did you ever kiss a frog?

April was fun and enjoyable:) A-Z review

Well the frenetic madness comes to a gentle end, I as I suspect many others have been having a well earned breather this past week.  I joined the A-Z last year and had a great time but, I leant some lessons then. 

The first, because I write long blogs, was do not attempt this challenge whilst writing a novel! which is what I attempted back then.  I was exhausted for far too long afterwards.  I cleared the decks this April, so writing 800-1000 word blogs each day was manageable, and so I enjoyed the experience even more this time around.

 I did mean to write short blogs this year; I failed:(.  Having decided on the theme of this world build, I found the research led me down many divers paths, the trick was to confine it within that 1000 word max.   Very difficult that proved.

The research time was approximately 2-3 hours per letter and the writing about an hour an a half so, as you can imagine, creating a novel at the same time would have been difficult.  I started planning each blog before the start of April, however, in the writing different strands may be followed , different fancies take over the direction, nothing is set in stone.  Blogs have characters of their own, as well as fictional pieces, in my abode!

I have failed on following all my fellow A-Z’ers, but the list remains and I will keep on trogging and maybe, I say maybe because, well have you seen how many there are?- get around them all.  There has been such a wonderful array of blogs , of subject matter. Everyone stepped up the mark with amazing diversity.

I have finished the month with a long list of future posts gleaned from the research I had to do, those tempting  nuggets on those paths I dared not follow due to lack of time, are mine for future picking:)  as I wrote, new ideas, thoughts and opinions occurred to me which hopefully will feed into blogs and my novels.  On that front, I also have to mention that, new ideas and thoughts have occurred from some of the comments, so thank you everyone who dropped by.

Many people commented on opening blogs up without security, I think mine might have been on, as some seemed to think their comments were not getting through – my comments do have to be verified, I don’t allow spam or unpleasant comment through – I apologise for any inconvinience , but that is how I run my blogs, and all comments did get through:)  and many others it seems, I personally do not mind proving I am not a robot:) it only takes a moment or two, so I had no objections to those who still had their spam catchers on through the challenge.  It seems there is a def. split of opinion on this subject.

All in all, April was fun and enjoyable, will I join in next year? But of course, if it’s running, it is such a blast. Will I write short snappy posts, such as many of you did – ‘tis unlikely, I am a gabby old lady, and the A-Z is a chance to write about subjects other than my fiction work:)  Will I turn off security so more people visit, probably not. 

What I would have liked, but couldn’t arrange it in time, was to have this blog in a triberr group, maybe by next year I will.

So on that note.  You who visit here know the subjects and style of did you ever kiss a frog, anyone with blogs that would fit, do you want to join a triberr group?  I belong to two others, but they are concerned with writing not so much with other subjects. Or do you already belong to one with room for one more?

 

 

Z is for maxamizing your chances

 

 

Some soft sunny days shout out for relaxing on some close cropped hillside, lying back, eyes closed against the sun, hands digging into the soft sheep nibbled downland grass.  Ears only just aware of the lazy drone of contented, clover feeding bees. Bird song, a pleasant background, harmonizing maybe with the gentle, watery bubble over pebble, sound of a distant stream.  Easy days. Easy thoughts.  All is well with the world.  All is peace.

Unfortunately, rarely is a moment peaceful on this planet of ours. It is, like Lord Byron, mad, bad and dangerous, world.  Prey and preyed, hunter and hunted.  That grass full of enough murder and mayhem to fill some novels.  Those valleys full of … well you get the drift.  Today in the last of this world build A-Z blogs, I am chatting, without any great depth, on how some maxamize their chances. Well, all the deceits of the world – not enough space you say and I agree, so I am only going to touch fleetingly upon deceit and trickery.

Beginning, because today is a Z day, with the Zebra, I wasn’t going that way at all, however my theme has been world build and this crazy looking horse is part of the fantastical side of our planet.  Camouflage! I grew up wondering why black and white stripes on the open savannas equalled camouflage?  The lions don’t see colour, I was told. Well, okay, maybe in that case… lions think the stripes are wavy grasses! Ah come on 

Slowly over the years it became, the stripes confuse the predators; then, the mass of stripes, presented by the herd, stopped the lions from distinguishing just one animal. Maximizing an individual's chance.  Getting better, after all that is how some birds and some fish live to fight another day.  So zebra stripes were designed to help camouflage them.  Lately, there is an extra theory for those stripes, not necessarily doing away with confusion.  It is thought that they also help to distract and ward of the tsetse and horse flies of the savanna, both of which can cause serious illness /or death to the animal.  These two flies do not like confusing black and white stripes either.. Nice one zebra.

It is a dangerous place this planet, full of unexpected hazards, it behoves one to have some kind of protection.  Is it unkind of me to call it deceit?  No. The different ploys are supposed to deceive predators.

Everywhere one looks within the animal kingdom we find them. But we can only guess at some.  Do butterflies appear to have the pattern of eyes on their wings to startle a predator, or to draw the predator towards attacking the wing and leaving the vulnerable body part alone.  Some butterflies do appear to have many attacks on the wing area, by the end of each season they are quite tattered and torn.  Maybe it is both.  Those with eyes startle the predator into thinking it’s a tougher predator and for others it is the pattern which disturbs.

Striking patterns are often a warning of toxicity. Snakes display them and those of the waspish persuasion do.  Black and yellow stripes often mean poison.  So if by having these stripes you can avoid being eaten, it is a splendid idea, so we have the harmless hover fly all primped up and darting around like a child in her mothers high heels.  It may not fool me – I have read the books – but it does help protect them.

I have in my garden, occasionally, they are becoming quite rare now, Cinnabar moths, beautiful crimson, little day flying moths.  Now in the UK we are used to the majority of our moths being night flyers and pretty drab.  The cinnabar flits out there in plain view, but it rarely gets eaten by the birds.  It is red.  It tastes nasty (apparently, I haven’t I confess tried it;:)  The birds keep away.

Then there are those who blend in, either by disguising themselves, caterpillars who look like bird shit, crabs who fling seaweed and the like over themselves to look like a rock, and those such as moths who resemble the bark of a tree, or the chameleon and octopus, who can change their colour to match their background. Think stick insects or Praying Mantis. Masters at vanishing.

Anything which will maximise their chance of eating or not being eaten.  Try finding all the green caterpillars on the brassicas:( one will always be overlooked to wreck havoc.  Those caterpillars who much ones lunch with visible stripes evolved to put off the birds, not me – I find all of those:)

Some will use speed, some sloth.  Others will curl into agonisingly, nose spiking balls, and others retreat into hard shells.  Some will enlarge themselves alarmingly, others will change their voices to deep, loud signs of strength.  Mass of numbers, erratic movements, sudden plummets, or stops, quick agile turn arounds, amazing jumps and quick dashes underground.  There are many ways of avoiding predation.  There are many ways of hunting. 

No, our glorious planet is not a peaceful idyllic place.  Not for the beasties, not for us humans.  It is an unpredictable, interesting, exciting, terrible, awe inspiring planet.  Out there in the universe. glorious in its blues,  greens and browns. 

There is not an invented world around to match it.

 

Y is for coracles

 

Messing about on the river – sounds fun, restful and conjures up images of sparkling sunlit waters.  Gentle murmuring sounds and blue, blue skies.  So peaceful.

When did we first venture onto the water?  When did we say, blow getting our feet wet paddling in the shallows, lets float on something and try to stay dry?  Now, for a person who suffers from extreme sea sickness when just pushing a child on a swing, this love affair with water appears very strange:)  Oh, I have often ventured, I live on an island after all, and grew up with a burning ambition to travel, so I ventured but, I have never done so without feeling like death warmed up, and imagining how deep the depths below me were - I am an excellent swimmer!

 Sometime, somewhere, a person/persons sat on a pile of reeds or debris (maybe after a river flooded) and found they could, not only float, but could travel so swiftly and to new places.  Ah restless humanity.  Reeds, maybe rafts, hollowed tree trunks – that would take a deal of faith wouldn’t it?  A tree floating?  It works, all of them work.  So why? Was the first reason food, trade, or travel?  I think warfare would have come later but what a good idea for Empire building. I run away with myself.

 

Humanity often lived near rivers, in river valleys there is water – essential and once they settled into agriculture, fertile land from the periodic floods. There is much evidence that early humans were also coastal dwellers.  Ancient, flat bottomed craft from across the globe indicate that lightweight watercraft designed and suitable for rivers are also ideal for coastal environments, for wetlands and marshes.

 

Cave paintings and remains dated the first boats in northern Europe about 15,000 years ago

Herodotus describes trade by sea, back around 430 BC

 

Flint flakes, used for stone age tools,  have been found hundreds of miles away from source on islands suggesting marine skills started very early in our history.

Coracles – so lightweight, carry on your back, so manoeuvrable and with the shallowest of drafts are found from the Celtic lands of Ireland, Scotland and Wales to the Far East such as Vietnam.  Made from split willow or bamboo, weather-proofed from tar or coconut oil, they were still built in a similar way.  They are in fact stable enough on the oceans to travel out into the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.

 

They have been found across India, Iraq and Tibet

 

This is where I say, ‘who was crazy enough to take such a small fragile craft onto the ocean? Why would you? Crazy people!

Fishing hooks and fish bone remains found in Timor indicate that humanity was deep sea fishing (tuna being among the finds – now there’s a big fish) back 42,000 years ago. Feeding oneself first class protein is certainly a good reason to indulge in a relationship with water. 

 Then of course trade began so early in our history and what better way to transport bulky or heavy commodities over distance.  The major rivers of any region, such as the River Nile,  4,132 miles from Central Africa to the Mediterranean Sea.  Great trade route, and, of course in time, it is only a hop, skip and a jump to continue down the Red Sea and then around the coast and then…..

 

Oh it is easy to see how generations of these clever people were beguiled into longer and longer trading routes.

 

A shipwreck has shown trade with China during the period 628 – 906AD

 

And piracy!

 

Early records show the Nabataens were using boats to capture these cargos in 600 – 250 BC – nothing much changes.

 

The great Monsoon winds would have been useful to these travels, although they would dictate the time and season of trade good movements, they would save on muscle power considerably, as would the trade winds.

Warfare, unfortunately, has to come into this splendid endeavour, doesn’t it always when dealing with our history?  Why buy/barter for essential or rare commodities if you can conquer and own them instead.  Empire building began so long ago – I fear we have always been greedy. 

Maybe I won’t discuss the history of the man of war ship, the galley slaves, the mayhem and carnage, there has been enough said over the years.  Suffice to say that, as in many aspects of our life, new and better ways of ship building were developed in the arms/trade race.

 The history of trade is, of course, from very early on mired in the worst aspects of our nature. It is not just warfare, but the Empire Building; trade so often comes at the cost of wholesale movement of peoples around the Empire in the form of slavery, from earliest times until the present. It comes at the cost of small societies and the pristiness of the landscape and wildlife. It is a fascinating history and there are many great books charting its course. My favourite at the moment is William Bernstein’s A Splendid exchange - How Trade Shaped the World – new ones appear all the time so who knows, it might be supplanted in my favours.

