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America .. Blaming the victims

American Women Pay More to Give Birth than British Royalty—But Receive Worse Care

This is a sad commentary on the myth of "American Excellence". Americans pay around double what the other industrialized nations pay, per person, for health care, yet America is ranked twenty-sixth in the World for the quality of health care it's citizens receive.

From Sy Mukherjee's article at Think Progress:


"On Tuesday, Elizabeth Rosenthal of the New York Times  tweetedout, “British royal born in fanciest ward :$15000. Average US birth: billed $30,000; paid $18,000. What’s wrong here?” Rosenthal has her numbers right — and to answer her question, what’s wrong is that the U.S. system of medical care charges patients on a fee-for-service basis without giving consumers transparent pricing information. Worse yet, Americans don’t even receive particularly high-quality maternal care in exchange for their outsized medical bills.

Rosenthal’s tweet leads to a  detailed analysis she did for the New York Times in June. She found that hospitals charge about $30,000 for a vaginal delivery and newborn care, and C-sections cost closer to $50,000. Insurers only pay $18,000 to $28,000 on average for those services — and out-of-pocket costs for women with insurance, which used to be almost nothing, have risen to an average of $3,400 today:

The biggest reason for this disparity is the American medical culture, in which doctors have a perverse incentive to perform as many procedures as possible since they can bill for each test and treatment.

For instance, the American Academy of Family physicians released a list of 90 most common unnecessary procedures that  includes expensive C-section deliveries for healthy women before 39 weeks of pregnancy. Consumer groups  point out that the rates of these C-sections have skyrocketed without many discernible health benefits, as have ultrasounds after 24 weeks of pregnancy, and early epidurals.

But for all the money that Americans spend on maternity care, newborns in the United States still die at a higher rate than babies in other industrialized nations. In fact, Save the Children  found that 11,300 U.S. babies die on their first day of life, which is a 50 percent higher first-day mortality rate than all other industrialized countries included in its study combined. 

[READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT ALTERNET]

"Zealot:" The Real Jesus

Reprinted with thanks from Salon

Very little is known about the historical Jesus, as opposed to the Jesus of myth who appears in the New Testament. He is mentioned by the 1st-century historian Flavius Josephus in reference to his brother, James, who led Jesus’ followers after his death. Two second-century Roman historians, Tacitus and Pliny, also refer to Jesus’ arrest and execution in discussing the movement he founded. Other than that, we have to rely on biblical writings, particularly the gospels — the earliest of which (Mark) was written down almost 40 years after Jesus’ death. None of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses to the events described; they’re based on oral and perhaps some written traditions. Much of contemporary biblical scholarship involves parsing and triangulating the various accounts to surmise which bits are the oldest and most likely to represent some real event or statement by Jesus himself.

This, of course, hasn’t stopped anyone from trying to reconstruct a historical account of Jesus’ life, however speculative it must necessarily be. The latest to try is Reza Aslan, a professor of creative writing with a background in religious studies, which seems like just about the right configuration of skills. Aslan is best known for “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam” and his appearances on “The Daily Show,” but his literary talent is as essential to the effect of “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” as are his scholarly and journalistic chops. This book, he explains in an author’s note, is the result of “two decades of rigorous academic research into the origins of Christianity.” It’s also a vivid, persuasive portrait of the world and societies in which Jesus lived and the role he most likely played in both.

Any account of the historical Jesus has to be more argument than fact, but some arguments are sounder than others. Aslan wants to “purge” the scriptural accounts of “their literary and theological flourishes and forge a far more accurate picture of the Jesus of history.” The picture he uncovers is very different from the now-common view of an unworldly pacifist preaching a creed of universal love and forgiveness. Instead, Aslan’s Jesus is a provincial peasant turned roving preacher and insurrectionist, a “revolutionary Jewish nationalist” calling for the expulsion of Roman occupiers and the overthrow of a wealthy and corrupt Jewish priestly caste. Furthermore, once this overthrow was achieved, Jesus probably expected to become king.

