A Brief History of the Knights Templar

I have just posted a brief overview of the history of the Knights Templar at the link below. Hope you enjoy.

http://www.helium.com/items/1465966-history-of-the-knights-templar

Was America founded as a christian or a secular nation.

This is obviously a very emotive subject for many, especially for the every growing conservative Christian factions who are becoming more prominent in America today. One of the problems with understanding history is that our ticket to the past is mainly found in peoples writings. These thoughts and ideas are used by the next generation of writers to inspire their works and so it goes from generation to generation until you realise that any book you read today is just a series of interpretations from one author to the next. Many books have hidden agendas and it is very easy to represent facts in such away that they support your cause. Facts and truth are often not the same thing. Countries, like people, often re-invent their own paths to help support the image they want to project today. So in a rambling way I am saying that if it is not in the modern history books that we need to look for evidence to the true nature of the founding of America, then it is to the original writings of the founding fathers themselves.

I would say at this juncture that I am at no point saying that America was largely shaped by men with Christian beliefs, from the Mayflower to the drafting of the Declaration Of Independence and through out much of America’s history the main players have largely been of white, protestant European, if not British stock. But it is not the individual beliefs of the politicians that is under scrutiny here. It is certainly true that the Great Migrations of the 1630 which founded the Virginia Colonies were as a direct result of the puritans belief that Charles I of England was trying reunite the country with Roman Catholicism, and a new protestant kingdom was sought away from the religious turmoil of Europe, currently embroiled in the religious fervour of the Thirty Years War and an England about to embark on its own Civil Wars. But these colonies are not yet America, merely hidden outpost too far from the control of Europe.
The question of Americas founding being religious or secular is found in the writings and official documents of the men who drafted the Declaration, the document that effectively created The United States as a country in its own right, in political terms. The clearest indication of the nature of the newly founded America comes from two of its biggest players. The following is from a treaty drafted in 1796 under George Washington and signed by John Adams advocating a peace accord with the Muslim Kingdom of Tripoli.


“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen (Muslims); and as the said states never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
That as got to be as big a declaration of the secular nature of the nation as you could wish to have to support the non-religious basis of the creation of the United States of America. Although this statement seems to be very out of line with the held beliefs in Washington today, it seems to have caused no uproar at the time. It does open up the grounds of an interesting paradox, and it is this. The United States, founded on secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, whilst England with its established church headed by a constitutional monarchy, is amongst the least. A second is that because America is legally secular, religion has become a free-enterprise with rival churches aggressively competing for congregations, and thus their tithes and donations. In England, religion under the control of a long established church, has become something of a pleasant social pastime.

There are also some quite dramatic quotes that even show that some of the men who forged America were not only secular but even Atheists. In a letter to his nephew in 1787,Thomas Jefferson said

“If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in this exercise, and the love of others which it will procure”

He also remarked “Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man”

Both these statements are clearly deist if not atheist, though other quotes from him follow a more agnostic nature.

One common argument regarding the perceived religious nature of the founding of America is the pledge of allegiance. Many use the argument that certain phrases in the pledge point to a religious basis for the country’s constitutional creation. Again we need to look at the evolution of the pledge to see where the arguments falls flat. The pledge of allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892 and read

“I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”

There is no mention of God or indeed the United States itself. The change from “my flag” to something more specific as added in 1923 to ensure that immigrants coming to the country would be sure which flag they are searing by. The “under God” addition is even later. The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternity, believed that the pledge should have a reference to a deity and so between 1951 and 1954 lobbied for the inclusion of the words “under God”

I believe that founding fathers were secularists who believed that a persons religious beliefs and their constitutional rights were separate issues and one should never be reliant on the other. It can even be noted that amongst their ranks there were agnostics and deists if not atheists, but that in no way had any bearing on the creation of a modern constitution for a new republic. I wonder what they might make of the rampant religious fanaticism in America today.

Books for Sale

I have just up loaded a bunch of (mainly) history books at Price Minister and there are loads more to be added, check out the list as they are all at bargain prices. A link is in the left hand menu.

