account for almost two thirds of the writing in this book. In fact, the 2 leading authors, Jane McIntosh and Georgina Muskett, together, account for almost one third of the writing in this book; that is, maybe over 180 pages. Of course, Paul Bahn, as the editor, did a very great deal of other work, too.
The book jacket states that, "Beginning deep in prehistory, it{the book} takes in all the archaeological sites of the world as it advances to the present day." And, "it takes the reader on a tour through time and around the globe to hundreds of sites of archaeological importance." Besides that, we learn about the most modern archaeological uses of "magnetometers, ground penetrating radars, < > 3D laser scanners, < > DNA analysis" and even satellites and other applied sciences.
The editor, Paul Bahn, apparently wrote about 15 pages of this overwhelming 555 page book. But there are 13 other additional authors: 6 men and 7 women. It seems that the 7 women authors account for almost two thirds of the writing in this book. In fact, the 2 leading authors, Jane McIntosh and Georgina Muskett, together, account for almost one third of the writing in this book; that is, maybe over 180 pages. Of course, Paul Bahn, as the editor, did a very great deal of other work, too.
The book jacket states that, "Beginning deep in prehistory, it{the book} takes in all the archaeological sites of the world as it advances to the present day." And, "it takes the reader on a tour through time and around the globe to hundreds of sites of archaeological importance." Besides that, we learn about the most modern archaeological uses of "magnetometers, ground penetrating radars, < > 3D laser scanners, < > DNA analysis" and even satellites and other applied sciences.
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Experimental Blog # 219
Quotations and notes from "A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived" - The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes by Adam Rutherford
"Something on the order of 107 billion modern humans have existed, though this number depends on when exactly you start counting. < > The species Homo sapiens < > emerged a mere 300,000 years ago, as far as we know, in pockets in the east and north of Africa."
"The seven billion of us alive today are, according to all the evidence available to us, the last remaining group of human great apes from a set of at least four that existed 50,000 years ago. < > Earlier people had been loitering around the continent{Europe} for up to 2 million years. < > Homo erectus < > had great success leaving < > Africa and making it < > as far east as Java, and all over western Europe."
Mathematics and geneticists agree that, "... merely 600{???} years ago. Sometime at the end of the thirteenth century lived a man or woman from whom all Europeans could trace ancestry < > if we could document the total family tree of everyone alive back through 600 years, < > everyone European alive would be able to select a line that would cross everyone else's around the time of Richard II." Richard II lived from 1367 to 1400.??? 600 years ago would be 1417, which is in the 15th century. 1367 would be in the 14th century.
Beyond Europe it seems "that the most recent common ancestor of everyone alive on Earth" today, no matter how remote or isolated they might be, lived somewhere in Asia and not more that 3,600 years ago.
"Something on the order of 107 billion modern humans have existed, though this number depends on when exactly you start counting. < > The species Homo sapiens < > emerged a mere 300,000 years ago, as far as we know, in pockets in the east and north of Africa."
"The seven billion of us alive today are, according to all the evidence available to us, the last remaining group of human great apes from a set of at least four that existed 50,000 years ago. < > Earlier people had been loitering around the continent{Europe} for up to 2 million years. < > Homo erectus < > had great success leaving < > Africa and making it < > as far east as Java, and all over western Europe."
Mathematics and geneticists agree that, "... merely 600{???} years ago. Sometime at the end of the thirteenth century lived a man or woman from whom all Europeans could trace ancestry < > if we could document the total family tree of everyone alive back through 600 years, < > everyone European alive would be able to select a line that would cross everyone else's around the time of Richard II." Richard II lived from 1367 to 1400.??? 600 years ago would be 1417, which is in the 15th century. 1367 would be in the 14th century.
Beyond Europe it seems "that the most recent common ancestor of everyone alive on Earth" today, no matter how remote or isolated they might be, lived somewhere in Asia and not more that 3,600 years ago.
