The
Secret of the Bay Area Walls
I'm
going to use my actual own quotes from my recent rant on Jason Calavito's blog
site, a published blogger and skeptic I have gone to for free and wrote on his
blog wall as Kal. It is easier that way since for the walls it's kind of long.
I do not know this person at all, although some of the bloggers seem to be
misinformed as to my motives, since I find trolls often and mention PT Barnum a
lot, but really I have not met him.
From
Marco Polo Discovers America, an America Unearthed episode review.
Kal
12/21/2014
12:23am
Oh, had I known SW was not 4 miles from my
current location messing with Ed Levin Park I would have had to go and pester
his film crew! But it looks like he was pretending he was there, because that
park is on county land above Milpitas and Fremont, not in San Jose, which is
the other side of the valley, (and the greener foothills) and 40 miles from San
Francisco.
On the Mt. Diablo and Mt. Hamilton side you get the dry hills. (San
Jose is actually larger than San Francisco, but we call it 'the city' anyway).
The Ed Levin park people know who built the rock walls behind the park.
Settlers. As for the ones in Berkeley, probably other settlers. Milpitas has
over 74,000 people. San Jose has over half a million. The whole county has a
million.
The walls were not there before the
Spanish. The early settlers included Portuguese and Spanish ranchers. Since
they were in an arid place with little trees they used stone to mark the edge
of their territories. The valley and the opposite side, Santa Cruz and all, had
a lot more trees being closer to the ocean. They didn't need rock walls. So at
least at the county park they're just settlers' walls. They're not that old.
It's also possible Ohlone helped to mark the walls but settlers were more
common.
The walls likely were erected between the 1700s and the 1900s. They
are...colonial. Sorry SW. Wrong again. California under the Spanish was settled
even before it was an official state, and was a territory of Spain and Mexico.
SW doesn't recall that. The city names and trails that lead to San Francisco
were all part of a massive mission trail going all the way to the city and up
north a bit.
Kal
12/21/2014
12:28am
Actually there are some walls in the Santa
Cruz hills too and some on the other side of San Jose, so technically if he
went to Alum Rock first it would have looked a little like the Ed Levin region.
I suppose he thinks Alum Rock refers to some kind of mythical group called the
Alum. Lol. It's named after a special rock, but not the KRS. Maybe SW should
have went in search of the rock. It's interesting looking up close, but hardly
left by giants or aliens.
Kal
12/21/2014
2:11am
The clear genetic evidence of Asian
looking Native Americans from several instances of either island hopping
through the Pacific, or polar ice and land bridge hopping from Siberia, at the
end of the ice age, point to there being Asians in America long before Columbus.
Whether or not they sailed in stone age times or after is not well documented.
Also there would be a reason for there not to be records in China of later
voyages, before the settlers in colonial times, that most of the voyages to
America before it was called that would have bee one way. They never went back.
They kept going. They settled here (and in South and Central America). It
wasn't until colonial times that ships were built well enough to come and go if
they wishes.
It's not like the Scandinavians though as
the colonial ones that settled Minnesota and the like were much later. Those
colonials wanted to feel at home and carved stones.
Yep, the rock walls of California are
colonial. Sure there are also native walls too. Those are older. Alum Rock Park
even has some interesting pre-colonial things, which SW apparently ignored,
because it doesn't prove his shoddy points.
Kal
12/21/2014
3:50pm
SW has done this before when he has found
mounds and old grain mills and said it must have been someone other than
natives. He's making it up.
In the case of the walls, they are
documented. The Spanish settlers and the locals built them as part of the
rancheros and missions. Everyone here knows that. It's not even legend or
folklore. The evidence that SW seems to completely ignore the Spaniards in
favor of in Italian is hilariously silly. After this one nobody should take
them seriously. The place is called California, a Spanish word! Most of this
stuff is colonial. The natives also piled rocks. One of the tribwes is called
the Ohlone, so they could have asked their tribal club. It does exist to this
day. Then that would require actual research, which they don't want, so they go
for the most obscure idea ever.
I still like the one way trip theory for
the Chinese pre colonial groups. Even though ancient China after the dark ages
(only in Europe) were more advanced, their boats were barely strong enough to
make the journey, and it's a larger ocean. Island hopping occurred to them as
it did the other unrelated groups. They kept no records we know of because
those voyages were lost. They never returned. Once colonials started coming and
going centuries later, they kept records. Did the Columbus people even have
translations for Chinese characters?
Only for trade. They knew about the Orient
and were looking for it. Chinese is a picture writing language. A symbol means
something instead of a letter. You see the character for ship and for water and
can interpret that differently if you know the context.
The Chinese and India did trade with
Europe during the colonial times and they did know of each other. Just because
SW didn't find any evidence doesn't mean it wasn't there. He likely doesn't
even speak Chinese.
The show AU mixes colonial times with
ancient times frequently based on bad evidence, hoaxes, and made up stories.
Attempts to ask the right questions of actual knowledgeable people are few and
far between.
The genetic facts prove that the Native
Americans were here thousands of years before the colonial Europeans ever were
there. But since then they are so intermingled they're finding mixed groups
with combined cultures.
Marco Polo did not come here. The Spanish did in colonial times, and
they added rock walls, state, city and street names, and even a road that runs
through San Jose called the King's Highway, (El Camino Real), implicating they
wanted the king of Spain to come and visit the ranchers. (Update. No, they meant God).
Alum Rock marks the site of a colonial
quarry near the site of a pre colonial settlement.
Ed Levin lake is man made from the 1950s
or so. The park was on this old ranch land. They had peach orchards. Some of
the orchard is still off Piedmont Road, named for many other Piedmont roads,
including one in Duluth, Minnesota. I suppose SW will think that thus vikings
settled California! Nope. Piedmont is Latin for foothill, and we use the
English word 'foothill' to describe the low rolling hills the road is on.
By Colonial times the Chinese could come
and easy did come to the Americas. Most of the current Chinese settlements are
colonial, as they were laborers and ranch hands. The settling of San Francisco
Bay is well known. The colonials also made it up to Seattle but not Marco Polo
or that alleged admiral.
Milpitas is a combination of Spanish and
local dialects and means either land of a thousand gardens, or land of a
thousand cornfields.
Since it's also Silicon Valley and we're
all extremely OCD about detail, we know quite well about the old history of the
place.
Kal
12/22/2014
2:16pm
SW should not be hitting rocks with a
hammer on a county park land on TV. No wonder they keep kicking him out. His
forgetting entirely the Spanish heritage of the valley, or ignoring it, is
extremely messed up, not scientific, and utterly baffling. Forensic geology.
Bah! The Ohlone and the Mexicans are probably laughing about this episode.
Alum was allegedly a precious element the
later Gold Rush settlers thought was on Alum Rock and so they built a resort
there, not just a quarry, where they had bath houses through natural springs,
and a brothel. Some of the natural springs still remain even after the water
table fell in more modern times. The remnant of the warm springs and mission
trails run through the valley to other settlements.
The area is rich with relatively modern
history, after the Mexican history, but SW ignores both in favor of tapping on
300 year old stones. Actually they're from about the 1600s so that's a little
off. Some of those stone markers are still land boundaries, (the never ones by
Caucasian settlers), had he looked in the freaking county records, which he
didn't.
I would recommend Ed Levin and Alum Rock parks not let him back in. Good day. (I'm not actually going to call them, as I'm sure they've seen this mess already, but it was fun to watch).
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