The Spanish Enclaves of North Africa

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

At the onset of the Industrial Revolution (circa 1750-1850), European countries began scouring the globe looking for resources to power their economies. Africa, because of its geographic location and its abundance of resources, was seen as a key source of wealth for many of these nations. This drive for control of resources led to the "Scramble for Africa" and eventually the Berlin Conference of 1884. At this meeting, the world powers at the time divided up the regions of the continent that had not already been claimed.

Claims for North Africa

Originally, North Africa was settled by the indigenous peoples of the region, the Amazigh or Berbers as they have come to be known. Because of its strategic location on both the Mediterranean and Atlantic, this area has been sought after as a center of trade and commerce for centuries by many conquering civilizations. The first to arrive were the Phoenicians, followed by the Greeks, then the Romans, numerous Muslim dynasties of both Berber and Arab origin, and finally Spain and Portugal in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Morocco was viewed as a strategic trade location because of its position at the Strait of Gibraltar. Although it was not included in the original plans to divide up Africa at the Berlin Conference, France and Spain continued to vie for influence in the region. Algeria, Morocco's neighbor to the east, had been a part of France since 1830.
In 1906, the Algeciras Conference recognized France and Spain's claims for power in the region. Spain was granted lands in the southwest region of the country as well as along the Mediterranean Coast in the North. France was granted the rest and in 1912, the Treaty of Fez officially made Morocco a protectorate of France.

Post World War Two Independence

In the aftermath of World War II, many African countries began seeking independence from the rule of Colonial powers. Morocco was among the first nations to be granted independence when France relinquished control in the spring of 1956. This independence also included the lands claimed by Spain in the southwest and in the north along the Mediterranean coast.
Spain continued its influence in the north, however, with control of two port cities, Melilla and Ceuta. These two cities had been trading posts since the era of the Phoenicians. The Spanish gained control over them in the 15th and 17th centuries after a series of struggles with other competing countries, namely Portugal. These cities, enclaves of European heritage in the land the Arabs call "Al Maghrib al Aqsa," (the farthest land of the setting sun), remain in Spanish control today.

The Spanish Cities of Morocco

Geography
Melilla is the smaller of the two cities in land area. It claims approximately twelve square kilometers (4.6 square miles) on a peninsula (Cape of the Three Forks) in the eastern part of Morocco. Its population is slightly less than 80,000 and it is situated along the Mediterranean coast, surrounded by Morocco on three sides.
Ceuta is a little larger in terms of land area (roughly eighteen square kilometers or about seven square miles) and it has a slightly larger population at approximately 82,000. It is located north and west of Melilla on the Almina Peninsula, near the Moroccan city of Tangier, across the Strait of Gibraltar from mainland Spain. It too is located on the coast. Ceuta's Mount Hacho is rumored to be the southern Pillar of Heracles (also vying for that claim is Morocco's Jebel Moussa).
Economy
Historically, these cities were centers of trade and commerce, connecting North Africa and West Africa (via the Saharan trade routes) with Europe. Ceuta was especially important as a trade center because of its location near the Strait of Gibraltar. Both served as entry and exit ports for people and goods going into, and coming out of, Morocco.
Today, both cities are part of the Spanish Eurozone and are primarily port cities with much business in fishing and tourism. Both are also part of a special low tax zone, meaning that the prices of goods are relatively cheap when compared to the rest of mainland Europe. They service many tourists and other travelers with daily ferry and air service to mainland Spain and are still points-of-entry for many people visiting North Africa.
Culture
Both Ceuta and Melilla carry with them the marks of western culture. Their official language is Spanish, although a large portion of their populations are native Moroccans who speak Arabic and Berber. Melilla proudly claims the second largest concentration of modernist architecture outside of Barcelona thanks to Enrique Nieto, a student of the architect, Antoni Gaudi, famous for the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Nieto lived and worked in Melilla as an architect in the early 20th century.
Because of their close proximity to Morocco and connection to the African continent, many African migrants use Melilla and Ceuta (both legally and illegally) as starting points to get to mainland Europe. Many Moroccans also live in the cities or cross the border daily to work and shop.

Future Political Status

Morocco continues to claim possession of both enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta. Spain argues that its historical presence at these specific locations predates the existence of the modern country of Morocco and therefore refuses to turn over the cities. Although there is a strong Moroccan cultural presence in both, it appears as though they will remain officially in Spanish control in the foreseeable future.

The Phoenix

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

A artist's digital image of a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Getty Images/James Porto

Each culture has its own myths, tall-tales, and legends. At first sight, the differences between cultures as one travels from place to place seem abundant. People dress differently, speak different languages and worship different deities. Surprisingly, most human societies, despite vast geographic differences, share common threads in their myths and legends one prominent example is the legend of the phoenix.

Like many other components of culture, the main schisms of the myth of the phoenix are between the Eastern and Western world. Today, the phoenix is even more popular today thanks to Harry Potter. As such, it is the story of a mythical bird that lives for centuries and ends its life by bursting into flame followed by rising anew from its ashes. The story of the phoenix is a story that resonates strongly with the human story, which is likely why this mythical bird appears in so many diverse cultures.

The Western Phoenix

Centuries before Harry Potter, the phoenix was made popular in the Western world by the Greeks, who spoke highly of the phoenix's magical and healing powers. Greek and Roman legend told of a bird of brilliant red plumage that emitted pure sunlight and could live for centuries. It would spend its years in Arabia, and upon reaching the end of its lifetime it would fly to Egypt, and build a nest of spices atop the Temple of the Sun. The sun would ignite the nest, engulfing the bird in its flames and leaving behind a new bird to begin the next lifecycle. The new phoenix would then encase its parent's ashes in an egg of myrrh, a spice used to anoint corpses, and transport it to the altar of the sun god.
The Greeks were known to prescribe phoenix ashes to treat medical ailments while the Romans took advantage of the legend and used the phoenix's image on their coins as propaganda. They likened the phoenix's tale of immortality to the longevity of the Roman Empire. Various highly-regarded Christians held the legend of the phoenix in high esteem. Pope St. Clement used the legend of the phoenix to explain Jesus's resurrection, and ties to resurrection after death made the phoenix a popular image on Christian tombstones.

In the Bible, Job 29:18, Job explains that he will multiply his days like "Khol", which means both sand and phoenix in Hebrew and thus leads to some confusion in translation. In Jewish tradition, the phoenix, called khol or milcham, was rewarded with immortal life for being the only creature in the Garden of Eden to refuse the forbidden fruit.