Saturday, November 4, 2017
Experimental Blog # 218
Quotations from "The Forgotten Genius of Oliver Heaviside" - A Maverick of Electrical Science by Basil Mahon
"Oliver Heaviside, who lived from 1850 to 1925 < > founded much of the subject of electrical engineering as it is taught and practiced today: every textbook and every college course bears his stamp."
"I{Oliver Heaviside wrote} hold the view that it{that is, mathematics}is essentially an experimental science, like any other, and should be taught observationally, descriptively, and experimentally."
" ... someone had to bridge the gap between the world of the scholarly scientist and that of the practical-minded engineer."
"What gave Heaviside the power to bridge the great chasm was his unique approach to mathematics. To him, symbols and equations were not pale abstractions but components in a vivid picture of the physical world."
"The advance of electrical communications in the past hundred years is the greatest leap of knowledge in humankind's history. Radio, television, radar, cell phones, the Internet, satellite navigation: each has been turned from ambitious idea into everyday tool at incredible speed. With astounding skill and ingenuity, scientists and engineers have created hundreds of wonderful new devices and techniques ... < > On the face of it, we have left Heaviside way behind. But in one important sense it was Heaviside who made it all possible. By bridging what had been a great gulf between theory and practice, he brought advanced electrical science within reach of technologists."
"Oliver Heaviside, who lived from 1850 to 1925 < > founded much of the subject of electrical engineering as it is taught and practiced today: every textbook and every college course bears his stamp."
"I{Oliver Heaviside wrote} hold the view that it{that is, mathematics}is essentially an experimental science, like any other, and should be taught observationally, descriptively, and experimentally."
" ... someone had to bridge the gap between the world of the scholarly scientist and that of the practical-minded engineer."
"What gave Heaviside the power to bridge the great chasm was his unique approach to mathematics. To him, symbols and equations were not pale abstractions but components in a vivid picture of the physical world."
"The advance of electrical communications in the past hundred years is the greatest leap of knowledge in humankind's history. Radio, television, radar, cell phones, the Internet, satellite navigation: each has been turned from ambitious idea into everyday tool at incredible speed. With astounding skill and ingenuity, scientists and engineers have created hundreds of wonderful new devices and techniques ... < > On the face of it, we have left Heaviside way behind. But in one important sense it was Heaviside who made it all possible. By bridging what had been a great gulf between theory and practice, he brought advanced electrical science within reach of technologists."
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Experimental Blog # 217
Notes and quotations from "My European Family" - The First 54,000 Years by Karin Bojs
This book is a very up-to-date summary of the applications of the most recent advances in high resolution DNA analysis. Since the author, Karin Bojs, is not a scientific DNA researcher herself, she seems to be very able to give the views of all the contending scientists.
"Doubtless human beings have been singing and dancing since time immemorial, far longer than since the point when we first left the African continent."
" ...when modern humans in Europe interbred with Neanderthals, their descendants must have died out. Researchers can only see definite traces of interbreeding somewhere in the Middle East about 54,000 years ago, and further east in Asia."
However, it turns out that since Europeans have not quite 2% Neanderthal DNA; it is equivalent that they have a Neanderthal great-great-great-great grandfather, one of 32!, in their family tree. Apparently, the DNA has persisted at this level for about 54,000 years because it is useful to human life."
"Blue eyes and dark skin are an extremely rare combination today, but many Ice Age people seem to have had such an appearance. Blue eyes, dark hair, and dark skin seem to have been commonplace in much of Europe. < > it looks as if many people among Europe's original population of hunters had black hair and quite dark skin. < > as late as 8,000 - or even 5,000 - years ago, many European hunters still bore the original gene variants from Africa, meaning that they were probably quite dark-skinned."
Advanced DNA analysis has also been very useful, even revolutionary, in determining the times and places of the domestication of dogs, cats, horses, and other animals; and plants too.
