White Nationalist Cognitive Dissonance, Part 5: Opposing Views

White Nationalist Cognitive Dissonance, Part 5: Opposing Views

As we explained at length long ago, in a series of podcasts titled The Jews in Medieval Europe, Jewry had been able to greatly influence the course of the development of what is now called “science” through the dissemination of the Kabbalah, which was distributed widely among medieval alchemists and other scholars. This process led to the dawn of Freemasonry, and the science academies of Western Europe were founded out of its lodges. Today, the international banks and corporations steer “science” in the direction which is most accommodating to their own agendas, and it is they and the governments which they also influence that provide the funding for most of what is “science”. So with the mass media freely and widely promoting the findings of this “science”, modern scientists have become the new high priests of a one-world religion as they are able to formulate what it is that people think about themselves and the world. This we also discussed at length in part 32 of our Protocols of Satan series, titled The Appointed Priesthood. Now we shall address a notable aspect of the cognitive dissonance of many White Nationalists, because while they purport to despise and even to expose Jewish power and influence, yet they embrace all of the claims of so-called “science” concerning the past as if they are gospel truth. It just so happens that David Duke is the most well-known of these supposed nationalists.

So here I want to address some claims which have been made by David Duke, which I have heard him make repeatedly as long as I have been familiar with him, which is mostly the last ten or twelve years. But since I never read his books, and have only listened to small portions of a couple of his many podcasts, I really only know him from things which he has said in person, which I and many others of our friends have heard from his own mouth. But before I address these things, there is some foundation which must be laid, beginning with a brief discussion of our primary differences. Basically, David Duke’s view of the world is evolutionary, and no different than that of mainstream so-called science, at least until it reaches the point of differences between the various races of what they consider to be man. In the earlier portions of this series on White Nationalist Cognitive Dissonance, we have already offered many criticisms of evolution theory, so we shall not repeat them here, although here we hope to take some of them a step further.

To the contrary, our view of the world is that of the Bible, wherein a Divine Creator is responsible for the natural world, and He created it according to His Own design. But even according to His Word, our Creator did not create everything which we see in our world today, since much of it has actually come from the sins of men, even men who are sometimes referred to as angels. For that reason Christ had said “Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” While man was created for a particular purpose, on account of sin he has fallen from that purpose, and the Creator shall restore him once he learns of the consequences for his sin. This is the essence of all the promises of Christianity. For that same reason, Adolf Hitler had written in Volume 1, Chapter 8 of Mein Kampf that “What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfil the mission assigned to it by the Creator.” It must have been from this very passage that another David, the pagan David Lane, had plagiarized and condensed his so-called “fourteen words”, which wrongly removed any references to the Creator.

So in David Duke’s view of the world, man has evolved, but the White man and other races have evolved differently, and evidently, for that reason they should remain distinct. Of course, that is not all that David believes, but it is a fair enough summary and it should suffice for our purposes here. David then uses this evolutionary view of the world to discredit our Christian faith, while insisting that we have embraced something Jewish and thereby giving Jews all the more power and credibility in the eyes of Christians, or even worse, dissuading them away from Christ because Jews themselves are evil. However in our view of the world, the White man was created by God for a specific purpose, which the Scriptures explain, and the other races, who are not of the Adam of the Bible, are the remnants of a world which was formerly corrupted, in the rebellion of the fallen angels. I cannot possibly quantify that statement here, but we have already quantified it with many citations from Scripture and antiquity in many other papers and podcasts which have been presented at Christogenea. But once it is understood, it becomes fully evident that Christ is the incarnate God of the White man, and His faith is for no others.

Once we understand these fundamental differences in our primary beliefs, we can honestly say that while the view of human life which David Duke espouses is evolutionary, ours is devolutionary, because rather than having evolved out of some primordial ooze, as modern science describes it, we believe that both the Pre-Adamic world, and now the Adamic world, have devolved from what God had created, and we see that as the entire over-arching lesson of Scripture. The very concept of the primordial ooze was actually a belief of ancient Mesopotamian paganism, which described a world created in Chaos, in contrast to the world of the orderly Creation of God which is explained in Christianity. So where we see ancient monuments which are believed to be of great antiquity, we are confident that there were races here before our own that they had very likely created those monuments. But the races which inhabit some areas of the earth today where those monuments are found are not necessarily the creators of those things, as they have never created anything else which is worthy of note throughout our entire historical period.

However, to truly understand the innate abilities of the non-White races, we can really only do so through the lens of those Europeans who first encountered and described them in the Colonial period of the late Middle Ages. So as they were found by early European explorers, all of the other races were, for the most part, existing only in a very primitive state. Their inability to exceed that primitive state without intervention in turn reflects the fact that the arts, crafts and society in which they were found does not necessarily reflect a state to which they had evolved, but rather, it reveals the state to which they had devolved. The ancient monuments demonstrate that at one point the areas in which they exist contained a more cultured society which for some reason the current inhabitants have been unable to maintain or advance. Precolonial Egypt and Iran are the most significant examples, however we have a history of their devolution and its causes. Others may be found in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Mesoamerica and the Far East. Everything which the peoples dwelling in those places currently have attained over the past few hundred years has come to them through their acquaintance with the White man. So where the White man has found them to be amenable, today they wear his clothes, they eat his food, they have use of his technology and they even manufacture his goods.

Then, in contrast, to understand the ability of White men, while modern science sees the race as having progressed from the state of cave men to what we now see as modern society in the so-called Post-Industrial Age, which itself is a deceptive term, that is certainly not true. In the ancient White world, everywhere that cooperation and periods of relative peace have endured, the White man had made great progress in technology and the arts. Ancient calculating machines have been found on the sea floor of the Mediterranean. An example is the so-called Antikythera mechanism, which was discovered in a shipwreck off the coast of a Greek island and believed to date to as early as 205 BC. This machine was constructed with 37 gears and was evidently used to predict the movement of heavenly bodies in order to calculate eclipses and other astronomical movements. Knowledge of these movements were important to shipping at the time, which is evident in ancient literature. Diodorus Siculus recorded the many inventions of Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse on Sicily in the 3rd century BC. Among them were lenses, or perhaps concave mirrors, which could magnify the rays of the sun sufficiently enough to set fire to enemy ships in the harbor. That is a description of a modern laser. The first steam engine was described by Heron of Alexandria in the 1st century AD. The Egyptians had mass-produced chariots and weapons, the Phoenicians glass and armaments, the Greeks and Phoenicians ships, the Phoenicians, Romans and Greeks housewares and apparel, vessels for liquids, armaments of iron and other materials, food, oils and wines, all with striking regularity and quality which often meets or exceeds what was produced in 19th-century European factories.

