I was tipped off to a disturbing piece of slander which I felt compelled to address. I can’t find the original (if you know the origin let me know), but there are posts around the internet stating that in Irish Gaelic McCain means “Son of Cain” attempting to tie McCain to that brother-murderer in the bible (1 John 3:12) through some kind of naming-destiny argument too ridiculous to believe. Although I personally dislike McCain for his dirty deals, infidelity, and constant flip-flopping on the issues, I can’t let this one stand.

McCain is an anglicized spelling of the Irish name Mac Uí Catháin (for those of you about to yell that he’s not Irish, he’s Scottish - the Scots are transplanted Irishmen). If you have never heard Gaelic spoken, it is very different from English. It sounds a lot like Hebrew with alot of sounds which English speakers sometimes find difficult to reproduce. Mac *does* mean “son of” (so does the prefix “O”) and “Mc” is just an abbreviation for Mac. The clan McCain (to use the Anglicized spelling) was allied with the O’Neills (again an anglicized spelling) in the Province of Ulster in the north of Ireland. Many of the ruling families hailed from Ulster in ancient Ireland, and these were just two. As the English became entrenched in northern Ireland, they couldn’t pronounce the Gaelic easily and ended up spelling the names in English as closely as they could to what they sounded like to them. The Uí Catháin name was derived from the word Cathan (cath, “a battle”, an, “one who”). So, if it matters at all (and I don’t think it does), McCain’s name literally means “One who battles” which would have been fitting for someone of the ruling class of ancient Ireland. This was discussed on Roots Web in 1999 here (even before the 2000 election

On occasion I’ll stumble into a conversation about life expectancy. Almost invariably, someone is suggesting that humans are living so much longer today than they once did at such and such a time. Since I’m particularly interested in Roman/Celtic times, as well as the period of the American Revolution I’ve often been puzzled by these statements because so many of the characters I’ve read about seem to have lived to a great age. At issue seems to be a mis-application of the facts of statistics.

Do a quick search on the internet and you’ll find that the life expectancy in ancient Rome was about 28 years. This does not mean that if you were 27 years old in ancient Rome that you were a wizened old man (which seems to be the prevailing opinion in the discussions I’ve been in), but instead indicates your average *chance* to survive when you count all the infant deaths (a huge mortality percentage - perhaps as high as 50%)! Sure there were other factors - poor diet and higher risk of death from disease, but it doesn’t mean that man was physically any different than today. If you lived as a Roman citizen in Rome and had a good standard of living, chances are good you’d live just as long as the typical American today. However, even if you were a rich Roman, the medicine of the time couldn’t do a thing about many of the serious medical conditions we routinely correct in neo-natal hospitals today or the not so serious conditions we routinely have corrected in old age, so many of the unfortunate infants would simply die, and some of the elderly would succumb earlier than we might expect today which skews the statistics greatly. Things don’t look much better for the late 1700s America, with estimated life expectancies of 35 to 40 years. I’ve read that infant mortality during that period could have been as high as a possible 30 to 40%! If you managed to make it adulthood, chances were good you would live a fairly long time because the American diet was excellent compared with that of old England (according to William Fogel British men had a 17 year shorter life expectancy due to inadequate diet).

So it depends on what you mean when you say we live longer. If you mean an average of the entire society including infants, you’re right - modern medicine has worked wonders to help keep infants alive, and reduce the ravages of disease. If you mean a particular modern individual person will live longer than his ancient counterpart, then depending on which individuals you are comparing and what their individual circumstances are you might be wrong.

Here’s a totally random list of ages I looked up just for kicks:

• Julius Ceasar died at only 56 (but he was assassinated)
• Augustus Ceasar - 76
• Tiberius Ceasar - 78
• George Washington - 67
• John Adams was 90
• Thomas Jefferson - 83

I first came across the following 8th grade test posted on the soc.culture.irish newsgroup. So much has changed in only a little over a 100 years, and that is quite evident in the subject matter of the test. Good grammar and knowledge of geography were obviously considered more important than they are today, and the math questions were of a very practical nature. Doing well on this test meant you were well prepared to succeed in the business of the day which at least in the midwest was probably going to have something to do with farming, but it also meant that you would be able to correspond with others using the written word and that you had a basic knowledge of American as well as Earth history.

The words of the usenet poster may be helpful to some in understanding the context of the test:

In 1885 the 8th grade was considered upper level education. Many children quit school as soon as they could master the basic fundamentals of the 3 R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic). Most never went past the 3rd or 4th grade. That’s all you needed for the farm and most city jobs. Child labor laws were not in existence. Additionally today’s education has much more focus on technology and sociology than the grammar and geography of old. It’s a different world with different requirements and capabilities needed to succeed.

