February is Black History Month: Underground Railroad

February is Black History Month and I have decided to write a brief article daily regarding Black History. I hope you all will enjoy these articles!

The Underground Railroad:

Many people seem to have a misconception that the underground railroad refers to an actual railway, train, or literal underground system of tunnels leading from American South to the safer American North during the nineteenth century. It doesn't.

The underground railroad was actually a network of brave people throughout the country that assisted escaped slaves in reaching the North and Canada. These people often offered their own homes to escaped slaves as a safe haven for a night or a few nights on their journey northward. The "conductors" of the underground railroad were both freed blacks and whites. Escaped slaves often traveled between 10 and 20 miles a night, usually on foot, to reach these safe houses. The slaves hid in barns, hidden rooms, and even closets during the day. They would be given a small provision of food and while they rested during daytime hours the next "station master" would be contacted, and that night the slaves would be sent to the next safe house on their route. Most homes on the route hung a quilt on the door with a particular color and design as a kind of flag that escaped slaves recognized as a symbol of the underground railroad and a safe house.

The journey was long and arduous. The slaves and those assisting their escape risked their lives by participating in the underground railroad. Once escaped slaves reached the North they were "free" in a sense. However, racism was prevalent in the North and escaped slaves often found it difficult to procure employment and a stable home in the Northern states. Yet this new sense of freedom was worth any hardship encountered to most of the escaped slaves.

PBS has an interesting article that goes more in depth located here. National Geographic offers an interactive online game based on Harriet Tubman's underground railway route. I highly recommend playing it!

Stone Age Burial Site Yields Social Clues

Researchers discovered a 4,600 year old burial site in Germany earlier this month, a find that is especially significant as it yields the earliest known evidence of people living together in family units.

Four nearly identical Stone Age burial sites were located in Eulau, Saxony-Anhalt. Through DNA analysis researchers were able to prove that the graves were actually family burials. The remains of a mother, father, and two children were found carefully buried together. Another grave contained two siblings and an unrelated female. Researchers believe this female was likely a paternal aunt. The individuals were buried facing each other and all remains dated to the same time period.

Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide commented, "By establishing the genetic links between the two adults and two children buried together in one grave, we have established the presence of the classic nuclear family in a prehistoric context in Central Europe--to our knowledge the oldest authentic molecular genetic evidence so far."

While tools and artifacts dating to the Stone Age have been studied in depth, not much is currently known about the societal norms of Stone Age life. This find is particularly significant because it proves that early peoples recognized nuclear families, and perhaps even resided in nuclear family units.

Furthermore, the evidence suggests that the individuals located were victims of a raid. Researchers believe that the survivors of this raid returned once their attackers had left in order to bury their dead. Burial is significant because it often suggests a belief in the afterlife, or in the very least a reverence for the dead. Burying family units together suggests that such units were recognized and important to early peoples. The uniformity of the burials suggests that the ritual of burying the dead had already been established, something previously unknown.

This find is incredible. If you would like to read more please click here.

The Jack-O-Lantern

Pumpkin carving as become a kind of modern art. People take it seriously. This year people are even carving images of presidential candidates in their pumpkins to make political statements. A girl I went to high school with carved Barak Obama into her pumpkin. Others stick to the traditional scary faces with triangular eyes and leering toothy grins.

Some places like Keene, NH for instance even have pumpkin festivals. Carving Jack O'Lanterns has become an integral part of American Culture.

The annual festival in Keene draws tourists from all over the world. The locals take their festival seriously, carving hundreds of pumpkins up to create a glowing spectacle not seen elsewhere.

Aren't those Jack O'Lanterns fabulous?

But where did this tradition come from? Why do we carve pumpkins into leering monsters on Halloween? Do other people do it?

Turns out the tradition of carving gourds into sneering leering monstrous faces comes from medieval Scotland and Ireland. The Irish have a folk tale called "Stingy Jack" and most historians believe this particular tradition arose in response to this little story.

Stingy Jack, as it turns out, was a very stingy man. He didn't like to spend his money. One night he invited the devil to have a drink with him at a local tavern. So they drink their ale and wracked up a hefty tab, and Stingy Jack being stingy as he was did not want to pay the barkeep. So he tricked the devil into turning himself into a coin to pay for their ale. And the devil did. And Stingy Jack stole the coin back and placed it in his pocket next to silver cross so that the devil couldn't change himself back. Jack eventually decided to free the devil, but only under the condition that the devil would not bother Jack again for at least one whole year and that if Jack died the devil would not claim his soul. The devil agreed and left good old Stingy Jack alone. A year later the two came into contact once more. This time Stingy Jack tricked the devil into climbing up a tree to pick some fruit. While the devil was high up in the tree Jack decided it would be funny to carve a cross into the trunk, neatly trapping the devil up in that fruit tree. Again Jack bargained with the devil and the devil agreed to the same terms as before: to leave Jack alone for a year and not to claim his soul if he died. So Jack helped the devil get down from the tree. Then one day Jack died. God didn't want such a conniving and dishonest soul in heaven so he refused to take him. The devil, bound by his original pledge, refused to claim Jack too. And so the devil sent Jack off into the inky blackness of the night with naught but a burning coal to light his way. Jack, being the smart man he was, put the coal into a carved out turnip. And so Jack roams the earth with his glowing turnip because neither God nor the Devil wants him.

