Discover Edo, the Historic Green/Sustainable City of Japan

in Environment, History, Nature | March 29th, 2023

When you pic­ture mod­ern day Tokyo, what comes to mind?

The elec­tron­ic bill­boards of Shibuya and Shin­juku?

The teem­ing streets?

The maid cafes?

The robot hotel?

A 97 square foot micro apart­ment?

Bernard Guer­ri­ni’s doc­u­men­tary Natur­opo­lis — Tokyo, from mega­lopo­lis to gar­den-city describes Tokyo as “a giant city, a city which nev­er stops grow­ing:”

It has destroyed its nat­ur­al spaces. It has cre­at­ed its own weath­er. It’s too big for its own good. They say Tokyo is like an amoe­ba that absorbs every­thing in its path.

It’s a far cry from the urban space Toku­gawa Ieya­su, founder of the Toku­gawa Shogu­nate, intend­ed when plant­i­ng the seeds for Edo, as Tokyo was orig­i­nal­ly called.

As the above excerpt from Natur­opo­lis explains, the 16th-cen­tu­ry city was inno­v­a­tive in its incor­po­ra­tion of green space.

The daimyō, or mil­i­tary lords, were required by the shogu­nate to keep res­i­dences in Edo. Each of these homes was fur­nished with a gar­den­er and a land­scap­er to main­tain the beau­ty of its al fres­co areas.

Mean­while, crops were cul­ti­vat­ed in all com­mu­nal out­door open spaces, with irri­ga­tion canals sup­ply­ing the nec­es­sary water for grow­ing rice.

These plant-rich set­tings pro­vid­ed a hos­pitable envi­ron­ment for ani­mals both wild and domes­tic. The care­ful­ly curat­ed nat­ur­al zones invit­ed qui­et con­tem­pla­tion of flo­ra and fau­na, giv­ing rise to the sea­son­al cel­e­bra­tions and rites that are still observed through­out Japan.

Whether admir­ing blos­soms and fire­flies in spring and sum­mer or autumn leaves and snowy win­ter scenes in the cold­er months, Edo’s cit­i­zens revered the nat­ur­al world out­side their doorsteps.

Bashō did the same in his haiku; Uta­gawa Hiroshige in his series of ukiyo‑e prints, One Hun­dred Famous Views of Edo.

Some­what less poet­i­cal­ly cel­e­brat­ed was the impor­tance of night soil to this bio­dy­nam­ic, pre-indus­tri­al shogu­nate cap­i­tal. As envi­ron­men­tal writer Eisuke Ishikawa del­i­cate­ly notes in Japan in the Edo Peri­od — An Eco­log­i­cal­ly-Con­scious Soci­ety:

A long time ago, when excre­ment was a pre­cious fer­til­iz­er, it nat­u­ral­ly belonged to the per­son who pro­duced it. Farm­ers used to buy excre­ment for cash or trade it for a com­pa­ra­ble amount of veg­eta­bles. Fer­til­iz­er short­ages were a chron­ic prob­lem dur­ing the Edo peri­od. As the stan­dard of liv­ing in cities improved, sur­round­ing vil­lages need­ed an increas­ing amount of fer­til­iz­er…

(Any­one who’s shoul­dered the sur­pris­ing­ly heavy interactive–not THAT interactive–night soil buck­ets on dis­play in Tokyo’s Edo Muse­um will have a feel for just how much of this nec­es­sary ele­ment each block of the cap­i­tal city gen­er­at­ed on a dai­ly basis.)

The Mei­ji Restora­tion of 1868 brought many changes — a new gov­ern­ment, a new name for Edo, and a race toward West­ern-style indus­tri­al­iza­tion. Many parks and gar­dens were destroyed as Tokyo rapid­ly expand­ed beyond Edo’s orig­i­nal foot­print.

But now, the Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Gov­ern­ment is look­ing to its past in an effort to com­bat the effects of cli­mate change with a push toward envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The goal is net zero CO2 emis­sions by 2050, with 2030 serv­ing as a bench­mark.

