My Trip to the Edge of Sanity

 

 

This is a couple of reports on the Ayahausca experience and one is from one of the first facilities in North America providing the service.

I have not experienced this drug nor have i experienced any drug nor particularly care.  I am deeply interested in the developing beneficial results of targeted and carefully guided applications of psychoactive drugs like Cannibis and Ayahausca.  The good news is that superior protocols are also evolving that are far less physically stressful.

The remarkable take home is we have two individual reports of long term drug addiction been resolved.  I would like to see this tested on nicotine to see if some relief can be found there.

I am optimistic that science has been cut loose on all these drugs and some sort of sane therapy protocols are now well on the way..

.

My trip to the edge of sanity

Fans say this drug can cure heroin addiction… but its use is controversial and illegal

Thomas Church

5 December 2015

http://life.spectator.co.uk/2015/12/my-trip-to-the-edge-of-sanity-on-ayahuasca-the-latest-fashionable-hallucinogen/

A single flickering candle is the only source of light in the living room of a house in Wandsworth. Six of us are seated in a circle, each occupying an armchair or a spot on a sofa as the shaman, Adam, sings a rhythmic tribal chant in Spanish and shakes a rudimentary rattle made from dried leaves. 

We’ve all knocked back a dose of ayahuasca, a powerful Amazonian hallucinogen, and are anxiously waiting for the drug to take effect.

I’m doing my best to relax, but I can’t help noticing Jess, an Australian charity worker in her twenties, out of the corner of my eye. Seconds earlier, she buckled over and rested her chest on her lap, burying her head into her knees. I’m about to ask her if she’s all right when she lifts her head and is violently sick. I think of that Bette Davis line in All About Eve: ‘Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.’

I first met Adam several weeks earlier when I was trying to find out more about ayahuasca. A concoction made from particular leaves and vines by the tribes of the Amazon for many hundreds of years, it suddenly seems to have become all the rage among fashionable types in London and New York. Celebrities from Paul Simon to Sting, Miley Cyrus to Lindsay Lohan, have spoken about its benefits, and it featured prominently in a recent film about the lives of Brooklyn hipsters called While We’re Young.

But the drug’s recent surge in popularity has brought controversy too. A 19-year-old British backpacker died in Colombia last year from an ‘allergic reaction’ and in Brazil ayahuasca was implicated in the murder of a prominent newspaper cartoonist — both he and his attacker were members of the church of Santo Daime, which administers the drug as a sacrament (and has a handful of outposts in the UK). And there’s no shortage of anecdotal reports linking it to seizures and mental illness.

On top of all this, the active ingredient in ayahuasca is dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a Class-A drug. Although there has only been one ayahuasca-related conviction in Britain to date, anyone supplying or dealing the drug could in theory face life in prison. So what is the attraction?

It’s not always obvious. Some initial research revealed first-hand accounts of people who had taken the drug and experienced vivid, sometimes bizarre visions — mind-boggling colours and patterns, a swarm of malevolent red-eyed bats, or a personification of the brew in the form of ‘Mother Ayahuasca’. One man even described seeing his own penis take on the form of a towering building, ‘rendered from solid, impenetrable stone’.

More intriguing is the claim that it has therapeutic properties. Some users report temporarily heightened powers of introspection that allow them to consider their lives in a deeper, more meaningful way. Others speak about an increased sense of connection with the natural world; and there are claims (credible ones, according to Professor David Nutt, a former government adviser on drugs) that heroin users have been cured of their addictions after just a few supervised sessions.

I got in touch with Graham Hancock, whose books about archaeology and ancient civilisations have sold in excess of five million. He also gave a TEDx talk about his experience of ayahuasca in which he described how his encounters with ‘Mother Ayahuasca’ helped him kick a 24-year cannabis habit and re-evaluate the impact that his actions were having on those closest to him. He suggested that by stopping people using the drug, we might be ‘denying ourselves the next vital step in our own evolution’. Administrators removed the video of Hancock’s talk from the TED website amid accusations that he was pedalling ‘pseudoscience’ — which seems slightly unfair, considering that accusation could be levied at 99 per cent of TED talks.

However, when Hancock welcomed me to his beautiful Georgian home in Bath, he told me this move did him ‘a huge favour’. Footage of the presentation was reposted on YouTube, where it has garnered more than a million hits. When it was revealed earlier this year that Hancock would be giving a free-to-attend talk about ayahuasca at Waterstones on Oxford Street, the initial response was so overwhelming that the organisers asked him to tell his 84,000 Twitter followers to stay away.

Hancock’s view is that taking ayahuasca ‘might just shake us up so much that it allows repressed memories to be released, and allows us to empathise with people in ways that we normally block ourselves off from’. But, he added: ‘The sense of entering a seamlessly convincing parallel universe inhabited by intelligences is overwhelming. It is very hard to convince yourself that, at some level, it’s not real. I think it’s premature of science to say: “That’s just your brain on drugs.” I think it needs to be investigated much more deeply.’