The world of 18th century England was not much different in technical advancement from that of 1st century Rome, until the full harnessing of coal, fuel oils and finally electricity has now made possible our many modern conveniences. But the first power station which could provide electricity to common homes was not put into use until 1882 in New York City. Then, from the website for the Science Museum in England, we read in part: “By the 1930s new homes in urban areas of Britain were being lit by electricity. It took time for the National Grid to roll out electricity to most of the country, but the number of homes wired up increased from 6% in 1919 to two thirds by the end of the 1930s.” So not even a hundred years ago, a third of Britain still had no common use of electricity, and a hundred and twenty years ago, no one in Britain had any use of electricity. With our luxury of modern conveniences, we have lost any concept of the relative hardship in which our ancestors had lived up until recent decades.

In spite of this innate ability to invent and produce, David Duke asserts that White men had inhabited Northern Europe continually and for the past 30,000 years with no such achievements. He asserts that modern northern Europeans have descended from ancestors which had always inhabited northern Europe throughout that entire period. Yet in northern Europe, where technological advances are much more necessary in order to sustain life than it is on the much warmer Mediterranean shores, no evidence of any such advances has ever been found. In other words, for at least ninety percent of Duke’s 30,000 years, the White man must have lived a life which was no better than that of Eskimos, and even of that there is relatively little or no trace of his existence.

We often hear terms such as Stone Age, Bronze Age or Iron Age, but these can be misleading when they are heard outside of the context of the archaeology of a particular region, because they represent different periods of time in different regions. So, for example, the so-called Iron Age in the Levant, which is roughly the land area of ancient Israel and Syria, is generally said to have begun around 1200 BC, as the archaeologists of that region use the term. But in Denmark, the Iron Age is said to have begun around 200 BC, a thousand years later, as archaeologists generally use that term in reference to northern Europe. Furthermore, these ages are not to be confused with geological ages, such as Holocene or Pleistocene. The geological ages overlap the developmental ages, and describe conditions of the earth from a different point of view, that of a geologist rather than an anthropologist. So, for example, it is said that the beginning of the geological Holocene age roughly corresponds to the beginning of the so-called Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age, in most of Europe. But sometimes even the same sources project different opinions.

Then, even within the context of the Levant, the terms Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age are not as historically relevant as archaeologists may imagine them to be. For example, although the Iron Age is not said to have begun until 1200 BC, the use of iron is mentioned in the writings of Moses in an antediluvian context (of times before the flood of Noah), in books which are demonstrably written before 1400 BC. Then, although iron was known to the Israelites of the Exodus, and while it was in use in Canaan, as late as 900 BC they were still using armor made of brass, as the King James Version translated a word that may also mean bronze. This is evident in David’s time in 1 Samuel chapter 17 and even later in the time of Rehoboam, in 2 Chronicles chapter 12. This is also consistent with Homer’s Iliad (cf. Book 11), where armies on both sides of the Trojan War were described as having been equipped with armor and weapons made of bronze. According to Classical Greek histories, the Trojan War may be roughly dated to the early 12th century BC.

If iron were common for either David or Rehoboam, if it was truly already the Iron Age, they certainly would have used weapons and armor of iron, which were much stronger than bronze. In the Iliad, in Book 11, there is an account of a soldier named Iphidamas who confronted Agamemnon and shot at him with a spear tipped with bronze, and he failed because the tip bent when it hit Agamemnon, who was protected by an armored girdle made of silver. So Homer wrote that “the spear-point struck the silver, and was bent like lead”, as he proceeded to describe Agamemnon’s subsequent victory in the battle. While the Trojan War took place around the beginning of the time that archaeologists label as the Iron Age, even three hundred years later it was not yet the Iron Age for all of the people of the region, or else the Israelites would have had weapons and armor of iron or steel, rather than of brass or bronze.

In fact, according to the historical records of Scripture, and the way in which archaeologists themselves describe the Iron Age, for David and Rehoboam, which is approximately 1000 to 900 BC, it was still the Bronze Age. In a 2011 book titled European Prehistory: A Survey, by Sarunas Milisauskas, who is currently a research professor and professor emeritus in the department of anthropology at the University of Buffalo, is cited as having explained that “The ‘Iron Age’ begins locally when the production of iron or steel has advanced to the point where iron tools and weapons replace their bronze equivalents in common use.” Evidently from the records of Scripture, three hundred years later that was still not the case for the Israelites, who were still using bronze. So the terms are basically subjective, and in the way in which they are employed they are not always historically meaningful.

The so-called Stone Age, which is said to precede the Bronze Age, is itself often divided into three theoretical periods, named after words derived from Greek as the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic, meaning old, middle and new stone. The generally egalitarian archaeologists like to imagine that all races and nations naturally progress through these three ages, stone, bronze and iron, until they achieve something resembling modern society. This is an evolutionary view that presents a history which is not necessarily true. In fact, we would assert that it is certainly not true.

For example, there are hundreds of examples of so-called “rock art” in Finland and elsewhere in Scandinavia, which are said to date from a very early period, perhaps even over ten thousand years ago. But even if that is the case, all of the examples of this so-called art are in a naturally-occurring pigment known as red ochre, and the crude drawings represent only stick-figure humans, simple representations of animals such as those which are drawn by preschool children, and other figures, many of which have generally been interpreted as boats, although alternative interpretations of at least some of them are possible. Similar art is found in Norway and in Sweden.

In Sweden, some of the red ochre images which were both carved and then painted look more decisively like boats, and the human stick figures accompanying them sometimes have heads which look like those of birds, reminiscent of some of the gods of ancient Egypt. More complex and ornate examples of engravings in the Scandinavian rocks picture ships and swords. These are generally dated to the early Bronze Age, perhaps as early as 1600 BC, and therefore they may have been made well within the periods of Egyptian and Phoenician exploration and expansion. Some of the more notable examples were found at Tanum in Sweden, south of Oslo and very close to the coast of the North Sea. Similar carvings have been found elsewhere in Sweden, such as at Litsleby and Simris, and those sites are also quite close to the sea.

