“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer
Saratoga. Everything hinged on Saratoga. From history.com we have the following:
“British strategy in 1777 involved two main prongs of attack aimed at separating New England (where the rebellion enjoyed the most popular support) from the other colonies. To that end, General John Burgoyne’s army marched south from Canada toward a planned meeting with Howe’s forces on the Hudson River. Burgoyne’s men dealt a devastating loss to the Americans in July by retaking Fort Ticonderoga, while Howe decided to move his troops southward from New York to confront Washington’s army near the Chesapeake Bay. The British defeated the Americans at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvannia on September 11 and entered Philadelphia on September 25. Washington rebounded to strike Germantown in early October before withdrawing to winter quarters near Valley Forge.
Howe’s move had left Burgoyne’s army exposed near Saratoga, New York, and the British suffered the consequences of this on September 19, when an American force under General Horatio Gates defeated them at Freeman’s Farm in the first Battle of Saratoga. After suffering another defeat on October 7 at Bemis Heights (the Second Battle of Saratoga), Burgoyne surrendered his remaining forces on October 17. The American victory at Saratoga would prove to be a turning point of the American Revolution, as it prompted France (which had been secretly aiding the rebels since 1776) to enter the war openly on the American side, though it would not formally declare war on Great Britain until June 1778. The American Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its colonies, had become a world war.“
At one time, France actually had a spine. The colonists rejected their oppressors and earned the assistance of the long time British enemies, France. What is not remembered often is that Spain entered the conflict as an ally of France. America owed Spain a debt of gratitude for what they did to assist. They provided critical supplies and funding. They were in their own conflict with the British and saw it as an opportunity to further weaken their enemy so that that could retake Menorca, which was successful a few years later.
Win-win-win for the colonies, France and Spain. An enemy of my enemy is my friend.
But let’s take a closer look at General Horatio Gates in the fall of 1777, the reported hero General who changed everything for the colonies. From mountvernon.com:
“When British troops under the command of Major General John Burgoyne invaded New York in 1777, Gates’ army defeated Burgoyne twice, on September 19, 1777 and October 7, 1777. Gates’ troops forced Burgoyne to surrender his 5,700 man army near Saratoga on October 17, 1777. This victory, a major turning point of the American Revolution, convinced France to form an alliance with the Americans against Great Britain in 1778.
Tensions between Gates and General George Washington grew immediately following Saratoga, after Gates informed Congress directly of his victory rather than informing his Commander-in-Chief. Washington was further angered that Gates did not promptly return troops sent to help Gates during the New York campaign. General Washington was also convinced that Gates played a role in the Conway Cabal in late 1777, which was a supposed plot to remove Washington from command and replace him with Gates. In November 1777, Gates became president of the Board of War and technically became Washington’s superior. Bickering continued between the two men as Gates drew up plans for an invasion of Canada without consulting Washington.“
Wait… what? There was dissent in the highest ranks during the Revolutionary War? Somebody got the big head after battle victories? Somebody decided to posture for personal career gain like our political and military idgits do today? Tell me it isn’t so! What is this about a “Conway Cabal” being involved? Enjoy reading the backbiting of some of our founding fathers in the link below. Be sure and click on the second page prompt at the bottom left of the first page.
As if Benedict Arnold was not enough, Gen. Gates played politics and showed his pompous azz in the middle of our fight for independence. But in the ultimate “what goes around comes around” result, the following explains what happened next. Unfortunately it came with a heavy cost of lives for the colonists.
“In the spring of 1778, Gates returned to field command in the north, controlling troops in New York and Massachusetts. Gates took command of the Southern Army in South Carolina in July 1780 to meet the British army that had invaded that state earlier in the year. Abandoning the cautious strategy he employed against Burgoyne in 1777, Gates marched his army toward the British troops in Camden, South Carolina, despite the fact that his men were running low on supplies. This action led to the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780, which was one of the largest American defeats of the war. As the American troops retreated, Gates left the battlefield and abandoned his army, riding nearly 200 miles in three days. Accused of cowardice, his reputation was ruined. Gates was removed from command in October 1780.
Congress briefly reinstated Gates into the army in the summer of 1782, but after uneventful service he left for the final time in 1783. In 1790 Gates sold his Virginia plantation, freed his slaves, and bought an estate in New York called “Rose Hill Farm.” He ended his career serving one term in the New York legislature from 1800-1801. Gates died on April 10, 1806.”
Proverbs 16:18 – Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall. We have seen this scripture proven true countless times over the years. We should always heed these wise words.
Time for more signers. Let ‘s go with one of the players in the Conway Cabal debacle.
Benjamin Rush
The most celebrated physician in America post Revolutionary War was Benjamin Rush. He was born in Byberry, PA in 1745. He was born to merchant John Rush and Susana Hall, the middle of seven children. His father died when he was six and he was sent with a brother to live with an aunt and uncle two years later so they could receive an education. He studied under Dr. Samuel Finley at the West Nottingham Academy. Not long after that he graduated at age 14 with a BA degree from the College of New Jersey, which became Princeton later. For the next five years he apprenticed under Dr. John Redman in Philadelphia before accepting an opportunity to study at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland for three years, where he earned an M. D. degree. While there he became fluent in French, Italian and Spanish. He returned to America in 1769 and opened a medical practice while also teaching chemistry at the University of Philadelphia (UPenn – there it is again). Later in life he published the first American textbook on chemistry.
