not fade away

It's been a while since I've written about the train journeys I enjoyed when I lived in England in the mid-1960s. In those days the railway was still the most convenient and relaxing way of traveling around the countryside and one of my primary reasons for doing so at the time was that I had become interested in brass rubbing - similar to coin rubbing but on a larger scale. Commemorative plaques installed on stone floors of churches between the 1300s and the 1700s, the brasses are elegant and detailed portrayals of people in the medieval period - important people, that is. By the the time I got interested in making some reproductions of my own many of the churches that housed the monuments had stopped allowing people to make the rubbings at all because brass, being a fairly soft metal, is easily damaged or simply worn away.

So while many churches in the south of England had banned the practice ministers outside large urban areas were frequently more amenable. Since it wasn't a good idea to simply walk in carrying the rolls of paper, wax and weights (to hold the paper down) I wrote letters to request permission and to determine an acceptable date. Once that was done I'd plan my trip.

Probably the most interesting of my expeditions was the day I arrived at a tiny village that was home to a very old Gothic church. A young minister met me at the entrance and showed me into the nave where shafts of light from the arched windows created patterns of light and shade. The brass I'd come to reproduce, a knight in full armour with a greyhound at his feet,  was to the left of the altar. After dusting the piece carefully I positioned the paper and set to work transferring the image under the fascinated gaze of the minister. A little later while he related the history of the church he paused for a moment and asked if I'd like to see something special. Naturally, I said yes. He asked me to help him move a couple of wooden pews to one side and then he rolled back a carpet. There I gazed upon one of the most beautiful and intricate of the monumental brass memorials ever made.

Not this, but something like:

and no, I didn't even ask of I could make a rubbing. Seeing it was enough and having seen it was a very special moment for me. I think many people have accepted a very unfair description of the medieval period by calling it the Dark Ages. There was much in that time that was worthwhile - such artistry as the old churches attest both in their building and decoration required time and peace of mind in their creation.


“I don't suppose there has been a moment in the world's history where more people felt themselves to be artists, or when less art was produced."
~ Auberon Waugh

♡

unearthing history

In the northwest part of India that borders Pakistan there is a huge area where the Indus River flows to the Arabian Sea. In that river valley on the frontier of two modern countries are the remains of another river that was once fed by annual monsoons and the Himalayan glaciers, the Sarasvati, on whose banks the very ancient Indus Valley civilization once thrived. Also known as the Harappa (named after a nearby village) the culture remains an enigma. The Sarasvati, a miles wide river that ran south of the Indus whose course is still visible from space, has been a dry river bed for the better part of three thousand years. Once the Indus Valley civilization itself collapsed circa 1900BC its cities eroded and their remains covered by (that old standby) the sands of time.

It was in 1826, that a British Army deserter, posing as an American engineer named Charles Masson, recorded the existence of mounded ruins at a small town in the Punjab, Pakistan. The Punjab came under British control after 1849, and with the building of canals, roads and bridges, it became one of the most prosperous agricultural provinces of the empire. Archeological surveys undertaken in the mid-1800s led to the assumption that as the mounds were remnants of a recent culture it would be okay for the engineers constructing the Lahore-Multan railroad used brick from the Harappa ruins for track ballast. The bricks taken from the site were more than enough to furnish 100 miles of railway track, testifying to the scale of the buildings that existed there.

In 1919, the site of what turned out to be another important city, Mohenjo-daro, was visited by an Indian archeologist who found items indicating the place was very old and likely very large. Major excavations were carried out at separate periods from the 20s to the 60s when they were banned due to weathering damage to the newly exposed structures. In recent years less invasive methods have been used to gather further information.

Thousands of years ago (as of last year determined by geologic survey and modern dating methods to be at least eight thousand years) the Indus Valley civilization was larger than the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. Many of its sprawling cities were located on the banks of rivers that still flow through Pakistan and India today. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of the world population. The cities were so sophisticated and well-planned, that many archaeologists believe they were conceived as a whole before construction on them begun. Lothar, a port city found in the 1950s,  has the earliest known shipping docks.

The Indus script is made up of partially pictographic signs and various human and animal motifs that have been found inscribed on miniature steatite seals, terracotta tablets and occasionally on metal. As none found have been longer than 26 characters decoding them has proven impossible so far.