But we would assert that the dates of the red ochre drawings are only assumptions, as red ochre is made from clay and there is no reliable technique by which it may be dated. While we would not be bothered if they were ten thousand years old, the characteristics of the art drawings claimed to be from earlier times are not much different than that which is found in the carvings which are attributed to the Bronze Age, and neither is that date absolutely certain. We would assert that the carvings are dated to the Bronze Age only because of the technology which is required to have made them. Then, because of the similarity in the style of art, we would assert that all of the red ochre drawings, those which were carved and those which were not, must have been made within the same general period.

But actual human remains are far more important in determining the nature and characteristics of inhabitants in a given area. The oldest purportedly modern human remains found in Scandinavia that are not classified as either Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon are from the Håga mound or King Björn's Mound near Uppsala, the King's Grave in Scania, the three Borum Eshøj mummies found in Denmark, two of which wore kilts like the Tarim Basin and other mummies found in Aisa, the Borremose bog bodies and the The Egtved Girl. All of these are all generally dated to the 14th century BC. Of the many other bog bodies which have been discovered in Scandinavia, most of them are much younger than these.

However there are a couple of exceptions, but the exceptions are in the dating and not necessarily in the reality. The so-called Koelbjerg man, formerly known as the Koelbjerg woman, the gender apparently having been corrected after a DNA test in 2016, is claimed to date to 8000 BC. Only a skull and a few of the bones were recovered from a peat bog. The 8000 BC date was arrived at in a 1941 pollen analysis, and it is said to have been supported by a 1983 carbon-14 test. After this there is the Stoneyisland Man, found in Ireland in a bog in 1929. These remains are also not a complete skeleton, and they have been carbon-14 dated to about 3300 BC. The next-oldest bog body which has been discovered is the so-called Cashel Man, which was also found in Ireland and which has been dated to about 2000 BC. This is the oldest body found with skin intact, but the peat bog changes the nature of the skin, causing it to turn brown. In the article describing Cashel Man at the Live Science website we read in part: “The cool, waterlogged conditions of Northern European bogs (a type of wetland) create low-oxygen, highly acidic environments ideal for body preservation. As a result, hundreds of ‘bog bodies’ dating back thousands of years have been uncovered in the region, but many have shriveled down to mostly skeletons and tend to be closer to 2,000 years old.”

We do not necessarily trust carbon-14 dating techniques. Originally, carbon-14 testing assumed that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere while an organism lived and at the time when it died was the same as it is today. More recently, a technique from studying tree rings called dendrochronology is employed to estimate the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere at any given time. That is done by estimating the amount of carbon-14 in each of the long-dead rings. One method is as open to error as the other, and either way, the amount of carbon-14 which was originally contained in the sample being tested can only be estimated. A minute difference in the estimation can make a very significant difference in the presumed dating of the sample. It may also be an errant presumption, that tree rings should contain the same amount of carbon-14 as human tissue.

Furthermore, the very low level of radiation being measured, with the half life of carbon-14 being only 5,730 years, the margin of error is much greater than mere differences in the estimations of the level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere over many thousands of years. There are only 1 to 1.5 atoms of carbon-14 for every one billion atoms of carbon in the atmosphere, and the concentration of carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere is said currently to be 412 parts per million. So in any case, the actual amount of carbon-14 in any living organism is extremely small. Finally, there is also a possibility of error when transferring the carbon-14 from the specimen and into a so-called scintillation solution, in which the amount of carbon-14 from the specimen may be measured. That in turn is done by measuring the amount of radiation being emitted by the scintillation solution with a radiation detector after the sample has been introduced. The entire procedure is extremely precarious, and is certainly not proof enough upon which to form any honest opinion of world history.

So when we do a survey of the actual archaeological discoveries in Northern Europe in which what may appear to be modern humans have been uncovered, we find only one specimen is said to predate the flood of Noah, which we estimate to have been approximately 3300 BC, and that is the so-called Koelbjerg Man. But we shall see that is also controversial, because in some sources the Koelbjerg Man is said to be a Cro-Magnon, and not truly a modern European. Another, the Stoneyisland Man, is claimed to be as old as the flood of Noah. But the claimed dates, based on carbon-14 assumptions, are not to be accepted by themselves, and they certainly do not disprove any of our claims concerning European history. However they certainly do not support David Duke’s claims that modern Europeans are the same people who have inhabited those same areas for 30,000 years.

In fact it is even doubtful that Koelberg man is truly a modern human. While most articles found on the internet do not associate the Koelberg man with Cro-Magnons, some do, although they seem to be more difficult to find. In a 1946 book titled Crania Norvegica II by a K. E. Schreiner, in chapter 2, titled The Stone Age, the author correctly postulated that the skull may have been that of a male rather than a female, which later tests had evidently established. Then, where an earlier study was being cited, we read in part: “‘The result of the investigation is’, say the authors, ‘that the Koelbjerg skeleton represents a type closely related to the reindeer hunters from the Magdalenian period, the Cro-Magnon race, which has left its mark on Denmark’s’ ancient population’.”

We can only guess as to where David Duke got this number of 30,000 years, but upon reading this information the guess is obviously a correct one. For example, in a Wikipedia article titled Early European Modern Humans (EEMH), we read the following: “EEMH were anatomically similar to present-day Europeans, but were more robust, having broader faces, more prominent brow ridges, and bigger teeth. The earliest EEMH specimens also exhibit features that are reminiscent of those found in Neanderthals, as well as modern day African, European and aboriginal Australian populations. The first EEMH would have had darker skin; natural selection for lighter skin would not begin until 30,000 years ago.” Other sources, such as Britannica, state that Cro-Magnons were taller and had a much larger cranial capacity than modern Europeans. For us, these statements by themselves speak volumes, and we probably have no need to look further. The Cro-Magnons are a decidedly different race than modern Europeans, and the latter did not necessarily evolve from the former. The gaps in the archaeological records as well as the earliest historical records help to demonstrate that Cro-Magnons are not the ancestors of modern Europeans.

