The report of the ancient mtDNA analysis has been published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. In the paper, "Rare mtDNA Haplogroups and Genetic Differences  in Rich and Poor Danish Iron-Age Villages," I did not read about any discussion of a sterile excavation. It seems as if the remains were removed and curated at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, in the University of Copenhagen for several decades. Owen Lovejoy and other notable phyiscal anthropologists have analyzed the remains to determine sex and the age at death.

The fact that a sterile excavation was not done and at least a half dozen analysts touched the remains, presumably with non-sterile technique, is troublesome for any accurate ancient DNA analysis. One way the authors of this paper compensated was to sample mtDNA from within teeth that were still sitting snug in the alveolus.

DNA isolation and amplification was done in a clean laboratory with the highest grade reagents. The authors mention all the precautions they took to avoid contamination. I would not expect anything otherwise! The products of the PCR were further amplified using Topo TA cloning. I do not know why.

Approximately, 340 bases of the Hyper Variable Region 1 (HVR-1) of the mitochondrial genome was amplified of from 22 individuals. In some cases isolations from three teeth were used per individual, but I can't tell if they were combined because there was not enough DNA or if they were keep seperately as part of a validation control layer.

Once the sequences were acquired, the authors performed a haplogroup comparison of the samples to a 'private' mtDNA database they maintain. There was not a discussion about how robust their private database is and that is very concerning. If their database was relatively small, i.e. not many samples, that would seriously hinder their ability to resolve fine differences. What is just as curious is that there was no discussion about why the authors decided to use their own database! There are large, accurate datasets out there that many people use. The authors could have also compared their sequences to these public datasets to validate their results!

Either way, the big headline find from this sequence comparison is that one individual, a male, from Bøgebjerggård carried the haplogroup R0a in his mitochondrial genome. This haplogroup is rarely found in modern Danish populations and not found in any of the other ancient Danish remains. This haplogroup is, however, found in sporadically in South Eastern Europe populations but predominately found in populations of Arab ancestry -- Bedouins in the Arabian Peninsula, Yemenites and Ethiopian Jews, and Somalis.

Ask yourself is this surprising? No it is not. In April we read of archaeological evidence of Middle Eastern coins from the 7th century in Sweden. This indicates people were actively migrating back and forth between the Near East and Northern Europe, exchanging goods and probably exchanging genes.

Does this finding warrant headlines like, "Adolf Hitler's Aryan theory rubbished by science" appearing in the newspaper the Telegraph? No, it does not. Like I said, this finding isn't surprising nor does it mean that 1 individual in Iron-Age Denmark throws off the whole genetic composition of an entire population. The overwhelming majority of Danes do not carry this haplogroup. So, the presence of the remains of male with with the haplogroup R in his mtDNA simply suggests he is of Near Eastern descent.

Melchior, L., Gilbert, M., Kivisild, T., Lynnerup, N., Dissing, J. (2008). Rare mtDNA haplogroups and genetic differences in rich and poor Danish Iron-Age villages. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 135(2), 206-215. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20721

Here's the synopsis:

Migrations is a meditation on the changing face of human identity, as seen through the eyes of a Mali-born immigrant to Canada named Omar. When Omar immigrated to Montreal from his sandy hometown of Bamako, it was the first time he encountered snow! Since those days, he has become a key figure in a very vibrant, multi-ethnic community in Montreal, where he often assists new immigrants who are transitioning into a different way of life and and a new society.

