Resisting the barrage

The flood of awful, outrage-inducing, and flat-out insane news lately has made it hard to focus on anything else.

Just in the day prior to my writing this:

• The U.S. Senate confirmed a wildly unqualified Christofascist woman-abusing drunkard to lead the largest and best-funded military in the world
• Trump summarily fired seventeen inspectors-general at the offices of State, Veterans' Affairs, HUD, Interior, Energy, and Defense, effectively removing any capacity for oversight
• ICE raids have begun in earnest, and have included churches, preschools, and schools; among those arrested/harassed have included a military officer who was born in the U.S. but happens to be the wrong color, and, in a height of irony, Native Americans
• The Episcopal bishop of Washington D.C. was called "nasty" by Trump, and has received death threats from his followers (and a threat of deportation by a MAGA congressman) for... of all things... urging mercy, kindness, and empathy toward those who are suffering
• By executive order, Trump removed the $35 cap on medications for people on Medicare and Medicaid, profiting pharmaceuticals companies at the expense of the elderly and poor
• Elon Musk has doubled down on his Nazi salute at the Inauguration by making a series of sick puns about names of prominent Nazi officials, followed by a laugh-till-you-cry emoji
• The GOP has proposed revisions to the budget that include eliminating the mortgage interest deduction, making it harder for working-class people to afford to purchase a house

And those are just the ones that come to mind immediately.

It is unsurprising if we're feeling overwhelmed by all of this.  I've had to limit my time reading the news -- given my capacity for spiraling into depression even in normal times, I can't risk letting all this take a sledgehammer to my mental health.  And keep in mind that this is what Trump and his cronies want; the nuclear bomb of lunacy that has marked the first two weeks of Trump 2.0 is, at least in part, intended to create a Gish gallop of horrors so demoralizing that the opposition simply gives up.

That is exactly what we cannot afford to do.  Instead, let the barrage of bad news stiffen your resolve.  There's a line from the song "Turning Away," by the fantastic Scottish singer/songwriter Dougie MacLean, that applies here: "Words cannot extinguish us, however hard they're thrown."

And this brings me to a documentary I watched last week that you all must make sure you see.

It's called Porcelain War, and was the winner in the documentary category at Sundance last year.  It's about two brilliant Ukrainian porcelain artists, the husband-and-wife team of Slava Leontyev and Anya Stasenko, whose delicate, whimsical, and stunningly decorated animal sculptures charmed me the first time I saw them, in an online ceramics workshop Anya led that I took about four years ago.  I've followed them ever since, and their work never fails to make me smile.

Then came Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and the horror show that followed.

Slava and Anya live in Kharkiv, which has been heavily attacked, but have refused to leave.  Slava volunteered to train infantry, so he's away from home a lot of the time, and has often found himself in the middle of the battles.  In the film, he talks about how much he hates fighting -- and, in fact, hates the guns and other weapons he is training his fellow soldiers to use.  ("They're only for one purpose," he says -- "killing other human beings").  But he is unequivocal that defending his home and his fellow Ukrainians is nothing less than an absolute duty.  The only other choice is to let Putin win, and that is simply not an option.

But then, when he gets leave to come home -- he and Anya go back to creating sweet, beautiful pieces of art.

The juxtaposition of the atrocities of the invasion with the staggering loveliness of Slava and Anya's delicate porcelain work is both inspiring and heartbreaking.  "If the fighting makes us stop creating beautiful things," Slava says, "we've already lost."

So as counterintuitive as it sounds, we need to take inspiration from Slava and Anya, and fight hard against letting despair freeze us into inaction.  That's what Trump and his cadre want.  And not only do we need to push back against the flood of evil that threatens to engulf us, we need to commit ourselves to continuing to create beauty.  As Slava Leontyev points out, the world can still be a beautiful place, if we work to make it so -- despite what is happening around us.

"It's easy to scare people," he says.  "But it's hard to forbid them to live...  Ukraine is like porcelain.  Easy to break, but impossible to destroy."

May we show such resilience, dedication, and spirit in the war we will fight over the next four years.

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Old New England

What do you know about the founding of New England?

No, not that New England, the other one.  Although there are some significant parallels, notably a king in a completely different country granting settlers land despite the fact that he didn't own it and it inconveniently happened to be already occupied by someone else.  (Hardly the only time this has happened, of course.  See the history of South and Central America, Indonesia, India, and pretty much the entire continent of Africa for other notable examples.)

