Cyprus-Forum.com

[Oracle]

Oracle- Are you a Cypriot? Or ?

Since you are new here ... I do not know in what context you would be using the term Cypriot, and what you mean/understand by Cypriot, and indeed, what you are/hail from, may be polite to reveal first, as no doubt you could glean a fair idea of my persuasion(s) from my various posts.

[doesntmatter]

Malaria it was but Oracle, are you talking about selective evolution?

More interesting than the Malaria association is the protection against Coronary Heart Disease. Perhaps the lower incidence of this condition in Mediterraneans, is due more to carrier status of Thalassaemia, and less to do with the diet

Food for thought ......

As far as evolution .... what types (other than selective) do you have in mind Bananiot? Convergent or divergent are both under selective pressure.

Cue for a Creationist ....

It CAN come down to a matter of choice...When Oracle was given the choice to put down her creed she chose Greek and Greece......Then on here she says Greek Cypriot......

Are we into "creed" now? When did you offer me a "creed" to choose Zan?

Would this be a genetically identifiable "creed" or a Zan-logic "creed" where whichever-one-you-are-in, is the imaginary victim of the whichever-one-I'm-in?

A factor!!!!!! You need to look at all aspects and not just the ones that suit you. One of my sisters, after me telling her that there is a distinct possibility that we might have Maronite blood, said, she would rather be pure Ottoman. I don't think like that but am excited about all aspects of my past. Just like you choosing to be a pure Hellenite.

Zan, do you know what a pure Ottoman is? (did they exist?) An Ottoman is any person who lived within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. They include Greeks, Turks, Albanians , Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians etc etc. Its best to leave that term out.

Did The Greeks and the rest you counted above help to conquer Cyprus and also committed the so called "Armenian Genocide" as Ottoman Deniz?

Were there Yeniceri/Jannisarry's/ Devshirme's in the Ottoman army? The answer is yes. The second part, possibly. The Ottoman armies did include Arabs, Kurds and other 'nationalities' as well.

...and the point you want to make?

I am just wondering why only the Turks get the blame for everything that happened in the Ottoman times when as you say it was a mixture of many nationalities/races or whatever one would like to call it.

[yialousa1971]

Malaria it was but Oracle, are you talking about selective evolution?

More interesting than the Malaria association is the protection against Coronary Heart Disease. Perhaps the lower incidence of this condition in Mediterraneans, is due more to carrier status of Thalassaemia, and less to do with the diet

Food for thought ......

As far as evolution .... what types (other than selective) do you have in mind Bananiot? Convergent or divergent are both under selective pressure.

Cue for a Creationist ....

It CAN come down to a matter of choice...When Oracle was given the choice to put down her creed she chose Greek and Greece......Then on here she says Greek Cypriot......

Are we into "creed" now? When did you offer me a "creed" to choose Zan?

Would this be a genetically identifiable "creed" or a Zan-logic "creed" where whichever-one-you-are-in, is the imaginary victim of the whichever-one-I'm-in?

A factor!!!!!! You need to look at all aspects and not just the ones that suit you. One of my sisters, after me telling her that there is a distinct possibility that we might have Maronite blood, said, she would rather be pure Ottoman. I don't think like that but am excited about all aspects of my past. Just like you choosing to be a pure Hellenite.

Zan, do you know what a pure Ottoman is? (did they exist?) An Ottoman is any person who lived within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. They include Greeks, Turks, Albanians , Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians etc etc. Its best to leave that term out.

Did The Greeks and the rest you counted above help to conquer Cyprus and also committed the so called "Armenian Genocide" as Ottoman Deniz?

Were there Yeniceri/Jannisarry's/ Devshirme's in the Ottoman army? The answer is yes. The second part, possibly. The Ottoman armies did include Arabs, Kurds and other 'nationalities' as well.

...and the point you want to make?

I am just wondering why only the Turks get the blame for everything that happened in the Ottoman times when as you say it was a mixture of many nationalities/races or whatever one would like to call it.

Those other nationalities never asked to be Turks, they were kidnapped then brain washed into thinking they were Turks.