In addi­tion to hold­ing the busi­ness, finan­cial, and ener­gy sec­tors to envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble stan­dard, the zero emis­sion plan seeks to address the aver­age citizen’s qual­i­ty of life, with a lit­er­al return to more green spaces:

Accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change mea­sures is impor­tant to pre­serve bio­di­ver­si­ty and con­tin­ue to reap its boun­ty. In recent years, the idea of green infra­struc­ture that uti­lizes the func­tions of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment has attract­ed atten­tion. It is one of the most impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions for the future: achiev­ing both bio­di­ver­si­ty con­ser­va­tion and cli­mate change mea­sures.

A Unit­ed Nation report* point­ed out that COVID-19 is poten­tial­ly a zoonot­ic dis­ease derived from wildlife, such infec­tious dis­eases will increase in the future, and one of the rea­sons is the destruc­tion of nature by humans.

Read Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Government’s Zero Trans­mis­sion Strat­e­gy and Update here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Met Puts 650+ Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Online: Mar­vel at Hokusai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji and More

Down­load 1,000+ Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints by Hiroshige, the Last Great Mas­ter of the Japan­ese Wood­block Print Tra­di­tion

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

Cats in Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Ani­mals Came to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Art

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold an Astonishing Near-Nightly Spectacle in the Lightning Capital of the World

in Environment, Nature, Science, Travel | March 21st, 2023

Extreme weath­er con­di­tions have become a top­ic of grave con­cern. Are floods, earth­quakes, tor­na­does and cat­a­stroph­ic storms the new nor­mal?

Just for a moment, let’s trav­el to a place where extreme weath­er has always been the norm: Lake Mara­cai­bo in north­west­ern Venezuela.

Accord­ing to NASA’s Trop­i­cal Rain­fall Mea­sur­ing Mis­sion’s light­ning image sen­sor, it is the light­ning cap­i­tal of the world.

Chalk it up to the unique geog­ra­phy and cli­mate con­di­tions near the con­flu­ence of the lake and the Cata­tum­bo Riv­er. At night, the moist warm air above the water col­lides with cool breezes rolling down from the Andes, cre­at­ing an aver­age of 297 thun­der­storms a year.

Watch­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jonas Pio­ntek’s short film doc­u­ment­ing the phe­nom­e­non, above, it’s not sur­pris­ing that chief among his tips for shoot­ing light­ning at night is a point­ed warn­ing to always keep a safe dis­tance from the storm. While view­able from as far as 400 kilo­me­ters away, the area near­est the light­ning activ­i­ty can aver­age 28 strikes per minute.

More than 400 years before Pio­ntek shared his impres­sions with the world, Span­ish poet Lope de Vega tapped Cata­tum­bo light­ning in his epic 1597 poem La Drag­ontea, cred­it­ing it, erro­neous­ly, with hav­ing  thwart­ed Sir Fran­cis Drake’s plans to con­quer the city of Mara­cai­bo under cov­er of night. His poet­ic license was per­sua­sive enough that it’s still an accept­ed part of the myth.

The “eter­nal storm” did how­ev­er give Venezue­lan naval forces a gen­uine nat­ur­al assist, by illu­mi­nat­ing a squadron of Span­ish ships on Lake Mara­cai­bo, which they defeat­ed on July 24, 1823, clear­ing the way to inde­pen­dence.

Once upon a time, large num­bers of local fish­er­men took advan­tage of their prime posi­tion to fish by night, although with recent defor­esta­tion, polit­i­cal con­flict, and eco­nom­ic decline dec­i­mat­ing the vil­lages where they live in tra­di­tion­al stilt­ed hous­es, their liveli­hood is in decline.

Mean­while the Eter­nal Storm has itself been affect­ed by forces of extreme weath­er. In 2010, a drought occa­sioned by a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong El Niño, caused light­ning activ­i­ty to cease for 6 weeks, its longest dis­ap­pear­ance in 104 years.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ist Erik Quiroga, who is cam­paign­ing for the Cata­tum­bo light­ning to be des­ig­nat­ed as the world’s first UNESCO World Her­itage Weath­er Phe­nom­e­non warns, “This is a unique gift and we are at risk of los­ing it.”