• I'm down at TechEd 2008 IT Pro this week in Orlando until Thursday afternoon with a few other members of the B&R Team - Jason Medero, Michael Lotter, Bob Fox & Josh Carlisle.  If you'd like to get together with any of us and talk SharePoint, feel free to ping me on the blog or via email - chrisr (at) bandrsolutions (dot) com.
• Monday night is the famous 'SharePoint by day, SharePint by Night' event... more information on it can be found here on Bob's blog and here on AC's.  I'll be there with the guys mentioned above.
• Jay will be running the SharePoint 2003 -> 2007 Migrations Birds of a Feather session on Wednesday, June 11 at 6:30PM... it will run about an hour, and Jay will be more than happy to stay after and answer all of your questions (as long as you take him out for a drink).  Jay has done more migrations then I can count at this point, and all of different sizes.  He is a great resource to talk to (or bring it to your shop) if you need some assistance. I highly recommend this BOAF session if you are thinking of making the jump to 2007 from 2003, or you are in the middle of it.
• My BOAF session - 'Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows Server 2008: What a Match' is on Thursday, June 12 at 10:30AM.  Some more information on this session:  "With the launch of Windows Server 2008, there have been many discussions in the SharePoint community around whether or not SharePoint farms should be upgraded to the latest and greatest server operating system, or if administrators should take the "wait and see" approach. Based on experience so far, the answer is pretty clear—by upgrading, your life as an administrator is going to be made easier, and you will see performance gains with SharePoint. This Birds-of-a-Feather session focuses on both the technical and business drivers for upgrading sooner instead of later, and how you can go back to your manager and make a convincing argument… one that will not only save you time, but will end up helping your organization as well."  I hope to see you there!

And then on another note, I've been working with Josh Carlisle on the AMD Developer Cental site, http://developer.amd.com, and Josh just released a really cool feature - 'SharePoint Smart 404' on CodePlex, which got its roots from the work we've done for AMD.  Essentially, instead of giving your users the same old boring 404 page when they type the wrong URL, the 'smart 404 page' will provide them with search results based on the url they were trying to hit.  To see an example of this in action, try hitting the site http://developer.amd.com/processors - this Processors site doesn't exist - but note that you now have relevant search results around the word 'processors' (note the 'Best Bets' area).  I look forward to contributing to this project.

Until the next post,
Chris

Technorati Tags:
SharePoint 2007, MOSS 2007, SharePint, Smart 404, CodePlex, Migrations, Server 2008, TechEd

1. You have to create them using the innodb storage engine to enable Transaction and to be able to run correctly your tests (rolling back, sandbox,..)

http://significantbits.wordpress.com/2007/03/22/make-sure-you-use-innodb-and-utf-8-when-creating-tables-through-migrations/

2. If you are dealing with a legacy database (old database), you have to run the task existing in this page to turn your table to inndb:

http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/4327

3. Here more details about top-secret tuned configuration for rails and migrations:

http://blog.evanweaver.com/articles/2007/04/30/top-secret-tuned-mysql-configurations-for-rails/

 Pearl is a member of the honorary board of the Daniel Pearl Foundation which was founded by Daniel Pearl's parents, Ruth and Judea Pearl. Other honorary board members include international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, former President Bill Clinton, Pakistani philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi, president of Stanford University  John L. Hennessy, founding Nightline anchorman Ted Koppel, Queen Noor of Jordan, Palestinian professor and president of Al-Quds University Sari Nusseibeh violinist Itzhak Perlman, Nobel Peace Prize winning author Elie Wiesel, and others.

A Mighty Heart is a memoir by Mariane Pearl, the widow of the slain American journalist Daniel Pearl.

The book has been reviewed by, among others, The Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Spectator and The New York Review of Books.

A Mighty Heart has been made into a movie, A Mighty Heart, with Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl, Dan Futterman as Daniel Pearl, and Archie Panjabi as their friend and colleague Asra Nomani. 

1. Fixtures#create_fixtures deletes data - Whoops! After looking at the source code, create_fixtures effectively drops all the data in the table it is just about to populate. Obviously this isn't very useful if you want to use a migration on any table that isn't empty.
2. Related data - Migrations in Rails 2 have a nifty feature allowing you to create inter-related table rows by using named data items. The methodology outlined in Part 1 doesn't load all the yaml files into the migration and then run them, instead it runs them one at a time meaning (and with no model class) so Rails is unable to resolve the relationships between rows.

[sourcecode language="ruby"]
monkeys:
george:
name: George the Monkey
pirate: reginald
fruits: apple, orange, grape

fruits:
apple:
name: apple

orange:
name: orange

grape:
name: grape
[/sourcecode]

This naming convention follows the ideas behind migration naming convention and doesn't stop you having more than one seed file per migration (obviously of unrelated data) e.g. 006_add_tables_and_chairs.yml

Temporary work around

For the time being (until we extend the yaml parser) we have written a slightly different seed data function for our migration files This allows us to seed a row into the database, read its insertion ID and then reference that row object in subsequent inserts.