The Irish began calling Jack "Jack of the Lantern" or "Jack O'Lantern". The Irish and Scottish started to carve frightening faces into turnips and potatoes, which they stuck a candle in, to ward off Jack and other wandering souls like him. These "Jack O'Lanterns" were placed near doors and windows to keep evil spirits out of Scotch-Irish homes. When the Scottish and Irish migrated to the other places, like the United States where native pumpkins replaced turnips, they brought their folk tale and the tradition of carving Jack O'Lanterns with them. The story of "Stingy Jack" has since faded, but leering faces of Jack O'Lanterns glow brightly on doorsteps across the United States every October.

Mythical City Found!

A Russian archaeologist claims to have discovered the capital city of a mythical tribe, the Khazars. The Khazars were a nomadic tribe that roamed from Russia to the Aral Sea in Central Asia more than 1,000 years ago. According to Russian legend the Khazars adopted Judaism and became an imperial superpower. Under Soviet rule study of the Khazars was strictly discouraged and it is only recently that scholars have begun digging into this part of the Russian past.

Dmitri Vasilyev, who has been excavating along the Caspian Sea for nine years, discovered a triangular fortress of flamed brick and knew he had hit pay dirt. It was illegal to use flamed brick anywhere but the Khazarian capital city of Itil. So far his team has unearthed jewelery, decorative ceramics and pottery, armor, and lamps. They have yet to locate any Jewish artifacts.

Other archaeologists remain skeptical, awaiting further evidence that this city is indeed Itil.

For more information see the article below:

Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital

By MANSUR MIROVALEV, Associated Press Writer Sat Sep 20, 2:13 PM ET

MOSCOW - A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.

Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.

By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said. The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.

"The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe's first feudal state is of great significance," he told The Associated Press. "We should view it as part of Russian history."

Kevin Brook, the American author of "The Jews of Khazaria," e-mailed Wednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and even though it has yielded no Jewish artifacts, "Now I'm as confident as the archaeological team is that they've truly found the long-lost city,

The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.

Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said.

It lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and China, which "helped Khazars amass giant profits," he said.

The Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev said his team has found "luxurious collections" of well-preserved ceramics that help identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, the Byzantine Empire and even Northern Africa. They also found armor, wooden kitchenware, glass lamps and cups, jewelry and vessels for transporting precious balms dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries, he said.

But a scholar in Israel, while calling the excavations interesting, said the challenge was to find Khazar inscriptions.

"If they found a few buildings, or remains of buildings, that's interesting but does not make a big difference," said Dr. Simon Kraiz, an expert on Eastern European Jewry at Haifa University. "If they found Khazar writings, that would be very important."

Vasilyev says no Jewish artifacts have been found at the site, and in general, most of what is known about the Khazars comes from chroniclers from other, sometimes competing cultures and empires.

"We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few," said Kraiz. "But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing."

The Khazars' ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions including Islam.

Yevgeny Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow, said he believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of political expediency — to remain independent of neighboring Muslim and Christian states. "They embraced Judaism because they wanted to remain neutral, like Switzerland these days," he said.

In particular, he said, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732.

The Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the "Jewish Giant."

"In many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state," Vasilyev said.

He said his dig revealed traces of a large fire that was probably caused by the Russian conquest. He said Itil was rebuilt following the fall of the Khazar empire, when ethnic Khazars were slowly assimilated by Turkic-speaking tribes, Tatars and Mongols, who inhabited the city until it was flooded by the rising Caspian Sea around the 14th century.

The study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. The dictator Josef Stalin, in particular, detested the idea that a Jewish empire had come before Russia's own. He ordered references to Khazar history removed from textbooks because they "disproved his theory of Russian statehood," Satanovsky said.

Only now are Russian scholars free to explore Khazar culture. The Itil excavations have been sponsored by the Russian-Jewish Congress, a nonprofit organization that supports cultural projects in Russia.

"Khazar studies are just beginning," Satanovsky said.