The Eastern Phoenix

In Slavic folklore, the phoenix appears in tall trees as various forms of fire-birds that are known to grant wishes or save the lives of humans in peril. One variation of the legend is the tale of Finist the Bright Falcon. Finist was able to transform between man and bird and whose magical feathers could grant wishes. In the Legend of Finist the Bright Falcon, Finist falls in love with a young maiden and gives her a feather to grant her wishes and a flower to beckon him.

The phoenix is known as the Feng Huang in China. This phoenix was one of the four sacred animals (along with the dragon, tortoise, and unicorn) who helped create the world. Wife to the dragon, Feng Huang represented good luck, balance, and eternal love between a man and wife. Feng Huang controlled all birds and is often depicted with a bevy of small birds following as attendants, and was also a symbol for ying and yang, another popular motif in Asian cultures. Curiously, some accounts of the Feng Huang report that this bird was actually two separate birds or that it has three legs.
Similar to the Chinese Feng Huang, the Vietnamese Phoung was often used as an emblem for queens of the region, as it was a symbol for grace, pride, and nobility. The Phoung was said to be an immense bird whose song made up the five basic tones of the traditional music scale. This phoenix was described as a mismatch of animal parts, including the back of a tortoise and the tail of a fish. The Phoung had the super natural ability to fly over immense distances very quickly, and was known only to rest in very tall trees or mountains.

Unlike Western phoenix legends, Eastern phoenixes are portrayed as being truly immortal, never dying and thus never rising up from its ashes. Both Western and Eastern phoenixes are revered for the qualities and traits they symbolize, although in the West, the legend of the phoenix is often tied to political or religious motives. Despite the differences in each variation of the phoenix legend, it is clear that this myth is one centered on longevity, renewal and most importantly hope.

Texas Textbook Crusaders Want to Rewrite History

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception



“Few, if any, instruments shape national culture more powerfully than the materials used in schools,” states a recent article about textbooks around the world in The Economist. It is not just that textbooks are the first books that people in many places encounter; they are also “along with religious texts, almost the only books they encounter.”

All the more reason to want to laugh, cry, snort and/or throw your hands up in the air in hearing about how the ongoing textbook battles in Texas.

As Andrew O’Hehir writes on Alternet, fundamentalist Christian/Tea Party-affiliated/creationist Texans have not been content to limit their crusade to insert discussion of “intelligent design” into science textbooks. Now, they’re extending the battle lines to social science textbooks, a fight which is,

…arguably worse, since opinions and analyses in that field can’t be subjected to the same scientific rigor. Culture-war amendments were added fast and furious to the academic standards in that area: removing references to the slave trade from the texts and praising leaders of the Confederacy; substituting “country music” for “hip-hop” in a discussion of pop culture; adding, preposterously, religious figures like Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin as inspirations for the American Revolution, while deleting the word “Enlightenment.” (One board member even suggested that every reference to Barack Obama should include his middle name.)

 

Despite the arguments of apologists, Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers were not inspired by Thomas Aquinas. Jefferson himself can be said to embody the notion of a “man of the Enlightenment,” with beliefs in the principles of science and the role of reason and rational inquiry. The architect of the Declaration of Independence was a Deist (not a Christian — of course, the 4th-century B.C.E. Greek philosopher Aristotle was not Christian either).

O’Hehir describes a former chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, Don McLeroy, a dentist in the Texas suburbs, as “the most famous” figure of the textbook wars, though not necessarily the most powerful or influential according to a low-budget documentary by Scott Thurman, aptly titled The Revisionaries.

That title is reserved for former Austin School Board member Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer who teaches at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Virginia, and “was evidently groomed for her position on the Texas board by political activists on the Christian right.” While McLeroy’s zealotry is unabashedly evidence in the documentary (he harangues “his dental patients and Sunday-school students about Noah’s ark”), Dunbar is a blander but ultimately more sinister soldier in the culture battles. In The Revisionaries, she offers platitudes about community service but look her up and you’ll see she is on the record for referring to public education as unconstitutional and a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion.”

It is exasperating (and then some) to hear about what some American school children are reading, and not reading, in their textbooks. “Lower rates of citizenship and voting among minorities” are keeping the state “reliably red,” for now. Noting that “non-whites are already a minority in Texas – and a rapidly shrinking minority among those under 18″ — O’Hehir suggests that demographic and social change is already, inevitably, changing things in Texas.

McLeroy and Dunbar may see themselves as soldiers, if not prophets, in something like a religious war, but in reality they are the last to hold up the standards of a crusade that is based on Christian fundamentalist beliefs, a strong whiff of racism and ideology.

Curious Cat Discovers 2,000-Year-Old Catacomb

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Spanish archaeologists claim they have found the exact spot where Julius Caesar was stabbed to death on March 15, 44 B.C.E. in Rome.



But it is possible that a cat is one-upping them in detecting archaeological finds in the Eternal City.
This past Tuesday, a cat chanced upon a 2,000-year-old catacomb in a residential area of Rome near the Via di Pietralata. Mirko Curti and a friend followed the cat from their apartment building to a low rock cliff of tufa, a porous stone that has been used for digging tombs over millennia due to its softness. Curti and his friend heard the cat meowing and, following it, discovered themselves in a small opening in a cliff full of niches like those the ancient Romans dug into the rock to hold funeral urns. Around their feet was a telltale sign of where they were, human bones.

Archaeologists summoned to investigate said that the tomb probably dates from the first century B.C.E. to the second century C.E. The bones strewn on the floor had most likely “tumbled into the tomb from a separate burial space higher up inside the cliff”; the urns in the niches themselves contained the ashes of the dead.

Heavy rains at the start of the week in Italy had revealed the long-hidden tomb, by causing rocks at the entrance to crumble and show their long-hidden contents to a curious cat that, thanks to its smaller size and agility, as able to squeeze its way to the ancient site.

There’s no doubt about what the cat-uncovered catacombs hold. In contrast, Spanish archaeologists who say they’ve found the spot where Julius Caesar was stabbed admit that their finding is “open to dispute.” This site was identified based on ancient written sources that hold that Augustus, Caesar’s adopted son and heir who became the first Roman Emperor, had a concrete structure ten feet wide and nearly seven feet high erected over the spot where Caesar was stabbed.

