Happy Thanksgiving!

[anvil]

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

If there is a thread on this, please combine them.

Thanks

[ThomasPowers]

!Igualmente!

[Frosty]

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY!  2020 has been a rough year but the dark times makes the light times stand out more vividly. I have much to be thankful for.

For IFI members in other countries today is a celebration that was celebrated by the earliest European colonists to this one. It celebrated the abundant harvest of the new land and increased chance of surviving the winter. A land of plenty for people from less plentiful lands.

Today we celebrate our bountiful land and the opportunity presented to us all just by living here. We celebrate with parades, performances and a feast. The feast being the most symbolically important.

We don't live with a guarantee of success, just the opportunity to be successful IF we work for it. It's only in extreme times that the nation is less than bountiful. Those times pass and for that I'm thankful. 

One thing I'm very thankful for are my friends, met and unmet in person. You the tens of thousands of people who populate this forum, I count you all as friend, you'd have to do something truly evil to lose my friendship. I'm thankful for you, everywhere.

Be well everyone, everywhere.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Well said Frosty, Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

[George N. M.]

Ditto.  To expand on the quaint native traditions for folk around the world who may not be familiar with it as we quaint natives:  The feast is supposed to replicate what the settlers ("pilgrims") ate at their harvest feast in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1621.  Included are roast turkey, stuffing of various types which is often cooked within the bird, cranberries (similar to old world bog berries), potatoes (white and/or sweet), and pumpkin pie.  There are later additions such as green bean casserole (fresh, frozen, or canned green beans baked with a sauce based on canned cream of mushroom soup).  Most families have their own take on it an have their own traditional dishes in addition to the ones mentioned.  Also, there are regional variants, e.g. there may be significant differences between what is served in Alabama than in Minnesota.

I second what Frosty has said about the meaning of the day.  There is still a lot to be thankful for even in a very difficult year.  One thing that I am thankful for is this forum and all the people who have made a hard year a bit easier.  It is a bit odd to feel close to and thankful for so many people that I have never met face to face.  Hopefully, once this is over and people are travelling again and there are various events there will be more meet ups.

As the signs around here in Wyoming say, "Better times are coming, Cowpokes!"

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."  

[anvil]

Well said, all of you. Makes me proud to stand with you all.

May your clinkers always be small, and your fires always be hot!

[ThomasPowers]

Well except that the earliest European settlers in what is currently the USA were the Spanish! Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe (nps.gov) " Erected c. 1610, it is the oldest extant public building constructed by European settlers in the continental United States having survived four centuries of use and architectural evolution."

 

[anvil]

And yet, they celebrate Thanksgiving in Santa Fe to the day, often embellished with southwestern goodies.

[George N. M.]

Anvil:  The Anglo-Saxons referred to the man who stood beside them in the shield wall as "shoulder brother."  All of you here, male and female alike, are my shoulder brothers.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand." 

[anvil]

Absolutely!

[ThomasPowers]

Yes we are Americans after all and it's a national holiday.  I was just quibbling with "that was celebrated by the earliest European colonists to this one"  as the Spanish were building government buildings that have lasted over 400 years a decade before the Pilgrims arrived.   Luckily we are not in the next country to the North where the first Europeans might be eating Lutefisk and kæstur hákarl,  NOT something to be thankful for!

[George N. M.]

Of course, if we a talking about permanent European settlers we would have to be eating amphibians and quiche (to perpetuate a stereotype) if we were one country to the north.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[ThomasPowers]

And there are always my ancestors who walked over to the Americas...

[Shabumi]

What about the Polynesians/Maori who made it by raft to South America before the landbridge(supposedly)? I believe the Blackfeet tribe has the current claim to to oldest DNA in the America's. They have a haplogroup that is found nowhere else except in the pacific seafaring peoples.

 https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2019/05/06/blackfeet-man-dna-deemed-oldest-americas-cri-genetics/3145410002/

To help validate this theory, the sweet potato, a new world crop, had naturalized in the Philippines and south east Asia before written history. Now my question is, did they bring marshmallows with them for their Thanksgiving feast?

[Frosty]

Yeah, I was expecting to be called on the "earliest" statement, it happened refreshingly quickly.

