I see an economic diasater coming...

[triffid]

About 10 thousand years ago farming was invented, which allowed larger numbers of people to be fed, thereby creating a population explosion. But not all people wanted to be farmers.  Many people preferred the old way of life, of gathering food for free. For a long time this wasn't a problem since farming land was very different from the areas where people gathered food.   This changed dramatically when farmers decided to drain swamps by constructing dykes and sea walls to turn swamps or salt marshes into farmland.  Conflict was created between the farming people and the gatherers, a conflict that the farming people would always win, because of their greater numbers.Whenever farmers decided to drain a swamp or salt marsh, there would be people living on it who would object, creating conflict between the two communities.  When the farmers built their dykes and started to drain the land, the chances are that the gathering people would come in the night   and breach the dykes to re-flood the land.  The farmers, angry at having to guard their dykes, might simply decide to wipe out the swamp people as a solution to the problem. History, as we all know, is written by the winners of any conflict, in this case the farmers. Today, we only know history from the farmers' point of view.  Having gone as far as wiping out the people who fed themselves by gathering, they then set about justifying the genocide by condemning their victims as evil people who deserved to be murdered.  Stories about their wicked deeds were invented and circulated.It seems that in the gathering communities it was women who were the leaders, in much the same way as men were the leaders in farming communities.  The focus of all the vitriolic attacks by the farmers would be centred on the female leaders, who were condemned as evil witches.   The witches would not only be seen as evil, but also practitioners of black magic. Where did these ideas come from?

[triffid]

When people switched to farming, their diet became more restricted, even though more food was available, because the bulk of their diet consisted of cereal crops.  Much of their food was lacking in vital nutrients, which led to deficiency diseases. The farming communities discovered that the gatherers, with their vast knowledge of plants and herbs, knew of plants that could overcome these dietary deficiencies.  So the farmers began using the witches of the gathering communities as doctors.  We find much the same in mermaid stories, where mermaids are also described as herbalists. As we see today,  people can quickly become dependent on doctors. If we look at Africa, Witch doctors not only dispense herbal medicine but psychological medicine as well, through their magic rituals.  But they can also abuse this power by threatening their patients with magic curses.   If there was conflict between the farming and gathering communities, when the farmers wanted to drain the swamps, the witches could use the farmers belief in and fear of magic to try and put a stop to this.   As a result, if the local lord wanted to drain a swamp and found that the people were too frightened of the witches to do this, he would turn to the priests to reassure the people and condemn the witches. Since the Church itself also owned large areas of land, it might also want to drain swamps and turn the land over to farming.  It had an investment in denying the power of the witches. They had to be eradicated.

[triffid]

The propaganda war between the Christian priests and the witches for power over the people became very ugly, resulting in widespread witch hunts and the genocide of the gathering people.   It's more than likely that the mermaids and witches living in swamps or  salt marshes were the ones  who  were killed in the Witch-hunts, but some of the mermaids living on the coast may have escaped this persecution as there was no-one wanting to use the land along the beach. As a result, there were still stories and sightings of mermaids as late as the 18th and 19th centuries, long after the witch hunts had finished.The mermaid's way of life is very, very ancient,  going back millions of years, as we will explain in the next video about the Aquatic Ape Theory.


The above posts are what I found in reading about witches and mermaids.I felt this material would be be useful in explaining a lot of things in our modern day world.I do know that more people have been killed in the name of god than any other reason.Maybe the conflict did start over food and how to acquire it?triffid

[triffid]

It's been estimated that the ancient gatherers were aware of over a 150 different kinds of plants that they could collect all year around.    On the seashore they also found edible seaweed, shellfish and crustaceans.

Field studies on hunter/gatherer societies that survived until the 20th century, show us that the vast majority of food was gathered by women.  Hunting with spears or a bow and arrow has always been a very unreliable way of obtaining food, because most animals can easily outrun human hunters.In contrast, food was always available for gathering in swamps, rivers, lakes and the seashore, like the seeds of wild rice and club rush, floating plants like cresses, water chestnuts and water lilies. Along the coast there is sea parsnip, sea fennel, sea rocket and sea kale, to list but a few.

[triffid]

Here is a link to methane gas production(natural gas) on a small scale production
http://forum.minneapolis-moline.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=69  keep in mind everyone on earth makes methane gas.So the smallest methane digesters are always walking around on earth.Soon to be on the moon too!
http://forum.minneapolis-moline.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=69