Well-planned street grids and elaborate drainage systems hint that the occupants of the ancient Indus civilization cities were skilled urban planners who gave importance to the management of water. Wells have also been found throughout the cities, and nearly every house contained a clearly marked bathing area and a covered drainage system. The houses were thick walled with tall ceilings to help keep them cool; flat roofs, latticed windows, and gardens were part of every home. Archeologists found a large pool surrounded by the remains of small bathing chambers on the upper level of Mohenjo-daro that may have held religious significance. It was so well sealed that it could be filled with water even today.

The civilization's prosperity and stature are evident in the artefacts, like beads, jewelry, and pottery recovered from almost every house, as well as the baked-brick city structures themselves. It appears not everyone was rich but even the poor probably got enough to eat. The cities lack ostentatious buildings like palaces and temples, and there is no obvious central seat of government or evidence of a ruler. Also, the lack of many weapons shows that the Indus people had few enemies and that they preferred to live in peace.

Farmers, traders, and craftspeople, the most commonly found artefact in the Indus Valley civilization is jewelry. Both men and women adorned themselves with a large variety of ornaments produced from every conceivable material ranging from precious metals and gemstones to bone and baked clay. Excavated dyeing facilities indicate that cotton was probably dyed in a variety of colours (although there is only one surviving fragment of coloured cloth).

Archaeologists have long wondered about the sudden decline of the Indus Valley civilization. There is no convincing evidence that any  city was ever burned, severely flooded, besieged by an army, or taken over by force from within. It’s more likely that the cities collapsed after natural disasters or after rivers like Indus and Ghaghra-Hakkar changed their course and the Sarasvati dried out.

***

I've been fascinated by history for most of my life and deep history has enthralled me these past years as more discoveries have been made and disseminated. The subject of the Indus Valley civilization is very big and much more complex than a small blog post allows. I've even had trouble choosing just a few photos and imagined illustrations of the period to show here for the simple reason there are so many. I hope you'll be interested in looking at some of the links or checking out the subject for yourself. If you do you'll find that it's also a contentious issue because of continuing political, religious, and caste-class issues.

There is one last thing I'd like to mention before I finish and that's the fact that at the Last Global Maximum (21 thousand years ago) of the most recent Ice Age coastal sea levels around the world were 400 feet lower than they are today. 10 thousand years ago, when the enormous glaciers began to melt, it's very likely that a number of places where people lived may have been inundated by sudden overwhelming floods. Considering the areas in red on this map were once dry land it's easy to see the Indus Valley was much larger then than now, a fact that opens many possibilities about origins.

When it's hard to think about the future there's some comfort in imagining the past - at least for me..

♡

in depth history

A few years ago when I read Alan Weisman’s book 'The World Without Us' I came across a paragraph that raised my curiosity:

“No one knows how many underground cities lie beneath Cappadocia. Eight have been discovered, and many smaller villages, but there are doubtless more. The biggest, Derinkuyu, wasn’t discovered until 1965, when a resident cleaning the back wall of his cave house broke through a wall and discovered behind it a room that he’d never seen, which led to still another, and another. Eventually, spelunking archeologists found a maze of connecting chambers that descended at least 18 stories and 280 feet beneath the surface, ample enough to hold 30,000 people – and much remains to be excavated.”


Perhaps you already know about them, but they were new to me and more than a little extraordinary. So for those who don't know about them at all and for those who've had other things on their minds lately, I'll go ahead.

It was in 1963 that a man in central Turkey knocked down a wall of his home. Behind it, he discovered a mysterious room. He continued digging and soon discovered an intricate tunnel system with additional cave-like rooms. What he had discovered was the ancient Derinkuyu underground city, part of the Cappadocia region in central Anatolia, Turkey. The elaborate subterranean network included discrete entrances, ventilation shafts, wells, and connecting passageways. It was one of dozens of underground cities carved from the rock in Cappadocia thousands of years ago - quite likely 5,000 years although nobody knows for certain (the old thing about not being able to date rock).