 So feeding, trade, warfare and Empire Building, I can understand all these, but, as I said at the beginning, I do not favour choppy waters or even gentle swells,  so I cannot understand why people then began to think it would be ‘fun’ just to be on the water.  Why they decided to build ‘pleasure’ craft, yachts and liners.  Well maybe liners if used to get from A-B such as in the case of immigration.

 Yachts for the wealthy, for partying on the high seas, for racing; cruise ships for frolicking! What a long way we have come.

From coracle to yachts.

X is for beware of the stranger

In the creation of a perfect world-build one needs a dominant life form, as I have already stated, and one is advised to have both the bad and the good – to make the story more exciting! More exciting, is really only good within the pages (paper or electronic) of a book.

More exciting on this planet can be just plain nasty.  A dominant life force – yup we have that – now is it humans or insects I forget?  We will go with humanity.  This blog is really the other side of, S is for Dunbar.  Humans don’t really like each other that much. What a thing to say up here in cyberspace with networking buzzing uncontrollably around us!  Bear with me.  This post is about xenophobia.

 

 Xenos  =  stranger

Phobos = fear

 A fear of strangers!  Well the dictionary definitions elaborate a little to include

 Deep-rooted antipathy towards foreigners (Oxford English Dictionary) and

Unreasonable fear or hatred of the unfamiliar, especially people of other races (Webster’s)

 Hatred of the unfamiliar.  Unreasonable fear.  Deep rooted antipathy.

 

How do we get up in the morning?  I suspect hatred of the unfamiliar is hard wired into our DNA – a survival instinct from waaaay back when.  It seems to be a natural instinct in the very small child.  Beware of the stranger, we teach them this if we are ‘responsible’ adults.  Stranger danger.  Our natural instincts re-enforced from birth.  We need to be wary of the strange, because the strange may hurt or kill.  Do not eat casually of a berry, even if it does display the same juicy red of a strawberry, that might just be a tempting disguise!

All life forms to some extent or other, view the unknown, the strange with wise suspicion.  To stay alive and unharmed being the aim.

But we have called ourselves Homo Sapiens ‘Thinking Man’ or 'Wise, Rational Man'.  Thinking because our ancestors elevated us up beyond the animal kingdom.  We have a brain capable of logical and reasoned thought.  We are superior, no longer bound by our instincts!

Instincts are what they are – instinctive.

However, life on this planet could be better if we applied that sapiens part a little more often.

It has been many decades now, since I believed all humanity could one day live in harmony with each other.  My father believed it to the end.

He was born at the start of the First World War, from parents who had lost siblings in the Boer War, and served in the navy during the second, and never, did he buy into the jingoist patter of those days and believe the ‘enemy’ was anything else except a person such as he.  His views were unpopular, scoffed at, but his scorn was for the politicians, and moneymaking wheeler dealers who caused the conflicts in the first place.

He would sit back in his chair, pipe in hand, and quietly speak sense against childhood passions of hate and excess.  Use your imagination, he would scold.  Imagine another person’s life.  Be the other person. He sent me off into unimaginable zones.  How could I imagine what it was like to be a German, an Irishman?  What did an Indian or an African have in common with my life? Not that much in the material sense but, did they all have the same inner life as I.  Fears, loves, laughter, and yes hatred of the unknown, the unknown that brought down the wars and calamities.

Years later when I could make my own judgements on the ‘strange’ the ‘foreign’ I would endeavour to think, how would he have done it?

Foreigners – well now, are they those from the neighbouring area?  Our neighbours.  Or do they have to be thousands of miles away?  Are they those with different views to ours?  Remember Dunbar? We huddle in our small groups of kin, interests and affiliations.  We grow passionate about them. We claim them, They are ours.

Do we fear loss of identity if we allow ‘them’ to close to ‘us’? Xenophobia is not about ‘race’, that is racism.  We use the term interchangeably quite often.  Xenophobia is a larger and possibly more dangerous term.  It is as unreasoning as racism, as illogical.  We do not need to cosy up to those who are different; we do need to dampened the unreasoning nature of hatred.

It is not just a problem with our modern societies, the gathering together of so many differences- this is as old as the world of living creatures.  Read the bloody history of small tribal wars.  The difference with modern societies and the even more modern nationhood is that we can unleash devastating ‘fear’ against others on the grand scale.

Because the vast majority of us are, and this I do believe, basically kind hearted, another instinct? we need to have the distrust of strangers fanned into enough heat that we can ignore our kinder side.  It is how governments get men to fight and kill, how gang leaders get young recruits, how football fans can suddenly go berserk, how youths can riot dangerously on the streets.  Stranger danger; they will eat your babies, steal your life, take your employment, destroy your hopes and dreams. The solution - destroy them first.

Who asks first if this is so? Who tries to imagine what being a refugee would be like? Being starved or beaten?  Who stops to examine if the ‘stranger’ before them actually has two heads?

Is it always a matter of wanting more land, more resources, more power that we continually wage war, fight our neighbour, hurl insults across the backyard wall? If all these were equally distributed would disputes cease?  I don’t think so.  Always someone will desire what another has. 

My dad was never a pacifist; bullies need to be stood up to. But, he was right to distrust the people in power.  His plea always was for some kind of reasoned thought.

His was the voice that demanded, we children, asked /found all the facts, thought around, and above and below before we made a judgement on anyone or anything.  I fail often to live to his high standards but I hope he wouldn’t be too disappointed in his daughter.

 

W is for the Midas touch

 

Once upon a time in a far away land – oh those fairy tales of my youth.  I loved them.  Beautiful princesses with golden tresses, (always tresses) handsome dashing princes on white steeds, (must be a steed). Daring and doing, and rescuing damsels (wonderful word -damsels). Life begins to intrude very early in ones childhood, life, with its, ‘you must’ - ‘because’ – ‘do it’

The fairy tale land was full of sunshine and gold.  Especially gold – it was a colour/metal full of magic and wonder. From the gold tresses to the gold rings, golden eggs ,golden carriages, golden flax and even, if we stray into the land of myths, a king who could even turn his daughter into gold.

There was also a deal of spinning.  Spindles, spinning wheels, fine spinning, rubbish spinning.  It is a difficult thing to spin fine silk, obviously only a damsel fit for queen-ship is likely to be able to do so:) all manner of girls were locked up with their spinning wheels to prove they had what it took.  Or, if not being locked up, were being sent into decades long sleep because of that accursed spinning!

Spinning was usually of the flax persuasion, but one can spin all sorts, we know about wool, and flax.  Nettles and other plants can be spun into a yarn, and of course silk- the ultimate in luxury, those fine, fine, filaments of silk.

This is not however a post about fairy tales, or spinning as such.  About gold perhaps.  This is a blog about another creature that reckons large in myths, folk tales and other fantastical stories.  A creature which, if you have followed my previous posts you will know, looms large in my nightmares.  Spiders!  Oh, how many of us do not like them. They have been spoken with fear and awe since time began, I suspect. As spinners and weavers of destiny, as creators of the veils of illusion, as tricksters or as creators of all things - from silken threads and, of course, as our own symbol of hope (Robert the Bruce)

Once, when I was a girl, I awoke to a spider sitting on my pillow, the first thing I saw! The other day, in my old age, the first thing I heard when I awoke was another spider.  On the radio. 

A magical fairy tale of a spider. 

The golden orb spider from Madagascar. 

I came in half way through an interview about a golden cape. Feather light – the invisible cape  (it had no weight at all) made from this spider – well millions of them.  From their silk to be exact, extracted (without harm to the spider) and spun into a golden thread. 

 Truly, a golden thread, no dye was used in the process. 

 

A spider whose web is golden.  Picture raindrops and sunlight on a web spun from golden coloured silk.  Ah, I would go and actively look for a spider who could enchant like that.

This cape is truly a magical creation and rather than try to describe it to you I have included a link – spare the 7 minutes it will require to see the fantastical brought to life – it will be worth it.  Spun, woven and embroidered, by patient talented people.  Not princesses, not hard done by step daughters, but ordinary human people.  It is beautiful.

W is for webs and weaving today – enjoy this wonder.

 

Okay I have tried and tried to get this link to work - it won't for me - however, it is the correct address so please, I urge you, type in the URL, there is a treat in store on the page - I promise you- it seems to be something to do with encryption issues:(

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/g/golden/golden-spider-silk

scroll a little for the video, it shows the whole process of collecting spinning weaving and sewing - great video

 

 or there are some pictures here

http://www.zurmat.com/2012/02/05/golden-orb-spider-silk-cape/

 this site has photos only, no video, but stunning for all that

If any of you have visited the V&A  (Victoria and Albert Museum) in London, and seen this cape, I would love to hear and if you haven’t, but will be in London before the exhibition closes – go, go , go.

V is for rivers of fire

Many, many, decades ago when I was quite small, well before the world of science had even become visible on my horizon my father explained what a volcano was.  I think there was a picture of one on the cover of some Saunders of the River type adventure story.  He was not to realize the terror this struck in his daughter’s heart. To find out, from that font of all knowledge ones father, that the firm ground I played so happily on was just a covering of earth over red hot liquid!  That there were ‘holes’ from which this red hot liquid exploded and this red hot liquid poured down mountain sides killing and destroying all before it. 

 

Many nightmares troubled me after that revelation.  Ground was ground, no holes allowed. The planet was a ‘solid’ ball in space – it had to be solid – didn’t it?  If it wasn’t solid, what was to stop it all falling in on itself?

 

That first brush with the realities of this planet almost killed at birth any interest I might have in the place.  Unreliable and distinctly unsafe.  Luckily I still had my father’s calm outlook to steady me, his questioning and delight in the world to inspire me.  But, I have a deep suspicion of holes.

 I have read and seen much since then, nothing but confirmation that the planet can be a treacherous place.  Also a wondrous place full of marvels. 

 Yes of course vocanos they are dangerous, but without them we would not be, the world as we know it would not be.  They may well one day kill us all in some mighty super-eruption, a winter of dust storm, but so far, where they are/have been the soil is good, where they have been whole continents and mountain ranges exist.

Can’t you just imagine with what awe our ancestors regarded these explosive eruptions.  Whole sides of mountainous rock being hurled ever skywards, the rivers of burning lava, threateningly dangerous in the day and supernaturally alive at night.  Whole forests ignited and destroyed in moments.  This is angry gods at their most unpredictable and capricious worst.

Another slightly worrying factor (well for a young child anyway – I have grown past the worry now:) was the movement of the earths outer crust, outer crust? – I couldn’t get my head around the blackberry and apple pies Mum made.  Very fragile that crust. Gigantic ‘plates’ like the jigsaw puzzles I enjoyed – moving around and crashing into each other.  I was quite young when Mount Everest was climbed, the Himalayas I was told were the result of one of these crashes.  It really did seem to me the world was a very unstable, hazardous place to live – never mind what I thought when I found out about gravity!

The crust is approximately 18 miles thick (that’s hardly any distance) Where the plates are.

Between this layer and the next is magma – rock and gasses then

The Mantle approximately 1,800 miles thick (much better)

The Core = the inner layer

Actually saying 1,800 miles is better is crazy, it’s really still not that long a distance.