[yialousa1971]

Malaria it was but Oracle, are you talking about selective evolution?

More interesting than the Malaria association is the protection against Coronary Heart Disease. Perhaps the lower incidence of this condition in Mediterraneans, is due more to carrier status of Thalassaemia, and less to do with the diet

Food for thought ......

As far as evolution .... what types (other than selective) do you have in mind Bananiot? Convergent or divergent are both under selective pressure.

Cue for a Creationist ....

It CAN come down to a matter of choice...When Oracle was given the choice to put down her creed she chose Greek and Greece......Then on here she says Greek Cypriot......

Are we into "creed" now? When did you offer me a "creed" to choose Zan?

Would this be a genetically identifiable "creed" or a Zan-logic "creed" where whichever-one-you-are-in, is the imaginary victim of the whichever-one-I'm-in?

A factor!!!!!! You need to look at all aspects and not just the ones that suit you. One of my sisters, after me telling her that there is a distinct possibility that we might have Maronite blood, said, she would rather be pure Ottoman. I don't think like that but am excited about all aspects of my past. Just like you choosing to be a pure Hellenite.

Which imaginary sister is this? The one who suffers from amnesia about her trips to the free area?

People don't choose what they are born Zan, neither have I "picked" what suits me. How long have I been espousing the ONE Human Race for? If you'd know me these past 25 years you could pinpoint it to my first DNA sequencing experiment.

As for which ethnic cultural group one was born and raised in ... then tough luck to your sister for wanting to be part of an extinct nomenclature for a defunct tribe!

Oracle, would you like a sample of my DNA? Prehaps you could clone me, maybe make a clone army.

[Bananiot]

Oracle, I was talking about how selective gene amplification - ­mass copying of a specific gene ­- can increase the speed with which organisms adapt to their environment.

Apparently, all organisms can amplify parts of their DNA under certain conditions, and the variants that have an increased amount of one special gene can gain survival advantages when they are exposed to various types of environmental conditions.

However, you probably know all about this ... and the speed by which these phenomena take place.

[denizaksulu]

Malaria it was but Oracle, are you talking about selective evolution?

More interesting than the Malaria association is the protection against Coronary Heart Disease. Perhaps the lower incidence of this condition in Mediterraneans, is due more to carrier status of Thalassaemia, and less to do with the diet

Food for thought ......

As far as evolution .... what types (other than selective) do you have in mind Bananiot? Convergent or divergent are both under selective pressure.

Cue for a Creationist ....

It CAN come down to a matter of choice...When Oracle was given the choice to put down her creed she chose Greek and Greece......Then on here she says Greek Cypriot......

Are we into "creed" now? When did you offer me a "creed" to choose Zan?

Would this be a genetically identifiable "creed" or a Zan-logic "creed" where whichever-one-you-are-in, is the imaginary victim of the whichever-one-I'm-in?

A factor!!!!!! You need to look at all aspects and not just the ones that suit you. One of my sisters, after me telling her that there is a distinct possibility that we might have Maronite blood, said, she would rather be pure Ottoman. I don't think like that but am excited about all aspects of my past. Just like you choosing to be a pure Hellenite.

Zan, do you know what a pure Ottoman is? (did they exist?) An Ottoman is any person who lived within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. They include Greeks, Turks, Albanians , Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians etc etc. Its best to leave that term out.

Did The Greeks and the rest you counted above help to conquer Cyprus and also committed the so called "Armenian Genocide" as Ottoman Deniz?

Were there Yeniceri/Jannisarry's/ Devshirme's in the Ottoman army? The answer is yes. The second part, possibly. The Ottoman armies did include Arabs, Kurds and other 'nationalities' as well.

...and the point you want to make?

I am just wondering why only the Turks get the blame for everything that happened in the Ottoman times when as you say it was a mixture of many nationalities/races or whatever one would like to call it.

It is what I call the 'crusader' mentality. Blame everything on the 'TURK'. If you study the composition of the 'Ottoman' army during the two sieges of Vienna, there were Magyars, Serbians etc as part of it. Occasionally thy would turn against their 'Ottoman' masters, but they got used to it.

