Sheep are ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. One of the earliest animals to be domesticated for agricultural purposes, sheep are raised for fleece, meat and milk. A sheep’s wool is the most widely used of any animal, and is usually harvested by shearing.

Being a key animal in the history of farming, sheep have a deeply entrenched place in human culture, and find representation in much modern language and symbology. As livestock, sheep are most often associated with pastoral imagery. In contemporary English language usage, people who are timid or easily led are often compared to sheep.

Sheep are prey animals with a strong gregarious instinct, and a majority of sheep behaviors can be understood in these terms. The dominance hierarchy of sheep and their natural inclination to follow a leader to new pastures were the pivotal factors in it being one of the first domesticated livestock species. All sheep have a tendency to congregate close to other members of a flock, although this behavior varies with breed. Farmers exploit this behavior to keep sheep together on unfenced pastures and to move them more easily. Shepherds may also use sheepdogs in this effort, whose highly bred herding ability can assist in moving flocks.

Flock dynamics in sheep are only exhibited in a group of four or more sheep. Fewer sheep may not react as normally expected when alone or with few other sheep. For sheep, the primary defense mechanism is simply to flee from danger when their flight zone is crossed. Cornered sheep may charge or threaten to do so through hoof stamping and aggressive posture. This is particularly true for ewes with newborn lambs.

In displaying flocking, sheep have a strong lead and follow tendency, and a leader often as not is simply the first sheep to move. However, sheep do establish a pecking order through physical displays of dominance. Dominant animals are inclined to be more aggressive with other sheep, and usually feed first at troughs. Primarily among rams, horn size is a factor in the flock hierarchy. Rams with different size horns may be less inclined to fight to establish pecking order, while rams with similarly sized horns are more so.

Sheep can become stressed when separated from their flock members. They can recognize individual human and ovine faces, and remember them for years. Relationships in flocks tend to be closest among related sheep. In mixed breed flocks, same breed subgroups tend to form, and a ewe and her direct descendants often move as a unit within large flocks.

Sheep are frequently thought of as extremely unintelligent animals. A sheep’s herd mentality and quickness to flee and panic in the face of stress often make shepherding a difficult endeavor for the uninitiated. Despite these perceptions, a University of Illinois monograph on sheep found them to be just below pigs and on par with cattle in IQ, and some sheep have shown problem solving abilities.

A flock in West Yorkshire, England allegedly found a way to get over cattle grids by rolling on their backs. In addition to long term facial recognition of individuals, sheep can also differentiate emotional states through facial characteristics. If worked with patiently, sheep may learn their names, and many sheep are trained to be led by halter for showing and other purposes. Sheep have also responded well to clicker training. Very rarely, sheep are used as pack animals. Tibetan nomads distribute baggage equally throughout a flock as it is herded between living sites.

The Count of St. Germain has been variously described as an adventurer, charlatan, inventor, alchemist, pianist, violinist and amateur composer, but is best known as a recurring figure in the stories of several strands of occultism, particularly those connected to Theosophy, where he is also referred to as the Master Rakoczi and credited with near god-like powers and longevity. 

Guy Ballard, founder of the I AM Activity, claimed that he met Saint Germain on Mount Shasta in California in August of 1930, and that this initiated his training and experiences with other ascended masters in various parts of the world.

A book titled The Great Secret, Count St. Germain by Dr. Raymond Bernard purports that St. Germain was actually Francis Bacon by birth, and later authored the complete plays attributed to Shakespeare. He also contends, as does the Saint Germain Foundation in Chicago, IL., that Francis Bacon was the child of Queen Elizabeth and Lord Dudley but that it was kept quiet. Francis was raised by the Bacon family, yet throughout the Shakespeare Plays, there are numerous hints that he knows of his true birth as revealed in the plays itself, the numerous explicit hints in the text, as well as the cipher code he employed.