Generally volcanoes are found where these tectonic plates diverge or converge

The mid-Atlantic Ridge has examples of volcanoes caused by divergence of plates pulling apart

The so called Pacific Ring of Fire have examples of the opposite where converging plates come together.

One can also find volcanoes,  such as those in the East African Rift and the Rio Grand Rift in North America, where that crust is stretching and thinning- I always knew 18 miles wasn’t thick enough!

 

They are without doubt one of the planet's most destructive forces. Amongst the gasses that can be discharged, depending on the type of volcano are

Carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride,

 

Volcanic action is believed to be the reason for various mass extinctions in our distant past. One such may be a super eruption in Indonesia 70,000 years ago which many experts believe killed most of the humans alive.

It is thought that volcanic activity caused the freezing winter of 1740-41, which led to widespread famine across Europe, and in 1815, the eruption of Mount Tambora affected the weather of Europe and north America so severely  that in that ‘year without a summer’ livestock died, crops failed again causing wide spread famine.

It is estimated that 200,000 people have died as an immediate result of volcanic activity in the past 500 years.  Yet one in ten people live within the danger area of a volcano (the soil is eventually so fertile the risks are taken)

The poisonous gasses released at the time of an eruption will kill both people and animals.

Ash will cover plants thereby rendering them inedible

The dust cloud can blot the sunlight, cause climate changes such as excessive cold, torrential rain, severe winds.  It can (a modern day problem this) affect the safety of aircraft.

 

 Volcanic eruptions can also cause  

Tsunamis – flash floods – earthquakes – mud flows – rock falls

 

Supervolcanos!

 These have the potential to produce devastating eruptions, sometimes on a continental scale. The huge amounts of sulphur and ash they would produce would be sufficient to cool the whole planet for many years.  These are the very bad boys of volcanoes.

Just one more hazard lurking in the shadows and I am so pleased I didn’t hear about this one when a child!

U is for the magic beneath our feet

 

We run around on this planet of ours, jump, and drop heavy and/or explosive devices upon it secure in the knowledge that the ground beneath our feet is sound, solid.

 Well no. It’s not really.

 Caves! Mysterious places under this amazing planet.  They are hidden mostly from view.  Maybe an entrance tempting us into their darkness. (Well not me, as I really do not like dark enclosed spaces very much).  An entrance that leads us into what are basically hollows under our feet, topped with a thinner layer of the planet than the rest.  Very few of us know where they are or how far down they may be.  And for the most part don’t worry too much about them, until a house sinks, a person falls through!

They are found all around the planet but only a small number of them have been explored or even documented.

Of those which have been

 

 The greatest total length is 390 miles (628 Kilometres) in Kentucky USA –Mammoth Cave

 

The longest underwater cave 134 miles (215Kilometres) Mexico, Sistema Sac Actun

 

The deepest known 7,188 feet (2,191 kilometres) Abkhazia, Voronya Cave

 

The largest chamber 2,297 x 1.312 feet (700x 400 metre) and a height of 260 feet (80 metres)

 

Some of the caves around are magical enough to be the stuff of fantasy.

 

In Waitomo, New Zealand, one can gape (and I surely did) at the beautiful twinkling starlight of glow worms covering the ceiling of the cave.

 

There are endless caves around the globe (limestone for the most part) where amazing formations of both stalactites and stalagmites can be found and wondered at (for those who can never remember – stalactites hold tightly to the roof, and stalagmites might reach the roof .

 

The sight of a waterfall cascading down from the earth above into the dark recesses of a cave is a sight to remember. In Yorkshire, UK there is a fall of water 360 feet high.  Speechless and not just from the noise:)

 

One of the most exciting times I had on my travels was wandering in underneath a glacier of such a pure blue ice it almost hurt in its exquisiteness.

 

Some caves have become iconic in their mysterious antiquity

 

Such as the Great Cave of Niah in Malaysia , 40,000 years ago people used it for shelter, and the even older Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa showing signs of human habitation and rock art from 60,000 years ago. Pictures singing out over thousand of years.

 

 

Man-made caves would have to include

The underground city of  Derinkuya which was built into the soft volcanic rock in Turkey. Possibly in 7^th-8^th century BC , and enlarged through the centuries until it finally could accommodate 35,000 – 50,000 people.  There were 11 floors, extending 85 metres down and everything a city could need. Wine/oil making facilities, stables, cellars and churches amongst other amenities.  That’s one big hole in the ground!

 

Caves have been used for living in as well as for shelter, but being on the whole dark, damp places not as often as one would like to imagine.  However, in times of emergency and stress - think battles, think persecution or natural disaster - they have proved to be great escapes.

Man made certainly include the thousands , tens of thousands maybe, of mines we have left in the ground and mountainsides.  Mankind has  been digging into the hills/mountains/ground since Neolithic times: it all started with stone and gold, since then we have gathered to ourselves

Base metals, precious metals, coal, iron, rock salt, diamonds, uranium, limestone and potash.  I have probably left a whole lot out.

 

I am not able to judge which are the deepest mines as records appear to be broken all the time but some in the recent past have reached 3.9 kilometres.

Now for another Duh! bit of magic -  there is life down there in those dark depths.  Over the millennium life forms have adapted to living in complete absence of sunlight

 

Troglobites are completely cave dwelling and often of white /pale colouration, with loss of eyes or vision(what need, indeed, in the dark), elongation of appendages and a superior set of other senses.

Troglophiles can live in caves but are also found elsewhere, such as oligaphourura (archaphorura).

Trogloxenes use caves a lot but need to be able to go outside for a complete life cycle, such as some species of bats and crickets.

  

Fantasy writers from wherever – it’s all been done before!

 There is also that most magical of all substances down there – water.

 

Some of the water is over a million years old.

Ground water makes up approx 20% of the world’s fresh water supply

Naturally topped up from precipitation (think very long term!)

Naturally, eventually, finds a way back to surface (sometimes over many thousands of years) via streams, rivers, wells and springs.

  

We take too much too quickly and what we don’t take we are slowly polluting from all the pollutants above ground, seeping down. As I have mentioned before, in earlier blogs, we plunder this resource at our peril.  An underground reservoir which has taken a million years to fill, can be emptied in just a few. Do we have time to wait out another million years – for the sake of all year round potatoes or out of season strawberries?

T is for immortality

 

 

• ‘The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself – not just sporadically, an individual here in one way. An individual there in another way – but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief’

Julian Huxley 1927.

 He called it Transhumanisim – it has been dubbed the world’s most dangerous idea.

 Back on K is for transplant day, I was discussing transplants of body organs, tracing the history and finishing with a few of the new ethical decisions that are being considered.  I am an author of a futuristic series, featuring genetically modified humans.  Genetics is a subject I am interested in and from what I had read it seemed quite reasonable to assume that all I wrote could be possible in the near future. I was guessing, or rather just pushing events forward in my mind.

 Some of my first readers queried the science; I stoutly defended, telling them it was possible. This last week I have been reading An Optimists Tour of the Future by Mark Stevenson and discovering just how right I was, and how close it is.  I have also been discovering more about transhumanisim.

 A few weeks ago there was a report that science had discovered a way of extending the life of mice almost indefinitely, by delaying aging.

Immortality!

Ah, now there is a concept to ponder.  It's an old, old idea, we find it in texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, found on clay fragments discovered in 1850, written in the 2^nd millennium BC, in ancient Mesopotamia,. I should imagine that humanity has desired this prize since before then.

What stops our life short of this prize?  For many centuries it was disease and accident.  Few wandered into the aging process.  For early man, birth reproduction death – it took a little longer than a dragonfly’s life, but it was pretty much the same.  Then we grew quite clever and began to work out how to deal with accidents and gradually how to prevent, or at least heal disease.

 

 Then miraculous ideas such as blood transfusions, skin grafts,  kidney, heart, cornea transplantations arrived.  Worn out/diseased organs could be replaced.  I am not sure many would begrudge a kidney transplant.  Nor say nay to a wounded soldier being given a new face or hand.

 We can insert pacemakers (old hat that!) Any minute now we will be able to slow down aging as well as transplant organs and attach new limbs . Actually attach new limbs wired up to our brains, so that the recipient can operate, say a hand, by his brain synapses and nerve endings.  This is good.  Isn’t it?

 We have begun to grow new organs in the labs. Using the patients own stem cells. Learnt how to use nano-tecnology to re-arrange aroms, learnt how to reprogramme cells. 

 Often these new advances have been a matter of small steps

 fading eyesight –  larger print - a pair of glasses – contact lenses – laser treatment - stem cells

 

We have already accepted these steps.  One advance slowly following another.  Fine. When do we say no more – indeed do we say no more?

 

Transhumanism wishes to transform humanity.  To allow us to march into the future transformed into something way beyond our idea of human now.  With disease and age defeated.  With bodies enhanced by technology beyond anything dreamed of now.  Hey, hey, some might say, not so fast, what do mean?

 More of the same.  We can, so we will. Bionic man is no longer a TV programme.  Some sports officials are proclaiming Oscar Pistrious carbon- fibre blades (his artificial running legs) give him an unfair advantage.  He has no legs! and he has an unfair advantage?  Soon it is thought all the new science and technology will be used to ‘repair’ brain power, while we would not begrudge the repair of anyones cognitives abilities it is only a small step from enhancing cognitive ability. 

Some already maximise their children’s chances in life by picking ‘good’ schools.  Ferrying them to and fro out of school activities. Moving to ‘good’ neighbourhoods. Cultivating the ‘right people’.  Do we/ should we enhance out children’s chances further?

This technology is only a very few baby steps away from linking brains, bodies and AI hardware!

Science and technology are poised on the brink of amazing things.  Amazing ways of helping humanity to cease its suffering and disadvantages.  No more disease or suffering, an extended lifetime – which as it is extended, could eventually become immortality. Who wouldn’t want to live forever?

The ideals are maybe splendid, who would want to prolong suffering?  However, the cost of all this makes one suspect it would not be available to all.  So do we have super humans and then the rest?  Will super humans eventually eliminate the rest, because they can’t keep up?  What happens if no one dies or not until they are well into their 100s (if they can be kept young, fit and healthy) What happens to the next generations?  Are there any? Do we need babies, if those who have been transformed live for ever with mind and body trim? 

We became what we are through evolution, some odd accidents were thrown up in this process, some were kept and gave us an edge; some were useless and were either not reproduced or died out.  We built slowly and methodically to the present.  Due, a great deal of it, to adverse conditions in life.  Will we be so keen, if life is perfect, to keep building, keep evolving? And these changes were also due to succeeding generations wanting to go further, do more.  Due to the babies growing up, with their eclectic mix of genetic material. Where the rich mix of genetic material if no one dies?

People with enough money have ‘cosmetic’ surgery now, to enhance themselves.  Would they be willing to have a ‘not so perfect’ leg  removed and replaced with a better one, grown from their own stem cells?  Eradicate genetic disease – um yes. Straighten out  mental differences – no more mental illness – begins to get tricky there, who decides which bit of normal is normal?  Grow your own knee replacement?  Have your memory downloaded onto a hard drive?

