I love Milo Manara‘s short representation of a small portion of the ancient human life. I think it somehow looks like the Aurelian column.
View more of this artwork on my other blog, or alternatively, in this video (if you can stand the music. I suggest that you mute it and put something that you like on.)
the Aurelian column
Firstly, an unrelated note here. I know I have neglected this blog for a long time, and I really do regret it. I will try harder from now on. Oh, and my main blog is here, so you might want to take a look.
My last post in my main blog was about iGoogle (Google’s customizable page). I use the tea house theme for my own iGoogle, which I think is wonderful because it changes all the time. I love foxes and the illustration of this particular fox is amazingly cute. Plus it changes during the day. You can see the different illustrations of the upper bar during the different times of the day in the post on my main blog. You might have noticed the spirits there at 03:14 who eat the oranges which are offerings, they are some kind of a Yōkai which are a class of preternatural creatures in Japanese folklore ranging from the evil oni (ogre) to the mischievous kitsune (fox) or snow woman Yuki-onna.
Here are some Yōkai images that were illustrated during the Edo period. They are ukiyo-e prints, which are Japanese woodblock prints or paintings.
Below is a Kappa, which is a type of water sprite found in Japanese folklore.
Below, there are images of Tengu (天狗?, “heavenly dogs”) which are a class of supernatural creatures found in Japanese folklore, art, theater, and literature. They are one of the best known yōkai (monster-spirits) and are sometimes worshipped as Shinto kami (revered spirits or gods). Although they take their name from a dog-like Chinese demon (Tiangou), the tengu were originally thought to take the forms of birds of prey, and they are traditionally depicted with both human and avian characteristics. They appear in the children’s story Banner in the sky when the main character trips over one and falls off the face of the mountain. The earliest tengu were pictured with beaks, but this feature has often been humanized as an unnaturally long nose, which today is practically the tengu’s defining characteristic in the popular imagination.
Buddhism long held that the tengu were disruptive demons and harbingers of war. Their image gradually softened, however, into one of protective, if still dangerous, spirits of the mountains and forests. Tengu are associated with the ascetic practice known as Shugendō, and they are usually depicted in the distinctive garb of its followers, the yamabushi.
To add some more differentiation to Yokai, there are also my favorite types, the Kitsune and the Yuki-onna:
Kitsune, 狐, きつね is the Japanese word for fox. Foxes are a common subject of Japanese folklore; kitsune usually refers to them in this context. Stories depict them as intelligent beings and as possessing magical abilities that increase with their age and wisdom. Foremost among these is the ability to assume human form. While some folktales speak of kitsune employing this ability to trick others—as foxes in folklore often do—other stories portray them as faithful guardians, friends, lovers, and wives.
Foxes and human beings lived in close proximity in ancient Japan; this companionship gave rise to legends about the creatures. Kitsune have become closely associated with Inari, a Shinto kami or spirit, and serve as his messengers. This role has reinforced the fox’s supernatural significance. The more tails a kitsune has—they may have as many as nine—the older, wiser, and more powerful it is. Because of their potential power and influence, some people make offerings to them as to a deity.
Yuki Onna (雪女, snow woman) is a spirit or yōkai in Japanese folklore. She is a popular figure in Japanese animation, manga, and literature.
Yuki-onna appears on snowy nights as a tall, beautiful woman with long hair. Her inhumanly pale or even transparent skin makes her blend into the snowy landscape (as famously described in Lafcadio Hearn‘s Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things). She sometimes wears a white kimono, but other legends describe her as nude, with only her face and hair standing out against the snow. Despite her inhuman beauty, her eyes can strike terror into mortals. She floats across the snow, leaving no footprints (in fact, some tales say she has no feet, a feature of many Japanese ghosts), and she can transform into a cloud of mist or snow if threatened.
Some legends say the Yuki-onna, being associated with winter and snowstorms, is the spirit of someone who perished in the snow. She is at the same time beautiful and serene, yet ruthless in killing unsuspecting mortals. Until the 18th century, she was almost uniformly portrayed as evil. Today, however, stories often color her as more human, emphasizing her ghost-like nature and ephemeral beauty.
In many stories, Yuki-onna appears to travelers trapped in snowstorms, and uses her icy breath to leave them as frost-coated corpses. Other legends say she leads them astray so they simply die of exposure. Other times, she manifests holding a child. When a well-intentioned soul takes the “child” from her, they are frozen in place. Parents searching for lost children are particularly susceptible to this tactic. Other legends make Yuki-onna much more aggressive. In these stories, she often invades homes, blowing in the door with a gust of wind to kill residents in their sleep (Some legends require her to be invited inside first.)
What Yuki-onna is after varies from tale to tale. Sometimes she is simply satisfied to see a victim die. Other times, she is more vampiric, draining her victims’ blood or “life force.” She occasionally takes on a succubus-like manner, preying on weak-willed men to drain or freeze them through sex or a kiss.
Like the snow and winter weather she represents, Yuki-onna has a softer side. She sometimes lets would-be victims go for various reasons. In one popular Yuki-onna legend, for example, she sets a young boy free because of his beauty and age. She makes him promise never to speak of her, but later in life, he tells the story to his wife who reveals herself to be the snow woman. She reviles him for breaking his promise, but spares him again, this time out of concern for their children (but if he dares mistreat their children, she will return with no mercy. Luckily for him, he is a loving father). In a similar legend, Yuki-onna melts away once her husband discovers her true nature.