Most of all in this book, DNA analysis is continuing to provide more detailed information of all kinds on the settlement of Europe: the first neolithic migrants, the first farmers, the Iron Age Indo-European language carriers, and others.
This book is a very up-to-date summary of the applications of the most recent advances in high resolution DNA analysis. Since the author, Karin Bojs, is not a scientific DNA researcher herself, she seems to be very able to give the views of all the contending scientists.
"Doubtless human beings have been singing and dancing since time immemorial, far longer than since the point when we first left the African continent."
" ...when modern humans in Europe interbred with Neanderthals, their descendants must have died out. Researchers can only see definite traces of interbreeding somewhere in the Middle East about 54,000 years ago, and further east in Asia."
However, it turns out that since Europeans have not quite 2% Neanderthal DNA; it is equivalent that they have a Neanderthal great-great-great-great grandfather, one of 32!, in their family tree. Apparently, the DNA has persisted at this level for about 54,000 years because it is useful to human life."
"Blue eyes and dark skin are an extremely rare combination today, but many Ice Age people seem to have had such an appearance. Blue eyes, dark hair, and dark skin seem to have been commonplace in much of Europe. < > it looks as if many people among Europe's original population of hunters had black hair and quite dark skin. < > as late as 8,000 - or even 5,000 - years ago, many European hunters still bore the original gene variants from Africa, meaning that they were probably quite dark-skinned."
Advanced DNA analysis has also been very useful, even revolutionary, in determining the times and places of the domestication of dogs, cats, horses, and other animals; and plants too.
Most of all in this book, DNA analysis is continuing to provide more detailed information of all kinds on the settlement of Europe: the first neolithic migrants, the first farmers, the Iron Age Indo-European language carriers, and others.
Saturday, September 9, 2017
Experimental Blog # 216
Quotations from "The Home That Was Our Country ' - A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek
"When authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya were overthrown in 2011, all eyes turned to Syria as if it would be next. But despite both peaceful and armed opposition, the regime that had ruled Syria for over forty years remained entrenched."
"The Ottoman Empire had captured the region{greater Syria} in 1516. < > Greater Syria is ancient, and it was home to some of the world's earliest civilizations. < > Since the third millennium BCE, many empires, dynasties, and caliphates had ruled Greater Syria. They read like a greatest hits of the ancient, classical, medieval, and Islamic eras: the Akkadians, Sumerians, Egyptians, Hittites, Mitanni, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Muslims{Umayyad, Abbasid, Mamluks}, Crusaders, and Mongols."
"When the Allies occupied the Ottoman capital, Constantinople{in World War I}, they began partitioning the territorial spoils according to agreements they had negotiated among themselves during the war. < > France would take what would eventually become Syria and Lebanon, and the United Kingdom grabbed Palestine{which included Jordan} and Iraq. In the separate Balfour Declaration{1917}, the United Kingdom had also encouraged the Zionists to seek a Jewish homeland in Palestine."
"Only in 1946, and with British intervention, did the French finally leave."
"With independence, Syrians were no longer unified by the pressing need to get rid of the French."
"The resulting movements and their leaders based their politics on ideology - whether that was socialism, nationalism, Islamism, or some combination."
"Alongside these political players was the military. < > the French had intentionally recruited for the new Syrian Army men with fewer opportunities, such as from the rural poor. They also sought minority men, assuming that they might be less prone to any kind of nationalism .."
"However, < > not all officers thought with one mind; among them, many were loyal to different ideological factions. Sometimes, that even meant being more loyal to military strongmen outside of Syria < > than to a class they were never part of inside Syria."
"...the ideologues became willing to work with the military in hopes of bringing about their envisioned changes. As might have been expected, eventually the men with guns could{and would} dump the philosophers. Thus, Syrians were introduced to the coup d'e'tat, the attempted coup d'e'tat, and the counter coup. While each coup that took place had different goals based on the philosophies of whoever was backing it, they all tended to follow a similar process."
