We maintain and continue this committee of correspondence in memory of our founder and mentor, Colonel W. Patrick Lang. The image to the right is Marcus, a character from William S. Burroughs’s “The Coming of the Purple Better One.” Colonel Lang would refer to Marcus sometimes in clever jest, sometimes in biting social commentary and sometimes simply because he liked Marcus. May everyone who corresponds here do so in a similar spirit.
Essential Writings on History, War, Religion and Strategy
From the Introduction:
“In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Col. Lang created his own blog which to this day still serves as a committee of correspondence for a large network of former military and intelligence officers, diplomats, and scholars of international affairs.
Since its launch in 2005, the Turcopolier website has had over 40 million unique visits.
Since leaving the government, he has also authored five books, including a Civil War espionage trilogy, a memoir of his years in government service, and a primer on human intelligence.
This present volume—his sixth book—is an anthology of some of his most important writings. The content speaks for itself. So have at it.”
A quick personal note on Pope Francis.
I was in St. Peter’s Square when the white smoke appeared. The rain that had been going on for days since Pope Benedict left the Vatican subsided — and the umbrellas finally got to go down as the crowd grew — by the time Pope Francis was introduced to the world.
Truth be told, at first I didn’t know who he was — other than his name. I thought he was another Argentinian, who worked for the curia. And I was disappointed.
I ran down the Via della Conciliazione to try to get a signal on my phone — the jamming devices that had been put in place for the conclave, to keep cardinals from spilling the beans during the secret process. I had media lined up for the night, and it would help to know what I was talking about.
The first buzz about the new pope, besides that he was from Latin America and that he took the name of the beloved Francis of Assisi — the latter which the Romans were loving — was, amusingly, in retrospect, a defense he had made of Pope Benedict on an issue involving sexual morality. (It’s too random to get into now.) It all seems amusing and quaint in retrospect, given all we’ve all lived through with him in the time since.
The more I learned about the former Cardinal Bergoglio, the more I loved. He was a Jesuit who had a love for St. Ignatius Loyola’s spiritual exercises — for all the jokes conservatives make about Jesuits, the exercises of their founder are their rigorous best.
That night, media friends had divided up and were translating an interview he did with a rabbi friend of his from Spanish. (Lopez was in intermediate Spanish in college, alas. It wasn’t going to do!)
This is all a long way of saying: I’ve loved the man since the beginning. He didn’t know it, but we spent some intimate time together during Covid — I would stay up or wake up at odd hours to pray morning Mass with him when I couldn’t go to Mass, I would watch him live on my laptop. Just praying with him was such a help in isolation. His sermons touched my heart and guided me. And it wasn’t the first time. In that Ignatian tradition, his morning homilies early on were challenging to me. I know many priests in the Vatican saw them as rants against their clericalism. But I heard a pastor urging us to get serious about being Christians.
As bizarre as it may sound, I felt shocked this morning when I saw that Pope Francis had died. Sure, he had spent all that time in the hospital, but we were pretending he was rallying. Even as he obviously didn’t look like he was when he met with JD Vance yesterday. Also, file this under way-too-honest: I’m totally jealous of Vance for having been with Pope Francis on Easter Sunday. For all the immigration politics and everything, that’s got to have an interior impact.
Pope Francis spent some time here in the U.S. with us. He risked his life visiting Iraq. There’s a lot to remember. I remember a man I loved and who challenged me in the best of ways.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/remembering-a-father-francis/
Comment: This is just one of the articles written by Kathryn Jean Lopez this morning about the death of Pope Francis. is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and an editor-at-large of National Review. She is the author of A YEAR WITH THE MYSTICS: VISIONARY WISDOM FOR DAILY LIVING. I was unaware of her until this morning. Her simple, personal words above mean more to me now knowing the depth of her faith.
In another article by her this morning, she said this:
If Pope Francis is going to be remembered for anything beyond our ideological takeaways, it should be for this:
*** His emphasis on mercy. That’s because most of us have something we think we can’t be forgiven for. Maybe it’s because we do it repetitively. Maybe it’s because we can’t even admit we’ve done it. Ask God for forgiveness. He never tires of forgiving us. And he wants us to be free. Now. Always. Eternally.
*** The Beatitudes are our identity card as Christians. Our world would look different if we took the Sermon on the Mount seriously. Seriously, get serious about living them.