It is in the cause of investigating more deeply that I find myself at the house in Wandsworth on a Friday night, where Adam, who runs the Facebook page ‘Brilla Medicina’, is to guide us through the ayahuasca experience. Also in attendance are two charity workers, a former schoolteacher and a nurse-turned-homeopath. Each of the guests has made a ‘donation’ of £100 and we are all supposed to be midway through a strict regime that forbids pork, alcohol, drugs, dairy products, red meat and sexual activity for up to a week before and after the ceremony.

There is some nervous small talk before we take our seats and eye up the cavernous black plastic sick buckets that have been provided. Adam, who is extremely tall and wearing jeans, shirt and a pair of Nike trainers, dons a brightly coloured tunic and a necklace decorated with animal teeth. He then lights a pipe filled with tobacco and sets about ‘purifying’ the candlelit room with smoke, pacing around and chanting between puffs. Next, he takes a plastic litre bottle filled with the ayahuasca brew and shakes it. The bottle hisses gently when he removes the lid and pours about 25ml into a small cup.

After some more blowing of smoke, chanting and hand gestures, Adam finally offers me the cup before repeating the process with each participant. We sit with our eyes closed as he sings tribal chants, shakes a rudimentary rattle made of dried leaves and tells us to ‘open our hearts to love’. The homeopath, Moira, has also spent time in Peru and she joins in, adding her delicate voice to Adam’s deep timbre, creating rather a beautiful harmony.

After an hour, apart from feeling very mellow, I haven’t noticed any effects. So when Adam asks whether we’re OK and would like a second cup, I say yes.

It’s after the third cup that I really achieve lift-off. To start with, I see a spectacular galaxy of moving, brightly coloured geometric shapes, which gives way to images of exotic jungle plants growing and sprouting new leaves. But these disappear if I open my eyes, which I do when I hear Moira move over to help Jess, the Australian charity worker who is bent double beside me at the other end of the sofa.

Moira kneels down in front of Jess and whispers: ‘You are carrying a great sadness.’ She then rises to her feet and blows smoke from a hand-rolled cigarette through her cupped hands and on to the top of Jess’s head. Instantaneously, Jess vomits into her bucket and begins to sob. ‘That’s good,’ says Moira. ‘Let the sadness out.’ After a while, Jess stops crying audibly, brings her feet up onto the sofa and goes quiet.

I close my eyes again and soon the visions give way to a strange, profound feeling — as if I am teetering on the edge of an abyss within myself. Below, madness awaits. Fortunately, I am still lucid enough to know that going insane would be a very bad thing indeed and so resolve to avoid that fate by focusing on happy thoughts with laser-like intensity.

This, rather soppily, leads me to think about my mother. I’m not usually given to sentimentality, but I begin to consider how much she loves me and how every-thing I have, I owe to her. But then I start to worry: maybe the reason I haven’t yet found a nice girl to settle down with is partly because of the strength of that relationship. Perhaps I expect too much? No, I tell myself, one day, I’ll find The One, and we’ll be able to make our own children feel as loved as I did growing up. This seems to do the trick, and I allow myself to bask in a feeling of contentment.

Eventually, as the effects start to wear off and I sense my grip on sanity becoming a little firmer, people feel ready to discuss their individual experiences. Jess says that she met Mother Ayahuasca herself and, overall, felt positive about the experience — even if, at one stage, it was as though she could feel the sum total of ‘all the sadness in the world’.

No one knows what time it is, but once mobile phones are retrieved and switched back on there is some surprise that it’s almost 5 a.m. — nine hours after we first arrived. Blankets and mattresses have been laid out on the floor to accommodate anyone who wants to sleep at the house, but most are keen for their own beds, and cabs are called.

As Adam leads the group into the garden to pour the contents of the sick buckets into a hole, my phone signals the arrival of an Uber. And somewhat gratefully, I begin the next leg of my journey back to reality.

Some names have been changed.

Another report

I remember it like it was yesterday.

It was on one of the most intense nights of my entire life.

It was March, 2013, on a dark night... I arrived at the home of a local shaman in Peru.

He gave "the talk" on what to expect with Ayahuasca, how to get the most out of my ceremony, and he asked:

"Who here is sitting with Ayahuasca for the first time?"

I raised my hand, as others raised theirs around me.

"Wow, this is really happening," I thought...

Nervous, yet extremely excited, not knowing really how to feel, I made my way into the Ceremony temple.

We sat in a circle, got our buckets and our blankets, and one by one, went up to receive a cup of this potent, powerful, life-changing tea.

The lights dimmed.

The room went still.

And then, like popcorn, I could hear people around the temple starting to purge into their buckets.

And it hit me.

