15th century map depicting Ptolemy's description of the Ecumene, Johannes Schnitzer, engraver
Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, by Hartmann Schedel.
(Turn your head it's upside down.)
This one and the next one are both attributed (on the internet, at least, to Muhammad al-Idrisi, 1154--probably both from his Tabula Rogeriana.
(This one is also upside down.)
Supposedly a recreation of what Ptolemy's original map would have looked like based on the coordinates he gave.
The Great Serpent Mound is an enormous earthwork shaped like a snake eating an egg and located in Ohio. It's 1,348 feet long, and attributed to various peoples. Carbon dating of charcoal fragments previously placed the Serpent's beginnings around the year 1070, but new research apparently suggests that it might actually be 1,400 years older than this--new carbon dates place the mound's beginnings around 321 BCE. Researchers suggest the later date may represent a layer of repairs made after a thousand years of wear had taken their toll on the Serpent.
One such thing was the existence of Antarctica. This occasionally leads to theories that ancient people must have actually discovered or even settled Antarctica, perhaps at some time when it was not ice-covered. The more reasonable explanation, IMO, is just that they had some mixed-up geographic knowledge that happened to get something right by random chance, given the sheer amount of bad and mixed-up geographic knowledge medieval maps display.
Medieval cartographers had a lot working against them. They had no reliable way to determine longitude, for example, and there was a strong belief that geography actually reflected theology. The quintessential Medieval map is the T-O map, so called because it looks like a T inside an O:
(From Etymologies, by Sait Isidore, Bishop of Seville, 12th century)
(Liber Floridus)
(St. Sever world map after Beatus, 1030 A.D.)
(Note: North is to the left on these. The convention of putting North at the top of the map probably didn't begin until compasses became widespread.)
Obviously no one was actually trying to navigate with these things. They are meant to show that the divine order of the world reflects the Christian Trinity--one continent for each part of the Trinity, with the world's center at Jerusalem.
There was just one problem with this tidy little package: ancient Greek philosophers had claimed the existence of a fourth, southerly continent, beyond the ocean's stream. This mysterious fourth island was known by a variety of names, such as the Antipodes and Terra Australis Incognita--the Unknown Southern Land.
(Beatus)
Beatus, probably the Osma copy, 1203
Beatus world map, London copy, 1109 A.D.
Macrobian World Map
Liber Floridus
The whole matter occasioned much debate, and not just because people thought three continents was much better than four. For you see, medieval geographers thought the equator was an impassable band of fiery burning heat. (Any Europeans who'd ventured into the Sahara would be forgiven for thinking that going even further south was a bad idea.) If the equator was impassible, then how could anyone know if there was land down there or not? How could anyone get there or live there? And if people did live down there, how could the evangelists have preached there (the Bible claims that they preached in all corners of the Earth, after all)?
But argue as they might, there it was in ancient Greek philosophy, and they were loathe to completely discard anything in Greek philosophy.
Where did the Greeks get the idea?
I'm not sure, but the most obvious idea is that they had contact with people who had actually sailed south of the equator and discovered land there (note that much of Africa is, in fact, south of the equator.) (If I recall correctly, the Egyptians manned an expedition that actually made it around Africa.) Couple these reports with the belief in a circling ocean stream at the equator, and it's not too hard to see how people might have gotten confused.
After a while, Europeans discovered that you didn't actually die hideously of burning fire if you sailed too far south, but belief that there was another island down there somewhere persisted, even as more and more of the world turned out not to contain it.
Oronteus Finaeus, 1531 AD
1604 copy of the 1602 Chinese map Kunyu Wanguo Quantu
Petrus Bertius’s P. Bertii tabularum geographicarum contractarum (Amsterdam, 1616).
I'm so sorry, but the legend on this map was not in English. Here it is, if you can read it: 1619 tarihli bir dünya haritası
Fra Mauro, Map of the world, 1448-1453 (okay, that was probably just Madagascar.)
Abraham Ortelius, 1592
Johannes Schöner, globe of 1533: southern hemisphere.
Terre Australle, 1583, by Jacques de Vaux
With each new discovery of land in the southern hemisphere, map makers thought they'd found the edges of the fabled southern continent. But when even the continent south of Indonesia turned out not to extend over the south pole, cartographers threw up their hands and decided to just name it "Australia" and be done with it, somewhere around 1804-1814.
