The Red Army Faction

Baader-Meinhof

 

The Baader-Meinhof Gang, or Red Army Faction, was a German terrorist group active from the early 70s to the late 90s, when it finally disbanded. In its thirty years or so of sporadic activity, the RAF robbed a number of banks, set off quite a few bombs and killed 34 people.

 

The RAF grew out of the student protest movement of the late 60s. German students, in particular, had many reasons to rebel against the status quo, including the fact that post-War Germany was largely run by the same generation that had allowed Hitler to murder millions of people, including quite a few former Nazis in high positions. The members of the RAF, though, were not idealistic student protesters so much as murderous zealots. They seem to have been driven, at least in part, by the sense that they were obligated to wage the war of resistance their parents ought to have waged against Nazism but never did. It was like a resistance-by-proxy, with the West German government standing in for the Nazi regime since it no longer existed for them to fight.

Their inner circle, however, was made up of sociopathic hypocrites. They professed to be fighting the good fight the older generation should have fought, but they openly endorsed the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes by Palestinian terrorists, and one of their founding members is now a prominent Holocaust denier and far-right politician. They went to Jordan to get training from the PLO, but once there they showed zero interest in any training or discipline at all, and insisted on firing off their AK-47s for amusement and sunbathing nude as a group to offend the Palestinians.

 

Once they returned to Germany, they began their murderous yet completely ineffective campaign of terror, which continued for years after the original core members were captured and imprisoned. At one point the RAF enjoyed the sympathy of one quarter of all Germans below the age of forty, but this probably had more to do with a rejection of the older generation and of the legacy of Nazism than with the RAF itself. In their cartoonish fanaticism and their callous indifference to human life, in their antisemitism and in their fetishization of death and destruction, the RAF had a lot more in common with the Nazis than they would have liked to admit.

 

 

The Decided Ones

Of Jupiter The Thunderer

You've probably never heard of the Decided Ones of Jupiter the Thunderer, an Italian secret society and bandit army of the nineteenth century, but they were large enough to virtually seize southern Italy for themselves, marching under a skull and crossbones “Jolly Roger” flag bearing the inspirational slogan “Sadness, Death, Terror, and Mourning.” They were led by a sociopathic Catholic priest named Ciro Annunchiarico, who claimed to be the earthly avatar of the ancient Roman god Jupiter. Belief in his supernatural powers was so unquestioned that he was actually able to walk straight through an army encampment unmolested and take the general prisoner at knife-point.

The peasants of Calabria were convinced that the priest and bandit warlord was really Jupiter, and that he could call down lightning from the skies at will. He is supposed to have killed between sixty and seventy men by his own hand, the first baker's dozen before he was a bandit (in a private vendetta with the family of a man who felt that a Catholic priest should not have seduced his fiance, and made the fatal mistake of saying so!) and the others after he fled to the mountains to join the bandit gangs. He seems to have had an extraordinary if not mysterious power of charisma, as tens of thousands of hardened bandits readily obeyed him and acknowledged his bizarre claims. However, when the authorities hired some very unsuperstitious Swiss and German mercenaries, he was quickly defeated and captured. Even his execution was bizarre- supposedly a firing squad of twenty-one men couldn't put him down, and he went on praying to Jupiter until an officer finished him off with a silver bullet. I'm not suggesting anyone take that last bit too literally, but clearly Ciro Annunchiarico was no garden-variety sociopath.

 

 

Human Movement Throughout History Leaves Trail of Animal Species

Humans have had such an impact on other species that, like breadcrumbs in a fairytale, it's often to see where we've been by the species left behind.

Tracking the progress of human movement around the globe over the last several thousand years can be tricky; even more so when you’re attempting to track who was where and when. However, one helpful detail in doing this is looking at the local flora and fauna. No other species’ migrations have had such an impact on the movement of other species. Humanity has, over the thousands of years in which they’ve been traversing, plundering, conquering, and exploring, left a fascinating trail of animal and plant species across the globe and in every natural biome and human community.