I started to get these colorful visions, that I didn't know how to make sense of.

Of course, I didn't try to make sense of them, as I entered a space of no-mind, no-thought...

I felt this energy moving inside of me, like a snake, slithering around... It was the Spirit of Ayahuasca.

I watched her, and I could see her go into places inside my mind, inside my heart, inside my soul...

And break them open. Tear them apart.

There was this sensation almost like an explosion going off inside of me.

And "the purge" began.

I vomited, and purged, and released, and cried...

 

I saw experiences from my life I had long forgotten about...

I witnessed scenes of my life, like a movie playing in front of me.

And things that once pained me so deeply to just think about, seemed to instantaneously resolve

and heal themselves, as I watched it, from this birds-eye perspective.

I saw my first girlfriend, and how I cheated on her... 

I saw my addiction to chasing money...

I saw my parents getting divorced... and my difficult childhood...

Experience after experience, they played before me. And I continued to purge, simultaneously, as I saw these painful memories re-emerge.

I went between crying, vomiting, and curling into a  ball in fetal position... and this continued for hours.

Until eventually, the worst of it was over...

And I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I was filled with this somewhat euphoria. A new-found sense of "lightness", like I just took off a 100 pound backpack of rocks that I didn't even know I was carrying.

And a smile crept on my face.

I started to laugh, at the journey I just went through...

I could see, I knew, how powerful what I experienced was.

And I knew, in that moment, I am here to share this medicine with the world.

I didn't know how, or in what way yet, but I KNEW.

And the journey began.

The next day, I was exhausted, but I could feel, deep DEEP inside, a shift. Beyond anything I could really comprehend.

I was different.

Life was different.

How I thought, how I felt, even what I wanted in a grander scheme, was different.

Clearer. More true to ME & my path...

It was one of the hardest, most intense nights of my life.

But it was worth it. Absolutely beyond words worth it.

 

And I had to come back. I knew, I had to sit with this medicine again.

Nothing has ever helped me as much as this did.

Nothing has ever created that deep of a shift inside of me, so quickly, than what I just experienced.

I'm not going to sugar-coat this.

It's NOT going to be easy.

But if you want real change in your life, then, it's not going to come through doing what's "easy".

It takes a commitment, a dedication, a perseverance, and a true heart-felt desire for the deepest shifts

inside, for anybody to come to Ayahuasca.

I won't ever tell you it will be easy.

But I will tell you, it will be one of the greatest things you have ever done for yourself.

If you're ready, to really face the pains aching at your heart from the inside out, to go into the shadows, find the memories that continue to create pain and struggle in your life, and finally let them go...

If you're really ready, then now's your chance. 

You don't have to go to Peru.

We've brought Ayahuasca to you.

Because I know we need it. As a whole, our society is sick. We need this medicine.

So if you feel the call, click here to learn how to experience Ayahuasca in America, and get all the

details on our DEEP spiritual healing retreats. 

We're here for you.

Whenever you're ready.

With SO much love, here for you in every way possible, Trinity de Guzman & The Ayahuasca USA Family PS - I'm not here to convince anybody to sit with this medicine. That's the last thing I'm here to do.

I just tell my story, share my truth, open my heart, and let you decide what to do for yourself.

Listen to your heart.

Ayahuasca is NOT for everybody. It's only for people who are ready to really go deep, look inside, and face the sadness that lays in the corners of our consciousness, that we often try to pretend don't exist...

Only if you're ready to do that, should you apply for any of

our healing retreats.

Click here if you feel ready to learn more

SO much love your way!

---

When did the Mayas come to the North American Mainland?

 This makes it clear that large scale migration from Mayaland took place beginning around 800 Ad through 1400 AD in response to varying tribal fortunes in war.  This is a span of around six hundred years and ample to support the huge amounts of attapulgite found in Mayaland and the unexpectedly large population that made the move

It says little however regarding the real antiquity of the mineral trade itself which could easily have started and in my view likely did, back during the Atlantean Bronze Age between 2400 BC through 1159BC when trade was hugely curtailed but not ended.

Just as agricultural richness attracted European farmers over the last three centuries, the same held true here. for a six century span.  This has not been specifically investigated, but i suspect that corn culture included terra preta as well.  The soils in Florida obviously demand it.  I have seen one clear reference so far that supports this conjecture.

 .

When did the Mayas come to the North American Mainland? 

December 17, 2015 Richard Thornton

 

http://peopleofonefire.com/when-did-the-mayas-come-to-the-north-american-mainland.html 

That is a very good question, which really can’t be answered with certainty . . . Few contemporary archaeologists have dared to ask it.

Using attapulgite as a measuring stick

The mineral attapulgite or palygorskite is the active ingredient in Maya blue pigment, which is renowned for its ability to resist deterioration over time. Attpulgite was also mixed with red ocher to make a red stucco pigment and copper oxide to make a light green pigment.

