From Wiley-Blackwell via Eurekalert
Ancient Arabic writings help scientists piece together past climate
Iraqi sources from 9th and 10th centuries give new meteorological insights – The team believes the sources show Iraq to have experienced a greater frequency of significant climate events and severe cold weather than today.
Ancient manuscripts written by Arabic scholars can provide valuable meteorological information to help modern scientists reconstruct the climate of the past, a new study has revealed. The research, published in Weather, analyses the writings of scholars, historians and diarists in Iraq during the Islamic Golden Age between 816-1009 AD for evidence of abnormal weather patterns.
Reconstructing climates from the past provides historical comparison to modern weather events and valuable context for climate change. In the natural world trees, ice cores and coral provide evidence of past weather, but from human sources scientists are limited by the historical information available. Until now researchers have relied on official records detailing weather patterns including air force reports during WW2 and 18th century ship’s logs.
Now a team of Spanish scientists from the Universidad de Extremadura have turned to Arabic documentary sources from the 9th and 10th centuries (3rd and 4th in the Islamic calendar). The sources, from historians and political commentators of the era, focus on the social and religious events of the time, but do refer to abnormal weather events.
“Climate information recovered from these ancient sources mainly refers to extreme events which impacted wider society such as droughts and floods,” said lead author Dr Fernando Domínguez-Castro. “However, they also document conditions which were rarely experienced in ancient Baghdad such as hailstorms, the freezing of rivers or even cases of snow.”
Baghdad was a centre for trade, commerce and science in the ancient Islamic world. In 891 AD Berber geographer al-Ya’qubi wrote that the city had no rival in the world, with hot summers and cold winters, climatic conditions which favored strong agriculture.
While Baghdad was a cultural and scientific hub many ancient documents have been lost to a history of invasions and civil strife. However, from the surviving works of writers including al-Tabari (913 AD), Ibn al-Athir (1233 AD) and al-Suyuti (1505 AD) some meteorological information can be rescued.
When collated and analysed the manuscripts revealed an increase of cold events in the first half of the 10th century. This included a significant drop of temperatures during July 920 AD and three separate recordings of snowfall in 908, 944 and 1007. In comparison the only record of snow in modern Baghdad was in 2008, a unique experience in the living memories of Iraqis.
“These signs of a sudden cold period confirm suggestions of a temperature drop during the tenth century, immediately before the Medieval Warm Period,” said Domínguez-Castro. “We believe the drop in July 920 AD may have been linked to a great volcanic eruption but more work would be necessary to confirm this idea.”
The team believes the sources show Iraq to have experienced a greater frequency of significant climate events and severe cold weather than today. While this study focused on Iraq it demonstrates the wider potential for reconstructing the climate from an era before meteorological instruments and formal records.
“Ancient Arabic documentary sources are a very useful tool for finding eye witness descriptions which support the theories made by climate models,” said Domínguez-Castro. “The ability to reconstruct past climates provides us with useful historical context for understanding our own climate. We hope this potential will encourage Arabic historians and climatologists to work together to increase the climate data rescued from across the Islamic world.”
evilincandescentbulb, the wave of late medieval witch burnings coincided during prolonged colds spell in Europe and the accused women were often charged with bringing in early frosts and cold winters.
There are some curious parallels between the CAGW frenzy and the witch scare. First, it took a while to develop the “hypothesis” with learned discussion over such points as whether witches physically, flew or imagined that they did, and what role the Devil played. Church law became involved from the start, at first making it a heresy to believe that witches physically flew, then that they only imagined to do so. The most prestigious scholars and the top seminaries and universities were involved in the “study” of witchcraft and its supposed effects, and the Church and the secular governments directed and protected their research and declared the “science” as settled, with heavy penalties for skepticism. Tremendous amounts of propaganda were published and issued from pulpits and market squares with the intent to enrage and terrify the population. An examination of the economics behind the craze, suggest that the religious fervour behind the craze was stoked-up to provide an unassailable fig leaf for a substantial revenue grab. The Church and governments collected donations, fines, bribes and duties to “save” the population and nature from the malevolent “actions” of witches. The victims were typically widowed women with property which would have gone to relatives, but upon their conviction and execution this property was split up between the Church and secular authorities according to well-developed formulas. A similar process occurred with the heretic persecutions and because serious money was involved in both of these scams, we have good records on the collection methods and the sums involved. The French historian Le Roy Ladurie did some work on the Fournier Register covering the heresy Inquisition in mountain village of Montaillou in the Occitan region of Southern France and the late great anthropologist, Marvin Harris, wrote a readable book which in part covers the economic dimension behind the European witch hunts in his, Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches.
