Christopher Golde

Neanderthal

Neanderthal, also spelled Neandertal, the most recent archaic humans, who emerged between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago and were replaced by early modern humans between 35,000 and perhaps 24,000 years ago. Neanderthals inhabited Eurasia from the Atlantic regions of Europe eastward to Central Asia and from as far north as present-day Belgium southward to the Mediterranean and southwest Asia. Similar human populations lived at the same time in eastern Asia and Africa. Because Neanderthals lived in a land of abundant limestone caves, which preserve bones well, and where there has been a long history of prehistoric research, they are better known than any other archaic human group. Consequently, they have become the archetypal “cavemen.” 

Only after World War II were the errors in the sub human species perception of Neanderthals recognized, and the Neanderthals have since come to be viewed as quite close evolutionarily to modern humans. This view has been reflected in the frequent inclusion of the Neanderthals within the species Homo sapiens, usually as a distinct subspecies, H. sapiens neanderthalensis; more recently they have often been classified as a different but closely related species. 

The fate of the Neanderthals is closely related to the appearance of modern humans. Over the years, the Neanderthals have been portrayed as everything from an evolutionary dead end to the direct ancestors of modern European and western Asian populations. Fossil evidence indicates that modern humans first evolved in sub-Saharan Africa sometime before 100,000 years ago. Subsequently they spread northward sometime before 55,000 years ago, displacing or absorbing local archaic human populations. As a result, the Southwest Asian, Central Asian, and central European Neanderthals were absorbed to varying degrees into those spreading modern human populations and may have contributed genetically to the subsequent early modern human populations of those regions. Even in western Europe—a cul-de-sac where the transition to modern humans took place relatively late—some researchers contend that there is fossil evidence for interbreeding between late Neanderthal and early modern humans.

1066 William the Conqueror


William was the illegitimate son of Robert I, duke of Normandy, by his concubine Arlette, a tanner’s daughter from the town of Falaise. The duke, who had no other sons, designated William his heir, and with his death in 1035 William became duke of Normandy at age seven. Rebellions were epidemic during the early years of his reign, and on several occasions the young duke narrowly escaped death. Many of his advisers did not. By the time he was 20, William had become an able ruler and was backed by King Henry I of France. Henry later turned against him, but William survived the opposition and in 1063 expanded the borders of his duchy into the region of Maine.

In 1051, William is believed to have visited England and met with his cousin Edward the Confessor, the childless English king. According to Norman historians, Edward promised to make William his heir. On his deathbed, however, Edward granted the kingdom to Harold Godwine, head of the leading noble family in England and more powerful than the king himself.

In January 1066, King Edward died, and Harold Godwine was proclaimed King Harold II. William immediately disputed his claim. In addition, King Harald III Hardraade of Norway had designs on England, as did Tostig, brother of Harold. King Harold rallied his forces for an expected invasion by William, but Tostig launched a series of raids instead, forcing the king to leave the English Channel unprotected. In September, Tostig joined forces with King Harald III and invaded England from Scotland. On September 25, Harold met them at Stamford Bridge and defeated and killed them both. Three days later, William landed in England at Pevensey.

With approximately 7,000 troops and cavalry, William seized Pevensey and marched to Hastings, where he paused to organize his forces. On October 13, Harold arrived near Hastings with his army, and the next day William led his forces out to give battle. At the end of a bloody, all-day battle, King Harold II was killed–shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend–and his forces were defeated.

William then marched on London and received the city’s submission. On Christmas Day, 1066, William the Conqueror was crowned the first Norman king of England, in Westminster Abbey, and the Anglo-Saxon phase of English history came to an end. French became the language of the king’s court and gradually blended with the Anglo-Saxon tongue to give birth to modern English. William I proved an effective king of England, and the “Domesday Book,” a great census of the lands and people of England, was among his notable achievements. Upon the death of William I in 1087, his son, William Rufus, became William II, the second Norman king of England.