Let’s start with the beginning; domestication. People very early on figured out that training animals to bear one’s workload, provide food and safety, and even to be one’s faithful companion, was a useful application of their intelligence. As a result, livestock have followed nearly every human population as it moved across the globe. Horses, for instance, died out on the North American continent about 10,000 years ago. However, herds of wild horses spread across the Bearing Strait onto the Asian continent and so were domesticated by humanity as it slowly developed civilization. Fast forward to the sixteenth century, when Spanish explorers brought horses back to the Americas where most of their evolutionary progress had actually taken place.

Dogs are perhaps the most versatile and longest domesticated species in human history, and as such, they have been bred and evolved into nearly as many different breeds and types as there are different human communities. Dogs have been used throughout history for everything from hunting and war, to companionship or even as a food source. The Shiba Inu is a mid-sized, efficient, and highly-intelligent dog from Japan that was bred for service and battle, as was the English Bulldog and Mastiff; large powerful dogs to knock armored men on their backs. On the other hand the Dauchsund was bred in Germany for the purposes of hunting rodents and vermin that were plaguing their cities in the middle ages, small and long to navigate subterranean tunnels.

Of course, there are the unintended traces as well. Mice, which can be found nearly anywhere human beings are, have followed the movements of human populations since there were any. Mice have been particularly talented at adapting to human civilization and using it as a kind of “natural” habitat. Once recent piece of evidence is from the Vikings of the 9th and 10th centuries. Mice followed Viking explorers to Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland (in present-day Canada). However, perhaps indicating how important humans are to some of these species that seem to mirror our movements, just as the Vikings died out in Greenland and Newfoundland so too did their Nordic mice.

Missing Links in Human Evolution – China May Hold a Key to Understanding

"Such an important discovery raises many new and interesting questions."

In a not-so-recent discovery, remains of ancient peoples were excavated from the caves that served as their former dwellings in southwestern China.  The fossils in question were first discovered in 1979 and 1989, though had been placed in storage until just recently.  Professor Ji Xueping discovered the remains of the 1979 group sitting in a basement and, upon taking a further look, noticed that the traits of these fossils were truly unique in the chain of human evolution.

Though the remains came from two separate caves and encompass five distinct individuals, they all share the same unique traits and are therefore almost certainly the same species.  What species that happens to be, no one seems to know.  Many of the characteristics of the so-called Red Deer Cave people are equivalent to humans, both modern and primitive, though several other traits are definitely not Homo sapien.

The remains date from approximately 11,500 to 14,500 years ago, near the end of the Ice Age.  Evidence from nearby sites show that the Red Deer Cave people coexisted side-by-side with human ancestors.  Other artifacts show that they made tools and had knowledge of the use of fire as well.

Such an important discovery raises many new and interesting questions.  Anthropologists are trying to figure out if what they have found are the remains of a separate branch of evolution or whether they somehow fit into the evolution of Homo sapiens at a previously unknown point.  The lack of their unique characteristics among human populations today shows that, at the very least, they did not interbreed enough to pass their traits on.

Currently, scientists are working on extracting and testing DNA from the remains so that they can more accurately determine how this species relates to other intelligent primates.  Until the results of those tests are available, they can only guess at what exciting evolutionary discovery they have stumbled upon.

Humanity's Dominance Over Neanderthals As Simple As "Right Time, Right Place"

It may have had more to do with opportunism and luck than anything like "superior intellect".

As a human it would pain to think that our survival as a species, which we believe was due to innovation and superior intelligence, may have been as simple as being in the right place at the right time. However, a recent theory suggests that Homo Sapiens may have been able to beat out their competitors, like Neanderthals, simply because they found the right place to wait out the Ice Age. Two British scientists have hypothesized that the various numbers of archaic humans that came out of that period, and the fact that Homo Sapiens Sapiens ultimately triumphed, is attributable to climate patterns consistent with the Ice Age.

An Ice Age, as one would expect, is creates an extremely inhospitable landscape for a very long period of time. As such, a small pocket of inhabitable space by a space, sustainable group of species over that time will have a massive impact on the evolution of life on the planet. These small pockets of hospitable space are called refugia (refugium, singular). Furthermore, as reported in io9, these refugia have very specific elements of natural selection and genetic drift. They are often very disconnected, and so a species that may have once been unified across a continent may emerge from the refugium, after thousands of years when the glaciers melt away, very different. This, according to the theory, explains the very fractured nature of the human species after the Ice Age.

