Global Thirst

“To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail our pride supports us; when we succeed, it betrays us”- Charles Caleb Colton. By far an anecdotal masterpiece in terms of what should be described as human success, excess, and the subsequent failure that tends to evolve from decisions made during this said prominence. Perhaps one of the greatest paradigms of our modern epoch associated in part by such behavior is the grossly unjustified squandering of Earth’s most fundamental resource, water. Where better to start than by fulfilling an understanding of the current levels of mismanagement/waste; then give a realization of consequential events that will inevitably occur and how they can be incorporated with projected water consumption levels in ratio with projected reserves, and finally present possible solutions that will afford not only water relief and security but create a social evolution in the way which we interact with our planet in effort to enhance her natural resources.

In terms of water mismanagement the current situation has certainly been brought forth by numerous antecedents both in and out of direct control. Certainly one factor is how humans directly control, and thus affect, the entirety of our planet’s water supply (Duncan). This leads to the issue of 3^rd world governments, especially those located in water starved regions, and how they have neglected the upkeep of their corresponding water infrastructure. To make a volatile situation worse these nations greatly subsidize the distributed reserves to their citizens, creating a culture of waste and misuse (Darity). Appreciate the true scarcity of water in disparity with demand for the substance. The Earth is involuntarily short of fresh water. In natural sequence, 97% of water is saline and stored in the oceans; of the remaining 3%, approximately 2.97% is locked in glaciers or deep underground reservoirs, though this circumstance may fluctuate in the future. Therefore this constitutes that only 0.03 percent of total H2O is surface based and accessible; navigating down our chief waterways or residing in lake basins (Darity). Compile the fact that in our age humans direct the flow, distribution, and allocation of all the worlds surface waters, save a few isolated cases. Even so “this inherent scarcity has been worsened by the accelerated diversion of water for agricultural, commercial, industrial, and residential uses, which has greatly increased in response to a growing world population reaching 6.5 billion in 2006 (Darity).  

A developing theme here is more stipulation in conjunction with a gross mishandling of current water capital. At the very least this system is not sustainable, and more likely it is damaging our ecosystems globally in manners that may not be repairable. Statistics provide an immaculate and undeniable picture, and thus for a greater perception look at the places on Earth that will be impacted the most by water deficiencies.  The United Nation reports that “only Iraq and Sudan will pass the [water] scarcity test by 2015, with more than 1000 cubic meters per person per year. However, supply could be adversely affected by policy in Turkey and Ethiopia (Smith)”. A separate finding conducted by the Arab Forum for Environment and Development states that “13 of the 19 most water scarce nations are Arab states. Within five years all Arab countries will fall below the level of severe water scarcity at 500 cubic meters per person per year (Smith). The significance of such information will become blatant as further information is discerned. Recently, these states are experiencing what many intellectuals and scholars alike in the west are calling the “Arab Spring.” With political instability emerging in this region of the world if these figures are correct the two could very well vortex into a very desolate and degenerate reality in this part of the world. Yet the Middle East will not be the only area jeopardized by such occurrences; all nations, regions, and continents will experience some type of negative consequence whether it consist of water discrepancy or invasions due to the necessity of water. Even after describing this, the most drastically affected constituency on Earth by far will be the continent of Africa; a place particularly vulnerable to water variances due to many factors.

Move on to the wider world and get a dawning sense of this problem in its entirety. The consequences will be historic. In the next century a complete redrawing of not just the political maps but the social framework that retains society together is quite possible. Some pieces of commentary may help one truly visage what is in store if current practices are continued to be adhered to. The present situation (in the Middle East) where water use is unmetered, priced low, or subsidized by government agencies contributes to the wasting of existing resources and discourages private sector decision making. Demand management initiatives tend to be more dispersed and less amenable to central control than most decisions made on supply. And even without the politics, demand management involves a suite of complexities (Brooks). Again we know that this region is experiencing a political upheaval the likes of which have not been seen since the Communist uprisings of the later 20^th century. Demand management options are too often neglected. One reason for this is the entrenched "supply bias" of traditional water agencies. But this is only part of the story. While demand management may typically be better, it is not obviously easier. Few demand options are energy-intensive or environmentally disruptive but, like supply options, they can be capital-intensive and politically complex. For this segment there are two main antecedents supporting the prior statement. The first actually incorporates another human miscalculation/error of biblical proportions: carbon initiated global temperature rise and more important the effect of such rise on glacier cap of both poles. The predicted consequence of such events is estimated to be one meter of sea rise distributed evenly across the coastlines on all continents. The total population affected; between 25 million and 1 billion. Why such an inconsistency in statistics? It is because scientist don’t know if sea-levels will rise even higher than this [one meter is a conservative estimate.] Natural disasters (including ones related to climate change) destroy strategic infrastructure while there is a lack of requisite insurance to cover the loss. It is estimated that the cost of disasters over the next 20 years will be from 6-10 trillion (Smith). 

