large scale disappearances
June 25, 2003
To all:
Circumstances can have many levels, and many of them can be less than obvious. Unless you look at all the levels of a matter, though, it is possible that will not completely understand it.
In preparing a post on the relationship of the straight Anasazi roads and ley lines, I began to think about aspects of a different issue, but one which related to the Anasazi.
The Anasazi, a Navajo name meaning "Ancient Ones" or "Ancient Enemies" constituted an apparently massive, thriving culture of the American southwest. With the center of their population in a complex of giant pueblos in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, the Anasazi seemed to have a massive system of incredibly straight roads, connecting outlying communities, Great Houses, waterholes, and even apparently empty spots. They seemed to even have an efficient message system, involving outposts with tools for making bonfires, or reflecting others' signals, with polished obsidian blocks. In all, they seemed to have a sturdy, well-defined and individual culture. So impressive is the Anasazi community, in fact, that it has often been referred to as the "Chaco Phenomenon"!
Yet by about the middle of the twelfth century A.D., they all but disappeared. A smaller culture supposedly began another community north, near the southern border of Colorado, which lasted for, perhaps, another 100 years, but, essentially, the Anasazi culture disappeared around 1140 A.D.
In that, they joined a list of other disappeared peoples around the globe, from the Etruscans; to the builders of Nan Madol, in Micronesia; to the builders of Zimbabwe; to the builders of Angkor Wat; to the lost tribes of Israel; to those who erected the stone heads on Easter Island; to even the squadron supposedly lost over the Bermuda Triangle, Judge Crater, the colony of Roanoke and even the Neanderthals. These separate disappearances occurred over a wide range of years, but they also encompass a wide range of sizes. Interestingly, though, it seems that, while disappearances occurred over a span of time, the sizes of disappearances seem to have been decreasing over time!
If the disappearance of the Neanderthals is taken as one of the earliest such occurrences, it can have represented as involving a few million individuals, and to have occurred, perhaps, one hundred thousand years ago. The Etruscans comprised a very large nation of people, perhaps some tens of even hundreds of thousands, who had communities from the tip of the Italian boot to the northern portion of the peninsula. They had a thalassocracy, a kingship based on a control of the seas, second, perhaps, only to the Phoenicians, and apparently even had an alliance with Carthage. Perhaps around 350 B.C., they were all but gone. Between 1586 and 1590, more than one hundred colonists of Roanoke Island vanished. Around the 1880's the Marie Celeste, carrying, presumably, less than one hundred people, was found, completely abandoned. Within recent years, single individuals, such as Judge Crater, have disappeared.
One can wonder if the presumed mass extinctions can even be added to this list.
To be sure, in all that time, smaller groups, likely, also disappeared, but the maximum size of disappearances seems to have decreased. It is possible that contacts between different groups, allowing them to keep an eye on what other groups are doing, may have significantly expanded. And it may even be the case that just as large disappearances keep occurring, but one individual at a time. The fact that whole populations are observed very easily, but many do not put great attention on the actions of individuals can explain why large groups no longer, apparently, disappear, but single people do. To the extent that natural occurrences may have caused great disappearances, the increased connection of support systems between neighboring groups, these days, may also stand in the way of populations vanishing.
But it remains that many disappearances have been anomalously large, and all but inexplicably utter. To the extent that unusual vanishings may, indeed, be decreasing, it is possible that, if the decrease is examined, it may be possible to estimate the size of the population, if the time of its vanishing is known. The ten tribes of Israel, for example, were supposed to have disappeared around 720 B.C. There are those who say they have been found in other areas of Asia Minor. The presumed size of the tribes can be determined, by examining how other vanishings changed with time. If that size is far less than what their size was supposed to be, it can be that they didn't disappear, but merely moved to another area.
As an aside, it seems also to have been the case that most of the mass disappearances of populations, around the world, seem to have concentrated themselves in certain latitudes. Again, it can be that most of the population of the world has fallen within these limits, too, but most of the large disappearances seem to have taken place between the equator and 45º north latitude.
Julian Penrod
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I've removed your address and tel' no m8 - best not advertise it TBH