Tea at Trianon: Ice Age America

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, February 10, 2023

Ice Age America

From Atlas Obscura:

During the last ice age, wooly mammoths, bison, caribou, and herds of fuzzy, stocky horses roamed the tundra-like grasslands of Beringia—a now-inundated landmass that once connected Siberia to Alaska and Yukon—munching vegetation and running from predators like steppe lions, bears, and wolves. Humans were living and hunting in Beringia at this time, too. From the Bluefish Caves, three hollows in a remote limestone ridge in northern Yukon, archaeologists have unearthed some of the oldest known signs of human occupation in North America. Today, these caves are providing scientists with a glimpse into the lives of the Beringian hunters who used them nearly 24,000 years ago.

Archaeologists have long debated how and when people entered the Americas. Throughout the 20th century, the mainstream hypothesis was that the Clovis people were the first to pass into Alaska about 13,000 years ago. Archaeologists who presented earlier dates for humans’ arrival were dismissed by many of their peers, and the sites they studied disregarded. (Read more.)