The Cappadocia region of Anatolia is rich in volcanic history and sits on a plateau around 3,300 feet (1,000m) tall. The area was buried in ash millions of years ago creating the lava domes and rough pyramids seen today. Erosion of the sedimentary rock left pocked spires and stone minarets. Volcanic ash deposits consist of a softer rock – something the Hittites of Cappadocia and the Phyrgians (remember them?) discovered thousands of years ago when they began carving out rooms from the rock. It appears it all began with storage and underground food lockers since the subterranean voids maintained a constant temperature.

Then, as invaders moved into and across the territory, the underground tunnels  served a larger purpose: protecting the people from attack. Miles of tunnels blackened from centuries of burning torches were strategically carved narrow to force would-be attackers to crawl single-file. Eventually the tunnels reached hundreds of caves large enough to shelter tens of thousands of people in separate family quarters.

As time went by Derinkuyu was inhabited by early Christians who expanded the caverns further by adding chapels, churches with ancient Greek inscriptions and frescoes. Over one hundred unique entrances to Derinkuyu are hidden behind bushes, walls, and courtyards of surface dwellings. Access points were blocked by large circular stone doors, up to 5 feet (1.5m) in diameter and weighing up to 1,100 lbs (500 kilos) were installed so each level could be sealed individually. The tunnelling architects included thousands of ventilation shafts varying in size up to 100 feet deep (30m). An underground river filled wells while a rudimentary irrigation system transported drinking water.

Commercial spaces included communal meeting areas, schools, dining rooms, grocers, religious places for worship (even shopping) while arsenals stored weapon caches and stables kept animals safe.

Just recently a housing construction project may have unearthed the biggest hiding place ever found in Cappadocia. Discovered beneath a Byzantine-era hilltop castle in Nevşehir, the provincial capital, the site dates back at least to early Byzantine times. It is still largely unexplored, but initial studies suggest its size and features may rival those of Derinkuyu.

Geophysicists from Nevşehir University who conducted a systematic survey of a 1.5-mile (4-kilometer) estimate the site is nearly five million square feet (460,000 square meters). These studies suggest the underground corridors may plunge as deep as 371 feet (113 meters). If that turns out to be accurate, the city could be larger than Derinkuyu by a third.

Cities, empires and religions have risen and fallen around these unique underground havens - 100 square miles with 200+ underground villages and tunnel towns complete with hidden passages, secret rooms and ancient temples and a remarkably storied history of each new civilization building on the work of the last. There are indications that many of these underground cities were connected by tunnels now collapsed or simply lost (for the moment).

It's an area I'd love to visit, but since that's not very likely (besides, I'm claustrophobic) and just a few are partially open to the public, I've settled for looking at some of the many online photographs and written accounts.

We inhabit a world both old and deeper than we might otherwise imagine.

♡

mysteries abound

Have you ever heard of the Longyou Grottoes in China? As a longtime admirer of a good mystery this one caught my interest when I first read about them a year or two ago, but unfortunately, there isn't really a lot of information other than some pictures and a few articles to be found on the internet.

Discovered in 1992 by a curious farmer (or an old lady called Grandma Wu depending on which account you accept), who wondered if the pond near his village was one of the legendary 'bottomless' ones, he convinced his neighbours to share in the rental on a pump so they could see for themselves. Now while I can't really understand why poor villagers would want to disrupt their supply of fresh water, they apparently kept pumping water from the squared off hole long enough to discover it was actually a purpose made cavern of pretty enormous size. Already ninety-eight feet deep, the floor itself sprawled to enclose an area of nearly thirteen thousand square feet - supported by carved pillars. The ceiling, wall and pillar surfaces are all finished the same way with a series of parallel bands between ridge marks about twenty inches wide and containing parallel chisel marks set at an angle of about 60°.

Once the first grotto was reported to the authorities a further twenty-four (or thirty-five) were found, all isolated from one another and often separated by less than two feet of stone. One fact from Wikipedia was curious. “Despite their size and the effort involved in creating them, so far no trace of their construction or even their existence has been located in the historic record.” Carved in siltstone, a medium-hard rock, the grottoes are thought to date to a period prior the Qin Dynasty in 212 BCE. However, there is not a single ancient text that describes the underground complex nor its creation or its purpose. Furthermore, there's no sign anywhere given the fact that the Ancient Chinese were extremely meticulous record keepers, of where nearly thirty-five million cubic feet of excavated rock went. When it's mentioned it would have taken a thousand workers each carting one hundred buckets twenty-four hours a day for six years (going where?) I can only shake my head in perplexity.