What both findings emphasize is how many archaeological sites are literally under the feet of residents of Rome. An ancient Roman road was discovered in a parking lot of an Ikea store on the outskirts of Rome, notes the Guardian.

The softness of the tufa, the very quality that made it a useful site for digging tombs, is also a reason that the catacombs are threatened today. Once a site, long closed up and preserved, is exposed to the elements it starts to decay.

Earlier this year, the roof of the Villa of the Mysteries, which contains elaborate red and gold frescoes, in the ancient town of Pompeii collapsed after a 13-foot supporting beam fell. As Valentina Stefano from the Italian Confederation of Archaeologists said to the Telegraph, “The Italian government is always talking about the importance of our culture and heritage, but the fact is they have been cutting funds for the sector” — namely, funds for archaeological sites and archaeologists. It’s perhaps all the more reason to laud the cat who found the catacombs as it did so gratis, for no fees.

The Mayan Calendar

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

The Mayans calendar (of which there are more than one) is based on Sun, Moon and planetary cycles. The Mayans understood the nature of energy at both physical and cosmic levels.

Their calendar the Tzolkin was created based on the movements of the star system Pleiades and charted Creation Cycles. It marks the end of the current creation cycle on the Mayan Tzolkin calendar and the beginning of the new. Period.

Doom and gloom theories like Armageddon will NOT begin on December 21, 2012.

Seeking Return of Art, Turkey Jolts Museums.. The NY Times

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

ISTANBUL — An aggressive campaign by Turkey to reclaim antiquities it says were looted has led in recent months to the return of an ancient sphinx and many golden treasures from the region’s rich past. But it has also drawn condemnation from some of the world’s largest museums, which call the campaign cultural blackmail.

 

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

 

 

The top half of the “Weary Herakles” statue recently returned to Turkey by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

                          

In their latest salvo, Turkish officials this summer filed a criminal complaint in the Turkish court system seeking an investigation into what they say was the illegal excavation of 18 objects that are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Norbert Schimmel collection.

 

Last year, Turkish officials recalled, Turkey’s director-general of cultural heritage and museums, Murat Suslu, presented Met officials with a stunning ultimatum: prove the provenance of ancient figurines and golden bowls in the collection, or Turkey could halt lending treasures. Turkey says that threat has now gone into effect.

      

“We know 100 percent that these objects at the Met are from Anatolia,” the Turkish region known for its ancient ruins, Mr. Suslu, an archaeologist, said in an interview. “We only want back what is rightfully ours.”

      

Turkey’s efforts have spurred an international debate about who owns antiquities after centuries of shifting borders. Museums like the Met, the Getty, the Louvre and the Pergamon in Berlin say their mission to display global art treasures is under siege from Turkey’s tactics.

      

Museum directors say the repatriation drive seeks to alter accepted practices, like a widely embraced Unesco convention that lets museums acquire objects that were outside their countries of origin before 1970. Although Turkey ratified the convention in 1981, it is now citing a 1906 Ottoman-era law — one that banned the export of artifacts — to claim any object removed after that date as its own.

      

Thievery and looting are wrong, Turkey says, no matter when they occurred. “Artifacts, just like people, animals or plants, have souls and historical memories,” said Turkey’s culture minister, Ertugrul Gunay. “When they are repatriated to their countries, the balance of nature will be restored.”

Turkey is not alone in demanding the return of artifacts removed from its borders; Egypt and Greece have made similar demands of museums, and Italy persuaded the Met to return an ancient bowl known as the Euphronios krater in 2006.

      

But Turkey’s aggressive tactics, which come as the country has been asserting itself politically in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring, have particularly alarmed museums. Officials here are refusing to lend treasures, delaying the licensing of archaeological excavations and publicly shaming museums.

      

“The Turks are engaging in polemics and nasty politics,” said Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees the Pergamon. “They should be careful about making moral claims when their museums are full of looted treasures” acquired, he said, by the Ottomans in their centuries ruling parts of the Middle East and southeast Europe.

      

One example is a prized sarcophagus named for Alexander the Great, discovered in Sidon, Lebanon, in 1887, and now in Istanbul’s Archaeological Museum. Mr. Suslu said the sarcophagus was legally Turkey’s because it had been excavated on territory that belonged to Turkey at the time.

      

Turkey’s campaign has enjoyed notable success, however. Last year the Pergamon agreed to return a 3,000-year-old sphinx from the Hittite Empire that Turkey said had been taken to Germany for restoration in 1917. German officials said Turkey had threatened to block major archaeological projects if the sphinx did not come home.

      

But even after it had, the Germans complained, Turkey still declined to collaborate and refused to lend four objects for a current exhibition. Mr. Suslu indicated that the Pergamon had to return other disputed items before loans would resume.

      

Mr. Parzinger said Turkey had no legal claim to the contested objects it says his museum has illegally, and that treating Germany like a petty thief puts more than a century of archaeological cooperation at risk and harms relations between the countries as Turkey seeks to join the European Union. He pointed out that Westerners had been at the forefront of safeguarding Turkey’s rich history.

      

“If all Westerners are just thieves and robbers,” he asked, “then who has been restoring their cultural heritage?”

      

In another victory for Turkey, last month the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology announced that it had agreed to lend indefinitely 24 artifacts to Turkey from ancient Troy whose murky provenance helped inspire the 1970 Unesco convention. Turkey, in turn, promised future loans and collaboration with the university.

      

Some museum directors said that they feared that the surrender of the objects by the university, which acquired them in 1966, threatened to lead to a flood of further claims.

      

In September 2011, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, returned the top half of an 1,800-year-old statue, “Weary Herakles,” which the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, triumphantly took home on his government jet.

      

To press the Met for documentation on the Schimmel objects, Turkish officials said they had refused to lend to a Met exhibition that ran this year, “Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition.”

 

The Met denied it had asked Turkey for pieces for the show. Its director, Thomas P. Campbell, said in an interview that the Met believed the objects sought by Turkey had been legally acquired by Norbert Schimmel in the European antiquities market in the 1960s before being donated to the museum in 1989, and thus were in compliance with the Unesco accord.

 

He acknowledged that most of the objects had no documented ownership history, but also said that there was no evidence of an illicit excavation. Turkish officials said they had not yet uncovered evidence proving that the objects had been illegally smuggled out.

      

“If evidence emerges that the objects were illegally excavated or looted, we will address that on a case-by-case basis,” Mr. Campbell said.