*** No life was made to be thrown away. From yes, the unborn, to the suffering addict, to the refugee, the prisoner, the elderly. . . What are we doing to ourselves when we let our culture double down on death for the sake of perceived convenience?
That’s about as good a summary of Francis’ message to the World as I can find. I also want to reprise the thoughts of Colonel Lang that he posted in March 2013 when Cardinal Bergoglio was elevated to Pope Francis. Over the years, Colonel Lang did not hesitate to voice his displeasure with some of the things Pope Francis said and did, but he remained a Roman Catholic soldier to the end. Both of them did.
I wrote here earlier that the Catholic Church needed a moderate and evangelical pope. I think that is what the Catholic Church got. He was a Jesuit priest. This has great significance. The members of the Society of Jesus are teachers and missionaries who give up the possibility of being a bishop when they become members of their community. To become a bishop they must leave the order, but they never really leave in their hearts. They are intellectuals who are known in popular culture as “God’s marines.” Bishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States began his priestly life as a Jesuit trained in Belgium.
The name choice is significant. This man rode the bus back to the clerical hotel last night. He rode the bus with his former colleagues and let his limo follow along behind. Once at the hotel, he went to his room, collected his things and went down to the front desk to pay his bill in person. When reminded that he was now the proprietor and need not pay the bill, he said that he wanted to make sure that they all pay their bills. It will be interesting to see how he has the papal apartments decorated or if he lives there at all. Vatican City is a big place, he could live anywhere within it.
The possibilities for this man to lead by example on issues of poverty and the spread of the Good News of the gospels is virtually unlimited. pl
Pope Francis passed away early this morning. I learned of this in a comment from LeaNder who linked to the above painting by Thomas Cole, “The Pilgrim of the Cross at the End of His Journey.” I find it most appropriate. I’ll have more to say later.
This morning President Trump announced an Executive Order from the White House balcony prior to the annual Easter Egg Roll. “I just signed an executive order putting the flags of our country — all of them — at half-mast in honor of Pope Francis. He was a good man, worked hard. He loved the world. And it’s an honor to do that.” Even he knows better than to do and say otherwise I was pleased to see that.
TTG
By Robert Willmann
Back when putting together a movie was an attempt to create art rather than using a cookie cutter to make one, the film Jesus of Nazareth appeared as a production from Britain, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. A group of real actors and actresses starred in the movie, names that were not together in any other film: Robert Powell (as Jesus), Laurence Olivier, Ernest Borgnine, Anne Bancroft, James Earl Jones, Claudia Cardinale, James Farentino, Stacy Keach, Donald Pleasence, Christopher Plummer, James Mason, Anthony Quinn, Fernando Rey, Rod Steiger, Peter Ustinov, and others. For a group like this to be in one production was unheard of, before it was made, or since. Watching them perform doubles the effect of the story.
Six hours long, the movie also appeared as a four-part series. Here is a citation to watch the entire film.
http://rumble.com/v4m3u35-jesus-of-nazareth-full-movie-hd-english.html
(Nicole Perlroth) I do not care what your politics are. Every American needs to read this entire thread: DOGE went in. Data came out. Russians started logging in *with VALID DOGE passwords* in 15 minutes. Either Russia had access to DOGE devices or someone gave them access. DOGE is not a “government efficiency effort;” it is a national security threat.
(Matt Johansen) THREAD: A federal whistleblower just dropped one of the most disturbing cybersecurity disclosures I’ve ever read. He’s saying DOGE came in, data went out, and Russians started attempting logins with new valid DOGE passwords. Media’s coverage wasn’t detailed enough so I dug into his testimony:
Who’s the whistleblower? Daniel Berulis — a senior DevSecOps architect at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), formerly with TS/SCI clearance. He just told Congress the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) pulled off a covert cyber op inside a federal agency.
DOGE demanded root access. Not auditor access. Not admin. They were given “tenant owner” privileges in Azure — full control over the NLRB’s cloud, above the CIO himself. This is never supposed to happen. They disabled the logs. Berulis says DOGE demanded account creation with no recordkeeping. They even ordered security controls bypassed and disabled tools like network watcher so their actions wouldn’t be logged.