The most fascinating aspect of “Zealot” is its portrait of the political and social climate of Jesus’ day, 70 years or so after the conquest of Judea by Rome, an event that ended a century of Jewish self-rule. The Romans replaced the last in a series of Jewish client-kings with a Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, when Jesus was in his 20s, but even Pilate ruled by working closely with the aristocratic priestly families that controlled the Temple in Jerusalem and thereby all of Jewish politics. This elite reaped great wealth from the sacrifices the faithful were required to offer in the Temple, as well as taxes and tributes. In the provinces, noble families used the tax and loan systems to seize and consolidate the lands of subsistence farmers. They also began to adopt the customs of the pagan occupiers.

The dispossessed migrated to cities in search of work or roamed the countryside causing trouble. Some of them, called “bandits” by the Romans, robbed the wealthy (who were often seen as impious) and rallied the poor and discontented. They invariably offered religious justifications for their activities; many claimed to be the messiah, the prophesied figure who would eject the foreigners, raise up the oppressed, punish the venal rich and restore the Jews to supremacy in their promised land. Although Jesus himself wasn’t such a “bandit,” he definitely fit the well-known type of apocalyptic Jewish holy man, so commonplace in the countryside that the Greek philosopher Celsus wrote a parody version, a wild-eyed character running around shouting, “I am God, or the servant of God, or a divine spirit. But I am coming, for the world is already in the throes of destruction. And you will soon see me coming with the power of heaven.”

The legitimacy of all of these figures was founded on zeal, which Aslan characterizes as “a strict adherence to the Torah and the Law, a refusal to serve any foreign master — to serve any human master at all — and an uncompromising devotion to the sovereignty of God,” just like “the prophets and heroes of old.” Although the Zealot Party would not exist for a few more decades, most insurrectionists of the time — including Jesus — could be rightly called zealots. They revered the Torah and honored its many rules and regulations. The most fanatical of such groups, such as the Sicarii, practiced a form of terrorism, attacking members of the Jewish ruling class, even assassinating the high priest within the precincts of the Temple itself, “shouting their slogan ‘No lord but God!’”

Aslan points out that crucifixion was a punishment the Romans reserved for political criminals, and that the men hung on crosses next to Jesus’ are described with a word often mistranslated as “thieves” but that in fact indicates “rebel-bandit.” The placard “King of the Jews” hung on Jesus’ cross was meant not to mock his ambitions but to name his offense; using that title or claiming to be the messiah amounted to a treasonous declaration against the authority of Rome and the Temple.

Aslan also insists that the parable of the Good Samaritan is less concerned with the Samaritan’s compassion than it is with the “baseness of the two priests” who passed by the injured man in the road before the Samaritan stopped to help him. It was a class critique as much as an exhortation to help one’s neighbors. He also dismisses the gospels’ depiction of Jesus’ trial, with its reluctant magistrate, as “absurd to the point of comedy,” given that the historical Pilate never showed anything but contempt for the Jews and sentenced hundreds of politically troublesome people to the cross without a second thought.

How was Jesus, this “zealous Galilean peasant and Jewish nationalist who donned the mantle of the messiah and launched a foolhardy rebellion against the corrupt Temple priesthood and the vicious Roman occupation,” transformed into the incarnation of God, a being who sacrificed his life to mystically redeem the souls of all mankind? This new Jesus, Aslan asserts, was largely the invention of Paul, who never met the man he would celebrate as his savior (though he claimed to speak often with the “risen Christ”), and Paul’s theological heirs.

Paul clashed with James, John and Peter, who led the core of Jesus’ following after his death. Theirs was a deeply Jewish community centered in Jerusalem, where it awaited its founder’s return and the restoration of God’s kingdom on earth. Paul instead opted to convert and minister to gentiles as well as Jews in Rome and beyond. In the year 70, the ferment in Palestine finally erupted in a full-fledged revolt and then Roman reprisals. Ultimately, the Temple, Jerusalem and the holy city’s occupants were destroyed, and with these the Jewish core of Jesus’ followers. By default, it was Paul’s version of Jesus’ teachings — Christianity — that survived, splintering off from Judaism and incorporating many ideas from Hellenistic philosophy.

This is a credible account, and one that raises a provocative question: Just how much of Christianity has anything to do with Jesus? In many respects, Paul seems to have been the more visionary leader. Somewhat bafflingly, Aslan remarks in his author’s note that he finds Jesus the man “every bit as compelling, charismatic and praiseworthy as Jesus the Christ” — by which he means the divine figure who presides over Christian theology. I suppose that “the man” is more human and accessible, but he is also not especially exceptional, original or innovative.