Anthropologists and archaeologists like to classify the discovery of ancient relics by labeling them as “cultures”. The discovery of some flint tools mired in three feet of sand on some outcrop of land or in the bottom of a cave might be associated with a “culture” or even labelled as a new culture, depending upon the region and the stratigraphic layer of sediment in which it was found. Stratigraphy is the study of rock layers which came into existence as a result of certain natural conditions, such as sediment layers from floods, sands shifting in the wind, centuries of vegetation overgrowth and decay, or even volcanic layers formed by lava flows or heavy ash deposits. Some archaeological discoveries can be dated by these means with relative accuracy, while others can only be assigned to a very general epoch of prehistoric times. Pompeii is an example of the former, and prehistoric fossils of the latter.

We don’t necessarily have to believe the dates we are about to discuss, but we will present them as they are stated. Speaking of prehistoric times, we have already mentioned the so-called Pleistocene and Holocene ages. During the Pleistocene geological age, much of Scandinavia, Britain and the Alps were completely covered in hundreds of meters of ice, in what is popularly called the Ice Age. During this period, where it is claimed that 30% of the earth’s entire surface was covered with ice, global temperatures are said to have averaged 10 degrees centigrade below freezing 20,000 years ago, and only reached an average of 0 degrees centigrade (32 degrees Fahrenheit), the point of freezing, 10,000 years ago. In northern Europe, most of which is said to have been covered with ice, it would have been much colder climate than that overall average. In contrast, the U.S. Government website Climate.gov reports a global average temperature of 13.9 degrees centigrade (57 degrees Fahrenheit) during the 20th century. The end of the Pleistocene age is said to have been marked with vast geological changes. Without the burden of ice, the surface area of the land beneath it is said to have risen hundreds of meters. Coastlines rose with the melting ice and then retreated with the rising land, and earthquakes and other natural disasters were apparently frequent.

If David Duke were right about his claims that White Europeans lived in Northern Europe for 30,000 years, then for well over 20,000 of those years they would have lived in temperatures which continually averaged far below freezing. Furthermore, the extremely thick ice glaciers would have made either farming, fishing or hunting practically impossible. Aside from this, modern man requires a large amount of infrastructure to be able to live in comparatively mild cold climates, and to sustain a level of subsistence surpassing that of an Eskimo. But there is no archaeological evidence of any such infrastructure anywhere in Northern Europe which dates to the closing centuries of the Pleistocene period, or even the first 9,000 years or more of the Holocene epoch, in which we currently live and which began not 12,000 years ago. We would challenge David Duke to show us the houses, the kilns, the ovens, the iron or copper implements, all things which may have survived if there were actually men living in Northern Europe in significant numbers throughout that period of time.

David Duke is living in an imaginary fairy tale with his claims that Scandinavia or even Germany were continually populated by modern Europeans at that time. The Holocene epoch begins with an alleged period of abrupt warming in which the last sheets of ice were said to have disappeared from most of Europe, and only then did parts of Europe even begin to become inhabitable. This also leads us to further doubt the 8000 BC date of the so-called Koelbjerg Man, since 10,000 years ago Denmark was still barely habitable. While Europe may have begun to become habitable at this time, that does not necessarily mean that it was immediately inhabited, or that it was inhabited by White men. Men cannot live on ice hundreds of meters thick, where there are no food sources and no means to grow any vegetation. David Duke is an intellectually dishonest man.

Here perhaps we should depart from speaking of geological ages and turn back to the so-called “cultures” of supposed “early modern humans” which are commonly identified by anthropologists and archaeologists. This period, in Europe, begins over fifty thousand years ago, where so-called Cro-Magnons are claimed to have migrated west from Asia and are sometimes said to have converged and interbred with Neanderthals. The Neanderthals are said to have become extinct perhaps as long as 40,000 years ago. Then the history of the Cro-Magnons in Europe is said to have generally begun with the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age in Southern Europe, where 20,000 years ago the climate was evidently warming and became more suitable to habitation. So this period gave rise to well over a dozen so-called “cultures”, each of which cover certain regions of Europe over certain periods of time from 48,000 to 8,000 years ago. We should not necessarily trust the dates provided here, but I will only repeat what I have read. Furthermore, these cultures are independent of the Paleolithic cultures of the Fertile Crescent, Africa or Mongolia, although some, namely the Aurignacian culture, appear in more than one region.

These “cultures” are dated when tools or other relics are found and an estimated date is given to them, and then perhaps in another area similar tools or relics are located, and because the tools might be similar, they are said to be from the same “culture”, and then when all the findings are carbon-14 dated, however that may happen because stone itself cannot be dated in that manner, a date range for the so-called “culture” is estimated from the results of the tests. This does not mean what they say it means, but assumptions are drawn from the similarity of the tools and therefore they are assigned a date range. The entire system is based on presumptions and suppositions which are not necessarily true.

The earliest claimed European so-called culture is the Bohunician culture supposedly centered in Moravia and dated from 48,000 to 40,000 years ago. The only findings of this “culture” are some stone tools. Of these, the Science Direct website says that “A preliminary comparison of the sites indicates a high degree of similarity among assemblages and may represent the same expansion event hypothetically associated with anatomically modern humans.” The use of the term hypothetically is appropriate here. Also, in this sense, an assemblage is the sum total of the collection of objects which were discovered. Next is the Châtelperronian culture of 44,000 to 36,000 years ago, the existence of which is debated. So among other opinions, we read at the Thought Co. website that “the Châtelperronian is today recognized as roughly coeval with or perhaps somewhat later than the Aurignacian period”. Recently, in 2016, German researchers are said to identify the Châtelperronian culture in southwest Europe with Neanderthals [who in other sources should have been extinct by that time]. A so-called Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician culture of 43,000 to 32,000 years ago is also said to be identified with Neanderthals. The area it supposedly covered, in northern Germany, France and the south of Britain, is at the edge of the portion of Northern Europe which was covered by glaciers in the Pleistocene epoch.