Antarctica was spotted in 1820.
Whoops.
Well, Brazil got its name in a funny way, too.
They were an essentially apocalyptic sect. They associated the year 1666 with the number of the beast of Revelations, and believed that Jesus was about to begin the 1,000 year "fifth monarchy" (the first four were Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome.)
Two Fifth Monarchists were judges at Charles I's trial and signed his death warrant. After Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Rump Parliament, the Fifth Monarchists proposed that the country should be ruled by a body of "saints," based on the Old Testament Sanhedrin. These saints, they believed, would usher in the apocalypse and the second coming of Christ.
Oliver Cromwell actually tried to implement this scheme. English churches nominated 129 men for the new government; Scottish churches nominated five; and the Irish, six. Many of those nominated were Fifth Monarchists themselves or were otherwise sympathetic to their cause. This Parliament of Saints, (also known as the Barebones Parliament,) lasted a whole 6 months before it dissolved itself for the good of the people.
After that, Fifth Monarchists' power and influence waned. They tried and failed to overthrow Cromwell's Protectorate. They later tried to conquer London (on Jesus's behalf,) and many were subsequently killed hideously for treason.
Shakers believed in Christ's immanent return to Earth--as a woman. Many of their preachers were female, and in 1770, one of their leaders, Anne Lee, was declared the Messiah. (Thereafter she was called Mother Anne.)
The Shakers had split from the Quakers, taking with them many of the more charismatic members and leaving behind a calmer set of Quakers. Shakers spoke in tongues, danced, shook, and received divine revelations. They believed that God was both male and female and practiced male/female equality in community leadership and structure. They became conscientious objectors during the Civil War, and as you probably already know, had no children.
They are also an example of successful religious communism--possibly because membership was voluntary, control was local, and the lifestyle agrarian.
Shaker communities managed to attract new members and remained economically successful until the Industrial Revolution radically changed the economic landscape, though I'm not sure it's really the IR's fault. There were 5 or 6,000 Shakers in the US in the 1800s (remember, the whole population of the US was much lower back then); today there are 3, in Maine.
We tend to think of "communism" as starting with Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto. Marx was certainly a significant political theorist, but he was actually part of an existing, much larger movement that has its origins in the same reforming impulse that lead to American democracy and many religious communes.
Today we think of "communism" and "democracy" as opposites, but in the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s, they were more or less the same. Democracy meant a community of people had the right to determine their own laws, instead of the King dictating laws to them. Communism of the day was meant that the community had a right to determine their economic fates, rather than the King. In religious communes, in particular, councils voted on both legal and economic matters. Later, the idea of collectively running one's own country and of collectively running one's own factory can be seen as the same idea expressed at different levels.
As I understand it, our notion that the government and the economy are two separate entities is fairly modern. 500 years or so ago, the political and economic systems were completely entwined, via that system popularly known as feudalism.
I'm still not clear on when or why democracy/communism first became a big deal, but we see at least some interesting groups emerging in the 1600s, with a variety of systems. The Pilgrims of the Plymouth Bay Colony, in 1620, established a democratic society, apparently in keeping with Calvinist doctrines. The colony's government also administered certain economic concerns, like regulating the purchasing of land, but does not appear to have banned private property.
Some Quaker and Shaker groups did hold all property in common. The Diggers, around 1650, were agrarian socialists who attempted to farm on common lands. I believe the Mormons also practiced some form of centralized economic direction in the settling of Utah. And, of course, many monasteries and convents have been essentially communistic for centuries.
Some groups were obviously more successful than others, but overall, religious communes seem to have done pretty well, and may have provided much of the inspiration for the secular communism movement.
I would not be surprised to find that many of the more enthusiastic-personalitied Brits immigrated to the US as a result, leaving their calmer brethren behind, and contributing to the development of our respective national characters.
Occident and Orient you probably already know, but what about Septentrion and Midi?
Septentrion = Septen + trion = 7 + plough ox, (or potentially "threshing ox,") in Latin. It's another name for the Big Dipper, which points to the North Star.
Midi is short for Meridional, from the Latin meri dies, or midday. At northerly latitudes, the sun is always slightly to the south at midday.
Map by Alain Manesson-Mallet, 1687.