 

Mr. Campbell said the argument that objects should always be returned to their countries of origin was dubious, given that many artifacts had traveled throughout the centuries. “We are in the business of celebrating Turkish culture,” he said, “and it is the great displays in London, Paris and New York, more than anything else, that will encourage people to go to Turkey and explore their cultural heritage, and not just the sun and beach.”

      

Marc Masurovsky, an expert on plundered art at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, said it was no surprise that in the absence of an international agency to enforce anti-plunder measures, the Turks were resorting to hard-nosed diplomacy. But Turkey faces hurdles trying to apply an Ottoman law outside its borders, he noted. And even if that law is accepted as applicable, dating the illegal excavation of any site is difficult because no records are typically kept.

      

Still, Mr. Suslu said nothing justified theft, and he pointed to the Louvre’s possession of late-16th-century Iznik tiles that had been stolen, he said, by the French restorer Albert Sorlin-Dorigny in the 1880s. The tiles, from the mausoleum of Sultan Selim II in Istanbul, were taken to Paris for repair, but he said Sorlin-Dorigny gave them to the Louvre in 1895 instead of returning them.

      

The Louvre did not respond to messages seeking comment. Turkish officials said that the French insist that the tiles were given to Sorlin-Dorigny by a member of the royal family, but that they did not offer any documentary proof.

      

“Who in his right mind would give a present from his own relative’s tomb to a foreign country?” Mr. Suslu asked. “If you come to my house and you steal precious objects from me, do I not have a right to get them back?”

Pangea

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Pangea, also spelled Pangaea, was a supercontinent that existed on the Earth millions of years ago and covered about one-third of its surface. A supercontinent is a very large landmass that is made up of more than one continent. In the case of Pangea nearly all of the Earth's continents were connected into one large landmass. It is believed that Pangea began forming about 300 million years ago, was fully together by 270 million years ago and began to separate around 200 million years ago.

The name Pangea is ancient Greek and means "all lands." The term began being used in the early 20th century after Alfred Wegener noticed that the Earth's continents looked like they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. He later developed his theory of continental drift to explain why the continents looked the way they did and first used the term Pangea at a symposium in 1927 focused on that topic.

Significant tectonic plates on the earth's surface.

Public Domain from USGS

Formation of Pangea

Due to mantle convection within the Earth's surface new material constantly comes up between the Earth's tectonic plates at rift zones, causing them to move away from the rift and toward one another at the ends. In the case of Pangea, the Earth's continents were eventually moved so much over millions of years that they combined into one large supercontinent.

Around 300 million years ago the northwestern part of the ancient continent of Gondwana (near the South Pole), collided with the southern part of the Euramerican continent to form one very large continent. Eventually the Angaran continent, located near the North Pole, began to move south and it collided with the northern part of the Euramerican continent to form the large supercontinent, Pangea, by about 270 million years ago.

It should be noted however that there was another separate landmass, Cathaysia, which was made up of north and south China that was not a part of the larger Pangea landmass.
Once it was completely formed, Pangea covered around one-third of the Earth's surface and it was surrounded by an ocean that covered the rest of the globe. This ocean was called Panthalassa.

Break-Up of Pangea

Pangea began to break up about 200 million years ago as a result of the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates and mantle convection. Just as Pangea was formed by being pushed together due to the movement of the Earth's plates away at rift zones, a rift of new material caused it to separate. Scientists believe that the new rift began due to a weakness in the Earth's crust. At that weak area, magma began to push through and create a volcanic rift zone. Eventually the rift zone grew so large that it formed a basin and Pangea began to separate.

In the areas where Pangea began to separate, new oceans formed as Panthalassa rushed into the newly opened areas. The first new oceans to form were the central and southern Atlantic. About 180 million years ago the central Atlantic Ocean opened up between North America and northwestern Africa. Around 140 million years ago the South Atlantic Ocean formed when what is today South America separated from the west coast of southern Africa. The Indian Ocean was the next to form when India separated from Antarctica and Australia and about 80 million years ago North America and Europe separated, Australia and Antarctica separated and India and Madagascar separated. Over millions more years, the continents gradually moved to their current positions.

Evidence for Pangea

As Alfred Wegener noticed in the early 20th century, the Earth's continents seem to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle in many areas around the globe. This is the significant evidence for the existence of Pangea millions of years ago. The most prominent place where this is visible is the northwestern coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America. In that location the two continents look like they were once connected, which they in fact were during Pangea.

Other evidence for Pangea includes fossil distribution, distinctive patterns in rock strata in now unconnected parts of the world and the distribution of the world's coal. In terms of fossil distribution, archaeologists have found matching fossil remains if ancient species in continents are separated by thousands of miles of ocean today. For example matching reptile fossils have been found in Africa and South America indicating that these species at one time lived very close to each other as it is not possible to them to have crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

Patterns in rock strata are another indicator for the existence of Pangea. Geologists have discovered distinctive patterns in rocks in continents that are now thousands of miles apart. By having matching patterns it indicates that the two continents and their rocks were at one time one continent.
Finally the world's coal distribution is evidence for Pangea. Coal normally forms in warm, wet climates. However geologists have found coal under Antarctica's very cold and dry ice caps. If Antarctica were a part of Pangea it is likely that it would have been in another location on the Earth and the climate when the coal formed would have been very different than it is today.

Many Ancient Supercontinents

Based on the evidence scientists have found in plate tectonics, it is likely that Pangea was not the only supercontinent to exist on the Earth. In fact, archaeological data found in matching rock types and searching for fossils shows that the formation and break-up of supercontinents like Pangea are a cycle throughout the Earth's history (Lovett, 2008). Gondwana and Rodinia are two supercontinents that scientists have discovered that existed prior to Pangea.

Scientists also predict that the cycle of supercontinents will continue. Currently the world's continents are moving away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge toward the middle of the Pacific Ocean where they will eventually collide with one another in about 80 million years (Lovett, 2008). To see a diagram of Pangea and how it separated, visit the United States' Geological Survey's Historical Perspective page within This Dynamic Earth.

Election Day at Willamsburg

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Election Day on the Courthouse steps.

Visit the Revolutionary City on November 30 to cast your vote for the mayor of Williamsburg!

