@Getty
Just the other day, North Korea again fired what is said to be land-to-ship missiles off its east coast, the latest in a series of missile tests defying cries from all over the world to stop its horror show. President Rodrigo Duterte's advise to US President Donald Trump is "just to be prudent and patient" and to not play into the hands of Kim Jong Un because "my region will suffer immensely".
We know that we are playing with somebody who relishes letting go of his missiles" - Duterte to Trump.
Kim's ballistic missiles this time are designed to defend against threats such as enemy warships. He wants to show his ability to target a large warship like his enemies' aircraft carriers.
“Sumer suffered a great catastrophe, a huge hurricane, who came from somewhere unknown, dared the city, and then a fiery wind rose. The sun did not shine during the day, but the moon did not shine at night, no stars were visible. The air became poisoned, the plants did not grow, the cities became deserted. ” - Sumerian clay tablet
But the use of nuclear weapons is really more ancient than we thought. According to texts written down especially by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia as culled by Zechariah Sitchin in his The Earth Chronicles based on clay tablets, the Bible, clay tablets, ancient myths and archaeological discoveries, that was, in fact, the case.
In those days. visitors from another planet came to Earth in search of gold and created man to mine. After the Deluge that we Christians know of that catastrophically swept over the Earth the visitors became gods, granting Mankind civilization and teaching it to worship. Then all that had been achieved were wiped out in a nuclear calamity caused by rivalries and wars that caused the end of Sumerian civilization. Same thing happening on Earth today.
They used to make formidable galleons in Marinduque, PH
To think that once upon a time, like some 500 years ago Earth's warships merely grappled with each other so that soldiers could board the enemy ship, then later inventing cannonballs to batter the wooden hulls of enemy vessels to sink them. Those were the days of the Spanish armada and the English or Dutch fleets, first making use of round shots from dressed stone then from iron by the 17th century.
That's because when fired directly into an advancing column in land battles, a cannonball of iron was capable of passing straight through up to forty men enough to kill them or cause gruesome injury.
Not wipe out humanity that nuclear warfare can do. The bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki exploded with a yield of 15 and 20 kilotons of TNT, whereas In contrast, tests of a thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb in the United States in November 1952 yielded an explosion on the order of 10,000 kilotons of TNT.
Spanish galleon interior
During the Spanish period more than a hundred galleons were built in the Philippines, in shipyards located in Cavite, Pangasinan, Albay, Mindoro, Sorsogon, Iloilo, Masbate, Camarines and Marinduque. Task forces of as many as 8,000 men, it is written, were organized by the Spaniards to cut down the trees, convert them to timber and haul them to the shipyards.
Polo
Our able-bodied men were forced to work in shipbuilding under a compulsory system called polos y servicios, or forced labor, just like in the far ancient days. But with some improvement. Men from 16 to 60 were mandated to work for 40 days for the goals of Spain such as building churches and galleons. Usually the 40 days rule was not followed and the forced labor would continue for months and months. 
Spanish galleon
According to history, in Marinduque were built the Spanish almiranta San Marcos and the galleon San Juan Bautista. What timber did they use for these galleons?
"Their breastwork were of Philippine hardwood that could not be pierced by cannonballs”, such that Philippine-made galleons earned a reputation as formidable sea vessels, one British commander (Rogers), during the war with Spain noted: “These large ships are built with excellent timber that will not splinter; they have very thick sides, much stronger than we build in Europe”.
Another account from The Manila-Acapulco Galleons (Fish) reads:
“In 1619, Captain Sebastian de Pineda, wrote a letter to the Council of Indies in Spain in which he described the shipbuilding activities he witnessed in the Philippines. The letter is an important document as it was an eyewitness account of how the galleons and other vessels were constructed at Cavite, as well as the types of woods, iron, sails, provisions used in the process…" 
Impenetrable Palo Maria
"In those islands is found a wood called maria (palo maria), which is used to make the futtock timbers of all the galleons, galleys, and pataches and all the knees and compass timbers of all sizes required. There is much of this timber from which to select, although, because of the ships built by Don Juan de Silva, the suppy of it is now obtained from a distance. That wood is used only for this purpose, for the tree is short and not straight."
According to Fish, some scholars have asserted that the main hardwoods used by the Spanish shipbuilders were "palo maria, banaba and dangan.”
A viking ship of a cloud hovers above the once forest-clad Marinduque mountains.
Marinduque forests were destroyed, men got sick
There are no historical records indicating how many trees were felled during the colonial period for the construction of galleons but it was estimated that at least two thousand trees were needed for the construction of one galleon alone. We could only imagine, then, how many forest-clad Marinduque mountains were wantonly denuded during the Spanish period for the building of galleons and the repair of many more.
Marinduque was indeed an important shipyard. We find another account stating that five vessels sailed to Marinduque from Cavite for repairs in that year, 1619. It was so decided because it was less expensive to provide the repair and careening services in Marinduque than transporting timber to Cavite for the same purpose.
But, one supposes that under the roots of the palo maria, banaba and dangan trees that have managed to survive in Marinduque, even after a series of mining disasters, could be traced their ancestral stories, akin to our own historical stories and DNA - but without any trace whatsoever of any radiation from any ancient civilization nuclear disaster that has completely been forgotten.
|