These cases illustrate the difficulty of fighting such massive fraudulent schemes. As with the CAGW scare today, the “science” is the fig leaf, the scare propaganda is the delivery system, but the money is the driver and the end game. While it’s important to clarify the science, by itself this effort is fruitless, equally if not more important is to undermine the propaganda and to expose and disrupt the money flow, without which such schemes always collapse under the weight of their obvious idiocy.
evilincandescentbulb, PS: Sorry, I’m on a roll here, it seems. I forgot to mention that similar dynamics were involved in the persecution of Europe’s Jewish communities and that those cases are even more obvious and better documented. Again, there are patterns and dynamics there which you’ll note resemble those of the CAGW craze…although, thank goodness, without the insane brutality, craziness and violence. So far, at least.
Typically, Jews would be invited to a city or a duchy to manage taxes, mint coinage or lend money to the Church authorities, monarchs, nobility, the emerging burgher bourgeoisie and land owning peasantry. Once these services were no longer needed and the lenders rang up unsustainable debts, the friars, priests and others would “suddenly discover” awful things in the Jewish scriptures and fantastic rumours would emerge as if out of nowhere about Jews with horns and hoofs, well poisonings, blood libels and such.
Usually, the process began with the kehilla, (the Jewish community self-government) paying fines or protection bribes and writing off debts to the important people, which usually just bought them time. Once the money ran dry, though, the community would be expelled if “lucky.” As with the other apparently religiously-motivated persections, the real estate property again being split-up between Church and secular authorities, and the case of the loans, the Church would typically take these over and begin collections with the help of secular militia. In many cases, where the hatred reached a feverish pitch, and it became useful to cover-up debts, the Jewish communities would be totally annihilated.
As with the witches and heretics, the officially sanctioned and aggressively defended “settled science” flew under the flag of theology. The dynamics were quite complex over the length and breadth of the continent, with some regions and Church sectors discovering religious tolerance, especially if they were in dire need of the Jews’ services, while others, where Jews were no longer needed or competed against emerging Christian financiers and capitalists, “discovered” the terrible evils of Jews.
It’s unfortunate that historians have almost exclusively focused on the obvious and manifested causes of these cases. Most studies fixate on the theology and belief systems behind the heresy, witchcraft or anti-Jewish charges, with little if anything on the substantial material causes. Superstition, religious fervour, beliefs and philosophies are important, but they do seem to flourish or perish depending on what they can earn and so, I’d say, it always pays to apply the cui bono (who profits) rule on any unusual social phenomena we encounter.
Peter Kovachev said @ur momisugly February 29, 2012 at 7:26 am
Nothing much to argue with there. Of course while the disciplines scientific continue to denigrate history as “a pack of lies” they will ever fall victim to such scams. Being human is ever interesting 🙂
True, Pompous Git, I’ve always marvelled how it’s often the scientists who fall victim to the most ludicrous pseudoscientific scams, especially those outside of their area of expertise. I’m certain that the majority of self-declared “climate scientists” genuinely believe in the science, not really understanding that what they actually believe in is the cause and that what lubricates their enthusiasm are the material rewards. Historiography can never attain the certainties the physical sciences can. The reliance on spotty evidence and biased recordings and assessments will always bedevil the field. Still, this shouldn’t prevent the honest historian from scrupulously applying the strict rules of the scientific method. Alas, this is not where the fad of “post-normal” science is dragging all disciplines towards. It’s essentially an obscurantist reaction against empirical science, with its re-warming of Marxism and Neo-Marxism, its abandonment of “bourgeois” objectivity and adoption of whatever the Hell are “narratives,” social justice imperatives and sexy causes. Well, the pendulum will swing back again, eventually and after much damage has been done, although seeing from your website how your beard is as grey as mine is becoming, probably not in our lifetimes!
“agfosterjr says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:37 pm
Armagh Observatory says:
February 28, 2012 at 2:55 pm
“…but the Arabs never really made any great discoveries in science or engineering.”
