M.J. Rose

A compelling book tells the story of human sacrifice in North America. It seems the natives were not always the peaceful teepee dwellers we’d like to think they were…

Sacrificial virgins of the Mississippi
Archaeologists are slowly unearthing the ghastly secrets of Cahokia, an ancient city under the American heartland

By Andrew O’Hehir

Ever since the first Europeans came to North America, only to discover the puzzling fact that other people were already living here, the question of how to understand the Native American past has been both difficult and politically charged. For many years, American Indian life was viewed through a scrim of interconnected bigotry and romance, which simultaneously served to idealize the pre-contact societies of the Americas and to justify their destruction. Pre-Columbian life might be understood as savage and brutal darkness or an eco-conscious Eden where man lived in perfect harmony with nature. But it seemed to exist outside history, as if the native people of this continent were for some reason exempt from greed, cruelty, warfare and other near-universal characteristics of human society.

As archaeologist Timothy Pauketat’s cautious but mesmerizing new book, “Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi,” makes clear, Cahokia — the greatest Native American city north of Mexico — definitely belongs to human history. (It is not “historical,” in the strict sense, because the Cahokians left no written records.) At its peak in the 12th century, this settlement along the Mississippi River bottomland of western Illinois, a few miles east of modern-day St. Louis, was probably larger than London, and held economic, cultural and religious sway over a vast swath of the American heartland. Featuring a man-made central plaza covering 50 acres and the third-largest pyramid in the New World (the 100-foot-tall “Monks Mound”), Cahokia was home to at least 20,000 people. If that doesn’t sound impressive from a 21st-century perspective, consider that the next city on United States territory to attain that size would be Philadelphia, some 600 years later…

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Dalai Lama urges global cooperation in economic crisis

(AFP) –

FRANKFURT — Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama called for worldwide cooperation to fight the effects of the economic crisis.

The Tibetan Buddhist leader said the global downturn showed “how our world is really small” and urged countries to take concerted action.

“We have to think globally,” he said, speaking at a conference on the economic crisis in Germany’s financial capital Frankfurt.

The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India, also said urgent measures were needed to fight global warming and close the gulf between rich and poor.

“We don’t need just nice talking, we must take action,” he told an audience of several thousand gathered in a football stadium.

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Vietnam’s dispute with Zen master turns violent
By BEN STOCKING (AP)

HANOI, Vietnam — Communist Vietnam’s sometimes edgy relationship with religious freedom is being tested in a dispute over a monastery inhabited by disciples of Thich Nhat Hanh, one of the world’s most famous Zen masters.

For four years, the Buddhist monks and nuns at Bat Nha monastery in central Vietnam have been quietly meditating and studying the teachings of the 82-year-old Vietnamese sage who is perhaps the world’s best-known living Buddhist after Tibet’s Dalai Lama.

But lately, they are in a standoff that could test the patience of even the most enlightened.

First, local authorities cut off their power, water and telephones.

Then, a mob descended on their compound with sledgehammers, smashing windows, damaging buildings and threatening occupants.

Communist authorities have ordered the 379 Vietnamese monks to leave the monastery in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. They say the standoff stems from disagreements between two Buddhist factions at the monastery.

But Hanh’s followers believe they are being punished because of Hanh’s praise for the Dalai Lama and his call to broaden religious freedom in Vietnam.

The affair represents a remarkable turnaround from four years ago, when France-based Hanh returned to his native land after 39 years of exile during which he developed a philosophy called “Engaged Buddhism” and sold more than a million books in the West.

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