The fate of the Neanderthal

The Neanderthals are an important part of mankind’s past. Being our closest pre-historic relatives. For 200,000 years they dominated they area geographically described as Eurasia, that is the continued landmass on which the continents of Europe and Asia sit. They managed to poke their, now famously, large and protruding noses into every corner of Europe, south along the Mediterranean, into Greece, Iraq, Russia and new evidence suggests almost as far as Mongolia in the east. It is calculated that even at the height of their occupation, they never numbered more than 15,000, the size of a small town. Despite these surprisingly low numbers, they managed to endure at a time when Europe was cooling, creating an environment that would have been much like northern Scandinavia ‘s bleak tundra.

By the end of their dominance, they had been reduced to a few pockets on the Iberian peninsular and along the southern Mediterranean shores, squeezed out by the deteriorating climate and the westward spread of a breed of anatomically modern and more adaptable humans from Africa and the middle east. Soon the Neanderthals would be gone leaving a few bones and a lot of questions to be answered.

This period from about 45,000 years ago when the two branches of humans co-existed to 30,000 when the Neanderthal’s disappeared from history, hold a massive fascinations with anthropologists and archaeologists, no least because understanding the scientific detail and sequence of events holds the answers to who modern man is truly descended from. Why did one survive and the other disappear? And more to the point are we descended wholly from the new emergent strain of modern man or is there Neanderthal in us today.

The image of the Neanderthal has come down to us today as a slow, low browed, sub human, but this is a fallacy that harkens back to the earliest finds in the 1850’s in Germany and is based purely on the shape of the finds. Fossil size does indeed suggest short, heavily built frames with massive muscles and a large ribcage to encompass capacious lungs, everything you need to survive in sub arctic conditions. A short, heavy shape means the blood warms the body more efficiently helping to ease the burned on the estimated 5000 calorie intake needed to survive in such bleak environments. Think of modern day, Inuit, Lapps and Siberians, all conform to this evolutionary design. And behind that low domed skull and bulging brow-ridges, the Neanderthal possessed a brain actually slightly larger, by volume, than we do today.

The longest and most controversial debates in human evolution rages around the relationship between Neanderthals and their European successors. Did the modern humans sweep out of Africa and totally replace the Neanderthals, or did they interbreed and assimilate them? It’s an argument that seems to move in circles.

In 1997, geneticist Svante Paabo and his colleagues were able to extract a tiny snippet of mitochondrial DNA from the original Neanderthal find and came to the conclusion that Neanderthals and modern humans had begun to diverge long before the modern migration out of Africa. Both had a common ancestor but the Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end long before the two branches met again north of the Mediterranean. These discoveries suggest that Neanderthals were a separate species, yet that doesn’t explain why they disappeared.

One obvious possibility is that modern humans were just, more clever, more adaptable, more sophisticated, if you like, more “human” There is evidence, in the archaeological record, for a great leap forward about 40,000 years ago that suggests, developments in stone and bone tools, body ornamentation and other symbolic expression. Some scientist argue for a dramatic change in the brain, possibly associated with the development of language around this time, that propelled the modern humans to cultural dominance.

The evidence on the ground is not so clear cut. In 1996, fossil finds that were clearly Neanderthal bones, were found in association with ornamental objects, such as ivory rings and pierced animal teeth and even as far back as 1979 similar bones had been found along side sophisticated tool kits. All things normal associated with the more modern arrivals. Were Neanderthals more advanced than we give them credit for or is this evidence of imitation of their rivals or could it be evidence of a mixing of the two cultures if not genetically, possible as traders.

To confuse the issue even more, Erik Trinkaus at Washington University in St Louis, proposes that the two groups did interbreed. “There were very few people on the landscape, you need to find a mate and reproduce. Why not? Humans are known not to be choosy. Sex happens”

This furthers the idea that the Neanderthals did not disappear in a physical sense but they were assimilated into the more populous modern humans to a point where it is difficult to see them on a genetic level.

It’s a debate that is still running and changing balance with every new find. In conclusion, there is no definite answer and there looks likely that there will not be firm evidence for one theory or another for a long time to come, but it is a fascinating debate and one that has repercussions on our whole understanding of where we come from and fundamentally who we are.