Commenting on the Longyou Grotto Caves, Yang Hongxun, an expert at the Archaeological Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, explained:

“At the bottom of each cave, the ancient builders wouldn’t be able to see what the others were doing in the next grotto. But the inside of each cave had to be parallel with that of the other, or else the wall would be holed through. Thus the measure apparatus should have been very advanced. There must have been some layout about the sizes, locations, and the distances between the caves beforehand.”

Another of the grottoe's mysteries is that there’s no evidence of lighting having been used. At Longyou there are no traces or remnants of the lamp bases, oil plates or other lighting equipment that have been found in other Chinese caves. Carbon residue remains on rock permanently. How did the builders see what they were doing when excavating and how did they breathe? The entrances are small and the caves deep, there would have been little to no natural light. It's a mystery.

Most of the spectacular mysterious ancient caverns are still full of water and neglected. This may be a good thing since Trip Advisor states the most bizarre thing is the level of destruction that has gone on in the ones that are open to the public. Concrete has been poured over them, lights and speakers installed, large fish ponds built inside the grottoes, and modern carvings have been added to the walls. By trying to attract tourists the government has destroyed and defaced the ancient cultural historical and architectural wonder. Alas, the Chinese were once understood to be very sensitive to ancient culture.

The general assumption about the grottoes is that they were man made about twenty-five hundred years ago, but I wonder. Not so much that people couldn't have made them, but the timing of their fabrication. While our race is estimated to be two hundred thousand years old our history dates back less than ten thousand years. Many ancient and mysterious artifacts and constructions have been found and are still being found. We don't know everything.

Maybe I'll ask Crow.

♡

ps: article of the week

memories with Crow

We all have worries, some common to everyone and others simply things that seem vaguely wrong about the way things are in our modern world. One subject Crow and I have talked about at length while sitting by his fireplace sipping Remy these cold and wet evenings of late autumn is the problem of storing what people have learned and made. Music, for one example in my lifetime, has been available in a number of formats over the years. I'm a bit too young (not by much) to remember wax discs but I do remember 78s, the flat discs made of a brittle material that broke all too easily. After them came 45s and albums made of longer lasting plastic. You needed a phonograph to play discs. Next came tapes which required the listener to have a special player. The next big innovation was the the cd, another disc but this one could only be interpreted by a laser disc machine. Now most of us have mp3 files that we access on our electronic devices - no discs, no tapes, no cds, in fact, theres nothing really to see or hold at all. It's pretty much the same for printed matter of all kinds. Now I know this isn't true for all of us, since books are still pretty common as are dvds, but it's largely true overall.

One can't help but wonder what next and, moreover, what if something happened that made all of our electronic information as inaccessible? A major solar flare, which apparently aren't all that uncommon, could destroy much of what's stored in the cloud. Besides music, movies and personal pictures almost all scientific documents are are written and saved on computers. Makes one think, doesn't it? Then, of course, there's just the general course of progress I already described where formats and the means of accessing them disappear.

I was very happy to discover that it hasn't just been Crow and I who have noticed these things. Not long ago on one of my voyages of discovery around the internet I found a website called 'The Memory of Mankind', a group that has dedicated itself to preserving much of our culture using a modern version of the clay tablet. The idea is that information deemed significant is being printed on ceramic microfilm and is being stored in an ancient saltmine in Austria. It's pretty interesting and most definitely a worthwhile project.

***

Once a king asked his wise men to give him something that would make him happy when he is sad, and sad when he is happy. The wise men spent days thinking about it in silence and watching the clouds go by. On the fourth day, they wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to the king. When the king read it, he thanked them. What did it say?

    “This, too, shall pass.”

:)

a fawlty assumption

This one didn't work out quite the way I'd hoped but it's enough to give a general idea of the time I went up north (north being the little village of Eastgate in Co. Durham) to visit my grandmother. I'd been in England, living on my own in London, for a couple of months by then and a visit was already overdue. What was I? 18 or 19, perhaps? Goodness knows, I thought I was about as grown up and sophisticated as a girl could be. My grandmother was probably 80 or maybe a bit older by the time I arrived on her doorstep - the first we'd seen of each other since 1958 when my mother and I had spent 3 months traveling the country visiting family. Naturally we'd been in Eastgate a lot. My granddad had died two years before so she was on her own in the two storey cottage they'd shared in retirement.