Count Vlad (Drakula) himself was an Ottoman Officer. So was his brother. The brother was sent to crush the rebellious Count Vlad, Drakula got away and returned at a later stage to become the 'Kazikli Voyvoda, where he crushed the Ottoman armies and allegedly impaled 30,000 of them.

Its all part of the 'glorious history ' of the Ottomans.

[Oracle]

Oracle, I was talking about how selective gene amplification - ­mass copying of a specific gene ­- can increase the speed with which organisms adapt to their environment.

Apparently, all organisms can amplify parts of their DNA under certain conditions, and the variants that have an increased amount of one special gene can gain survival advantages when they are exposed to various types of environmental conditions.

However, you probably know all about this ... and the speed by which these phenomena take place.

Well since you said artificial, it wasn't directly applicable to what is a natural process...

Sorry, I meant to say artificial selection.

As for gene amplification (in vivo, as opposed to PCR to keep it in context) then there are different scenarios for whichever gene you look at. Even in bacteria you have different mechanisms of adaptation to changes in environment either by selection of a pre-existing mutation or increased expression of a gene (or switching off of others) or by plasmid transfer (increased copy number). However in Humans there are even more components at play.

Adaptation to altitude can happen quickly (days) by increasing Red Blood Cells or over thousands of years by selection for increased lung capacity or reduced blood viscosity. But the gene capacity is already encoded so you do not have to evolve new races or species, it is just differential control/expression. Same with skin colour which is a polygenic trait in all humans and depending on environmental stages between ice ages, we all have the capacity over time to alter the expression (rapid over days) or select for increased copy numbers (generations) of these pre-existing genes ... again they do not make us different races because we all have the melanin gene (unless we have a mutation for albino ... but that is the same for all genes. It doesn't make you a different race ... and we all have mutations, even if they are not apparent!).

Then there are developmentally regulated genes which can be subjected to selective pressures according to changes in environment or diet (e.g. for lactose utilisation).

As for the SCA, the mutation is in a gene that we all have but the selective pressure for any advantage it confers is removed in the absence of malaria .... Malaria was rife all over Europe at some point so these mutations would have been more prevalent in the general European population at those times but now SCA or thalassaemia are rarer in Western Europe because of the elimination of malaria. But I don't think anyone has proven selective gene amplification occurs in this particular case.

So each gene has to be treated individually and you cannot generalise from a single gene (especially one which has been pre-selected for causing a disease such as thalassaemia) and then use it to decide on "race". So we have gone all round the houses back to where we started.

Ergo: There is only one Human race, susceptible to nurture.

[humanist]

I call myself Cypriot and proud of the fact ......... Once upon a a time I used to speak Greek heheheheheheehehehe

[denizaksulu]

Malaria it was but Oracle, are you talking about selective evolution?

More interesting than the Malaria association is the protection against Coronary Heart Disease. Perhaps the lower incidence of this condition in Mediterraneans, is due more to carrier status of Thalassaemia, and less to do with the diet

Food for thought ......

As far as evolution .... what types (other than selective) do you have in mind Bananiot? Convergent or divergent are both under selective pressure.

Cue for a Creationist ....

It CAN come down to a matter of choice...When Oracle was given the choice to put down her creed she chose Greek and Greece......Then on here she says Greek Cypriot......

Are we into "creed" now? When did you offer me a "creed" to choose Zan?

Would this be a genetically identifiable "creed" or a Zan-logic "creed" where whichever-one-you-are-in, is the imaginary victim of the whichever-one-I'm-in?

A factor!!!!!! You need to look at all aspects and not just the ones that suit you. One of my sisters, after me telling her that there is a distinct possibility that we might have Maronite blood, said, she would rather be pure Ottoman. I don't think like that but am excited about all aspects of my past. Just like you choosing to be a pure Hellenite.

Zan, do you know what a pure Ottoman is? (did they exist?) An Ottoman is any person who lived within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. They include Greeks, Turks, Albanians , Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians etc etc. Its best to leave that term out.

Did The Greeks and the rest you counted above help to conquer Cyprus and also committed the so called "Armenian Genocide" as Ottoman Deniz?