=====================================================================
It doesn’t get much sillier than that. Algebra? The zero? “The Book of Ingenious Devices”?”
I stated that “They just developed the discoveries and inventions of others and stagnated when they could take a basic idea no further.”
The Arabs swept over the territories of the Romano- Greek world and the Persian Empire and in doing so, discovered the libraries and academies containing the works of all the philosophers, engineers and scientists of the ancient world.
They will come across the instruments of navigation, the methods of calculation, geometry, mathematics and architecture and law and all the other achivements of the thousands of year history of the Greek, Roman and Persian worlds.
They translated these libraries into Arabic and following the Korans stricture to Learn, began to study and in doing so added to and improved upon the works of the ancients.
Of course they developed algebra, but only after absorbing the works of Greek and Babylonian scholarship.
Zero comes from Indian and Persian mathematics, as do the so called “Arabic” numerals. They didnt invent these themselves, what they did was to bring all this ancient knowledge together within one culture, Islam. In doing so they saved it from being lost to history despite this being the work of Pagans. Considering that the Library of Alexandria. had been burned to the ground by Christian fundamentalists, its a good thing too. They did not, however, make any great original discoveries themselves.
They took the work of the ancients and improved upon it, by an understanding of it and intellectual evolution, but they remained stuck in the world view of Aristotle so could not take it any further as they failed to make the cultural leap away from myth, magic and the need to for the supernatural.
There was not an Arabic parallel to Newton, who started his adult life as the last of the sorcerers, looking for the Philosopher’s Stone, but was able to do a 180 degree intellectual turn and write the Principia.
The Arabs could best be described as the librarians of the ancient world.
If they saw a little further than Archimedes et al, it was because they were standing on his shoulders, while Newton saw further than anyone until then because he was looking at the Universe in an entire different way.
ie The right way up.
Armagh Observatory said @ur momisugly February 29, 2012 at 4:05 pm
thus clearly showing you haven’t a clue what you are talking about. Amr ibn al-‘As burnt the library at Alexandria in September 641 AD. He was a Muslim, not a “fundamentalist Christian”. Christian fundamentalism, arose out of British and American Protestantism in the late 19thC and early 20thC among evangelical Christians, so there is absolutely no way they could have destroyed the library at Alexandria hundreds of years before they existed. Methinks you need to take your meds more regularly..
As for the Book of Ingenious Devices, do you really, really believe that such wonderous things were devised without reference to books written by others in the distant past?
Are you seriously telling me that in the two hundred years since invasion by newly converted Islamic camel traders with no history of anything ,other than worshipping a large ferrous meteorite, produced works such as this spontenously?
The Caliphate had access to every ancient work imaginable. Enough to stir the imagination to recreate the contents and desire to plagerise. In oder to make one’s name one merely had to copy ancient Greek manuscripts into Arabic, claim it as your own work and destroy the original.
Chances are another copy would never turn up and in this case, they were right, so far, but Im quite sure, somewhere in the sands of Egypt or Arabia is buried another copy waiting to be discovered.
Funny how archeology is illegal in Saudi Arabia…
Wouldnt it be fascinating to excavate ancient Mecca and Medina for the real history of pre- Islamic and early Islamic Arabia.
The Libray of Alexandria was actually set fire to by Julius Caesar, by accident during his burning of the Egyptian fleet in 48BC. The remaining books were then stored in the Serapeum in a temple complex.
How you define Christian fundamentalist is up to you.
I define Christians who destroy the holy places of others out of bigotry and intolerance ,at any time in history as fundamentalists.
Whatever the Muslim fundamentalists burned when they turned up in 644 seemed to have already been well flattened by then.