Although Aslan never explicitly states as much, the parallels to today — to certain deeply religious and nationalist Muslims who zealously strive to cast out foreign occupiers and corrupt clerics — are hard to ignore, especially when Aslan describes Sicarii shouting, “No lord but God!” Perhaps “Zealot” is partly intended to make today’s zealots seem less alien and scary, or perhaps it’s meant to suggest that all religions go through a process of maturation that simply takes time. If so, I’m not sure it works. The historical Jesus’ call for justice is stirring, but the xenophobic and theocratic society he allegedly advocated is not — in fact, it sounds a lot like what the worst of (so-called) Christians seek today. I may not be a Christian myself, but even I can see that Jesus the Christ stands for something better than that.

Author: Laura Miller

Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site, magiciansbook.com.

Australian builders unearth urban trove of 50 million year-old fossils

Australian builders doing roadworks have uncovered a rare urban trove of crocodile and other fossils thought to be around 50 million years old, officials said Tuesday. The fossils, trapped in a layer of oil shale, were found during excavation works near Brisbane’s Geebung railway station at a depth of about 15 metres (49 feet), according to city mayor Graham Quirk.

“The bones have been identified as from ancient crocodiles, as well as other significant material including fish, freshwater shells and plant impressions,” said Quirk. Geoscientists were called in to examine the find, which Queensland Museum chief executive Suzanne Miller described as “particularly significant”.

(Read the full story here)

The Mysterious Connection Between Sirius and Human History

I first read about the Dogons and Sirius (the Dog Star) over fifty years ago, as a teenager. It was fascinating them and is just as fascinating now, as I learn more about the Sirius-Human connection. There also appears to be a connection between Humans and the Orion cluster, where Orion's Belt points directly to Sirius, but that's another story.

 

Now, on to Sirius:

"Sirius is located in the constellation Canis Major – also known as the Big Dog – and is therefore known as the “dog star”. It is over twenty times brighter than our sun and is twice as massive. At night time, Sirius is the brightest star in the sky and its blue-white glare never failed to amaze star gazers since the dawn of time. No wonder Sirius has been revered by practically all civilizations. But is there more to Sirius than meets the eye?

Artifacts of ancient civilizations have revealed that Sirius was of a great importance in astronomy, mythology and occultism. Mystery schools consider it to be “sun behind the sun” and, therefore, the true source of our sun’s potency. If our sun’s warmth keeps the physical world alive, Sirius is considered to keep the spiritual world alive. It is the “real light” shining in the East, the spiritual light, where as the sun illuminates the physical world, which is considered to be a grand illusion.

Sirius with the divine and even considering it as the home of humanity’s “great teachers” is not only embedded in the mythology of a few primitive civilizations: It is a widespread belief that has survived (and even intensified) to this day. We will look at the importance of Sirius in ancient times, analyze its prominence in secret societies and we will examine these esoteric concepts as they are translated in popular culture.

In Ancient Egypt, Sirius was regarded as the most important star in the sky. In fact, it was astronomically the foundation of the Egyptians’ entire religious system. It was revered as Sothis and was associated with Isis, the mother goddess of Egyptian mythology. Isis is the female aspect of the trinity formed by herself, Osiris and their son Horus. Ancient Egyptians held Sirius in such a high regard that most of their deities were associated, in some way or another, with the star. Anubis, the dog-headed god of death, had an obvious connection with the dog star and Thoth-Hermes, the great teacher of humanity, was also esoterically connected with the star.

The Egyptian calendar system was based on the heliacal rising of Sirius that occurred just before the annual flooding of the Nile during summer. The star’s celestial movement was also observed and revered by ancient Greeks, Sumerians, Babylonians and countless other civilizations. The star was therefore considered sacred and its apparition in the sky was accompanied with feasts and celebrations. The dog star heralded the coming of the hot and dry days of July and August, hence the popular term “the dog days of summer”.
Several occult researchers have claimed that the Great Pyramid of Giza was built in perfect alignment with the stars, especially Sirius. The light from these stars were said to be used in ceremonies of Egyptian Mysteries.

[......]