Thus this human entailed mismanagement of nature may have disastrous consequences separate from the current water consumption issues. The second antecedent is a possible desertification of all the agrarian centers on planet Earth. A quick lesson is contemporary agricultural practice is first in order. We have a severely carbon based and water aloof agricultural system, globally. Countries like America have since learned from experiences like the Dust Bowl of the 30’s or the USSR from droughts caused by collectivization and water depletion, yet a calamity not since on any historical scale may be heading right in our direction. Couple this with the undeniable ecological mechanics of nature such as rivers are fed by snow melt in the northern areas and once destroyed cannot feed major rivers (Middleton. Miller). This is a small example really, once underground reservoirs like the Ogallala Aquifer in the Midwest United States are depleted and mountain caps are burned off by the extensive heating of globally temperature rise and the soil retention of nutrient will be shattered unless hydrocarbon fertilizers are reintroduced every year, a complete crash of not just agriculture but the biosphere of most areas right now deemed as water safe shall occur. Even so there will not be any water to grow crops or any subsidiary plants besides from the ocean in which no modern nation has the infrastructure to utilize economically or even fast enough to stave off major drought. Once rivers and lakes are dried up, vegetation will follow suit. With such degraded soil and water deprivation it will be near impossible to revitalize any areas affected, and immediately desertification will set it. Since rain is cause by evaporation of major surface water sources in continental areas the only areas that will receive substantial rainfall will be coastal areas which will be near inhabitable due to the intense storms created by an expanded ocean face (Laurie. Minehardt).  If you need more evidence look at the Aral Sea impact zone, the drought in Southwest China as of 2011, or the East African crisis which is continuing today. A little known fact is these droughts have the possibility to compound and completely alter the natural pattern of water flow throughout a region. Unless water, the key ingredient in all this, is managed properly we will certainly see this intensify. Instead of the water circular world that humans and all other land based life forms rely on, a static water reality could develop. And another catastrophe that could happen is oxygen liquidation due to a massive die out of Earths vegetation, creating a carbon rich atmosphere and subsequently the advancing of already high temperatures. The planet could literally because so hot that water would continually evaporate and never condense except at the poles, and this water would just continually circulate in the oceans and never make landfall. Since humans have no conceivable way to utilize this water, most vegetation between the polar zones would die; and with it all other biological organisms. The only place abundant with life will in fact be the oceans.

Now this is a very extreme, yet furthermore a very real, scenario. A complete extinction of our species is actually entirely possible, let alone a crash of society as we know it. However, realize that the solutions to this issue lie all around us; it only requires a new perspective on the matter at large. First appreciate the overall human aspect of a sophisticated water culture. The economic benefits of safe drinking water in terms of health, longevity, and time saved in fetching water range from 300 billion to 400 billion USD a year. There are a number of technological means to augment water resources, including but not limited to cloud seeding, desalination, and wastewater reuse, rain harvesting, and importing water from relatively wet zones (“Darity”). Incorporate a strategic system of pipelines and desalination plants, center hubs and router lines and you not only solve a great deal of the water shortage issues of the coming decade, or the agricultural de-evolution that may come with it, but to create an grand economic opportunity comparable in terms to China’s Great Leap Forward. Is it possible to take sea water and convert it to a usable substance in which biological life forms can use? Without doubt yes. In the UAE [United Arab Emirates], Abu Dhabi has launched a scheme to create the world’s largest underground reservoir, which is to be filled with 26 million cubic meters of desalinated water (“Smith”). If developments resembling this are undertook the possibilities are endless; to reverse the spread of desertification throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and prevent it globally, all my mean of responsible water management, could be the largest economic boost in human history.

Without a doubt in the event of massive infrastructure projects the likes of which required hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created in the construction sectors alone, not to mention the myriad amount added in the service, financial, government, and protection services sectors. And this should be done renewable to ensure a further sustainable future. New technologies for producing for producing desalinated water could combine abundant sources of wind and solar energies with sea water to create [Artificial Aquifers] in the deserts of the Gulf States allowing for sand to used to lower desalination costs. Now take that further. Humanity could ultimately reshape the entire biosphere of planet to adjust to high carbon saturation in the atmosphere. With a developed system to distribute water in areas where natural rainfall is limited, it is actually quite possible to reverse desertification and begin land reclamation. The Israelis successfully accomplished this and that is partly why they enjoy the most organically diverse landscape in there region. The two significant benefits are a mean to lock excess water in an ever expandable biological system, water that would otherwise contribute to sea level rise. The later is the untold implications on human society. The possibly trillions in economic maturity, the assurance of growth for further generation, and the impact on struggling people in our own time (“Duncan”).

                Joerg Tremmel, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, suggests that in spite of the difficulties such as opportunity cost, restricted human ability and foresight, modern collective agencies (present governments and leading industrial companies) have to take their responsibilities for future generations seriously (Byravan. Sudhir). In the utmost he is right. It is the responsibility of the generation in control to sort out the questions that may affect those of tomorrow. A water secure world is something we owe not just to the people today, the ones whose lives revolve around the substance not yearly but daily. To those who will come to inherit this world and can hopefully enjoy a better standard than what preceded them. This undertaking will not be easy. It will be hard work, expensive, and exceptionally complex on more than a few levels. Yet to achieve the mission, like mankind has done so many other times, advantages by which no one in history has experienced shall be brought forth. In the end it is our choice.  

Works Cited

Brooks, David B. "Against the flow: a better response to the coming world water crisis is not expansion of supply but less waste and fairer allocation." Alternatives Journal (2003) Global Issues In Context. Web. 18 May 2011.

Byravan, Sujatha and Sudhir Rajan. “The Ethical Implications of Sea Level Rise due to Climate Change.” Ethic of International Affairs. (2010) Global Issues in Context. Web. 17 May 2011.

Darity, William Edward Jr.”Water Resources.” International Encyclopedia of the Social Studies. Macmillan Reference U.S.A. (2008) Global Issues in Context. Web. 18 May 2011.

