From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Sat Dec 20 1997 - 12:42:54 MST
Guru George wrote:
>
> On Fri, 19 Dec 1997 19:23:50 -0500
> Michael Lorrey <retroman@together.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >Thanks Damien. SOunds like another case of the famous Maya fraud of the
> >30's, where socialist/communist sympathizing archaeologists from British
> >and American Ivy League schools developed the preposterous and
> >completely unsupported, and eventually debunked theories that the Maya
> >civilization was a socialist paradise of peaceful, communistic, unarmed
> >innocent heathens.
> >
> >As it turns out, nothing could have been further from the truth.
> >Following a successful harvest, the preist/god/king typically had a
> >ceremony in which he sought the advice of the gods/ancestors, etc. by
> >piercing his penis with a series of sharpened splinters from different
> >trees. The pattern of splattered blood that formed supposedly told him
> >what the gods wanted, or that the hallucinogenic state the preist was in
> >gave him the illusion he was talking to the gods. In any event, the
> >message almost invariably was this: GO TO WAR.
> >
> [snip]
>
> There is also the famous case of Margaret Mead more or less making up a
> whole load of shit that influenced (especially leftist) sociology for
> years in her book "Coming of Age in Samoa".
>
> She painted a picture of Samoans as Noble Savages, the whole shebang
> (especially in regard to sexual freedom); actually, Samoans are if
> anything even *more* taboo-ridden than we are.
>
> Recently, one of her then-adolescent informers (now a grand dame in
> Samoan society) owned up to having teased Mead a *lot* in the course of
> her researches for the book!
>
> (Sorry I can't remember references, but it's quite a well known case in
> sociology.)
>
Sorry to make this a short reply, but do you have any dates on when she
was debunked?? I remember clearly in school that my social studies
teachers taught a lot based on her work in Samoa,and this was in the
1980-86 period.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:45:15 MST