And then the data started flowing out. 10+ GB spike in outbound traffic. Exfiltration from NxGen, the NLRB’s legal case database. No corresponding inbound traffic. Unusual ephemeral containers and expired storage tokens. They used an external library that used AWS IP pools to rotate IPs for scraping and brute force attacks. They downloaded external GitHub tools like requests-ip-rotator and browserless — neither of which the agency uses.
The most damning claim in this statement IMO: Within 15 minutes of DOGE accounts being created… Attackers in Russia tried logging in using those new creds. Correct usernames and passwords. 2 options here. The DOGE device was hacked. And I don’t think I need to explain the 2nd.
Multi-factor authentication? Disabled. Someone downgraded Azure conditional access rules — MFA [multi-factor authentication] was off for mobile. This was not approved and not logged.
Cost spikes without new resources. Azure billing jumped 8% — likely from short-lived high-cost compute used for data extraction, then deleted.
Then came the intimidation. While preparing this disclosure, Berulis found a drone surveillance photo of himself taped to his front door with a threatening note. This was just a few days ago.
US-CERT was about to be called in, CISA’s cyber response team. But senior officials told them to stand down — no report, no investigation.
https://x.com/mattjay/status/1913023007263543565
Comment: This is from a thread on X highlighting some of the points from the Congressional testimony of a whistleblower from the NLRB. NPR did an excellent, in depth write up for those interested in the details of this story.
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security
This story shows that the DOGE boys know how to maneuver in large IT systems. At the very least, it also shows they have a cavalier attitude about the security of the data in those large IT systems. But given the lengths they go to in order to hide their activities on those systems, I think they know exactly what they’re doing. The data is being taken deliberately and in great secrecy. I can’t see how that can further the aims of uncovering fraud, waste and abuse or creating efficiency. Whether they are deliberately aiding the foreign theft of that data or are just indifferent to that theft is a question that Congress is left to answer. Our organizations devoted to cyber defense are being deliberately decapitated and hobbled by the Trump administration. I’m not sure it is being done out of vengeance or for more nefarious reasons.
“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you’re my only hope.”
TTG
Note: This story was first published on Turcopolier by Colonel Lang in 2021 and reposted last year by Walrus. A video version was published in 2014 on the old SST site, but Colonel Lang commented that he couldn’t find it again in 2021. I find it especially appropriate this year with Colonel Lang’s passing. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stoop to equating Colonel Lang with Jesus. He would be the first to rip me a new one and ban me as penance for voicing such foolish, maudlin and sacrilegious claptrap. It’s the soldier talk that appeals to me and I believe Colonel Lang saw that as well.
2025 Note: It’s been a few years now since we lost Colonel Lang. I hope he is pleased with this reposting as he sits in Heaven’s mess hall drinking coffee and chowing down on a heaping plate of SOS, powdered eggs and hash browns… still one of my favorite meals… especially from a mermite container.
——
Three Roman soldiers are in a drinking-place at eleven o’clock at night. There are barrels around the wall. Behind the wooden counter is a Hebrew wine-seller. The three Roman soldiers are a little cock-eyed.
1st Roman Soldier—You tried the red?
2d Soldier—No, I ain’t tried it.
1st Soldier—You better try it.
2d Soldier—All right, George, we’ll have a round of the red.
Hebrew Wine-seller—Here you are, gentlemen. You’ll like that. [He sets down an earthenware pitcher that he has filled from one of the casks.] That’s a nice little wine.
1st Soldier—Have a drink of it yourself. [He turns to the third Roman soldier who is leaning on a barrel.] What’s the matter with you?
3d Roman Soldier—I got a gut-ache.
2d Soldier—You’ve been drinking water.
1st Soldier—Try some of the red.
3d Soldier—I can’t drink the damn stuff. It makes my gut sour.
1st Soldier—You been out here too long.
3d Soldier—Hell don’t I know it?
1st Soldier—Say, George, can’t you give this gentleman something to fix up his stomach?
Hebrew Wine-seller—I got it right here.
[The third Roman soldier tastes the cup that the wine-seller has mixed for him.]
3d Soldier—Hey, what you put in that, camel chips?
Wine-seller—You drink that right down, Lootenant. That’ll fix you up right.
3d Soldier—Well, I couldn’t feel any worse.
1st Soldier—Take a chance on it. George fixed me up fine the other day.
Wine-seller—You were in bad shape, Lootenant. I know what fixes up a bad stomach.
[The third Roman soldier drinks the cup down.]