Decree of Theodosius, destruction of the Serapeum in 391. Paganism was made illegal by an edict of the Emperor Theodosius I in 391. The holdings of the Great Library (both at the Mouseion and at the Serapeum) were on the precincts of pagan temples. While this had previously lent them a measure of protection, in the days of the Christian Roman Empire, whatever protection this had previously afforded them had ceased.[2] The temples of Alexandria were closed by Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria in AD 391.[29]
Socrates of Constantinople provides the following account of the destruction of the temples in Alexandria, in the fifth book of his Historia Ecclesiastica, written around 440:
At the solicitation of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, the emperor issued an order at this time for the demolition of the heathen temples in that city; commanding also that it should be put in execution under the direction of Theophilus. Seizing this opportunity, Theophilus exerted himself to the utmost to expose the pagan mysteries to contempt. And to begin with, he caused the Mithreum to be cleaned out, and exhibited to public view the tokens of its bloody mysteries. Then he destroyed the Serapeum, and the bloody rites of the Mithreum he publicly caricatured; the Serapeum also he showed full of extravagant superstitions, and he had the phalli of Priapus carried through the midst of the forum. … Thus this disturbance having been terminated, the governor of Alexandria, and the commander-in-chief of the troops in Egypt, assisted Theophilus in demolishing the heathen temples.
—Socrates; Roberts, Alexander; Donaldson, James (1885), “Socrates: Book V: Chapter 16”, in Philip Schaff et al., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, II, II
The Serapeum housed part of the Great Library, but it is not known how many, if any, books were contained in it at the time of destruction. Notably, the passage by Socrates makes no clear reference to a library or its contents, only to religious objects. An earlier text by the historian Ammianus Marcellinus indicates that, whatever books might earlier have been housed at the Serapeum, none was there in the last decade of the 4th century. The pagan author Eunapius of Sardis witnessed the demolition, and though he detested Christians, and was a scholar, his account of the Serapeum’s destruction makes no mention of any library. When Orosius discusses the destruction of the Great Library at the time of Caesar in the sixth book of his History against the Pagans, he writes:
So perished that marvelous monument of the literary activity of our ancestors, who had gathered together so many great works of brilliant geniuses. In regard to this, however true it may be that in some of the temples there remain up to the present time book chests, which we ourselves have seen, and that, as we are told, these were emptied by our own men in our own day when these temples were plundered—this statement is true enough—yet it seems fairer to suppose that other collections had later been formed to rival the ancient love of literature, and not that there had once been another library which had books separate from the four hundred thousand volumes mentioned, and for that reason had escaped destruction.
—Paulus Orosius, vi.15.32
Re, AO’s endless BS:
For starters, Newton was hardly a mystic turned rationalist: his alchemy and mysticism consumed more of his effort the longer he lived. He can correctly be said to have stagnated in later life, much like Einstein.
Mohammed was illiterate, as were most of his followers. The Koran is so called because it was originally a memorized collection of recitations. Accordingly the earliest conquests hardly entailed an assimilation of learning from the conquered civilizations. But unlike Christianity, which from its outset constituted an affirmation of distinction between the legal system and the ethical life, Islam redefined the Torah of the Jews; like Judaism, Islam was a legal system. The establishment of this system on an international scale required political institutions and literacy.
The Arabs of Mohammed’s time had no script. They adapted the Syriac script for their purposes, and the Koran was early written down. Then legal commentary, the Hadith–equivalent to the Talmud–was built up. This new political and legal system, with lingua franca and newly devised script, incorporated the most enlightened cultures of the day, and the purposeful aquisition of books and information was symptomatic of the scientific and philosophical blossoming. Translators were valued as wards of the court, and I challenge AO to find a single example of destruction of an original for purposes of plagiarism. My hell, what BS!
Yeah, the zero had prededent, and true, the authors of the “Book of Ingenious Devices” were Persians with a family pedigree in engineering. The point being, such talent was valued! And built on. In the Caliphate Christians and Jews mingled with Moslems in collecting, translating, and commenting on thousands of documents. And the Christians, Jews, and Moslems all contributed to learning that put the northerners to shame. All under the auspices of the Islamic Caliphate.
“Arab” can mean many things, but it refers in most times and places to the language one speaks. Accordingly there were Arab Christians, Arab Jews, and Arab Moslems. Arabic speakers have constituted a minority in the Islamic world for centuries, if not for a millenium. But the scholars learned Arabic, as the Europeans learned Latin. There is little correspondence between genes from the Arabian penninsula and Islamic learning, but somehow Mohammed’s preaching led to a veritable scientific flowering in Africa and the Middle East which far surpassed anything then extant in the world. Anyone who doubts this has never read a book on the history of science, and again, AO had best hit the books. –AGF
It is interesing that having accused me of “endless BS”, agfosterjr goes on to agree with most of my assertions.
