LawPundit
" Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. "
-- Proverbs 29:18, King James Bible (KJV)

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Words, Acts and Cognition in Life and Law: Speech as an Act of Performative Utterance: Language Performativity Suggests Rethinking the ImpACT of the Human Word

What a superb article by Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)
at Why We Care About the Royal Family Feud .

Noonan's "performativity"-centered discussion about the British Monarchy has had a special bonus for us, by opening up a new way of thinking about human communication and interaction in the form of "speech acts", which analysis also provides an unexpected connection to "critical legal thinking" (see the link below).

The Wikipedia writes: " Performativity is the concept that language can function as a form of social action and have the effect of change. The concept has multiple applications in diverse fields such as anthropology, social and cultural geography, economics, gender studies (social construction of gender), law, linguistics, performance studies, history, management studies and philosophy. " [link added]

Indeed, "performativity" suggests to us that the unending mainstream media discussion about controversial social topics such as e.g. White House lies and untruths over the last four years have completely -- and we mean completely -- missed the point in their analysis of the significance of an avalanche of Twitter Tweets from the past U.S. President and from his similar performative utterances. Something else -- arguably more important than truth -- was at work.

As the language professionals writing about performativity suggest to us, it is not the content of spoken words per se or even the truth or falsity of that content that is at issue, but rather the purpose viz. societal influence of a given "speech act",
ala John L. Austin .

Read on below .... where we find to our astonishment ... really, in a fascinating turn of analysis ... that the assertion of truth or untruth has nothing to do with it.

Who would have thought it. Performativity is even applicable to basic science.

It is thus likely e.g. that the truth of history or other content being written about is not the chief issue in academic publications, as otherwise alleged by the powers that be, but rather the often hidden ulterior motives lurking behind such publications that are among the main driving forces of science. Scientific periodicals and human interactions at gatherings such as congresses can thus fundamentally be viewed as forums for performative acts. Recall that the motto is "publish or perish" but NOT "publish the truth or perish".

We have always known the above to be true, but never understood why.

Now we suspect to know a little more.

Hat tip to CaryGEE.



Friday, February 26, 2021

Amazon Mounds and Earthworks Updated: Too Difficult for Contemporary Archaeologists or Modern Astronomers?

One of the primary obstacles that we face in our megalithic research -- an obstacle that is greater than the difficulty of astronomical decipherment of standing stones themselves -- is the lack of a wide, knowledgeable audience.

Many contemporary archaeologists and people in related professions erroneously seem to assume that e.g. megaliths or earthwork mounds erected by prehistoric societies are properly the realm of study of Archaeology, even though most archaeologists seem to know little about megaliths, and even less about astronomy. The sky above is exactly the opposite of their chosen "geo-bound" interest. Who cares about the far distant stars above them? Pots rule.

Similarly, those few researchers who call themselves archaeoastronomers or astroarchaeologists, often do not go beyond elementary solar and lunar considerations, virtually ignoring the starry night of stars -- thus suggesting to us that their understanding of ancient mankind is very limited. We expect little help from their ranks.

We have found, contrary to flawed prevailing directions of research -- research is an area in academics that we taught at the university level -- that the starry night of stars and the ever-present band of the Milky Way DOMINATED ancient society as the domicile of their gods.

As we have written at Megaliths.net

" Megaliths.net is a systematic graphic-supported analysis of megaliths and megalithic sites around the world which shows that ancient megalithic sites are land survey sites located by prehistoric astronomy. As observed by Alice Cunningham Fletcher (Alice C. Fletcher) in her 1902 publication in the American Anthropologist , there is ample evidence that some ancient cultures, e.g. the Pawnee in Nebraska , geographically located their villages according to patterns seen in stars of the heavens. FLETCHER, A. C. (1902), STAR CULT AMONG THE PAWNEE —A PRELIMINARY REPORT. American Anthropologist, 4: 730–736. doi: 10.1525/aa.1902.4.4.02a00050. "

However, that knowledge has not seeped into so-called mainstream science. Unless one is shooting rockets into the sky for war or putting new satellites into orbit, the stars are ignored. Indeed, even the Zodiac of stellar groupings has been relegated to the realm of esoteric Astrology. Any hermetic "as above, so below" explanation for prehistoric mankind's cultural focus is not taken seriously.