Were there Yeniceri/Jannisarry's/ Devshirme's in the Ottoman army? The answer is yes. The second part, possibly. The Ottoman armies did include Arabs, Kurds and other 'nationalities' as well.

...and the point you want to make?

I am just wondering why only the Turks get the blame for everything that happened in the Ottoman times when as you say it was a mixture of many nationalities/races or whatever one would like to call it.

It is what I call the 'crusader' mentality. Blame everything on the 'TURK'. If you study the composition of the 'Ottoman' army during the two sieges of Vienna, there were Magyars, Serbians etc as part of it. Occasionally thy would turn against their 'Ottoman' masters, but they got used to it.

Count Vlad (Drakula) himself was an Ottoman Officer. So was his brother. The brother was sent to crush the rebellious Count Vlad, Drakula got away and returned at a later stage to become the 'Kazikli Voyvoda, where he crushed the Ottoman armies and allegedly impaled 30,000 of them.

Its all part of the 'glorious history ' of the Ottomans.

Here is Kazikli Voyvoda / Vlad the Impaler / Count Drakula:

The Life of Vlad III (1431-1476)
Vlad III was born in November or December of 1431 in the Transylvanian city of Sighisoara. At the time his father, Vlad II (Vlad Dracul), was living in exile in Transylvania. The house where he was born is still standing. It was located in a prosperous neighborhood surrounded by the homes of Saxon and Magyar merchants and the townhouses of the nobility.
Click to Enlarge


Little is known about the early years of Vlad III’s life. He had an older brother, Mircea, and a younger brother, Radu the Handsome. His early education was left in the hands of his mother, a Transylvanian noblewoman, and her family. His real education began in 1436 after his father succeeded in claiming the Wallachian throne by killing his Danesti rival. His training was typical to that of the sons of nobility throughout Europe. His first tutor in his apprenticeship to knighthood was an elderly boyar who had fought against the Turks at the battle of Nicolopolis. Vlad learned all the skills of war and peace that were deemed necessary for a Christian knight.

In 1444, at the age of thirteen, young Vlad and his brother Radu were sent to Adrianople as hostages, to appease the Sultan. He remained there until 1448, at which time he was released by the Turks, who supported him as their candidate for the Wallachian throne. Vlad’s younger brother apparently chose to remain in Turkey, where he had grown up. (Radu is later supported by the Turks as a candidate for the Wallachian throne, in opposition to his own brother, Vlad.)

As previously noted, Vlad III’s initial reign was quite short (two months), and it was not until 1456, under the support of Hunyadi and the Kingdom of Hungary that he returned to the throne. He established Tirgoviste as his capitol city, and began to build his castle some distance away in the mountains near the Arges River. Most of the atrocities associated with Vlad III took place during this time. Atrocities of Vlad Tepes
More than anything else the historical Dracula is known for his inhuman cruelty. Impalement was Vlad III’s preferred method of torture and execution. Impalement was and is one of the most gruesome ways of dying imaginable, as it was typically slow and painful.

Click to Enlarge



Vlad usually had a horse attached to each of the victim’s legs and a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. The end of the stake was usually oiled and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp, else the victim might die too rapidly from shock. Normally the stake was inserted into the body through the buttocks and was often forced through the body until it emerged from the mouth. However, there were many instances where victims were impaled through other body orifices or through the abdomen or chest. Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mother’s chests. The records indicate that victims were sometimes impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake.

Vlad Tepes often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern was a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of a city that was his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The decaying corpses were often left up for months. It was once reported that an invading Turkish army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube. In 1461 Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, a man not noted for his squeamishness, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of twenty thousand impaled Turkish prisoners outside of the city of Tirgoviste. This gruesome sight is remembered in history as "the Forest of the Impaled."

Thousands were often impaled at a single time. Ten thousand were impaled in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu in 1460. In 1459, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, Vlad III had thirty thousand of the merchants and boyars of the Transylvanian city of Brasov impaled. One of the most famous woodcuts of the period shows Vlad Dracula feasting amongst a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Brasov while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims.