So there I was back with my grandmother for what I'd imagined would be a relaxing few days of quiet teas, long walks, and early bedtimes that would let me unwind from my busy life in the south country. What happened instead is that I'd hardly got in the door that evening before she put on her fur collar and her sparkly earrings, refreshed her lipstick and perfume, and hustled me out the door and around the corner to the local pub. My grandparents had been publicans among their many occupations over the years and had always been well loved in the area. So, unsurprisingly, just about everybody from the village and roundabout was there waiting for us to arrive, including the village bobby.

Now I never was much of a drinker, but people were buying rounds for my grandmother and me and the only way she was going to get another glass of blackcurrant brandy was when I'd finished what was in my glass. Nanna enjoyed her drink as much as a good joke and there were plenty of both going around the tables that evening. As it got later I comforted myself with the knowledge that soon the landlord would call 'Time!' and everybody would finish their drinks and go home. I'd had a very long train ride and a bus trip to follow so I was tired to say the least. Finally I heard the little bell ring and the landlord's call for last drinks. The policeman left. Five minutes later he was back wearing his comfortable clothes and the party continued for three more hours.

I could tell you some stories about some of my grandmother's exploits but it's late now and I should go to bed. I'm not the woman my nanna was. :)
♡

speculating with Crow

Crow, tired of the snow and rain in these parts this past month*, went off to visit his old Uncle Horus. There's no doubt modern society tends to suppress non-conforming ideas, imagination and adventure so I'm looking forward to his return and our ongoing conversations about perplexing, possibly strange, versions of history prior to Egypt's Old Kingdom.

We know Gobekli Tepe was built 12,000 years ago and was deliberately buried 2,000 years later.
Could the Sphinx date from 10,500BC?
Does the Piri Reis map prove there was an ancient seafaring culture?

Might even Atlantis have been real?

There are things we may never know but, while we don't have to believe everything we read, it's always good to keep an open mind. You never know what you might learn and there's always entertainment to be found:

Les Pyramides d'Égypte from Kheops Pyramides on Vimeo.


* Yes, it snowed again this evening. No accumulation, though.
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expedition with Crow

One thing about living in this out of the way place is that mail doesn't come very often or at any specified time. However, that which arrived today brought a letter from Crow he asked me to share with you:

Dear Friends,

You may be curious about where I''ve disappeared to these past long months. I hope you'll accept my apologies with the understanding my new found companions  and I have been making great efforts on behalf of all the animals and good people in the world . What could that be, do you wonder? I will explain.

During my late winter sojourn to ancient Aegypt I came upon a cartouche of profound antiquity which took me many long nights to decipher. It told of a path that leads to lands of unimaginable wonder where all can live in peace and harmony. I'm aware you may be skeptical that such a path exists but remember it wasn't that long ago most humans agreed the world was flat, that Earth was the center of the Universe, and man was the pinnacle of creation. We all know what became of those assumptions and who knows but there may be others that will be overturned as wisdom grows.

As we search for signs of our route across this mighty desert I've taken a moment to send you fond greetings. There are trails to mystery and beauty in unexpected places, some of which you may have found yourselves. Always remember the journey itself is what brings meaning to the destination. In other words, enjoy yourselves and why not try something new (like a piece of fruitcake)?

I will send further dispatches as space and shifting time lines allow.

Meanwhile, I send my salutations.

Crow

ps: susan will try to clarify yet another sun and sea damaged picture.

and that's his letter. I'm rather looking forward to hearing the rest of his adventure and sharing the details with you.

Best wishes and have a good weekend if I'm not back sooner.

♡

traveling Crow #3,249,001,683

Crow has sent another postcard from Egypt in which he appears to be enjoying himself enormously. He's even taken to wearing one of the costumes he favored during the reign of Ramses I. There wasn't much room for writing on the card that seems to have been through a sandstorm or two on its way here except for:

My friend the Sphinx is a little irked about his nose having gone missing and has wondered aloud 'What is wrong with you people?'

I know you've been drinking my Remy Martin but under the circumstances you're forgiven so long as you purchase more. Bag of dates on the way and me too.