Note: The information included in this section has been taken and edited from various on-line and hard copy journals. Although, the assembling of the information and its presentation is original the content is not. 

It has been provided to offer the reader information about aspects of this novel that might not be commonly known. Some of the information is factual and some theoretical and every attempt has been made by the writer to identify for the reader the difference.

Scientific factual evidence provided is summarized and condensed to offer the reader a brief explanation and it has been researched to be as accurate a depiction of the subject as possible.

King Arthur

The historical basis for the King Arthur legend has long been debated by scholars. One school of thought, citing entries in the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) and Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), sees Arthur as a genuine historical figure, a Romano-British leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons some time in the late 5th to early 6th century. The Historia Brittonum, a 9th-century Latin historical compilation attributed in some late manuscripts to a Welsh cleric called Nennius, contains the first datable mention of King Arthur, listing twelve battles that Arthur fought. These culminate in the Battle of Badon, where he is said to have single-handedly killed 960 men. Recent studies, however, question the reliability of the Historia Brittonum.

The other text that seems to support the case for Arthur's historical existence is the 10th-century Annales Cambriae, which also link Arthur with the Battle of Badon. The Annales date this battle to 516–518, and also mention the Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) were both killed, dated to 537–539. These details have often been used to bolster confidence in the Historia's account and to confirm that Arthur really did fight at Badon. Problems have been identified, however, with using this source to support the Historia Brittonum's account. The latest research shows that the Annales Cambriae was based on a chronicle begun in the late 8th century in Wales. Additionally, the complex textual history of the Annales Cambriae precludes any certainty that the Arthurian annals were added to it even that early. They were more likely added at some point in the 10th century and may never have existed in any earlier set of annals. The Badon entry probably derived from the Historia Brittonum.

The origin of the Welsh name "Arthur" remains a matter of debate also. Some suggest it is derived from the Roman nomen gentile (family name) Artorius, of obscure and contested etymology (but possibly of Messapian or Etruscan origin). Some scholars have suggested it is relevant to this debate that the legendary King Arthur's name only appears as Arthur, or Arturus, in early Latin Arthurian texts, never as Artōrius (though it should be noted that Classical Latin Artōrius became Arturius in some Vulgar Latin dialects). However, this may not say anything about the origin of the name Arthur, as Artōrius would regularly become Art(h)ur when borrowed into Welsh.

THE NICENE CREED

The original Nicene Creed was adopted at the First Council of Nicaea in 325.

The council was called together by the Roman Emperor Constantine I and came to be known as the first ecumenical conference of bishops for the Christian Church.

In 381, the Second Ecumenical Council of Christian churches added the balance of the text (except for the words "and from the Son"). This version is still used today by Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches. In the same year, 381, the Third Ecumenical Council formally reaffirmed the version and declared that no further changes could be made, nor could any other creeds be adopted.

The Roman Catholic Church made the addition of the words "and from the Son" to the description of the Holy Spirit. Roman Catholics refer to the Nicene Creed as the "symbol of faith." In the Catholic Mass, it is also called the "Profession of Faith."

Along with the Apostles' Creed, most Christians today regard the Nicene Creed as the most comprehensive expression of the Christian faith, with it often being recited in worship services.

Some evangelical Christians, however, reject the Creed, specifically its recitation, not for its content, but simply because it is not found in the Bible.

The Nicene Creed is the most widely accepted statement of faith among Christian churches. It is used by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran and most Protestant churches.The Nicene Creed was established to identify conformity of beliefs among Christians, as a means of recognizing heresy or 

Multiple Dimensions

Theories with more than one dimension of time have sometimes been advanced in physics, whether as a serious description of reality or just as a curious possibility. Itzhak Bars's work on "two-time physics", inspired by the SO(10,2) symmetry of the extended supersymmetry structure of M-theory, is the most recent and systematic development of the concept (see also F-theory).