This particular New England is on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea, in what is now Ukraine and Russia.  According to three medieval manuscripts -- the French Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis, Orderic Vitalis's Ecclesiastical History, and the Icelandic Játvarðar Saga -- it was founded in the late eleventh century by a group of pissed-off Anglo-Saxon noblemen who, after the Norman Invasions of 1066, didn't like that the country had been taken over by a bunch of Frenchmen, so decided to up stakes and leave.  There's some indication that they were led by prominent English thegn Siward Barn, who had been imprisoned by William the Conqueror, and after being released in 1087 disappears from the records entirely.

This, apparently, may have been because he went to Constantinople.

The English group was mostly made up of powerful and wealthy landowners; after the Conquest, the peasant class pretty much went on with their miserable lives just as before, only with new kings and masters.  Most of them probably reacted to William's accession to the throne the same way these guys did:

"King of the who?"

In any case, Siward and his disaffected noblemen decided to take off for greener pastures (figuratively, not literally, as it turned out) and sailed to the Mediterranean, sacking the city of Ceuta near the Straits of Gibraltar, and pillaging and plundering their way from Mallorca to Menorca to Sicily (which at that point was also being run by the Normans).

It was in Sicily where they found out that Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenos was in trouble from Muslim invaders (and also from the goddamn Normans, who just would not mind their own business), so they decided to head over to Constantinople and give him a hand.  The battle went poorly for the Muslims (ultimately they'd come back and pretty much take over the place, but this was a significant setback, at least for the time being); the Normans were routed completely, and limped back to Sicily to regroup and figure out who they would annoy next.  Alexius was grateful enough to tell the English they could stay in Constantinople permanently if they wanted.  Siward said thanks but no thanks -- figuring, probably correctly, that he'd remain in a subservient position if they stayed there, and after all that was why they'd left England in the first place -- and asked Alexius if he had any other deals to offer.

Alexius said "Sure do," and described a region on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea that Siward and his friends could have.  This was ignoring the aforementioned minor details that (1) Alexius didn't own the land in question, and (2) someone else did.  So it was no skin off his nose either way.  But Siward thought that sounded just ducky, and after all they'd already proven to everyone they could pillage with the best of 'em, so they took off for the spot in question, wiped out the people who lived there, and settled down.

They called the spot "New England."  They named some towns they founded "London," "York," and "Sussex," amongst others named after "other great towns in England."  Eventually they intermarried with the local population (what was left of it), and were assimilated into the Byzantine, and ultimately the Russian, Empires.

The most reliable of the three sources, Vitalis's Ecclesiastical History, spells out in detail how it all went down:

[They] went into voluntary exile so that they might either find in banishment freedom from the power of the Normans or secure foreign help and come back and fight a war of vengeance.  Some of them who were still in the flower of their youth travelled into remote lands and bravely offered their arms to Alexius, emperor of Constantinople, a man of great wisdom and nobility...  This is the reason for the exodus of the English Saxons to Ionia; the emigrants and their heirs faithfully served the holy empire, and are still honored among the Greeks by the Emperor, nobility, and people alike.

It's a pretty fantastic story, but is it true?

As amazing as it sounds, it appears to be.  It's attested in three unrelated sources -- details differ some, but they all substantially agree on the main points.  Further, linguist Ottar Grønvik found distinctive West Germanic -- i.e., Anglo-Saxon -- words, morphology, and syntax in Crimean Gothic, a Germanic language spoken in the region until the sixteenth century.  Most strikingly, there are still place names on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea that seem to come from this settlement; notably a Londina River and a town named Susacho (from "Sussex" -- later renamed Novorossiysk by the Russians).

None of which is proof, of course.  My training as a linguist impressed upon me the danger of taking chance sound or spelling correspondences as hard evidence of an etymological common root.  But I have to admit that the case still seems pretty strong to me.

So there you have it; a New England that pre-dated the more famous one by five centuries.  It'd be interesting to do some DNA testing of the people who live there now and see if there are any discernible traces of English ancestry.  Not that it's likely to happen soon; the coast of the Black Sea is once again a pretty dangerous place to wander around.  But curious to think that almost a thousand years ago, some Anglo-Saxon long-distance soldiers-for-hire may have settled there, never to see Merrie Old England again.