Newton may have remained a fan of alchemy, as was common in his time, but he still produced the Principia and smashed the blocking hold that that the Aristotelian imodel had had on thought for the previous nineteen centuries, and was one of the 17th century thinkers who heralded the Enlightenment. Agreed?
Good.
I am aware that Mohammed was illiterate. Muslims make much of this fact as use it as “proof” that his so called devine revelations which make up the Koran came direct from Al-Lah and were not his own original thoughts.
(I wasnt aware that their script was derived from Syriac, though. Interesting as the main contact with the Roman world the Meccans had, was trading camels twice yearly into Syria)
Had he been acknowledged to be literate, it would be a simple matter to convince anyone that much of the Koran was plagerised from Jewish and Christian works. Conveniently, he is also said to have little contact with Jews or Christians, so he he didnt pick it up from them verbally either-so there!
Going off at a tangent, the tale of a simple, illiterate, Arabic speaking Bedouin shepherd boy being visted by Gabriel with a very important message from God in Arabic, is an interesting parallel to the tale of Gabriel contacting a young Aramiac speaking Jewish girl with a very important message from God in Aramiac. (which had apparently occured some time previously)
If you’re claiming to have a new revelation of an old established religion, its important for your devine messenger to be consistant in his approach, yeah?
As for plagerism, if you can convince others that you had no knowledge of the original Jewish works, then your inclusion of the Torah into your new work could only have come from God, eah? You dont have to destroy anything.
Just convince everyone that you had no previous knowledge of Jewish writings and eventually say, to everyones amazement: “Hey look, these guys have the same stuff! I told you it came from God! Heres the proof! Just call me The Prophet”
I have no idea if complete Greek or Persian works were plagerised and the originals destroyed.
Just using an outragious bit of speculation to make the point that a formally illiterate culture 150 years out of the camel trade would be unlikely to produce such works as the Book of Ingenious Devices spontaneously without reference to a great body of earlier work.
(You dont get to the ’63 Ford Mustang without someone first inventing the steam engine, then someone else, decades later inventing the diesel engine then someone else inventing the petrol engine then someone else making a V8.)
And of course it took 10000 years for the steam engine to be invented
AO: “Had he been acknowledged to be literate, it would be a simple matter to convince anyone that much of the Koran was plagerised from Jewish and Christian works.”
So are you expressing skepticism regarding Mohammed’s illiteracy? Are you claiming he had access to a written Bible? In what language? How do you you explain that a good share of the Koran’s frequent allusions to the Bible don’t get the story straight? It’s pretty obvious that he was going by memory.
AO: “(I wasnt aware that their script was derived from Syriac, though. Interesting as the main contact with the Roman world the Meccans had, was trading camels twice yearly into Syria)”
So are you suggesting there was an Arabic script extant in the Hejaz of the 7th century, and that Mohammed and his contemporaries were acquainted with it? Why did the Nabateans have to come up with their own script? Maybe you’ll even claim that Mohammed had an Arabic Bible handy. Or maybe you’ll claim that Mohammed did write his revelations down at the start. Hard to tell what you think.
AO: “Had he been acknowledged to be literate, it would be a simple matter to convince anyone that much of the Koran was plagerised from Jewish and Christian works. Conveniently, he is also said to have little contact with Jews or Christians, so he he didnt pick it up from them verbally either-so there!”
I don’t know where you get this nonsense. Any accounting of Mohammed’s teaching with the slightest sophistication fully acknowledges his thorough dependence on Jewish sources. At the same time his acquaintance with Christian teaching is seen to be slight by comparison. He accepts the virgin birth and the prophethood of Jesus, but Islam is in essence Rabbinic Judaism recast. Christians have priests; Jews have scholars–the priesthood is extinct.. Likewise Islam has scholars and no priests. The rabbis act as lawyers as do their Islamic counterparts; they have little concern with theology, which is the main concern of the Christian priests.
It may well be that Mohammed had hoped to reconcile Christians and Jews, but it is even more likely that he was exasperated with the inaccessibility of both systems: you had to know how to read foreign languages in unfamiliar scripts to navigate their law and religion, and his native literature, great though it was, was restricted to oral tradition–they had no literature in the strictest sense. So Islam, like Hasidic Judaism and a few elements of Protestantism, began as a rebellion against a clerical monopoly, but as Hasidic Judaism quickly reassimilated the older learning, so Islam quickly adopted letters and began to accumulate judicial precedent.
