The Orthodox Jews maintain about one thousand shohatim - many of them in Argentina and Uruguay -, who sacrifice the cattle and ensure that the meat is kosher. Two thousand years have passed since the Temple's cohanim and levi'im were disbanded, but the Jewish priestly caste succeeded in maintaining its social position and extracting its divinely ordained share. Amazing!
Xerxes regularly consults Magi (the Persian priestly caste who served as seers) and pays attention to dreams and portents. Before crossing the Hellespont, there are elaborate rituals and divination. The Greeks are even more conspicuous about it - Spartan kings like Leonidas and later Pausanias, accompanied by seers, and they won't move armies without favorable sacrifices.
A striking example: at Plataea, the Spartans under Pausanias endure Persian arrow volleys while waiting for favorable omens from sacrifice. Men are dying around them, but they won't advance until the seer Tisamenus declares the signs are good. Only then do they attack.
The Athenians, too, consult Delphi about the Persian invasion, and the oracle's ambiguous prophecies about "wooden walls" become crucial to their strategy. The Seven against Thebes were led by the seer Amphiaraus (pic), who foresaw the death of all of them.
What's interesting is that Herodotus presents this as universal behavior - not peculiarly Greek or Persian. Croesus consults oracles, the Egyptians have their own forms of divination, and the Scythians use willow rods. For Herodotus' world, the divine constantly intervenes in human affairs, and ignoring signs or seers leads to disaster. Those who disregard prophecies (like Croesus's misunderstanding of Delphi) pay dearly.
The Hebrews had the urim and tumim, but I am unsure what they were. I'll ask Claude.
Numerous Neanderthal bones recovered from archaeological sites bear unmistakable marks of butchery—cut marks from defleshing and fracture patterns consistent with marrow extraction. The larger bones, particularly the femurs and tibias, exhibit characteristic notching and pitting, indicating that someone systematically cracked them open to access the nutrient-rich marrow. Some bones even display signs of "retouching"—secondary modifications indicating they were later repurposed as tools for sharpening stone implements. In other words, whoever consumed these individuals subsequently used their remains as whetstones.
The chronology is particularly striking: these butchered bones date to the period when Homo sapiens first arrived in Europe. The evidence suggests newcomers hunted young Neanderthals and processed them with stone tools using techniques identical to those used for game animals. Neanderthals disappeared rapidly after contact with our species. While various theories attempt to explain this—climate change, genetic bottlenecks, competitive exclusion—the archaeological record points toward a simpler explanation: they were hunted as food.
This interpretation finds support in ethnographic accounts. Societies that practised cannibalism consistently describe human flesh as resembling pork in taste and texture. New Guinea communities famously termed humans "long pig" and consumed them at communal feasts. The notion that such practices served purely ceremonial functions or represented symbolic absorption of an enemy's strength strikes me as a wishful reinterpretation. The more straightforward answer is that people hunted and ate Neandertals because they found the meat tasty and nutritious. Meeting Homo sapiens was very bad news for every one of God's creatures.
I am an optimist. Tomorrow, my portfolio will rise.
These are the people who captured and enslaved, and assassinated our 18-year-old girl-soldiers.
NVidia in free fall - without any reason except that it has been rising steadily for a long time. Strong earnings unnerved the market, a sign that people are very nervous and will react unreasonably.
"The selloff appears to be largely positioning-driven, with recent outperforming names taking the worst of the move," said Jon Withaar, senior portfolio manager at Pictet Asset Management in Singapore.https://x.com/i/status/1985243190937444826
This is an explosion of a main tunnel in Gaza. See the smoke emerging from ten or more outlets at the same time.
Tehran loses nearly a third of its water through broken pipes. So much water has been pumped from aquifers that parts of Tehran are sinking by more than 10 inches per year. The Ministry of Energy is drilling 250 deep wells to extract groundwater beneath Tehran, but this water may be contaminated by wastewater (Dr Elisha Kaly taught me that there is no drinking water under cities)..
Water access in Tehran is unequal; wealthier northern districts have better infrastructure and a more consistent supply, while southern districts experience frequent water rationing. The situation cannot be solved by rationing; instead, a plan is in place to evacuate approximately one-third of Tehran's population. This is genuinely alarming for a capital city and virtually without precedent.
A political change will not improve the outlook. Claude estimates that desperation will not motivate them to start a war. Iran's current president Pezeshkian has publicly acknowledged the crisis, even offering 100 million tomans (about $1 million) to anyone who could solve it. Honi HaMeagel may have some ideas.
Pic.: Amir Kabir Dam. See the regular water level mark.
I am reading about Cecil Roth's History of the Jews in Venice. The University of Padua claimed bodies for its lessons of anatomy, and the Jewish community paid for being excluded. Sometimes, cemeteries were robbed or bodies were snatched during funerals.
I never understood the cult of the dead. The champions were the Ancient Egyptians, who erected mountains of stone blocks to store embalmed bodies and their cats. We may have caught this משוגאַס from them, or the Ancient Greeks, whose battles never ended till they recovered their fallen companions. But no, every human society always treated its dead with ceremony, hoping vaguely for resurrection here or in Hades. Or revenge if they were mistreated.
