1,329 days until trump’s term is over? This is a godsend! Thank you, Elon. Sloppy Seconds is going to help ‘God’ bless America! 😉
True or False?
“All of us have tailbones missing a tail.
Christians are teaching children with a lie.”
“The lie is why Christians believe in hell.
‘Jesus’ has become a beam in ‘our’ eye.”
(The lie makes Jesus a beam in our eye.)
“What makes the gospel a beam in our eye?
Fiction can make children believe they’re free.”
“Neighbors can go to heaven if they lie.
Which lie begins with a forbidden tree?”
Dear friends,
Scientists have recently uncovered new evidence of pre-Columbian exchanges between Asia and the Americas. Not only did early humans migrate from Northeast Asia all the way to the southern tip of the Americas, but even horses seem to have journeyed between the two continents in ancient times.
This discovery once again brought me back to my visit to Chichen Itza, a monumental site of the Maya civilisation in Mexico. As I wandered among the weathered ruins, I experienced a haunting sense of deja vu. The stone carvings of serpent gods and faintly recognisable spiral patterns felt strangely familiar – like echoes of a distant memory. It reminded me of the inexplicable kinship I felt while exploring the ruins of China’s Shang and Zhou dynasties along the Yellow River, the jade relics of Liangzhu near the Yangtze, or the enigmatic bronze masks of Sanxingdui in Sichuan.
Yet, a voice in my mind urged caution. The Pacific Ocean is vast, I told myself. Could these similarities simply be coincidences?
But science keeps offering clues. DNA studies repeatedly confirm blood ties between ancient Asian and Native American populations. Could these genetic threads explain my intuitive sense of connection?
The late archaeologist Kwang-chih Chang proposed a bold theory in the 1980s. After studying cultural parallels between China and the Americas – sacred symbols, ritual practices and mythologies – he suggested a shared ancestry. Perhaps both civilisations stemmed from an ancient Pan-Pacific culture, now lost to time.
What strikes me most is the shared reverence for jade. In China, wars were fought over this luminous stone. Historical records tell how, in 283BC, the Qin king offered 15 cities in exchange for the legendary He Shi Bi jade disk. Its value lay not just in beauty but in its strength. Crafting a single jade artifact required generations of meticulous labour – father passing the task to son, then to grandson, with no room for error.
Jade also held the same sacred status in ancient Mesoamerica. Olmec and Maya artisans carved breathtaking jade masks and figurines, some even surpassing Chinese craftsmanship in complexity. Both cultures produced jade in staggering quantities, using shockingly similar techniques. Scholars debate endlessly: are these parallels proof of ancient contact, or mere coincidence – human ingenuity solving shared challenges in parallel? But how, then, do we explain nearly identical symbols etched onto jade blades and ceremonial objects on both sides of the Pacific?
If this Pan-Pacific civilisation existed, its remnants may now lie beneath the ocean. Recent discoveries of ancient human fossils in Taiwan’s seabed sediments hint at submerged chapters of our history. Some truths may forever elude us, but one thing is certain: as science advances, the distance between China and the Americas won’t grow wider – they will only draw closer.
Cheers,
Stephen Chen
Imagine Women Freed 