Walter Craig and Steven Weinstein proved the existence of a well-posed initial value problem for the ultrahyperbolic equation (a wave equation in more than one-time dimension). This showed that initial data on a mixed (spacelike and timelike) hypersurface obeying a particular nonlocal constraint evolves deterministically in the remaining time dimension.

As a solution to the problem of the subjective passage of time, J. W. Dunne proposed an infinite hierarchy of time dimensions, inhabited by a similar hierarchy of levels of consciousness. Dunne suggested that in the context of a "block" spacetime as modeled by General Relativity, a second dimension of time was needed in order to measure the speed of one's progress along one's own timeline. This, in turn, required a level of the conscious self-existing at the second level of time. But the same arguments then applied to this new level, requiring a third level, and so on in an infinite regress.

Renowned Physicist, Stephen Hawking popularized the concept of imaginary time in his book A Brief History of Time.

         “One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds? ”

                     — Stephen Hawking

In Cosmology the theory of relativity, time is multiplied by i. This may be incorporated into time itself, as imaginary time, and the equations rewritten accordingly. In physical cosmology, this may be used to describe models of the universe, which must be solutions to the equations of general relativity. In particular, imaginary time can help to smooth out gravitational singularities, where known physical laws do not apply, in models of the universe. The Big Bang, for example, appears as a singularity in ordinary time but, when modeled with imaginary time, the singularity is removed and the Big Bang functions like any other point in spacetime.

Emperor Constantine

Or also know as Constantine the Great – (27 February c. 272 AD – 22 May 337 AD), also known as Constantine I was a Roman Emperor of Illyrian-Greek origin from 306 to 337 AD. He was the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, a Roman Army officer, and his consort Helena. His father became Caesar, the deputy emperor in the west, in 293 AD. Constantine was sent east, where he rose through the ranks to become a military tribune under Emperors Diocletian and Galerius.

In 305, Constantius raised himself to the rank of Augustus, senior western emperor, and Constantine was recalled west to campaign under his father in Britannia (Britain). Constantine was acclaimed as emperor by the army at Eboracum (modern-day York) after his father's death in 306 AD, and he emerged victorious in a series of civil wars against Emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become sole ruler of both west and east by 324 AD (more on this later).

As emperor, Constantine enacted many administrative, financial, social, and military reforms to strengthen the empire. The government was restructured, and the civil and military authorities were separated. A new gold coin was introduced to combat inflation known as the solidus. It became the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years.

Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity and he played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which declared religious tolerance for Christianity in the Roman empire. He called the First Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the Nicene Creed was adopted by Christians. In military matters, the Roman army was re-organised to consist of mobile field units and garrison soldiers capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths, and the Sarmatians—even resettling territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the Third Century.

The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire. He built a new imperial residence at Byzantium and renamed the city Constantinople after himself. It became the capital of the Empire for more than a thousand years, with the later eastern Roman Empire now being referred to as the Byzantine Empire.

His more immediate political legacy was that he replaced Diocletian's tetrarchy with the principle of dynastic succession by leaving the empire to his sons. His reputation flourished during the lifetime of his children and centuries after his reign. The medieval church upheld him as a paragon of virtue, while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype, a point of reference, and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built on his orders at the purported site of Jesus' tomb in Jerusalem and became the holiest place in Christendom. The Papal claim to temporal power in the High Middle Ages was based on the supposed Donation of Constantine. He is venerated as a saint by Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics. He has historically been referred to as the "First Christian Emperor", and he did heavily promote the Christian Church. Some modern scholars, however, debate his beliefs and even his comprehension of the Christian faith itself.

In AD 312, the Roman Empire was split by the Emperor Diocletian, who divides the realm between two senior and two junior emperors, but the complex arrangement collapses. Constantine realizes that he needs help from a power greater than himself, but who or what? He has his doubts about the traditional Roman gods. He prays earnestly that the true God, whoever that may be, will “reveal to him who he is, and stretch forth his right hand to help him.”

He does not know it yet, but that prayer will change the course of Christian history as well as of western civilization. Later he will tell his friend Bishop Eusebius the incredible story of that hour. When Eusebius reports it in his history, he admits it is hard to believe.