Rush joined the Sons of Liberty soon after his return from Scotland. He was so respected that Thomas Paine consulted him about content in his Common Sense book. He represented PA when he signed the Declaration. In a letter to John Adams he recalled the signing in a similar manner as fellow signer William Elery. Per Wiki, he wrote the following,
He described it as a scene of “pensive and awful silence”. Rush said the delegates were called up, one after another, and then filed forward somberly to subscribe to what each thought was their ensuing death warrant. He related that the “gloom of the morning” was briefly interrupted when the rotund Benjamin Harrison of Virginia said to a diminutive Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, at the signing table, “I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes and be with the Angels, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.” According to Rush, Harrison’s remark “procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the Solemnity with which the whole business was conducted.”
He served in the Continental Congress as well as in the war in the field with the Philadelphia militia. He laid the foundation for battlefield treatments of the Continental Army during this time. For a period he served as Surgeon General in the Continental Army’s Middle Department until the lack of medical supplies and underreporting of casualties by officials caused him to make the ill fated Conway related comments, after which Washington asked him to resign. He regretted what he said greatly. Per Wiki, in another letter to John Adams in 1812 he stated, “He [Washington] was the highly favored instrument whose patriotism and name contributed greatly to the establishment of the independence of the United States.” Rush also successfully pleaded with Washington’s biographers Justice Bushrod Washington and Chief Justice John Marshall to delete his association with those stinging words.
Benjamin Rush accomplished an incredible amount in his life in the post revolutionary period. Perhaps the greatest was facilitating the reconciliation of two of the great founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. He had lifelong friendships with both as well as other signers.
A biographical summary is linked below and you will probably be as amazed by his accomplishments as I was.
On a personal level Benjamin Rush was a devoted Christian. He believed (as I do) that the United States of America was the work of God: “I do not believe that the Constitution was the offspring of inspiration, but I am as perfectly satisfied that the Union of the United States in its form and adoption is as much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament”. In 1798, after the Constitution’s adoption, Rush declared: “The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion.” He had involvement in several denominations through the years and assisted Richard Allen in the formation of the AME Church at one point.
He had married Julia Stockton in 1776. The couple had thirteen children, nine survived past one year. One son, Richard, went on to become part of the administrations of the presidencies of James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincey Adams, Andrew Jackson, James Polk and Zachary Taylor. Benjamin Rush died of Typhus Fever in 1813 at age 68. Julia, 14 years his junior, lived until 1848. Both remained faithful to the Lord and their country throughout their lives.
Benjamin Rush was an incredible American Patriot who left a legacy that continues to this day.
Joseph Hewes
Born in 1730 in Princeton, NJ to Society of Friends (Quaker) parents. He also graduated from the College of New Jersey (Princeton). He left the area soon after and joined a family member’s mercantile business in Philadelphia. He attended Quaker meetings while there and apprenticed in the business. He learned of business opportunities in the port town of Edenton in North Carolina, so he moved and formed a company with Charles Blount there that succeeded for a time. However, the death of his fiancee soured him on life as well as the business, which was dissolved. He recovered and partnered with a local attorney, Robert Smith. His business ventures began to flourish. He owned many properties, warehouses and became involved with shipping at the port; owning multiple ships, sloops and brigs. He created a rope walk to be used between ships as well developing and selling rope and related products to the shipping industry.
Over the years he became a justice of the peace and later was elected into the NC Assembly. He remained active as a Quaker and at one point was believed to have joined the Anglican church. Many historians report he believed as a deist.
He became more and more involved in the independence movement. He joined the NC Committee of Correspondence and represented the state in the Continental Congress. He actively supported the Suffolk Reserves, which called for a termination of trade with Great Britain in 1774. He was sold out to the causes of the colonists and independence. Ultimately this led to his signing of the Declaration.
For a month afterwards he visited his mother back in Princeton, NJ. The gravity of the situation had begun to weigh on him. Per Wiki, “Hewes wrote “I had the weight of North Carolina on my shoulders within a day or two of three months. The service was too severe. I have sat some days from Six in the morning till five, and sometimes Six in the afternoon without eating or drinking. My health is bad, such close attention made it worse. …Duty, inclination and self preservation call on me now to make a little excursion in the County to see my mother. This is a duty which I have not allowed myself to perform during almost nine months that I have been here.” Towards the end of September Hewes returned to Edenton for rest and recuperation.
Hewes fully realized what was to come from the Declaration. He assisted in training the NC militia and began preparing ships for Naval use. In truth, some of this work had been done well before the signing of the Declaration as he saw the course the colonists were on would lead to war. He was appointed to a marine committee that began outfitting of privately owned ships with guns. He even leased one of his brigs to the marine committee in the Continental Congress with the committee providing him insurance for potential loss.
In the late 1770’s his health began to suffer as he dealt with continuous head aches. He served in the Continental Congress until mid 1779 despite a group of fellow marine committee members objecting to the money he made while providing marine services to the country. He returned to office with the NC Assembly and continued to represent the state in the Continental Congress. He returned home from the Congress in October 1779 due to his health. He passed away a month later at 49 years of age.
Joseph Hewes never married. The earlier loss of his future wife was too much for him to overcome. As a result he had no children. Her loss had led him to throw all of his efforts into his business ventures and service to our country in the Revolutionary War period. He was a self made man of great wealth who remained committed to the cause of independence unto his death. In his honor and in a demonstration of respect, members of Congress wore crape on their left arms for one month after his death.
Joseph Hewes was a true, devoted American Patriot.
William Williams
Born in Lebanon, CT in 1731, William Williams was one of ten children of Congregationalist Church minister, Solomon Williams and wife, Mary Porter Williams. He studied both law and theology at Harvard and graduated in 1751 as well as studying the ministry with his father. Four years later he served in a local militia in the French and Indian War. He returned and opened a store in Lebanon. He never owned slaves as he felt it was morally wrong.
