Cowabunga The origin

Cowabunga!   The Origin.

14 Jan 2007

Andre Willers

The origin : Covadonga

Literally : Cova Domenica , latin for Cavern of our Lady .

The term seems to have originated as a battlecry , denoting delight in the forces of the right inflicting a defeat on the unrighteous against overwhelming odds .

The Battle of Covadonga refers .

By 721 AD , the only Visigoth resistance left against Muslim expansion in the Spanish peninsula was in the mountainous northern areas of Spain called Asturia . A local aristocrat called Pelagius ( Pelayo) managed to defeat them at the Battle of Covadonga . The Christian kingdom of Asturias resulted , later forming the core of the Kingdom of Castile . This was the start of the Christian reconquistada of Spain

Units of the Spanish army are still referenced by Covadonga .

Google together to see that the same sense remains .

Morphing :
The “V”  comes from Latin spelling , which had no separate character for the Germanic  “W”  sound .

Cova Domenica -> Covadonga ( a shift due to extremely reduced literacy and bureaucracy of an insignificant place after the collapse of the Roman empire )

Covadonga -> Covadunga ( the second is easier to pronounce aloud)

Covadunga -> Covabunga ( the second is easier to pronounce aloud)

Covabunga -> Cowabunga ( the second is easier to pronounce aloud for germanic speakers )

Past Significance :

As a marker in the turning of the tide in the Christian-Muslim conflict in Spain , it’s reputation grew in myth and legend , then dimmed in the ensuing tumultuous centuries as the Christian-Muslim conflict ebbed and Spanish influence waned .

It still has deep cultural roots in Spain and previous Spanish colonies .

Imagistics

Put yourself in the place of an inhabitant of the Iberian peninsula circa 720 AD . They were a post-collapse melange  composed of old Roman families (large landowners mostly ) like Pelagius , the recent Visigothic conquerors  and  the ex-latifunda slaves , all battling to survive and establish some equilibrium . All Christians of various persuasions .

As a fighting force , this mixture was not up to resisting the thrust and momentum of a century of Muslim conquest in Egypt and North Africa .

The Visigoth mounted horse attempted a defense under King Roderick , but was heavily defeated in 711 by an Arab expeditionary force . Light cavalry routed heavy cavalry when heavy cavalry are unsupported by fortresses and infantry ( something that happened with tedious regularity all over the remnants of the Roman Empire)

The Arabs rolled over Spain in a seemingly unstoppable wave .

At Covadonga the wave hit a rock .

The rock seems to have been a method of combining

1. the few remaining heavy cavalry (Visigoths) ,

2. the infantry (local farmers with shields , swords and spears dating back to great- grandfather’s  mustering out of the Roman legions )

3. and  most importantly  , the majority of the population . The ex-slaves .

To mobilise the ex-slaves , the Church was necessary . These people had been kept in subjugation mainly by “learned helplessness” conditioning . The Christian religion already had the tools ( seehttp://andreswhy.blogspot.com : “forgiveness is free , the last shall be first”)  to break this conditioning .

This was the crucial development for the next millennia . (It is still on-going)

An indication:

There is little hard evidence of the battle , not even the date . But one  bit that survived was that “God turned the arrows around in mid-flight and turned them back against them.”

We can surmise that the Christian infantry and archers stood firm on the defensive . The Arabs then attacked in waves of mounted archers . The standard tactic was to exhaust the defenders’ supply of arrows (remember , the Arabs were a professional force with huge supplies , while the defenders were a bunch of yokels ) until the defenders had no distance-weapons left . Then a swift charge on the weakest point settled matters . 

However , the normally indifferent bottom-of-social heap went into the no-man’s land to pick up arrows and give them to the defenders . Hence the “turned-around arrows” .

This was unheard of . Slaves were slaves , conditioned into it . The rebellious ones had been culled long ago . Large numbers of slaves could not fight effectively , even if commanded to .

The “Learned-helplessness” conditioning is a true neural-level , nuts-and-bolts level conditioning .

The only way to break it is at a self-consciousness level

 ( see http://andreswhy.blogspot.com : “The Religious Experience and Proximal rewards” )

This battle was very closely studied and copied all over Europe .

The military ecology paradigm shift .

To reiterate , Covadonga was a combination of defensive , offensive and unfriendly military ecology .

The military ecology was new . No previous civilizations had the technology to break the learned-helplessness conditioning , as well as the will .

Total war was born .

This same recipe was followed in the Reconquistada and in Spanish territories in South America .

This meme propagated via Martel and Holy Roman empire to the rest of Europe .

It is interesting to note that slavery is incompatible with this meme .

Indeed , the meme that Christians may not own Christian slaves , whereas Muslims were allowed to own Muslim slaves led to the historic reductio-ad-absurdems of general-franchise England and all-slaves-except-Sultan Ottomans . The battlefield results are known as well .

At last! A Proximal reward reason why general slavery was not re-established in Europe .

The mobilization of the Christian Church as an essential part in the military paradigm would obviously lead to purely military considerations of the role of the Vatican . However , this would conflict with basic Christian assumptions . This would lead to internal roiling . As usual , a merry time is had by all .

The Crusades , the mass production of spectacles , printing , protestantism , the age of reason , nationalism , democracy , capitalism , communism are all only possible because of the paradigm established at  Covadonga .

It is interesting that Cowabunga should resurface from the cultural collective-mind at a similar time as a steep escalation of the Christian-Muslim conflict . Whether it is a natural or engineered process , more of a similar nature can be expected .

Not bad , Pelagius .

Your paradigm of deconditioning learned-helplessness has not only changed the preceding millennia , but will change the succeeding ones as well .

It has changed human history .

Pelagius , I salute you .

Andre Willers

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