The only significant source of attapulgite in the Western Hemisphere is in Southwestern Georgia. There is a minuscule amount in Yucatan . . . not nearly enough to stucco even one of the major cities.

Several years ago, a cluster of highly publicized studies by American universities located attapulgite in a couple of cenotes in Yucatan. After the newness of the press releases died out, fact checking revealed that these studies were merely finding decomposed Maya Blue that had been applied to sacrificial victims. The University of Minnesota is the only university that has dared to compare attapulgite in Georgia to blue stucco in Mexico, and it was a 100% match at Lakamha (Palenque in Spanish.)

Obviously, for vast quantities of attapulgite to be imported to the Highland Maya city of Lakamha along with the yaupon holly bush, Maya traders must have been fairly familiar with the geological resources of the Lower Southeast for a long time. They would have needed a chain of safe harbors along the Florida Gulf Coast to pull their big freight canoes into at night and during storms. That, in turn, would have required a chain of treaties or military actions.

Maya Blue was being used at the massive cities of Teotihuacan and Cholula long before the Mayas made it. Teotihuacan was occupied between around 250 BC and 750 AD. It is quite possible that the Olmec Civilization (1500 BC – 500 BC) used it before Teotihuacan. There are no sources of attapulgite in the main portion of Mexico. Thus, it is quite possible that the traders of the Olmec or Central Mexico

Lakamha was founded at some point in the Late Formative Period (400 BC – 250 AD). It early stages have never been excavated. Its written history dates from around 450 AD. Its existence as a major city dates from around 580 AD to 800 AD. Thus, we can be certain that Maya traders were coming to the Southeast as early as 580 AD. Around 800 AD the mega-volcano El Chichon erupted in Chiapas, causing the abandonment of Lakamaha and a massive diaspora of the Itza People.

Mexican anthropologists have never been able to determine where most of the Itza went. The Itza capture of Chichen about 100 years later does not account for most of the population loss. Thus, around 800 AD is a likely time when the first significant bands of Itza refugees began arriving in North America. The Kennimer Mound in Northeast Georgia is the earliest structure to display Itza architectural traditions. It has not been radiocarbon dated, but there are Napier Culture potsherds on the surface, which suggests a 750-850 AD construction date.

There was a wave of towns with Mesoamerican characteristics being founded in the Southeast between around 900 AD and 1050 AD. The region around Lake Okeechobee, Florida exploded with population around 900 AD. The first settlement on the Ocmulgee Acropolis was about that time. Around 990 AD, towns with Mesoamerican-Mississippian traits were founded on the Etowah River in NW Georgia, at Ichese on the Ocmulgee River and in Bessemer, Alabama.

What archaeologists will need to determine is the precise date when shell tempered, plain redware pottery first appeared in the Southeast. This is what Maya commoners made exclusively. It has been precisely dated at Ocmulgee National Monument at 900 AD. My suspicion is that old redware will be found in the vicinity of Savannah, if someone can find an undisturbed town site from that era.

There was a second wave of towns being abandoned and founded in the Lower Southeast between 1150 AD and 1200 AD. This coincides with widespread attacks by Chichimec barbarians in Central Mexico and the defeat of Chichen Itza by Mayapan in the Yucatan Peninsula. The hybrid Maya population of Tamaulipas was completely driven out of Mexico. Tamualipas is an Itza word. This period seems to mark the final large scale immigration from Mesoamerica and the Caribbean Basin into southeastern North America.

The last and perhaps, smallest wave of Mesoamerican immigration into the Southeast would have occurred around 1300-1400 AD. This is the migration described in the Migration Legend of the Kaushita People. Aztec armies launched multiple invasions of the descendants of the Toltec Civilization in East-Central Mexico.

Using corn as a measuring stick

An alternative approach would be to assume the arrival of maize (American corn) as a datum point for Mesoamerican contacts with North America. Primitive maize pollen was found in southeastern Alabama that was radiocarbon dated to around 1200 BC.

Archaeologist William Sears calculated the radiocarbon date of the initial cultivation of improved corn varieties at Fort Center to be around 850 BC or earlier. It was cultivated in raised beds composed of improved soil. Corn does not grow well in the natural soils of Southern Florida. The Seminole Tribe must grow its feed corn in northwestern Florida or buy it from elsewhere.

Large scale corn cultivation appeared at Ocmulgee National Monument at least as early as 900 AD, but surprisingly few radiocarbon dates have been taken there. Researchers may find older dates farther down stream on the Ocmulgee River or near Savannah.