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The horse warriors

I'm always drawn to a historical mystery.

The difficulty, of course, is given that a huge amount of our history has either highly unreliable records or else no records at all, a lot of mysteries will never get resolved satisfactorily.  Two examples I read about recently which are as fascinating as they are frustrating are the true identity of Jack the Ripper, and the fate of the "Princes in the Tower" -- the two young sons of English King Edward IV, who disappeared in around 1483 and were probably murdered.  

As a quick aside, it bears mention that in the latter case the alleged culprit, King Richard III, was not the horrific, amoral villain you might think, if your only source is the play by Shakespeare.  He was actually competent and not a selfish monster, nor was he a hunchback; the Shakespearean smear job makes for great theater, and appeased the anti-Yorkist monarchy of the time, but has unfairly tarred a man who -- if Henry Tudor hadn't decided to swipe the throne -- probably would have been considered a pretty good leader.  He may still have had the princes killed, though; such behavior by a king anxious to eliminate rivals and put his own claim to the throne beyond question was not at all uncommon at the time.  But Shakespeare having Queen Margaret call him a "deformed, bunch-backed toad" seems a little excessive.

Sometimes there's an entire ethnic group that is mysterious, again usually because we have mostly archaeological evidence to go by, supplemented by dubiously accurate accounts written down by other (often hostile) cultures.  In fact, the whole reason why the subject of historical mysteries comes up is because of a paper I read a couple of days ago about the Scythians, the central Asian "horse warriors" who bumped up against the cultures their territory bordered -- principally Greece, Rome, China, and Persia -- and whose accounts form the basis of our knowledge of who they were.

The Golden Stag of Kostromskaya, one of the most famous Scythian artifacts (ca. 7th century B.C.E.) [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Joanbanjo, Placa en forma de cérvol tombat, trobada al túmul de Kostromskoy a Kuban, segle VII aC, CC BY-SA 3.0]

In "Ancient Genomic Time Transect from the Central Asian Steppe Unravels the History of the Scythians," which appeared last week in Science Advances and was authored by a huge team led by Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, we read about a genomic study of the remains of over a hundred individuals from Scythian burial sites, and find out that they were hardly a single unified ethnic group -- their genomes show a significant diversity and represent multiple origins.  So the Scythians seem more like a loose confederation of relatively unrelated people than the single unified, monolithic culture of fierce nomads depicted in the writings of their rivals.

The authors write:

The Scythians were a multitude of horse-warrior nomad cultures dwelling in the Eurasian steppe during the first millennium BCE.  Because of the lack of first-hand written records, little is known about the origins and relations among the different cultures.  To address these questions, we produced genome-wide data for 111 ancient individuals retrieved from 39 archaeological sites from the first millennia BCE and CE across the Central Asian Steppe.  We uncovered major admixture events in the Late Bronze Age forming the genetic substratum for two main Iron Age gene-pools emerging around the Altai and the Urals respectively.  Their demise was mirrored by new genetic turnovers, linked to the spread of the eastern nomad empires in the first centuries CE.

 If that's not intriguing enough, last week there was also new information uncovered about an artifact from the same place but a lot earlier, the "Shigir idol," which was uncovered from a peat bog in the Ural Mountains in 1890.  Its age is apparently greater than scientists have thought -- the new study suggests it's about 12,500 years old, making it the oldest wooden representation of a human figure known.

The Shigir idol [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Владислав Фальшивомонетчик, Большой шигирский идол, CC BY-SA 3.0]

"The idol was carved during an era of great climate change, when early forests were spreading across a warmer late glacial to postglacial Eurasia," said study lead author Thomas Terberger, of the University of Göttingen, in an interview in the New York Times.  "The landscape changed, and the art—figurative designs and naturalistic animals painted in caves and carved in rock—did, too, perhaps as a way to help people come to grips with the challenging environments they encountered."

What it brings home to me is the humbling thought of how little we actually know of our own history.  For every mystery we know about -- like Jack the Ripper and the Princes in the Tower we began with -- there are probably thousands of other equally fascinating events we don't have any way of knowing about.  The vast majority of humans died without leaving any extant traces, and since human remains and biodegradable artifacts (like the Shigir idol) only survive under specific (and uncommon) conditions, the vast majority of those are gone beyond recall, too.  When we luck out and find tangible evidence, like the Scythian burials, we can sometimes glean further information about a culture we knew little about.  The unfortunate but tantalizing truth, though, is that most of our own history is both unknown and unknowable.