At nearly 40 years old he married Mary Trumbull who was about 15 years younger. She was the daughter of CT Royal Governor Jonathon Trumbull. Trumbull went on to serve as the second Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives. William and Mary went on have three children together. He took the job of town clerk, a position he held for 44 years.
Williams spent over two decades as a representative in the CT House of Representatives. He was elected Speaker in four of those years. He was strongly for independence as he was a member of the Sons of Liberty, on the Committee for Correspondence as well as the Council for Safety. At one time he anonymously had a satirical letter published in the local newspaper that confronted the King and his actions. He became an even more fierce opponent to the Crown after the Coercive Acts of 1774. He was elected to replace Oliver Wolcott as a representative from CT in the Continental Congress one week after the Declaration was formally announced, so he did not get to vote. However, he arrived in time to be a signer. Following this act he resigned his militia commission as a Colonel to serve in the Congress. He also served as a county judge for 28 years beginning in 1776.
Williams refused to sign the Constitution. He was opposed because Article VI banned religious tests for government officials. As a devout Christian and Congregationalist Deacon he felt it was a necessary requirement. He lived a life of dignity with a humble attitude and consistency that he felt was necessary for government officials. He lived his entire life as an example for Christ and for America. During the war, he closed his business, gave generously of his time and contributed much of his wealth for the cause. He regularly opened his home for military members to stay and rest.
In his latter days Williams read, meditated and prayed. He passed away at age 80. The day of his death, August 2, was exactly 35 years to the day from the date he signed the Declaration. His wife, Mary, passed away 20 years later.
William Williams was the epitome of a Christian servant leader and American Patriot.
Conclusion
As we wind our way through the Declaration signers, we come across stories such as these with Gates, Conway, Washington and Rush that remind us that nothing in life happens in a linear progression of goodness. Sometimes it all comes across as a soap opera. Yet, somehow the hand of God always has appeared at the right time to steer us in a direction that restores our destiny. Indeed, we are going through such a resurgence of the American spirit today.
It is interesting to me that an active faith in God, in a higher power, always seems to be the catalyst that drives the renewal.
In this story we have two devout Christians and a probable deist from different states who were working on the same team as patriots and signers of the Declaration of Independence. They gave their all for America, just as American First MAGA is doing today.
This Rejoice & Praise God Sunday Open Thread, with full respect to those who worship God on the Sabbath, is a place to reaffirm our worship of our Creator, our Father, our King Eternal.
It’s also a place to read, post, and discuss news that is worth knowing and sharing. Please post links to any news stories that you use as sources or quote from.
In the QTree, we’re a friendly and civil lot. We encourage free speech and the open exchange and civil discussion of different ideas. Topics aren’t constrained, and sound logic is highly encouraged, all built on a solid foundation of truth and established facts.
We have a policy of mutual respect, shown by civility. Civility encourages discussions, promotes objectivity and rational thought in discourse, and camaraderie in the participants – characteristics we strive toward in our Q Tree community.
Please show respect and consideration for our fellow QTreepers. Before hitting the “post” button, please proofread your post and make sure your opinion addresses the issue only, and does not confront or denigrate the poster. Keep to the topic – avoid “you” and “your”. Here in The Q Tree, personal attacks, name-calling, ridicule, insults, baiting, and other conduct for which a penalty flag would be thrown are VERBOTEN.
In The Q Tree, we’re compatriots, sitting around the campfire, roasting hot dogs, making s’mores, and discussing, agreeing, and disagreeing about whatever interests us. This board will remain a home for those who seek respectful conversations.
God is in Control . . . and His Grace is Sufficient, so . . . Keep Looking Up
Hopefully, every Sunday, we can find something here that will build us up a little . . . give us a smile . . . and add some joy or peace, very much needed in all our lives.
“This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn nor weep.” . . . “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
A Good King
Josiah was the king of Judah from approximately 640 to 609 B.C. His reign in Jerusalem is discussed in 2 Kings 22–23 and 2 Chronicles 34–35. Josiah was a godly king and known as one of the world’s youngest kings; he began his reign at age 8 after his father was assassinated. A highlight of Josiah’s reign was his rediscovery of the Law of the Lord.
Second Kings 22:2 introduces Josiah by saying, “And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.” In the eighteenth year of his reign, he raised money to repair the temple, and during the repairs the high priest Hilkiah found the Book of the Law. When Shapan the secretary read it to Josiah, the king tore his clothes, a sign of mourning and repentance (2 Kings 22:10–11).
King Josiah called for a time of national repentance. The Law was read to the people of the land, and a covenant made between the people and the Lord: “The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant” (2 Kings 23:3).
Many reforms followed. The temple was cleansed from all objects of pagan worship, and the idolatrous high places in the land were demolished. Josiah restored the observance of the Passover (2 Kings 23:2–23) and removed mediums and witches from the land.
Second Kings 23:25 records, “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.” God’s wrath would later come upon Judah due to the evil King Manasseh had done (2 Kings 23:25), but the judgment was delayed because of Josiah’s godly life and leadership (2 Kings 22:20).
Much can be learned from Josiah’s life that is positive.
Josiah shows the influence a person can have from a very young age. Even children have enormous potential to live for God and to have great impact.
Josiah lived a life fully committed and obedient to God and was blessed for it.
Josiah properly responded to God’s Word. By the time he became king, the Scriptures had long been neglected, and Josiah’s heart was smitten by the failure of his people to honor God’s Word. Josiah had Scripture read to the people and made a commitment to live by it.
“‘Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken . . . I also have heard you,’ declares the Lord” (2 Kings 22:19).
