I can’t get enough of this stuff. Reading every book by Thor Heyerdahl I could find, gave me an idea of his theories concerning the ethnologic history of the Pacific. What I didn’t know was that more and more interested people keep coming up with theories and evidence strengthening the hypothesis. With today’s genetic proof the plot thickens quite a bit. This is my real nerdy side I guess. Too bad Heyerdahl passed in 2002, oh well …

Polynesian Pathways

Genetics Rewrites Pacific Prehistory

Genetic Evidence

Some Background on the Harappa People

Easter Island – Indus Valley Script

Route Harappa – Polynesia?

Early Americans helped colonise Easter Island

However, Thorsby’s findings don’t mean that Heyerdahl’s ideas have been vindicated. The first settlers to Polynesia came from Asia, and they made the biggest contribution to the population. ‘Heyerdahl was wrong,’ Thorsby says, ‘but not completely.’

What??! I don’t recall reading one single line by Heyerdahl that suggested exclusive colonization of Polynesia from South-America. Contrary – during Thor Heyerdahl’s lifetime – it was the established scholars who claimed exclusive exploration of the pacific islands eastward, from Southeast Asia. Despite the abundance of confirming findings – in biology, anthropology, nautical science and archeology – that he presented. In Indians and Old Asians in the Pacific he explained the Japan Current and the likely connection between East Asia and the American Northwest. Further, the ethnographic connections of the Northwest, Hawai’i and New Zealand Heyerdahl drew, have now been confirmed by fellow scientists, as displayed following the links above.

Speaking of Asia as a place of origin, the Southeast Asia theory of old, viewing the Lapita Culture as the ancestors of the Polynesians, has been replaced with Taiwan (through Heyerdahl’s Japan Current) – even by today’s academics. Putting Lapita on the western border and Taiwanese descendents at the center of Polynesia.

Not only have natural catastrophes changed the course of history, but there is much that has been lost to conquering tribes. This is not to say the defeated did not contribute to the resultant culture. Their language and history may have been lost, but genetic and cultural elements of that pre-existing culture remain. The victorious tribe does not make an effort to tell the history of the vanquished, but they glean what they can use and trash the rest. Therefore when attempting to use language to trace the history of man, we must remember it will only tell us half the story.

The Polynesians are the product of many encounters, with tribes of differing backgrounds, that is why their early history has so many conflicting stories. It is also why they are culturally rich. They did not come from one place, but they came from many places. They as a culture were created in the Pacific.
The Polynesians are a combination of fragments of civilizations from both east and west, with a history going back a very long way. The Hawaiian genealogy goes back to Lai Lai who existed 16,000 years ago, but unfortunately such stories have, sadly, been passed off as mere folklore.
Due to their isolation, people on the scattered isles of the Pacific have retained cultural traits from their ancestral civilizations. Isolated island communities are in some ways veritable time capsules of past civilizations, with certain belief systems dating back over 12,000 years. By comparing cultural traits throughout the region and identifying what they have in common, we can start to build up a picture of what these ancient civilizations were once like. To ignore these connections is to ignore a veritable treasure trove of information. I have merely scratched the surface in this article and much work is yet to be done. Unfortunately 140m of water, tens of metres of sediments and the passage of time make it very hard to piece together this most interesting period of human prehistory.

Quote from Conclusion by Peter Marsh

Yesterday I had the idea to create a twitter account posting links that document life (mostly images) under Keynesian Economics.

I had realized it’s not so much the artist, designer or architect that decides the style of an era, but the conditions, the societies that these creatives are working in.

Some person may be a natural born architect. But what the buildings actually look like is much more dictated by the times than by the individual. The same guy working under Louis XIV would build different things than, say, in the mid-century-modern era – which I call the Keynes-Era.

Style is of course just one aspect of life. But it’s the first thing you realize that is changing between eras. And we see much more than skirt lengths in fashion photos. We see if women wore veils or burkas in the mid-east in 1958.

Photos transport moods, especially in everyday, real life scenes – by professional photographers as well as hobbyists. And the attention which hobbies themselves do get in the media, does also say something about a culture.