Which for me makes it even more appealing, although inevitably, as frustrating as it is fascinating.

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The sad truth of our history is that science and scientific research has until very recently been considered the exclusive province of men.  The exclusion of women committed the double injury of preventing curious, talented, brilliant women from pursuing their deepest interests, and robbing society of half of the gains of knowledge we might otherwise have seen.

To be sure, a small number of women made it past the obstacles men set in their way, and braved the scorn generated by their infiltration into what was then a masculine world.  A rare few -- Marie Curie, Barbara McClintock, Mary Anning, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell come to mind -- actually succeeded so well that they became widely known even outside of their fields.  But hundreds of others remained in obscurity, or were so discouraged by the difficulties that they gave up entirely.

It's both heartening and profoundly infuriating to read about the women scientists who worked against the bigoted, white-male-only mentality; heartening because it's always cheering to see someone achieve well-deserved success, and infuriating because the reason their accomplishments stand out is because of impediments put in their way by pure chauvinistic bigotry.  So if you want to experience both of these, and read a story of a group of women who in the early twentieth century revolutionized the field of astronomy despite having to fight for every opportunity they got, read Dava Sobel's amazing book The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars.

In it, we get to know such brilliant scientists as Willamina Fleming -- a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid, but who after watching the male astronomers at work commented that she could do what they did better and faster, and so... she did.  Cecilia Payne, the first ever female professor of astronomy at Harvard University.  Annie Jump Cannon, who not only had her gender as an unfair obstacle to her dreams, but had to overcome the difficulties of being profoundly deaf.

Their success story is a tribute to their perseverance, brainpower, and -- most importantly -- their loving support of each other in fighting a monolithic male edifice that back then was even more firmly entrenched than it is now.  Their names should be more widely known, as should their stories.  In Sobel's able hands, their characters leap off the page -- and tell you a tale you'll never forget.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

World War Woo

If you're wondering why the world seems to have lost its collective marbles lately, we now have an answer:

The Reptilians who control all of the governments in the world have realized that we're on to them, and they're trying to start World War III.

At least that's the contention of YouTube user "2CirclesArchive," who posted a video a couple of days ago that should win some kind of award for complete batshit lunacy.  In case you don't want to jeopardize valuable cells in your prefrontal cortex watching the thing, here are a few salient quotes:

The Reptilian parasites know that humanity is waking up to their existence and presence. That’s why the need the Third World War as a distraction.  That’s the sole reason for this irrational conflict.

Which of the many irrational conflicts are we talking about, here?  Because in the last few months, we seem to be having global-scale irrational conflicts on nearly a daily basis.  And I'm not entirely sure how starting a world war helps out the Reptilian parasites' goal of remaining undercover.  You'd think that'd kind of seal the deal, actually.

It’s Reptilians versus humans – not humans versus humans.  Not the West versus Russia...  Putin had been part of a group advised by reptiles.  Nordics made the counter offer to Putin.  The technology the Nordics are giving to Putin is on par with America.  The Nordics have told Putin he no longer has to toe the American line, hence his resistance.

The "Nordics" doesn't refer to Scandinavian people, here.  They're a race of sexy blond aliens, kind of like Liam Hemsworth only with superpowers.  So apparently the Nordics and the Reptilians are playing some kind of chess game with Putin as one of the pawns.  And since "2CirclesArchive" claims that the focal point of the unrest is going to be in the Ukraine, I suppose it makes some kind of bizarre sense that Putin would be involved.

Then we're told that at least one other human besides "2CirclesArchive" has figured it out.  This person is Simon Parkes, former councilor in Whitby, North Yorkshire, England.  Parkes has appeared in Skeptophilia before because of his claims that (1) his mother was a nine-foot-tall green alien with eight fingers on each hand, and (2) he's been abducted by an alien he calls "the Cat Queen," who screwed him silly and proceeded to give birth to a half-alien, half-human child named "Zarka."