"The Ba'ath Party was founded by two Syrians < > They named their party Ba'ath from the Arabic word for "resurrection" or "renaissance," and they envisioned a new society that transcended sectarian loyalties and the borders that foreign powers had imposed on the region."
"The most organized of the dissenters were the Islamists, which in Syria meant the Muslim Brotherhood. < > If the Muslim Brotherhood believed that Islam was both religion and state, the Ba'athists believed that religion belonged to God, while the country belonged to all{in theory}."
" ...on October 30, 1970, Hafez al-Assad staged the last coup in Syria, which he would maintain was not a coup but simply a "corrective movement."
"As much as Assad's authoritarian ways were resented, so were his Alawite roots. Anger against the oppressive regime was also driven by a class-based indignation that Syrian society's lowest rungs were now in charge."
Soon after the death of Hafez al-Assad on June 20, 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad became the new ruler of Syria.
"Tahrir means liberation, and Arab countries are full of Liberation plazas, boulevards, and buildings - though freedom has been in short supply in all of them."
"When authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya were overthrown in 2011, all eyes turned to Syria as if it would be next. But despite both peaceful and armed opposition, the regime that had ruled Syria for over forty years remained entrenched."
"The Ottoman Empire had captured the region{greater Syria} in 1516. < > Greater Syria is ancient, and it was home to some of the world's earliest civilizations. < > Since the third millennium BCE, many empires, dynasties, and caliphates had ruled Greater Syria. They read like a greatest hits of the ancient, classical, medieval, and Islamic eras: the Akkadians, Sumerians, Egyptians, Hittites, Mitanni, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Muslims{Umayyad, Abbasid, Mamluks}, Crusaders, and Mongols."
"When the Allies occupied the Ottoman capital, Constantinople{in World War I}, they began partitioning the territorial spoils according to agreements they had negotiated among themselves during the war. < > France would take what would eventually become Syria and Lebanon, and the United Kingdom grabbed Palestine{which included Jordan} and Iraq. In the separate Balfour Declaration{1917}, the United Kingdom had also encouraged the Zionists to seek a Jewish homeland in Palestine."
"Only in 1946, and with British intervention, did the French finally leave."
"With independence, Syrians were no longer unified by the pressing need to get rid of the French."
"The resulting movements and their leaders based their politics on ideology - whether that was socialism, nationalism, Islamism, or some combination."
"Alongside these political players was the military. < > the French had intentionally recruited for the new Syrian Army men with fewer opportunities, such as from the rural poor. They also sought minority men, assuming that they might be less prone to any kind of nationalism .."
"However, < > not all officers thought with one mind; among them, many were loyal to different ideological factions. Sometimes, that even meant being more loyal to military strongmen outside of Syria < > than to a class they were never part of inside Syria."
"...the ideologues became willing to work with the military in hopes of bringing about their envisioned changes. As might have been expected, eventually the men with guns could{and would} dump the philosophers. Thus, Syrians were introduced to the coup d'e'tat, the attempted coup d'e'tat, and the counter coup. While each coup that took place had different goals based on the philosophies of whoever was backing it, they all tended to follow a similar process."
"The Ba'ath Party was founded by two Syrians < > They named their party Ba'ath from the Arabic word for "resurrection" or "renaissance," and they envisioned a new society that transcended sectarian loyalties and the borders that foreign powers had imposed on the region."
"The most organized of the dissenters were the Islamists, which in Syria meant the Muslim Brotherhood. < > If the Muslim Brotherhood believed that Islam was both religion and state, the Ba'athists believed that religion belonged to God, while the country belonged to all{in theory}."
" ...on October 30, 1970, Hafez al-Assad staged the last coup in Syria, which he would maintain was not a coup but simply a "corrective movement."