3d Roman Soldier—Jesus Christ. [He makes a face.]
2d Soldier—That false alarm!
1st Soldier—Oh, I don’t know. He was pretty good in there today.
2d Soldier—Why didn’t he come down off the cross?
1st Soldier—He didn’t want to come down off the cross. That’s not his play.
2d Soldier—Show me a guy that doesn’t want to come down off the cross.
1st Soldier—Aw, hell, you don’t know anything about it. Ask George there. Did he want to come down off the cross, George?
Wine-seller—I’ll tell you, gentlemen, I wasn’t out there. It’s a thing I haven’t taken any interest in.
2d Soldier—Listen, I seen a lot of them—here and plenty of other places. Any time you show me one that doesn’t want to get down off the cross when the time comes—when the time comes, I mean—I’ll climb right up with him.
1st Soldier—I thought he was pretty good in there today.
3d Soldier—He was all right.
2d Roman Soldier—You guys don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not saying whether he was good or not. What I mean is, when the time comes. When they first start nailing him, there isn’t none of them wouldn’t stop it if they could.
1st Soldier—Didn’t you follow it, George?
Wine-seller—No, I didn’t take any interest in it, Lootenant.
1st Soldier—I was surprised how he acted.
3d Soldier—The part I don’t like is the nailing them on. You know, that must get to you pretty bad.
2d Soldier—It isn’t that that’s so bad, as when they first lift ’em up. [He makes a lifting gesture with his two palms together.] When the weight starts to pull on ’em. That’s when it gets ’em.
3d Roman Soldier—It takes some of them pretty bad.
1st Soldier—Ain’t I seen ’em? I seen plenty of them. I tell you, he was pretty good in there today.
[The second Roman soldier smiles at the Hebrew wine-seller.]
2d Soldier—You’re a regular Christer, big boy.
1st Soldier—Sure, go on and kid him. But listen while I tell you something. He was pretty good in there today.
2d Soldier—What about some more wine?
[The wine-seller looks up expectantly. The third Roman soldier is sitting with his head down. He does not look well.]
3d Soldier—I don’t want any more.
2d Soldier—Just for two, George.
[The wine-seller puts out a pitcher of wine, a size smaller than the last one.
He leans forward on the wooden counter.]
1st Roman Soldier—You see his girl?
2d Soldier—Wasn’t I standing right by her?
1st Soldier—She’s a nice-looker.
2d Soldier—I knew her before he did. [He winks at the wine-seller.]
1st Soldier—I used to see her around the town.
2d Soldier—She used to have a lot of stuff. He never brought her no good luck.
1st Soldier—Oh, he ain’t lucky. But he looked pretty good to me in there today.
2d Soldier—What become of his gang?
1st Soldier—Oh, they faded out. Just the women stuck by him.
2d Roman Soldier—They were a pretty yellow crowd. When they seen him go up there they didn’t want any of it.
1st Soldier—The women stuck all right.
2d Soldier—Sure, they stuck all right.
1st Roman Soldier—You see me slip the old spear into him?
2d Roman Soldier—You’ll get into trouble doing that some day.
1st Soldier—It was the least I could do for him. I’ll tell you he looked pretty good to me in there today.
Hebrew Wine-seller—Gentlemen, you know I got to close.
1st Roman Soldier—We’ll have one more round.
2d Roman Soldier—What’s the use? This stuff don’t get you anywhere. Come on, let’s go.
1st Soldier—Just another round.
3d Roman Soldier—[Getting up from the barrel.] No, come on. Let’s go. I feel like hell tonight.
1st Soldier—Just one more.
2d Soldier—No, come on. We’re going to go. Good-night, George. Put it on the bill.
Wine-seller—Good-night, gentlemen. [He looks a little worried.] You couldn’t let me have a little something on account, Lootenant?
2d Roman Soldier—What the hell, George! Wednesday’s payday.
Wine-seller—It’s all right, Lootenant. Good-night, gentlemen.
[The three Roman soldiers go out the door into the street.]
[Outside in the street.]
2d Roman Soldier—George is a kike just like all the rest of them.
1st Roman Soldier—Oh, George is a nice fella.
2d Soldier—Everybody’s a nice fella to you tonight.
3d Roman Soldier—Come on, let’s go up to the barracks. I feel like hell tonight.