So I think we can safely conclude that Parkes is a few fries short of a Happy Meal.  Nevertheless, "2CirclesArchive" thinks he is a credible witness, and finds it completely plausible that he has interacted with "aliens, shadow people, elementals and UFOs... Mantid (Mantis) beings, Draconis Reptilian, Feline, small and tall Grey creatures, Crystalline beings and other creatures that can’t be identified."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons CGP Grey, Roswell - Alien 4889611102, CC BY 2.0]

Okay, what do we do about all this?  "2CirclesArchive" has some advice:

Pass it on and tell everyone.  The internet is controlled.  Call people in Ukraine randomly.  Google for a phonebook of Ukraine and call people and businesses and tell them all politicians are Reptilians.  They want the Third World War.  Search on the internet.  I love you.  Hurry, time is running out.

So because the internet is controlled, we're supposed to... search on the internet?  And then... just call random people in Ukraine?

There's also the problem of the fact that even if I was inclined to do this, which I'm not, I don't speak Ukrainian.  I mean, anyone can look up how to say "All politicians are Reptilians" using Google Translate ("Vsi polityky ye reptiliyi"), but I should warn you that Google Translate isn't all that accurate.  Every year I have to advise my Latin and Greek students not to attempt cheating on their assignments by loading them into Google Translate, because what comes out is an often-hilarious hash.  As an example, take the simple and rather well-known quote from Petrarch, "Nihil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio" ("There is nothing as hateful to wisdom as too much cleverness").  Here's what Google Translate did with it:

There is nothing more offensive to that wisdom of the sharpness of the excessive.

Right!  What?

So I'm not sure you should be all that confident of my translation into Ukrainian.  You might be better off hiring an actual Ukrainian person, although you'd have to choose carefully, or they'd just tell you, "ty absolyutno bozhevilʹna" ("you are absolutely insane," at least if you believe Google Translate).

Other than that, I'm not sure what to do.  I mean, I've done my part in passing the message along, but I'm not sure I'm going to push it much further.  I'm only willing to stretch the patience of my readers so far.  Beyond that, I think we'll have to take our chances with the Reptilians, shadow people, Mantids, and Liam Hemsworth.

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia is Flim-Flam!, by the grand old man of skepticism and critical thinking, James Randi.  Randi was a stage magician before he devoted his career to unmasking charlatans, so he of all people knows how easy it is to fool the unwary.  His book is a highly entertaining exercise in learning not to believe what you see -- especially when someone is trying to sell you something.

Flight of the dead

If there's a group of people that I enjoy arguing with even less than I enjoy arguing with young-earth creationists, it's conspiracy theorists.

At least the young-earth creationists admit that there's evidence out there that needs an explanation.  Fossils?  Left behind by the Great Flood.  Genetic and morphological homology between related species?  Coincidence.  Light from stars further away than 6,000 light years?  The speed of light changes as it goes.  Or light stretches.  Or weakens.  Or something.

So, okay, they're wrong, about nearly everything scientific that you could be wrong about.  But at least they don't come up with batshit crazy nonsense for which there is no evidence, and then argue that your evidence doesn't exist.

Which is, by and large, the conspiracy theorist's favorite modus operandi.  Take, for example, the latest wacko explanation (if I can dignify it by that name) of the recent tragic downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 17 by Ukrainian separatists: the whole thing was staged in order to force a confrontation between the United States and Russia, and the plane itself was being flown remotely and was peopled entirely by corpses.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

My first thought upon reading this was that the originator of this "theory" must have believed that the Sherlock Holmes episode "A Scandal in Belgravia" was a historical documentary.  What evidence, you might rightly ask, does anyone have that this conjecture is true, other than that provided by Mr. Freeman and Mr. Cumberbatch?

A statement that rebel leader Igor Girkin made that a number of the bodies at the crash site did not appear to be "fresh."

Well, if the plane I'm on gets blown out of the sky, and I fall 30,000 feet, I'm guessing I won't be looking my "freshest" at that point, either.  And afterwards, Girkin reportedly said that he could "neither confirm or deny" the claim.

But that was all it took.  The plane was full of corpses.  The whole thing was a setup.  This, despite the fact that one of the passengers on the doomed plane, Mohammed Ali Mohammed Salim of Kuala Lumpur, took a video of himself and other passengers getting settled right before the plane was preparing to take off, and uploaded it to Instagram along with the message that he was "a little nervous."

For good reason, as it turned out.