Although impalement was Vlad Dracula’s favorite method of torture, it was by no means his only method. The list of tortures employed by this cruel prince reads like an inventory of hell’s tools: nails in heads, cutting off of limbs, blinding, strangulation, burning, cutting off of noses and ears, mutilation of sexual organs (especially in the case of women), scalping, skinning, exposure to the elements or to wild animals, and burning alive.

No one was immune to Vlad’s attentions. His victims included women and children, peasants and great lords, ambassadors from foreign powers and merchants. However, the vast majority of his victims came from the merchants and boyars of Transylvania and his own Wallachia.

Many have attempted to justify Vlad Dracula’s actions on the basis of nascent nationalism and political necessity. Many of the merchants in Transylvania and Wallachia were German Saxons who were seen as parasites, preying upon Romanian natives of Wallachia. The wealthy land owning boyars exerted their own often capricious and unfaithful influence over the reigning princes. Vlad’s own father and older brother were murdered by unfaithful boyars. However, many of Vlad Dracula’s victims were also Wallachians, and few deny that he derived a perverted pleasure from his actions.

Vlad Dracula began his reign of terror almost as soon as he came to power. His first significant act of cruelty may have been motivated by a desire for revenge as well as a need to solidify his power. Early in his main reign he gave a feast for his boyars and their families to celebrate Easter. Vlad was well aware that many of these same nobles were part of the conspiracy that led to his father’s assassination and the burying alive of his elder brother, Mircea. Many had also played a role in the overthrow of numerous Wallachian princes. During the feast Vlad asked his noble guests how many princes had ruled during their lifetimes. All of the nobles present had outlived several princes. None had seen less then seven reigns. Vlad immediately had all the assembled nobles arrested. The older boyars and their families were impaled on the spot. The younger and healthier nobles and their families were marched north from Tirgoviste to the ruins of his castle in the mountains above the Arges River. The enslaved boyars and their families were forced to labor for months rebuilding the old castle with materials from a nearby ruin. According to the reports they labored until the clothes fell off their bodies and then were forced to continue working naked. Very few survived this ordeal.

Throughout his reign Vlad continued to systematically eradicate the old boyar class of Wallachia. Apparently Vlad was determined that his own power be on a modern and thoroughly secure footing. In the place of the executed boyars Vlad promoted new men from among the free peasantry and middle class; men who would be loyal only to their prince.

Vlad Tepes’ atrocities against the people of Wallachia were usually attempts to enforce his own moral code upon his country. He appears to have been particularly concerned with female chastity. Maidens who lost their virginity, adulterous wives and unchaste widows were all targets of Vlad’s cruelty. Such women often had their sexual organs cut out or their breasts cut off, and were often impaled through the vagina on red-hot stakes. One report tells of the execution of an unfaithful wife. Vlad had the woman’s breasts cut off, then she was skinned and impaled in a square in Tirgoviste with her skin lying on a nearby table. Vlad also insisted that his people be honest and hard working. Merchants who cheated their customers were likely to find themselves mounted on a stake beside common thieves.

The End of Vlad III

Although Vlad III experienced some success in fending off the Turks, his accomplishments were relatively short-lived. He received little support from his titular overlord, Matthius Corvinus, King of Hungary (son of John Hunyadi) and Wallachian resources were too limited to achieve any lasting success against the powerful Turks.

The Turks finally succeeded in forcing Vlad to flee to Transylvania in 1462. Reportedly, his first wife committed suicide by leaping from the towers of Vlad’s castle into the waters of the Arges River rather than surrender to the Turks. Vlad escaped through a secret passage and fled across the mountains into Transylvania and appealed to Matthias Corvinus for aid. The king immediately had Vlad arrested and imprisoned in a royal tower.

There is some debate as to the exact length of Vlad’s confinement. The Russian pamphlets indicate that he was a prisoner from 1462 until 1474. However, during this period he was able to gradually win his way back into the graces of Matthias Corvinus and ultimately met and married a member of the royal family (possibly the sister of Corvinus) and fathered two sons. It is unlikely that a prisoner would be allowed to marry a member of the royal family. As the eldest son was about 10 years old at the point Vlad regained the Wallachian throne in 1476, his release probably occurred around 1466.