Sadly, the profession of astronomy itself has not persevered where Archaeology and related professions have dismally failed, thus leaving a "black hole" in science as regards serious research regarding the megaliths and similar constructions. 

Paradoxically, so-called modern astronomers and people in related professions spend a lot of resources studying "black holes" in far distant space that bear little relation to human life on Planet Earth, now or ever. A stellar connection for ancient human technology is of no interest to them. Indeed, your average academic astronomer seems no longer to know much about the visible stars -- those that we humans see above with the naked eye. How ancient mankind viewed the wide expanse of the starry sky above them is not a scientific question for modern skywatchers. That is "below them". Their eyes are focused on distant space, where billions are spent on NASA, planetary visits (mostly by machines), and the search for extraterrestrials.

Those same dedicated people, however, seem to consider it lunacy to allege that ancient mankind ALSO had an overriding interest in the stars.

You figure it out, we can't.

Perhaps mainstream scientists just find this entire field to be too difficult for them. Just two months ago we posted Landmarks by the Stars in Ancient Days: Amazonian Pre-Columbian Earthworks & Geoglyphs Represent Stars in the Sky in a Cosmic Geo-Hermetic Stellar Map "As Above, So Below" , which contains an explanatory map for perusal by contemporary archaeologist and/or modern astronomer. That posting at our Ancient World Blog has 27 hits thus far. It should be hundreds of times more than that.

Too tough? We post an elementary explanatory visual update below:

and here is how we explained it in the previous posting:

"Why would the ancients have used stars of the starry night to "map" their Earth?

Just imagine trying to make your way in a tropical climate in ancient days. How did you get around and know where you were?

We think stars and landmarks based on stars are the answer.

West & SW Amazonian Pre-Columbian village mounds viz. earthworks, geoglyphs and "enclosures" identified by archaeologists are shown here in our independent decipherment -- not related in any way to the publications of the archaeologists -- as having been located by the ancients to represent the Milky Way and corresponding stars in the stellar constellations Aquila, Sagittarius, [Scorpio perhaps via a natural mountain formation], Lupus, Centaurus, Crux, Musca, Carina, Vela, Pyxis, & Puppis. Note that the ancients may have grouped and designated the respective stars somewhat differently, but the principal star locations in the sky remain the same nevertheless, concentrating on the sky's brightest stars by magnitude, which form the "shape" of artificial star groupings.

The star correspondences shown below were discovered in December 2020 by Andis Kaulins after reading an article in Smithsonian magazine about Amazonian Pre-Columbian mound villages and other earthwork and similar constructions. See the article by Livia Gershon in Smithsonian magazine at These Amazonian Villages Were Laid Out Like Clock Faces https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-find-clock-face-layout-amazon-villages-180976553/ .

As retained down to this day, we find that the ancients placed their religious "gods" in the heavens, i.e. stellar locations which provided a natural, fixed easily accessible map, which was mirrored geographically on Earth " as above, so below ".

Please note that our decipherment star maps -- shown below -- were created using our clips of star maps produced via Starry Night Pro astronomy software, to which we have added explanatory texts, labels, and figures, as necessary.

See http://www.starrynight.com/

In the image below, the upper section shows a geographic map clip by us from

-- a geographic map at Iriarte, J., Robinson, M., de Souza, J., Damasceno, A., da Silva, F., Nakahara, F., Ranzi, A. and Aragao, L., 2020. Geometry by Design: Contribution of Lidar to the Understanding of Settlement Patterns of the Mound Villages in SW Amazonia. Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology , 3(1), pp.151–169. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jcaa.45 --

which shows the locations of the Amazonian archaeological sites in question, together with our added star labels and the appropriate Milky Way section of stars. These identifications were made independently by Andis Kaulins, Traben-Trarbach, Germany, who is not affiliated in any way with any of the authors of the article cited above. We use the geographic map as fair use for research purposes.