Summation

It will be awhile for the Apalache Foundation will be able to carry out significant research into the “Maya Chronology” question. We still have not begun to understand the Apalache Culture, which began in the Woodland Period, but was synonymous with the “Lower Creeks” by the 1730s. The Apalache Culture obviously originated with immigration by Panoan peoples from eastern Peru. Swift Creek Stamped Pottery in Georgia and Late Formative Period Conibo Stamped Pottery in Peru were pretty much the same. Somewhere in the time after the Swift Creek Culture declined, Itza Maya cultural traditions began blending with the old traditions. When is the question.

Origins of the South Atlantic Coastal Peoples . . . the Mayas With Robert Thorton

What becomes clear is that the south East was actively colonized by significant populations of migrants from the advanced portions of the Gulf Coast surely because of attractive agricultural conditions able to accept their corn culture.

Add in the thousand year influx from the Atlantean world from 2400 BC through 1159 BC and we have clearly defined bookends between Atlantis and 1492 AD.  This is an active span of no centralizing power that lasted 2500 years.  We are now learning that significant intrusions took place by at least the Norse and here by the Maya and likely tribes fleeing Inca and Aztec.


The lack of a centralizing power able to protect villages and to establish a land registry made for a different economic geography.  Strong village became critical and a decent distance from enemies.  All readily available in the South East.

The important take home is that we have a long duration of village establishment and also disturbance in the area including far more peoples and actual numbers than we ever considered.




Origins of the South Atlantic Coastal Peoples . . . the Mayas

December 17, 2015 

Richard Thornton 

http://peopleofonefire.com/origins-of-the-south-atlantic-coastal-peoples-the-mayas.html

The discovery of the lost Creek migration legends in England, during early 2015, has radically changed our understanding of WHERE the first ancestral Creek towns and mounds were developed . . . the Savannah area. However, an abbreviated version of the Hitchiti-Creek Migration legend has been in printed form since 1776. It states that the ancestors of the Hitchiti came by water a long distance from the south. In many documents from the 20th century, Creek descendants made vague claims of being partially descended from the Mayas. There is absolutely no excuse for Southeastern archaeologists not knowing these facts in 2012 and 2013, before they acrimoniously attacked any suggestion that Itza Maya refugees settled in the Southeast.

Part II of the series on the South Atlantic Coast

In the spring of my sophomore year in architecture at Georgia Tech, Dr. Arthur Kelly, Director of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia, showed me a cylindrical ceramic seal found near the attapulgite mines in Georgia and photos of other artifacts that he found along the Chattahoochee River in Georgia. He thought that these artifacts were Mesoamerican in origin or at least copies of Mesoamerican artifacts. Although, very honestly, the possibility that Maya refugees settled in the Southeast was a very low priority in my career for many decades, I, nevertheless, assumed that some archaeological team would eventually find further proof of a Maya presence in the same region, where that Kelly found these artifacts.

Ironically, because of the artificial controversy created about the Track Rock Terrace Complex in 2012, that proof would come from the attapulgite mines in Georgia, but not by Georgia archaeologists. Instead, in October of 2012, University of Minnesota scientists found a 100% match between attapulgite mined in Georgia and Maya Blue stucco on temples in the Maya city of Palenque, capital of the Itza Mayas.

The “Maya immigration” question first popped to the forefront of my professional attention in 2007. While I was reading a box full of Spanish archives, sent to me by the American Museum of Natural History, I encountered the description of what appeared to be Maya houses. As part of my project, I was to prepare drawings of the Native American village next to Mission Santa Catalina de Guale.

A Spanish architect, based in Santa Elena (South Carolina), visited the new village of Wahale (Guale in Spanish) that had moved from the region just south of the mouth of the Savannah River to St. Catherines Island, GA. Caucasian archaeologists seem to not know this, but Wahale means “Southerners” in Creek.

He said that the interiors of the walls were composed of local adobe clay, reinforced with saplings. The walls were finished with a stucco* composed of white clay, sand, burned sea shells and crushed shells that made the buildings “glisten like pearls.” Interior partitions created three rooms inside the houses and the ends were rounded. I had actually lived in a house like that . . . but it was in the jungles of eastern Campeche State, Mexico in the Yucatan Peninsula!

*Yes, this is proof that the Native Americans on the South Atlantic Coast were constructing tabby buildings long before Europeans arrived.

 

While studying the Maya cities of Edzna, Labna and Sayil, the author lived in this Maya hut. Later that year I came upon a report written by Lt. Thomas Timberlake, while he was visiting the Overhill Cherokees in 1763. He said that the Tomatley (Tamatli) Cherokees built villages and houses that were very different than the other Cherokees. His description of the Tamatli houses were identical to that made by the Spanish architect on the coast, two centuries earlier . . . including “glistening like pearls.” What the heck was going on?

 

This Puuc Maya widow owned the house above. She cooked my Maya-style meals and washed my clothes daily with a soap made from the sap of a tree. The Mayas are fastidious in their personal hygiene, despite tropical conditions. Her facial features are one of four physical types found among Native American descendants in the Lower Savannah River Basin. 