Duncan, Laurie and Todd Minehardt. “Hydrology and Hydrogeology.” Encyclopedia of Water Sciences. (2005) Global Issues in Context. Web. 17 May 2011.

Ed. John Middleton and Joseph Miller. “Desertification, Modern.” New Encyclopedia of Africa. (2008), Global Issues in Context. Web. 18 May 2011.

Smith, Pamela Ann. “Water Offers Huge Investment Resources.” The Middle East. (2011). Global Issues in Context. Web. 17 May 2011.

History of Slavery in the Ancient World

Contrary to conventional thought, Slavery was NOT only endured by Blacks, all peoples have at one time or another been enslaved. The irony is that it is Blacks who appear to have created the institution of Slavery. As the creators of civilization, and the builders of the worlds first cities, Blacks logically were the first to have a need for slaves, as a source of free labor. Slavery in ancient cultures was known to occur in civilizations as old as Sumer, and it was found in every civilization, including Ancient Egypt, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient Greece, Rome and parts of its empire.

Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves. In the Roman Empire, probably over 25% of the empire's population, and 30 to 40% of the population of Italy was enslaved. Records of slavery in Ancient Greece go as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is often said that the Greeks as well as philosophers such as Aristotle accepted the theory of natural slavery i.e. that some men are slaves by nature. At the time of Plato and Socrates, slavery was so accepted by the Greeks (including philosophers) that few people indeed protested it as an institution. 

Romans inherited the institution of slavery from the Greeks and the Phoenicians. As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply to work in Rome's farms and households. The people subjected to Roman slavery came from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Such oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War led by Spartacus was the most famous and severe. Greeks, Berbers, Germans, Britons, Thracians, Gauls (or Celts), Jews, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labor, but also for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). If a slave ran away, he was liable to be crucified. By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome.

In the Viking era starting c. 793, the Norse raiders often captured and enslaved militarily weaker peoples they encountered. In the Nordic countries the slaves were called thralls. The thralls were mostly from Western Europe, among them many Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and Celts. Many Irish slaves participated in the colonization of Iceland. There is evidence of German, Baltic, Slavic and Latin slaves as well. The slave trade was one of the pillars of Norse commerce during the 6th through 11th centuries. The Persian traveler Ibn Rustah described how Swedish Vikings, the Varangians or Rus, terrorized and enslaved the Slavs, (thus the word Slave).

The Vikings raided across Europe, though their slave raids were the most destructive in the British Isles and Eastern Europe. While the Vikings kept some slaves for themselves as servants, known as thralls, most people captured by the Vikings would be sold on the Byzantine or Islamic markets. In the West the targets of Viking slavery were primarily English, Irish, and Scottish, while in the East they were mainly Slavs. The Viking slave trade slowly ended in the 1000s, as the Vikings settled in the European territories they once raided.

The Mongol invasions and conquests in the 13th century made the situation worse. The Mongols enslaved skilled individuals, women and children and marched them to Karakorum or Sarai, whence they were sold throughout Eurasia. Many of these slaves were shipped to the slave market in Novgorod, (near Moscow in Russia).

Slave commerce during the Late Middle Ages was mainly in the hands of Venetian and Genoese merchants and cartels, who were involved in the slave trade with the Golden Horde. In 1382 the Golden Horde under Khan Tokhtamysh sacked Moscow, burning the city and carrying off thousands of inhabitants as slaves. Between 1414 and 1423, some 10,000 eastern European slaves were sold in Venice. Genoese merchants organized the slave trade from the Crimea to Mamluk Egypt. For years the Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan routinely made raids on Russian principalities for slaves and to plunder towns. Russian chronicles record about 40 raids of Kazan Khans on the Russian territories in the first half of the 16th century. In 1521, the combined forces of Crimean Khan Mehmed Giray and his Kazan allies attacked Moscow and captured thousands of slaves.

In 1441, Haci I Giray declared independence from the Golden Horde and established the Crimean Khanate. For a long time, until the early 18th century, the khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. In a process called the "harvesting of the steppe", they enslaved many Slavic peasants. About 30 major Tatar raids were recorded into Muscovite territories between 1558-1596. In 1571, the Crimean Tatars attacked and sacked Moscow, burning everything but the Kremlin and taking thousands of captives as slaves. In Crimea, about 75% of the population consisted of slaves.

The Islamic World was also a main factor in Medieval European slavery. From the early 700s until the early Modern time period (rough the 18th or 19th centuries) Arabs and Berbers (Moors) consistently took European slaves. This slavery began during the Muslim Conquest of Visigothic Spain and Portugal in the 8th century. The Muslim powers of Iberia both raided for slaves and purchased slaves from European merchants; the Jewish Radhanites, one of the few groups that could easily move between the Christian and Islamic worlds.

As the Muslims failed to conquer Europe in the 8th century they took to pirate raids against the shores of Spain, southern Portugal and France, and Italy, that would last roughly from the 9th century until the 12th century, when the Italian city-states of Genoa, Venice, and Pisa, along with the Spanish kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, as well as the Sicilian Normans, began to dominate the Mediterranean. The Middle Ages from 1100 to 1500 saw a continuation of the European slave trade, as there was a shift from the Western Mediterranean Islamic nations to the Eastern nations, as Venice and Genoa took firm control of the Eastern Mediterranean from the 12th century and the Black Sea from the 13th century sold and both Slavic and Baltic slaves, as well as Georgians, Turks, and other ethnic groups of the Black Sea and Caucasus, to the Muslim nations of the Middle East. 