The History of the Shawl

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Kashmir Textiles-Shawls, Namdas, Gubbas

 

Kashmir a state in India, parts of which are disputed territory between India and Pakistan, was a pivotal point through which the wealth, knowledge, and products of ancient India passed to the

 

 

world. Perhaps the most widely known woven textiles are the famed Kashmir shawls, such as the Kanikar of intricately woven designs that are formalized imitations of Nature. The Chenar leaf (plane tree leaf), apple and cherry blossoms, the rose and tulip, the almond and pear, the nightingale— are done in deep mellow tones of maroon, dark red, gold yellow and browns. Another type of Kashmir shawl is the Jamiavr, which is a brocaded woolen fabric often in pure wool and sometimes with a little cotton added.

The floral designing appears like heavy embroidered weave in dull silk or soft pashmina wool, and usually comprises small or large flowers delicately sprayed and combined; some shawls have net-like patterns with floral motifs. Still another of the Kashmir shawl is the Dourukha, a woven shawl done to produce the same effect on both sides. This is a unique piece of craftsmanship, in which a multi-coloured pattern scheme is woven on the surface after the shawl is completed, the rafugar (expert embroiderer) works the outlines of the motifs in darker shades to bring into relief the beauty of design. This attractive mode of craftsmanship not only produces a shawl which is reversible because of the perfect workmanship on both sides, but combines the crafts of both weaving and embroidery and religious beliefs in the shawls.

The most expensive shawls, called Shatoosh, are made from the beard hairs of the wild ibex and are so fine that a whole shawl can be pulled through a small finger ring.

cashmere shawl factory

 

The naksha, a Persian device like the Jacquard loom invented centuries later, enabled Indian weavers to create sinuous floral patterns and creeper designs in brocade to rival any painted by a brush. The Kashmir shawl that evolved from this expertise in its heyday had greater fame than any other Indian textile. Always a luxury commodity, the intricate, tapestry-woven, fine wool shawl had become a fashionable wrap for the ladies of the English and French elite by the 1700s. The supply fell short of demand and manufacturers pressed to produce more, created convincing embroidered versions of the woven shawls that could be produced in half the time. As early as 1803, Kashmiri needlework production was established to increase and hasten output of these shawls, which had been imitated in England since 1784 and even in France. By 1870, the advent of the Jacquard loom in Europe destroyed the exclusivity of the original Kashmir shawl, which began to be produced in Paisley, Scotland. Even the characteristic Kashmiri motif, the mango-shape, began to be known simply as the paisley.

The paisley motif is so ubiquitous to Indian fabrics that it challenges belief that it is only about 250 years old. It evolved from 1600's floral and tree-of-life designs that were created in expensive, tapestry-woven Mughal textiles. Early designs depicted single plants with large flowers and thin wavy stems, small leaves and roots. As the designs became denser, more flowers and leaves were compacted within the shape of the tree, or issuing from vases or a pair of leaves. By the late 1700s, the archetypal curved point at the top of an elliptical outline had evolved.

The elaborate paisley created on Kashmir shawls became the vogue in Europe for over a century, and imitations of these shawls were woven in factories at Paisley, Scotland, that gave it the name paisley still commonly used in the United States and Europe. In the late 1700s and 1800s, the paisley became an important motif in a wide range of Indian textiles, perhaps because it was associated with the Mughal court. It also caught the attention of poor and non-Muslim Indians because it resembled a mango. "Rural Indians called an aam or mango a symbol of fertility."

Hesquiat woman wrapped in a shawl.

The first shawls, or "shals", were used in Assyrian times; and later went into widespread use in the Middle East.  Shawls were also part of the traditional male costume in Kashmir, which was probably introduced via assimilation to Persian culture. They were woven in extremely fine woollen twill, some such as the Orenburg shawl, were even said to be as fine as the Shatoosh. They could be in one colour only, woven in different colours (called tilikar), ornately woven or embroidered (called ameli).
Kashmiri shawls were high-fashion garments in Western Europe in the early- to mid-1800s. Imitation Kashmiri shawls woven in Paisley, Renfrewshire are the origin of the name of the traditional paisley pattern. Shawls were also manufactured in the city of Norwich, Norfolk from the late 1700s (and some two decades before Paisley) until about the 1870s.

Silk shawls with fringes, made in China, were available by the first decade of the 1800s. Ones with embroidery and fringes were available in Europe and the Americas by 1820. These were called China crêpe shawls, China shawls, and in Spain mantones de Manila because they were shipped to Spain from China via the port of Manila. The importance of these shawls in fashionable women's wardrobes declined between 1865 and 1870 in Western culture. However, they became part of folk dress in a number of places including Germany, the Near East, various parts of Latin America, and Spain where they became a part of Romani (gitana) dress especially in Andalusia and Madrid. These embroidered items were revived in the 1920s under the name of Spanish shawls. Their use as part of the costume of the lead in the opera Carmen contributed to the association of the shawls with Spain rather than China.

shawls in early 19th century France

The Greatest of Politicians

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Head lowered against black background with a frown creasing his brow, this portrait of Winston Churchill captures the great man at his lowest.  A far cry from iconic images of Britain's charismatic wartime leader in trademark bowler hat, his fingers in the 'V' for Victory sign, or puffing a fat cigar.

William Orpen's haunting portrait is the one Churchill himself treasured most, the then 41-year-old described it as 'the picture of a man's soul'.

'Haunted soul': The artist William Orpen captured Churchill in his political 'wilderness years' in the wake of the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign

Churchill sat for artist William Orpen in 1916 – as Britain was counting the human cost of the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign, the then First Lord of the Admiralty had championed the year before.

THE PAINTER WHO CAPTURED CHURCHILL'S SOUL

Irish artist William Orpen was an official war painter of the First World War, producing renditions of privates, dead soldiers and German Prisoners of War as well as official portraits of generals and statesmen.

Churchill sat for Orpen on 11 occasions in 1916, an experience the artist found tense and difficult given the state of mind of his subject.  Nonetheless, the final work met with the approval of Churchill, who is said to have told Orpen: 'It is not the picture of a man. It is the picture of a man's soul.'

The suffering Orpen witnessed during his time as a war painter affected him deeply, and critics attributed the occasional 'shallowness' of his portraits to emotional exhaustion in the wake of the Great War. Orpen was made a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) in the 1918 King's birthday honours list. He died in London aged 53.

Having crashed out of Government, Churchill likely suspected his hitherto glittering political career would never recover. The catastrophe weighed heavy on his shoulders and is evident from the gloom permeating the portrait, which the artist described as a 'man of misery'.

But Churchill would earn his place in history as arguably the greatest British prime minister and Orpen's painting captured a glimpse into his soul.