The scientists John Stewart and Chris Singer believe that the Neanderthals were trapped within refugia in the northern climates of Europe and thus adapted to colder climate where there was less to subsist upon and provided less opportunity for social development (concerned as they were with simply surviving). However, Homo Sapiens (which would eventually become us) preferred more temperate climates that afforded greater nourishment, and more importantly space. With more space populations could grow larger and, as the glaciers melted away, provide more competition for Neanderthals as the species began to migrate once again.

One way of look at this, according to the scientists, is to think of Neanderthals as the polar bears of the human evolutionary tree. Modern polar bears are essentially an offshoot of the brown bear which were trapped in northern climates and forced to adapt in the colder environments. However, as the earth warms and the polar bears become endangered as their habitat shrinks, they are forced to evolve or die off. Luckily for Polar Bears, modern humans have a soft spot for endangered animals and tend to intervene in the kind of natural selection that lead to their Neanderthal cousins’ extinction.

Dentist and Robots Hold Key to Great Pyramid of Giza

In another case of using technology to discover the past, a Hong Kong dentist and inventor by the name of Ng Tze-chuen has been working alongside Egypt’s former antiquities manager, Zahi Hawass in a joint effort to find out what may be behind two sealed doors in the Great Pyramid of Giza. 

These two doors were first found in 1872 though have remained shut up until now.  The main obstacle to exploration was the fact that the passages to the doors were too narrow for any human being to navigate.  Archaeologists speculate that there are unexplored chambers behind the doors and are hopeful that one of them will be the tomb of the Pharaoh Cheops.

The key that may solve this problem is the use of specialized gripping devices invented by Ng specifically for the task at hand.  These grippers will be attached to insect-sized robots which will be maneuvered down the narrow shafts to the doors.  Once there, the robots will drill through the doors, enter into the chambers behind them and take pictures with mounted cameras.

Using technology like this is another great leap forward for both exploration and preservation

 of archaeological sites.  As the field of archaeology has progressed, the emphasis on keeping sites intact has grown.  By implemented tools which can subtly find their way into ancient structures, many of the strong-arm tactics of the past will become obsolete.  There is no telling where this sort of robotic trend could end up, nor what other new technologies may emerge which could further help in the oftentimes complicated process of exploration.

Currently, the crew that will be cracking the Giza Pyramid is waiting for a license to get underway, but hope to be rolling by spring.  Ng has further expressed interest in using his inventor’s skills to help with a number of programs, from collecting soil samples on the moon to searching for the legendary lost tomb of Cleopatra.

The Jacquerie

Revolt and Atrocity

The “Jacquerie” was a peasant rebellion in northern France during the Hundred Years War. Unlike the huge English peasant rebellion of John Ball, the Jacquerie was characterized by scenes of almost unbelievable atrocity. The rebels supposedly:

 

“killed a knight, put him on a spit, and roasted him with his wife and children looking on. After ten or twelve of them raped the lady, they wished to force feed them the roasted flesh of their father and husband and made them then die by a miserable death.”

Why was this particular peasant uprising so savage? It's not really possible to give a definitive explanation for something like that, but it is possible to make an educated guess. The Jacquerie began when groups of peasants gathered to discuss a new law that required them to defend the castles of the French nobility who were off campaigning against the English.

 

This law took the peasants away from their fields and directly impacted their ability to grow the crops they needed to survive. It also came on the heels of numerous incidents in which the French nobility had disgraced and humiliated itself on the battlefield, sometimes abandoning the peasant infantry to be ridden down and slaughtered by the English. In addition, the nobles had completely failed to protect the peasants from wandering bands of mercenaries who often raided villages and committed murders, rapes and other crimes. When the peasants got together to discuss the defense of the castles against the English, someone angrily pointed out that the nobles had never defended them, and that it would be better to murder all of the nobles and rid the world of their entire class, rather than to suffer for the sake of the nobility.