The Barbary Corsairs, sometimes called Corsairs or Barbary Pirates, were Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa from the time of the Crusades (11th century) until the early 19th century. Based in North African ports such as Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, Salé, and other ports in Morocco, they sailed mainly along the stretch of northern Africa known as the Barbary Coast. But their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard, and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, and they primarily commandeered western European ships in the western Mediterranean Sea. In addition, they engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.

These Pirates destroyed thousands of French, Spanish, Italian and British ships, and long stretches of coast in Spain and Italy were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants, discouraging settlement until the 19th century. From the 16th to 19th century, pirates captured an estimated 800,000 to 1.25 million Europeans as slaves, mainly from seaside villages in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, but also from France, Britain, the Netherlands, Ireland and as far away as Iceland and North America. The most famous corsairs were the brothers Hayreddin Barbarossa ("Redbeard") and Oruç Reis, who took control of Algiers in the early 16th century. 

The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of Christian slaves into the Islamic world too. After the battle of Lepanto approximately 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman Turks. Christians were also selling Muslim slaves captured in war. The Knights of Malta attacked pirates and Muslim shipping, and their base became a center for slave trading, selling captured North Africans and Turks. Malta remained a slave market until well into the late 18th century. It required a thousand slaves to equip merely the galleys (ships) of the Order.

Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second enserfment. Slavery remained a minor institution in Russia until the 1723, when the Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679. The runaway Polish and Russian serfs and kholops known as Cossacks (‘outlaws’) formed autonomous communities in the southern steppes.

The sale of European slaves by Europeans slowly ended as the Slavic and Baltic ethnic groups Christianized by the Late Middle Ages. European slaves in the Islamic World would continue into the Modern time period as Muslim pirates, primarily Algerians, with the support of the Ottoman Empire, raided European coasts and shipping from the 16th to the 19th centuries, ending their attacks with the naval decline of the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th and 17th centuries, as well as the European conquest of North Africa throughout the 19th century.

Following the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as well as the involvement of the United States Navy in the First and Second Barbary Wars interceding to protect US interests (1801–5, 1815), European powers agreed upon the need to suppress the Barbary pirates and the effectiveness of the corsairs declined. In 1816 a joint Dutch and British Fleet under Viscount Exmouth bombarded Algiers and forced that city and terrified Tunis into giving up over 3,000 prisoners and making fresh promises. Following a resumption of piracy based out of Algiers, in 1824 another British fleet again bombarded Algiers. France colonized much of the Barbary coast in the 19th century

The Huns

The Huns

The Huns were a nomadic pastoral people from Mongolia eastern Asia who invaded Europe circa 370 A.D, and created an enormous empire centered in Germany. They were possibly the descendants of the Xiongnu, a northern people who were frequently at war with the Shang of China. Note, the Turkic, so-called "White Huns" (Hephthalites) had no direct connection with the Huns, these were White tribes who deliberately called themselves Huns, in order to frighten their enemies.

Attila

The historian Priscus (circa 450 A.D.) was a Greek-speaking Roman citizen who often meant with Attila, he described Attila’s personal features in his works, which are now mostly lost. Jordanes was a 6th century Roman bureaucrat who turned his hand to history later in life, he quotes Priscus thusly: When Attila's brother Bleda who ruled over a great part of the Huns had been slain by Attila's treachery, the latter united all the people under his own rule. Gathering also a host of the other tribes which he then held under his sway he sought to subdue the foremost nations of the world---the Romans and Visigoths. His army is said to have numbered 500,000 men. He was a man born into the world to shake the nations, the scourge of all lands, who in some way terrified all mankind by the dreadful rumors noised abroad concerning him. He was haughty in his walk, rolling his eyes here and there, so that the power of his proud spirit appeared in the movement of his body. He was indeed a lover of war, yet restrained in action, mighty in counsel, gracious to suppliants and lenient to those who were once received into his protection. He was short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head: his eyes were small, his beard thin and sprinkled with gray: and he had a flat nose and a swarthy complexion showing the evidences of his origin..

During Atila's reign he was one of the most feared enemies of both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. He crossed the Danube twice and plundered the Balkans. The Huns invaded the Sassanid Persian Empire. When defeated in Armenia by the Sassanians, the Huns abandoned their invasion and turned their attentions back to Europe. In 440 they reappeared in force on the borders of the Roman Empire, attacking the merchants at the market on the north bank of the Danube that had been established by treaty.

Crossing the Danube, they laid waste to the cities of Illyricum and forts on the river, including (according to Priscus) Viminacium, a city of Moesia. Their advance began at Margus, where they demanded that the Romans turn over a bishop who had retained property that Attila regarded as his. While the Romans discussed turning the Bishop over, he slipped away secretly to the Huns and betrayed the city to them.

While the Huns attacked city-states along the Danube, the Albino Vandals led by Geiseric captured the Western Roman province of Africa and its capital of Carthage. Carthage was the richest province of the Western Empire and a main source of food for Rome. The Romans stripped the Balkans area of forces to use them to defeat the Vandals in Africa, which left Attila a clear path through Illyricum into the Balkans, which they invaded in 441. The Hunnish army sacked Margus and Viminacium, and then took Singidunum (modern Belgrade) and Sirmium. During 442 Theodosius recalled his troops from Sicily and ordered a large issue of new coins to finance operations against the Huns. Believing he could defeat the Huns, he refused Atila's demands.