Conclusion

We still think that Fixtures provides a pretty good way of introducing structure data into our tables, but just needs a little bit more work before it plays nicely with migrations. We have also found the time to start writing the schema dump/load equivalents for seed data (when creating database from schemas, i.e. in production). These methods are just being finished and tested and we will post them up here in the next couple of days.

Here is the new map I created:

Deuxième solution: obtenir des documents pour expulser les requérants/-es, par tous les moyens. Pour cela, Ruth Metzler avait par exemple essayé d'élaborer un accord de réadmission avec le Sénégal, qui avait été abandonné suite à des manifestations des Sénégalais/-es. Dans un autre registre, une étrange délégation guinéenne qui délivrait très généreusement les laissez-passer pour son pays, moyennant de non moins généreux frais de déplacement et de dossier (le lièvre a été levé en Allemagne, avant d'inquiéter la Suisse).

Dernière solution: convaincre les requérants/-es de partir spontanément. Pour cela, la nouvelle loi sur l'asile suisse prévoit un statut paradoxal: les personnes déboutées se voient interdites de travail et exclues de l'aide sociale, même si elles ne sont pas renvoyables dans leur pays. C'est contre cette situation sans issue, destinée à sortir l'Etat de son impasse, que la Coordination Asile manifeste ce mardi (29/4) devant le Grand Conseil vaudois. A propos: ce genre de pratique a déjà été expérimenté aux Pays-Bas, et n'a pas donné de résultats probants. Est-ce que la Suisse veut vraiment une politique migratoire coordonnée au niveau européen?

The researchers constructed a mitochondrial phylogeny of 624 sub-Saharan individuals. They paid close attention to what's going on with the phylogeny of the Khoisan, because previous research like Knight et al.'s study on another loci, the Y-chromosome has shown that the Khoisan are carriers of oldest-diverging Y haplogroup, the Y-haplogroup A, indicating they may represent the deepest clade of modern humans. Recent research identified that the pygmy Khoisan populations share an ancestral and indigenous lineage of mtDNA with a neighboring population, the Bantu and this new study confirmed this.

The phylogenetic tree in this newer study is really informative. I've included it to the right. The researchers honed in on the mitochondrial haplogroup L, which is one of the oldest mtDNA haplogroups out there. The tree shows that early humans split into two small groups, demarcated by the L0 branch splitting from the L1'5 branch around 140,000 years ago. Based upon these two branches, the researchers were able to identify that one group was concentrated around eastern Africa (the L1'5 branch), while the other, the Khoisan's L0 branch, in southern Africa. The sub-branches within the L1'5 clade represent all of the other L haplotypes in the entire remainder of humanity, including haplogroups of those that left Africa... further suggesting east Africa peoples were the main migrators out of Africa.

How could this happen? As populations of early humans migrated within Africa and reached southern Africa, they were cut off from the eastern African populations for a significant period of isolation to diverge into two separate clades. From ScienceDaily,

"Recent paleoclimatological data suggests that Eastern Africa went through a series of massive droughts between 135,000-90,000 years ago. It is possible that this climatological shift contributed to the population splits."

The press is suggesting that this phenomenon indicated humans "started down the path of evolving into two separate species." But that's not true, they missed the part of the paper where populations came back together as a single, pan-African population about 40,000 years ago

But, something is a little fishy, because as I already indicated, the coalescence calculations in this new paper indicate the Khoisan matrilineal ancestry diverged from the rest of the human mtDNA pool about 140,000 years ago. At that time, the five additional, currently extant maternal lineages (Haplogroups L1'5) existed in Eastern Africa, before the emergence of L0 branch. Looking at the phylogenetic tree, these haplogroups are more ancestral to the haplogroup L0 branch by at around 40,000 years, implying that the Khoisan may not be the deepest clade of living humans alive. This doesn't match the Y-chromosome data, but we know already that mtDNA and Y-chromosome coalescent times aren't the same... but this doesn't match scores of other studies that indicate the Khoisan are a basal group of humans based off of their linguistic and cultural traits.

What this ultimately indicates is that eastern Africa may have truly been the cradle of humanity, at least the maternal cradle of modern humans. Which matches the fossil record, since some of the oldest remains of early human remains are also found in Eastern Africa, such as BOU-VP-16/1 and Omo 1 from Ethiopia.