Saint Germain is the central figure in the Saint Germain Series of Books published by the Saint Germain Press. The first two volumes, Unveiled Mysteries and The Magic Presence, written by Godfre Ray King, describe Saint Germain as an Ascended Master who is assisting humanity and the Earth. Godfre Ray King is the pen-name for Guy Warren Ballard. In these first two books, he discusses his personal experiences with Saint Germain and reveals many teachings that are in harmony with Theosophy. 

C. W. Leadbeater claimed to have met him in Rome in 1926 and gave a physical description of him as having brown eyes, olive colored skin, and a pointed beard. Leadbeater said that Saint Germain showed him a robe that had been previously owned by a Roman Emperor and told him that one of his residences was a castle in Transylvania. According to Leadbeater, when performing magical rituals in his castle in Transylvania, Saint Germain wore a suit of golden chain mail once belonging to a Roman Emperor over which is worn “a magnificent cloak of purple with a clasp of a seven pointed star in diamond and amethyst”.

Theosophists consider him to be a Mahatma, Master or Adept. Helena Blavatsky said he was one of her Masters of Wisdom and hinted at secret documents. Some esoteric groups credit him with inspiring the Founding Fathers to draft the United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as providing the design of the Great Seal of the United States.

Alice A. Bailey’s book The Externalization of the Hierarchy gives the most information about his reputed role as a spiritual Master. His title is said to be the Lord of Civilization and his task is the establishment of a new civilization. He is said to telepathically influence people who are seen by him and as being instrumental in bringing about the Age of Aquarius. Bailey stated that sometime after AD 2025, Master Jesus, Saint Germain, Kuthumi, and the others in the spiritual hierarchy would descend from the spiritual worlds and interact in visible tangible bodies on the Earth in ashrams surrounded by their disciples.

Zooplankton are a type of plankton that obtains its carbon from other organic compounds. They are organisms drifting in the water of oceans, seas, and bodies of fresh water. The name of zooplankton is derived from the Greek zoon, meaning animal, and planktos, meaning wanderer or drifter. Most zooplankton are too small to be seen individually with the naked eye.

They are a broad categorisation spanning a range of organism sizes that includes both small protozoans and large metazoans. It includes holoplanktonic organisms whose complete life cycle lies within the plankton, and meroplanktonic organisms that spend part of their life cycle in the plankton before graduating to either the nekton or a sessile, benthic existence. Although zooplankton are primarily transported by ambient water currents, many have some power of locomotion and use this to avoid predators or to increase prey encounter rate.

Ecologically important protozoan zooplankton groups include the foraminiferans, radiolarians and dinoflagellates. Important metazoan zooplankton include cnidarians such as jellyfish and the Portuguese Man o’ War, crustaceans such as copepods and krill, chaetognaths or arrow worms, mollusks such as pteropods, and chordates such as salps and juvenile fish. This wide phylogenetic range includes a similarly wide range in feeding behavior such as filter feeding, predation and symbiosis with autotrophic phytoplankton as seen in corals. Zooplankton feed on bacterioplankton, phytoplankton, other zooplankton, detritus and nektonic organisms. As a result, zooplankton are primarily found in surface waters where food resources are most abundant.

Through their consumption and processing of phytoplankton and other food sources, zooplankton play an important role in aquatic food webs, both as a resource for consumers on higher trophic levels including fish, and as a conduit for packaging the organic material in the ecology. Since they are typically of small size, zooplankton can respond relatively rapidly to increases in phytoplankton abundance, for instance, during the spring bloom.

Crude oil and natural gas are the preserved remains of prehistoric zooplankton and algae which had settled to a sea or lake bottom in large quantities under conditions of depleted oxygen. Over geological time the organic matter mixed with mud and was buried under heavy layers of sediment resulting in high levels of heat and pressure. This caused the organic matter to chemically change, first into a waxy material known as kerogen which is found in various oil shales around the world, and then with more heat into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons in a process known as catagenesis.

