Search for Ancestors in the Weeds

All facts are not being reported to us — even in this generation!

As we trace further back in time and attempt to fill the gaps for want of records, logic, and reasoning are employed. Now is the time to get out the history books. But where is the written history of long ago?

Archaeologists rely upon hieroglyphics written upon the walls of the tombs of the Pharaohs for information. However, the lifestyles of everyone else is a conjecture of old data.

The example I am thinking of is how they built the pyramids. One supposition is that the workers dragged those boulders across the desert. Yet, a visit to the Atlanta Civic Center to view the wealth from the tomb of Tutankhamun was an eye-opener. In plain view was a small replica of a perfect set of “gears.” It follows that surely, they used mechanisms with gears to lift heavy loads! In recent years, iron has been discovered in the earliest Egyptian and Chinese dynasties. Also, it appears that brass plates were used to preserve valuable records.

These plates have been discovered in China as well as middle eastern deserts Because of the difficulty of writing on brass, words were abbreviated and condensed, all writing being familiar to that generation. Hmmm, seems our ancestors could read and write after all. Before some of the more recent discoveries emerged, mankind was painted in the history books as being dumb and uneducated. What I am saying here is that our old history books are wrong, wrong, wrong! The researcher already has a taste of errors in history books when reviewing items such as correspondence kept by colonial municipalities and pension records.

We are residents of Modern Times which do not include the distant past. In fact, we are lucky that we have the Domesday Book of 1066 A. D.! Therefore, anything which has a claim to facts before that date is supposition.

So, we have to look deeper into the weeds, and try to figure it out. Yet, remember, our cycle of learning is restricted to the Modern Era. A writer composes a sheet of information which is uncomfortably further away from the fact. Realizing there is little source information, we must, however, express our logic and reasoning. This is for the next genealogist or historian to work on.