Wars and ConflictsΜύ permalink
Are the Longheads assured of Victory?
This discussion has been closed.
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Message 1.Μύ
Posted by Amphion (U3338999) on Tuesday, 18th March 2008
Professor Arthur keith, in a lecture to the members of the Royal Institution on Tuesday on "Sea power as a factor in the evolution of the races," referred to the pre-denomination of the long-headed races of Western Europe over those of the roundheaded races of Central Europe. He showed by interesting diagrams, maps, and figures how the long-headed and long-haired race, Portugese race, and the Spaniards after them, and then the British had expanded their possessions by means of their long-range boats.
"Of the eight millions population of Canada," he said, "Six millions are British. In regard to the United States, out of its 119 millions of people, no fewer than sixty millions are of British type, while the German population in America is only fifteen million.
"Thus there is no fear of the long-headed race suffering extinction at the hands of the roundheads. The safe position is only brought about by the wonderfully increasing sea power which we have exercised during the last fifty years. (17th March 1917)
Is it possible that President Bush considered these findings prior to the invasion of Iraq? -
Message 2
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Tuesday, 18th March 2008
Thus there is no fear of the long-headed race suffering extinction at the hands of the roundheads.Μύ
What about the pinheads? -
Message 3
Posted by Volgadon (U10843893) on Tuesday, 18th March 2008
Oh, so what were all those people I saw in Britain with rotund faces?
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Message 4
Posted by Volgadon (U10843893) on Tuesday, 18th March 2008
Doesn't it seems more logical that Porutgal, Spain and Britain became maritime powers because of an extensive seaboard? If you control the seas, you control trade.
BTW, what is the typical physiology in the Netherlands?
That professor has my vote for hack of the year. -
Message 5
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 18th March 2008
Arthur Keith might have had some crazy ideas by modern anthropological standards (his publicising of the Piltdown Man as genuine didn't help his reputation there) but he had the decency throughout a long and distinguished career of being the first to hold his hand up and admit a mistake, often long before anyone else had even spotted it. He could also be remarkably succinct and accurate in his observations, even if he knew that stating them would not be deemed politically correct.
As late as 1947 he was still shocking the RI and others with bold statements like;
"Hitler's policy with regard to Jews was not wrong by evolutionary standards, he simply made three cardinal mistakes with regard to its application"
and the amazingly prophetic;
"There has been a mandatory Power in Palestine for well nigh thirty years; the British taxpayer has spent upwards of Β£100,000,000 in maintaining it; and under it things have ever moved from bad to worse. No power on earth will suppress the resolution and raciality of the Jews."
which went on;
"The present critical situation in Palestine gives the Jews in general, and the Zionists in particular, an opportunity of making an unprecedentedly generous gesture to humanity, all the world over; to abandon their resolve to become the dominant power in Palestine, to acknowledge the lawful possession of that land by the Arabs who are native to it; to cease in demanding the mandatory " pound of flesh " from Britain, for ultimately it has to be cut from the living Arab; and to make terms with the Palestinians for all the rights and privileges which can be enjoyed by a guest people. The only alternative that I can see is a bloody and prolonged war." -
Message 6
Posted by Volgadon (U10843893) on Tuesday, 18th March 2008
Nothing prophetic, especially in 1947 it was quite obvious.
Keith sounds like a hack with a few good insights (few & far between) outside of his chosen field. -
Message 7
Posted by Volgadon (U10843893) on Tuesday, 18th March 2008
What shape is his face? -
Message 8
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 18th March 2008
Keith sounds like a hack with a few good insights (few & far between) outside of his chosen field.
Μύ
Try reading some of his books first. It appears you're judging him rather hastily on the basis of a misrepresentative piece about him quoted in the first message here. The "long headed" seafarers, for example, were a favourite of the anthropologist A.H. Keane, who died in 1912. His theories regarding a preponderance of "long headed" types in the predominant races of the world was one subscribed to by many other anthropologists for several decades after his death. Arthur Keith cannot be blamed in 1917 for citing the idea as a given fact, and should be commended for his courage in being one of the first anthropologists in the 1930s to essentially destroy Keane's simplistic and incorrect assumptions.
Keane was no hack either, by the way. Simply a man of his time struggling to apply Darwinian theory to human evolution.
I'm amazed no one here seems to have heard of Sir Arthur Keith before. -
Message 9
Posted by Volgadon (U10843893) on Wednesday, 19th March 2008
Ok, Nordmann, I'll take your advice and read his books.
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Message 10
Posted by RedGuzzi750 (U7604797) on Wednesday, 19th March 2008
Nord I had heard quite a bit of him, human evolution being an interest of mine. Only a sub-interest though - palaeontology used to be a hobby of mine. Quite a few years ago I read Stephen Jay Gould's book on the Piltdown Hoax (good book), which did not point the bone at Keith, but saw him as a bit of a dupe. As anyone might have been in his position. Even you or me.
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Message 11
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 19th March 2008
At one time Galley Hill man was also almost as renowned and believed as Piltdown Man. Keith was an ardent advocate of both as proofs of "missing link" stages in human development. Yet when Galley Hill man was proven to have been hopelessly optimistically ante-dated and was really a much more recent specimen of human habitation in Britain it was Keith who led the vanguard of anthropologists who publicised the error, even though he knew it invalidated much of what he had written in the 1920s and made him look rather a fool.
This links to a collection of essays from 1947 (in which much of what I quoted above was first recorded). Piltdown Man was still believed by Keith, but his analysis of humanity as a creature whose limitations are as much genetic as geographical in its early development is still relevant - and as fresh - when read today.
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Message 12
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 19th March 2008
Re: Message 11 and also the former messages.
Nordmann,
what an interesting place these messageboards are. During the last five years I learned a lot from them especially by persons as for instance you. It pushed me as for instance by lol beeble to do research to understand of what was said.
I read the URL that you mentioned, first the chapters completely, as the first chapters were the most interesting ones. It is a complete book. But then by lacking time trying to spot the most "essential" things among the "vast" rest.
Indeed the scattering of the small groups isolated from each other with inbreeding fastening the evolution of certain "good" characteristics for the survival of the small group is an interesting theory. And the best of these small groups made it into the later competition when they met other small groups. So have I understood it in my first quick reading
.
But later in the other chapters he adheres in my humble opinion some theories that already long ago are debunked? "Nation" is an old-fashioned concept nowadays, which is only remaining in some small minded persons not yet understanding that the world is nowadays "our village" (tribe, nation, country, brotherhood). And what is all that tripe about race, caucasians, "Blut und Boden". I agree it can be the very beginning of mankind as he describes, but to extend it behind the city states is not fair, again in my humble opinion. As even from the trio: Babylonians, Hittites, Egyptians there were already "political" reasons available to explain the discordance and not the race, nationalism, or whatever you want to call it, features.
No, I smell a kind of Nazism into all it, already far behind by the modern knowledge and sociology, again in my humble understanding, if not misunderstood by the "quick reading".
And yes, even the MBU's, Mini Business Units, that managers tried to ground to spark competition and greater rate of return in the factory are "undermined" by the common sense of those people not wanting to integrate into struggle and above the heads of those MBU's seeking for a greater coordination of the "whole" factory, also for a greater rate of return of the "whole" factory. Not to speak about the "unions" defending the common interests of all the "people" spread over these MBU's. I saw some managers with the "Japanese" book as if it was "the Bible"...
Nordmann, perhaps my comparison is a bit or completely invalid, but it was the first thing, which sprang to mind when reading the URL you provided .
Warm regards,
Paul.
PS. I thank again especially you and also the other contributors for the high level of some of these debates on these Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ History messageboards.
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