BEHAR, D., VILLEMS, R., SOODYALL, H., BLUESMITH, J., PEREIRA, L., METSPALU, E., SCOZZARI, R., MAKKAN, H., TZUR, S., COMAS, D. (2008). The Dawn of Human Matrilineal Diversity. The American Journal of Human Genetics DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2008.04.002

KNIGHT, A. (2003). African Y Chromosome and mtDNA Divergence Provides Insight into the History of Click Languages. Current Biology, 13(6), 464-473. DOI: 10.1016/S0960-9822(03)00130-1

Quintana-Murci, L., Quach, H., Harmant, C., Luca, F., Massonnet, B., Patin, E., Sica, L., Mouguiama-Daouda, P., Comas, D., Tzur, S., Balanovsky, O., Kidd, K.K., Kidd, J.R., van der Veen, L., Hombert, J., Gessain, A., Verdu, P., Froment, A., Bahuchet, S., Heyer, E., Dausset, J., Salas, A., Behar, D.M. (2008). Maternal traces of deep common ancestry and asymmetric gene flow between Pygmy hunter-gatherers and Bantu-speaking farmers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(5), 1596-1601. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0711467105

Введение

Миграция, в широком определении, - совокупность любых перемещений людей в пространстве[1]. Миграции – или миграционные потоки – древний и довольно сложный феномен, в основе которого лежит комплекс причин. Эти причины разнородные (экономические, демографические, религиозные, связанные с традициями, и т.д.) и не статичные они изменяются во времени. Следовательно, при изучении миграций и их роли, в какой бы сфере это не было, требуется уделить особое внимание многогранному характеру этого феномена. В научной литературе часто делается упор на экономические аспекты этого феномена, а также на те аспекты, которые касаются безопасности и деятельности Государства. Также, следует четко определить какой вид миграций принимается в качестве объекта анализа. Наш анализ будет сфокусирован на межгосударственных миграциях ввиду значительности их международной роли. Под ролью, мы подразумеваем функцию, которую выполняют миграции и последствия, которые возникают в связи с ними. Итак, принимая экономику, безопасность и деятельность Государства как ось нашего анализа, мы постараемся осветить какова международная роль миграций.

Международная роль миграций в сфере экономики

Миграция – перемещение людей, поэтому роль миграций особенно ощутима относительно проблемы занятости. Схематически, это выглядит следующим образом: из малоразвитых стран, иногда называемых «бедный Юг» массивно[2] эмигрируют в страны, иногда называемые «богатый Север[3]», в поиске лучших экономических условий (свободных земель, доступных ресурсов) или, часто, просто в поиске работы (например, потоки из Мексики в южные штаты США), за счет которой будут жить эмигрант и его семья. Отсюда следует, что роль международной роли миграций двойственна. С одной стороны, миграции, особенно нелегальные, выступают в качестве фактора усиления экономики, предоставляя странам-реципиентам дешевую (потому, что часто нелегальная) - и послушную - рабочую силу, за счет которого экономика создает себе экономическое преимущество (низкая стоимость фактора труда). Южным Штатам США выгодна «негерметичность» строящейся стены между ними и Мексикой, поскольку отсюда течет постоянный поток рабочих, готовых занимать рабочие места, от которых жители этих штатов отказывают. С другой стороны, увеличивается зависимость стран-реципиентов от этой мобильной рабочей силы. На Дальнем Востоке России, местная экономика опасно зависит от китайской рабочей силы и предпринимательства. Помимо этого, миграции играют роль моста для высоко-квалификационных кадров («импорт мозгов»,) благодаря которому страна-реципиент увеличивает научный и инновационный потенциал.

Следовательно, можно утверждать, что миграции играют важную роль в повышении взаимозависимости между странами-донорами и странами-реципиентами.

Миграции и деятельность Государства

Следует различать внешнюю деятельность Государства (внешняя политика) и внутреннюю политику.

Во внешней политике, роль миграций заключается в увеличении поля деятельности Государства. Миграция может служить инструментом экспансионизма через поддержку своих эмигрантов. В прошлом, такая поддержка была частью политики колонизации и осваивания территории (осваивание земли в Америки в ущерб местному населению). Сегодня, пример увеличения численности выходцев из Китая в Восточной Сибири напоминает своего рода экспансионизм, даже если участие властей КНР в этом процессе трудно оценить. По мнению некоторых авторов[4], нельзя интерпретировать такой миграционный процесс как намерение проводить будущую территориальную экспансию. По мнению других[5], конкуренция китайцев, которой российское население не может противостоят, неизбежно приведет к территориальной потере этого региона. Он отойдет КНР.