What happens that is so hard to believe? Constantine tells Bishop Eusebius that suddenly, during his prayers, he sees a bright cross of light emblazoned against the noonday sky and upon it the inscription: “In hoc signo vinces” —“In this Sign Conquer.”

It brings Constantine the assurance he needs. He accepts this as the answer to his prayer and orders his soldiers to inscribe crosses on their shields. Encouraged by his vision in the heavens, he hurls his troops against his rival Maxentius at Rome’s Milvian Bridge. Surprisingly, even though Maxentius has a far superior force, Constantine is victorious. Maxentius is among those who drown in the Tiber.

Afterward, Constantine does not forget to whom he owes his victory. For close to two hundred and fifty years, since AD 64 when Nero initiated violence against it, the Christian church has been a persecuted minority in Roman lands. Only a few years earlier, between 303 and 311, it suffered through Diocletian’s savage “Great Persecution.” Now Constantine issues orders that the Christian church is to be tolerated just as other religions are. Although he does not make Christianity the official religion of the empire, Constantine bestows favor on it, builds places of worship for Christians, and presides over the first general church council. He becomes the first emperor to embrace Christianity and will be baptized on his death bed—waiting so late for fear his duties as emperor might cause him to sin after he receives the solemn rite, blotting out its efficacy. 

The Process of Natural Selection

The theory of evolution is one of the great intellectual revolutions of human history, drastically changing our perception of the world and of our place in it. Charles Darwin put forth a coherent theory of evolution and amassed a great body of evidence in support of this theory.

Darwin’s process of natural selection has four components.

Variation.  Organisms (within populations) exhibit individual variation in appearance and behavior.  These variations may involve body size, hair color, facial markings, voice properties, or number of offspring.  On the other hand, some traits show little to no variation among individuals—for example, number of eyes in vertebrates. 
Inheritance.  Some traits are consistently passed on from parent to offspring.  Such traits are heritable, whereas other traits are strongly influenced by environmental conditions and show weak heritability.
High rate of population growth.  Most populations have more offspring each year than local resources can support leading to a struggle for resources.  Each generation experiences substantial mortality.
Differential survival and reproduction.  Individuals possessing traits well suited for the struggle for local resources will contribute more offspring to the next generation. 

From one generation to the next, the struggle for resources (what Darwin called the “struggle for existence”) will favor individuals with some variations over others and thereby change the frequency of traits within the population.  This process is natural selection.  The traits that confer an advantage to those individuals who leave more offspring are called adaptations.

In order for natural selection to operate on a trait, the trait must possess heritable variation and must confer an advantage in the competition for resources.  If one of these requirements does not occur, then the trait does not experience natural selection.  (We now know that such traits may change by other evolutionary mechanisms that have been discovered since Darwin’s time.) 

Natural selection operates by comparative advantage, not an absolute standard of design.  “…as natural selection acts by competition for resources, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates” (Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859).

During the twentieth century, genetics was integrated with Darwin’s mechanism, allowing us to evaluate natural selection as the differential survival and reproduction of genotypes, corresponding to particular phenotypes.  Natural selection can only work on existing variation within a population.  Such variations arise by mutation, a change in some part of the genetic code for a trait.  Mutations arise by chance and without foresight for the potential advantage or disadvantage of the mutation.  In other words, variations do not arise because they are needed.

In fact, what could be considered a deformity in a species could turn out to be a trait or survival mechanism that becomes inherent in the future of the species, or even divide over time into a completely new and more successful species.

Unclassified CIA Report to Congress,

July - December 2002

Short trancript from unclassified Report to Congress
on the Acquisition of Technology
Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction
and Advanced Conventional Munitions,

​​French police seized a chemical contamination suit and arrested a terrorist cell in December 2002 that allegedly was planning an attack using chemical agents. We know that at least one related group had ricin toxin in London at that same time for a future terrorist attack.