It is keeping people from getting ill, which has helped to prolong lives.  When my grandparents were young adults, the average lifespan in UK was 48.  The reason for the recent panic over pensions, is that we now live to claim them for 20 – 30 years longer than was intended.  We have been helped by science and medicine to live longer, healthier and more enjoyable lives. My grandparents may well not have believed transplants were possible. Do we believe half human/ half computer is possible?

We can replace body parts using patients' own stem cells

Bionics are almost at the point of allowing the ‘disabled’ to out perform the ‘abled’

The re-coding of cells to cure disease from within is almost within reach

We can attach new limbs and connect them to our brains

We have the ability to stop pandemics

We have almost cracked the aging problem

 

It is called a dangerous idea because… because… there are so many becauses.  For me, I think, the main ones concern the almost inevitable gap which will occur between those who can and those who can’t.  The gap is slowly decreasing between health and ill health around the world but, while this new science advances in almighty leaps, one child still dies from malaria every minute. One child in five still dies of diarrhoea, usually caused by polluted water.  For many it will be the 'changing' of what is human.  We have changed so much since those far away times, but is this a change to far?

I cherry picked the genetic enhancements in my series of novels – because I could, I invented the scenario:) We might think this transhumanisim can only happen if society says it can, but if we stop and think what we have already allowed, and don’t get me wrong, I agree with modern medicine and I have a great respect for science, but I do have a kind of fear that this is unstoppable, even if society wished it, and I can't see that happening.

 It will take awhile before they can manage all they dream of. I think, to be fair to these new magicians, they wish for this transformation because they wish to enhance life – a good idea.  History shows us what hi-jacked ‘good ideas’ can be turned into. I just hope they sort out and put into place some strong ethical guidelines before it happens.

S is for Dunbar

 

 

In world building one species is usually dominant, here, on this planet, thinking man gets the prize.

Humans are social creatures, and like all social species do not thrive on isolation – there are of course exceptions, those who shun crowds and the hustle bustle of our anthills, indeed I have a tendency that way myself.  However, they do have contact even if minimal.  Intrepid explorers, they usually had porters/slaves around, hermits,  mostly solitary, I grant, but someone would bring them food, prisoners have their guards, marooned and lost will adopt other species into their lives, those unfortunate few who have no contact at all find their minds play tricks, and disengage normal synapses.  We are social and need other creatures.

The most basic grouping is of course mother and child, as a species we have mostly corralled a male as well, to help protect woman and child.  The downside of our larger brain size is a longer period of vulnerability after birth, to catch up. However, families grow at quite a rate, so those early travelling bands would have been larger groups than three. 

It is estimated they would have been between 20 – 30 strong.  Strong is a good word.  With enough men to protect, hunt and do the ‘man’ stuff, enough females to bear, tend the children and do the ‘woman’ stuff and children to replace worn out parts of the group, these groups would work well.  They would probably have been related (or if an outsider, assimilated as soon as children were produced).  They knew each others strengths and weaknesses, knew their roles and I suspect had little room for slackers or hangers on.

As they travelled and began to trade, their ring of known ‘friends’ would slowly grow.  Indeed it was likely that organized meetings of these groups would have begun, for the purpose of trade and of gaining new blood for each group.  I haven’t believed the woman dragged by the hair to cave scenario for many decades now:) it makes little sense to attack another group unless under dire provocation – the loss of just one or two members of such small groups would have spelt disaster.

When agriculture slowed our wanderings down, pinned us into various ‘one’ spots, these groups would have increased in number, if not living together, as part of a wider group of contacts. Settling in a prime spot for farming.  Well others would consider it ‘prime’ also and so villages grow and now the groups grow larger. 

Still within manageable numbers for each to ‘know’ each other, for ‘each’ to be related in some way to ‘each’.  Social bonds strong enough to protect each other.  Probably at the beginning, the same ‘self policed’ rules would apply; everyone had a role and knew their place in the group.

But what happens when these groups grow too large? What happens when too many ‘outsiders’, with new ideas, begin to muscle in to ‘prime’ spots?  Social groups need constant work to keep them viable – social grooming – interaction, shared experience, gossip, a shared social life (dancing, singing, feasting will do it:)   Uneasy wobbles will begin to occur when it is no longer possible to keep it up.  Disputes, a feeling of ‘them’ and ‘us’ begin to occur.  Warfare is then a serious option, to keep ‘us’ safe from ‘them’; warfare to reclaim what is ‘ours’.

We continued to create these larger groups, agriculture produced them.  Our villages morphed into towns and then cities.  Enough food could be produced to feed non farmers, those who made the laws, stood ready to fight for ‘ours’.  New groupings other than kin had to be discovered to enable these large groups to work together.  A new feeling of ‘kinship’, a larger family.  Pride in one’s town/city/nation, a religion, an ideal.  As some new, larger and more powerful, group evolved, then smaller groups would be swallowed up or vanish.

However we are a social creature of small groups. It is difficult for people to encompass huge numbers and still maintain friendly relations with them.  Large numbers can feel threatening to those evolved into small groups of ‘known’ friends/allies.

When we became large groups in settled areas was when we became ‘citizens/obeyers of laws’.  Those powerful/persuasive enough, took over the role of keeping our homes/environments ‘safe’. In exchange for security, from those unknown neighbours of ours, we gave up the rights to make our own rules.  It works – mostly – there have of course been horrendous mistakes over historical time!

There a few theories around on our social groupings.  Anthropologists H Russell Bernard, Peter Kilworth et al estimated that 231 -290 is a number any group can deal with, however, the number that is widely quoted and indeed used in applications such as anthropology, evolutionary physiology and business management  is Dunbar’s Number

British anthropologist Robin Dunbar suggested the number of people with whom any group member can maintain a stable relationship with, is approximately 100-230, with 150 being the optimum number.  These are people one can know and keep in social contact with, not those one knows personally but have ceased contact with nor those one knows of but have little social contact with.  150 – about the size of a hamlet.  Those first settled settlements.

So what do we do?  Gathered together, as we mostly are. We create small social groups. A social group is defined as two or more humans who interact, share similar characteristics and collective sense of unity.  Kin is usually the small primary unit.  Secondary are the friends we collect along the way, overlapping with this first. Then the world is our oyster.

 

To be part of a group one needs to share

common motives /goals/interests

established status

accepted moral codes/ethic

awareness of a common category

 

We collect our small groups; peers, work mates, specialized groups, gangs, military friends, drinking partners, dance groups/ choirs, religious affiliations.

 

The list is endless and we tend to establish smaller groups within the larger.  We are more comfortable when we ‘know’ everyone.  Many of these groups slightly overlap, so that many of us have in the sum total of all our groups many, many more ‘known’ than Dunbar’s original number, however, we can accommodate these numbers because, mentally, they are in small groups.  We keep them small.

Such an adaptable little beastie aren’t we?

R is for the supernatural

 

When world building, we are told that, the social structures of our world need as much thought as the creatures, geography and politics do. 

I have wondered, and been awe struck, at our world as I have wandered through historical time.  At the ingenuity, diversity and plain inventiveness of all concerned.  There have been magicians who deal with life and death, the common folk who deal with survival, food production and the creators of metals, those who discovered how to communicate over vast distances.  Of all the mysterious whys? whats? and when’s? religion seems to reign supreme.

 

How far back did we begin to think of  the supernatural?

Before written records what evidence do we have?

Before archaeological finds is there reason to suppose a belief in a supernatural world existed?

 

If you think about it, this is probably a huge shift in the brain.  We cannot be sure, of course, that other animals do not have similar beliefs – ever watched a cat staring at a spot in the air with great interest! – I joke.  I think, only humanity has developed this way (I am ready to be found wrong) it is an amazing path to take.  When did we peer down that misty side lane of survival and decide it was a good place to travel?

 

Many theories have been developed over recent years

E.B.Taylor and James Frazer favoured the ‘making sense of incomprehensible events’, but that kind of leaves out any kind of social influence.

Sigmund Freud went for the psychological (no surprise there) declaring it was mass hysteria, existing only because of emotional conflict, weakness – a by product of mental stress.  Not everything, I feel, can be boiled down to emotional tangles.

E. Durkheim set it all in the realms of social organization.  A set of beliefs with sacred ‘things’ set apart and forbidden (unless of course you were one of the favoured few) taboos and totems being a symbolic expression of social reality.  Who chooses and why, what is to be forbidden?

Many of us have heard that Karl Marx declared religion the ‘opiate of the masses’. Dependent on the economic/material reality of each particular society. Just a reason and excuse to keep society functioning.  Is this why, in societies which have more personal power and security religion declines?  Is religion  a response to powerlessness?

Stewart Elliot reckoned it was anthropormorphyszation gone mad.  Giving the non human, human characteristics. It is true our minds can see faces and wild tigers in the shadows of the undergrowth – or on the wallpaper and ceiling.  It is thought to be a survival adaptation so - unusual shadow/shape = possible enemy  = run.  Can’t do harm, might mean live to fight another day.  But it feels simplistic to explain spirits and gods away like this.

 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, although he searched for an overall comprehensive explanation never found one, but did say we should accept that religion is the heart of societies.

None of this explains why every society seems to have decided to adopt the super-natural.  From the many to the one, from way back when to now.  So maybe Evans- Pritchard had the right of it, we have to accept it is so.  And maybe all those others and many more also have the right of it, and together make a whole.

There is of course no real evidence of religion of any kind before the nomadic way of life of the hunter gatherer became settled with agriculture and the invention of writing.  But some suggest that hunter gatherers would have had a supernatural beliefs only more suited to small bands and groups.

 The ability to write down religious beliefs helped to make concrete what was ethereal, helped to spread the word further and quicker.

 When humans settled into a static way of life, groups grew into towns and cities.  Social cohesion would have been very necessary to keep anarchy at bay.  Did the population give up their freedom of thought and action to the larger picture in return for divine intervention?  There is a vast social difference between a band of 20- 30 individuals and a community of 8-12,000

 In many old religions, the ruler is validated by the gods, either by being a descendent of gods or chosen by them.  It gave authority to the rule of law. Religion certainly helped to maintain order and peace between believers of the same gods.  Helping to forge bonds between unrelated individuals.  Helped in Empire building, it is easier to justify the slaughter of non believers.

The religions melded as Empires grew and collapsed, building on each other, borrowing, and taking over other’s gods.  When the modern religions were established we find, single and multiple gods still walking along, next to each other.  Modernity did not it seems lessen the need for the supernatural.

 

Q is for feed the world

 

 

How do the folk on this beautiful planet feed themselves?  We eat food, duh! So simple an answer and how did we learn to do so?  First man looking around tries fruits, nuts, the odd carcass on the ground.  Maybe throwing a stone and downing a bird.  We will never know.  What is known is that way back in the Neolithic period our ancestors were grinding a wide variety of materials and some of them were grain seeds.

 

What other material, one wonders, could a Quern stone grind?