 

This Guatemalan Itza Maya lady was virtually identical to my grandmother, whose Itsate Creek mother town was on the Savannah River. I stayed in this woman’s house while studying the Highland Mayas near Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Her physical appearance was VERY different than the Mayas living in Campeche, Yucatan & Quintano Roo, but similar to those in western Belize. Note the minimal ear lobe, which can also be seen on the statues found at Etowah Mounds. Also, note that each Maya branch has distinctly different traditional clothing. 

 

Highland Maya teenage girls in Chiapas State, Mexico. They are typical Itza Mayas, but could no longer speak their ancestral language. Their appearance is virtually identical to that of “Lower Creeks” and Seminoles with substantial Native American heritage. Upper Creeks have a raptor appearance to their faces that includes long thin noses, longer ears and flatter faces. 

 

The Conibo, Shipibo and Kashibo Peoples of Peru also sent immigrants to the Southeast. They became the Apalache Creeks. Similar in appearance to their Itza Maya cousins, they have longer noses and somewhat more oriental features. Their descendants are also in the Lower Savannah Basin. The Shipibo are considered to be the most skilled artists in the New World. 

Maya descendants in the Savannah River Basin

During the past seven months, my primary professional activities have been two projects involving the Native American history of the Savannah River Basin and the South Atlantic Coastal Region between Charleston, SC and the St. Marys, GA. I have identified four ethnic types among Native American descendants along the Lower Savannah River Basin.

The Uchee descendants have oval heads, high hair lines, super-sized cheek bones and pronounced noses. The Puuc Maya descendants have facial features like the Campeche lady above. The Highland Maya descendants, like the Itza lady above, have square heads, low hair lines, small noses, protruding chins and small, lobeless ears. The Apalache descendants are similar to the Highland Mayas, but tend to have “longer” heads and noses. They look very similar to the native peoples of Satipo Province, Peru that you saw in the videos of the article, “Canciones de Satipo.”

Maya provinces in the South Atlantic Coastal Plain

1. Itsate and Ichese (Ichete, Etchete, Etcheo, Hitchiti, Achese, Ochese, Wakate, Mayacoa, Mayaqua)

Itsate means “Corn Tamale” People in the Itza language. Ichese means “Offspring of Corn (Goddess?)” in Itsate Creek. Iche is also the Itza Maya word for maize (American corn.) “Te” is the Itza Maya suffix for “people.” The Muskogee word for Ichese, is Vchese, which means the same thing in Mvskoke. British settlers pronounced the broad A (V) in the beginning of the Muskogee version as an O. Creeks in Oklahoma have forgotten the original name of the ethnic group and now call them by their English names, Hitchiti and Ochese.

The Itsate and Ichese were Itza Maya – Muskogean hybrid peoples, who are now called Hitchiti Creeks. They were living in the Middle Ocmulgee River Basin, when Hernando de Soto passed through in 1540, when the French explored Georgia in the 1560s and also when British settlers arrived in the Southeast 110 years later. In the mid-1560s, the French called them by their Arawak name of Mayacoa (or Mayaqua) which means “Lake People.” Both they and the Spanish showed the Mayacoa also living near Lake Okeechobee, Florida. Originally, they probably called themselves Wakate, which means “Lake People” in a hybrid Panoan-Itza Maya word.

The Itsate, who were the same people as the Ichese, built their towns near mountain gaps in the Georgia Mountains that controlled major trade routes. After the Creek-Cherokee War began in 1715, most Itsate moved southward to the Oconee and Ocmulgee Rivers, eventually becoming members of the Creek Confederacy.

Tamachichi (Tomochichi in English) was the mako (mikko) of the Ichese Alliance until 1717, when he was banished by the town of Coweta as it was fomenting a new Creek Confederacy. In 1732, Tamachichi moved with a small band of followers to an old village site on Yamacraw Bluff, where the northern section of Downtown Savannah is located today. The following winter, he gave a walking tour to General James Oglethorpe of the planned site of Savannah. While walking, he pointed to some small burial mounds on the edge of Yamacraw Bluff and said that his ancestors’ bones were buried there.

The Itsate (Hitchiti) Migration Legend states that their ancestors came by water from the south. This statement by a people with an Itza Maya name should have long ago made anthropologists assume a Mayan connection, but it didn’t. They never bothered to translate their name!

The Ichese first settled in a swamp landscape near a great lake (Lake Okeechobee). They then moved to a location where many reeds grew (the Everglades.) They then paddled northward along the coast until they arrived at the mouth of the Savannah River. They established a village where Tamachichi’s village was located about 500 years later. This location is now the northern end of Downtown Savannah. The burial mounds are long gone.

Around 990 AD they established a village on a horseshoe bend in the Ocmulgee River, about two miles south of the Ocmulgee Acropolis. It grew slowly at first, but after the Ocmulgee Acropolis was abandoned, it grew into the most important town of the region and had at least two large mounds.