2d Soldier—You been out here too long.
3d Roman Soldier—No, it ain’t just that. I feel like hell.
2d Soldier—You been out here too long. That’s all.
CURTAIN
Write about whatever blows your skirt up, but I recommend this WSJ video explaining the history of William McKinleys tariff policies. I can now see why Trump is so enamored with McKinley and his tariffs, but I don’t think he realizes this is no longer the Gilded Age. Even McKinley became a free trade advocate.
https://m.wsj.net/video/20250204/38a9364c-142b-4656-afe3-b6f7f4f504e2/2/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8
In February, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine officially launched the “Contract 18-24” project. This is a voluntary initiative for Ukrainians aged 18-24 who are ready to join the Defense Forces for one year. After determining the candidate’s suitability for military service, the commander of the military unit signs a one-year contract with them. A mandatory condition of the contract is direct participation in combat operations in areas of military (combat) action.
After signing the contract, the commander issues an order appointing the candidate to the selected or proposed vacant position and officially enlists them in the military unit, providing all necessary support and resources. Additionally, within three working days, the commander must inform the head of the Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center, where the individual is registered for military service, as well as their employer, about their enlistment. Once the contract is signed and the service member begins fulfilling their duties, the first installment of the financial reward, 200,000 UAH (~4,470 EUR), is paid within five working days.
After signing the contract, the recruit is sent for intensive training, which includes: 45 days of basic general military training, 14 days of specialized training, and a 14 day adaptation course within the military unit.
After completing training and adaptation, the service member begins duty in the selected unit. From this moment, they are assigned to combat (or special) tasks, which is confirmed by a separate order from the unit commander. Based on this order, the second installment of the financial reward, 300,000 UAH (~6,700 EUR), is paid. During service, the service member also receives a monthly salary according to their position, along with additional payments for direct participation in combat operations. Upon completion of the one-year contract and issuance of the order for removal from the personnel list, the service member, provided all contractual obligations have been fulfilled, receives the final installment of the financial reward, 500,000 UAH (~11,175 EUR). From this moment, they gain the right to apply for a preferential mortgage with a “zero” interest rate, as well as the right to travel abroad freely.
The volunteer also decides for themselves whether to continue service or return to civilian life. The law guarantees exemption from mobilization for 12 months after the completion of the military contract. Volunteers can pick which unit to join, and the initiative gradually expands to more Ukrainian units. The following units currently accept volunteers from the Contract 18-24 initiative.
https://militaryland.net/news/contract-18-24-the-new-army-project-in-detail/
Comment: Only in April 2024 did Zelensky sign new conscription laws, passed by the Verkhovna Rada, that lowered the conscription age from 27 to 25. The thought of not drafting the youth in a time of war always seemed odd to me, but preserving the youth of Ukraine for the future seems to be the point of that decision.
A training period of nine weeks isn’t too shabby for this stage of the war if that training period stands. Initial US Army training in WWII was thirteen weeks. I’ve read stories of only two weeks of training for drafted/recruited Ukrainian convicts and plenty of tales of Russians being captured after being recruited/drafted just days before.
What I find more important than the nine weeks of training is that the recruits will go to established and experienced units rather than being used to create new brigades from scratch. That was a horribly misguided policy. The young recruits will get their real training with their squadmates and NCOs. Hopefully this training will begin before being engaged in combat, but that certainly is not guaranteed.
TTG
DONETSK, April 10 – RIA Novosti. At least 200 hours of practical flights at a training ground where conditions are created that simulate combat operations are needed to train an operator of attack FPV drones, Artem Mozho, an operator of attack FPV drones of the reconnaissance company of the 428th regiment of the Center group, told RIA Novosti.
“Training servicemen from scratch requires at least a month, since there is a theoretical part and a practical part. In the practical part, we train at this training ground, at least 200 hours are needed to hit targets well and accurately, to practice all the skills. The more he (the operator – ed.) practices the hours of flight, the more effective his hit will be,” the UAV operator said. According to him, both recruits and experienced operators undergo training at the training ground, honing their skills.