The rarely seen life-size painting - which hung for years in the home of Churchill's late grandson - is now on display in the National Portrait Gallery. The London gallery unveiled its new addition this week after securing the painting on a 10-year loan from Churchill's estate.

Aside from a brief period on display at the Imperial War Museum in 2005, the 'deeply personal' portrait has remained within the Churchill family.
The National Portrait Gallery said the painting captures a 'moment of crisis' in Churchill's career.  The portrait is displayed prominently in the early 20th-century room, illustrating Churchill’s significance in the context of the First World War, the gallery said.

V for Victory: Iconic images of the indomitable 'British bulldog' are far removed from the more vulnerable side of Churchill captured in Orpen's portrait

Until the dark hour captured in Orpen's portrait, Churchill's path to success had been relatively smooth. Born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough, as a young man he joined the British Army and proved his talent as a writer - attracting acclaim as a war correspondent. He made his first foray into politics as Oldham MP in 1900, rising swiftly to hold several senior positions before being appointed First Lord of the Admiralty under Asquith's government in 1908.

After war broke out in 1914, Churchill pushed for the Gallipoli Campaign that would end in disaster and the loss of thousands of troops. In November Churchill put forward his plans for a naval attack on Dardanelles in Turkey, a move based at least in part on what would turn out to erroneous reports regarding Ottoman troop strength.

 

The attack - designed to open up a path for the British Army to invade the Gallipoli peninsula and go on to take the Ottoman capital Constantinople - was opposed by military chiefs, but Churchill argued successfully for the plan to go ahead.

Losses: British, Austrialian and Indian troops in the Gallipoli landing at Cape Helles on April 25 1915

A joint British and French campaign was duly mounted to secure Constantinople - now Istanbul - and secure a sea route to Russia.

There was a delay of more than six weeks before troops arrived from Britain, allowing Ottoman forces time to prepare defences for a land assault, and the landing date of April 25 was leaked in advance. Allied troops sustained devastating losses during the landings as the Ottomans furiously defended every inch of their soil.
The attack then lost momentum after the initial landing with most troops remaining on, or not far from, the beaches, allowing the Ottomans time to bring in reinforcements.
The campaign rolled on but Allied troops initial objective proved unsuccessful and casualties mounted.  In the wake of the failed August Offensive the campaign - increasingly unpopular with the British public - entered a hiatus period and Allied soldiers were eventually evacuated.
By the close of the campaign in January 1916 more than 200,000 Allied troops had been killed.

At the time of Orpen's portrait Churchill was preparing to defend himself against charges of reckless and incompetent leadership before the Dardanelles Commission.
The Commission went on to conclude that he was not personally responsible for the failure of the mission, and Churchill eventually returned to the political front line at the outbreak of the Second World War, going on to be widely regarded as one of the great wartime leaders of the century.

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226728/It-picture-mans-soul--How-gallerys-exhibit-captures-Churchills-despair-political-career-appeared-over.html#ixzz2B4zzHGMz

St.Lucia

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Loading U.S.S.Spartan, St.Lucia

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British Soldiers, Kingston

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Waterfront, Kingston, Jamaica

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Llandovery Falls, Jamaica 1903

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Llandovery Falls, Jamaica

appears opposite pg 20 in Stark's History and Guide to Jamaica (1903)Item:
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Half Way Tree Church, Jamaica1903

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Half Way Tree Church, Jamaica

aka St Andrew's Church. Variation appears opposite pg 70 in Stark's History and Guide to Jamaica (1903)
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Road to Castleton, Jamaica

appears opposite pg 74 in Stark's History and Guide to Jamaica (1903)
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Kingston Harbor, Jamaica 1891

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

 

Valentine & Sons - A Bit on Kingston Harbor, 1891

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On The Wag Water at Castleton, 1891

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Valentine & Sons - On The Wag Water at Castleton, 1891

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Title: On The Wag Water at Castleton
Photographer: Valentine & Sons
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Year: 1891
Height: 8.5"
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Town: Newcastle
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Road to Castleton, Jamaica 1891

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Valentine & Sons - Road to Castleton, 1891

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Height: 8.5"
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Town: Newcastle
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Fort de France, Martinique

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

 

Man and His Servants, Fort de France, Martinique

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Height: 6.5"
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Country: Martinique
Town: Fort de France
Notes: inscription in pencil on mount "Un functionnaire et ses domestiques, dans la maison a Fort-de-France (Martinique)"
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Port Antonio,Jamaica ... once a town of glamour and glitz

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

 

Port Antonio, Jamaica

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The Mau Mau - every story has sides

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Why Mau Mau claims of British brutality are the reverse of the truth, by a man who fought them

By Tim Symonds
UPDATED:02:06 GMT, 7 February 2010

My captive had thick matted hair and a wild beard and was dressed in filthy, stinking rags barely recognisable as clothes. He looked as if he had just stepped out of the Stone Age. In a sense, he had. I poked his forehead with the muzzle of my gun, a new Belgian FN assault rifle.

'Tell me where the rest of your gang is,' I hissed in Swahili. 'I don't know what you're talking about, I'm here alone,' he replied. 'Everyone else is dead.'

He was a Mau Mau look-out, sworn by blood oath to kill the white man wherever he found him. His long hair and beard showed he had been living in the Mount Kenya forest for a long time, maybe two years.

Bloody conflict: A British officer examines the corpse of a Mau Mau fighter

To have survived so long - avoiding people like me, determined to hunt him down - meant he was immensely resourceful. I fired a shot about four inches above his head. Prodding the prisoner forward, I showed him where the bullet had passed clean through the trunk of a large tree.
'Next one goes through your skull,' I said. He began to shake uncontrollably. 'Kill him,' my Masai askaris, or 'soldiers', chorused. 'Kill him. He's Mau Mau.'
'Please, believe me. I don't know what you're talking about,' he pleaded.
My principal Masai tracker shook his head and drew his finger across his throat. 'He's lying, Effendi. Kill him.'

I lowered my gun level with his head and slowly began to squeeze the trigger...
It was 1955 and the 'Kenyan Emergency', which began in 1952 and lasted until the end of the decade, was at its height. The Mau Mau were rebels against British rule. Most of them were drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya's biggest tribe, and they practised primitive sacrifice and murder.

