Tea at Trianon: Human Hobbits?

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

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Human Hobbits?

From Ancient Origins:

After almost 20 years since the Homo floresiensis (nicknamed "hobbits") discovery was announced to the world, scientists are still asking many questions, including if they were human, a different hominid species, and equally importantly, how they managed to get there?

In an interview with the author, anthropologist Dean Falk of Florida State University suggested that the ancestors of the tiny beings accidentally floated to the Indonesian island of Flores in sleeping nests they had built in trees out of leaves and other plant matter.

These nests ended up in the sea, and “floated away” she said, adding, “Whatever they were made of depends on where they came from.” And we don’t even know where they began. But some proposed starting sites could have been Java, Sulawesi, or the Philippines, perhaps after leaving mainland Asia. Falk suggests palm trees are “natural raft material, particularly in that part of the world.” Even today one sees the dispersal of snails and other small creatures attached to floating palm leaves. (Read more.)