“On the obstacle course we have narrow openings in the form of windows and houses. There is a model of a house – the operator can fly into windows and doorways. Further along the course we have a forest – an imitation of a forest, so that the boys can learn to parry in the forest,” the serviceman said about the conditions created at the training ground, as close as possible to a combat flight of an attack FPV drone. He also added that for practicing techniques for hitting targets, the training ground has a model of an infantry fighting vehicle (IFV – ed.) with a landing compartment, a hangar and a dugout of a simulated enemy. “A large number of servicemen are interested in acquiring piloting skills,” the interlocutor said in conclusion.
https://ria.ru/20250410/tsentr-2010372828.html
Comment: I don’t think anyone can argue that Ukraine and Russia are the current leaders in drone warfare. I was surprised the Russian Army, or at least this one unit, puts their drone operators through a month of training including 200 hours of flying drones. I find that impressive in light of how little training Russian infantrymen are getting before being thrown into the meat grinder. What little drone training I’ve seen in our Army consists of a week of training by a contractor course, more an introduction to drones than a true training course. I certainly hope it’s addressed in our officer and NCO training courses. Not sure what China is doing in this field, but I’ve seen a video of anti-drone training for the PLA that was fairly elaborate. It emphasized digging in with overhead cover and wire mesh anti-drone screens on the dugouts as well as how to shoot down drones.
The closest thing to this I’ve experienced was in light infantry training at both Fort Benning and in the 25th Infantry Division. We dug in whenever we stopped moving and place a heavy emphasis on camouflage and concealment. We used wire communications to reduce our electronic signature. When moving we always employed air guards and practiced how to engage attacking aircraft with our infantry weapons. That included live fire exercises against ballistic rockets. The threat then was enemy helicopters and fast movers. Today’s drone threat is far more dangerous in my opinion. And I don’t see our Army taking this threat as serious as it should.
TTG
Abstract – The Maltese archipelago is a small island chain that is among the most remote in the Mediterranean. Humans were not thought to have reached and inhabited such small and isolated islands until the regional shift to Neolithic lifeways, around 7.5 thousand years ago (ka)1. In the standard view, the limited resources and ecological vulnerabilities of small islands, coupled with the technological challenges of long-distance seafaring, meant that hunter-gatherers were either unable or unwilling to make these journeys2,3,4. Here we describe chronological, archaeological, faunal and botanical data that support the presence of Holocene hunter-gatherers on the Maltese islands. At this time, Malta’s geographical configuration and sea levels approximated those of the present day, necessitating seafaring distances of around 100 km from Sicily, the closest landmass. Occupations began at around 8.5 ka and are likely to have lasted until around 7.5 ka. These hunter-gatherers exploited land animals, but were also able to take advantage of marine resources and avifauna, helping to sustain these groups on a small island. Our discoveries document the longest yet-known hunter-gatherer sea crossings in the Mediterranean, raising the possibility of unknown, precocious connections across the wider region.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08780-y
Comment: The full Nature article is quite lengthy and is a big tough to get through unless you have an avid interest in archeology or anthropology. Even though I’m an anthropologist by schooling, my interest was spurred by the thought of Mesolithic hunters and gathers building a boat to voyage to an unknown land over the horizon. Bundìn er bàtlaus mađur.
There are quite a few archeological digs of stone age dugout canoes. And much like Thor Heyerdahl, a Czech professor of anthropology, Radomir Tichy, set out to prove that such dugout canoes could accomplish such a voyage. He and a band of students recreated several dugout canoes, based on similar craft found at more northern European archeological sites. His second canoe was a replica of the Neolithic Lake Marmotta find in Lake Bracciano, Italy. The stories of “The Monoxylon Expeditions” are a good read for everyone, not just anthropologists. There are also videos of at least one of the voyages.
Earlier efforts in such experimental archeology were carried out by Professor Harry Tzalas, of the Hellenic Institute of Ancient and Mediaeval Alexandrian Studies. But he chose to reconstruct a reed (papyrus) boat that was, at the time, archaeologically unattested in the Mesolithic/Neolthic Mediterranean region, rather than a dugout canoe that is archaeologically attested. Tzalas did this because he did not believe that dugout canoes were seaworthy, although later disproven by Tichy’s monoxyl reconstructions. (Monoxyl being just a scientific term for dugout canoe.) The reed raft tradition was well documented in Mediterranean archeology and existed on the island of Corfu until the early 1970s and it could be constructed with simple Neolithic tools. Plus Tzalas created his boat soon after the voyages of Heyerdahl’s Ra and Kon-Tiki, although those designs were not Neolithic.
TTG
