Trilobite note

Almost six years ago, I wrote a piece about an early trilobite discovery and evidence of prehistoric and pre-literate knowledge of the nature of trilobites. It was pretty good and was included in The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs, 2010. Flash forward to this weekend. Catching up on my mail, I found a letter from a museum conservator in Utah asking about the source of one of the illustrations in the post and asking about a higher resolution version of it.

I wasn't very good about linking to the sources of illustrations back then. I have since learned better. Worse, the files and drafts of old blog posts are all on the hard drive of a computer that died about three years ago. I figured it wouldn't be that hard to redo the search I made that found the illustration in the first place. I was wrong. I tried Googling the location where the trilobite in question was found. I flipped to the image page and found several copies of the illustration. All of them linked back to me. This is flattering, but not helpful.

The illustration.

After noodling around for a while, I figured out how to find it. I found a scientific paper that mentioned the discovery (as a bonus, it had a photograph of the fossil). From that I found the name of the discoverer and the French journal that published his original report. I did a quick search to see if I could find it online. I couldn't, so I went Gallica, the site that has scanned copies of books and journals in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. There I had no problem finding the illustration, not in the original journal, but in one a few years later. My Google fu is still amazing. While looking for the illustration, I found out a good deal more about that fossil and decided to share it.

Adrien-Jacques-François Ficatier was an army doctor stationed in Paris during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He was also an amateur archaeologist. During the 1880s, he spent several summers poking around caves in the Yonne region southeast of Paris looking for artifacts. In 1886 he explored one of a series of caves just upstream from Arcy-sur-Cure. This cave is almost 60 meters long with a thick layer of earth, rich in artifacts, covering the bottom. The lowest layers have been dated to 35,000 years ago--well before the last glacial maximum. Ficatier excavated the two upper layers in the cave which date 14-15,000 years ago. There he found bones of horse and reindeer along with hundreds of pieces of worked flint, four needles, three spears, and several pieces that had been drilled to be worn as pendants. These were a wolf's tooth, four scallops, other marine shells, a beetle carved from pine, and a trilobite.

The trilobite is small--43 mm long and 23 mm at its widest point--and well worn as if it has been handled a lot. There are tiny holes on either side that would have been used to hang it. In 1897, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of its founding, the Society of Historic and Natural Sciences of the Yonne organized a series of excursions to the caves of Arcy-sur-Cure and St. Moré to compliment the usual dinners and lectures. Henri Douvillé, an  influential professor of paleontology at the École des Mines, told the Society that the trilobite belonged to the species Dalmanites hawlei found in Bohemia (the Czech Republic). More recent paleontologists have questioned that identification, but all agree that it was not a local fossil.

The trilobite.

The stratum where the trilobite was found has been dated to about 14,000 years ago. This is after the glacial maximum had passed, but during a sudden cold snap called the Older Dryas. The human culture of the time, called Magdalenian, was originally identified as one of great reindeer hunters. They had an improved set of hunting tools and were using dogs. Of course, they didn't just hunt reindeer. It was at about this time that mammoths died out in Europe.

There was more to their culture than just hunting. They manufactured items for personal adornment. The little trilobite meant something to them. It had enough value that it was a worthy object for long distance trade. What it meant is hard to say. One of the other items Dr. Ficatier excavated that summer might offer some context. The only manufactured amulet is a wood-borer beetle carved from lignite. Like the trilobite, it has holes drilled on the sides, rather than the top, for hanging. In many parts of the world where trilobites were traditionally called some variation of "stone insects". Was the trilobite significant because it resembled a beetle? Were these people the clan of the cave beetle? No one knows.

The best image.

After the summer was over and he returned to his job, Ficatier wrote up his field notes and they were published in a regional journal the Almanach historique de l'Yonne de 1887. It is here that the illustration first appeared. Over the next ten years, it was published in at least three journals that I know of. I've taken my image from the Bulletin de la Société d'anthropologie et de biologie de Lyon. The fossil itself, along with the beetle were placed in a museum in Joigny. Later that collection was moved to the Musée de l'Avallonnais. The museum's displays are mostly of local artists. There is an archaeology room, but I have been unable to determine if the trilobite, or the beetle, is part of the permanent display.

One final note. While looking for some biographical information on Ficatier I found out that a Playboy playmate from the 80's named Carol Ficatier is from Auxerre near Arcy-sur-Cure. I don't know how common the name Ficatier is in that part of France but, if it's not common, there's a possibility that they're related. Fame takes many forms.


The uncredited image.
Me. "The First Trilobite," Mammoth Tales. 10/14/2015 (reprint).

The photograph.
Schmider, Béatrice, et al. "L'abri du Lagopède (fouilles Leroi-Gourhan) et le Magdalénien des grottes de la Cure (Yonne)," Gallia préhistoire. Vol. 37,  No. 1 (1995)  pp. 55-114.