Satyagraha is a philosophy and practice of nonviolent resistance developed by Mahatma Gandhi. He deployed satyagraha in campaigns for Indian independence and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa. Satyagraha theory also influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. during the campaigns he led during the civil rights movement in the United States.

In traditional violent and nonviolent conflict, the goal is to defeat the opponent or frustrate the opponent’s objectives, or to meet one’s own objectives despite the efforts of the opponent to obstruct these. In satyagraha, by contrast, these are not the goals. The Satyagrahi’s object is to convert, not to coerce, the wrong-doer. Success is defined as cooperating with the opponent to meet a just end that the opponent is unwittingly obstructing. The opponent must be converted, at least as far as to stop obstructing the just end, for this cooperation to take place.

The essence of Satyagraha is that it seeks to eliminate antagonisms without harming the antagonists themselves, as opposed to violent resistance, which is meant to cause harm to the antagonist. A Satyagrahi therefore does not seek to end or destroy the relationship with the antagonist, but instead seeks to transform or purify it to a higher level. A euphemism sometimes used for Satyagraha is that it is a silent force or a soul force, a term also used by Martin Luther King Jr. during his famous I Have a Dream speech. It arms the individual with moral power rather than physical power. Satyagraha is also termed a universal force, as it essentially makes no distinction between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe.

Gandhi contrasted satyagraha, or holding on by truth, with duragraha, or holding on by force. He wrote: “There must be no impatience, no barbarity, no insolence, no undue pressure. If we want to cultivate a true spirit of democracy, we cannot afford to be intolerant. Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause.

Civil disobedience and non cooperation as practised under Satyagraha are based on the law of suffering, a doctrine that the endurance of suffering is a means to an end. This end usually implies a moral upliftment or progress of an individual or society. Therefore, non cooperation in Satyagraha is in fact a means to secure the cooperation of the opponent consistently with truth and justice.

Psych-K stands for Psychological Kinesiology. It is a self-help tool developed by Robert M. Williams in 1988 with the goal of changing beliefs in the subconscious mind. Subconscious beliefs are often the “invisible” cause of self-sabotaging behaviors. The Psych-K program was designed to help people change the way they feel, behave and interact in life.

Most traditional tools such as insight therapy, affirmations, will power, journaling and visualization are limited to the conscious mind. Psych-K focuses on changing subconscious beliefs with the hope of likewise changing behavior, feelings and interpretations in life. This enables the individual to change his state of mind at the first indication of stress.

In Psych-K, kinesiology is used to communicate with the subconscious mind. Specific body postures and movements cause neuron firings in both hemispheres of the brain, creating a state in which change can more readily occur. The creator of the program claims that, using this method, it is possible for subconscious beliefs to be recognized, and a debilitating belief could be replaced with one more desirable.

A unique aspect of Psych-K is that a “permission” step is included to ensure that the changes are in the best interest of the person at that time. Also, there are several verifying steps to catalogue the changes taking place. This is used to satisfy the skepticism of the conscious mind.

Psych-K incorporates Educational Kinesiology, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, acupressure, Ericksonian hypnotherapy, and various psycho-spiritual healing systems. Advanced Psych-K tools are streamlined and efficient, and they are therefore helpful in specific situations like breathing exercises, acupressure points, body postures, and body movements.

Remote Viewing refers to the attempt to gather information about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means or extra-sensory perception. Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance. The term was introduced by parapsychologists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff in 1974.

It was popularized in the 1990s, following the declassification of documents related to the Stargate Project, a 20 million dollar research program sponsored by the U.S. Federal Government to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena.

Remote viewing, like other forms of extra sensory perception, is generally considered as pseudoscience due to the need to overcome fundamental ideas about causality, time, and other principles currently held by the scientific community, and the lack of a positive theory that explains the outcomes.