A promise God made to the Children of Israel which, reasonably, could also be applied to God’s Children: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
Yep, Kurt has noticed that lots of people are getting twanging schadenböners.
And you do not have to be male to get this kind of böner.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
Gold zig-zagged across the 2,800 mark (which is record territory) on Friday. Since most people quote bid, not ask, and the bid for gold is 2799.20 you might hear that it closed just short of $2,800 on Friday. (I quote ask, because that’s the buyer’s price and you should be buying, right?) Gold was even above 2,810 at least once on Friday.
Of course this means that the FRNSI is at an all-time high.
Silver, on the other hand, actually dropped on Friday but still up nicely for the week as a whole. At least the gold/silver ratio has dropped a bit.
*The SteveInCO Federal Reserve Note Suckage Index (FRNSI) is a measure of how much the dollar has inflated. It’s the ratio of the current price of gold, to the number of dollars an ounce of fine gold made up when the dollar was defined as 25.8 grains of 0.900 gold. That worked out to an ounce being $20.67+71/387 of a cent. (Note gold wasn’t worth this much back then, thus much gold was $20.67 71/387ths. It’s a subtle distinction. One ounce of gold wasn’t worth $20.67 back then, it was $20.67.) Once this ratio is computed, 1 is subtracted from it so that the number is zero when the dollar is at its proper value, indicating zero suckage.
It is a CULT
Admittedly, the channel I am about to point you to–a brand new one–has one big Dufus Factor involved and that is the silly mask the guy wears for some reason having to do with his other gaming channel.
But when talking about Flat Earth he is spot-on. (And I’ve seen serious content delivered by people in sillier costumes–e.g., dinosaurs.) And…hallellujah! Except for two interviews his videos are short! Anyhow, his comparison of Flat Earth and cults seems spot on.
Nathan Oakley (as in “where are the GUNS, Nathan?!?!?”) tried to respond but of course was selective. As Oakley is credibly alleged to be a child abuser I won’t give him a link (you can surely find it if you want), but the response to his response is here.
CyberWaffle also has a response to the claims that The Final Experiment was done in a studio. Apparently he has some experience with the movie industry.
(In a later video he says he got the cost wrong…it should be 26 billion dollars.)
There seem to be four distinct responses to the Final Experiment from Flat Earthers (based on the interview with MC Toon).
Some maintain it doesn’t matter. “We never made a claim.” Well you still have to be able to explain what was seen.
Some retroactively claim that they were able to predict a 24 hour sun (this is revisionism (i.e., bare faced lying); there are plenty of videos of big-name Flerfers saying they would like to go to Antarctica during Austral summer, see the sun set, and thus prove the globe wrong–they didn’t erase them fast enough). But now they’re claiming that the Sun they saw was a reflection off the dome. (Decisively disproven by sunspot photos.)
One pastor claims the Sun was actually Satan.
But the most common claim is that it was faked; apparently “Flat Earth Dave [Weiss]” (who originally stood up against claims of “greenscreen”) has been brought back into line.
The problem is, they took plenty of videos not yet released to show it wasn’t a fake. Claims it was in a 360 degree surround studio are exploded by a drone flight to about a mile AGL (above ground level), a video that has been released. No studio could be that tall; that’s much taller than any building we have ever built.
MC Toon points out that anyone can go, but clearly the great expense (the Final Experiment cost $31K per participant) is a barrier. He has a standing offer to anyone who thinks it was fake. He will put $100,000 in escrow; they can do the same. Then they go together. Whoever’s right about the Sun gets the money. If they get turned away at gun point the Flerfer gets the money. None of them are confident enough in their position to have taken him up on it. (If they were that confident but poor, they could borrow the money for the trip and the 100K fully confident that they will have $200K afterwards to pay off the $131K loan with. Though perhaps a bank will laugh in their face when they make the application and explain why they are going.)
The Final Experiment team tried to anticipate every possible way that Flerfs could deny they had done what they did. As CyberWaffle put it: “That’s the only really bizarre thing about this trip to Antarctica, where the whole purpose of the trip to Antarctica, the whole time….no one’s ever done an expedition on the pure purpose to have to prove that they did the expedition.”
Here’s an Interview with MC “Where are the GUNS Nathan” Toon. Pay especial attention from 50:36 on and then at 58:00 (though if you have time the whole thing is worth watching).
Another; his most recent (unless he releases one between now (Thursday) and Saturday). This one lays out the best why I harp on this. Flat Earth isn’t just wrong, which is bad enough, it is harmful to the people who believe it. As often as not they lose their friends and even alienate their families.
But here’s a final one, from a totally different source. This one makes a larger philosophical point, and is an interesting exposition on the subject of “respecting one’s elders.”
[Edit to add: This last video’s conclusion could be taken as implying that we should, for instance believe the medical establishment. Maybe he actually does mean that. But I’ll go so far as to say that sometimes the experts disagree with each other and we do have experts on our side in this case. And the “establishment” has plenty of motivation to warp its judgement. That’s quite a different situation than disagreeing with your mechanic.]
CyberWaffle sometimes talks disparagingly of “conspiracy theories” and, in the way he understands the term, he is right to do so. The classic conspiracy theory is impossible to argue with, not because it is true, but because the holder of the theory is primed to dismiss any contrary evidence as faked or a lie, as part of the cover up.
The sorts of things we discuss here are (almost entirely) not like that. We bring a lot here, and so far as I know, if someone were to actually bring contradictory evidence the response here would not be to shove fingers in ears, shake our heads and say “nuh-uh!”
On the other hand, if you ever get to that point of wanting to simply dismiss any counter-evidence as fake, then you’re in danger of disconnecting from reality–in the unlikely event that you haven’t already done so.