See more of Jonas Piontek’s Cata­tum­bo light­ning pho­tographs here.

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold 900+ Magnificent Botanical Collages Created by a 72-Year-Old Widow, Starting in 1772

in Art, Biology, Creativity, Nature | March 10th, 2023

“I have invent­ed a new way of imi­tat­ing flow­ers,” Mary Delany, a 72-year-old wid­ow wrote to her niece in 1772 from the grand home where she was a fre­quent guest, hav­ing just cap­tured her host­ess’ gera­ni­um’s like­ness, by col­lag­ing cut paper in a near­ly iden­ti­cal shade.

Nov­el­ty rekin­dled the cre­ative fire her husband’s death had damp­ened.

For­mer pur­suits such as needle­work, sil­hou­ette cut outs, and shell dec­o­rat­ing went by the way­side as she ded­i­cat­ed her­self ful­ly to her botan­i­cal-themed “paper mosaicks.”

Over the next decade Mrs. Delany pro­duced 985 aston­ish­ing­ly flo­ral rep­re­sen­ta­tions from metic­u­lous­ly cut, hand col­ored tis­sue, which she glued to hand paint­ed black back­ings, and labeled with the spec­i­mens’ tax­o­nom­ic and com­mon names, as well as a col­lec­tion of num­bers, date and prove­nance.

In the begin­ning, she took inspi­ra­tion from a giant col­lec­tion of botan­i­cal spec­i­mens amassed by the cel­e­brat­ed botanist Sir Joseph Banks, with whom she became acquaint­ed while spend­ing sum­mers at Bul­strode, the Buck­ing­hamshire estate of her friend Mar­garet Bentinck, duchess of Port­land and a fel­low enthu­si­ast of the nat­ur­al world.

Bul­strode also pro­vid­ed her with abun­dant source mate­r­i­al. The estate boast­ed botan­ic, flower, kitchen, ancient and Amer­i­can gar­dens, as well a staff botanist, the Swedish nat­u­ral­ist Daniel Solan­der charged with cat­a­logu­ing their con­tents accord­ing to the Lin­naean sys­tem.

Sir Joseph Banks com­mend­ed Mrs. Delany’s pow­ers of obser­va­tion, declar­ing her assem­blages “the only imi­ta­tions of nature” from which he “could ven­ture to describe botan­i­cal­ly any plant with­out the least fear of com­mit­ting an error.”

They also suc­ceed as art.

Mol­ly Pea­cock, author of The Paper Gar­den: An Artist Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, appears quite over­come by Mrs. Delany’s Pas­si­flo­ra lau­ri­fo­lia — more com­mon­ly known as water lemon, Jamaican hon­ey­suck­le or vine­gar pear:

The main flower head … is so intense­ly pub­lic that it’s as if you’ve come upon a nude stody. She splays out approx­i­mate­ly 230 shock­ing­ly vul­vu­lar pur­plish pink petals in the bloom, and inside the leaves she places the slen­der­est of ivory veins also cut sep­a­rate­ly from paper, with vine ten­drils fin­er that a girl’s hair. It is so fresh that it looks wet and full of desire, yet the Pas­si­flo­ra is dull and mat­te

Mrs. Delany’s exquis­ite­ly ren­dered paper flow­ers became high soci­ety sen­sa­tions, fetch­ing her no small amount of invi­ta­tions from titled hosts and host­esses, clam­or­ing for spec­i­mens from their gar­dens to be immor­tal­ized in her grow­ing Flo­ra Delan­i­ca.