Logic implies that the Aztec civilization, therefore, most have been one of the most complex an organized in the world. After all, it take a lot of food to support that many people, which requires some form of infrastructure and administration to ensure that the food made it from the countryside to the city. With no draft animals to pull plows or carts, (or ride around on), the number of humans who had to coordinate to grow and transport that much food was probably higher than in Europe. As for the city itself, most of the people there probably weren't priests or rulers, but artisans or administrators of some sort--implying a substantial (for the age) middle class of skilled people.
All of which implies a pretty darn complex civilization.
About which I know virtually nothing.
Compare to ancient Rome: I learned Latin in highschool, can name most of the major Roman deities off the top of my head, and can sketch a vague outline of Roman history and culture.
At the very least, this implies that there's a lot of interesting stuff for me to learn.
I particularly recommend this book to anyone working with the poor, the homeless, the downtrodden, or the mentally ill, (or anyone who intends on working with them.) I recommend it for people whose loved ones are facing such difficulties, and of course, I recommend it for people suffering such difficulties themselves.
Thank you, Mr. Williams, for joining us today.
Why don't you start by telling us a little more about your memoir?
On my way home to camping in Golden Gate Park, unknown assailants bludgeoned me into a coma and left me to die. Two years later, as I was being diagnosed by my physician for mental illness, my friend offered his silence while the doctor examined me. My case for being in reality would have been stronger if my friend had existed.
I slept inside discarded rolls of carpet to get out of the rain. Professional caregivers openly mocked my failings. Security guards ousted me from benches at three in the morning, and I sobbed alone in the darkness. I participated in dialogues with illusory voices, and we formed a World Government. Amidst day-to-day functioning on the streets, my unreal friends and I anticipated the day our telepathic leaders would end warfare and run the planet.
Finally, with detox and therapy, real voices began to replace my auditory hallucinations. Friendships developed while I realized people do still care about people. Reuniting with my brother, I started this book, detailing my 15 homeless years and struggles with hearing voices and psychosis.
FRIENDS AND FOES is a memoir complete at 45,000 words. My story shatters stigmas and provides hope.
What inspired you to write about your experiences?
My outrage at the severity of the assault. No matter what I haven't accomplished in my life, the assault was too much for anyone need endure. I couldn't just absorb it alone.
What was the hardest part of your story to write?
Anything to do with my failings to my children. I had a daughter that died when she was four and a son I'll probably never know. I got to email the son a reference to my book, but I don't know if he'll pick it up.
If you could change the way society treats the homeless and/or mentally ill, what would you change?
For "professional caregivers" to realize how competent street people have to be to survive. Yes there's help, but all needs, whether hygiene, shelter or food, must be met by street people on their own. Doing so takes effort and competence not always recognized.
And if you could give one message to other people struggling with homelessness and/or mental illness, what would it be?
Life, at least DNA based life, universally wants to live and thrive. Find that part of yourself that also wants to live and thrive, and follow it. In other words, be yourself.
Tell us a little about yourself. What are you reading these days?
Time magazine because I have a subscription.
What's your favorite kind of coffee?
Peet's.
What are you working on, now? Do you have a new project?
Designing a painter's easel that will stand in the sand.
All right! Thank you so much for joining us today, and good luck!
I stumbled upon Things Grak Hates mostly by chance back during its drafting stages, read a few excerpts, and decided this was a book worth following. And now I have finally had a chance to read the whole thing, and yes, I think it is a fantastic, 5-star book.
Thank you, Mr. Story, for journeying all the way to Elflandia. So, tell us about your novel. What was the hardest part of the story to write?
Limiting the scope of my writing has always been the most difficult thing for me, as I think it is for many writers. I have a tendency to run away with a story and its characters, but that would have broken the rules I defined in my outline. Namely, the pace had to be slow, and the build-up had to be gradual. Another very important, but limiting element was that everything is seen through Grak's eyes, so he only notices the world and those around him when they threaten his desires. Those rules were all crucial to both style and story, but meant taking some very deep breaths when I sat down to write.
What motivates Brak? What motivates the others?
When the story opens, everyone is motivated by habit and naivete more than anything. The supporting characters all begin with a very simple and peaceful set of habits, reflecting their simple, peaceful way of life and establishing a clear comparison to the tribe we see at the end of the novel.