Не углубляясь в прогнозы, заметим, что миграционные потоки могут служить инструментом укрепления политики Государства. Такого укрепления можно также добиться при поддержкой диаспор, что в некоторых регионах мира, приведет к созданию мощных кварталов (например «чайна-тауны»).

Касательно внутренней политики Государства, поток эмигрантов, легальных или нет, может угрожать национальному единству и привести к росту напряженности между социально-этническими группами. К тому же, проведение политики в этой области дает мало результатов и неудовольствие по отношению к иммигрантам растет во многих европейских странах. Однако, роль миграций может носит и позитивный характер. Некоторые страны находятся в критическом демографическом положения и должны решить проблемы старения населения.

В случае если разработана эффективная политика интеграции иммигрантов, миграции могут обеспечить демографическое развитие страны. Такая роль миграции подчеркивает опять же двойственную природу этого феномена.

Проблемы, связанные с миграциями, в сфере безопасности

Если в двух предыдущих сферах, миграции играли некоторые положительные роли, то в сфере безопасности как на уровне Государства так и в глобальном масштабе, миграция влечет за собой ряд отрицательных последствий. Во-первых, при перемещении людей, особенно если оно неконтролируемое, повышается риск ввоза и распространения инфекций, запрещенных и опасных предметов. Во-вторых существование нелегальных миграционных потоков является источником дохода для ряда сетевых преступных организаций (торговля людьми, проституция, и т.д.). В-третьих, сами иммигранты, легальные или нет, могут представлять угрозу для безопасности страны. Оказалось, что с территории Великобритании именно выходы из Арабских стран активно распространяли радикальную-исламскую идеологию и координировали террористические атаки в США и на территории Европы.

Оказывается, что миграции до сих пор, ввиду отсутствия эффективных мер, как в странах-реципиентах как и так и в странах-донорах остается серьезной угрозой для безопасности Государства как и в мире в целом.

Библиография

Сергей Рязанцев, МИГРАЦИОННЫЕ ТРЕНДЫ И МЕЖДУНАРОДНАЯ БЕЗОПАСНОСТЬ // http://intertrends.ru/three/003.htm

Сергей Рязанцев, лекция, Тема 1 - ВОПРОСЫ ТЕОРИИ И КЛАССИФИКАЦИЯ МИГРАЦИИ

Séminaire CERI - PROJET TRANSVERSAL, MIGRATIONS ET RELATIONS INTERNATIONALES, Etienne BALIBAR и Bertrand BADIE, 22 мая 2006 // http://www.ceri-sciences-po.org/themes/projets/documents/cr_220506.pdf

[1] В.И. Переведенцев, методы изучения миграции населения – М., 1975, цит.

[2] выше, чем 175 млн человека в 2000 г.По данным ООН, приведенные

[3] Сергей Рязанцев, МИГРАЦИОННЫЕ ТРЕНДЫ И МЕЖДУНАРОДНАЯ БЕЗОПАСНОСТЬ // http://intertrends.ru/three/003.htm

[4] Сергей Рязанцев, МИГРАЦИОННЫЕ ТРЕНДЫ И МЕЖДУНАРОДНАЯ БЕЗОПАСНОСТЬ // http://intertrends.ru/three/003.htm

[5] Сергей Рязанцев, МИГРАЦИОННЫЕ ТРЕНДЫ И МЕЖДУНАРОДНАЯ БЕЗОПАСНОСТЬ // http://intertrends.ru/three/003.htm

I found this article over at livescience.com.

From the article:

New model

Waters puts forth a new model for how the first people populated the New World and it more than rules out the Clovis people as trend-setting firsts.

“What we now need to do is recognize the fact that Clovis is not first, and move on and start developing a new model for the peopling of the Americas,” Waters told LiveScience.

“We need to, once and for all, stop thinking of the peopling of the Americas as a single event,” he added, “and instead I think we need to start thinking of the peopling of the Americas as a process with people arriving at different times, taking different routes and coming from different places in northeast Asia.”