In 1972 Stanford Research Institute laser physicist Hal Puthoff tested remote viewer Ingo Swann, and the experiment led to a visit from two employees of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. The result was a $50,000 CIA-sponsored project. As research continued, the SRI team published papers in Nature, in Proceedings of the IEEE, and in the proceedings of a symposium on consciousness for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The initial CIA-funded project was later renewed and expanded. A number of CIA officials including John McMahon, became strong supporters of the program. By the mid 1970s, facing the post-Watergate revelations of its “skeletons,” and after internal criticism of the program, the CIA dropped sponsorship of the SRI research effort.

In the early 1990s the Military Intelligence Board, chaired by DIA chief Soyster, appointed an Army Colonel, William Johnson, to manage the reinstated remote viewing project and evaluate its objective usefulness. According to an account by former SRI-trained remote-viewer, Paul Smith, Johnson spent several months running the remote viewing unit against military and DEA targets, and ended up a believer, not only in remote viewing’s validity as a phenomenon but in its usefulness as an intelligence tool.

After the Democrats lost control of the Senate in late 1994, funding declined and the program went into decline. The project was transferred out of DIA to the CIA in 1995, with the promise that it would be evaluated there, but most participants in the program believed that it would be terminated.

Among some of the ideas that Puthoff supported regarding remote viewing was the claim that two followers of Madame Blavatsky, founder of theosophy, were able to remote-view the inner structure of atoms.

Paper is thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon or packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets.

The earliest recorded forms of paper were in use in Egypt in around 3500 BC, made from the papyrus plant. True paper is believed to have originated in China in approximately the 2nd century AD, although there is some evidence for it being used before this date. China used paper as an effective and cheap alternative to silk. The use of paper spread from China through the Islamic world, and entered production in Europe in the early 12th century. 

In America, archaeological evidence indicates that a similar parchment writing material was invented by the Mayans no later than the 5th century AD. Called amatl, it was in widespread use among Mesoamerican cultures until the Spanish conquest. The parchment is created by boiling and pounding the inner bark of trees, until the material becomes suitable for art and writing.

Together with the invention of the fountain pen and the mass produced pencil of the same period, and in conjunction with the advent of the steam driven rotary printing press, wood based paper caused a major transformation of 19th century economy and society in industrialized countries. With the introduction of cheaper paper, schoolbooks, fiction, non-fiction, and newspapers became gradually available by 1900. Cheap wood based paper also meant that keeping personal diaries or writing letters became possible and so, by 1850, the clerk, or writer, ceased to be a high-status job.

The original wood-based paper was acidic due to the use of alum and more prone to disintegrate over time, through processes known as slow fires. Documents written on more expensive rag paper were more stable. Mass-market paperback books still use these cheaper mechanical papers, but book publishers can now use acid-free paper for hardback and trade paperback books.

Although paper had been known as a wrapping and padding material, the first use of toilet paper in human history dates back to the 6th century AD, in early medieval China. During the Ming Dynasty, it was recorded that 720,000 sheets of toilet paper two by three feet in size were produced for the general use of the Imperial court at the capital of Nanjing. It was also recorded that for Emperor Hongwu’s imperial family alone, there were 15,000 sheets of special soft-fabric toilet paper made, and each sheet of toilet paper was perfumed.

The standard 8.5″ x 11″ size stems from the original size of a vat that was used to make paper. At the time, paper was made from passing a fiber and water slurry through a screen at the bottom of a box. The box was 17″ deep and 44″ wide. That sheet, folded in half in the long direction, then twice in the opposite direction, made a sheet of paper that was exactly 8.5″ x 11″.

Prehistoric medicine is a term used to describe the use of medicine before the invention of writing. Because writing was invented at different times in different places, the term prehistoric medicine encompasses a large number of time periods and dates, and should not be thought of as a set period in time. Prehistoric medicine predates written records and so study of the subject relies heavily on artifacts and skeletons, and on anthropology. Previously uncontacted peoples and certain indigenous peoples who live in a traditional way have been the subject of anthropological studies in order to gain insight into both contemporary and ancient practices.