Attila responded with a campaign in 443. Striking along the Danube, the Huns, equipped with new military weapons like the battering rams and rolling siege towers, overran the military centres of Ratiara and successfully besieged Naissus (modern Niš). Advancing along the Nisava River, the Huns next took Serdica, Philippopolis, and Arcadiopolis. They encountered and destroyed a Roman army outside Constantinople but were stopped by the double walls of the Eastern Roman capital (Constantinople - Byzantium). They defeated a second army near Callipolis (modern Gallipoli). Theodosius, stripped of his armed forces, admitted defeat, sending the Magister militum per Orientem Anatolius to negotiate peace terms. The terms were harsher than the previous treaty: the Emperor agreed to hand over 6,000 Roman pounds (ca. 2000 kg) of gold as punishment for having disobeyed the terms of the treaty during the invasion; the yearly tribute was tripled, rising to 2,100 Roman pounds (ca. 700 kg) in gold; and the ransom for each Roman prisoner rose to 12 solidi.

In 450, Attila proclaimed his intent to attack the Visigoth kingdom of Toulouse by making an alliance with Emperor Valentinian III. He had previously been on good terms with the Western Roman Empire and its influential general Flavius Aëtius. Aëtius had spent a brief exile among the Huns in 433, and the troops Attila provided him against the Goths and Bagaudae had helped earn him the largely honorary title of magister militum in the west. The gifts and diplomatic efforts of Geiseric, who opposed and feared the Visigoths, may also have influenced Attila's plans. However, Emperor Valentinian's sister was Honoria, who, in order to escape her forced betrothal to a Roman senator, had sent Atila a plea for help – and her engagement ring – in the spring of 450. Though Honoria may not have intended a proposal of marriage, Attila chose to interpret her message as such. He accepted, asking for half of the western Empire as dowry. When Valentinian discovered the plan, only the influence of his mother Galla Placidia convinced him to exile, rather than kill his sister Honoria. He also wrote to Attila strenuously denying the legitimacy of the supposed marriage proposal. Attila sent an emissary to Ravenna to proclaim that Honoria was innocent, that the proposal had been legitimate, and that he would come to claim what was rightfully his.

Attila gathered his vassals—Gepids, Ostrogoths, Rugians, Scirians, Heruls, Thuringians, Alans, Burgundians, among others and began his march west. In 451, he arrived in Belgica with an army half a million strong. Aëtius moved to oppose Attila, gathering troops from among the Franks, the Burgundians, and the Celts. A mission by Avitus, and Attila's continued westward advance, convinced the Visigoth king Theodoric I (Theodorid) to ally with the Romans. The combined armies reached Orléans ahead of Attila, thus checking and turning back the Hunnish advance. Aëtius gave chase and caught the Huns at a place usually assumed to be near Catalaunum (modern Châlons-en-Champagne).

The two armies clashed in the Battle of Châlons, whose outcome is commonly considered to be a strategic victory for the Visigothic-Roman alliance. The Albino king Theodoric was killed in the fighting and Aëtius failed to press his advantage, because he feared the consequences of an overwhelming Visigothic triumph as much as he did a defeat. From Aëtius' point of view, the best outcome was what occurred: Theodoric died, Attila was in retreat and disarray, and the Romans had the benefit of appearing victorious.

Attila returned in 452 to claim his marriage to Honoria anew, invading and ravaging Italy along the way. The city of Venice was founded as a result of these attacks when the residents fled to small islands in the Venetian Lagoon. His army sacked numerous cities and razed Aquileia completely, leaving no trace of it behind. Legend has it he built a castle on top of a hill north of Aquileia to watch the city burn, thus founding the town of Udine, where the castle can still be found. Aëtius, who lacked the strength to offer battle, managed to harass and slow Attila's advance with only a shadow force. Attila finally halted at the River Po. By this point disease and starvation may have broken out in Attila's camp, thus helping to stop his invasion.

Emperor Valentinian III sent three envoys, the high civilian officers Gennadius Avienus and Trigetius, as well as the Bishop of Rome Leo I, who met Attila at Mincio in the vicinity of Mantua, and obtained from him the promise that he would withdraw from Italy and negotiate peace with the Emperor. After Attila left Italy and returned to his palace across the Danube, he planned to strike at Constantinople again and reclaim the tribute which Marcian had stopped. (Marcian was the successor of Theodosius and had ceased paying tribute in late 450 while Attila was occupied in the west; multiple invasions by the Huns and others had left the Balkans with little to plunder).

Attila died in the early months of 453: The conventional account, from Priscus, says that at a feast celebrating his latest marriage to the beautiful and young Ildico (if uncorrupted, the name suggests she was Albino) he suffered a severe nosebleed and choked to death in a stupor. An alternative theory is that he succumbed to internal bleeding after heavy drinking or a condition called esophageal varices, where dilated veins in the lower part of the esophagus rupture leading to death by hemorrhage.

Jordanes says: "The greatest of all warriors should be mourned with no feminine lamentations and with no tears, but with the blood of men." His horsemen galloped in circles around the silken tent where Attila lay in state, singing in his dirge, according to Cassiodorus and Jordanes: "Who can rate this as death, when none believes it calls for vengeance?" Then they celebrated a strava (lamentation) over his burial place with great feasting. Legend says that he was laid to rest in a triple coffin made of gold, silver, and iron, along with some of the spoils of his conquests. His men diverted a section of the river, buried the coffin under the riverbed, and then were killed to keep the exact location a secret.