Brak cares about others, yet is a bit of a pushover, partially because of self-image issues. Jafra has always had quite a bit of strength as a matter of necessity--because Grak has grown up rather spoiled, her proximity to him has made her more responsible than might normally occur. Doran is accepting (perhaps to a fault) and a dreamer. Even Grak is motivated by habit, though his habit is self-absorption.
As the tale develops, each character's motivations develop in direct relation to Grak's actions, thus showing a bit more of their true tendencies. Their decisions aren't dictated by unalterable personality traits so much as by sheer force of habit. Thus, they follow their tendencies along the path of least resistance to form the characters we see by the end of the book. Except, of course, for the handful of brave souls willing to go against the grain.
Why hunter-gatherers? And why tyrants?
The nomad choice was basic enough. It seems to be one of the most uncluttered and rhythmic ways of life, which is exactly what's needed to show a drastic shift in the dynamic of a community. And it gave me room to slow the story's pace down enough to give proper focus to Grak's descent.
The tyrant aspect of "Things Grak Hates" just followed naturally from Grak's character. Left to our own devices, I think it’s easy for anyone to become a tyrant of sorts. Most of us have witnessed the likes of a new middle manager in the organization. A person who gains the slightest bit of power, but thinks they've arrived at some promised land. The difference is that their power has natural limits. With "Things Grak Hates," I'm asserting that this hint of megalomania is the same drive behind the tyrants and dictators of history. They crave that control, and they'll do anything to achieve it.
Some of us are less inclined to this trait than others, but ultimately, we are all selfish beings. The natural progression of an undeterred selfish soul ultimately ends with some sort of tyranny. Some are merely tyrants over their immediate circle of friends and family. Others rule tyrannically over their peers and employees. Dictatorships aren't so different--they're just ruled by a tyrant on a much larger scale.
So, without giving away the ending, how much do you agree with it? (You readers will just have to read the book to figure out what we mean.)
That's difficult to answer without giving anything away. Obviously, I don't agree with Grak's behavior. That's the main point of this book. But I do agree with the concept of redemption. Truly. But does Grak deserve redemption? Does any tyrant? Does anyone? Where do we draw the line? More importantly, would redemption be so sweet if it were deserved? Would it fill us with such hope?
In the end, I'm not Grak's judge, so I've left that question open. But like the rest of this book, I think that answer will be different for each person. It all depends on your particular set of experiences, your current focus on life, and the goals you've laid out for yourself. Which side of Grak are you looking at? I've been encouraged by the myriad of reviews that have applauded so many different angles of the story. That's what I was aiming for: to tell a tale with many facets and new meaning from each reading.
Tell us a little about yourself. What are you reading these days?
Most recently, I've been working through an alpha version of book two of "The Last Bucelarii" by Andy Peloquin. It's a dark fantasy series from an incredible new author. The first book is coming out in the next few months. It's kind of fun to read alpha copies, but also somewhat sad. I get to read it first, but since I almost never read a book twice, I don't get to read the final version. But Andy has an intimate relationship with his words, so his alpha versions are actually better than many other completed books that I've read.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and have lived here for much of my life. I find it a charming place. People here are generally quite friendly, and the pace is rather slow for such a large city. Plus, there's a lot of history here, which is precious to me.
What's your favorite kind of coffee?
I use a pour-over coffee brewer at home. People complain that pour-over coffee takes a lot longer to brew, but the flavor is surprisingly better than coffee from a machine. I take it with a little cream, no sugar, a pinch of cinnamon, and a few drops of vanilla. Beyond that, I really have no preference.
What are you working on, now? Do you have a sequel planned, or something new?
It's something new. Very different from Grak in many respects. I'm working on the outline in the spare moments I have while promoting "Things Grak Hates." I'm very particular about my stories, and if something doesn't flesh out into a full story, I won't push it. I'll even scrap a story or put it back on the shelf for later if I don't like it. Because of that, I'm trying to finish the outline before I give away any details.
It's my observation that books seem to reflect their writers. What aspect of you is reflected in your book?