A fascinating aspect of Sirius is the consistency of the symbolism and meanings attached to it. Several great civilizations have indeed associated Sirius with a dog-like figure and viewed the star as either the source or the destination of a mysterious force. In Chinese and Japanese astronomy, Sirius is known as the “star of the celestial wolf”. Several aboriginal tribes of North America referred to the star in canine terms: the Seri and Tohono O’odham tribes of the southwest describe the Sirius as a “dog that follows mountain sheep”, while the Blackfoot call it “Dog-face”. The Cherokee paired Sirius with Antares as a dog-star guardian of the “Path of Souls”. The Wolf (Skidi) tribe of Nebraska knew it as the “Wolf Star”, while other branches of knew it as the “Coyote Star”. Further north, the Alaskan Inuit of the Bering Strait called it “Moon Dog”.

In 1971, the American author Robert Temple published a controversial book entitled The Sirius Mystery where he claimed that the Dogons (an ancient African tribe from Mali) knew details about Sirius that would be impossible to be know without the use of telescopes. According to him, the Dogon understood the binary nature of Sirius, which is, in fact, composed of two stars named Sirius A and Sirius B. This lead Robert Temple to believe that the Dogons had “direct” connections with beings from Sirius. While some might say “you can’t be Sirius” (sorry), a great number of secret societies (who have historically held within their ranks some of the world’s most influential people) and belief systems teach about a mystic connection between Sirius and humanity.

In Dogon mythology, humanity is said to be born from the Nommo, a race of amphibians who were inhabitants of a planet circling Sirius. They are said to have “descended from the sky in a vessel accompanied by fire and thunder” and imparted to humans profound knowledge. This lead Robert Temple to theorize that the Nommos were extraterrestrial inhabitants of Sirius who travelled to earth at some point in the distant past to teach ancient civilizations (such as the Egyptians and Dogons) about the Sirius star system as well as our own solar system. These civilizations would then record the Nommos’ teachings in their religions and make them a central focus of their Mysteries.

The Dogon’s mythology system is strikingly similar to the ones of other civilizations such as the Sumerians, Egyptians, Israelites and Babylonians as it includes the archetypal myth of a “great teacher from above”. Depending on the civilization, this great teacher is known as eith Enoch, Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus and is said to have taught humanity theurgic sciences. In occult traditions, it is believed that Thoth-Hermes had taught the people of Atlantis, which, according to legend, became the world’s most advanced civilization before the entire continent  was submerged by the Great Deluge (accounts of a flood can be found in the mythologies of countless civilizations). Survivors from Atlantis travelled by boat to several countries, including Egypt, where they imparted their advanced knowledge. Occultists believe that the inexplicable resemblances between distant civilizations (such as the Mayas and the Egyptians) can be explained by their common contact with Atlanteans."

[Read the fascinating full story here]

The Bible 1

Lt Gen Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO - Bloody few are violinists

When we talk about heroes, de Wiart is up there with the best of them, as this article from the blog "Standing Well Back" illustrates. It is reprinted with thanks to "Standing Well Back".

"A divergent aside from the grim world of terrorism.  I came across a fascinating historical eccentric British military figure.  He went by the name of Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO. Very non-PC. I'm digging into his life story, and honestly you couldn't make it up.   Here's some examples of his exploits:

• He enlisted in the Army as a trooper in the Boer War, and was invalided home
• He fought in British Somaliland in 1914 against the Mad Mullah
• He was wounded 11 times in battle. He was shot through the lung (in South Africa), in the eye, and ear and arm in British Somaliland, lost his left hand in 1915, biting off his fingers when a doctor declined to remove them, shot through the skull and ankle at the Somme through the hip at Passchendale through the leg at Cambrai and through the ear at Arras.
• In 1914 De Wiart was taken back to Britain where he had what was left of his left eye removed. By this point it was early 1915 and World War 1 was in full swing and De Wiart was informed that he could only go if he wore a glass eye (they didn't want the Germans to think they forced to use one eyed officers), De Wiart agreed and as he left the Medical Board he took out his eye and threw it away.
  He won the VC and commanded three battalions and a brigade on the Western front
• He was part of the British military mission to Poland after the war and retired and settled there in the 1920's, and illegally was gun running for the Poles with the aid of a stolen train (allegedly). He was involved in a number of escapades which included shooting marauding Russian cavalry with his pistol from the footplate of a train. He then fell off the train (but jumped back on).
• On escaping from Poland in 1939 he crossed into Romania with this terrific quote. When he got to the border the first sentry on the other side stood up and de Wiart addressed him, first in English and then in French. He said there were only three sorts of Romanians: they're either pimps, pederasts or violinists, and bloody few are violinists..... Fortunately the Romanian sentry, thinking this was mutual regard, saluted and they passed through.
• He commanded a pretty disastrous Norwegian campaign at the start of the German invasion there.
• He was appointed head of the British military mission to Yugoslavia as the Nazis were poised to invade, but en route his transport aircraft crashed over the Med and he became a POW after swimming to shore. Despite his age and disability he set about working on an escape tunnel for seven months and tried to escape 5 times.  Once de Wiart evaded capture for eight days disguised as an Italian peasant, no mean feat considering that he was in northern Italy, did not speak Italian, and was 61 years old, with an eye patch, one empty sleeve and multiple injuries. Ironically, de Wiart had been approved for repatriation due to his disablement but notification arrived after his escape. As the repatriation would have required that he promise not to take any further part in the war it is probable that he would have declined anyway. 
• By August 1943 he was back in England (long story!) and was then sent to China as Churchill's personal representative. There's a whole book worth of anecdotes there...   
• A champagne, claret and port man, he detested whisky, liked popular music hall tunes and had no ear for classical music.
• He married a countess, had two daughters but omitted mention of any of them (and his VC) in his autobiography. His second wife was 25 years younger then him."

Animals vs Humans 1

Corporations deliberately kill the spirit of humans in order to get a subservient workforce that will accept whatever rewards the corporations are prepared to hand out for their services. Right to Work laws are one method of killing the human spirit, as is not raising the minimum wage in line with productivity increases, or, at least, to a livable amount that will take workers out of poverty.

George Zimmerman and the Benefits of White Privilege

[With thanks to PoliticsUSA.com and Keith Brekhus]

This is spot on.

"George Zimmerman is a beneficiary of white privilege. It matters not that his mother is Hispanic, for the benefits of white privilege can be bestowed on a light-skinned Hispanic who passes as white just as easily as they can be conferred upon a person who is “all white”.  Race after all, is a social construction, and if a person passes as white in a given setting then he is objectively white in that block of space and time. So while Zimmerman’s defenders like to play up his Peruvian mother and his Hispanic identity as proof that his alleged crime was not racially motivated, those defenses fail to stand up to the complexity of modern racism, which is not simply an issue of black or white but involves several shades of gray. Now it is hard to prove Zimmerman is a beneficiary of “white privilege” since we cannot quantitatively measure how he would have been treated differently if he were black and his victim passed as white, but we can note for comparison that in Florida, Marissa Alexander, an African-American woman was sentenced to twenty years in prison for “standing her ground” and firing a single warning shot to warn her estranged spouse, who had a record of domestic violence and was under an injunction to stay away from her on the night she fired the warning shot. Although nobody was injured, Marissa Alexander received a twenty year prison sentence following the incident.

In neighboring Georgia, a lawsuit has been filed because some courts have “accepted the race of a victim as evidence to establish the reasonableness of an individual’s fear in cases of justifiable homicide.” In other words, “I was scared for my life because he was black”, is a defense that can be considered reasonable by some courts.  Also in Georgia, a black man, John McNeil, is serving a life sentence for killing a white man who charged him with a knife on his own property even though Georgia’s “Stand your ground” law and its Castle Doctrine defense should have both applied to the case. In Both Georgia and Florida, it would appear however, that “stand your ground” is an acceptable defense for whites only and the laws do not apply to African-Americans, who prosecutors and juries seem to agree, do not have the same right to self-defense.

Although Zimmerman is finally on trial, he has been given the benefit of the doubt far too many times by the legal system in Florida. Consider Zimmerman’s history of violence. In 2005, Zimmerman was arrested for battery of a law enforcement officer and resisting an officer with violence, both felonies, after he assaulted a police officer in an Orange County bar. The charge was later waived in exchange for Zimmerman entering an alcohol education program. In the same year, his ex-fiancee, Veronica Zuazo filed a restraining order against Zimmerman, alleging that he had committed domestic violence against her.


