adaptation

["Spirit One Email" <laurel@spiritone.com>]

Sinclair's message including the word "adapt" recalls the MOVA show this
week.  They have carried a series called "Secrets of the Dead".  One episode
was aired this week in Portland, OR "The Lost Vikings".    I caught the last
20 minutes but it will be run again Thurs. midnight May 18.

    As I piece this 20 minutes together using other things I have read, they
are saying that there was a mini-ice age in the 14th century.   I don't know
starting and ending times.  The Vikings that went to Greenland was the topic
I saw maybe there were other people discussed earlier in the show.   But the
Norwegians had established several settlements there.  The people there
followed the same customs and reliance upon crops and farm animals as had
been practiced in Scandinavia for centuries.  They viewed this as the
superior way to provide for themselves and looked upon the hunting and
fishing of the Inuet people as the inferior method of uncivilized people.
   The church also controlled their food gathering  by requiring that anyone
hunting or fishing would have to first get the church's permission.  The
program pointed out that if a Viking were to ask an Inuet (I know I'm not
spelling this correctly--How can I find a word in the Dictionary, mother, if
I don't know how to spell it to start with?) to teach him how to fish or
hunt, the Inuet would have to include their ceremony connected with the hunt
to the Viking, i.e., praying for forgiveness to the spirit of the caribou
and giving thanks to the great spirit.   The church, naturally, did not want
the Viking to get caught up in this, so just forbade such activities except,
I suspect, if a Viking were going solo or with a group of Vikings.
     Now with the approach of this mini-ice age, the Vikings began to suffer
when their livestock died for lack of forage.  Their garden crops could not
feed them and not much could be found growing naturally to feed them.   They
clung to their Scandinavian clothing which did not keep them warm enough
now.  The Inuets wore much warmer fur clothing which they could make
waterproof if the furside were inside.   Plus they made themselves more
water and windproof with an outside layer made from animal or fish bladders
(I think that is what I was seeing on the Inuets' legs.).
     Around 1350, (can't find that article) Norway became concerned about
the silence from some/all? of their Greenland colonies--had they gone
"native", were they still strong Christians?    Norway sent out a search
team under the leadership of Paul Knutsen, I believe.  I don't remember
whether the team returned.  But the point is, their worry about them being
absorbed into the native culture, not whether they were starving.
 This same fear must have absorbed the Greenland clergy.  They would have
dissallowed any hunting or fishing to almost the end.   It was noted that
the Icelanders were allowed to fish and did so very much.  But there were no
native people to "corrupt the Icelanders.  I don't think they had a whole
lot of indigenous animals to hunt.
    Even with many Greenland Vikings dying from starvation, the church
maintained its rules. Probably  when all the clergymen were dead there were
inexperienced people who fished or hunted and wraped themselves in furs but
was it too late?  Their refusal to adapt to changing climatic conditions was
their downfall.

Since they find no bodies in the houses, it was thought by the archaelogists
that there were survivors who were able to bury the dead and then leave
Greenland by boats.  But where did they go.---back to Norway, Iceland or to
North America???

      When Prince Henry's group went that way in 1398, there were still
dangerous ice flows and bergs in their path.  The Norwegians had ceased
their journeys in that direction because of the extreme danger.
   I think it was (my copy is loanded out now)  In "How Scotland Changed the
World", Robert Wright mentions  that England had knowledge of Prince Henry's
voyage which might mean that the Scots would claim it for their own.

So one should wonder "Why didn't the English just rush over and claim it
then?"   Again it might have been because of the dangerous sailing
conditions if one followed a northerly route.  For all the English knew, the
land could be found only on a northerly route but if they sailed straight
westward, they might not find any land until they got to Asia.   They were
able to calculate that distance from England to Asia and knew there was no
way to take enough water and food along to last them that long.  But when
Columbus made his journey and it was known that there were lands over there,
then the English sent the Cabots in 1497.  I wonder what route they took?





----- Original Message -----
From: Privateers <Privateers@privateers.org>
To: <sinclair@matrix.net>
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: sacred geometry


> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
> the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
> Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. .
I
>
> Sinclair
>
>



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