About the same time, the Ichesi established a village on the Etowah River (Etowah Mounds.) That village grew into a large town, but did not have large mounds. The large mounds were constructed by a related people, who occupied the town site around 1250 AD.

2. Tamate (Tamale, Tamatli, Tama, Altamaha)

Tamate is the Itza Maya word for “Trade People.” This branch of the Creek Confederacy was probably descended from Chontal Maya traders, who originated in the tidal marshes of Tabasco State, Mexico. Their homeland is virtually identical to the South Atlantic Coast between Charleston, SC and St. Marys, GA.

3. Oconee (Okvte, Okate, Okoni, Ocute)

Oconee is the Anglicization of the Itstate Creek word, Okvni, which means “born of water.” Okvte (Ocute) their name recorded by Hernando de Soto’s chroniclers, means “Water People.”

The Oconee Migration Legend describes their ancestors as paddling from the south to reach North America and then entering the continent via the St. Marys River between present day Georgia and Florida. Their culture flourished within and on the edges of the Okefenokee Swamp, which in earlier times was like Lake Okeechobee. In 1776, botanist William Bartram stated that after the snow melted in the Georgia Mountains, the Okefenokee would swell three times its normal size and cover much of Southeast Georgia.

The original capital of the Oconee was on Billy’s Island. Here they establish a Temple of the Sun that was staffed by Sun Priestesses. Even after most of the Oconee had moved northward to the Oconee River in NE Georgia, the temple remained and was considered a sacred site by the Creek Confederacy. There was also branches of the Oconee (Okate) in Beaufort County, SC on the coast, on the Upper Savannah River and where the North Carolina Cherokee Reservation now is. The main river in this reservation is the Oconaluftee. Its name is the Anglicization of “Oconee People – Cut Off.” “Cut Off” is an 18th century Native American term that means “to be sacked or massacred.”

4. Kiale (Kiokee, Kiake, Kialegi, Keowee, Kiawah)

The Kiale were a branch of the Oconee Creeks, who established their capital on the Upper Oconee River in present day Watkinsville, GA. They established colonies on Kiawah Island, SC and along the Keowee River in northwestern South Carolina.

An Economist's 10 Objections to the Minimum Wage

The fundamental problem with minimum wage as presently imagined by the idiots is that it is price control rather than market intervention.  This makes it market interference.  Market interference by regulation is meaningless unless it is combined with a properly managed market with ample liquidity.


Without true planned and capitalized liquidity you have a discount market in which a portion of the population is not able to participate except as slaves which is obviously illegal.  That means they do not work and instead are enslaved to a government handout and all the baggage associated with that.


Since it is obviously stupid it needs to be addressed.  I have done that through the creation of the four hour standby job that provides a night's rest in a warm bed, a shower, laundry,  breakfast and lunch in exchange for four hours of light work.  This protocol is easily implemented using resources already available and its purpose is to make the idea of a minimum wage meaningful.


Thus  worker can after lunch then take on a full eight hour shift if it becomes available and not disturb his options..
 
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An Economist's 10 Objections to the Minimum Wage

Price controls have serious consequences

MARK J. PERRY Friday, December 11, 2015

http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/an-economists-10-objections-to-the-minimum-wage/

#Employment

One of the biggest political issues right now nationwide, and one that will likely be an important issue in next year’s presidential election is the minimum wage.

Economists are generally in agreement that increases in the minimum wage, especially large increases to $15 an hour like in Seattle, will reduce employment opportunities for unskilled workers.

Despite the inevitable negative outcomes that will surely result from a $15 minimum wage — we’ve already seen negative effects in Seattle’s restaurant industry — politicians and unions seem intent on engaging in an activity that could be described as an “economic death wish.”

Proponents of a higher minimum wage point to the obvious and visible benefits to some workers — those who may find a job at the higher wage or keep their existing job and get a higher wage.

But that is only part of the story — there are many less obvious downsides to an artificially high minimum wages that take longer to recognize, and it’s those inevitable negative effects that lead economists to generally oppose minimum wage laws.

What are the specific objections of economists to the minimum wage and why do they generally favor market wages instead? Here are ten reasons in favor of market wages over a government-mandated minimum wage:

Proposed minimum wages are almost always arbitrary and never based on sound economic analysis. Why $10.10 an hour and not $9.10? Why $15 an hour and not $16 an hour?

A uniform federal minimum wage may be sub-optimal for many states, and uniform state minimum wages may be sub-optimal for many cities. A one-size-fits-all approach to the minimum wage is really a “one-size-fits-none.”

Minimum wage laws require costly taxpayer-funded monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, whereas market wages don’t.

Minimum wage laws discriminate against unskilled workers in favor of skilled workers, and the greatest amount of discrimination takes place against minority groups, like blacks.