 

And so the Jacquerie began, characterized more by huge mobs of angry peasants over-running castles and slaughtering the inhabitants rather than by any kind of strategy. The Jacquerie was ultimately suppressed, and then followed by mass murders against the peasants by the nobility in reprisal. The aristocratic victims of the Jacquerie numbered in the hundreds, while the peasant victims of the reprisal campaign numbered in the tens of thousands. The story of the Jacquerie is a cautionary tale of the consequences of any revolution based on sheer rage rather than on a call for justice.

 

 

Returning Native American Cultural Relics

Over time, many items of Native American cultural significance have been collected and placed into museums.  Whether gathered for scientific study, bought via the black market or taken as artifacts from archaeological dig sites, these things have steadily filled museums and warehouses over the years.  Many of these items were acquired during a time period when Native Americans had little right to their ancestral homelands and were thus powerless to stop archaeologists from exhuming the remains of their past.  Now archaeologists are trying to correct their past mistakes and get these artifacts back to the original tribes that they belonged to, though it is proving to be no easy task.

The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act served as one of the primary catalysts to this movement.  The act is legally forcing museums to return the remains and artifacts that they currently 

hold to the tribes from which they came.  Many of these have already been returned, but museum officials are dealing with more than 100 years worth of collections.  To further complicate matters, many of these items have few clues which point to their origins, meaning that museum staff have to do heavy research to find the original owners.

Each piece must be indentified and those who are to receive them notified that the item is to be returned.  Unfortunately, unstaffed museums with limited resources are unable to do this in a timely and efficient manner.  Though the road ahead looks daunting, at least an effort is being made to send back these stolen artifacts and perhaps some of the damage that has been done over the years can be repaired.

Werwolfs

Nazi Guerrillas

 

My grandfather served on the Western Front during World War II, but he actually got there too late for the fighting. He was one of the final wave of soldiers that went over to Europe, and his military service was limited to the post-war occupation of Germany. I asked him once if he ever saw combat, and he said not really, but that his unit was pinned down by sniper fire once.

That sniper would have been a “Werwolf,” part of a last-ditch attempt by the Nazis to carry out a guerrilla campaign against the victorious allies, imitating the methods of the partisan forces that had been making things difficult for the Nazis themselves on the Eastern Front and elsewhere.

 

The idea of the Werwolf campaign was not to stage an ongoing guerrilla war after the Allies won, because the Nazis just couldn't accept the possibility that such a thing could even happen in the first place. What they were really supposed to do was just to slow the Allies down until the Nazis could recoup their losses and stage a massive counterattack, which at that point was just a fantasy. But Werwolf units were trained in guerrilla warfare, and some of them did try to continue the struggle after Germany's surrender.

 

They planted bombs and cut railroad tracks and staged sniper attacks from rooftops, like the one my grandfather ran into. It had no chance at all of success, but such was the intense fanaticism of some of the Nazi true believers.

 

 

Holding the Past Hostage

A long time ago, the tradition of stealing other people’s heritage was a strongly ingrained one, especially among imperial powers.  During the 1800s, archaeological artifacts were nothing more than the spoils of war or curiosities to be bought and sold.  Historians who recognized the value of these artifacts would usually take them back to their home countries where they would then be put on display at a museum or placed in a private collection.  This hundreds-of-years-old looting practice is causing some very modern problems, however, as countries demand to have their cultural heritage restored to them.

The most recent conflict involves the country of Turkey and three museums which hold artifacts that Turkey claims are theirs by right.  The New York Met, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum are all in possession of items which were obtained from Turkish sites.  How these museums came into possession of said artifacts is up for debate, though no doubt some of them were obtained quite legally.

In retaliation, the Turkish Ministry of Culture is refusing to allow any of their museum pieces to be lent to the three offending museums until the dispute is properly resolved.  This is causing stress to those who have organized exhibitions and been promised a loan of key pieces from Turkish museums.

The whole affair raises the question of whether it is more important for historical artifacts to be present in their home country or whether it is more beneficial that these items are somewhere that people can see and appreciate them.  I am no fan of selling archaeological remains on the black market, but pieces that have been in museums for more than 100 years and sales that were negotiated when the ownership of artifacts was a free market rather than a cultural preservation brings questions of circumstance to light.

These items are being seen by people who might never have otherwise had the opportunity to view them and are traveling to places that they most likely never would have.  What is better for the understanding of history – ownership or visibility?

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