From the second link:

"ST. LOUIS—Ancient humans from Asia may have entered the Americas following an ocean highway made of dense kelp.

The new finding lends strength to the "coastal migration theory," whereby early maritime populations boated from one island to another, hunting the bountiful amounts of sea creatures that live in kelp forests."

And here is one more:

The first Americans may have been European.

"ST. LOUIS—The first humans to spread across North America may have been seal hunters from France and Spain.

This runs counter to the long-held belief that the first human entry into the Americas was a crossing of a land-ice bridge that spanned the Bering Strait about 13,500 years ago."

So, as you can see, scientists, after almost 100 years, are slowly changing their theory that the first Americans came by the Bering Strait. Now, if these very primitive ancestors could travel and migrate like this what would stop other cultures from doing the same thing after a couple of thousand years of developing boats, ships, and navigation?

I have proposed on this blog that the Nephites and Lamanites migrated into North America over time and in various sizes of groups. Hagoth built ships and that there were shipping between North and Central America. I have shown that Hagoth brought many groups of Nephites into western United States. In the first books of the Mentinah Archives they talk about many migrations of people going to all parts of North America. These groups could have encountered the descendants of these early peoples and integrated with them, creating the Asian features found in Native Americans. This goes for the Jaredites, as well, when they first came to America about a thousand years before Lehi. These two groups brought advance technology and new customs to these early peoples creating a whole new culture. There are also evidence of other groups coming into the Americas, adding to the mix. The Asian features and customs may be dominate but why is there so many different kinds of artifacts from different parts of the world? This would suggest other groups came here by boat or that there were overseas trading.

This is from the History of Louisiana from 1718-1758 (main website):

"In fact, where is the impossibility, that some prince in one of those countries, upon failing in an attempt to raise himself to the sovereign power, should leave his native country with all his partizans, and look for some new land, where, after he had established himself, he might drop all foreign correspondence? The easy navigation of the South Sea renders the thing probable; and the new map of the eastern bounds of Asia, and the western part of North America, lately published by Mr. De Lisle, makes it still more likely. This map makes it plainly appear, that between the islands of Japan, or northern coasts of China, and those of America, there are other lands, which to this day have [83] remained unknown; and who will take it upon him to say there is not land, because it has never yet been discovered? I have therefore good grounds to believe, that the Mexicans, came originally from China or Japan, especially when I consider their reserved and uncommunicative disposition, which to this day prevails among the people of the eastern parts of Asia.

I well know that those who know antiquity only from the pagan authors, and who are in the habit of searching there for the origins of all things, will find it incomprehensible that the Chinese and Japanese were able to pass into America long before the Phoenicians (who are regarded as the first seafarers of the world), and were then called "Ancients of the Country" by the descendants of these first Phoenician colonists. But I implore them to consider that these same profane letters which appear to us as extremely remote, are in some sense modern by comparison to the sacred letters. The great establishments of the Phoenicians are placed by the best informed chronologists around the time of the [84] flight of the Israelites from Egypt, and it was without a doubt a long time after this, that they dared to risk themselves on the ocean, and founded Cadiz. But since Diodorus Siculus implicates the Carthaginians in the discovery of America, one can only suppose that this happened long after the enlargement of Carthage by Dido, and since this republic was jealous of the Tuscans, navigation having lately flourished in Italy, it seems fitting to the honor of these ancient mariners, to fix the time of their first voyages to the New World one hundred years before the first Punic War. And this war began 264 years before Jesus Christ, some five hundred years after the retreat of Dido to Carthage, and twelve or thirteen hundred years after the flight from Egypt."

There are recorded stories of a group of Jews that landed in Mexico and created the city, Tula and became the Toltecs. These Jews, from what I have read, fled from Moses while they were wandering in the desert.

And this from the History of Alabama:

"In 1822, Big Warrior, who then ruled the Creek confederacy, confirmed this tradition, even going further back than Milfort, taking the Muscogees from Asia, bringing them over the Pacific, landing them near the Isthmus of Darien, and conducting them from thence to this country. "My ancestors were a mighty people. After they reached the waters of the Alabama and took possession of all this country, they went further -- conquered the tribes along the Chattahoochie, and upon all the rivers from thence to the Savannah -- yes, and even whipped the Indians then living in the territory of South Carolina, and wrestled much of their country from them."