Adjustments to total compensation following minimum wage laws will disadvantage workers in the form of reduced hours, reduced fringe benefits, and reduced on-the-job training.

Many unskilled workers will be unable to find work and will be denied valuable on-the-job training and the opportunity to acquire experience and skills.

Minimum wage laws prevent mutually advantageous, voluntary labor agreements between employers and employees from taking place.

To the extent that higher minimum wages result in lower firm profits and higher retail prices, that’s a form of legal plunder by workers from employers and consumers that is objectionable.

Market-determined wages are efficient, whereas government-mandated wages create distortions in the labor markets that prevent labor markets from clearing.

Like all government price controls, minimum wage laws are distortionary. If you trust government officials and politicians to legislate and enforce a minimum wage for unskilled workers, you should logically trust those same bureaucrats to set all prices, wages and interest rates in the economy. Realistically, if you agree that those economy-wide price controls would be undesirable, then you should also agree that the minimum wage law is also undesirable.

In summary, economists are not unconcerned about unskilled workers, we are actually very concerned about those workers. And it is because of that concern to maximize employment opportunities that economists oppose the minimum wage.

Simply put, we would rather see unskilled workers employed at a market wage — even if that wage is only $5, $6 an hour — that allows them to gain valuable work experience and on-the-job training, than to be unemployed at $0.00 an hour. And unfortunately, a $15 minimum wage maximizes the probability that an unskilled worker will be unemployed at $0.00 an hour instead of being gainfully employed.

Methelene Blue Reverses Progeria Symptoms and Normal Age-related Damage

Skip the clinical trials on this protocol.  It has been safe for one and one half centuries and readily obtainable.  Thus it is certain that every supplement supplier is packaging it up as we speak.  Their customers will do all the experiments you can imagine.

 If the general effect is as persuasive as suggested by this work, then what we can expect is major cellular regeneration and a suspension of age related decline.  That is hard to miss.

 It may well turn out that the cause of cellular aging has also been tripped over here as well.  It is all very encouraging and available soon..

Common chemical reverses progeria symptoms and normal age-related damage

Methylene blue reversed the effects of progeria on cells

(Credit: Kan Cao/Zheng-Mei Xiong/UMD)

A new study by a team of scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD) indicates that a common chemical can reverse the symptoms of the premature-aging disease progeria and perhaps even those of normal aging. According to the study, small doses of methylene blue can undo the damage done to cells by the genetic defect that causes progeria with a speed and reliability that the scientists claim is "like magic."

Progeria is a rare, notorious, and tragic genetic disease that afflicts the young. The patients usually show symptoms in the first year of life, which are similar to normal aging, except greatly speeded up. They become thin, the bones and joints grow fragile, the skin wrinkles, all hair is lost, and death occurs from organ failure and complications by the time most reach their teens.

It's caused by a defect in the gene that controls the production of lamin A protein, which is part of the cellular nucleus under the nuclear membrane. According to the UMD team, healthy cells cut off a small part of each lamin A molecule, which allows it to carry out its function properly. In progeria, the molecules remain unaltered and interfere with the workings of the nuclear membrane until it starts to bulge and deform and the cell stops looking like a ball and resembles a sick popcorn kernel.

For the first time, the team recorded the extent to which progeria affects the mitochondria, which are the powerplants of the cell. The progeria defect causes them to swell, fragment, and malfunction. This was suspected, but not properly seen before.

But the bigger discovery by the UMD team is that small doses of methylene blue, a common, inexpensive, water-soluble can reverse the symptoms of progeria in less than eight weeks.

First produced in 1876, methylene blue is used as a bacteriological stain, for treating plaque psoriasis and other diseases, in cases of cyanide poisoning, and even for cleaning aquaria because its toxicity is so low it won't harm fish eggs.

Working with human fibroblast cells, the team discovered that methylene blue changed progeria-affected cells from deformed to normal round shapes in a matter of weeks and almost completely repaired the damage until they are nearly indistinguishable from normal cells. Exactly how methylene blue does this is still not clear, but the team reports that repeated experiments have not revealed a single failure.

According to the team, methylene blue can also reverse the effects of normal aging in healthy cells, including damage to the mitochondria. The researchers say that the next step will be to test the chemical on animal models. If the results pan out, it could be used as an inexpensive disease treatment, as well as in non-prescription anti-aging treatments, cosmetics, and nutritional supplements.

"So far, we have done all of our work in stem cell lines." says Kan Cao, senior author on the study and an associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at UMD. "It is critical to see whether the effect extends to whole animals. We also want to see if methylene blue can repair specific effects of progeria in various cell types, such as bone, skin, cardiovascular cells and others. Further down the line, other groups might begin human clinical trials. It's very exciting."

The study was published in Aging Cell.