08:00 Things are happening on the Russian steppes! Not in real life, but in my book. I get the book out, "The Horse, the Wheel and Language" by David W. Anthony, the book I got last month for my birthday.
the Indo-European "homeland" where the people who spoke
the English language's ancestor language were living 7,500 years ago
Our linguistic ancestors, the Indo-Europeans, who were speaking the English language's distant ancestral language 7,500 years ago - the people who first thought of the word "man", that we still use today - have finally started to wise up. It's 5,200 BC and they're beginning to think it might be a good idea to keep cattle and not just get their food from hunting, shooting, fishing, and foraging. They've noticed that their western neighbours, who have developed farming, generally have more food on their tables and are going to bed in a better mood.
a typical early farmer sitting down to a plate of meat
and getting ready to go to bed in a good mood
The move to farming from foraging happened around 5,200 BC - it started around the Dnieper River rapids, but eventually spread north and east to the rest of the "homeland" area.
The Indo-European homeland on the Russian steppes was probably also the first place in the world that horses were domesticated and eaten, at around 4800 BC. But why? Why bother to domesticate horses when you've already got cows?
The answer seems to be that horses were cheaper and easier to feed in the winter. It turns out that horses can use their hooves to break through snow and find grass to munch on, and they can also break ice on the surface of ponds, rivers etc and get a refreshing drink of water.
horses can knock through snow with their hooves and get at the grass!
Who's a clever boy then haha!!!
Cows and sheep on the other hand have to be kept going through the winter by being given food by the farmers. Sheep can graze on winter grass through soft snow, but if the snow becomes encrusted with ice, then their noses will get raw and bloody, and after that they would rather stand and starve in the field than try to get at the grass beneath - what madness!!!!
Cattle are even worse - if it's been snowing and they can't see the grass any more, they don't know what to do. They just stand around looking puzzled, and so the farmers have to go to a lot of trouble to get them fodder and thus keep them alive in the winter.
What madness (again) !!!!!
So horses were the ideal choice - simples! Who knew that, eh? [I expect a lot of people did - Ed]
09:00 Over a cup of tea I tell Lois about the horse's discovery that there was often grass under a field of apparent snow. We're sure that early man noticed this about horses ability to find grass under snow.
We discuss how sophisticated so-called primitive people were, as revealed in a recent Onion News story that went viral a few years ago.
ARDÈCHE, FRANCE—Saying that the recently discovered
figurative art sheds new light on prehistoric speculative conflict,
archaeologists working at France’s Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave announced Friday the
discovery of a 300-century-old painting of an adult European mammoth squaring
off against five sabre-toothed tigers.
“This well-preserved and surprisingly detailed illustration shows us that ancient humans, people we refer to as cavemen, were capable of surprisingly sophisticated thought and probing insight, asking themselves mankind’s oldest philosophical question: Who would win in a fight?” said prominent palaeolithic art expert Dr. David Whitley, noting that it was only a small intellectual step from sabretooth-versus-mammoth to such fundamental human debates as Hercules versus Gilgamesh, double-size Muhammed Ali versus one-tenth-size Godzilla, and the 1996 Bulls versus the 2012 Heat.
“It’s a question that has shaped and moulded all of human history. Also, I don’t care what this cave painting says—the mammoth would totally prevail unless it got, like, stuck in a tar pit.” Whitley refused to comment on the discovery of a second, somewhat more realistic mural, which seems to ask the question of how many Cro-Magnons it would take to drive the Neanderthals extinct.
The morale is simple, we think. Never underestimate the so-called "primitive mind"!
10:00 Lois and I go for a walk. Lois is very knowledgeable about nature, so she often treats me to a "nature ramble" where she uses examples on our route to make me more aware, which is nice! Today she showcases what she is is a nice "flowering currant" - I must try and remember: there'll be a test next time we step out - yikes!
Lois showcases a "flowering currant" in the ancient hedgerow
that borders the local football field on the road side
It's heart-warming that we've been actually getting some light rain today, after a drought of a few weeks. We just wish it could be warmer, seeing that it's almost the end of April now. The high temperature today is predicted to be only 50F (10C) - brrrrr!!!!