In the article cited above, Iriarte et al. mention a possible "cosmic" meaning to the locations, as follows:

" Arranged in symbolically significant ways with no clear hierarchy, the villages' circular layouts may reflect their Indigenous inhabitants' conceptions of the cosmos (Iriarte et al., Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, under CC BY 4.0) ".

To that we can independently add: YES ... the COSMOS ... We find that the cosmos referred to is comprised of specific "landmark" stars and sections of the Milky Way of stars visible from the identified Amazonian locations.

Still too difficult?

-- given the map update further above in this posting??? 

Take another look at the updated explanatory map.

You want to go contra? Forget it.

It is time for you all to bring your "science" up into the modern age.


Saturday, December 26, 2020

The Megalithic Guadalperal Standing Stones of Peraleda de la Mata, Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain as The Stars of the Starry Night Sky ca. 4200 B.C. Based on the Solstitial Colure

The reservoir-flooded megalithic standing stones of Guadalperal reappeared in the drought of 2019 in the Tagus River Valdecañas Reservoir in Peraleda de la Mata, Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain.

We present here our decipherment of these megaliths, whose "stone circle" -- actually, more in the shape of a boat than a circle, as at Tanum, Sweden -- is clearly astronomical in nature.

We show through the images below that these stones represent the starry night of stars ca. 4200 B.C., based on our dating of the solstitial colure that we have located in the stones.

The underlying main photograph here of the Guadalperal megaliths -- essential for the decipherment -- is copyright of Rubén Ortega Martín, Raíces de Peralêda de la Mata https://raicesdeperaleda.com/ . We use the photograph here as "fair use" for research purposes. 

The underlying aerial photo, equally essential for decipherment
-- which we clipped to better fit the decipherment image --
is attributed to 1080 Wildlife Productions at
https://allthatsinteresting.com/dolmen-de-guadalperalnterpretation .
We use the photograph here as "fair use" for research purposes.

This is our decipherment image of the megalithic standing stones of Guadalperal
( click on the image for the larger original image which can then be properly read ):

The decipherment is fairly self-explanatory, with the solstitial colure in ca. 4200 B.C. running from Leo to the North Celestial Pole, marked by the central megalith in the center of the boat-shaped "stone circle" at Guadalperal.

The remaining standing stones mark groups of stars, known modernly as constellations viz. asterisms of definite shape, a shape determined by bright stars, all known well in modernity, and here represented by a clip of a star map via Starry NightPro astronomy software

-- but perhaps seen somewhat differently in ancient days, though the bright stars are the same, so that the analysis still holds, even if the star groups were somewhat different then --

going clockwise from the left after Leo and Coma Berenices -- Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Boötes, Hercules, Ophiuchus, Lyra, Aquila, Cepheus, Pegasus, Andromeda, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Draco, the North Celestial Pole, Cassiopeia, Perseus, Camelopardalis, Lynx, Auriga, Gemini, Orion, Cancer and Hydra. We may have missed a few groups of stars, but on the whole, the analysis stands.


°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Sky Earth Native America -- in Two Volumes
Native American Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs
Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds
Deciphered as Land Survey & Astronomy by Andis Kaulins

paperbacks in color print
Volume 1, 2nd Edition, 266 pages

ISBN: 1517396816 / 9781517396817
Volume 2, 2nd Edition, 262 pages
ISBN: 1517396832 / 9781517396831

Sky Earth Native America Volume 1
Sky Earth Native America Volume 2
by Andis Kaulins J.D. Stanford                                         
by Andis Kaulins J.D. Stanford
(front cover(s)) 



(back cover with a photograph of the author and book absract text)


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