Zimmerman benefits from white privilege when, despite his history of violence, many white people afford him the presumption of innocence, a courtesy many of them would not extend to a black shooter , with the same history, who killed a white teenager under the same circumstances. Would the Sanford police have simply questioned a black shooter who had a previous history of arrests and restraining orders against him, and casually release him because his story “checked out”, or would they have detained him and charged him with murder right away?  Would right-wing analysts on TV and bloggers online overlook a black killer’s history of violence and label a murdered white student a thug who deserved to die simply because he was suspended from school once? The answer to both questions is almost certainly not.

In addition, Zimmerman had a history of making dozens of “emergency calls” to the police to report suspicious black men, including one incident where he reported a “suspicious black male” between the ages of seven and nine years old. In the garbled 911 call he made on the night he killed Trayvon Martin, he appears to utter a racial slur. Zimmerman pursued Trayvon Martin and reported him as suspicious because he was a black teen wearing a hoodie. Zimmerman’s history of unwarranted suspicion directed towards African-American men makes him a racist.

Modern racism is often covert and its adherents masquerade as “colorblind” members of society even as they harbor subtle (or not so subtle) racial prejudices. Yes, Zimmerman is part Hispanic, but being part of an ethnic or racial minority does not automatically insulate someone from promoting white supremacy or anti-black racism. Zimmerman, after all, can pass as white with his fair complexion and Anglo-sounding surname. Furthermore, one need only look at the relations in some communities between Asian-American and Arab-American shop owners and black patrons to see that racial prejudice is not simply a black and white issue. Members of racial and ethnic minorities do not necessarily align with other minorities in solidarity against white power or white privilege.
The fact that George Zimmerman is half Hispanic and does not wear a white hood on his head or a swastika on his arm is of little consequence. His extreme suspicion of young black males contributed to the death of Trayvon Martin. Even as Zimmerman and his apologists may assert his “colorblindness“, it was his racial perceptions, subtle as they may have been, that ultimately contributed to the vigilante execution of Trayvon Martin.

The notion that a non-white person cannot advance the ideology of white supremacy is a naive notion that does not square with the reality and complexity of contemporary racism. Many on the political Right, have accused those of us who speak of racism with regards to the Trayvon Martin case as playing the “race card”. What they seem to overlook is that we did not deal this hand. When the deck is stacked a certain way, you have to play the cards that were dealt and call them as you see them. To do otherwise is to live in denial, and wishing racism away is not the same thing as ending racism.

While some on the Right are expressing fears that if Zimmerman is acquitted, blacks will riot, a greater concern should be that if Zimmerman is acquitted whites and those who pass as white will continue to have legal sanction to murder African-Americans with impunity. White privilege in this nation has sometimes included even the privilege to murder and to be held up as some kind of folk hero for doing so. If George Zimmerman is acquitted, then white privilege in America will continue to carry with it, a license to kill, and the rules of engagement will tilt even further in the direction of protecting those who perpetuate racial injustice through the barrel of a gun.

China Discovers Some Of The World's Oldest Writing

Archaeologists say they have discovered some of the world's oldest known primitive writing, dating back about 5,000 years, in eastern China, and some of the markings etched on broken axes resemble a modern Chinese character.

The inscriptions on artifacts found at a relic site south of Shanghai are about 1,400 years older than the oldest written Chinese language. Chinese scholars are divided over whether the markings are words or something simpler, but they say the finding will shed light on the origins of Chinese language and culture.

The oldest writing in the world is believed to be from Mesopotamia, dating back slightly more than 5,000 years. Chinese characters are believed to have been developed independently.

Inscriptions were found on more than 200 pieces dug out from the Neolithic-era Liangzhu relic site. The pieces are among thousands of fragments of ceramic, stone, jade, wood, ivory and bone excavated from the site between 2003 and 2006, lead archaeologist Xu Xinmin said.

The inscriptions have not been reviewed by experts outside the country, but a group of Chinese scholars on archaeology and ancient writing met last weekend in Zhejiang province to discuss the finding.

They agreed that the inscriptions are not enough to indicate a developed writing system, but Xu said they include evidence of words on two broken stone-ax pieces.

One of the pieces has six word-like shapes strung together to resemble a short sentence.

[Read the full story here]

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