The so-called Aurignacian culture, dated from 43,000 to 26,000 years ago in Europe, seems to be the first one with any substance beyond some stone tools. Its bearers supposedly migrated from the Fertile Crescent, and among the artifacts by which it is said to be represented are some prehistoric ivory carvings discovered in caves in Germany. Oddly, the date range for this culture in the Fertile Crescent is only said to span from 35,000 to 29,000 years ago, at least at Wikipedia. But none of these findings in any of these so-called cultures can be directly associated with modern Europeans, or even so-called “modern humans”. In the Wikipedia article for the Aurignacian culture we read in part: “Although finds of human skeletal remains in direct association with Proto-Aurignacian technologies are scarce in Europe, the few available are also probably modern human.” The use of the word probably should not be missed. But as they use the term, even “modern human” is not equal to “modern European”, or European people as we know them. In other words, they apply the term “modern human” to Cro-Magnons, and assume we descended from Cro-Magnons, so they can call both modern Europeans and the Cro-Magnons “modern humans”, which is not true.

Overlapping the Aurignacian, other cultures such as the Szeletian (41,000 to 37,000 years ago) and the Périgordian (35,000 to 20,000 years ago) are identified in various places, which are only represented by some stone tools such as blades or arrow heads. Then the next significant culture is the Gravettian culture, which is claimed to have existed from about 33,000 to 24,000 years ago. To this culture much is attributed, as it is claimed to have been “archaeologically the last European culture many consider unified”, as Wikipedia cites a French author from a 2013 publication. Artifacts classified as Gravettian have been found across Europe. To this culture are attributed certain ivory carvings, carved limestone, mammoth and wolf bones, reindeer antlers and bones and other relics (see Detailed Pedia). Some of the carvings represent so-called Venus figurines which are also found in later Mesopotamia and the Levant. According to that same source the Gravettian culture “had mostly disappeared by 22,000 BP, close to the Last Glacial Maximum, although some elements lasted until 17,000 BP.” The websites for Britannica, Science Direct and other sources inform us that the human remains identified with this culture are classified as having belonged to Cro-Magnons.

After this there is the so-called Pavlovian culture which is said to be “a variant of the Gravettian”, which is also said to have survived in Moravia by using “sophisticated stone age technology … in the tundra on the fringe of the ice sheets around the Last Glacial Maximum.” Two other cultures which are said to have derived from the Gravettian are the Epigravettian, ranging from 20,000 to 10,000 years ago, and the Solutrean, which is dated to 22,000 to 17,000 years ago. Some human remains identified with the Solutrean culture are said to resemble those of the earlier Gravettian culture.

The Solutreans evidently had a more refined stone tool-making ability which is not seen again until thousands of years later. According to a hypothesis which links them to some prehistoric American Clovis culture, their tools were supposedly brought to North America. But the hypothesis is based on thin, or even superficial evidence which compares vague similarities in flint tools, those of the Solutreans in France and those of the Clovis in New Mexico, and on that evidence alone the identification is hardly credible. There is no evidence of Cro-Magnon Solutreans plying the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, let alone being able to cross over. While David Duke has expressed support for the theory, it is only because he wants it to be true, and not because it is true. David believes what fits his own agenda, not what has any actual relation to truth.

Another group of Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures in Northern Europe are the Hamburg, Federmesser, Ahrensburg and Bromme cultures, which were all apparently in the same geographical region in Denmark, northern Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and surrounding areas from 15,500 to 9,800 years ago. These are represented by some stone tools and items made from reindeer antlers and bones which evidently belonged to nomadic reindeer hunters. The earliest bow and arrow finding in Europe is assigned to the Ahrensburg culture, as flint arrowheads were found among the relics. Other so-called cultures in adjacent areas are often also related to these. The Swiderian culture of north-central Europe, claimed to date from 11,000 to 8,000 years ago in what is now northern Poland, is also characterized chiefly by stone tools. But it is apparently only distinguished from the northern German cultures by variations in the shape of some of the tools. Contemporary to these cultures in modern northern Germany are the Magdalenian and Azilian cultures of western Germany, France and Spain, however sources also state that these stretched to Poland in the east, and that they are characteristic of reindeer hunters. To this culture is attributed antler carvings, bone relics, tools and cave paintings in modern France.

With all of this, there is no evidence of structures aside from some evidence of dwelling in caves and primitive stone huts, or from what appears to be thick ancient walls of stone and bones held together with mud which have been excavated in Moravia, which are said to be evidence of permanent habitations. This alone seems to represent the what is called the “sophisticated stone age technology” of the Pavlovian culture. One source for this, the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Cro-Magnon man, informs us that these prehistoric people, the predominant people of Paleolithic Europe, were taller and had a somewhat different skeletal structure than early modern humans, with a significantly larger cranial capacity than modern Europeans. Britannica then admits that “It is still hard to say precisely where Cro-Magnons belong in recent human evolution,” although we ourselves would reject any concept of evolution at all. But David Duke, following many other evolutionists, simply assumes that they are our ancestors and claims that we evolved from them.

These findings would trouble the young-earth Creationists found among modern Evangelicals and other mostly Christian sects. But as Identity Christians, none of what we have seen here troubles us, even from our solely Biblical viewpoint. That is because first, we do not interpret the Scriptures in the same narrow and shallow way that most Evangelicals interpret them, and secondly, contrary to most other Christians, we do not believe that the Genesis account is some scientific manual, or a full account of the Creation of God and a history of everything which happened up to the beginning of the historical narrative of the Scriptures. As the apostle Matthew had written in relation to Yahshua Christ, in Matthew chapter 13, He spoke in parables “35 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.” If things were kept secret from the foundation of the world, then the Genesis account is not a complete history up to and including the creation of Adam.

In the Scriptures, in Genesis chapter 6 we read “4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God [or in some sources, the angels of God] came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” The Hebrew word for giants in that passage is nephilim, which we can establish means fallen ones. Yet there is no account of the origins of these fallen ones earlier in Genesis, and it is left unexplained until the parables and Revelation of Yahshua Christ in chapter 12, where we learn that they are a race which had long before rebelled from God, and having been associated with the serpent of Genesis chapter 3, we may easily and justly deduce that their rebellion must have happened even long before the creation of Adam. So the nephilim, or giants, were in the earth both before and after the flood of Noah, as they are frequently mentioned after the flood in Scripture.