She also received dona­tions of exot­ic plants at Bal­strode, where green­hous­es kept non-native plants alive, as she glee­ful­ly informed her niece in a 1777 let­ter, short­ly after com­plet­ing her work:

I am so plen­ti­ful­ly sup­plied with the hot­house here, and from the Queen’s gar­den at Kew, that nat­ur­al plants have been a good deal laid aside this year for for­eign­ers, but not less in favour. O! How I long to show you the progress I have made. 

Her work was in such demand, that she stream­lined her cre­ation process from neces­si­ty, col­or­ing paper in batch­es, and work­ing on sev­er­al pieces simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Her fail­ing eye­sight forced her to stop just shy of her goal of one thou­sand flow­ers.

She ded­i­cat­ed the ten vol­umes of Flo­ra Delan­i­ca to her friend, the duchess of Port­land, mis­tress of Bal­strode “(whose) appro­ba­tion was such a sanc­tion to my under­tak­ing, as made it appear of con­se­quence and gave me courage to go on with con­fi­dence.”

She also reflect­ed on the great under­tak­ing of her sev­enth decade in a poem:

        Hail to the hap­py hour! When fan­cy led

My pen­sive mind this flow’ry path to tread;

And gave me emu­la­tion to pre­sume

With timid art to trace fair Nature’s bloom.

Explore The British Museum’s inter­ac­tive archive of Mary Delany’s botan­i­cal paper col­lages here.

All images © The Trustees of the British Muse­um, repub­lished under a Cre­ative Com­mons license.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Dis­cov­er Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Col­lec­tion of Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

The New Herbal: A Mas­ter­piece of Renais­sance Botan­i­cal Illus­tra­tions Gets Repub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful 900-Page Book by Taschen

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826)

A Beau­ti­ful 1897 Illus­trat­ed Book Shows How Flow­ers Become Art Nou­veau Designs

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Discover Pemmican, The Power Bar Invented Centuries Ago by Native American Tribes

in Food & Drink, Health, K-12, Nature | March 3rd, 2023

Out­door enthu­si­asts of a non-veg­e­tar­i­an stripe, do you weary of gar­den vari­ety ener­gy bars and trail mix?

Per­haps you’re feel­ing adven­tur­ous enough to make your own pem­mi­can, var­i­ous­ly described by Tast­ing His­to­ry’s Max Miller, above, as “history’s Pow­er Bar” and “a meaty ver­sion of a sur­vival food that has a shelf life not mea­sured in months but in decades, just like hard tack.”

Per­haps you’re already well acquaint­ed with this  low-carb, keto­genic portable pro­vi­sion, a culi­nary sta­ple of the upper half of North Amer­i­ca long before the first Euro­pean traders set foot on the land. Many indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties across North Amer­i­ca are still pro­duc­ing pem­mi­can for both per­son­al and cer­e­mo­ni­al con­sump­tion.

Back in 1743, Hudson’s Bay Com­pa­ny fur trad­er James Isham was one of the first to doc­u­ment pem­mi­can pro­duc­tion for an Eng­lish read­er­ship:

 [Meat] beat between two Stones, till some of itt is as small as Dust…when pound­ed they putt itt into a bag and will Keep for sev­er­al Years, the Bones they also pound small and Boil them…to Reserve the fatt, which fatt is fine and sweet as any Butter…Reckon’d by some Very good food by the Eng­lish as well as Natives.

Per­haps now would be a good time to give thanks for the plen­ti­ful food options most of us have access to in the 21st-cen­tu­ry (and pay it for­ward with a dona­tion to an orga­ni­za­tion fight­ing food inse­cu­ri­ty…)

A time may come when know­ing how to make pem­mi­can could give us a leg up on sur­viv­ing, but for now, exe­cu­tion of this recipe is like­ly more of a curios­i­ty sat­is­fi­er.

To be fair, it’s not designed to be a del­i­ca­cy, but rather an extreme­ly long last­ing source of calo­ries, four times as nour­ish­ing as the same weight of fresh meat.

If you want to try it, lay in 2 pounds of meat — bison is his­tor­i­cal­ly the most pop­u­lar and most doc­u­ment­ed, but deer, elk, moose, beef, fish, or fowl work well too.