 

Seeds, nuts, fruit, vegetables, herbs, spices, meat, bark, pigments and clay (our clever potters again)

 

One study found traces of arsenic and bismuth and level of antimony many times higher than the source rock would provide – the conclusion drawn was that ancestors of ours had been preparing medicine, cosmetics and dyes and maybe alloys

 

Querns were used in the grinding of metal ores, so certainly grinding gold, the earliest metal used.

 

So what is a Quern Stone?

 

A stone tool for hand grinding, it is used in pairs.  The lower stone is stationary – this is the quern- and the upper, mobile, stone is called the hand stone.

 

They were/are still used right across the planet, chiefly for creating flour for bread; millstones only began replacing them when we figured out how to mechanize the process with water and wind.

 

We can feed 7 billion people today because those ancestors of ours developed agriculture and farming. Of course the obvious argument is, that we only need to feed 7 billion people because our ancestors developed agriculture and farming.  With a steady and fairly reliable supply of food, often in excess of need, populations could grow at a rapid rate, arts and leisurely pursuits could flourish and standing armies and Empire building could arise.  Who would have thought the grinding of a few seeds could lead to all that!

 

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that, is anything?  What came first, the collection of seeds or the grinding?  Did they throw them on the fire whole first, semi cooking them, rather than grind into a flour.  Stones were around before the fire.  When did they realise that grinding a seed, to a flour, adding water and heat, produced ‘the staff of life’ Or that cooking these grains, enhanced the body’s ability to absorb the protein more easily, thus delivering humanity a great surge in development.

 

Signs of the use of wild grains have been discovered on a 20,000 BC site in Israel, Planned cultivation and trait selections from 10,000+BC  found in Syria.

 

Before this there were, almost certainly, forest gardens in prehistoric times, along the lush banks of jungles and/or in monsoon areas. Where a family or small community could identify, tend and select useful plants growing in the wild there and clear any that impeded.

 

That agriculture changed the world is undisputed, and those early farmers were inventive and good observers of life around them.  Although the pace of change was slow, agriculture kept communities in one place after all, by 7000 – 5500 BC my Sumerians had established a scaled up version of early farming.  They had large scale, and very intensive cropping of the land, with mono-cropping, irrigation and special labour force for farming (no longer small communities all sharing the tasks!)

 

This kind of farming brought a very dense population growth of large towns/cities.  Excess to barter and trade, and raise an army that went Empire building – they were a powerful force in the region.   Beaten in the Empire stakes, 1000 years later, by the ancient Egyptians who expanded their conquered land to three times that of the Sumerians.

 

As humanity spread across the globe, agriculture spread with it.  Inventive and innovative mankind came up with even larger, better? solutions to the ever burgeoning populations.  However these populations were still well within the reach of the farmer’s skill.

 

As the centuries turned, agriculture became more efficient, more intensive.  The benefits became more desirable.  We could produce the arts in all their forms, leisure pursuits in all their varieties.  We could keep millions away from the land to enjoy different lives, science and medicine developed.  Armies swept back and forth, Empires came and went and still the farmer produced.

 

It was with the rapid rise of mechanization in the 19^th and 20^th century that populations increased so quickly supply looked, at times, as if it wouldn’t meet demand.  Somehow we always managed to pull something out of the hat. There is still, just about, enough food being produced to feed everyone on the planet. In many areas, it is not the lack of food which deprives people of nourishment, but political regimes and lack of money.

 

Now we have reached a global population, undreamed off two hundred years ago, and an estimated rise of  3-4 billion more in the next 50 years.  Feed the world, how? Where? Intensive farming has degraded many areas; the wrong plants for conditions are destroying our rivers and underground reserves of water.  Our need for food (and for power) is encroaching, more and more, on fragile eco systems  we destroy at our ignorant peril.

 

Plants which may offer cures for disease, provide new food resources are being ripped up and destroyed before we have indentified them, in the name of more, more, more.   

 

We want.  We demand. Can we get?

P is for Pox and Plague

Well I have been waxing fairly lyrically about how splendid this planet is, but to appreciate all that is wonderful, amazing and beautiful there must be some nasties as well.  Apart from, that is, our desire to kill each other!  We have nasties in abundance on our planet.  Diseases. 

 Plague and Pox have been with us, constant companions, from a long way back. Early records of symptoms are recognizable as, influenza, T.B and of course the plague, amongst many. 

 When? I reckon, ever since humanity curled up with each other for warmth, left last night's meal platters unwashed up and kept their midden heap right next to them. The virus and bacteria which see us as excellent hosts, just thrive in overcrowded populations; they love those with compromised immune systems due to poor diet and living conditions. 

As we gathered more livestock, wittingly or otherwise, around us, we increased the chance of species-hopping bugs. We hear a great deal about this, and maybe consider it a new operation, but geneticists believe this species-hopping has been going on for a very long time, and indeed why should it be a new invention of bugs, they are clever little entities.

Apart from the Black Death – which has had the most exposure in the press over historical time

We have Influenza

Typhoid

Cholera

TB

Smallpox

Typhus and

Leprosy

 

All determinedly wiping out thousands of the world population.

 

All these change over time and place.  Being more or less of a problem as situations differ. Smallpox, for many years, was a childhood disease of little bother , like chicken pox today probably, a nuisance but rarely dangerous.  Maybe a new strain cam into our country from abroad? Did social conditions change?  Did it arrive courtesy of the slave trade? Whatever it became a killer for a while.

There had been attempts to offer a vaccine before Edward Jenner gazed upon those milk maids, however the vaccine, made with smallpox, did present certain dangers

Jenner after his sight and consequent thoughts about milkmaids complexions, decided to use cowpox for the vaccine, and the rest is the proverbial history.  Clever lad.  Goes to show gawping at the ladies isn’t always bad!

In 1881 100,000 cases of smallpox in England by

1900 had been eliminated in this country

In 1967, WHO, the World Health Organization, decided to eliminate smallpox world wide and in 1979 it was declared banished for good. (Of course, there’s that supposed strain, kept under lock and key, just in case!) We are such fools sometimes.

 

Bubonic plague, that which was so dramatically labelled the Black Death, that which wiped out anything from 50 – 75% of Europe’s population (depending on which account one reads) in seven years. That plague is still around in two or three continents to this very day, killing about 2000 people a year.  Far less than die of influenza each year. This disease had been recorded in 542 BC.  It was not the mighty killer back then.  It was also originally a rodent disease, another species- hopper 

 Why was it such a killer in the middle ages? Well, the jury is still out, but increasingly it’s looking as if it was the social conditions  of the time rather than the virulence of bacterium yersina pestis.  Indeed in mapping the genome of the bacteria so little change from then to now was found that there is a puzzle as to why and how?

At that time the weather had plunged into constant rain, whole harvests, across Europe, for years, were wiped out, the climate had changed quite radicallywith winters becoming very cold – a mini ice age- 4-6 degrees colder than the years before.  So in the towns, with their unhealthy sanitation, huddled half-starved masses, the situation was ready.   Ships were regularly off loading cargo from around the known world; bacterium from foreign shores would find new fresh hosts who had had no chance to build up immunity.  Chaos and scenes from medieval hell.

 Influenza – flu – is a killer.  Many people do not appreciate this. Declaring they have the flu when they have a cold.  Different. Oh so very different.  In the debasing of the word, the fear has been replaced with false expectations.  Do not take the word of flu in vain folks, nasty surprises await if you succumb.

 

Hippocrates recorded it in 412BC

There were major outbreaks here in 1510, 1557, 1580 and again in 1781, 1830, 1833 and 1889

 Then in 1918 the flu epidemic to end all epidemics struck killing it is estimated 30 million worldwide – more than had been killed in the The Great War (what a dreadful name for that particular carnage) This epidemic though instead of cutting down the old and very young as most do, attacked the adults, those who had been fighting for their lives just before.

 If social conditions were the judge than years of warfare, food rations and poor immunity would raise the numbers. Scientists have anaylized the DNA from skeleton remains of this disaster (is it wise to play with these diseases?) and have decided that it was a species-hopper from birds to human.  We are right to mistrust those chickens.

 The flu epidemics that followed in

 1957 (Asian flu) I caught that one! and

1968 (Hong Kong Flu) I had that one also! were not such killers, probably killing only about one and a half million worldwide. 

Now in the UK, and other countries, we offer a newly made vaccine each year for certain groups thought to be at risk – and yes I am one of them:)

 The war diseases – those that followed, armies and navies, enjoyed, as the soldiers did not, the poor conditions, were typhus, typhoid, cholera and sexually transmitted diseases.  Poor sanitation, water and sexual appetites coupled with the lack of decent food, sleep, high stress levels and the movement into and out of foreign lands, all contributed. Add TB to that list and over populated slums were also the playground of those bad guys.

Leprosy, another disease missing from UK shores now, has been humanity’s companion for a very long time, at least 4000 years. An Egyptian papyrus document dated at 1550BC, records it, and ancient China and India certainly knew about it.  There has been no way of counting the number of sufferers over the centuries, however, 1-2 million nowadays suffer visibly and are  irreversibly disabled because of the disease. Although it has been largely brought under control, these days, with drugs developed in the 1970s and 1980s, we are still looking for a vaccine.

 I haven’t mentioned HIV, it is in a case of constant change but I will say it is almost certainly another species-hopper.  First recorded at the end of the 19^th century and beginning of 20^th century, moving out of Africa and into plague like proportions in the middle of the 2oth century.  While in the West it is mostly controllable, in certain areas of the world it is wiping out the working generation.  Young adults, the very ones needed to bring their countries out of poverty and despair. Whole swathes of countryside are filled with the old, bringing up the babies.  It is a tragedy on a massive scale; a nation cannot long sustain such a loss.

The fact that we have fought and conquered so many nasties means nothing in this war, the baddies are winning.  We have, through our complacency and stupidity, bred bacteria immune to our most powerful drugs, and bacteria can mutate and adapt quicker than we can.  Virus is as cunning.  We relax at our peril. If we think we are safe in the West with our better sanitation, living conditions and food security think again, air travel and global food shipments leave us wide open to the ‘new disease’ explorers. 

 

They love a fresh host to feed upon.

O is for the depths

This blue planet looks so beautiful from space – due to the most part to the colour of its oceans. It’s those short light waves again! Life, we believe, emerged from these watery depths or from the shallows anyway:) We call them oceans but of course it is just one great sea, they all merge together. It is too large a mass for us poor mortals to comprehend, and, way back, before photos from space, every gigantic mass of ceaselessly moving water was a more localized affair.  So we named separate portions of it and turned ‘it’ into a ‘them’.

We need the ocean, it gave/give us life. It  occupies approx 71 % of the planets surface.  This a very wet planet!

 

The Pacific alone covers one third of the planet and holds half of its water.

Is 64 million square miles (165 million square kilometres)

Is eighteen times greater than the whole of the United States of America

As an aside, this part of the Ocean was named by one of my explorer heroes, Ferdinand Magellan – he named it ‘Peaceful Sea’. Of course he lived in violent times but still… peaceful? Did he miss all the storms somehow?

 

Whereas most of the ocean is only two to three miles deep, in the Western Pacific we have what we think is the deepest area.