SOURCE:
The following document was transcribed from the original document in the collection of the Smoky Valley Genealogy Society, Salina, Kansas. This test is the original eighth-grade final exam for 1895 from Salina, KS. An interesting note is the fact that the county students taking this test were allowed to take the test in the 7th grade, and if they did not pass the test at that time, they were allowed to re-take it again in the 8th grade.

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS - 1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu., deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per m?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u’.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e’. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.

1. Where are the saliva, gastric juice, and bile secreted? What is the use of each in digestion?
2. How does nutrition reach the circulation?
3. What is the function of the liver? Of the kidneys?
4. How would you stop the flow of blood from an artery in the case of laceration?
5. Give some general directions that you think would be beneficial to preserve the human body in a state of health.

The 20 sided die evokes memories of all night Dungeons and Dragons gaming sessions. I never imagined them being rolled in ancient Rome! Gaming blogs were all over this story when it first broke in 2003 when Christies announced it was auctioning off a Roman 20 sided die. I guess I just don’t run in the crowd of folks that can afford to plunk down $18,000 for such a bauble, but I have to admit that it’s intriguing. Measuring 2 and 1/16 inch wide and covered in arcane symbols, Christies claimed the deep blue-green glass piece was made sometime around the 2nd century AD. The die was supposed to have been found in Egypt in the 1920s by the father of the seller. Most of the blogs I have found have the same information, all gleaned from the Christie’s website lot info (no longer on the web), and all mentioned that ’several polyhedra with similar symbols are known from the Roman period’, but I can’t find anything (quickly) to support this statement (yet?). The fact that a University professor in Maryland paid the aforementioned exorbitant sum for the die at auction does not provide enough evidence for me that it’s not just an early 20th century oddity passed off as an ancient die. If anyone has any information about other polyhedra of this type, or can point to a scholarly study of the piece in question, please let us know!

I’ve made it a point since last year to visit the Web Gallery of Art at least once a week and discover something new by digging into it’s vast archive of paintings. Images are hosted on servers at the Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. I’ve been concentrating on images of musicians, downloading my favorites and adding the associated text. It’s been a great source of new desktop wallpapers at work, too!

Non Prophet recently posted about The Nazca Lines which are strange geometric forms drawn in the desert in Nazca, Peru some in the shape of animals, so large that they are not visible in their entirety from the ground. There have been a multitude of proposed theories attempting to explain the creation of these lines over the years, and I found that this site lays them all out pretty well. The most interesting theory, to me is that laid out by the Nasca Lines Project which postulates that the glyphs indicate (at their terminal points) the location of geophysical faults where water seeps to the surface. Water would have been *very* important to those peoples living in this desert environment. In fact, it is only due to the extremely dry climate that the lines are still evident today. The theory is the work of David Johnson of NY, a photographer, former HS teacher of 25 years, and adjunct professor of Anthropology at the University of Mass. More detailed analysis is available on his site under ‘water research’.

Although most Christians are really only comfortable with the story that Santa Claus was really ‘St. Nicholas’ (of Turkey), it seems obvious to me that the current mythology behind Santa Claus is at least in part a survival of the pagan Viking belief in Odin. This doesn’t fit well with Santa’s arrival near Christmas, and so, has been fairly well disguised over the years. Odin, the ‘AllFather’ of the Viking (Norse) pantheon would occasionally take human form and leave his comfortable abode in Asgard to mingle with men (and women) in Midgard (the land of men) often as a grey bearded old man. On the Jule (Yule) or the Winter Solstice which is the longest night of the year, he would ride his 8 legged horse Sleipnir across the sky in a great hunt. Children would leave their boots out filled with carrots and straw for Sleipnir to eat, and Odin would reward the children for their kindness by replacing the offerings with gifts or candy.

Odin on Sleipnir
From the 18th century Icelandic manuscript NKS 1867 4 now in the care of the Danish Royal Library.

The Dutch, who settled parts of North America early in this country’s history brought these traditions with them, and we still hang stockings, think of Santa as flying through the sky propelled by a multi-legged power-train, and Santa lives in a cold climate which is much more like the land of the Vikings than the relatively warmer land of Turkey. Also, he looks a heck of a lot more like descriptions of Odin than St. Nicholas (of whom images exist). Also, St. Nicholas was popular in Russia, not Northwestern Europe, though the Russ were Vikings! It’s more likely that aspects of Odin travelled *from* Viking lands *to* Russia to become associated with St. Nicholas than the other way around. These parallels to Odin have become for me more striking recently as I’ve been reading The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland, a fantastic translation of the greatest stories of Norse Mythology (largely taken from Snorri Sturlson’s original transcriptions in the 13th century), retold in modern english (with scholarly endnotes and discussion).