Seeing that there was a race of fallen angels upon the earth even before the creation of Adam, the ancient peoples who are similar to modern Europeans perhaps even in the composition of their DNA, yet who preceded and seem to be historically unrelated to modern Europeans, are accounted for without damage to our historical records or our Scriptures. So we would assert that in those and other passages, and in related works which were left out of our modern Bibles, the presence of Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons, and other races of so-called humans may certainly be explained. But even with that. All of the dates for these Paleolithic so-called cultures are based on dendrochronology and carbon-14 dating techniques which we do not trust to be accurate.

Moving to discuss the Mesolithic period of Northern Europe at greater length, a supposed Fosna–Hensbacka culture is the name given to some discoveries of stone tools in Norway, and it is assigned various dates ranging from 12,000 to 7,300 years ago. The so-called Iron Gates culture, named for an area along the Danube River near the border between Romania and Serbia, is dated from 13,000 to 6,000 years ago. To this culture is attributed buildings of unknown construction having stone hearths and plaster floors, pottery, carved stone sculptures and other artifacts. Another presumed culture, Komsa culture, is said to have existed from around 10,000 BC in northern Norway. These cultures supposedly thrived at the time when all of Northern Europe was just emerging from the ice, which in our opinion helps to indicate problems with dating as well as the amount of conjecture injected into the interpretations of the archaeological findings.

The Kunda culture, supposedly originating from the earlier Swiderian culture in Poland, is identified with “mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities” in the territory of the modern Baltic States and northwest Russia and dated from 8,500 to 5,000 years ago. This culture is represented by discoveries of both stone tools and human remains. The Maglemosian culture of Scandinavia, dating from 9,000 to 6,000 BC, is the time to which the Koelbjerg man allegedly dates. This culture is said to be represented by wood, bone, horn and flint hunting tools, including arrow heads. Although the period of this culture is said to have overlapped that of the ice age, dwellings made of bark, which hardly seem to have been any protection from the extreme cold of the period, are said to have been preserved. Evidently, bark dwellings are also demonstrative of a presumed “sophisticated stone age technology”. In France and central Europe a supposed Sauveterrian culture is identified as existing from 10,500 to 8,500 years ago. It is said to be represented by flint tools, but no woodworking tools, and by supposedly ritual burials.

Also in France, Belgium and Spain a Tardenoisian or Beuronian culture is identified from 10,500 to 5,000 years before the present. The Wikipedia article for this culture, which offers a different date range, admits that “The Tardenoisian followed the Ahrensburgian, with which it was paralleled, and lasted from about 9,000 BC until 6,000 in the Neolithic.” So this culture seems only to be an extension of the Ahrensburg culture which spanned the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods, and it is unclear as to why it merits a distinct name. The same is true of the so-called Neman culture, assigned a span from the 7th to the 3rd millennia BC, which is said to have “bordered the Kunda culture during the Mesolithic and the Narva culture during the Neolithic.”

Three other Mesolithic cultures are described as existing in Scandinavia, which are the Nøstvet and Lihult cultures, said to be similar cultures from 6200 to 3200 BC, the Kongemose culture of 6000 to 5200 BC, and the Ertebølle culture from 5300 to 3950 BC. Like all of the other cultures here, we can only assume that the dates are taken from artifacts which may be dated with carbon-14 methods. The World Heritage Encyclopedia states that the Nøstvet and Lihult cultures, along with several other minor Scandinavian cultures which we are not going to list here, were derived from the Paleolithic Fosna-Hensbacka culture, and that they “are so varied and vaguely defined that they are rather a tradition than an archaeological culture.” To us, archaeologists use both terms in a rather odd manner, because even a few stone tools do not merit either of these labels, culture or tradition.

A Danish history website describes the Kongemose culture more extensively than many archaeological articles, but perhaps with much more conjecture. While it does not use the term Cro-Magnon, it seems to describe human remains dated to the period in that manner where, under the subtitle “How did the Kongemose Hunters Look Like?” we read in part: “The skeleton of a man, who was about forty years of age, when he died, lay in a well-preserved grave. He was approximately 166 cm tall [just over 5’5”] and strongly built with solid bones, significant eyebrow arches and strong jaws… His skull is the largest among all ever found from the entire Danish prehistory.” Likewise, the Wikipedia article describing the Ertebølle culture informs us that it had also belonged to Cro-Magnons, although it is also claimed that the Cro-magnons were “ancestral to the current population of Europe” based on mitochondrial DNA testing, citing a study which we shall soon discuss at length. Those claims are accompanied by a description of evidence of conflict and even cannibalism among the skeletal remains.

Many other sources have made similar claims relating Cro-Magnons to modern Europeans. But we do not trust this testing as any proof of an ancestral relationship of ancient populations to modern ones. The mitochondrial DNA is only passed on through women, and it is not the same as the nuclear DNA which is inherited from both parents. Mitochondrial DNA only contains information pertinent to the metabolic function of the cell in which it is found. Because the female provides the egg which apparently contains the material from which the outer structure of a cell is formed, and because all other cells in an embryo originate in divisions of that first cell, mitochondria is believed to be passed down exclusively through women. We are not going to debate that, as it seems plausible on its surface. But because mitochondrial DNA only regulates the metabolic functions of a cell, functions which all living beings require, we may assert that at most, similarities in such DNA are only vaguely indicative of some commonality of origin, or even of design, rather than some direct ancestor/descendant relationship.

One significant study, the study which Wikipedia cited to claim that Cro-Magnons are “ancestral to the current population of Europe”, and which was published in July, 2008 claims to differ from most studies of Cro-Magnon DNA which preceded it by purportedly eliminating any possibility of contamination of the DNA before it was examined. This study was published at the PLOS Global Public Health website under the title A 28,000 Years Old Cro-Magnon mtDNA Sequence Differs from All Potentially Contaminating Modern Sequences. In their conclusion on the significance of their study the authors wrote: “The Paglicci 23 individual carried a mtDNA sequence that is still common in Europe, and which radically differs from those of the almost contemporary Neandertals, demonstrating a genealogical continuity across 28,000 years, from Cro-Magnoid to modern Europeans. Because all potential sources of modern DNA contamination are known, the Paglicci 23 sample will offer a unique opportunity to get insight for the first time into the nuclear genes of early modern Europeans.” The label “Paglicci 23” is for the partial Cro-Magnon skeleton which is being tested in this study, which is esteemed to be 28,000 years old and which is said to have been discovered in a cave in southern Italy. The authors of the study never explain how it gives insight into nuclear DNA, except by offering their methodology as an example for possible nuclear DNA studies in the future.