You’ll also need an equal amount of suet, though heed Miller’s advice and add just enough to make things stick.

Bump the fla­vor up a notch with ground dried berries, sug­ar, or salt.

(Miller went the tra­di­tion­al route with choke­ber­ries, pro­cured in an extreme­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry man­ner.)

In terms of appli­ances, feel free to use such mod­ern con­ve­niences as your oven, your blender, and a small pan or mold.

(Please report back if you take the old school route with fire, direct sun­light, mor­tar, pes­tle, and a bag formed from undressed hide.)

Giv­en Miller’s response to the fin­ished dish, we’re hunch­ing most of us will rest con­tent to feast on his­tor­i­cal con­text alone, as Miller digs into the Pem­mi­can Procla­ma­tion of 1814, the Sev­en Oaks Inci­dent and the unique role the bira­cial, bilin­gual Métis peo­ple of Cana­da played in the North Amer­i­can fur trade…

Those still up for it should feel free to take their pem­mi­can to the next lev­el by boil­ing it with wild onions or the tops of parsnips, to pro­duce a ruba­boo or rechaud, as bushcrafter Mark Young does below.

You can also get a taste of pem­mi­can by order­ing the Tan­ka Bars that Oglala Lako­ta-owned small busi­ness pro­duces on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reser­va­tion.

Watch more of Max Miller’s Tast­ing His­to­ry videos here.

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday. 

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Venice’s Canals Have Run Dry During a Winter Drought, Leaving Gondolas Stuck in the Mud

in Nature | February 28th, 2023

When Venice was way under water a decade ago, we post­ed about it here on Open Cul­ture. By that time, the City of Canals was sup­posed to have been pro­tect­ed by MOSE, a $7 bil­lion flood-con­trol sys­tem not actu­al­ly com­plet­ed until 2021. But a drought struck the fol­low­ing year, and what afflicts Venice right now isn’t an excess of water but a lack of it. “Weeks of dry win­ter weath­er have raised con­cerns that Italy could face anoth­er drought after last sum­mer’s emer­gency,” reports Reuters, “with the Alps hav­ing received less than half of their nor­mal snow­fall.”

Venice in par­tic­u­lar “faces unusu­al­ly low tides that are mak­ing it impos­si­ble for gon­do­las, water taxis and ambu­lances to nav­i­gate some of its famous canals,” a phe­nom­e­non blamed on a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors includ­ing “the lack of rain, a high pres­sure sys­tem, a full moon, and sea cur­rents.”

The Guardian video above includes, among oth­er dispir­it­ing scenes, a gon­do­lier strug­gling to maneu­ver through one of the canals of Venice not quite reduced to mud­dy ditch­es. It also shows the con­trast with the flood­ing Venice endured as recent­ly as 2019, which had tourists and locals alike up to their knees in water.

These con­di­tions are strik­ing, but not unprece­dent­ed in Venice’s his­to­ry of over a mil­len­ni­um and a half. “Although they’ve become sig­nif­i­cant­ly less fre­quent over the past two decades due to ris­ing sea lev­els, Venice still sees one to ten low tides every year,” writes The Local’s Giampi­etro Vianel­lo. “The city has seen 160 low tides with lev­els equal to or low­er than ‑90cm since 1872, where­as the cur­rent tide has ‘only’ reached the ‑70cm mark so far.” Fore­casts do indi­cate a rain­fall to come across north­ern Italy, but at least until then, mod­ern-day Robert Bench­leys will have to alter their mes­sage back home: “Streets emp­ty of water. Please advise.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Sup­port the City Threat­ened by Cli­mate Change: A Poignant New Sculp­ture

How Venice Works: 124 Islands, 183 Canals & 438 Bridges

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

The Venice Time Machine: 1,000 Years of Venice’s His­to­ry Gets Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­served with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Big Data

A Relax­ing 3‑Hour Tour of Venice’s Canals

Watch Venice’s New $7 Bil­lion Flood Defense Sys­tem in Action

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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3,000-Year-Old Olive Tree on the Greek Island of Crete Still Produces Olives Today

in Life, Nature | February 22nd, 2023

Image by Eric Nagle, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

On the island of Crete, in the vil­lage of Vou­ves, stands an olive tree esti­mat­ed to be 3,000 years old. Hearty and resilient, “the Olive Tree of Vou­ves” still bears fruit today. Because, yes, olives are appar­ent­ly con­sid­ered a fruit.