Black Civilizations of Eastern Europe

The site of Sungir (26,000 B.C.), discovered during clay extraction operations in 1956, was excavated by Otto Bader from 1956 to 1977. Excavations were re-opened by Bader's assistant Ludmilla Mikhailova and Bader's son Nicolai in 1986, and continue today. Sungir is an enormous early Upper Paleolithic living site located on the outskirts of the city of Vladimir, 192 km from Moscow in the Russian Republic.

While inhabiting Sungir, at least five of the site's occupants perished. According to Russian physical anthropologists, these consisted of a 60 year-old man, a 7 to 9 year-old girl, a 13 year-old boy, an unsexed headless adult and an adult female skull.

The two adolescents and the adult male were buried in two shallow graves three meters apart, dug into the permafrost beneath the living surface of the site. All three of the corpses were laid on their backs with their hands folded across their pelvises. The fourth individual was represented by an isolated and poorly preserved female skull placed beside a stone slab in an area stained with red ochre, and was found overlying the man's burial (a person sacrificed to serve as a protector in the afterlife?). The fifth skeleton, that of a headless adult, was so poorly preserved as to be practically unrecoverable. It was found immediately on top of the two adolescents, (a person sacrificed to serve as a protector in the afterlife?), who were buried together in a head-to-head fashion in the middle of an apparently abandoned circular dwelling structure.

Each of the three intact individuals were lavishly decorated with thousands of painstakingly prepared ivory beads arranged in dozens of strands, perhaps basted to their clothing. Although it is almost certain that the three individuals buried intact at Sungir were members of the same social group, there are remarkable differences among them in details of body decoration and grave offerings. The man was adorned with 2,936 beads and fragments arranged in strands found on all parts of his body including his head, which was apparently covered with a beaded cap that also bore several fox teeth.

His forearms and biceps were each decorated with a series of polished mammoth-ivory bracelets (25 in all), some showing traces of black paint. They were thin, flat strips of mammoth-ivory, cut longitudinally along the tusk. They were pierced at each end, some with one hole, others with two, apparently to keep the ivory bent into a circle. What appear to be brush strokes from the application of pigment are visible on at least one specimen. Around the man's neck, he wore a small, flat schist pendant, painted red, but with a small black dot on one side.

In the book "The Mind in the Cave" David Lewis-Williams cites Sungir as evidence that humanity's natural state is subject to a ruler. He cites this as one of the cognitive "advantages" we enjoyed over Neanderthals, leading to our success and their failure. But if the human condition is so amenable to rulership, why is the royal burial at Sungir so exceptional? Why have we not found more burials like it?

Lewis-Williams himself unwittingly offers us the reason why. Sungir was situated along the mammoth migratory routes. There was such a glut of mammoth meat once a year, that these foragers could afford to remain stationary. Thus they developed a complex society, including royalty.

The Site of Mal'ta (Siberia) Russia

The vast territory of North and Central Asia represents a poorly understood region in the prehistoric era, despite intensive excavations that have been conducted during the past century. The earliest human occupation in this region, probably began sometime around 40,000 years ago. Small groups of big-game hunters likely migrated into this region, as a result of the second out of Africa (OOA) migration. They confronted a harsh climate and long, dry winters. By about 20,000 B.C., two principal cultural traditions had developed in Siberia and northeastern Asia: the Mal'ta and the Afontova Gora-Oshurkovo cultures.

The Mal'ta tradition is known from a vast area spanning west of Lake Baikal and the Yenisey River. The site of Mal'ta, for which the culture is named, is composed of a series of subterranean houses made of large animal bones and reindeer antler, which had likely been covered with animal skins and sod to protect inhabitants from the severe, prevailing northerly winds. Among the artistic accomplishments evident at Mal'ta are remains of expertly carved bone, ivory, and antler objects. Figurines of birds and human females are the most commonly found items.

Note: It should be noted that the Mal'ta Culture may more correctly be associated with the "Eastward" second wave of migration out of southern Africa that occurred about 55-50,000 B.C. However, lacking similar type figures from China, we associate the Mal'ta Culture with Grimaldi.

Note: The Paleolithic art of Europe and Asia, falls into two broad categories: mural art and portable art. Mural art is concentrated in southwest France, Spain, and northern Italy. The tradition of portable art, predominantly carvings in ivory and antler, spans the distance across western Europe into North and Central Asia. It is suggested that the broad territory in which the tradition of carving and imagery is shared, is evidence of cultural contact and common religious beliefs. Some of the most well known examples are the so-called Venus figurines. One such figurine, illustrated here, is from the site of Mal'ta and dates to around 22,000 B.C. It is carved from the ivory of a mammoth, an extinct type of elephant highly prized in hunting that migrated in herds across the Ice Age tundra of Europe and Asia. Like most Paleolithic figurine carving, the image is carved in the round in a highly stylized manner. Typically, there are exaggerated characteristics such as breasts and (steatopygia) buttocks, which may have been symbols of fertility.

The Kostenki Sites, Russia

The Kostenki - Borshevo sites (34,000 B.C.) are a group of more than twenty settlements from the same culture, on the right bank of the Don River, south of Voronezh. The basic excavations were conducted in the 1920s - 1930s by P. Yefimenko, and in the 1940s - 1960s by A. N. Rogachev.