And there is also a reference in the Mentinah Archives about people coming from the lands across the great waters to the west. It will take me a while to find but when I do I will add it here.

What I am wondering is why has it taken so long for scientists and historians to relearn and rediscover our history? Because of lack of evidence or arrogance? It would seem to me that the Native Americans would know more about our past than we do. It is in their stories and legends. And everybody laughed at Joseph Smith for presenting the very same ideas and translated a book that no one will take seriously because they can't see it with their own eyes. This goes for the Mentinah Archives, as well. These archives have a lot of history that can be shown in ancient texts and research. I have to say that researchers into the Book of Mormon history better rethink their theories about how North America was settled or else they will fall into the same category as the scientists and historians. My theory is becoming more and more real in light of all this research. The point of this post was to show that there are alternative theories to the Book of Mormon history and that the idea that the Nephites and other groups migrated over time into the United States, as I have shown from the Book of Mormon and other sources, is largely ignored by LDS scholars. So far, I have not found any references to this idea, at least on the Internet. I hope someone will at least consider what I have presented on this blog and take up more research into this area and give me some credit for it.

After bumping our heads together, we came up with a way of managing seed data using the same philosophy as data structure migrations. The only prerequisite to your data structure is to add a column named "came_from_migration" to any table that is going to contain seeded data. This way when moving down migrations it is possible to determine what data that shouldn't be there (and delete it).

1. Add a "fixtures" folder to /db/migrate. Your seed data yaml files will be saved here.
2. Create your seed data yaml file and name it in a similar fashion to your migration script using the table name as the descriptor e.g. 005_table_name_to_seed.yml. Save this in the folder you created above. This means that you can seed several tables as part of one migration version and it's nice and easy to see what's going on from just the file name.
3. Now I needed to write a couple of helper methods to move to and from the seed data. I've placed these in a MigrationsHelper module which is included in any migration that needs to seed data. And because we are so nice, here they are:

[sourcecode language='ruby']
def seed_from_yaml(table_name)
info = get_migration_file_info(caller[0])
fixture_folder = RAILS_ROOT + "/db/migrate/#{info[:type]}_fixtures"
fixture_file = "#{info[:version]}_#{table_name}"
puts "Seeding #{table_name} from #{info[:type]} fixture version #{info[:version]}"

require 'active_record/fixtures'
connection = ActiveRecord::Base.connection
seed_data = Fixtures.new(connection, table_name.to_s, nil, File.join(fixture_folder, fixture_file))
seed_data.insert_fixtures
end

def deseed(table_name)
info = get_migration_file_info(caller[0])
puts "Deseeding #{table_name} with anything newer than #{info[:version]}"

execute %{DELETE FROM #{quote_table_name(table_name)} WHERE #{quote_column_name('came_from_migration')}=#{info[:version].to_i}}
end

private
def get_migration_file_info(file)
file.gsub!(/:.*/, '') # get rid of everything after the colon
migration = file.split '/'
db_type = migration.include?("global") ? "global" : "private"
migration_file = migration[migration.length-1].split '_'
migration_number = migration_file[0]
{ :type => db_type, :version => migration_number, :file => migration_file }
end
[/sourcecode]

Seeding data when not using migrations

What about when running tests or deploying, i.e. seeding data when not using migrations and coming from a empty database? Well, the schema should be held for you in your _schema.rb file, but that doesn't cover any seed data. The answer is to create a *_seed.yml containing all the data in the database (in the same way the *_schema.rb file contains the complete data structure schema of the database). This way you can load in the seed data after the tables have been created. We have yet to write this method, so is left as an exercise for the reader at present. The basic premise is to go through every table in the schema, check for the existence of the "came_from_migration" column, do a "select * from table where came_from_migration is not null" on tables with that column and then concatenate the output from the select statements to a *_seed.yml and save in /db. There may also be problems with referential integrity with seed data and to what order it is inserted into the database. No doubt we will come across these difficulties soon.