 

The Mariana Trench (pretty name) named by those in the UK Challenger 2 in 1951, who surveyed the area and found a trench (I think valley sounds better personally) 1,554 miles long and 44 miles wide.  In this  valley, they have found a spot that is 7 miles deep, that is deeper than Mount Everest is tall – think on that! 

In1960 a US  Bathyscaphe went to the bottom of The Challenger Deep, as this hole was named, and found amazingly, life thriving down there in the extreme cold, totally sunless depths.  Depths which experience pressure from the weight of water above (imagine just how much water above, is seven miles) of 8 tons per square inch.  Per square inch!

In 1996, a remote controlled, Japanese vehicle indentified many of the life forms: shrimp like amphipods, scale worms, sea cucumbers, and some microbes being among them.

 

So what else lives in the ocean? 

We know fish do, the latest estimate is that there are 15,000 types of fish

Over a million KNOWN species of plants and animals (and some guess there may be as many as 2 - 9 million that we know nothing about)

Mammals are part of those million known

 

When I was a small girl, in the early 50s, and visited the Natural History Museum in London I always made a beeline to the Blue Whale exhibit (Forget the dinosaurs they were dead, the Blue Whale was still alive and swimming in the sea; okay, the exhibit wasn’t alive!) It hung there above my head and it was tremendous.

 

Blue Whale

100 foot long (as large as a Boeing Jet- and I had not seen one of those yet)

150 tons in weight

With a heart the size of a small car

A tongue so big they say 50people could stand on it

And its spout  goes 30 feet into the air.

Well, as you can imagine I was dead impressed!  It was the grandest thing in my world and has remained in my heart ever since.  And this monster of an animal lives off  krill! Krill of all things, a tiny shrimp like entity - adult measures 0.4 - 0.8 inches long (1-2cm). The Blue whale consumes 4-6 tons of the stuff a day.

So marine life ranges from the Blue Whale down to the microscopic.  What a wonderful place.

 

One of the strangest places, in the ocean, is down in the dark depths – not necessarily in the seven mile hole! But down where the sun doesn’t shine.  How does anything live down there? Volcano chemical cocktails, that's how. 

There are deep sea vents which lead down to the magna below, chemicals leach out onto the sea bed and many creatures seem to thrive there.  The strangest is the tube worm.  This organism has no mouth and no digestive organs?  It has evolved a cunning plan, the tubeworm lives in a symbiotic relationship with bacteria (there are my good guys again) which live inside the tube worm; the bacteria convert the chemicals from the volcanic vents into carbohydrates for themselves and the tube worm.  The tube worm gives safety to the bacteria.  What a plan.  Living this way a tube worm can grow to 8ft long and 4 inches wide. A plan that works!

All this amazing array of wildlife began back before the emergence of mankind.  There is evidence of complex life forms in the ocean at about 630 million years ago.  So the earlier more simple forms must have been there millions of years before that.

 

The Permian Extinction

During one of the mass extinctions of history, The Permian Extinction, 250 million years ago, almost all the complex life in the oceans vanished – it is estimated 90-95% went.  At the same time, on the land, nearly all the forests and great swathes of insects vanished as well as other life. Following fossil evidence, scientists have found that fishes recovered quite quickly after this extinction and in a million years were back, it took other species longer. 

 I think possibly, (I may be wrong!) if the oceans suffer a similar fate any time soon, we wont be around to see the recovery.

It is thought the reason for that catastrophe was due to massive volcanic action in Siberia – nothing on the small scale of our present volcanic activity, this one was mega huge!  The result of it all, was a tremendous increase in volcanic gases such as Sulphur Dioxide and Carbon Dioxide. The earth’s atmosphere warmed up, the seas became low in oxygen, also becoming acidic due to the increased CO2.  Hmm! sounds familiar.

Remember how I said it took the other species longer than fish to recover! It actually took 80 – 100 million years after the Permian Extinction for the life on Earth (including the seas) to reach pre-extinction level of diversity!  

N is for Fiction

The narration of facts and stories is as old as speech and community. Stretching way back through history to the misty caves of our ancestors.  We will never know, for sure, if those first oral story tellers told tales of maidens in distress and courageous heroes rescuing them, I like to think they did, it seems to be a very ancient plot:)  We have evidence of early written narrations, preserved on many different surfaces in many unconnected places.  The ancients wished the written form to be kept for a future.  We have uncovered writing

 On stone, bone, metal, clay and terracotta,wood, parchment, leather and papyrus. 

 

And in the dry climate of the Middle East written evidence has been found in

 

Tombs, wrapped around mummies, on ancient midden heaps, buried in jars and secreted in caves.

 

 

Although every community possessed language, the progress of the written word was slow and spasmodic.  We can be sure though, that oral narration was alive and well from the complexity of the written versions when they were created.  No over night revelation that, of writing down facts, stories, histories and ‘do as we say’ scripts. 

 Probably the earliest narrations were to do with explaining a hugely complex and strange world.  Certainly most of the ancient finds are tied to religion in the form of what we now refer to as myths and legends.  The oldest known religious text dates back to 2400-2300BC, referred to as the Pyramids Texts, from ancient Egypt. And the oldest religious text still in use is probably the Rig-Veda of Hinduism

 In ancient Sumer, in Mesopotamia, my favourite the Goddess Inanna (3200BC) is part of a vast literature of legends and songs. Excavated clay fragments, include hundreds of narratives, as well as the afore mentioned there are also fables, proverbs and essays.

 Narratives such as these help, not only to inform the populace of their religion but, help them to create an identity of themselves.  Cultural norms, wisdom, ethics and morality.  They are codes to behaviour, relating the past, informing the present and being preserved for the future.  Humans need identity.  As a small child will experiment with behaviour to find the comfortable niche in a family, so a society needs to have a niche.

Oral story telling does this, but oral storytelling changes, adapts, as each teller reconstructs the basic narration to suit himself, his audience, his patrons.  They travelled around and would adopt and adapt from other cultures.  Oral storytelling is fluid.  What writing did for narration was attempt to pin story down to one specific version of a story, stamped authority on that version, slowed its evolution.  Writing empowers the narrator. Those in charge often took over writing, being very choosy who would posses this particular magic. Who could dictate what was being preserved for the future.   

Writing the narrative did catch on and spread around the various civilizations, innovations were made.  Still not for hoi polloi though!

Narrative, written or oral, has been an educational tool, all  through the ages.  Minds and perceptions can be expanded, empathy encouraged.  Narratives can help with problem solving, excite imaginative thought, enable the dream of impossibilities and give validation to present living. It is easier to remember facts when presented in this way and, facts can be slipped into a story with no one noticing.

Over the ages a definite structure emerges.  A good narrative has a beginning, middle and end, and that end should be moral.  If one is living in an uncertain world, with hidden dangers at every step, one desires structure, predictability, a trusted format.  All life proceeds thus and the morality at the end ? - for those who could never depend on justice, a good just end is satisfying.  There are those of us who occasionally tinker with our endings, but we risk losing the audience, the story can take all manner of risks but do not let the ‘baddie’ win, let the good triumph, just the once please.

If the narrative is not supposed to be fiction, then truth is the required request, trust demands it.  Trust is often disappointed.  It seems that often those who dictate the facts are fond of fiction. It’s this identity thing again, to create a niche, a persona is often just a work of fiction, and the preservation of it equally so.  We find we cannot trust history accounts when we realise this fact.  To justify a war, a beheading, an act of treason or villainy, fiction is the only way - rewrite the narrative.  It has always been thus. So when we say we ‘know’ about the Shang Dynasty , China 2^nd millennium BC, from accounts written on bone, we actual mean, we can read a ‘story’, someone’s interpretation and rewritten narrative of the Shang Dynasty. I doubt human nature has changed much in the intervening years.

M is for liquid rock

 

 

Many, many, moons ago, when I was just a dab of a child, I learnt about Stone Age Man, we had pictures of them in our school books (illustrated books were fairly uncommon back then) I knew what Stone Age Man was.  And Bronze Age Man and do not forget Iron Age Man, that mighty, powerful ‘Cave Man’.  For to us, back then, these were ‘Cave Men’.  Their gait was that of a shambling orang-utan, their hair was knotted and unkempt, they always carried a club shaped like a leg of lamb and they wore a strip of animal hide, reaching to thigh level and exposing one shoulder. (Oh, and they dragged captive women behind them by their hair.)

I can conjure up this picture, clearly still, over time.  We accepted this view of our ancestors.  We had to learn about them in primary school but they weren’t very exciting people, they conversed with each other by way of grunts and gesticulation, maybe, by Iron Age Man, they could speak in Pidgin English – English?!! Games in the playground featuring any of the three were never going to catch on, one or two imaginary mammoths, and a sabre tooth tiger was all really. And anyway the Romans had shiny breast plates and swords.  Early man was banished.

The great thing about life is there are so many opportunities to admit one is wrong.  Banishment was cruel and so wrong.  These so called cave men were not thuggish brutes, nor were they comic book Flintstones.  These were the most amazing innovators and inventors in all of humanities life span on this equally amazing planet.  There should be statues and ‘Days’ devoted to them.  The original shoulders all have been stood upon.

So why you may ask, am I raving about them yet again in this world build of mine?  They were only uneducated, unskilled cave men after all. No these were the world’s first mighty magicians.

These people were miners at least 43,000 years ago when they mined Hematite (used for red ochre). Those flints we hear so much about? they were mined! These useless grunting Stone Age men mined down into the hill/mountainside following seams in the rock to find flint for those tools.  Who came up with that idea and how did they do it?

As a child, I used to imagine they just picked sharp stones up from the ground and whittled them a bit, tied them to a piece of wood and voila an axe was born. I wasn’t too much older when I decided something like that wouldn’t have lasted long against a mammoth’s hide. I began wondering about these cave men when I started wondering about the everyday.  How is a spoon made Dad? Where does silver come from Mum? How do you melt rocks?

You ‘melt’ rocks by subjecting them to high temperatures, at least 700-800 C – a camp fire apparently only reaches 600.  That sounds pretty hot to me!  However to truly get into this melting business, malachite maybe, temperatures of 1100 -1200 degrees C are needed.  The only fires hot enough would probably had been the ancient potter’s clay firing furnaces.  So hang on, rewind that, ancient potters had furnaces that could fire their pots at that temperature?  Which cave did they live in?

For lead one needs temperature of 327 C which is manageable on that camp fire, is that how it all started, on a camp fire by accident?  Something had to happen by accident surely? Melting metals, baking clay, but then how did they progress?  How did they build those clay baking ovens? How did they excavate mines?  How did they decide that, if they mixed the proceeds of one melted rock with another, a third was created?  How? What? Why?

That last intrigues me.  That spark, which means they try an impossible thought.  In a life which had to have been short and chancy, why would they try?  The - how did they think of it? - seems to be an impossibility until you watch a small boy (and I know it sounds sexist but it is usually the small boys) take something apart, or put a tangle of stuff together.  But digging out a mine, building Stone Age blast furnaces.  It is mind boggling.