The villages of Kostenki and Borshevo contained five cultural layers. In the upper layer were preserved the remains of dwellings with hearths located along the central longitudinal axis of the dwellings, together with storage pits. Flint tools and hoes made from mammoth tusks, bone digging implements, a baton from deer horn, and about forty female statuettes made from both ivory and marl/limestone, figurines of a bear, cavelion and anthropomorphous marl heads. Triangular flint tools are found in the lowermost layer with a concave base, retouched with a pressure process.

At Kostenki II (Zamyatnina site) were found the remains of a round dwelling made of mammoth bones, seven or eight metres across, with the fireplace in the center.

At Kostenki IV (Aleksandrovka site) there was preserved in the upper of two cultural layers, the remainders of two round dwellings approximately six meters in diameter with the hearth at the center of each. Among the findings here were ground, drilled disks of slate. In the bottom layer there were two long dwellings, with a length of 34m and 23m, and a width of 5.5m, in which were found flint leaf-like tips processed by pressure retouching. In the second layer were found fragments of human bones, partially burnt, as well as flint miniature plates (microliths?) and needle shaped points (burins?).

Kostenki XI contained not less than five cultural layers. In the upper layer the remains of a round dwelling 9 metres in diameter made from large mammoth bones were discovered. In the lower layers there were interesting findings of triangular flint tips, analogous to those found in the lower layer of Kostenki I.

Kostenki XIV (Markina Mountain, Markina Gora), contained four cultural layers.

At Kostenki XV (Gordocovskaja site) the ochred burial of a child of about six years was found. With this burial were flint and bone tools, and over 150 drilled teeth of the Arctic Fox.

Borshevo II contained three cultural layers, dated from the end of the late Palaeolithic through to the Mesolithic. In the top layer, the camp of a temporary settlement of horse hunters, mammoth bones were absent, but there were reindeer bones. The flint tools were of the microlith type, which could have been used for arrow heads.

The Kostenki - Borshevo sites (34,000 B.C.) are a group of more than twenty settlements from the same culture, on the right bank of the Don River, south of Voronezh. The basic excavations were conducted in the 1920s - 1930s by P. Yefimenko, and in the 1940s - 1960s by A. N. Rogachev.

The Real Moors

Early inhabitants of the central Maghrib have left behind significant remains. Early remnants of hominid occupation in North Africa, were found in Ain el Hanech, near Saïda Algeria (ca. 200,000 B.C.). Later, Neanderthal tool makers produced hand axes in the Levalloisian and Mousterian styles (ca. 43,000 B.C.) similar to those in the Levant. According to some sources, North Africa was the site of the highest state of development of Middle Paleolithic flake-tool techniques. Tools of this era, starting about 30,000 B.C., are called Aterian (after the site Bir el Ater, south of Annaba) and are marked by a high standard of workmanship, great variety, and specialization.

The amalgam of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a distinct native population that came to be called Berbers. Distinguished primarily by cultural and linguistic attributes, the Berbers lacked a written language and hence tended to be overlooked or marginalized in historical accounts. Roman, Greek, Byzantine, and Arab Muslim chroniclers typically depicted the Berbers as "barbaric" enemies, troublesome nomads, or ignorant peasants. They were, however, to play a major role in the area's history.

When you think of European culture, one of the first things that may come to your mind is the renaissance. Many of the roots of European culture can be traced back to that glorious time of art, science, commerce and architecture. But did you know that long before the renaissance there was a place of humanistic beauty in Muslim Spain? Not only was it artistic, scientific and commercial, but it also exhibited incredible tolerance, imagination and poetry. Moors, as the Spaniards call the Muslims, populated Spain for nearly 700 years. As you'll see, it was their civilization that enlightened Europe and brought it out of the dark ages to usher in the renaissance. Many of their cultural and intellectual influences still live with us today.

Way back during the eighth century, Europe was still knee-deep in the Medieval period. That's not the only thing they were knee-deep in. In his book, "The Day The Universe Changed," the historian James Burke describes how the typical European townspeople lived:

"The inhabitants threw all their refuse into the drains in the center of the narrow streets. The stench must have been overwhelming, though it appears to have gone virtually unnoticed. Mixed with excrement and urine would be the soiled reeds and straw used to cover the dirt floors.

This squalid society was organized under a feudal system and had little that would resemble a commercial economy. Along with other restrictions, the Catholic Church forbade the lending of money - which didn't help get things booming much. "Anti-Semitism, previously rare, began to increase. Money lending, which was forbidden by the Church, was permitted under Jewish law." (Burke, 1985, p. 32) Jews worked to develop a currency although they were heavily persecuted for it. Medieval Europe was a miserable lot, which ran high in illiteracy, superstition, barbarism and filth.

During this same time, Arabs entered Europe from the South. ABD AL-RAHMAN I, a survivor of a family of caliphs of the Arab empire, reached Spain in the mid-700's. He became the first Caliph of Al-Andalus, the Moorish part of Spain, which occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula. He also set up the UMAYYAD Dynasty that ruled Al-Andalus for over three-hundred years. (Grolier, History of Spain). Al Andalus means, "the land of the Vandals," from which comes the modern name Andalusia.

