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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| It's not often I'll bother with History (as in The History Channel), because, every time I saw something from them, it was WWII or aliens or aliens causing WWII. Okay, that's not fair. There were also Secret Bible Codes, some of them put in there by aliens. I'll give 'em a chance with this one. Did the Trojan Horse Really Exist?  Some writers have struggled to rationalize the Trojans' gullibility. Well, it's a legitimate question, I suppose. I think the importance of the Trojan Horse lies in its metaphor, whether it existed in consensus reality or not. Like with Eden or Atlantis. The story of the Trojan Horse has been celebrated for thousands of years as a tale of cunning deception... To the victor, as they say, go the spoils, as well as the ability to write history to make you look good and the enemy look like a bunch of fools. I'm going to assume everyone here knows about the Trojan Horse. If not, there's always the linked article. But at least one later Greek writer was struck by the gullibility of the Trojans in falling for this obvious ploy. The second-century geographer Pausanias described it as anoia—"folly" or "utter silliness." What might not be obvious from the article is that there's a 1500-year gap between the generally accepted time of the Trojan War and the time of Pausanias. 1500 years is, by any measure, a long time. Think about what you know about what happened fifteen centuries ago, during the sixth century C.E. Just why the Trojans were fooled by the Trojan Horse, without first checking inside it for enemy warriors, is more complicated than it may seem. Well, for starters, we know about the Horse due to an epic that included gods, sorcery, and an epic love triangle. Of those, the only thing I'd give any credence to is the love triangle, and even that was most likely exaggerated for effect. “But it’s myth,” Burgess says, adding, “The wooden horse is not nearly as strange or fantastic as most of the story.” Like I said. Homer doesn't actually say much about the Trojan Horse. As the article notes, that particular story was added to later on. Virgil gets mentioned, of course, but even Virgil was over a thousand years later. University of Oxford classicist Armand D'Angour, author of The Greeks and the New: Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience, says archaeology indicates a war destroyed Troy VI—the sixth of nine ancient city layers discovered during excavations at Hisarlık near Turkey's Aegean coast. What the article seems to leave out is that the Troy excavation was the beginning of modern archaeology, and as far as I know, the best we can do is say this might have been Homer's Troy. That suggests Homer's epics contain echoes of true events, and the Trojan Horse may be one of them. Yeah, that's pretty damn common with myths and other ancient stories. The trick is figuring out which elements are factual and which are fictional. But even the fictional ones have meaning for us, which is what elevates it to mythological status. It's like historians trying to decide who the historical King Arthur was, or wondering who were the real Romeo and Juliet. Regardless of the answer, those stories are dug in deep in the soil of our collective consciousness, at least here in the West. "I like the theory that the 'horse' was based on the notion of a wooden siege engine covered in horse hides," D'Angour says. Back when I was in high school, trying to read Virgil in the original Latin, that's the interpretation I remember my teacher favoring. I don't know if it's true or not, but it tracks with what I know of the history of warfare, and it doesn't involve gods or monsters. There are also suggestions that Troy VI was destroyed by an earthquake, in which case the Trojan Horse could have symbolized such a disaster: Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, was also the god of horses and earthquakes. And so I learned something new (to me) about Poseidon. D'Angour doesn't think the Trojan Horse was an earthquake, but he reasons there may have been some truth in the story. "What a feat of imagination that would be, if there were in fact no material counterpart," he says. And yet, humans are capable of such feats of imagination. We know this. Just read fiction or watch a movie. Humans haven't changed all that much in 3000+ years (though society and technology certainly have). According to Virgil, a Trojan priest of Apollo named Laocoön warned of danger, declaring "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”—Latin, which means “I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts” in English. And I'm just including this bit because I've seen some confusion as to the origin of the phrase "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." It wasn't Homer. And also so I can make this pun: if you made it this far, you know I don't really have an overarching point, so you may be disappointed. I don't charge for this service, though, so beware of geeks bearing gifts. |
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