The chemical process for testing DNA is very complex and goes through many steps. First, a process called Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is used to produce clones, supposedly exact copies, of the DNA being examined. This is done by first by adding synthetic DNA called primers which, it is claimed, are removed before the final results of DNA sequencing are achieved. The primers supposedly assist in the process of cloning the DNA. So this study informs us that “Quantitative PCR showed a relatively large amount of mtDNA molecules in the Paglicci 23 fossil, approximately 2300.” Once the clones were made, we read: “We thus proceeded in the analysis by initially sequencing a total of 144 clones, respectively 64, 32 and 48 for the three regions in which the HVR I was divided. Reproducible mtDNA sequences corresponding to positions 16024–16383 of the published reference sequence CRS were obtained in the Florence laboratory from the tibia and from a skull fragment of Paglicci 23.” The HVR I is one of several so-called hypervariable regions of mitochondrial DNA identified by scientists, the others having been named HVR II and III.

According to the DNA Learning Center website of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Human Mitochondrial genome “consists of a DNA ring of about 16,570 nucleotides.” Here the authors of this study find what appears to be a match with the mitochondrial DNA of at least some modern Europeans in a small fraction, about 360 of these 16,570 nucleotides, which is just over 2.1% of the total, and they expect us to look at this 28,000-year-old Cro-Magnon and call it “daddy”, something for which there is certainly not enough evidence.

But even this presumed match in a mitochondrial DNA sequence between the Cro-Magnon sample and the Cambridge Reference Sequence is not enough in itself to establish a relationship with modern Europeans. So, using their own scientists in their example, the authors describe how a relationship with Paglicci 23 “was estimated by a statistical parsimony method” implemented by certain computer software. At the My Biosoftware website we read that this software is designed: “to estimate gene genealogies including multifurcations and/or reticulations (i.e. networks). The network estimation implemented … is also known as Statistical Parsimony. A cladistic analysis of phenotypic associations with haplotypes inferred from restriction endonuclease mapping and DNA sequence data.” At Encyclopedia.com we read a from a definition for multifurcation: “In a phylogenetic tree, the occurrence of a split in an ancestral branch into more than two branches at an internal node, because the order in which the progenic branches occur cannot be determined.” Furthermore, at the University of California at Berkeley website Understanding Evolution, we find a definition of cladistics: “Cladistics is a method of hypothesizing relationships among organisms — in other words, a method of reconstructing evolutionary trees.”

So in other words, by this point we should realize that all of this is a house of cards, as the conclusions of ancestral relationships made from mitochondrial DNA testing results are based on an endless series of suppositions. Then we must remember that in the first place, mitochondrial DNA only contains information necessary for cells to convert food into energy, and once we consider that, we must consider that varying races of men all use the same food sources to produce the same energy, so of course it seems that there would be similarities in the instructions. But that does not mean that all races of men descend from the same ancestors, or that modern Europeans have a common ancestor in the 28,000-year-old Cro-Magnon sample. While mitochondrial DNA contains 16,570 nucleotides, the DNA which is found in the nucleus of a cell contains around three billion nucleotides, and it is that DNA which apparently determines what we are, and not merely how our cells function.

But it is upon evidence such as this that David Duke claims that modern Europeans have lived in Europe for the last 30,000 years. He accepts all of the claims of the DNA scientists who all operate on the presumption that evolution theory is true, and then on other presumptions, such as this alleged match in 2% of a specimen’s mitochondrial DNA being some proof of a direct ancestral relationship, after it was run through calculations which estimated and hypothesized relationships. For my part, I will not ask for forgiveness because I reject this religion. It is indeed a religion, even if the science itself is accepted as being somewhat legitimate, because the conclusions are measured against estimated, hypothesized, and even fabricated data. So now we shall discuss another aspect of that data, namely the reference system against which all mitochondrial DNA is assessed.

The reference to CRS mentioned in this study is the Cambridge Reference Sequence, which was purportedly established from a mitochondrial DNA sequence which was first sequenced in 1981. It was used as a basis for comparison with mitochondrial DNA test results until it was replaced in 2014 with the Reconstructed Sapiens Reference Sequence (RSRS). Before it was replaced, there was an rCRS, or revised Cambridge Reference Sequence, but soon it was realized that the revision was not good enough, because it was not sufficiently diverse. So at the Family Tree DNA website we read:

The revised Cambridge Reference Sequence is a revision of the very first mitochondrial genome sequenced at Cambridge University in 1981. This was based on an anonymous individual of European descent. In the rCRS system, each nucleotide base is assigned a position along with the value (A, C, T, or G) that was discovered in this anonymous individual. Your rCRS values are reported by listing the location followed by your derived value. For example, if you differ from rCRS at position 263 with a value of G, this will be reported as 263G.

As global testing became more prevalent, we began to find that the rCRS sequence, although common among Europeans, was not ancestral for the wider global human population. In order to address this, a group of scientists published the Reconstructed Sapiens Reference Sequence (RSRS) in 2012.

The Cambridge Reference Sequence was a representation of the mitochondrial DNA of a single European, which was supposed to represent every European, and because he or she was anonymous, we really have no idea what it was or if it truly represented at least many Europeans. But next we shall see the opposite extreme, where the DNA scientists literally threw the kitchen trash from some Chinese buffet into the mix. So describing the newer and reconstructed reference sequence, the article continues and says:

The Reconstructed Sapiens Reference Sequence was designed to be representative of “Mitochondrial Eve.” This is not the first woman who lived, but rather the woman from whom all modern humans descend in a direct maternal line. The RSRS is a reconstruction of this ancestral mitochondrial sequence. Just like the rCRS, each nucleotide is assigned a position and an ancestral value. RSRS values are reported using a system that lists the ancestral value, the position, then your mutation. For example, if at location 769, the ancestral value is adenine (A), and you have a mutation of guanine (G), then this mutation will be reported as A769G.

The RSRS also contains Extra Mutations and Missing Mutations. Extra Mutations are those that are present in your mtDNA but are not usually found within your haplogroup. Missing mutations are mutations usually found in your haplogroup that you do not have.