Crow

ps: I wonder if NYC will still look this good in 2500 years?


I always wanted to go to Egypt but along with so many places I'd prefer to go there at least 100 years ago before the tourists arrived. Wouldn't it be fine to be sailing up the Nile toward Karnak in 1923?

♡

taking the long view

You're likely to think I've been hitting the holiday eggnog or Crow's Remy Martin stash a little too hard when you read this one but I don't mind because my interest in alternate history is one I'm not ashamed of. Although anything other than absolute mainstream science is considered a foolish waste of time by many, I happen to think there are writers and scientists whose work has been unfairly marginalized. This is a post about such a person and his research into a subject we're simply not accustomed to considering.

'During a period of glaciation, the average global temperature drops considerably and the volume of the ocean decreases greatly. The water that would otherwise be in the ocean is frozen as ice in continental glaciers, or as sea ice in the oceans making the world in general a much cooler place than the one we know. This map shows coastlines (solid lines are today's coasts) as they were about 20,000 years ago which you may easily imagine provided a very fertile original homeland for civilization when the major land masses we know today were desert like and cold.'

I decided to re-read Underworld, a book written by Graham Hancock in 2002, that I first read when it was published. At the time I wasn't the least bit interested in our computer or its connection to internet search engines but now that's changed and not only does the book deserve a fresh reading (at least by me) but also an examination of references that are searchable online. He explores a subject that should be fairly obvious, that when the ice age glaciers melted, sea levels rose, obliterating civilizations that lined the ocean shores. However, archaeologists have confined their research to mainland structures - not too surprising considering difficulty and funding. Nevertheless, there is still much to learn about unrecorded, ignored or misinterpreted human history.

We have a tendency to think the world we know has always been much the same but science has proven that the oceans were once 400 ft lower than they are now. What most of us don't understand is that the last Ice Age was at its maximum 20,000 years ago when human beings just like us had been inhabiting the planet for at least 200,000 years. Once the massive ice sheets that covered most of North America, Europe and the Southern Hemisphere to a depth measured in miles began to melt they didn't just gently drip away inch by inch. What happened instead were periods surface ice melting into huge lakes which on three separate occasions broke through massive ice dams in what are called glacial outburst floods. There have been smaller versions of these in recent years but nothing like the three that happened 14,000, 11,000 and 8,000 years ago. At one point the accumulated water from an ice sheet the size of a third of Canada poured into the North Atlantic over the period of a few weeks. Not to oversimplify, related catastrophic events occurred when so much ice melted in a relatively short time. Earthquakes and volcanoes struck with great ferocity when the ice shields were no longer pressing down on the earth's crust. It's almost impossible for us living in this quiescent age to imagine what it must have been like for people who were living comfortably in wide alluvial plains where edible plants grew without requiring much labor. It sounds like Eden, doesn't it?

Interestingly enough, archaeology dates the rise of modern civilization to approximately 8,000 years ago with the discoveries of the Indus Valley and the Sumerian cultures. What is so strange about both societies is that they appear in the historical record at a very high level of development that dissipates over time. In other words, the deeper the archaeologists dug the more sophisticated the architecture and objects they found. It's also true the oldest Egyptian pyramids are the ones still standing. There's growing evidence that suggests the Persian Gulf (only 100 meters deep) was a large valley with the Tigris and Euphrates running through it to the sea. It was only completely engulfed 8,000 years ago. Could it be a total coincidence the remains of Sumer are close by in southern Iraq?


I'm enjoying the book again and may post more about it if you're interested or you may want to read it yourself. It is a very long book (700+ pages) but it's a fascinating subject to explore that has vast implications of how different our history might actually be. Perhaps there was once a very large and relatively advanced culture that goes back much farther in the archaeological record than previously accepted. I'd certainly like to think so particularly because the archaeological record of the Indus Valley culture in particular provides no evidence of armies, kings, slaves, social conflict, prisons, and other negative traits that we associate with civilization.

Maybe that's why all of recorded history appears to us as an ongoing disaster - one from which our Earth hasn't yet recovered. Isn't it possible the disaster was simply the sudden and dramatic loss of its ice shield? Could real floods be the basis for the world wide myths about Great Floods?