KeenInsight » Thu Feb 13, 2014 7:22 pm wrote:As far as the original tallest Native Americans, the Osage were considered the tallest, of which their DNA resides in my own, although I am more short from my own parents mostly european genes.
When I think of a 'tall race,' I would posit that the rare genetic abnormalities in humans might be the reason. We know there are instances today for example of people that 7 or 8 ft. tall people. Tall people also have more health complications than shorter people. And, of course, there are the genetic abnormalities of dwarfism as well.
So I would say that Tall people, as today, would definitely have existed in the past, but were they genetic abnormalities, which human DNA seems to have many, or were they literally an off-shoot evolved Homo-Sapien, in the way that there was found a short early pygmy race of Humans?
I guess that's what fascinates me about DNA in general, which is complex enough as it is, but contains genetic history. The abnormalities in humans today could be the product of breeding with off-shoot Human species, tall ones, short ones, you name it. Our own species is relatively 'new'-ish as for as evolution goes. We have over 100,000 ancient strains of virus in our own bodies, and supposed 98% junk genetic DNA.
As I wrote in Chapter 10 of my
Typhon: A Chronology of the Holocene Period,
As we have seen, the tropic extends through the Hoggar, the mountain of Atlas, all the way to the island of Cernê in a bay of the Atlantic, so that it is apparent where the expedition of Talib was heading in search of their genii in bottles. They were looking for the lost capital of the Amazons in the land now inhabited by those veiled, seven-foot tall, blue-robed, sword and gun-toting warriors astride white camels—the Tuareg—whose ancestors were conceivably the source of the Old Testament notion of the giants who were finally killed off in Syria, according to Josephus, by the armies of the Assyrian Old Kingdom. And if we are to take the historical sources of the fictional Thousand and One Nights at all seriously, they managed to find it, along with the last ruler of the Amazons. The references to the sea have to do with the confusion of the mountain of Atlas with the palace at Chersonesus on the Mediterranean noted by Stecchini and purportedly discovered by Paul Borchardt, which simply adds support to the authenticity of the story.
The Tuareg are definitely not genetic abnormalities, but simply a tribe of people of unusually tall stature. From Chapter 8:
Descendants of the Atlantes
Herodotus placed the Atlantes of his day in the Atlas Mountains, i.e., the Hoggar. As Lhote says, "the Tuareg may be regarded as the descendants of those 'Atlantes' who were the contemporaries of the Father of History." This is a critical identification, though Lhote doesn't seem to realize it, for the social structure of the Tuareg, the now generally peaceable native inhabitants of the Hoggar who wander the desert and had bloody encounters with the French Foreign Legion not many years ago, is rather peculiar and hearkens back to the Amazons more than it does to the Atlanteans. Again, it is to Count Francis Byron Khun de Prorok (writing under the shorter Count Byron de Prorok), apparently the archaeologist whom Lhote dismisses simply as an "American millionaire," that we must turn (In Quest of Lost Worlds,1935) for a description of this peculiar social structure.
Our first hint from de Prorok of what is to come appears after his expedition finds their prepositioned supplies at Meniet south of In Salah looted:
Chapuis, however, was by no means beaten. We collected all the water we had, and filled up one of the cars, when he took us about fifteen miles off the trail, into the region of the Moudir, where great precipices form a wall of rock, believed by the Tuaregs to be the fortress of the Amazons, ruled by a white goddess: the old fable of Atlantis.
Upon reaching Tamenrasset, the expedition meets with the Sultan of the Tuareg and obtains an invitation to visit their camp at Attakor, which they do for two weeks:
The ceremonial approach ended and we were presented to the Queen and her ladies-in-waiting with a pomp and ceremony that would not have disgraced a European court. Here were the real masters of the land! I was astonished to discover the matriarchate still potent in the world .... The women, with their clear, open faces, were worthy of their dignity; they were open, frank, really beautiful; obviously noble both of inheritance and character....
It was a country upside-down. The men, as I have said, were painted and veiled. The women were not. Inheritance is by the maternal line. The councils are really dominated by the women. The sultan is only the nominal ruler, chosen by the tribes for leadership in war, actually only a representative of the Queen. The name of the family is taken from the mother. She is supreme in councils of war, and the women accompany their men on the great trails, riding side by side, taunting the weak and the cowards, spurring them to their greatest bravery.
From Mysterious Sahara:
This position of power and influence is a direct hold-over from antiquity, for since earliest time women have held an exalted position among the Libyan civilizations. At Carthage they worshiped the strange and terrible divinity called Tanit, to whom countless children were offered up in dreadful sacrifice. Even the name "Libyan" comes from a female deity called "Libya." Queen Tin Hinan was a historic personage―the Eve of the Sahara―from whom all the noble Tuaregs claim descent. The Goddess Athena, and the famed Amazon of mythology probably originated in Africa, and it is said that Helen of Troy disappeared "into the heart of Libya." The last of the Amazons still engage in warfare and to this day handle the affairs of state.
Hence we have the Tuareg―the descendants of the Atlantes, the tribe conquered by the Amazons―ruled by women in peace and in war. Those women, though no longer the absolute rulers of the Greek legends, still wield an astonishing amount of power made even more amazing in a land where the women of the north continue to be subjugated by the male practitioners of the religion of Mohammed.