Recognisable and sophisticated artefacts

 

Gold  6000 BC

Copper 4200 BC

Silver 4000 BC

Lead 3500 BC

Tin 1750 BC

Iron 1500 BC 

Mercury 750 BC

 

I mean, come on, these are shoulders to stand upon, aren’t they?

 

I believe these men stood tall, wore adequate clothing – what was with the bare shoulder look? –had sophisticated language skills, thriving industry, trade routes across land and sea and wouldn’t be seen dead dragging their women by the hair!  I believe I was sold a pack of misinformation in my youth:)

It was the art of smelting that heralded in the ages of metal – so from rock mining Stone Age Man to metal working Bronze Age Man.  It didn’t happen overnight.  We were led to believe that Bronze Age man was superior in intelligence than its predecessor (do keep an eye on what your children are taught!) the transition took place probably 6000 – 2500 BC – that is a long time.  During that time this doltish brute, so beloved of cartoonists, had discovered, through trial and error, and a great deal of inspiration and thought, mining, rock melting, reformation of melted rock into objects of use and desire, reforming of wet earth into useful and ornamental objects, building of furnaces capable of withstanding tremendous temperatures, worked out how to create those temperatures. What else?

 To create Bronze you mix melted copper and tin, each smelted separately. Their lives were filled with ‘what ifs’. 

 I think maybe the definition of being human is an unstoppable curiosity.  Homo Sapiens -thinking man - seems to suggest philosophy and the higher arts, Homo Curiosus - curious man- would be a better description.

 Creating Iron is far more difficult than bronze, bronze can be cold worked or melted in fairly simple furnaces -simple? – But iron needs those hot hot furnaces. They gathered their supplies from meteorites and it was an everyday process by 1200BC. 

 I suppose the teachers and books got it right. Iron Age Man was powerful, and mighty, because with iron came a revolution in farming and warfare!

L is for my own personal rainbow

 

This marvellous, magical world, is both marvellous and magical because of its position in the solar system, because it has THE SUN beaming light and warmth upon it.  Great invention the sun.

 

The sun is 4.5 billion years old

It is 93 million miles from earth (thank goodness, wouldn’t want it any closer frankly!)

The temperature at the surface is 9.932 degrees F (see why?)

The temperature at the core, 22.5 million degrees F (how do they measure those temperatures?)

The sun is a very active star, fuelled by nuclear fusion reaction, it produces amongst other events sunspots (huge beasts they are) and solar flares. The energy produced in a few minutes of a solar flare is the equivalent of 100 hurricanes – scary!  They have an impact on our space weather which in turn can affect all those shiny toys we have floating in orbit.  They also give us one of the natural wonders of the world – the Northern and Southern lights – the Aurora.   What did our ancestors think as they watched this beauty dancing across the skies?

 The solar radiation filtered, luckily, through our atmosphere gives us not only light but warmth as well. Without either, our life on earth would be nothing.  Maybe a few uni-celled creatures but no plants and therefore none of the rest. The sun is our life bringer. It brings us energy and is the driving force behind our weather systems (more of this on W is for. . . . day)

 Long, long ago those remarkable forebears of ours recognised the suns wonders.  They realised the life force – how I wonder? Is it just a matter of watching?  Mythology all around those ancient civilizations told of the importance of the sun.  From the Sumerians to the Celts with Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Inuit, Aztecs, African, Chinese and Norse just to name a handful.  They knew, about the power, the deities and creation myths were well established all those thousands of years ago, so I suspect the awe was present millions of years ago.  My money is on the flint wielding party goers of the misty way back when….

 Apart from chasing away the night, warming our chilly bones, ripening the corn and making us all generally happier folk, the sun also makes our bones strong and healthy.  Covering up or staying indoors will lead to soft bendable bones. However, because life is like that, too much exposure will leave you burnt and in line for premature aging and/or skin cancer.  You can’t win sometimes.

 We get blue skies because of sunlight.  The solar radiation is absorbed and thereby weakened as it travels through the atmosphere – scattered by monucles of dust and air.  Short wavelengths, which produce the blue, scatter very easily. When the sun is high and vertical or almost so, these shorter wavelengths are not so scattered and the blue colour can dominate.  As the sun dips down away from the vertical the wavelengths have to travel further so the blue gets scattered and the red, longer waves, make it through as red, orange, pink, you name it, all the colours of the artist's palette, all the words of the poets vocabulary.  Voila, we have sunsets and sunrises and more beauty.

 Artists and writers have been extolling the beauty, the magnificence of the sun since they could.  One doesn’t have to be a cave dweller to forget/not know the science and just smile at the sun.

 I could not finish without mentioning the other more easily viewed natural phenomena – the rainbow.  As a child, which of us hasn’t happy danced our feet in excitement at the viewing (a lot of us oldies also:) To 'see' a rainbow the sun must be behind us and the raindrops before us. The effect of the raindrops prisms bend and bounce the light back towards us spreading out the spectrum of colours to delight. I viewed one today driving back from a quiz session.  My friend and I ah’ed and grew excited – we sat side by side but we saw different rainbows – just the slightest difference in the angle of view will change the seen effect.

 Each rainbow I view belongs to me, is my own specific spectacular…. And yours….and yours.

 

K is for transplant

 

 

 

It is time for more of those powerful magic makers, those who control life and death.  Every world build ought to have them. Different from natural magic, such as waterfalls, rainbows and the like, this magic is studied and many long years go into the making.

This magic did not appear very early in the world’s existence, indeed very late. Much application through the millennium was needed, because, this is as powerful as the use of genetics.  Scientists certainly aided these magicians but doctors, surgeons have to apply the spells.

We have to try to imagine the horror- horror? I am convinced it would have been horror – when this was first broached as a fit subject to pursue. If these particular scientists and doctors would use more melodious language their novels would outsell Stephen King in no time! I am a writer and would love to have their mind set to feed my imagination.

Picture the thought – the what if? 

  

‘Let’s take a body part from this corpse and sew it into someone living!!!’

 

I was an adult when news of the first successful heart transplant whirled around the globe.  In 1967 Christian Barnard from South Africa was the man, was the name on everyone’s lips.  Amazing, stupendous achievement!!  His patient only survived 10 days yet, yet, the deed was done and over the next 2 years another 100 operations were performed.  Survival rate was still only 60 days, but Barnard’s second attempt had the patient surviving 19months.  For someone who was going to die soon, an extra 2 or 19 months may seem like a bonus.  By 1984 survival rates had gone up to 5 yrs or more. Before I move on – think about it – this man transplanted a heart from one being into another being and it beat!! 

 

Where did that first idea come from? 

 

There are myths from ancient Rome, Greece and China of Gods and Goddess’s performing transplants. 

 

It is believed that by  800BC  Indian doctors had begun to graft skin, using the patients own skin, to help burns.

 

In the 16^th century an Italian, Gasparo Tagliacozzi, had begun to reconstruct noses and ears from the patients own skin.

 

The secret of these last two successes lies in the fact that nothing alien was being introduced.

 

It is almost sure, many attempts had been made over the centuries.  Mankind would have found the challenge to great to resist.  However, this magic was long in the coming because, other magicians had to do their work first.  Science had to come up with the answer to some pretty stiff barriers to success. Not least of which was the body’s tremendous and formidable resistance to anything ‘not mine’.  The immune system is a magical thing in itself, think of all those bacteria and virus in the world, all the accidents and illness’s waiting to gain a toehold.  How many times did we die of them? Very few times, everything considered.  The body knows itself well, and doesn’t take kindly to having strange things being foisted on/in it.

Until the immune system was understood, there was no chance.  Using the patients own skin was ok, the body would recognise it.

Then, when it was understood, some means of persuading this argumentative system to accept an organ from someone else, maybe alive but usually dead.  Why would it?

Even when that was done, there was the problem of the quality of the organ to be inserted into another; decay begins immediately death has visited. To keep an organ in a fit state to transplant, needed a great deal of thought, skill and the efforts of many.

In 1909 a rabbit kidney was transplanted into a child, who died two weeks later

 

1933 there was an attempt at a human-human kidney transplant, but they did not know about tissue/blood matching – the patient died

 

The first successful kidney transplant was in 1954 – successful because it was between identical twins – so no reason for rejection.

 

As the 1950s wore on, drugs to suppress the immune system became more effective, the success rate slowly increased.

 

They never give up these ‘wise men’ of magic!

 

1st success

of Pancreas 1966

of  Liver 1967

Heart 1967

Heart and lung 1981

Hand 1998

Partial face 2005

Double Arm 2008

Full face 2010

Double leg 2011

 

 

At the moment, in the UK, 1000 people a year die while awaiting a transplant, of some kind or other. Kidney transplants are common-place, however the list of donors cannot keep up with the list of those wishing to have a transplant.

Now there are more problems arising.  Because people expect this amazing life giver, because the list of those waiting transplants grows faster than donors can be found (tissue/blood have to be a match even with immunosuppressant’s) New ethical questions raise their heads.

Donations from the dead, you would think would not present problems; sign a donor card in life and ensure your nearest and dearest understand your wishes.  However, this business of the viability of the organ, means the fresher the organ is, the better.

What is ‘dead’? Should a person who is brain dead be kept ‘alive’ with machines, to preserve the organs, receive treatment which is of no use, except for someone else?

Should someone who has died from cardiac/ respiration failure, have the heart restarted, so that it can be transplanted in another?  These are two of the questions being asked now.

Another is that of the ‘exploitation’ of those in financial need from the richer patients, sometimes leading to a black market in organ trafficking with resultant kidnap and murder. There is money to be made – but is it moral or ethical to buy an organ?

There has been a suggestion that cloning for organs would be acceptable.  If just cloning organs. Maybe.  The fear of many is that whole people will be cloned (as you never know which organ would be needed) the stuff of nightmares – but, what if? Eventually kill your clone. Have you read ‘Never Let Me Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro?

 

Is this another of those escapees from Pandora’s Box?

J is for Jigs and Jamborees

 

 

 

We have life, in abundance.  We have a population of talented, innovative, intelligent people, beginning a long trek to the present day.  Looking around said present day, and even recordable history, we discover that the ancestors of those first just love to party!  We love to sing, dance. drink and generally wave out hands in the air.  We celebrate every occasion/event somewhere or other in the world.  We are at heart, it seems, celebratory folk.

 

When did that start I wonder? Why did it start, more to the point?  At which new synapse in our developing brain did we wish to engage in these strange antics? For a full blown celebration we need a gathering of like minded people, music, song - which came first? - feasting (so abundance of food), for many, alcoholic drink - so an ability to home brew. No doubt this is a social event, and is firmly filed under social bonding.  It has been, over centuries, so much more.

 Many reasons spring to mind.  Life was hard and dangerous, relief at being alive at the end of each day, finding food in times of shortage, safety /deliverance form storms, pestilence, floods, droughts or all the natural hazards.  The not knowing would turn people’s minds to an outside force, arbitrarily moving their fates around.  So appeasement might necessitate sacrifice, ceremony, worship and praise to try to ward off more blows.

 There is some evidence of early music, dance and alcohol

 Fragments of pottery show dance up to 9000 years ago.