Archae­ol­o­gist Ticia Verveer post­ed a pic­ture of the tree on Twit­ter and not­ed: It “stood here when Rome burned in AD64, and Pom­peii was buried under a thick car­pet of vol­canic ash in AD79.” That all hap­pened dur­ing the tree’s infan­cy alone.

An esti­mat­ed 20,000 peo­ple now vis­it the tree each year. If you can’t swing a trip to Crete, you can take a clos­er look with the video below, right around the three minute mark.

Across the Mediter­ranean, you can still find six oth­er olive trees believed to be 2,000–3,000 years old–some of our last liv­ing ties to an ancient world. And beau­ti­ful ones at that.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

Daisu­gi, the 600-Year-Old Japan­ese Tech­nique of Grow­ing Trees Out of Oth­er Trees, Cre­at­ing Per­fect­ly Straight Lum­ber

Vis­it Monte Tes­tac­cio, the Ancient Roman Hill Made of 50 Mil­lion Crushed Olive Oil Jugs

 

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Archaeologists May Have Discovered a Secret Language in Lascaux & Chauvet Cave Paintings, Perhaps Revealing a 20,000-Year-Old “Proto-Writing” System

in Art, Biology, History, Language, Nature | February 14th, 2023

Care to take a guess what your smart phone has in com­mon with Pale­olith­ic cave paint­ings of Las­caux, Chau­vet and Altami­ra?

Both can be used to track fer­til­i­ty.

Admit­ted­ly, you’re prob­a­bly not using your phone to stay atop the repro­duc­tive cycles of rein­deer, salmon, and birds, but such infor­ma­tion was of crit­i­cal inter­est to our hunter-gath­er­er ances­tors.

Know­ing how cru­cial an under­stand­ing of ani­mal behav­ior would have been to ear­ly humans led Lon­don-based fur­ni­ture con­ser­va­tor Ben Bacon to recon­sid­er what pur­pose might have been served by non-fig­u­ra­tive mark­ings — slash­es, dots, and Y‑shapes — on the cave walls’ 20,000-year-old images.

Their mean­ing had long elud­ed esteemed pro­fes­sion­als. The marks seemed like­ly to be numer­ic, but to what end?

Bacon put for­ward that they doc­u­ment­ed ani­mal lives, using a lunar cal­en­dar.

The ama­teur researcher assem­bled a team that includ­ed experts from the fields of math­e­mat­ics, arche­ol­o­gy, and psy­chol­o­gy, who ana­lyzed the data, com­pared it to the sea­son­al behav­iors of mod­ern ani­mals, and agreed that the num­bers rep­re­sent­ed by the dots and slash­es are not car­di­nal, but rather an ordi­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of months. 

As Bacon told All Things Con­sid­ered his fel­low self-taught anthro­po­log­i­cal researcher, sci­ence jour­nal­ist Alexan­der Mar­shack, came close to crack­ing the code in the 1970s:

… but he was­n’t actu­al­ly able to demon­strate the sys­tem because he thought that these indi­vid­ual lines were days. What we did is we said, actu­al­ly, they’re months because a hunter-gath­er­er does­n’t need to know what day a rein­deer migrates. They need to know what month the rein­deer migrates. And once you use these months units, this whole sys­tem responds very, very well to that.

As to the fre­quent­ly occur­ring sym­bol that resem­bles a Y, it indi­cates the months in which var­i­ous female ani­mal birthed their young. Bacon and his team the­o­rize in the Cam­bridge Arche­o­log­i­cal Jour­nal that this mark may even con­sti­tute “the first known exam­ple of an ‘action‘ word, i.e. a verb (‘to give birth’).