Prehistoric people believed in both supernatural causes and cures for diseases, beliefs which would continue in part to be used by the Ancient Civilizations. They blamed certain serious or disabling diseases which did not have a rational or obvious cause on the supernatural, such as gods, evil spirits and sorcery. They believed that evil spirits could inhabit the body and cause a person to become ill, and that these spirits could be removed from the body through treatments carried out by a Medicine man.

Prehistoric people used their common sense to understand the causes of many diseases and injuries, but most primarily the latter for which there was usually a clear cause. They did not have to blame injuries on the gods or spirits because they were able to understand how they were caused. If someone was injured by a fall then they realised that the fall must have been the cause. The discovery of a mummified body in the Tyrolean Alps in Northern Italy in 1991 gave rise to the suggestion that prehistoric people may have known more about the causes of disease than was previously thought. In a Lancet study, Dr. Luigi Capasso concluded that the discovery of the fungus suggests that the Iceman was aware of his intestinal parasites and fought them with measured doses of Piptoporus betulinus. Although the person found could not have had a detailed understanding of intestinal parasites, the findings suggest that prehistoric people were willing to accept a practical outlook on disease.

Different diseases and ailments were common in prehistory than are prevalent today. There is evidence that many people suffered from osteoarthritis, probably caused by the lifting of heavy objects which would have been a daily and necessary task in their societies. Things such as cuts, bruises and breakages of bone, without antiseptics, proper facilities or knowledge of germs, would become very serious if infected. There is also evidence of rickets bone deformity and bone wastage which is caused by a lack of Vitamin D.

There is evidence to suggest that many prehistoric peoples, where the climate and resources allowed, were able to set broken or fractured bones using clay. The broken area was covered in clay, which then set hard so that the bone could heal properly without interference. Also, primarily in the Americas, the pincers of certain ant species were used to close up wounds from infection. The ant was held above the wound until it bit it, then its head would be removed but the pincers holding the wound would remain.

Medicine men, witch doctors or shaman, along with the women who cared for the health of their families, would have looked after the health of their tribe, gathering and distributing herbs, performing minor surgical procedures, providing medical advice and supernatural treatments, such as charms, spells and amulets to ward off evil spirits. In Apache society, as would likely have been the case in many others, the medicine men initiated a ceremony over the patient, which was attended by family and friends. It consisted of magic forumlas, prayers and drumming. The medicine man then, from the patient’s recalling of their past and possible offenses against their religion or tribal rules, revealed the nature of the disease and how to treat it.

They were believed by the tribe to be able to contact the gods and use their supernatural powers to cure the patient, and therefore in the process remove the evil spirits. If this method did not work, the spirit was considered too powerful to be driven out of the person. A medicine man would likely have been a central figure in the tribal system, because of the their medical knowledge and because they could seemingly contact the gods. Many prehistoric cave paintings have been discovered showing a medicine man wearing antlers, which seems to agree with this theory. Because they would not have received any formal training in medicine due to the fact there was no way to record medical details, it is likely that any medical knowledge would have been passed down orally.

Because of the nature of the time period  before the invention of writing it is harder for historians to gather strong evidence on matters relating to prehistoric medicine. As there is a lack of written evidence they have turned to other sources such as skeletons and anthropological studies of people nowadays who live a similar nomadic lifestyle, though there are problems with both sources of evidence.

The writings of certain cultures such as the Romans can be used as evidence in discovering how their contemporary prehistoric cultures who had not yet discovered writing practiced medicine. People who live a nomadic existence today have been used as a source of evidence too, but obviously there are distinct differences in the environment in which nomadic people lived. Prehistoric people in Britain for example cannot be effectively compared to aboriginal peoples in Australia, because of the obvious differences in what resources would have been available to each.