In Iberia, many of the ousted White nobles took refuge in the unconquered north Asturian highlands. From there they aimed to reconquer their lands from the Moors: this war of reconquest is known as the Reconquista. It began in about 900 A.D. when a small Christian enclave of Visigoths in northwestern Spain, named Asturias; initiated conflicts between Christians and Muslims. Soon after, Christian states based in the north and west slowly; in fits and starts, began a process of expansion and reconquest of Iberia over the next several hundred years. The end for the Moors came on January 2, 1492: the leader of the last Moorish City "Granada" (located in southern Spain) - surrendered to armies of a recently united Christian Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile). This ended the 800 year reign of the Moors in Iberia.

 By some historical accounts: In 1491, Muhammad XII was summoned by Ferdinand and Isabella to surrender the city of Granada, and on his refusal it was besieged by the Castilians. Eventually, on 2 January, 1492, Granada was surrendered. In most sumptuous attire the royal procession moved from Santa Fe to a place a little more than a mile from Granada, where Ferdinand took up his position by the banks of the Genil. A private letter written by an eyewitness to the bishop of León only six days after the event recorded the scene.

With the royal banners and the cross of Christ plainly visible on the red walls of the Alhambra: …the Moorish sultan with about eighty or a hundred on horseback very well dressed went forth to kiss the hand of their Highnesses. According to the final capitulation agreement both Isabel and Ferdinand will decline the offer and the key to Granada will pass into Spanish hands without Muhammad XII having to kiss the hands of Los Royes, as the Spanish royal couple became known. Muhammad XII indomitable mother insisted on sparing his son this final humiliation. The Moorish sultan was received with much love and courtesy and there they handed over to him his son, who had been a hostage from the time of his capture, and as they stood there, there came about four hundred captives, of this who were in the enclosure, with the cross and a solemn procession singing the Te Deum Laudamus, and their highnesses dismounted to adore the Cross to the accompaniment of the tears and reverential devotion of the crowd, not least of the Cardinal and Master of Santiago and the Duke of Cadiz and all the other grandees and gentlemen and people who stood there, and there was no one who did not weep abundantly with pleasure giving thanks to Our Lord for what they saw, for they could not keep back the tears; and the Moorish sultan and the Moors who were with him for their part could not disguise the sadness and pain they felt for the joy of the Christians, and certainly with much reason on account of their loss, for Granada is the most distinguished and chief thing in the world…

 Muhammad XII was given an estate in Láujar de Andarax, Las Alpujarras, a mountainous area between the Sierra Nevada and the Mediterranean Sea, but he soon crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Fez, Morocco. The Spanish royal secretary Fernando de Zafra mentions in his letter of 9 December 1492 that Muhammad XII and his followers leave Andarax which left one month to go to Tlemcen, where he stayed little longer. He left in September or October 1492. He explained that his wife died in Andarax and was buried in Mondújar.

The remaining Muslims and Turkish Khazar Jews (not Hebrews) of Iberia were forced to leave Iberia or die; or convert to Roman Catholic Christianity. Many of the Khazar Jews who were expelled from Spain and Portugal immigrated to Holland, where they set up the Dutch West Indies Company, a prime mover in the Atlantic slave trade. Ironically, eight months after the last Moorish city fell: it was in the nearby town of Palos, on the evening of August 3, 1492. That Christopher Columbus would depart from Palos on his journey to the Americas. One result of which, would be the Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic Slave trade.

The story of Black slavery in the Americas, of course begins with Christopher Columbus. It is alleged that his voyage to the Americas was not financed by Queen Isabella, but rather by the Khazar Jew Luis de Santangelo, who supposedly advanced the sum of 17,000 ducats to finance the voyage. Columbus was accompanied by five 'Maranos' (Jews who had forsworn their religion and supposedly became Catholics) Luis de Torres - the interpreter, Marco - the surgeon, Bemal - the physician, Alonzo de la Calle and Gabriel Sanchez, and a Black navigator, Pedro Alonso Niño (1468 – 1505). It is not known if Pedro Alonso Niño was a Moor or a native Gaul of Iberia. While in the Americas, it was Gabriel Sanchez, who convinced Columbus to capture 500 American Indians and sell them as slaves in Seville, Spain.

After the Moors were gone; In 1480, Isabella and Ferdinand instituted the Inquisition in Spain, as one of many changes to the role of the church instituted by the monarchs. The Inquisition was aimed mostly at Jews and Muslims who had overtly converted to Christianity but were thought to be practicing their faiths secretly — called respectively marranos and moriscos. The Inquisition also attacked heretics who rejected Roman Catholic orthodoxy, including alumbras (native people) who practiced a personal mysticism or spiritualism. They represented a significant portion of the peasants in some territories, such as Aragon, Valencia or Andalusia. In the years from 1609 to 1614, these people were systematically expelled from the country. However many of them were converted to Christianity. This is clearly indicated by a "high mean proportion of ancestry from North Africa (10.6%)" that "attests to a high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced).

At the end of the Reconquista, it is estimated that about a third of the Moorish population had been killed or enslaved, another third immediately left; while a third tried to live in Christian Spain. However, for most Moors, the persecution and forced conversion to Catholicism of the Muslim population during the time of the Christian Reconquista, caused a mass exodus. Many found life under Christian rule intolerable and passed over into north Africa. This is considered the main reason why the number of Muslims had shrunk to a relatively small fraction of the total population by 1500.

The Berbers have since fallen on hard times, even to loosing their identity; for today, as is the case with all of the ancient Blacks, the mixed-race people, and even the Whites, now call themselves Berbers. So here are the "Real" Berbers.