If your intent is to cast Islam as false or inferior religion as compared to other great religions we can only dismiss your approach as hopelessly parochial. We can’t really communicate if you are unable to step back a few paces and consider the subject as might an extraterrestrial anthropologist, leaving your prejudices and preconceived notions behind. Do you believe in a God who cares nothing for the heathen of Arabia, or do you believe he is unable to speak to them?
If we are to judge Mohammed by his fruits, the Islamic Rennaisance speaks very highly of him. –AGF
Wow BBC WS prog Science In Action they were talking about records showing in Bagdad the river used to freeze then after 990 it didn’t any more then Richard Black came on and said it seems the MWP stretched as far as Iraq ..I thought he was a MWP denier ?
“So are you expressing skepticism regarding Mohammed’s illiteracy?
No, I would be astonished if a simple shepherd could read in the 7th century anywhere.
Are you claiming he had access to a written Bible? In what language?
No, but Jews and Christians in Arabia most certainly would have had all the works that became the Bible (and no doubt more works which would be considered apocraphal, if not down right heretical in the Roman world of the 7th century. For evidence, consider the Nag Hammadi Gospels in Egypt and the recently discovered works discovered in Jordan- 1st century Christian Gospel writings wrapped in cloth bearing the Menorah, stored buried in a clay pot stamped with a menorah.
“How do you you explain that a good share of the Koran’s frequent allusions to the Bible don’t get the story straight? It’s pretty obvious that he was going by memory.”
And here you reach the crux of the emigma that links Judiasm, Christianity and Islam and provides clues to what may be the real origin of what became Christianity.
As you state in your earlier post, it is quite clear to any sophisiticated observer that Mohammed’s source material came from contacts with Jewish and Christian communities, and not direct from God as claimed.
The references in the Koran to Jesus are pretty much in line with the Jewish idea of this person- that he wasnt the son of God, was as human as you or I and that he wasnt crucified, but that “they thought they had”
As he wasnt dead, his reappearence after the crucifiction event couldnt be described in any way as miraculous and no doubt weren’t claimed to be by the people who knew him as a brother and friend.
When, after 15 years, Paul of Tarsus got involved and his cult of the risen Christ took a different path from the messianic Jewish one, Jerusalem wasnt a good place for those who knew what really happened.
When Pauline Christianity became the Imperial religion, 4th century, the Roman Empire wasnt a good place for those who knew what really happened (Gnostics and others) and after persecution, they fled to live among the Jewish communities down the Red Sea coast of Arabia.
Not far from the coast in north east Arabia is Mecca and there are reports of Jewsih communities here in the 7th century.
Tenous, maybe- but it could explain where Mohammed got his information and why the Koran’s view of Jesus seems so wrong to Western Christians today. Despite the clear Jewish source of Islam, every Muslim I have put this to denies any contact withe the Jews and isists it all came direct from God to Mohammed
It’s nice to see Jean Grove’s book ‘The Little Ice Age’ (or rather books: the second edition, completed by her husband Dick Grove after Jean’s death, is quite a different beast from the first) getting so many name-checks these days.
A word of warning though. Jean herself was a sceptic of the old school, not the new one: which is to say, she was happy to disagree with everyone in the room if she felt the evidence at which she was looking warranted it; but she knew there was no place for programmatic cynicism in academic research. She was honest enough, and dignified enough, to accept new evidence, and to see the limits of her own data, and her own interpretations of it.
She was therefore quite unflustered by the fact that some younger scholars in the 1990s disagreed with her accounts of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. She was perfectly happy that her accounts of past climate perturbations didn’t correspond with other views of global climate history.
But as the rest of the world caught up with her life-time’s interest, she did not for one single minute or second challenge the theory of the Greenhouse effect, nor the evidence for various sorts of anthropogenic impact on the earth’s atmosphere in more recent history which began to take shape after the first edition of her book was published.
If you want to get a sense of a position perfectly in accordance with hers, based on more recent information, which would reflect her own view on the matter were she still alive to voice it, you might find this recent piece by her husband and long-term collaborator of some interest:
http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/portal/rielcano_eng/Content?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/elcano/elcano_in/zonas_in/dt25-2010.
You’ll find it disquieting if you were expecting scepticism to wear a different face.