Tak­en togeth­er, the cave paint­ings and non-fig­u­ra­tive mark­ings tell an age-old cir­cu­lar tale of the migra­tion, birthing and mat­ing of aurochs, birds, bison, caprids, cervids, fish, hors­es, mam­moths, and rhi­nos … and like snakes and wolver­ines, too, though they were exclud­ed from the study on basis of “excep­tion­al­ly low num­bers.”

Ear­ly humans were able to log months by observ­ing the moon, but how could they tell when a new year had begun, essen­tial infor­ma­tion for any­one seek­ing to arrange their lives around their prey’s pre­vi­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed activ­i­ties?

Bacon and his peers, like so many poets and farm­ers, look to the rites of spring:

The obvi­ous event is the so-called ‘bonne sai­son’, a French zooar­chae­o­log­i­cal term for the time at the end of win­ter when rivers unfreeze, the snow melts, and the land­scape begins to green.


Read the con­clu­sions of their study here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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Visit the “Cat Islands” of Japan, Where Felines Outnumber Humans

in Nature, Travel | January 9th, 2023

The world has heard much about the aging and shrink­ing of Japan­ese soci­ety, a process that has cre­at­ed ghost towns like those we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. But how­ev­er seri­ous­ly Japan’s pop­u­la­tion may be con­tract­ing, its love of cats abides undi­min­ished. Hence the replace­ment of peo­ple by felines — effec­tive­ly, any­way — on the island of Aoshi­ma, vis­it­ed in the CBS Sun­day Morn­ing seg­ment above. “Here, cats out­num­ber humans more than ten to one,” says cor­re­spon­dent Seth Doane. Its “tiny fish­ing vil­lage once had a pop­u­la­tion of 800 peo­ple, but the sar­dine fish­eries deplet­ed, jobs moved to cities, and human res­i­dents left the island.”

Such is the way, it seems, of any post-indus­tri­al soci­ety — but as always, Japan has ways of set­ting itself apart. On Aoshi­ma, Doane says, “the big moment of the day is when the tourist boat shows up. It’s 45 min­utes of bliss for all involved,” includ­ing the cat-lovers bear­ing treats as well as all the peck­ish ani­mals await­ing them at the dock. But Aoshi­ma is only one of ten such “cat islands” around Japan. The much larg­er (but still small) Tashiro­ji­ma boasts not just over 100 res­i­dent cats, but also Neko-jin­ja (猫神社), lit­er­al­ly “Cat Shrine,” one of a host of such feline-ded­i­cat­ed reli­gious sites in the island’s Miya­gi Pre­fec­ture.

Whether Japan’s atti­tude toward cats amounts to wor­ship remains a mat­ter of debate. But the fact remains that cats have proven to be the sal­va­tion of more places in Japan than a few of its islands: take Tama (lit­er­al­ly “ball,” but the Japan­ese equiv­a­lent of “Kit­ty”), a cal­i­co whose assump­tion of the posi­tion of “sta­tion mas­ter” brought a train stop in Wakaya­ma Pre­fec­ture back from the brink of clo­sure. In the old days, Japan­ese cats did the dirty work of killing rodents that would oth­er­wise infest fish­ing boats and destroy silk­worm farms; today, their ances­tors drum up tourism. The Japan­ese may love cats with an enthu­si­asm unknown in the rest of the world, but clear­ly they still expect them to earn their keep.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Cats in Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Ani­mals Came to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Art

Insane­ly Cute Cat Com­mer­cials from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyazaki’s Leg­endary Ani­ma­tion Shop

Japan­ese Researcher Sleeps in the Same Loca­tion as Her Cat for 24 Con­sec­u­tive Nights!

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

Dis­cov­er the Ghost Towns of Japan — Where Scare­crows Replace Peo­ple, and a Man Lives in an Aban­doned Ele­men­tary School Gym

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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