            Evidence of Cacao alcoholic drink 1100 BC

            Bone flute and fragments of ivory flutes 31,000 – 40,000 years ago

 

It is not easy to record these activities, they are not easily fossilized! Fragments and pictorial records only and so song does not have hard evidence.  And how to define song?  Does it need words or is it a voice making music? 

 Dance, seems such a natural expression to humans one has to wonder if that didn’t precede music, however I feel they probably evolved at almost the same time.  Which could have come first so tied up with each other now?  How to untangle the time sequence?

When we arose onto two legs, when we changed so radically anatomically, we were primed ready for dance and music By chance maybe, but what a wonderful magical chance! Because we were upright our larynx went further back = greater range of sound and a softer vocal tone, our legs so wonderfully evolved for long distance running were also ideal for twisting, spinning etc.  The fact that we no longer needed to use hands in unison with legs meant we had the opportunity for a whole range of expressive body language and signs, precursor to language? (many of the early dances involved the imitation of animal movements) our increased flexibility facilitated such.

 

I do believe that the first musical instrument would have been a voice.  Simple and clear.  If communication was unsophisticated, I think it matters not; a voice just sounding can create every emotion.  No need for words. How soon would harmonies have arisen? Experts had been saying ancient harmonies would have been almost impossible. However, Prof. Kilmer’s work on deciphering clay tablets excavated in Syria seems to have established the oldest (so far) preserved song(with harmony) = 3400 years old.    Yay for Kilmer:)

 

Music can be made with a hand clap, just a couple of rocks, picked up, ‘played’ and then discarded. If fully workable flutes were being made 40,000 years ago, from what invention of music did they follow? Rocks, split grasses blown through fingers, simple drums with hide and leather?  There are many possibilities and all could drive the invention back into dark time.  The simple beat of pounding seeds or vegetable matter would be an early rhythm; creating those flints would give beats to thrill the souls. Music is old, old, I am sure of it. Walking upright produces a rhythm of it's own, a beat which the human brain responds too well, tests with those suffering from Parkinson's have shown this.

Alcohol now, that could be even older than our intelligent humanity.  Have you ever seen the effect of a pile of fermenting apples, tucked into the corner of a field, on an animal?  They come back for more as well! The feeling of well being overcoming the unsteadiness obviously!!!

 

Any natural product high in sugars can be used to make alcohol, and it is a product from all around the world, such as Neolithic China 7000BC (wine).  I have already mentioned the Cacao 11,000BC, which it is thought was a by product of some earlier fermented drink. 

 

Evidence of

Neolithic wine making in Persia (modern Iran) 5400-5000BC

Alcoholic drink in Indus valley 3000 – 2000 BC

By 2700 the Babylonians worshipped a wine goddess

Ancient Greeks had mastered wine making by 2000BC

 

We had all the ingredients for a party in place way, way back.  We can guess at many of the reasons for putting these together, from ancient artifacts, writings and guesswork. 

 

Rituals of religious significance, ceremonies to appease, thank, and implore the gods.  Life being of a harsh and uncertain nature it would have been a natural use.  Medicine? Well yes, it has been so throughout the ages, (a short step to over indulgence). Social cohesion - or discord if you are a cynic like me:) It would have been found to have a preservative nature fairly soon, I would have thought, so it could have been used for preserving foods for harder times.

 

Social events such as meeting new groups, sealing bargains, making /cementing friendships/ alliances. Meeting new potential mates. Celebrating weddings, coming of age rituals, births, deaths.  Major events in any life. Special occasions.  Special occasions which would provide the need for decoration, on oneself as in tattoos and on clothing such as beads, embroideries and feather; and over consumption, a potlatch anyone?

 

 

 

 

I is for just how clever are we?

 

Well now, we have this planet, blue and beautiful bustling with life of every shape and size and variety.  Sweet plant given air to breathe, next on the agenda – intelligent life.

What is intelligence? No one seems to know.  I went looking and although it appears we have been putting forward theories and definitions since before the 12th century there is still no consensus of opinion. So that seemed to stop me in my quest to find out how far back it was, humans became ‘intelligent’.

Looking at the various definitions I find that intelligence over time has been defined as the possessing of or demonstrating

Logic

Reason

Abstract thought

Understanding complex ideas

Self awareness

Communication

Learning, from experience not just book learning

Emotional knowledge

Planning and

Problem solving

Ability to manipulate environment

 

Maybe there are more definitions I have missed.

 

Then of course comes the problem of working which one of these is the definition?  Do we need to posses all these? If only one or two, which one or two? And, the question I was in search of was, when did humanity first demonstrate intelligence?

I have often wondered how those first tiny communities felt, or did, how did they discover, what did they do?  Endless questions, and endless wishes for a time machine, that would go back and allow me to see.  See more than fossilized bone in rocky outcrops.  Looking at the definitions above, my mind begins way back with fire and tools.

One could imagine one or more, cautiously, venturing over a recently burnt out area, (lightening strike’s abound) finding, maybe, a burnt carcass of some unfortunate animal and finding it tasty/easy to eat.  The step from that moment to the harnessing of fire and deliberately cooking food is actually a high one which, as far as I can see, would involve

Logical, reasoning thought and imagination.

Planning and problem solving would be on the agenda

Communication skills would come into play and the

Understanding of complex idea

We know that Peking man had fire, he of Homo Erectus (upright man), firm on two legs.  Existing way back in time’s misty regions.  How long after he walked upright didhe work out the advantage of fire, the advantage of manipulating his environment...

 Peking man also used tools.  Flint, very basic, but tools for all that. So what happened, did someone throw a rock and crack splinters off, did someone pick up a splinter and then cut themselves accidently on the sharp edge. To go from an accident such as that to producing, deliberately, a sharp flint, for use effectively in everyday life, is this just happenstance over time or is it planned?  We will of course never know.  By the time Homo Erectus gave way to Homo Habilis the tools were very precise, infinitely more varied and ornamented, so learning by experience was certainly there, and possibly abstract thought. We of course do not know what the ornamentation was for, or  if it possessed any abstract meaning.

Both tools and fire changed the course of evolution considerably as far as we can suppose. Among other things, cooked food is better digested, nutrients more easily absorbed. Healthier bodies, larger brains. Tools enabled the easier butchering of animals, the better skinning of hides for clothing, coverings and rope.

To create tools of this calibre requires a great deal of learning by experience and planning.  But we can easily argue that they were merely copying, down through the ages, and changes happen- after all these were large time spans.  Which leads to an interesting question

                        Who is the more intelligent, the originator of an idea/innovation or the                         improver of such?

 By Neanderthal and Modern man, both masters at manipulating their environments, we have evidence of abstract thought and emotional knowledge and self awareness, in rituals for the dead, cave pictures and early writing.  Now all of these were most likely to be slow cultural changes but I would so like to know, who first suggested? When did it evolve?  One moment of blinding thought or accumulation of small steps?  Never to know, for a curious old bird such as I, is an agony:)

 

Manipulating the environment at the beginning would have been self

survival.  So crawling under old skins for warmth, wrapping it around while

moving around, would be a natural  response to chill air.  Does it become

 intelligence when a needle is invented.  Finely  made bone needles have been discovered and dated at somewhere between 19,000  -  15,000BC.  Are mankind’s  first tools the mark  of mankind’s emerging intelligence or just them manipulating their  environment?

 

Fast forwarding to writing 7000 years ago, intelligence or just building on the

marks made on cave walls, made in the dirt?  The vast amounts of written

works now?  do they make us more intelligent or less so?

We have never looked back from those hidden days, innovation, invention, knowledge sharing, logic, reason, problem solving and increasing complexity of ideas growing all the time.  Are these signs of intelligence or are they learnt

responses to situations.

 

What is intelligence? genetic, hard wiring, learnt response, animal cunning or just plain common sense? Maybe there is no such thing!

 

 

H is for Igloo

  

Combine 2 molucules of hydrogen with 1 of oxygen and a miracle occurs = water.

 

Water is so essential for life on this planet that we misuse it at our peril.  Most of the animal species and plant life on this world need fresh water to survive.  Humans can last only a few days without water but weeks without food.  Unfortunately there is very little fresh water around. Although 70% of the Earths surface is water

 97% of available water is salt sea water

3% of available is fresh water

 

66% is unattainable because it is frozen, in the form of glaciers or polar ice-caps.

 

Those figures really ought to be scary!  However, few people in the affluent west worry over much.

In poorer, less developed, countries the picture can be radically different. There the inhabitants know the value of fresh water, because there is so little available.  Because people die on a regular basis from the lack.

Water is held in esteem and awe around the world and through the ages.  We stand with excited wonder at the Victoria and Niagara Falls, how would have Neolithic man have viewed them.  We marvel at the big rivers such as the Amazon and Mississippi, but who was the first to push forth some kind of craft and ‘sail’ down them? Were they terrified, elated?  And those who ventured onto those terrifying oceans with seas so high they must have dwarfed the courage of the bravest.  Were these first, brave beyond anything or foolhardy in the extreme?

As people ventured further away from the tropics, into the cooler, colder climates of the North, how did they view their first frosts and snowfalls?  Work out that sometimes a lake or river could be walked upon, have sleds driven across? That a house could be made from blocks of ice!?

Now think about it, large bodies of water that could change into a solid surface must have been magic indeed. A liquid that fell as raindrops and could change into a moment to storms that wrecked and killed, powerful and vengeful. Rivers that could tear and gouge out valleys, wear away rock well!! It is no wonder that water has its fair share of deities.  Water deities are a common motif in mythology, the oceans, great rivers and springs all claim them. From the Aztecs through so many cultures such as Celtic, Japanese, Finnish, Greek and Romans to name but a few. The high priests of these deities would have been powerful.

Still in the major religions of the world, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Taoism, Bahia, Shinto, Rastafarian – water is used in ritual cleansing.

Water is precious and rare despite life being lived on the ‘blue planet’

 

 World wide:

69% of available water is used in agriculture

22% used for industry

Household’s usage is only 8% (drinking, cooking sanitation and cleaning)

 

Agriculture is essential for life, and for millennium water has worked well for those who needed the food.  Slowly, we have become more ‘clever’, more ‘adventurous’.  We have moved, with very little thought, native plants to foreign climes, unsuitable climes, because there is increased need for water to grow them.  We have learnt how to create a ‘desire’ a ‘market’ for unseasonable foods, which need to be grown under cover, and irrigated

We are for the most part an industrial world or attempting to be. However, industry sucks the rivers dry in attempts to keep wheels turning.

We expand our population, we build complex infrastructures, requirements in a ‘civilized’ society are high.  The demand for clean healthy water is not only for drinking but for washing clothes, ourselves, cooking, washing the car, cleaning paths and drives.  In the south east of the UK for example more water is used, than falls as rain, each year!

To grow potatoes and tomatoes in desert regions, to nurture rice in dry climates, to feed the world in a crazy way, we rob the underground reserves of water that took aeons to become, and will take aeons to replenish.  We waste river-fulls every day.  We treat this rare and beautiful commodity with distain and disrespect.  It won’t do for much longer!