The contemporary appeal of the dark age nomad.

Understanding history is a continuous process of revaluation and evolution of ideas. As new information is added to the historical, literary and archaeological record, so our view of the past must alter, sometimes in minor ways, occasionally in major paradigm shifts. It the west there has been a fascination with three ancient empires, the Egyptian and The Greek and The Roman. The explorer/antiquarians of the Victorian era saw these as being the epitome of culture and the very basis of Western civilization. But studying an empire in isolation only provides a warped snapshot, no matter how glorious its achievements and since the days of those early pioneers of ancient history, the approach has changed for the better. Ancient Egypt is now studied in the context of one nation in competition with its neighbours, The Hittites, The Kushites, the emerging states of the Near East and the Sea Peoples, among others. Greece is now more rightly seen as an ever shifting conglomerate of confederate states, allying and warring with each other and its rival, Persia, as their own needs change. Rome, particularly its decline, is dependant on the understanding of a host of migrating nomads that crashed upon its empires borders from the third century.

For years the Roman Empire was seen, amongst some scholars at least, as being the be all and end all of the Western Europe’s cultural inheritance. Nothing that came before it was seen as being of much value and the fact that the period that follows is known as the “Dark Ages” speaks volumes of how it was regarded. But it has know been acknowledged that the periods before and after the Roman Empire are both important to the development of Europe also. It follows that the lands that were eventually dominated and incorporated into Rome’s dominions must have had much to offer, as why would Rome go to the effort of conquering or assimilating them in the first place? But it is the period that followed the Roman era of dominance that is particularly interesting and the key to understanding its turbulent times is appreciating the relationship between empire and migrant nomad.

There was a time when it was seen as an easy pigeonhole system, Roman Empire equals good, constructive, positive, forward moving and cultured; the barbarian interlopers all things opposing that ideal. The modern view is much more open minded and the idea of wild barbarians over running a declining empire has been replaced by a more complex view. The barbarians, may have been nomadic, pastoralists turned warrior looking for new lands as they moved west, but they also managed to rejuvenate the failing western domains and create new empires in its stead. The Lombards, The Goths and the Franks managed to create kingdoms that are now being seen as the natural successor to Rome’s glorious past and the seeds that were to fuel the development of the medieval successor states and the flowering of the renaissance that followed.


The exploration of these nomadic conquerors, their lives, times and contribution to the history books is now picking up speed and the clear cut view that has been adopted in the past is now being swept away. Indeed by the time of such crucial battles as Adrianople in 378 AD the Roman forces that faced the Goths and their allies was itself made up of auxiliary units from all over the empire, effectively Barbarian nomads facing more sedentary barbarians who had been adopted by the empires military leaders.

The appeal of such forces to the modern reader may go beyond any purely historical appreciation. In a society that becomes more an more about the individual and less about the common cause, the rigid and almost corporate nature of the Roman Empire may be seen as something that we would not want to return to, especially after the ravages of the Britain’s Colonial exploits and, some might say, the subtle empire building of America’s foreign policy, the exportation of the American dream backed up with unbeatable military muscle is something the Roman emperors would have recognised all too well. The nomad, free, mobile, windswept and interesting, the noble savage is an iconic image that seems to have mass appeal to us today. The underdog fighting against the system, perhaps.

In reality, our view of the dark age nomads against the vast Roman machine is heavily romanticized and the two sides, especially in the third and fourth century, is one that blurred, merged and mutated side by side, eve shifting and elusive to the modern historian, but there is mass appeal in the idea of the nomad conquerors sweeping out of the east and challenging the crumbling empire coming to the end of a millennium of existence.

Ten extinct languages of the U.S.

Read a fascinating article over on Mental Floss the other day about languages that had become extinct in the US. Thought I should do the decent thing and share it. Follow the link below for the full scoop.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/22007

The Last Stand of the Brisies at the funeral of Achillies

My good friend Seph has another historical short story in a writers competition over at Notes and Grace Notes. Please have a read and a rate and check out the other wonderful work to be found there.

The Funeral of Achillies