Note: The Russian narrative, normally very favorable to Vlad, indicates that even in captivity he could not give up his favorite past-time; he often captured birds and mice and proceeded to torture and mutilate them. Some were beheaded or tarred-and-feathered and released. Most were impaled on tiny spears.

Another possible reason for Vlad’s rehabilitation was that the new successor to the Wallachian throne, Vlad’s own brother, Radu the Handsome, had instituted a very pro-Turkish policy. The Hungarian king may have viewed Dracula as a possible candidate to retake the throne. The fact that Vlad renounced the Orthodox faith and adopted Catholicism was also surely meant to appease his Hungarian captor.

In 1476 Vlad was again ready to make a bid for power. Vlad Dracula and Prince Stephen Bathory of Transylvania invaded Wallachia with a mixed contingent of forces. Vlad’s brother, Radu, had by then already died and was replaced by Basarab the Old, a member of the Danesti clan. At the approach of Vlad’s army Basarab and his cohorts fled. However, shortly after retaking the throne, Prince Bathory and most of Vlad’s forces returned to Transylvania, leaving Vlad in a vulnerable position. Before he was able to gather support, a large Turkish army entered Wallachia. Vlad was forced to march and meet the Turks with less than four thousand men.


Purported tomb
of Vlad Tepes
Click to Enlarge Vlad Dracula was killed in battle against the Turks near the town of Bucharest in December of 1476. Some reports indicate that he was assassinated by disloyal Wallachian boyars just as he was about to sweep the Turks from the field. Other accounts have him falling in defeat, surrounded by the ranks of his loyal Moldavian bodyguard. Still other reports claim that Vlad, at the moment of victory, was accidentally struck down by one of his own men. The one undisputed fact is that ultimately his body was decapitated by the Turks and his head sent to Constantinople where the sultan had it displayed on a stake as proof that the horrible Impaler was finally dead. He was reportedly buried at Snagov, an island monastery located near Bucharest.

[denizaksulu]

Malaria it was but Oracle, are you talking about selective evolution?

More interesting than the Malaria association is the protection against Coronary Heart Disease. Perhaps the lower incidence of this condition in Mediterraneans, is due more to carrier status of Thalassaemia, and less to do with the diet

Food for thought ......

As far as evolution .... what types (other than selective) do you have in mind Bananiot? Convergent or divergent are both under selective pressure.

Cue for a Creationist ....

It CAN come down to a matter of choice...When Oracle was given the choice to put down her creed she chose Greek and Greece......Then on here she says Greek Cypriot......

Are we into "creed" now? When did you offer me a "creed" to choose Zan?

Would this be a genetically identifiable "creed" or a Zan-logic "creed" where whichever-one-you-are-in, is the imaginary victim of the whichever-one-I'm-in?

A factor!!!!!! You need to look at all aspects and not just the ones that suit you. One of my sisters, after me telling her that there is a distinct possibility that we might have Maronite blood, said, she would rather be pure Ottoman. I don't think like that but am excited about all aspects of my past. Just like you choosing to be a pure Hellenite.

Zan, do you know what a pure Ottoman is? (did they exist?) An Ottoman is any person who lived within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. They include Greeks, Turks, Albanians , Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians etc etc. Its best to leave that term out.

Did The Greeks and the rest you counted above help to conquer Cyprus and also committed the so called "Armenian Genocide" as Ottoman Deniz?

Were there Yeniceri/Jannisarry's/ Devshirme's in the Ottoman army? The answer is yes. The second part, possibly. The Ottoman armies did include Arabs, Kurds and other 'nationalities' as well.

...and the point you want to make?

I am just wondering why only the Turks get the blame for everything that happened in the Ottoman times when as you say it was a mixture of many nationalities/races or whatever one would like to call it.

Those other nationalities never asked to be Turks, they were kidnapped then brain washed into thinking they were Turks.

Those peoples you refer to never thought of theselves as Turks. Only Ottomans. Muslim or gayri-muslim (non-muslim) Ottomans.