Re: maize in ancient india: strong transpacific links are indicated

August Matthusen (matthuse@ix.netcom.com)
Sat, 28 Dec 1996 10:26:40 -0800

Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
>
> Douglas Weller (dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> : On 27 Dec 1996 20:11:25 GMT, yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
>
> : >I believe that reality is catching up fast with the American
> : >isolationists. The sand-castle of isolationism is crumbling and sinking
> : >fast under the impact of increasing evidence that demonstrates that
> : >ancient peoples crossed the oceans many thousands of years before
> : >Columbus.
>
> : What evidence? Your maize, which is supposedly only a few hundred years
> before : Columbus?
>
> Hey, what's a few hundred years, eh?
>
> The reality, actually, is that the presence of maize in India and in China
> probably goes back at least to BCE. I know you're a busy man, Doug, what
> with all the hate mail you're sending me. But if you _only_ read carefully
> the material I posted, you will find something about the corn and the
> Boddgaya Temple that is dated to 1 c. BCE.

Yuri, sculpture is not corn. I know you may not be
able to believe it, but people cannot digest rocks.
It's a testable hypothesis, give it a shot if you
doubt it.

Absence of corn is absence of corn.
Presence of sculpture is presence of sculpture.

Indian sculpture is replete with six-armed statues. I suppose
you believe these six-armed individuals existed in large numbers,
too? Chinese dragons existed in numbers as large as their
statuary? Elephant-headed humans existed in India?
Chagall's stabiles had some existence outside of his
imagination (and as other than sculpture)? No sculptor
would *ever* consider taking a fertility symbol like a
pomegranate and elongating it into a phallic symbol.

BTW you've never explained *HOW* the statues were dated, even
though I've asked twice. (Are they equated with the erection
of the temples? God knows, statues are *never* added to a temple
*after* construction).

> Listening to your opponents,
> though, is something that is probably not a part of your regular routine,
> Doug.

Pot, kettle, black.

> Well, it's never too late to learn... Perhaps your credibility will
> only benefit if you don't make such obvious comprehension errors as this
> one.

Doug's credibility is fine. He isn't the one who has to
selectively expurgate material when he quotes an article
to attempt to make his point.

> : And that is supposedly your best shot, and even that in
> : no way proves the existence of any significant traffic.
> Well, this maize stuff proves the existence of some significant traffic,
> for sure.

You don't seem to get the idea that science doesn't "prove" anything.
You really don't understand scientific methodology, do you?

> Since cultural, mythological, and ritual details apparently

apparently??

> diffused to Asia from America along with the maize, we must postulate a

must??? Try showing some evidence for corn rather than evidence
for sculpted rock, first.

> number of trips, and a significant number of people coming across as a
> corollary to Johannessen's thesis. This was much more than a couple of
> shipwrecked sailors, it seems.

And if pigs had wings then everyone would realize Pink Floyd
was right when they wrote:

"And any fool knows a dog needs a home,
A shelter from pigs on the wing."
(Pink Floyd, "Pigs on the Wing [Part Two],"
lyrics by Roger Waters)

Regards,
August Matthusen