A picture says more than a thousand words. Many of these words are about the life, the people, the conditions, few about the creators. The director who understands that, like Jean-Luc Godard, has a greater chance to shape an era than the one with a more individualistic theme, say, Woody Allen.

link to vimeo

I’m following TK Smith’s creations on Flickr and his blog. Now he created a completely originally designed guitar and it looks like something I would play. I know I like the sound of his pick-ups in Teles and Höfners and what have you. Maple is a great wood for Rockabilly guitar bodies. The thing I don’t get yet are those odd strap attachment-devices.

TK Smith » Blog Archive » The Chambered Maple Pancake Guitar.

Stream the Entire New Trabants Album, Cinematic – Allston Pudding

[soundcloud params=”auto_play=false&show_comments=false”]https://soundcloud.com/trabants/sets/cinematic-6[/soundcloud]

by Lluis Fuzzhound (contemporary)

on Vimeo

The culture was already in a state of decline. I find this text by Jared Diamond on the topic very interesting.

I suspect, though, that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper. After all, there are those hundreds of abandoned statues to consider. The forest the islanders depended on for rollers and rope didn’t simply disappear one day-it vanished slowly, over decades. Perhaps war interrupted the moving teams; perhaps by the time the carvers had finished their work, the last rope snapped. In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation.

Here’s the full text: Jared Diamond, Easter Island’s End

Next merch item with my artwork:
The Enchanted Sea – Skateboard Deck from Zazzle.com

For some subconscious reason I just decided to start collecting farewell notes from websites.

Eye of the Goof

The Eye Closes
After giving it much consideration over the past month or so, I’ve decided to shut down this weblog. My life has changed a lot over the past 18 months, and unfortunately, my interest in blogging did not survive the transition. …

surfblog.de

One week…
…to go. Dann Praktikum fertig. Dann ab Richtung Leon zu Malte ins Haus, bissl Overcrowded Moliets antun und dann Eva nach San Sebastian bringen. Sie bleibt 3 Monate dort, ich darf zum 01.09. wieder nach Aachen nochmal 9 Wochen Praktikum machen
Für November/Dezember muss ich mir dann noch was überlegen. -> Hey Björn, wie sieht eure Afrika-Geschichte aus?

eXotica Releases Overview 5 Beta

fading out The “eXotica Releases Overview”
for more than 6 years, I have been curating This “eXotica Releases Overview”, and i’m getting tired of it, it has become a drag. From now on, there might be longer intervals inbetween updates, and I probably won’t be adding as many new titles or comments as I used to do.

CUEBURN

After nearly two years of inactivity it’s pretty clear there’s no time to tend this plot on the Internet. So, no new posts, and more unfortunately, no time to respond to requests for re-ups. Hope you’ve enjoyed what was here while it was here, and perhaps some day there will be hours to come back and continue.

-Soapy-

Office Naps

A note to kind Office Naps readers
DJ Little Danny
15. Mrz 2009, 06:53
Some of you have noticed that your author, who has made it a habit to drop things for months at a time, then to only suddenly reappear like that errant stepfather, has done it again.

A bit of explanation. When one’s waking hours are spent pitch-adjusting blue audograph discs or wondering whether more time shouldn’t be spent with something called digiprov, other things – important things – perspective, for one, updating music blogs, another – tend to get pushed aside. Healthier souls, even in their busiest stretches, commit themselves to at least some daily moment of relaxation or favorite activity. The word, I think, is balance. That’s something I’ve never much messed around with.

But Office Naps is something that we record collectors strive for. An unmediated, unregulated forum for our collections, simply, and an audience there to pay the tiniest bit of attention. Believe me, having someone, anyone, to listen to your music and your various exhortations about music is a true pleasure. And you, readers, you’re more than just anyone, you’re the best.

Which is to say I’ll be back. Just give me another month or two.

much love,
Little Danny

The good people at TED dedicated a whole website to the plastic pollution problem. Here’s a video I just watched there featuring the Malloy brothers reporting from their extensive visits to countless beaches and surf breaks all around the world.