That’s a very bad place to be. As Ayn Rand once said (and I’m paraphrasing), one is free to evade reality, but one cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.
And sometimes the consequences may be fatal.
More On Geology The Geologic Timescale
The same Kurt Schlichter article I quoted at the top since Aubergine couldn’t resist calling out the schadenböner reference, has this line (earlier in the same paragraph):
We have more energy than the freshly unleashed Permian Basin.
What is this “Permian Basin”? As it happens there are two of them, one centered on the North Sea in Europe (remember a lot of oil comes from offshore rigs in the North Sea), and the other is the one in West Texas and southeast New Mexico.
If you type “Permian Basin” into Wikipedia, you go to a page that tells you this, and you can then select the one you’re interested in. It also mentions that neither of them are in Perm Krai.
What on Earth is “Perm Krai”? Perm Krai does not have a link (but should). A “krai” (край, plural края́) turns out to be “one of the types of federal subjects of modern Russia, and was a type of geographical administrative division in the Russian Empire and the Russian SFSR.” A krai was traditionally a far out, peripheral frontier area (in fact it’s etymologically related to the word “Ukraine”), while an oblast was a bit more central. In today’s Russian Federation there’s no functional difference between a krai and an oblast; a subdivision of Russia is one or the other based on tradition. (Russia also has other kinds of subdivisions: republics, cities of federal significance, an autonomous oblast, and autonomous okrugs. All have equal status as constituent entities of the Russian Federation according to Article 5 of the Constitution of Russia.)
So here’s a map–which unfortunately lost its labeling on the way over from Wikipoo:
In green are “Republics” which have a little more autonomy (the biggest one is Sakha, better known as Yakutsk to Risk players, and is the largest territorial subdivision in the world). Orange are krais, yellow are oblasts, red are the two federal cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg; Sevastapol in Crimea is also a federal city but most nations do not recognize Russian ownership of that or the four Ukrainian oblasts recently annexed from Ukraine [in cross-hatch at the left side of the map]). The one autonomous oblast in in purple, four autonomous okrugs in blue.
Getting back to our subject, Perm Krai is here, tucked up against the Ural Mountains on the west side. (The Ural Mountains form the traditional border between Europe and Asia, since they aren’t really separate continents. The eastern border of Perm Krai is part of that dividing line.)
Perm has its own coat of arms (just like every “Federal Subject” does):
Despite being deep inside Russia, Perm Krai has a significant population of ethnic minorities; some are not ones you’re likely to have heard of, though: Tatars and Ukrainians, Komi-Permyaks, and Bashkirs. Bashkirs are actually Turkic, but the Komi-Permyaks…well, they’re “Uralic” meaning their closest well-known relatives are the Finns and Hungarians. Its largest city is named…Perm (it gave its name to the Krai), with just a bit over a million people. The total population is roughly 2.5 million, down from 3 million when the Soviet Union collapsed.
OK…so that was (maybe) interesting and even has a tiny bit to do with current events, but…why on Earth is an energy-rich place in Texas and New Mexico named for this place?
SO glad you asked!
The Geologic Timescale Today
I struggled with this topic a bit. Trying to just talk about it historically is hard, because a lot of what I am reading assumes you know what we know today. And a lot of this topic is naming conventions and historic holdovers, but a lot is not. If I were to try to trace this from the beginning without some context, it would get a bit confusing. which is unsatisfactory. So I’m going to briefly outline the modern picture, then jump back and try (and likely fail) to explain how we got here. That might be more confusing, but I aim to excel.
The geologic timescale as we know it today is our best effort to order the different rocks we find around the Earth, by time; and since this is science things need to be classified in buckets so that we can see patterns that will help illuminate what is going on.
This is a vast topic so it gets subdivided. In fact it gets sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-subdivided; there are six “levels” of subdividedness (if that wasn’t a word before, it is now); generically referred to as “units.” Except that there are two different names for the levels. When considering the rocks themselves, they are “chronostratigraphic units,” when talking about the times, they are “geochronologic units.” However when we get to looking at specific ones, they have the same names. Thus “Permian” refers to both a chronostratigraphic unit and a geochronologic unit.
The entire history of the Earth is first subdivided into eons (geochronologic, time) which are each equivalent to eonothems (chronostratigraphic; rock layers). There are four of these according to the standard scheme. In order, newest to oldest (newest is always at the top, because it mimics the principle of superposition, they are:
Phanerozoic (the current eon/eonthem)
Proterozoic
Archean
Hadean (starts with the formation of the Earth)
As you might imagine, the older, the less well understood. Thus, the Hadean is not further subdivided; we have almost nothing to work from with this one. The other three eons are subdivided into eras (geochronologic; time) or erathems (chronostratigraphic; actual rock layers). There are ten defined eras, from oldest to newest these are: The Eoarchean, Paleoarchean, Mesoarchean, Neoarchean, Paleoproterozoic, Mesoproterozoic, Neoproterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. As you likely guessed, the first four are subdivision of the Archean, the next three of the Proterozoic, and the final three by elimination are subdivisions of the Phanerozoic; we are living in the Cenozoic era, with rocks being laid down now part of the Cenozoic erathem. To summarize:
Phanerozoic (the current eon/eonthem)
Cenozoic (the current era/erathem)
Mesozoic
Paleozoic
Proterozoic
Neoproterozoic
Mesoproterozoic
Paleoproterozoic
Archean
Neoarchean
Mesoarchean
Paleoarchean
Eoarchean
Hadean (starts with the formation of the Earth)
The eras that are part of the Proterozoic and Phanerozoic (the Archean and certainly the Hadean are not subdivided to this level) are further subdivided into periods (geochronologically, time) equivalent to systems (chronostratigraphic, rock layers); there are 22 of these. You may recognize some of these names, but the ones from the Proterozoic eon/eonthem are new. I won’t be mentioning these much; the last two, however are the Cryogenian and Ediacaran. Once you get into the Phanerozoic, though, the Paleozoic is subdivided (oldest to newest) into the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous (which is a special case, there are two sub-periods of it called the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian), and Permian, and I will be talking about these. (In particular if I don’t discuss the Permian after that intro, someone will probably put a price on my head.) The Mesozoic is subdivided into the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. (If you have never heard of the Jurassic, you’ve been living under a rock. Maybe even one that formed in the Jurassic.) The Cenozoic is subdivided into the Paleogene, Neogene and Quaternary periods (or systems). [Note: the Cenozoic was reorganized in 2008 [edit]. Before then used to be a period called the “Tertiary” instead of the Paleogene and Neogene.] We are living in the Quaternary period; rocks laid down now are part of the Quaternary system.