"As much as Assad's authoritarian ways were resented, so were his Alawite roots. Anger against the oppressive regime was also driven by a class-based indignation that Syrian society's lowest rungs were now in charge."
Soon after the death of Hafez al-Assad on June 20, 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad became the new ruler of Syria.
"Tahrir means liberation, and Arab countries are full of Liberation plazas, boulevards, and buildings - though freedom has been in short supply in all of them."
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Experimental Blog # 215
Quotations from "The Great Departure - Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World" by Tara Zahra
"Between 55 and 58 million Europeans moved to North and South America in the period 1846-1940. < > The great departure from Eastern Europe was not unique: millions were on the move in other parts of the world as well. Between 48 and 52 million people, mostly from India and Southern China, moved to Southeast Asia and to islands in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific between 1846 and 1940. Another 46-51 million people left northeastern Asia and Russia for Manchuria, Siberia, Central Asia, and Japan."
"Well before the Nazi conquest of the East, a broad consensus had developed - among Western diplomats, Zionists, humanitarian organizations, and East European officials, as well as ordinary Jews desperate for a better life - that the "solution" to the so-called "Jewish problem" would entail the mass migration of Jews from Eastern Europe. < > When the Nazis successfully made Jews disappear, under the pretext that they were being "relocated" to the distant East, it is hardly surprising that so few East Europeans protested: the notion of emigration as a "humanitarian" solution to the "Jewish problem" had long been established, and it helped make the departure of Jews palatable to their neighbors."
" "It must be frankly recognized that the larger Eastern European problem is basically a Jewish problem," he{President Franklin Roosevelt} maintained in January 1939."
"But in order to understand why so little was done to save Jewish refugees, even once the immediate menace to their lives was apparent, it is necessary to understand the logic of population politics in the 1930s, itself an outgrowth of decades of emigration policies. That logic envisioned the large-scale emigration of Jews as a "humanitarian" solution to the "Jewish problem" in Europe. Well before the Nazis occupied Eastern Europe, moreover, many Polish, Czech, Romanian, and Hungarian officials and citizens had been hoping {and planning} for the evacuation of Jews from their territory. It is therefore hardly surprising that there was so little organized protest when Hitler fulfilled these fantasies."
"Between 55 and 58 million Europeans moved to North and South America in the period 1846-1940. < > The great departure from Eastern Europe was not unique: millions were on the move in other parts of the world as well. Between 48 and 52 million people, mostly from India and Southern China, moved to Southeast Asia and to islands in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific between 1846 and 1940. Another 46-51 million people left northeastern Asia and Russia for Manchuria, Siberia, Central Asia, and Japan."
"Well before the Nazi conquest of the East, a broad consensus had developed - among Western diplomats, Zionists, humanitarian organizations, and East European officials, as well as ordinary Jews desperate for a better life - that the "solution" to the so-called "Jewish problem" would entail the mass migration of Jews from Eastern Europe. < > When the Nazis successfully made Jews disappear, under the pretext that they were being "relocated" to the distant East, it is hardly surprising that so few East Europeans protested: the notion of emigration as a "humanitarian" solution to the "Jewish problem" had long been established, and it helped make the departure of Jews palatable to their neighbors."
" "It must be frankly recognized that the larger Eastern European problem is basically a Jewish problem," he{President Franklin Roosevelt} maintained in January 1939."
"But in order to understand why so little was done to save Jewish refugees, even once the immediate menace to their lives was apparent, it is necessary to understand the logic of population politics in the 1930s, itself an outgrowth of decades of emigration policies. That logic envisioned the large-scale emigration of Jews as a "humanitarian" solution to the "Jewish problem" in Europe. Well before the Nazis occupied Eastern Europe, moreover, many Polish, Czech, Romanian, and Hungarian officials and citizens had been hoping {and planning} for the evacuation of Jews from their territory. It is therefore hardly surprising that there was so little organized protest when Hitler fulfilled these fantasies."
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