A great deal. More than I even intended. Much of my younger life, I was a bit of a Brak. In fact, other than the fact that he's bald, I think he and young me have a great deal in common. Doran's ability to live on a dream and get completely absorbed by it was also me. Jafra was based mostly on the strong women I've known in my life, but that same willingness to speak the truth through fear was something I drew from my own experiences.
And then there's Grak. I have some OCD tendencies, so I injected that into his character. Also my eyesight is weak, so when I considered putting that in, it clicked with Grak's limited view of the world around him, and I just had to do it. And I've been the young middle-manager I spoke of earlier, so I know firsthand that the desire for control can be addictive. But most of all, I drew on my own fears and pain for Grak. Of course, I had to follow them into new territory, but I'd like to think that if I had clung as tightly to myself as Grak did and rejected the people around me who cared, I could have gone down a darker path. It's sobering.
Would you like to leave us with a quote from your book?
I have such a hard time making decisions like this, but someone recently posted a quote on their Tumblr feed and it's definitely one of my favorites.
“Sometimes life just … happens. And sometimes it hurts, and we can’t stop it. We can’t control it, no matter how hard we try. And that hurts even more.”
Thanks for everything!
Lyta came timidly beside him. She took one of the dried pods and carefully opened it, revealing last summer's blooms. "Each flower is a thousand white ones, but at their center lies a tiny red, a flower within a flower, the whole contained within itself." She held it out to him, and their fingers brushed as he accepted it.
"Nature has such an extravagance of beauty that she must put flowers within flowers," he said, but his eyes never left hers, and she felt as though he weren't talking about plants at all."
Then I recalled that this was also about the time of the French Revolution (late 1700s), which I ascribe largely to the effects of a particular nadir in the Little Ice Age. (I had a post about that a while back with graphs.) A bad hail storm also happened to wipe out a large % of France's crops right before the French Revolution kicked off--when a few years of bad harvests have completely depleted your savings, and then a hail storm destroys the harvest, your attitude towards paying taxes will turn distinctly sour. You might even behead a monarch or two and try to redistribute all of the land in a desperate attempt to not starve.
I wouldn't be surprised if similarly bad weather over in Eastern Europe prompted both increased antisemitism and gloominess--I know I'd feel pretty depressed if my crops failed and then someone burned down my house.
Another nadir in the Little Ice Age occurred in the 1600s. I don't know the history of the 1600s well enough to speak intelligently about it, but I speculate that this nadir was responsible for the English Civil War and the triumph of ultra-depressing Puritanism in England during that period.
I further speculate that multi-year crop failures (or single-year mega-calamities) ought to be strongly tied to religious pessimism and political revolutions/rebellions in a way that historians could probably even quantify and make predictions with. An end to the lean times ought to promote the emergence of more cheerful philosophies, politics, or religious teachings.
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Nikoloz Aslanis Dze Pirosmanashvili, or Niko Pirosmani, was a self-taught Georgian painter (from the Georgia that's a nation in the Caucuses, not the Georgia that's part of the US,) who lived from 1862 to 1918. He must have truly loved to paint, for he lived most of his life in utter obscurity, trading his paintings for food and shelter. He was "discovered" by the art world only toward the end of his life, and doesn't seem to have really understood what all of that fuss and bother meant. Poor Niko got sick, and with no one to look after him, soon died.
Today, Pirosmani's art is well-respected in his homeland, and he graces the Georgian 1 Lari bill:
For more information on Porosmani, I recommend his biography on Olga's Gallery (an art website,) his Wikipedia Page, or Soviet Life Magazine, 1969. (Why was I reading Soviet Life? Research.)
Anyway, here are some of his paintings I enjoyed:
A Boy Carrying Food
Threshing Yard, Evening
Cook
Gate Keeper
Feast in a Gazebo
Shepherd in a Sheepskin Coat on a Red Background
Tatar--Camel Driver
Train in Kakhetia
Donkey Bridge
Signboard: Wine Pub
Party by the River Zkheniszkali
Kakhetia Sagas, Alazan Valley
Kakhetia Sagas, Alazan Valley, detail
Kakhetia Sagas, Alazan Valley, detail
Batumi
Hunting Scene with a View of the Black Sea
The Tiflis Funicular
Prayer in a Village
Robber with a Stolen Horse
Wedding in the Old-Time Georgia
Grape Harvest Feast
Shamil with a Bodyguard
Shepherd with Flock