Phanerozoic (the current eon/eonthem)
Cenozoic (the current era/erathem)
Quaternary
Neogene
Paleogene
Mesozoic
Cretaceous
Jurrasic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Carboniferous (Mississippian + Pennsylvanian)
Devonian
Silurian
Orodivician
Cambrian
Proterozoic
Neoproterozoic
Ediacaran
Cryogenian
Tonian
Mesoproterozoic
3 periods
Paleoproterozoic
4 periods
Archean
Neoarchean
Mesoarchean
Paleoarchean
Eoarchean
Hadean (starts with the formation of the Earth)
That’s three levels, and that’s as deep as I am likely to get. However, you should remember there are finer gradations, the epoch/series, the subepoch/subseries, and the age/stage (giving the “time” name first, then the “rock” name second). These exist because there’s really no situation where a single distinct rock layer covers an entire period.
I’m certainly not expecting you to remember these last three levels. I certainly won’t. But please be aware that they are there. The systems (hence periods) were often originally built up by combining series (epochs).
(However, even popular treatments will break the Cenozoic down one more level than this down to the epoch level, and all of those have names ending in -cene. None, fortunately were named after the Russian river Ob.)
In some cases which smaller units got grouped into which larger units is arbitrary, but in other cases it’s anything but. There are clear, obvious dividing lines between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, as well as between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic; as we will see there was a mass extinction event at both of those dividing lines. Other, lesser mass extinctions turn out to be boundaries between periods/systems.
One more thing to add: For historic reasons, the first three entire eons put together are sometimes informally called “the Precambrian,” almost as if they were only as important as a mere period (two levels below them in the schema). This is largely due to the fact that until recently we knew next to nothing about those three eons and had a hard time distinguishing them from each other in any case. It was just some indefinitely long time.
The whole schema as it exists today (and with some text about proposed changes) is laid out in painstaking detail here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale, broken down all the way to Ages where such subdividing has been done.
Which brings us to the question of how we tell these apart from each other (and why those methods failed, at first, with the Precambrian). And so now I will switch to the historical perspective. So tuck all of that away in the back of your minds, wipe the mental slate temporarily, and…here we go.
Historical Development
Back to the late 18th and early 19th century, where we start to see the development of the geologic timescale. Between mining and the coal industry that was firing up to support the Industrial Revolution, geologists started to realize the fossils could tell us a few things. Similar fossils would appear at the same places in a bottom-to-top sequence and they could often be used to establish that the rocks were of a specific age. William Smith could distinguish otherwise-similar formations (i.e, rocks of the same color and texture) based on what fossils appeared in them. Putting things together people like Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brogniart realized you could set up a complete sequence of rocks, oldest to youngest, based on index fossils. Index fossils are fossils that were widely distributed (hence could be seen in large parts of the globe) and existed briefly, so they’d be confined to one stratum.
When they published in 1811, we saw the birth of modern stratigraphy. We started to see what today we consider the systems/periods within the Phanerozoic.
(Cuvier, by the way, used the sequence to argue for catastrophism. This means multiple disasters–not just one, that caused many of the different abrupt boundaries in the geologic column. And you know what…he wasn’t completely wrong, though it took some time for this to be recognized.)
Note that not every kind of fossil is an index fossil. A good candidate for an index fossil will be something that lived in the oceans (hence was probably nearly global) and doesn’t appear across a long span of time. The narrower the time, the more precisely you can date a formation.
Because fossils were used to distinguish epochs and periods from each other, we really could only get anything useful from a certain time onwards. Before that time the rocks apparently had no fossils in them (we know now this is not quite true). After that time…we have fossils.
This was a very iterative process, with people noting strata and their relationships slowly and a big picture emerging at last. In many cases the epochs were noted first and combined into the periods later; with some re-groupings along the way. So here’s what we ended up with, listed from oldest to youngest, and not by any means in the order they were discovered or got their final names.
English geologists were particularly prolific, identifying the following periods (from oldest to youngest): the Cambrian (from Cambria, meaning Wales), in 1835; the Ordivician (from a Celtic tribe) in 1879; the Silurian (another Celtic tribe) in the early 1830s; the Devonian (named after Devon, England) also in the 1830s, and the Carboniferous (named after the coal) in 1811. Anything older than the Cambrian at the time appeared to have no fossils in it, and as mentioned earlier just got called the “Precambrian”. These periods are abbreviated, respectively, Ꞓ, O, S, D, and C.
In North America, the Carboniferous period was initially treated as two periods, the Mississippian (older) and Pennsylvanian (younger)…so America does make its way into the schema. This kind of monkeywrenched the scheme when one group of geologists talked about the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian and the other talked of the Carboniferous. The compromise eventually arrived at is to consider this period, and only this period, as consisting of sub-periods by those names. Other periods don’t have sub-periods but go directly to being divided into epochs.