Because of the difficulty of getting hold of firearms, they were usually equipped with spears, simis (short swords), kibokos (rhino hide whips) and pangas - sharp-bladed machetes capable of disembowelling a person with a couple of heavy thrusts.

They slaughtered perhaps 10,000 of their own tribe who wanted a peaceful route to independence. They slaughtered Asians, too - mostly traders. And they murdered about 30 white settlers. The number of white victims may have been small, but there were some very high-profile cases.
In October 1954, about 60 Mau Mau guerrillas had attacked the famous anthropologist Louis Leakey's cousin, Gray Leakey, strangling his wife in front of him and then hauling him away to the Mt Kenya Crown Forest to sacrifice to their fearsome and demanding god.

We heard later that they cut open his stomach, yanked out his intestines and buried him in a pit upside-down, alive, facing the jagged peak of Mt Kenya where their deity lived.

Leakey was selected not because he was an enemy of the Kikuyu but, perversely, because he was widely considered a good man and therefore a more powerful sacrificial offering. He even had a Kikuyu nickname - Morungaru - which means 'tall and straight'.

Only a few weeks before my capture of the Mau Mau lookout, I had been working on a sheep farm in the White Highlands of Kenya. I was just 17 and had left Guernsey, where I grew up, to see a bit of the world.

On my first evening on the farm I sat down to dinner with the owner, Wil Powys, and his wife Elizabeth. To my amazement, when the houseboys came in with the hot soup, Wil put his hand on a revolver lying next to his cutlery and kept it there until the food had been served.

Brought to justice: A Mau Mau leader on trial in Kenya in 1954

Later he told me that not long before my arrival, on another white-owned farm, the house-boys had carried in bowls of soup, placing them simultaneously in front of the white farm owners and on a signal threw the contents into their faces. They flung open the front door and let in Mau Mau fighters who slashed the elderly couple to death.

On the Powys Farm, every minute of the day and especially at night we were aware the Mau Mau could attack. Each morning at sun-up my first duty was to look out for vultures. The birds would mean Mau Mau gangs had come out of the Mt Kenya Forest on the upper boundary of the farm and attacked the livestock.

When they had killed all they could carry, as a further blow to their white enemies they chopped the hamstrings of the remaining cattle or sheep, leaving them distraught and unable to move. This happened quite often, and I began to think: 'Let me get at these b*******.'
Eventually I could resist the call of adventure no more. I took a bus to Nairobi and signed up for the elite tracker teams, the military wing of the Kenya Police Reserve.

Because I already spoke 'settler Swahili' and knew the terrain well, I needed only limited training before I was made a tracker team leader with about 20 well-equipped 'askaris' at my command, mostly Masai and Kipsigi tribesmen.

I was issued with the regulation camouflage jungle attire and ordered to spend as much time as possible in the forest and to make life hell for the Mau Mau who hid out there. I'd heard their tribal leader, Stanley Mathenge, had a £5,000 bounty on his head. I hoped to buy my mother a house in Guernsey with the money.

I thought of myself as the perfect foot-soldier of the Empire, hunting the Mau Mau. When I crossed the forest verge I entered their twilight world - a world outside of civilisation, in which different rules applied.

Looking back over half a century, from the perspective of the modern world, those rules seem stark, even brutal. But this is what I experienced as a young man in the dying days of Empire.

The Kikuyu members of the Mau Mau knew every inch of the forest, which was closer to British woodland than to jungle. They were at home in it, living as hunter-gatherers in scattered groups, existing on wild bee honey, scraps of vegetation, including huge stinging-nettles, and any insects and animals they could find. In effect they were reliving their own historical past.

By contrast, my men were mostly cattle-raising tribesmen from the open plains. They didn't understand or like the forest, finding it eerie. And they despised the Mau Mau.

Our encounters with the Mau Mau were sporadic but astonishingly brutal. One morning, the askaris and I entered the forest for a lengthy patrol. We climbed cautiously up the ever-steeper slope of Mt Kenya, following a stream towards its source. We could see the start of the thick bamboo forest not far ahead. This was deep into Mau Mau country.

Dark memories: Tim Symonds today. As a young man he joined the military wing of the Kenya Police Reserve

 

One moment I was in a reverie characteristic of patrolling for days on end, the next, 15 or more Mau Mau sprang at us from thick brush bordering the stream. Fleeting shapes went sideways to our flanks - some to the left, behind trees, others to open ground to our right.

Those with spears and pangas had to get in 'close and dirty'. Everyone with a gun was firing. No one seemed to be taking aim.
Askaris and Mau Mau moved like a blur, then stopped to fire or swing pangas. They all swirled around in a mad Dervish dance.

The speed of movement; the deafening crack of the guns; the frenzy to discern friend from foe all combined to produce an experience so intense as to be almost dreamlike.

Within perhaps 20 seconds, it was over. The noise stopped. Like an audience expressing disapproval, a small troop of colobus monkeys broke into angry chitter-chatter.
I could hardly breathe. I managed to exhale a 'Well done!' There was a moment's alarm as we heard a rustling sound, but it was three of my team returning from giving chase to the surviving Mau Mau as they fled into the vast dark reach of the forest.

A tracker team was too small to haul bodies out of the forest but we had to identify the dead. We took turns to chop off the right hands of the five dead Mau Mau, putting them in a sack to take to the authorities for finger-printing. Grim stuff but at least they were already dead when mutilated - a nicety I knew the Mau Mau did not necessarily observe.

I had been leading the team for some months when I received a radio message summoning me to the heights of Mt Kenya, where I was ordered to flush out Stanley Mathenge, whose very name resonated with the spirit of 'Heart of Darkness' Africa.

He was about 36 years old and extremely fit; according to legend he once ran 60 miles non-stop through the forest after an encounter with a tracker team.

He had fought with the British in Burma and was a superb marksman with his old British .303 rifle. It was said he could take five cartridges and come back a few days later with five big-game kills, including rhino and buffalo.

If this world-class marksman was actually in one of the caves in the mountain, I was in serious trouble: the approach was over open ground so Mathenge could pick me off from half a mile. Every second of our climb was excruciating as I feared the slam of the bullet that would kill me.

However, we reached the caves without a shot being fired. They were empty, but the intelligence had been at least partially correct: there were signs of very recent habitation including a stack of tins filled with raw meat, 'soldered' over by an inch-thick layer of yellow zebra fat to preserve the contents.
I never did catch Stanley Mathenge, but nor did anyone else. No one really knows what happened to him. He fled Kenya, probably to Ethiopia.

