As we’ve reported here before, modern man isn’t the only one who has gone to the dentist. 4,500-year-old bones were found in Mexico which contained dentures made from jaguar or wolf fangs. George Washington hated his ivory dentures?he would have really hated these!
Archeologists think the teeth may have only been ceremonial, a way of conveying animal strength to the human wearing them.
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South America’s Aymara Indians of Bolivia, Peru and Chile, have a reverse concept of time: for them, the past is ahead and the future behind. A time traveler might think this way.
A Jesuit wrote in the early 1600s that the Aymara language was particularly useful for abstract ideas, and in the 19th century it was called the “language of Adam.” Maybe it is the language of the birds. It’s the first language in the world that linguists know of that does not place the future in front and the past behind.
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Computers aren’t just used to figure out the present?they can also predict the future. Supercomputers play out various scenarios having to do with global warming?and asteroid impacts. You can be sure that the scenario in Iraq was played out on superocomputers before we invaded. It’s one way scientists can know what to do, in case the worst happens. Now a supercomputer has simulated how to keep the earth safe from an asteroid impact. This is what killed the dinosaurs and it?s almost inevitable that it will eventually wipe us out as well?unless we’re prepared.
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We’re used to being judged as second-rate among first-world countries, when it comes to health care, but at least we’re number one when it comes to universities. But we DO have an emergency, when it comes to our emergency services.
International educational experts say we have the best universities of all, based on Nobel prizes won and peer-reviewed articles published by professors. The list ranks Harvard University as number one in the world. The next is Cambridge in the UK, with Oxford coming in at tenth place.
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