But no, say the conspiracy theorists, Salim's video itself is a fake, made hurriedly by the Evil Conspirators once Pillars of Sanity and Rationalism like Alex Jones and Jeff Rense began to figure the whole thing out.

Then, of course, we had the people who said that it couldn't be a coincidence that disaster has struck Malaysia Airlines twice within just a few months.  Maybe... maybe it wasn't a coincidence.  In fact, maybe MH 17 and MH 370, the flight that disappeared over the Indian Ocean this past March were...

... the same plane.

At least, I think that's what is being claimed on this site, wherein we are treated to the following brain-boggling chain of thought:

How brain dead do they think we are??? 

Our previous articles have covered the MH370 who, when, where and why but not the WHAT. What happened to MH370 after they whisked it into the airport hangar at Diego Garcia? 

The WHAT question has now been answered. MH370 was remarked and became Malaysian flight MH17. It was flown to Amsterdam where it picked up passengers and flew over the western allied Ukraine where it "disappeared from radar" and was shot down and destroyed. The Russian government was blamed in order to alienate and inflame existing Ukraine tensions with Russia. Now who would want to do that exactly???? Duh... 

In view of the unlikely coincidence of two Malaysian Boing 777's being downed within 3 months of each other, there's undoubtedly a connection! 

Over 500 passengers have been murdered on board two "downed" Malaysian Boeing 777's within 3 months of each other. This is NOT a coincidence. 

Well, yes, actually it is.  That's what you call it when two events coincide.

Oh, and from March to July isn't three months.  But maybe I'm splitting hairs, here.

What gets me about this, and (in fact) what gets me about all conspiracy theories, is how the proponents of these nutty ideas think that an absence of evidence is actually a point in their favor.  No conclusive proof that the dead bodies at the MH 17 crash site were already badly decomposed?  Well, it must be true, then.  No trace whatsoever of missing flight MH 370?  It must have landed on Diego Garcia.

Which, of course, makes them impossible to counter.  Any evidence you can produce against their argument has been manufactured; any lack of evidence on their part is just proof of how sneaky these false-flag-loving illuminati are.

All of which kind of makes me pine for a nice rip-roaring argument with a young-earth creationist.  Ken Ham?  Kent Hovind?  Andrew Snelling?  Anyone?

Damn.

Jurassic pyramid

There is a tendency amongst some folks that I just don't understand; and that is that if there is no ready explanation for things at hand, they feel obliged to make one up.

Maybe it's because I'm well aware of the extent of my own ignorance, and have no particular shame in saying "I don't know."  I try to make sure that the size of that territory gets smaller over time rather than larger; I am not, I hope, complacent, nor am I intellectually lazy.  If there's a topic about which I am ignorant, I am very willing to put in the hard work of learning.

Still, you can't be an expert about everything.  And one of the areas in which I am sadly lacking is geopolitics.  This is why when a student asked me, yesterday, why Vladimir Putin was so interested in the Crimea, I said, "I'm not sure."

I know that there are a good many ethnic Russians in the Crimea; there was a set of maps in an article on BBC News that showed the divide between areas of the Ukraine where the native language was Ukrainian, and where it was predominantly Russian.  Unsurprisingly, over 50% of people in the Crimea speak Russian as their first language.  Add to that the fact that the town of Sevastopol is a major naval center on the Black Sea, and it's not to be wondered at that Putin would like to find a reason to annex the region.

Still, the reasons for such military power plays are seldom simple, or few in number, and I was hesitant to say that these were Putin's only motives.  So I thought I'd do a little research, and see what else I could find.  And I found, in short order, some other claims -- that recently-ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was pro-Russian and anti-EU, and the previous president and presumptive current leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who was just released from prison, is pro-EU and anti-Russian.  That there are valuable oil and gas pipelines passing through that region that are vital to the Russian economy.  That Russia wanted to halt a trade agreement with the EU which had been proposed, and which was moving toward ratification.

And also, that Putin knows that a vastly powerful, energy-harvesting Jurassic-era pyramid is located in the Crimea, and he wants to control it.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Yes, you read that right.  And if you did a double-take upon reading it, well, so did I.  I may have even done a triple-take.  Jurassic-era?  As in back when there were dinosaurs?  Like, 180 million years ago?

Yup.  According to an article in the Crimean News Agency, a Ukrainian scientist named Vitalii Goh discovered the pyramid back in August of 2012:

A Ukrainian scientist discovered the oldest pyramid in the world. Most interestingly, it was found in the most beautiful corner of the country, in Crimea.

