Book Reviewed: Hunter-Gatherer Ireland: Making Connections in an Island World by Graeme Warren

How different were hunter gatherers of Ireland with the rest of the Europeans This is the first comprehensive study about Irish hunter-gatherers based on archaeological evidence with anthropological and ecological perspectives. This is a key contribution to understanding how Ireland was first settled by the early humans and adapted over millennia. The first humans arrived after the end of the last Ice age at around 8000 BCE. The post-glacial landscape was heavily forested with rivers and coastlines. With his studies on tool kits (microliths, stone tools), pollen records, faunal remains, geological conditions, and mobility patterns, he reconstructs the environmental context in which Mesolithic communities lived. The absence of permanent structures is interpreted as evidence of mobile lifeways. The book ends with discussion of the Neolithic transition when humans became farmers at around 4000 BCE. Hunter-gatherers are people who live by foraging by hunting wild animals, fishing, and gathering wild plants, fruits, nuts, and roots rather than farming or raising animals. Around 10,000–7,000 years ago, neolithic revolution, the farming as an alternative spread in Asia and Europe. Farming led to diets with less vitamin D from animal foods hunter gatherers were used to, and this accelerated selection for lighter skin. By about 6,000–5,000 years ago, lighter skin became common in European farming populations, partly hastened by with weaker sunlight. The author complains that archeological and historical data in the academia was interpreted in colonial frame of mind, that is, hunter-gatherers are "primitive," static, or lacking complexity when compared to agricultural societies. He assures that his approach to this study is different. But reading the book, the author doesn't systematically prove or develop this critique through the book.

Book Reviewed: Catholic Spectacle and Rome's Jews: Early Modern Conversion and Resistance by Emily Michelson

The savagery of the Roman Catholic Church A vast edifice of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship of the Roman Catholic Church was built on institutional records that portrayed it as a monolithic, uniform, and a successful religion. In this book, the author tackles antisemitism and mistreatment of Jewish population in Rome. Before 1555, Jews had lived in the city for centuries with periods of tolerance and hardship. They were allowed to practice Judaism, run small businesses, and had synagogues. The major turning point was when Pope Paul IV took over as the head of the church, and the proclaiming the Papal Bull of 1555 “Cum nimis absurdum,” which energized antisemitism. Jews were forced into a small ghetto, an overcrowded area near the Tiber River. It was walled, guarded, and locked at night. Jews were banned from owning property, practicing medicine on Christians, and holding most other professions. The Papal Bull intensified the church’s efforts to force Jewish conversion into Christianity, and allowed numerous intimidation tactics. The author focuses largely on the weekly church sermons and the way they were conducted. It was filled with hostility and theatrical zeal to assert Catholic identity, power, and global ambition. The author also highlights the Jewish resilience and community resistance like avoidance, passive resistance, formal petitions, and public protests. The sermons were staged weekly in public for roughly 250 years. Many of these events were held at the Oratory of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini. Jews were marched under guard from the ghetto to sermon; policed, cataloged, and seated under Christian spectators. The church also organized mock processions to counter the solemn Jewish funeral march of mourners. Funerals were fraught with sadness and the threat of violence. These processions provided an occasion for Catholic church to intimidate large groups of Jews gathered together outside the ghetto. The book discusses the known case of disrupting Rabbi Tranquillo Corcos’s funeral with a satirical approach. The mock procession of local young Catholic men to counter the solemn Jewish funeral procession of mourners. At the head of the counter procession, the mock Corcos's coffin contained a live pig. The author could have focused more on Jewish chroniclers and Jewish leaders who fought against the overreaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and perhaps their perspectives of antisemitism. This book is an important investigative work that highlights the dangers of intolerance to minority religions like Judaism and Hinduism. Antisemitism is widely spread among Muslim population around the globe. The legacy media, the liberal politicians and the Left-wing groups are intensifying antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiments at an unprecedented level, and this make it possible the religious persecution of minority faiths.

Book Reviewed: Basic Concepts of Modern Physics: Quanta, Particles, Relativity by Georg Unger

Making sense out of quantum and classical realities The author explores the reconciliation of quantum and classical realities with metaphysical solutions. Consciousness is not considered as a fundamental part of the physics or mathematics that explains the physical reality, but it is relevant in understanding quantum reality. He concludes that a reductionist approach may not help us understand physical reality, because properties like quantum uncertainties, wave-particle duality of matter, and quantum entanglement are puzzling to classical experience of material world. The book grapples with ironing out these ambiguities and the conceptual problems in physics, and observes that the non-intuitive nature of quantum physics leads to misunderstandings of physical reality. For example, if you measure the position of a particle, just before the measurements, they exist in wave form, so measurement would put the particle in one place, a transition from wave to particle that has definite position (a wave has no position). This particle materializing out of uncertain “positions” of a wave (particles) which could occur faster than speed of light seemingly violating Einstein’s special theory of relativity which does not allow any signals faster than speed of light. Similarly, quantum entanglement between two particles could occur across vast cosmic distances. If you measure quantum state of one particle, the outcome is correlated with the measurement of the other particle, even if the two are separated by light years. This effect does not mean faster-than-light communication, but it does mean nature exhibits nonlocal correlations. The author suggests that quantum uncertainties and quantum statistical phenomena are signs of the incomplete manifestation of entities whose essence has may be comprehended by other cognitive methods. A possible relationship may exist between Hilbert space and consciousness; the former is a complete mathematical space to describe the state of quantum systems that may emerge from underlying consciousness. The physical reality may also be an illusion (like Maya of Advaita Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism.) The holographic principle of theories of quantum gravity (especially string theory), suggests that all the information contained in a 3-dimensional volume of cosmos is actually encoded on its 2-dimensional boundary. In other words, the 3D “reality” we see is a projection or reflection of information stored in 2D.