Bibliography

• http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/FlexibleFixtures
• http://railspikes.com/2008/2/1/loading-seed-data
• http://quotedprintable.com/2007/11/16/seed-data-in-rails

• :string
• :text
• :integer
• :float
• :decimal
• :datetime
• :timestamp
• :time
• :date
• :binary
• :boolean

A default value can be specified by passing an options hash like { :default => 11 }. Other options include :limit and :null e.g. { :limit => 50, :null => false }

Son dernier livre, Le Cheveu de Vénus, est paru en français en automne dernier. Chichkine ne s'y positionne plus comme successeur d'une foule russe hétéroclite, mais comme médiateur pour les nouveaux arrivants : le narrateur est interprète auprès de requérants d'asile. Il représente fort bien le climat des auditions d'asile, cette première étape de la procédure, où le requérant doit expliquer ses motifs d'asile, et d'où l'administration tire souvent les arguments pour le refuser.

Question: Vous comprenez l'interprète?

Réponse: Oui.

Question: Votre nom de famille?

Réponse: ***

Question: Prénom?

Réponse: ***

Question: Quel âge avez-vous?

Réponse: Seize ans.

Question: Vous avez un passeport ou une autre pièce d'identité?

Réponse: Non

Question: Vous devez avoir un extrait de naissance. Où est-il?

Réponse: Il a brûlé. Tout a brûlé. On a mis le feu à notre maison.

Question: Comment s'appelle votre père?

Le narrateur poursuit dans cette machinerie administrative, que l'on imagine pesante; on le sent incapable de se positionner en faveur des requérants ni d'adhérer à la logique de la procédure d'asile. Il s'échappe dans des rêveries, dans des dialogues imaginaires et des pays lointains...

Quant à moi, j'ai été retenu par ces dialogues qui, reprenant le formalisme des auditions d'asile, en expriment l'absurde. Des dialogues à sens unique, où l'un est censé questionner et l'autre répondre (Question:Votre confession? Réponse: Comment? Question: Votre religion? Réponse: Croyant. Question: Orthodoxe? Réponse: Oui. Je n'avais pas compris la question). Des dialogues où les questions ne s'attachent pas à ce qu'a dit le requérant, mais à l'ordre imposé par le questionnaire (Question: Vous devez avoir un extrait de naissance. Où est-il? Réponse: Il a brûlé. Tout a brûlé. On a mis le feu à notre maison. Question: Comment s'appelle votre père?). Des dialogues où ce que dit le requérant est implicitement mis en doute, les conditions de vie occultées (Question: Exposez brièvement les raisons pour lesquelles vous demandez l'asile en Suisse. Réponse: J'étais dans un orphelinat depuis l'âge de dix ans. J'ai été violé par le directeur. J'ai fugué. A l'arrêt des cars, j'ai fait connaissance avec des chauffeurs qui conduisent des camions à l'étranger. Et il y en a un qui m'a fait passer la frontière. Question: Pourquoi n'avez-vous pas porté plainte à la police? Réponse: Ils m'auraient tué. Question: Qui "ils"? Réponse: Mais ils sont tous de mèche là-bas. Notre directeur me faisait monter dans sa voiture avec un autre gars et deux filles et il nous emmenait dans une datcha. Pas la sienne, chez quelqu'un d'autre, je ne sais pas qui. Ils étaient tous là, les supérieurs et le chef de la milice aussi. [...]Question: Vous avez indiqué toutes les raisons pour lesquelles vous demandez l'asile?).

J'ai assisté à quelques auditions d'asile, et j'ai senti ce climat oscillant le plus souvent entre l'indifférence et l'hostilité envers le requérant. J'ai gardé l'impression d'une mise en scène du droit du requérant à demander l'asile, qui répondait en fait plutôt aux impératifs pour que la Suisse puisse notifier un refus valable. J'avais le sentiment d'un simulacre un peu absurde, sans pouvoir le justifier.

Le livre de Chichkine me ramène à ce sentiment, avec quelques occasions de l'analyser et de l'étayer... C'est, je crois, une performance de cet interprète-médiateur, qui amène un peu d'étranger en Suisse, et donne à ce pays un air d'étrangeté.

Et le reste du livre que s'y passe-t-il? Et les autres livres de Chichkine? Je ne vous en parlerai pas, parce que je n'en sais rien. Vous voulez que je vous fasse une revue littéraire? Et quand est-ce que j'écrirai les autres articles du blog?