(That wasn’t the only dispute by any means. As you might have noticed, the Ordovician was first named much later than the others, and was created by reorganizing what we had before, as a way to settle a different argument altogether.)
England certainly has newer rocks than the Carboniferous, but for whatever reason other countries beat England to the punch as far as identifying and naming more recent periods.
The very next period, the Permian (P), was found in the Ural mountains of Russia and added to the scheme in 1841–and this is how the Permian basin of Texas got its name. It turns out to consist of rocks from the same period. (Famous fossils from the Permian include a lot of corals [an entire reef nows form the Gaudalupe mountains in West Texas] and Dimetrodon, the sail-back lizards, which contrary to popular belief were not dinosaurs.)
(As for how a coral reef ended up way out in West Texas at elevations up to 8751 feet…well, that’s for a future post.)
The next one after that was the Triassic (T), first noted in Southern Germany. This was in turn composed of three rock layers (hence the “tri” in the name). It got that name in 1834, however it had been noted earlier than that.
In the Jura mountains of France and Switzerland, we found the Jurassic (J). This was a markedly earlier discovery from 1795.
The Cretaceous was first identified in the Paris basin in 1822 and the name comes from the extensive beds of chalk (calcium carbonate from the shells of microscopic sea organisms). Its abbreviation is K, not C, from German Kreide, chalk.
Next was the Tertiary. Those rocks are quite new (as such things are measured); it brings us almost to the present day. This name actually goes back to the middle 1700s and Arduino, who divided geologic time into primitive, secondary, and tertiary periods based on what he saw in Northern Italy, so the Tertiary was essentially discovered in Northern Italy. For a time, this period was identified has having been laid down during the Flood.
The Tertiary is now considered obsolete and has been broken up into two periods, the Paleogene (Pg) and Neogene (N). I know that the Tertiary used to be abbreviated T, but that means the Triassic must have had a different abbreviation back then. This relatively recent rearrangement was very controversial and part of the dispute was what to do about the very next (and latest) period…
The Quaternary, which was named such because it followed the Tertiary. It was first identified by Arduino in 1759 (by contrast with the Tertiary) and very nearly didn’t survive the recent reorganization of the Tertiary; it almost got folded into the Neogene. This is the latest period/system.
These periods were (and still are) grouped into three Eras, with the Cambrian through Permian making up the Paleozoic (“old life”) era, the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous making up the Mesozoic (“middle life”) era, and the Tertiary and Quaternary making up the Cenozoic (“new life”) era.
Anything before the Cambrian got lumped together as the “Precambrian.” There were no index fossils in those rocks (at least we didn’t think so at the time), so although we could look at the rocks at one location and do relative dating on them, we couldn’t correlate the Precambrian rock layers in one location with those in another location far away.
Eventually we would overcome this and build up the much more refined timescale we have today, but for a long time the Precambrian was an difficult-to-chart wasteland of geologic time.
Geologists worked on and after two centuries of development, we have today’s schema.
As a reminder, today the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras are in turn grouped together into the “Phanerozoic Eon” and we’ve been able to subdivide the Precambrian into three full eons with some subdividing into eras and periods.
I’m going to jump ahead a bit, and talk about the Precambrian fossils that we have more recently discovered. But first, I have to bring up a basic point.
What are fossils, and what causes them?
A fossil is any preserved remains, impression or trace of past life. Usually these are preserved in rocks, but preservation in amber (a la Jurassic Park) also happens.
We actually have to distinguish different kinds of fossils. Sometimes all we have are “trace fossils.” I always found this name misleading (I’m used to other meanings of the word “trace”), but here it means such things as footprints, tracks, burrows (without any remains of the burrower), and so on…indirect evidence of the critter. Another category of fossil that goes into this bucket is “copralites.” And these are fossilized dung. (Who would have guessed that wokester brain matter existed back then?)
In many cases we have nothing more than trace fossils to identify something, or rather to identify that something existed. We can learn a few things from them, such as that the critter liked to burrow in the sediment at the bottom of a shallow sea and was of a certain size, but we won’t learn a lot.
Sometimes we have external molds. An organism is buried, decomposes, dissolves and is gone…but the void it left in the sediment is preserved as the sediment turns to rock. Sometimes sediments fill an organism’s interior and we end up with an internal mold or endocast.
Sometimes we get an impression of the creature. This can be very interesting since we might learn about skin texture. Skins usually don’t fossilize.
There are microfossils, things you need a microscope to examine. These often are of the critters themselves.
But the “classic” fossil like the skeleton you’ve seen in museums is when a buried organism’s tissues are slowly replaced by minerals coming out of solution. This is much more likely to happen if the organism is buried underwater right after it dies and as you might imagine, that’s far more common for sea life (which is already underwater) than land life.
This turns out to be a big subject, and I am going to take the easy way out and punt you over to Wikipedia if you want to know more. (Note that on occasion a fossil is made out of iron pyrite (fool’s gold)!)
It’s much, much easier to fossilize if you have hard body parts. Skeletons, exoskeletons, shells, etc., because the other stuff is likely to decompose or otherwise be consumed by animals even when buried. The reason why “fossils show up” only in the Cambrian and later is because that’s when hard body parts first show up. (Why not earlier? My speculation: This is when predators first showed up, and critters suddenly needed body armor.)
But we do have some fossils from before the Precambrian, after all.