Another nerve-racking experience began when I was at one of the small barbed-wire-enclosed police stations near the market town of Nanyuki. I received an order to drive to Meru, another centre of Mau Mau activity.

Arriving there, I was led to a storeroom where a white man pointed at a pile of disgusting ragged clothing in a corner.

'Take your pick,' he said. 'What for?' 'You're going to lead a pseudo-gang.'
A minute later two Kikuyu came in and were introduced as former Mau Mau. They'd been 'turned' by an offer of money and a patch of land. Now they were being paid quite handsomely to accompany me into the forest, all three of us dressed like Mau Mau, our Patchett sten-guns tucked inside our bulky clothing.

Our appearance would make us look like Mau Mau separated from our main gang. The aim was to fool any Mau Mau lookout and get taken to meet the rest of the gang and, at an opportune moment, pull out the Patchetts and shoot them.

I was astonished and pointed out what seemed to me to be the blindingly obvious flaw in this plan.
'They'll see I'm white from half a mile away,' I protested.
'Come back in the morning, and be ready to go,' came the reply.

That evening I gave the verminous ex-Mau Mau clothing a thorough wash and left it by a fire to dry. The jacket had upside-down sergeant's stripes on the sleeves. Next morning I gingerly pulled on the 'uniform' and went to the rendezvous with the two Kikuyu.

Walking from a nearby hut, they stopped at least 30 yards from me. I heard one say to the other, 'We're dead!'

Their sense of smell from life in the forest had become so keen that they could smell my freshly-laundered clothes. Another white man arrived. 'OK, film star,' he said to me. 'I'm your make-up man.'
He painted potassium permanganate on my hands, face and neck to stain the skin. Then he produced a small tin of boot polish and a tiny watercolour brush. 'Let's start with your right eye,' he said. 'Open wide.'

He brushed a small blob of the boot polish right inside the eyelid. It stung and I shouted, prompting peals of laughter from the Mau Mau men. He held out a mirror and, blinking uncontrollably, I looked at my eye. The polish had spread across it, turning the whites a streaky yellow.
'Africans have much more melanin than whites. They don't have whites of eyes, they're mostly yellow - like yours are now.'

When the stinging eased, I got a new, unwashed set of clothes from the stinking pile and as dusk settled over the mountain slopes my pseudo-gang of three set off. In five days, we never saw a single rebel.

Our disappointment couldn't have contrasted more with my encounter with that Mau Mau lookout I had come so close to shooting. Sparing his life turned out to be very fortunate for me. On that occasion I had entered the forest with my askaris at the start of a two-week search for Mau Mau and almost trod on him. He was sitting against a tree, asleep. Not the best of lookouts.

Now he was my prisoner I needed information from him fast: if he held out for even two or three hours his Mau Mau gang would know something was up.

During the day Mau Mau groups broke up for safety, arranging where to meet when darkness fell. If one of the gang failed to return at the agreed time, the rest would simply scatter. The pressure to get information from him was immense.

It was then that my Masai trackers had urged me to kill him as in 'shot while trying to escape', but I resisted their pleas. I planned to make Matenjagwo - 'Matted Hair', as one of my askaris dubbed him - tag along with us until we left the forest some days later.

It was just as well that I let him live. We set off up-slope with him immediately behind me. As the 'Colonial master', I led the way at a good pace along the elephant runways through the gigantic bamboo.

Suddenly Matenjagwo pulled at my shoulder. Mistaking his intentions I spun round ready to shoot. He was pointing just ahead of me in the gathering gloom. Covered by a carpet of bamboo strips and leaves was a pit dug by Mau Mau to catch wild animals for food.

A further two or three steps and I would have tumbled in, dropping full-length on to sharpened bamboo stakes. It would have been a particularly nasty death.
For the next three or four days we treated this Stone Age man as one of us, until we handed him in at Nanyuki.

In late 1955, towards the end of a ten-day forest patrol, I received a radio message from the Kenya Police Lysander spotter plane. I was to return for orders to a police station near Nanyuki, telling no one.

A white police officer met me and told me I was to take charge of a Land Rover with an African driver, who would take me to a secret destination to deliver a cargo. I went outside and met the driver. Crates had been loaded in the back of the Land Rover, covered by a tarpaulin.

Some time later we arrived at our destination where I gave a white Kenya police officer the papers to sign for the cargo. He invited me in for a quick drink before I had to set off for home base. Afterwards I came out to find the Land Rover only three-quarters unloaded. The mysterious cargo turned out to be crate upon crate of Scotch whisky.

The police officer explained that Jomo Kenyatta, the man accused of masterminding the Mau Mau, was being held under close arrest nearby. Kenyatta was being provided with three bottles of Scotch every day, which he was consuming.

The real aim, the officer said, was for Kenyatta to die of cirrhosis of the liver as quickly as possible. I could tell he wasn't joking.

Kenyatta was nearing 70 at the time. Eight years later, in 1963, he was to become newly independent Kenya's first black prime minister. Shortly after that he became Kenya's president, famed for his flywhisk, the symbol of a Kikuyu elder, made from the end of a cow's tail. Perhaps we pickled him instead of killing him: Kenyatta lived until he was 89.

My time in the forest ended suddenly. One evening the Lysander flew along the forest rim and transmitted a message. I was to leave the forest and go to Nairobi. There I was told that my contract was coming to its end and that the tracker teams were to be disbanded. In total, though, my team had killed around 45 men.

I realise now we were becoming a political liability to the British Foreign Office. International opinion had switched from Hollywood's horrified fascination with this most primitive conflict, to something resembling sympathy - especially in anti-Colonial America - for the Mau Mau.

Fifty years on, a group of Mau Mau veterans are claiming in the London courts that as prisoners they were tortured by the British. But I had seen no evidence of torture although I had been a direct witness to a particularly British - or, at least, Scottish - sort of punishment.

Despite the passage of time, I have not developed any sympathy for the Mau Mau. They were ruthless terrorists who eschewed the possibility of peaceful change in favour of savage murder and mayhem.

They deserved to pay the ultimate price for that but, of course, this has to be seen in the context of a violent chapter in Kenya's history when, as I said earlier, we all played by different rules.

• London's Imperial War Museum holds six hours of recordings by Tim Symonds, describing his experiences in Kenya.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1248980/Why-Mau-Mau-claims-British-brutality-reverse-truth-man-fought-them.html#ixzz2B4kPUIWX