If you look at your results and see a value other than A, C, T, or G, this reflects a heteroplasmy.

The compounds adenine and guanine, along with cytosine and thymine, are the chemicals from which the nucleic acids found in DNA are formed. A fifth such compound is uracil, found only in RNA. From the first four, DNA nucleotides are formed. Nucloetides are the basic structural units of both DNA and RNA, which are nucleic acids. From here the article directs its readers to a separate article describing heteroplasmy, which indicates that mitochondrial DNA and its so-called “mutations” are even more complex than what has been described here.

As for these mutations, once again at the Family Tree DNA website article for heteroplasmy we read, in part:

Just as with other types of DNA, over time, copy errors occur. These small copy errors are called mutations. Sometimes when DNA is replicated, one base pair may be substituted for another. For example, in a particular base pair, adenine (A) might be inadvertently substituted for guanine (G). To track these changes, we use a universal reference sequence. Typically, this is the Revised Sapiens Reference Sequence (RSRS), which represents the ancestral sequence for all human mtDNA sequences. It serves as a standard to which all mutations are compared.

This is as far as we should have to read. What we have just seen is an assumption that all living humans, regardless of race, have a common female ancestor, the mother of all races who held all of the world’s mitochondrial DNA in her womb. Maybe her name was Tiamat. From this, all modern differences in mitochondrial DNA are simply mutations. But they did not find this woman, they constructed her, just as the children of Israel built a golden calf in the desert at Sinai.

Moreover, why are slight differences in mitochondrial DNA between individuals necessarily mutations? In this context, I have not even seen the word adaptation, a term which is often used in regard to the theory of evolution in other areas. But the truth is that scientists really do not know much concerning the precise significance of each nucleotide, or the slight changes in behavior which various minute differences may actually cause in a living organism.

Then the DNA scientists believe that they can calculate mutations back in time to arrive at their assumption that all mitochondrial DNA comes from a common ancestor. Scientists even believe they can trace the origin of the various haplogroups of mitochondrial DNA. For example, in the Wikipedia article for mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U, we read in part that “Haplogroup U descends from the haplogroup R mtDNA branch of the phylogenetic tree.” This is a claim made without citation or proof, based on subjective opinions deduced from relatively scant archaeological evidence. So in the end it doesn’t really matter what they find in mitochondrial DNA because it is all studied through the lens of many assumptions, which have neither been observed nor proven. They will simply use “statistical parsimony” or “cladistics” to somehow prove that some ancient cavewoman is “mommy”.

This is not science. It is a godless religion being presented as science, constructed from an endless series of hypotheses, and the high priests of this religion expect you to accept it, because they said so, because they are an “authority”, no different than a Mohammad or a Pope Leo X may have expected. This is also what David Duke has accepted, as it is the only way in which his assertion that modern Europeans have lived in Europe for 30,000 years may be supported. Anyone who believes this is not a true scholar, and is certainly not a dissident in regards to the power and influence of world Jewry. But David Duke’s acceptance of all of these claims by so-called scientists proves that he is either supportive of the system which funds these scientists, or he has an incredible cognitive disconnect, or perhaps he has another, more nefarious agenda.

Going back to the study of Paglicci 23, we will quote a few more sentences, so that we can see that the conclusions were indeed based on this relatively minuscule amount of data: “Since we used different sets of overlapping primers pairs to amplify the fragment included between nucleotide 16024 and 16383, it seems highly unlikely that the sequence obtained was a chimera artefact. [This continues the assertion that the DNA was not contaminated.] Therefore, at this stage it is safe to conclude that at least one Cro-Magnoid mtDNA sequence, for which contamination can be ruled out with a high degree of confidence, falls well within the range of modern human variation.” From this, the study’s authors further conclude: “At any rate, the finding of the Cambridge Reference Sequence in Paglicci 23 shows that one of today's mtDNA variants has been present in Europe for at least 28,000 years, and that modern and archaic anatomical features appear associated with mtDNA sequences that can be classified, respectively, as modern and non-modern.”

But even that does not mean that this study somehow proves that modern Europeans descended from Cro-Magnons, even if various supposed scholars who have cited this study use it to support that idea. This is as far as the authors of this study concluded, and anything beyond the statement that “Paglicci 23 shows that one of today’s mtDNA variants has been present in Europe for at least 28,000 years” is sheer conjecture. But as we have explained, “one of today’s mtDNA variants” only represented 2% of the mitochondrial DNA found in any human specimen, and given the function of mitochondrial DNA we should not be surprised that there are similarities, since all humans need to process the same food to get the same general energy for their very similar cells.

According to anthropologists, the Neolithic, or New Stone Age which led to the modern world began less than 15,000 years ago in the Levant, with the rise of agriculture. But the Bronze Age which helped shape the modern world did not begin until after 5,500 years ago, in Mesopotamia and the Near East. While we may dispute the dates, we are not bothered by them and they do not disturb or cause us to reconsider our worldview. In fact, to a great degree they support our worldview.

The world was moved from stone tools to computers by the actual ancestors of European men in 7,500 years and in spite of all of their wars. But from 48,000 years ago, which is the date of the earliest Paleolithic “culture” mentioned here, until the beginning of the Neolithic Age, a period of nearly 40,000 years, the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals evidently accomplished nothing outside of some crude rock walls, cave paintings, crude bows and flint tools. Although Cro-Magnons had larger cranial capacities, they were not necessarily more intelligent, and from their accomplishments it is obvious that they were less intelligent. Although they evidently had larger, sturdier bodies, they were not necessarily better equipped for survival, and evidently they did not survive, at least on their own.

We shall continue this discussion with a brief examination of the Neolithic Age and latter ages in the near future. In the meantime, we hope to have begun to demonstrate the fact that science has not proven that White men have inhabited Europe for 30,000 years, and that David Duke has accepted as gospel all of the suppositions which are made by evolutionists, which are theoretical and which are certainly not convincingly proven.

Essentially, David Duke is worshipping the same beast that the ancient Babylonians, who were among the forerunners of today’s Jews, had also worshipped. In Sumerian inscriptions, that beast was portrayed as a serpent. Today it might be called “science”, but in Medieval times it was called Kabbalah.