The credited image.
"Communication de M. PHILIPPE SALMON, L'Age de la pierre," Bulletin de la Société d'anthropologie et de biologie de Lyon, Vol. 6 (1891) pp. 13-18.

Ryan's SUPER SECRET plan to steal the election

Lately, I've seen a couple articles explaining how Republicans could keep Trump out of the White House without using convention shenanigans. It would have the added bonus of also keeping the Democratic nominee out. The secret lies in a little known provision of the Constitution to throw the election to the House. There are two versions. Both are pretty ridiculous speculation. They involve the Electoral College...

Most people know that the president is not chosen by a popular vote, they're chosen by the Electoral College (fun fact: the phrase "Electoral College" is not in the Constitution). That same most people probably don't think about what that means very often, if ever. When we vote for in November, we are not voting for our preferred presidential candidate. We are voting for a slate of people who promise to vote for that candidate five weeks later in Washington. If no one gets a majority in that election the House of Representatives holds its own election. Each state gets one vote. To get that, the state delegations hold a mini-election. The winner of that vote is the state's vote in the House vote. Got that?

Here's version one, from Huffington Post. Faced with Trump being their candidate, panicking establishment Republicans slap together a third party team that takes enough electoral votes from both sides that neither one has a majority. The election is thrown to the Republican dominated House who elect their chosen third party team. There are several glaring flaws in this clever scheme. In many states, it's already too late to get onto the ballot. More importantly, getting votes is not enough; they need to take entire states to collect electors. In 1992, Ross Perot (remember him?) gained 19 million, votes but didn't win a single state. Even more difficult is the fact that these states have to draw from both sides of the aisle to throw the vote to the House. It's hard to imagine Democratic leaning states to flock to the banner of a hand-picked, Republican establishment team.

Version two is from the Washington Post. This one is not only unlikely, it has the added feature of causing a major constitutional crisis. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution says: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors... [italics mine]." In the early days of the Republic, many states did not allow the voters to choose the electors. The manner they directed was for the legislature to hold a vote for the electoral slates. This was based on the general fear of mob rule held by the upper classes. This is why many states originally only extended the vote to property owners and why Senators were not elected by a popular vote until 1913.

The version two clever scheme is that a bunch of states will change their laws returning the election of electors to the legislatures. The majority of states have Republican legislatures making it possible to steal the election from both Trump and the Democratic candidate. The result would be be multiple constitutional crises at both the federal and state level, endless lawsuits, hundreds of recall elections, and probably violent protests. Changing electoral law in the middle of an election is the worst election idea in the history of bad election ideas.

Basically, if Trump comes to the convention with a majority of the delegates, or even a good plurality, the Republicans have to go with him. Yes, his candidacy is almost guaranteed to be a disaster, but all the alternatives are worse.

The missing Swedish source

The other day, I went to check out how I referred to something in chapter four to make sure I was consistent in chapter five. To my horror (really, horror), I discovered that the version I had saved was not the last version I wrote; it was the one before. All of the editorial corrections and content additions I had made were gone. After the predictable two hours spent checking everywhere for the corrected version, hoping the additions were in another file, and repeatedly looking in the trash can, I arrived (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression) at an acceptance of my screw up.

Sigh, do it over. My many-times published, childhood friend, David Neiwert, pointed out that, while this is horrifying, having had a chance to get your thoughts together once and mull it over, the second version is usually better. He's right. At least that's how it works in non-fiction. I'm sure many poets would punch us in the face for saying that. But, then, poets are an emotional lot.

And so, after remaking the editorial corrections, I spent today recreating the missing addition. Naturally, I went back and re-researched it. My new version is four times as long as the last version. Telling it in greater detail might add clarity to the narrative, but there is  a problem. This anecdote is the weakest sourced section in the entire book. It's based on what I call "the missing Swedish document."

One of the reasons this book has taken nine years to write has been that I have sourced everything. I don't want to claim to be able to read the minds of long dead people. When I was a kid, the young people's histories we were given (often written in the 19th century) were full of "when Bobby looked at the open sea, his mind was filled with thoughts of the adventures he would have." For all we know, Bobby was filled with terror at the thought that he would be raped half way around the world before dying of scurvy. And leaving such a childish genre, my own graduate studies were filled with statements of what Stalin wanted or was planning. Was Stalin planning to invade Western Europe when he died in 1953? I think he wanted to. I'm not sure he was brave enough to actually have planned to do it. In my studies, the only solid evidence I've seen is that he planned to invade Yugoslavia later that year.

Back to the mammoth. I have what I think is a significant anecdote. I've hesitated to add it because I can't source it. All I have is "a certain Swede said... ." I'm sure I know who the certain Swede is, but I can't find where he said it nor can I find a direct quote anywhere else. All I have is this oblique reference. I'm sure the first reviewer of the book will latch onto this point and ask about it.

I'm doomed.