Yes, I am so assuming, although if we (homo sapiens) evolved more toward
the southern part of Africa we were probably not as black as Oroonoko but
more like the San people. The reason I assume Europeans bleached out,
either in Europe itself or during the time they were making their way
slowly out of Africa and into the steppes from which they and one sort of
future Asian both branched out (says a recent book on DNA and early
migration) is simply that people without much melanin in their skins are
more subject to damage from ultra violet. Of course after we lost our nice
chimp fur we may have spent some time getting blacker. Since skin doesn't
fossilize there's no way one can prove anything about ancient skin color,
I do admit. What I would want to tell Mrs. Behn and the others remains the
same: the DNA evidence suggests that we are all descended from Africans,
finally (unless one wants to go back to the originary bacterium, of
course).
On Hercules: the epigram from Alciato is wonderful and a reminder
that in one of his guises Hercules--the Gallic one--was indeed famed
for eloquence. I wonder if there is anything on his "proles" in
Erasmus. Hercules was unusually good at making offspring, of course,
having begotten how many--fifty?--kids in one night. Whether the kids
were talented is, I guess, another question.
Two queries: does anybody on the list know of parallels to
Contemplations mount other than St. John's vision on Patmos and that
scene in Tasso? I don't include Bat(e)man's picture of a redcross
knight gazing across the water at a heavenly city because there's no
mount. The reason I ask is that I found a French poem in which David
goes up the "Mont de Contemplation" and sees the New Jerusalem. Is
there a lot of this sort of thing around? Other hills named
"Contemplation" or at least with a hermit so named? I need this for
an (overdue) essay and could use the help.
Second query: has anybody ever written on, even briefly, a poem by
Samuel Rowlands (I think--I forgot to print out the bibliographical
info) in a book called "Pasquils Palinodia (1619) that begins "Lo, I
the man whose Muse whilome did play / A horne-pipe both to Country
and the Citty, / Am no againe enjoyn'd to sing or say, / And tune my
crowde unto another ditty, / To comfort Moone-fac'd Cuckolds, that
were sad, . . ." Yes, the lines rang a bell with me, too, and I
suspect Spenser, not the cancelled lines by (or not by) Virgil, are
what's being sent up here. Anne (Prescott)
> In a message dated 11/28/2003 3:39:06 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
> the first
> Europeans were almost certainly black.
> This is a sidelight, and a bit trivial...but you are assuming that the
> first Africans were black. This was not necessarily so.
>
> MRS
>
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