There were people living this side of both ponds long before the last ice age. The "Fulsom" points are all over this continent and are remarkably similar to Salutrean points in Europe. The Salutrean Hypothesis is pretty compelling and has a lot of evidence to support it. 

Wait a second! I said BEFORE the last ice age didn't I? There are human fossils that date well earlier and have numerous Polynesian features. There are the very old human fossils found on Catalina Island off the California coast. There human fossils found in the Labrea Tar pits that seem to predate the last glacial maximum and those aren't from the lower levels of the excavations. 

Personally I think humans have pretty well been everywhere a lot longer ago than is known now. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[anvil]

To add to the digression from Happy Thanksgiving, let's not forget the Vikings who were smelting iron along the north east coast around the 9th century. Sorry, I don't have the exact date handy. To put it into perspective of the Southwest this was around the time of the Anazi cultures.

[Frosty]

Oh another tidbit, a large % of bronze age copper has been traced through spectral analysis to the UP of Michigan's rich copper deposits. We aren't talking some artefacts we're talking multi ton loads and on site smelters producing the hide shaped ingots. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

I've always though that "Time to get out of Dodge!"  concept predated Dodge by a loooooong time!

Of course; I've been to the Black Water Draw dig near Clovis NM  where the Folsom points were found in situ.  Weather must have been much nicer back then...(It's possible to visit both the Black Water Draw and the Trinity Site in the same day with quite a bit of driving.  Sort of bracketing weapons technologies...)

I was happy to read that finds that predate Folsom are now being accepted; usually because we have better dating techniques; hard to argue with a well supported date! Unfortunately the earliest sites are probably underwater as the ocean level was 300' lower during the ice age and walking along the beach is a great way to travel if you are foraging for food as you go!

[Frosty]

I was intrigued by how many more Clovis and Folsom culture sites are found on the east coast. There are sites that date very easily on the Mississippi delta because of the regular flood deposits. It seems you can't dig a ditch near Chesapeake Bay without turning up points from Salutrean type evolving to Clovis, depends on how deep the ditch is of course. Nebraska, Hudson Bay, every darned where. 

There is a lens capping the culture's presence containing meteoric diamond and nickel iron micro spherules and ash, right at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, 12,900 bpe. Coincidence perhaps?

Modern tech is making paleo anything, so much easier to make better estimations of conditions and such. 

Do you walk stream beds and the base of hills after a rain? 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

I'm sorry what is this "rain" you mention?  We get weather forecasts with things like .02" of rain... I do like walking the arroyo but haven't seen any artifacts so far.  I live in the Rio Grande river deposits area, along with loess. 

[Frosty]

I remember rainfalls that turned to steam on contact with the ground without making it damp. The smell is distinct and you can feel your skin relax with the humidity then tighten back up as the moisture disperses. I experienced one of those rainfalls that cut arroyos in a few minutes if there isn't one there already. We used to dirt bike in the Mojave, weekends and got caught by a cloudburst. We saw it coming and made sure we were on ground above flood marks but not high enough to be lighting rods. We hoped. It rained so hard it hurt for about 10 minutes and the flash floods lasted better than an hour. 

Never occurred to us to look for arrowheads or fossils. Dumb kids. <sigh>

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

We get the "Virga"; where you can see rain falling from a cloud; but it evaporates before it hits the ground.

[Frosty]

We get that here all the time, especially against the Talkeetna mountains just north of us. They block the rain if it's not serious about it, makes for good shows here while folk living in the foothills are getting wet or misted. 

I LOVE weather over the mountains, it can be less fun living with it though. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

In Northern climes it can be more sublimation rather than evaporation.

[Shabumi]

I happen to be one of those in the foothills, though much further south in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  I love the mists and rains, though the coolest weather I've seen would be the cloudless blizzard I was caught in when I was walking home from school as a teen. It was a clear blue sky, but the pressure and temperature changed so quick that all the moisture in the air froze and created a whiteout blizzard for 15 minutes. I had to take refuge under a blackberry thicket and my hands and lips cracked almost immediately from the cold, but afterwards the air was crisp and clean, and there were tiny ice motes floating around. It looked like glitter caught on the wind. Its the only time I've seen that weather phenomenon, and was the talk of the town for a few months.