As the ICTV channel reported, the finding was revealed by accident, when during his test alternative methods of finding water Ukrainian scientist Vitalii Goh discovered underground unknown object, which proved to be a giant pyramid of 45 meters in height and a length of about 72 meters. Goh said that the pyramid was built during the time of the dinosaurs.

“Crimean pyramid” has a truncated top, like a Mayan pyramid, but its appearance is more like an Egyptian. It is hollow inside, and a mummy of unknown creature is buried under the foundation.

“Under the foundation is a small body in the form of a mummy long 1.3-1.4 meters with a crown on his head.”

Well, there is a general trend I've noticed, and that is that if you say the word "pyramid," the wackos start coming out of the woodwork.  So instead of asking the relevant questions -- such as how the hell such a pyramid could have been built when there were no humans there to build it, and how, if the story had even a scrap of truth, it didn't rock the archeological world -- we have comments like the following:

Considering these pyramids were built by the fallen angels when they were imprisoned here on earth before man...I wouldn't be surprised!

They are also NOT fighting the wars in the Middle East over "oil"...put another way, the Tower of Babel was built in modern day Iraq at the location of the strongest stargate on earth. TPTB are fighting for control of this portal.

These pyramids might indicate key locations of energy and would explain a great deal in light of current circumstances!

Antidiluvian [sic] technology!  This is why Russia claimed the North Pole a few years ago!

The Crimean pyramid was undoubtedly built by dinosaurs then, using huge stones from faraway quarries, and then constructed using a complicated system of ramps and pulleys.

This last one almost made me spit a mouthful of coffee all over the screen, but I'm glad it did, because it meant that I didn't choke to death when I read the next one:

Gravity was much weaker back then.  Explains why beasts could roam the Earth that are far too large to survive today.  Also explains how the Pyramids were built.  Less gravity means lighter rocks making the job far easier.  One day gravity became stronger (for whatever reasons) and that caused the massive die off of all large beasts. Also explains why small mammals survived easily and coniferous plants become overrun by flowering plants.

That's it.  I think we can quit, now.  That is the single dumbest thing I have ever read.

It does, however, remind me of the character of Calvin's dad in the immortal comic strip Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson.  Some of the most memorable exchanges between Calvin and his dad are when Calvin asks his dad a technical question, and gets an answer that is not much better than Jurassic gravity-warp dinosaurs building pyramids:

Calvin: Why does the sun set?
Dad: It's because hot air rises. The sun's hot in the middle of the day, so it rises high in the sky. In the evening then, it cools down and sets.
Calvin: Why does it go from east to west?
Dad: Solar wind.
Calvin: Why does the sky turn red as the sun sets?
Dad: That's all the oxygen in the atmosphere catching fire.
Calvin: Where does the sun go when it sets?
Dad: The sun sets in the west. In Arizona actually, near Flagstaff.
Calvin: Oh.
Dad: That's why the rocks there are so red.
Calvin: Don't the people get burned up?
Dad: No, the sun goes out as it sets. That's why it is dark at night.
Calvin: Doesn't the sun crush the whole state when it lands?
Dad: Ha ha, of course not. Hold a quarter up. See, the sun's just about the same size.
Calvin: I thought I read that the sun was really big.
Dad: You can't believe everything you read, I'm afraid.
Calvin: So how does the sun rise in the east if it lands in Arizona each night?
Dad: Well, time for bed. 

This puts me more in the position, though, of being like Calvin's mother, doesn't it?  In one strip, Calvin asks his dad, "How do they figure out the load limit on bridges?" and his dad says, "They drive bigger and bigger trucks over the bridge until it breaks.  Then they weigh the last truck and rebuild the bridge."  And Calvin's mom, perturbed, shouts, "Dear, if you don't know the answer, just say so."

Which brings us full circle.  There are lots of geopolitical reasons, I'm sure, that Vladimir Putin wants to invade the Crimea.  Some of them are probably logical, and perhaps some of them reflect a measure of megalomania.  However, I am reasonably certain that none of them involve dinosaur-built energy-warping pyramids that were constructed when the gravitational pull of the Earth was lower.

And to the people who are circulating this claim, I have only one thing to say: dear, if you don't know the answer, just say so.