We give in to our worst instincts and buy a couple of hot chocolate drinks at the Whiskers Coffee stand next to the Parish Council offices, just to warm up a bit. My god!!!!
Lois gets our hot chocolates from the Whiskers Coffee stand
next to the Parish Council offices
we warm up with a hot chocolate each
on the parish's shiny new wooden bench - yum yum!
We don't order anything to eat. The odd thing about the lockdowns is that Lois is the one who has been putting on weight even though she's the active one of us - I mainly just sit around all day. We both weigh about the same now, 10 stone 4 lbs (144 lbs or 65 kilos), even though I'm 5 foot 10 and she's only 5 foot 3. How weird is that?!!
20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom. I settle down on the couch to watch the second half of a documentary on film-star Liz Taylor, that I started watching last night.
I wasn't intending to watch the second half of this programme, but I'm stuck for finding programmes that Lois doesn't like, so I decide to see this one through to the end after all, and I'm glad I did: it's actually very interesting and at times inspiring.
We take up the story when the shooting of "Cleopatra" starts in London in 1961.
I'd forgotten that Taylor became very ill with some sort of pneumonia problem when the first attempts were made to shoot "Cleopatra" in England - Taylor actually became so ill, there were fears that she might die. And we see the unexpurgated "Cleopatra" photo of her that clearly shows the tracheotomy scar after her operation. We also see pictures of her being carried on board a plane to take her back to the US after it was all over.
Taylor, as Cleopatra, but with her tracheotomy scar clearly visible
Taylor being carried onto a plane to the US after her operation
I hadn't realised that she suffered from poor-ish health all through her life, but overcoming these problems seemed to make her a stronger person each time. After her brush with death in 1961 she recalled later how she had felt so "bloody glad to be alive" and that she had begun to "exult in life".
After her marriage to her Cleopatra co-star, Richard Burton, she entered the best years of her emotional life, according to her friends. Burton loved to buy her expensive presents, including the yacht Kalizma, where the programme's next landmark photo was taken, as the couple cruised off the coast of Sardinia in 1967.
The next picture is Taylor in the next, less happy, phase of her life. She is pictured with Liza Minnelli and Betty Ford, wife of the ex-president, sitting on a sofa at a party at the Studio 54 club in New York, in May 1979. 3 years after her second (and final!) divorce from Burton.
According to Taylor's friends, the trio spent a few hours on this sofa just so photographers could get shots of them - it was not a happy era in Taylor's life, and she was just wishing she could "get up and go home", friends say. And all three women would be embarking, within a year of the photo being taken, on years of rehab for alcohol and drug addiction. But Taylor was, in the early 1980's, to become one of the first celebrities to have the courage to go public on her addiction problems.
The programme's next photo was taken at a speech by her to members of the US Senate in 1986. The AIDS crisis was in full swing, and she had lost her close friend, film star Rock Hudson, to the disease in 1985. She urged senators to commit more money to the campaign to fight AIDS. Friends remark, in tonight's programme, on how assured and powerful a person she had become by this time - and we see her here showcasing the full 1980's "power-dresser" look, the Dynasty-style shoulder pads, the big hair and the big earrings etc.
Taylor speaking in the US Senate in 1986
The next picture shows her after another health scare, when she had had an operation to remove a brain tumour in 1997. The picture clearly shows the scars from her operation, which she was fearlessly determined not to hide.
a photo of Taylor after her brain operation in 1997,
saying to her public, "I got through this - and you can do it too".
Fascinating stuff !!!!
21:15 Lois emerges from her zoom session, and we watch a bit of TV, but - as I write these words the following morning - I can't remember what we saw. Oh dear - is it perhaps the sherry?
"Forgot what watched" haha!!!!
I recall Katy's famous diary entry of "Forgot what did".
Maybe somebody could do some research on the days Katy can't remember, and produce a "posthumous" novel "What Katy Forgot What Did", with options on a sequel "What Katy Forgot Next What Did". But am I entering the world of fantasy here, perhaps? I'm not sure, the jury's still out on that one! If I remember, I'll let you know next time.
22:00 We go to bed, I remember that, haha - zzzzzzz!!!!
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