For instance, fossilized bacterial mats called stromatolites going clear back into the Archean, and not just the late Archean either. (These mats still exist in certain isolated places today–the situation has to be just right, however, or they get eaten before the mats can really form. Shark Bay in Western Australia is one of these places–it’s so important for that reason that UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site.) Those things that look like lumpy brown rocks are alive.
And a number of soft bodied creatures did manage to get impressions preserved in the rocks from immediately before the Cambrian; this led to the recognition, for the first time in 120 years, of a new period, the Ediacaran, named after the Ediacara Hills of South Australia, at the tail end of the Neoproterozoic era. Interestingly, many of these fossils were first noticed in England by schoolchildren, and the paleontologists around them, knowing the local surface rocks were Precambrian, dismissed their stories until one of them went with the kids and looked. These organisms look like nothing around today (unlike the Cambrian ones), and they are collectively called the “Ediacaran biota” though they only appear in the more recent part of the Ediacaran system. Here is an artist’s impression (very speculative)
And here are some pictures of the actual fossils, first charnia:
And dickinsonia.
Before that we have fossils of algae. Such as stromatolites.
Fossils versus Index Fossils
I’m going to make one more thing clear. I’ve noted that the periods were defined by index fossils..in fact in many cases the fossils actually identify epochs and ages within the periods. Completely distinct rocks in widely separated locations can be identified as being from the same epoch or age based on the index fossils they contain. The narrower the time span, the better. Not every fossil is an index fossil. Sometimes the geographic range is too small (the creature wasn’t wide spread enough) and sometimes that particular species was around for far too long.
But those non-index fossils are still confined to a certain time range, even if it’s a broad one.
Take trilobites, an entire class of creatures. (Mammals are a class. Insects are a class. Trilobites were that big a grouping.) There isn’t a single trilobite alive today. All of them lived from the middle of the Cambrian to the end of the Permian. The fossils were found in those systems so they date to those periods. (In fact the abrupt disappearance of the trilobites is one of the reasons the Permian–and the entire Paleozoic Era–is regarded as ending right then.)
We’ve identified, from fossils, 22,000 distinct species of trilobites spread out over the entire Paleozoic. There were surely many, many more. Some got to be 28 inches long. Some were scavengers, some were predators, some were filter feeders. They were an incredibly diverse and successful class. I can’t find anything to say for sure (I’m running out of time), but I would be surprised if at least some specific species of trilobites weren’t index fossils.
But you never find a trilobite after the Permian system. Never. They died out at the end of the Permian in a mass extinction, among the victims of the biggest one of all time. You can’t tell what period a generic trilobite is (though if you can identify the specific species, you have a better shot at it), but if your rock has a trilobite fossil in it, it’s Paleozoic, not Mesozoic or Cenozoic. And certainly not Precambrian.
Similarly, dinosaurs lived at characteristic times. Tyrannosaurs, for instance, are from the very end of the Cretaceous. Allosaurus and stegosaurus (and closely related species) are Jurassic. You never see these creatures outside of those ranges.
And not just for these examples, but for every species we have fossils of. This sort of precise and consistent location within the geologic column is very, very hard to explain if someone wants to claim that the entire column was laid down all at once. And this is what Young Earth Creationists claim…the whole thing was laid down in one year by the Great Flood.
But if a single flood event laid down the entire geologic column with the fossils all being things that drowned in the Flood, why would you not find drowned trilobites and tyrannosaurs and brachiosaurus and apatosaurus and pelycosaurs and ambulocetus and archaeopteryx and anomalocaris and eurypterids and camerata and ammonites and I could go on and on and on, but especially fossilized fish and gigantic Mesozoic marine reptiles of various extinct species (which could surely have held out longer) throughout the entire geological column if the whole thing happened within one year, or at least with lots of overlap? Instead we see things strictly segregated by layers. Even if you want to appeal to objects forming layers by density a) the brachiosaur bones would be in the Precambrian not the Cretaceous–in other words things didn’t sort by density and b) even if we grant for the sake of argument that they did, we’d see at least SOME cases of things not falling as far as they should because some piece of debris got in the way. Enough that we couldn’t ignore them. But we don’t. They’re segregated too perfectly by era, period and epoch. The segregation is so good because something would have to be thousands of years out of its time at the very least to end up in the wrong layer (and how would that happen? Time travel?), not just “it needed to fall for just a few more seconds to the right layer but something else blocked it.”
I’m sorry but the “all due to Noah’s Flood” claim is absurd. And this is just one line of argumentation that that is so.
Is there plenty of evidence of flooding in the geological record? Oh, yes, yes indeed, but there is no indication that it was a single event, or that any of the multitude of episodes were global. We can do relative dating on these things, after all.
(So Georges Cuvier, who as far as I can tell, believed in global catastrophes, was wrong. Or was he? Stay tuned.)
Not a Single Number?
You may have noticed that I have not given any numbers here. When were these periods? Just for instance, what’s the timespan of the Jurassic period? From when to when?
We didn’t know back then. We could look at index fossils and say that this rock from Russia was the same age as this other rock from Texas (even though from totally different formations). We could say that that rock was older than this other rock, and newer than yet a third rock. This is called relative dating. But other than crude order-of-magnitude estimates like was done with Etna, we could not do any sort of absolute dating where we could assign an actual number to the age of the rock. We could say “millions of years” or “more millions of years.” And by the way, there’s a symbol for that: Ma means “million years ago,” so 66 Ma means 66 million years ago.
How we got to absolute dating is a future topic (I might cover some other things before that). I know something about the modern methods. I have no idea (yet) how precise they were able to get before the modern methods were available, and I hope I can find out. (I may even have to walk back some of what I said in the prior paragraph if I’ve underestimated the cleverness of 19th and early 20th century paleontologists and geologists.) This is a learning experience for me too.