Futurama, one of my all-time-favorite shows, makes a lot of puns about the past and future. This includes the visual material around us too. In one episode, there were people who were very rich and one of their favorite pastimes were destroying antique masterpieces, like the Mona Lisa.
There are three alternative alphabets that appear often in the background of episodes, usually in the forms of graffiti, advertisements, or warning labels. Nearly all messages using alternative scripts transliterate directly into English. The first alphabet consists of abstract characters and is referred to as Alienese, a simple substitution cipher from the Latin alphabet. The second alphabet uses a more complex modular addition code, where the “next letter is given by the summation of all previous letters plus the current letter.” The codes often provide additional jokes for fans dedicated enough to decode the messages. The third language sometimes used is Hebrew. Aside from these alphabets, most of the displayed wording on the show uses the Latin alphabet.
Several English expressions have evolved since the present day. For example, the word Christmas has been replaced with Xmas (pronounced “EX-mas) and the word ask with aks (pronounced axe). According to David X. Cohen it is a running joke that the French language is extinct in the Futurama universe (though the culture remains alive), much like Latin is in the present. In the French dubbing of the show, German is used as the extinct language instead.
Today was the death day of the founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk of Turkey, where I live in. People here mourn the loss of their founder, and that reminded me of his mausoleum Anıtkabir which has a very interesting construction because it has columns, reliefs, roofs shaped like pyramids… in the architecture. You can find more information here.
I’ve never visited Anıtkabir myself, but I’m told it is really grand. Here are some photographs from Anıtkabir:
To think of it, literacy is booming. We see the alphabet everywhere nowadays, even in soup!
Alphabet pasta, also referred to as Alfabeto or Alphabetti Spaghetti, is pasta that has been mechanically cut or pressed into the letters of the Latin alphabet, although other alphabets are used in regional variants. It is often served in an alphabet soup, sold in a canned, condensed broth. Another variation, Alphaghetti, consists of letter-shaped pasta in a marinara or spaghetti sauce.
One common American brand of condensed-style alphabet soup is Campbell’s. This soup like its competitors is marketed towards parents for its educational value.
A similar product, Alphabetti Spaghetti, was sold by the H. J. Heinz Company for 60 years before being discontinued in 1990. Like Campbell’s alphabet soup, it contains alphabet pasta canned in tomato sauce, but no cheese. It was later reintroduced by Heinz in 2005.
Age of Mythology is a mythology-based, real-time strategy computer game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios.
Age of Mythology focuses less on historical accuracy than previous games in the Age of Empires series, but instead centers upon the myths and legends of the Greeks, Egyptians, and Norse.
I think Age of Mythology makes people learn about ancient myths, gods and other notions better than books. Here are some pictures from Age of Mythology:
I guess everybody is familiar with Asterix, by Goscinny and Uderzo. I think Asterix was a very nice way to learn pieces about all the old/ancient different nations like the Gauls, Romans, Egyptians, Greeks, British and so on.. I think the plots in the comics are ingenious and the jokes witty, and there are clever connotations added here and there, plus I think they really know their stuff since the architecture, the outfit, the galleys and etc. are really close to what they were in the ancient times.
I really don’t know why people think that calligraphy can simply be done with a fountain pen. It is really absurd to think like this because there are people who have lived their whole lives trying to perfect their art, and some have even gone blind on the way!
I have learned before from one of the courses of our university, Hum 203, Major Works of Ottoman Culture about the cursive and cufic styles of the Ottoman, Arabic and Persian types of lettering. The arrangement of the words can be sometimes intertwined and thus stacked in a unique type of way, or the letters could be formed in an aesthetic kind of way. Here are a few works from Ahmed Karahisari, a very famous Ottoman calligraphy artist:
One can learn about the history of the world from Age of Empires, which is a real-time strategy computer game. I think the series is quite successful, since they represent the architecture, the clothes, the people and the culture quite well, although there are sometimes mismatches in accuracy – which is something that needs to be sacrificed for a nice gameplay. For example, while Germany in the early modern period—when Age of Empires III was set—was largely Protestant, the design of the German church building is Catholic. However, in The WarChiefs, the design team did take great care to ensure they portrayed Native Americans as accurately as possible, and relied on expert historians for assistance. Age of Empires games use historical figures and units that are relatively well-known, but also include several “strange or exotic military unit[s],” to make the games more interesting.
The games in the series focus on historical events throughout time. Age of Empires covers the events between the Stone Age and the Classical period, in Europe and Asia. Its expansion, The Rise of Rome, follows the formation and rise of the Roman Empire. The Age of Kings and its Nintendo DS spin-off follow Europe and Asia through the Middle Ages. The Age of Kings‘ expansion pack, The Conquerors, is set during the same period, but also includes scenarios about the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Age of Empires III and its first expansion, The WarChiefs, take place during the European colonization of the Americas. Its second expansion, The Asian Dynasties, follows the rise of Asia in the same period. The series’ spin-off, Age of Mythology, and its expansion pack, The Titans, are set during the Classical period, but focus on mythology as their themes, rather than history.
If you haven’t played the game before, I’d say you should gather a few friends and go to an internet cafe to play. It’s quite popular and easy to learn, plus it is really fun ^^
I recently learned about geoglyphs, which as a child I had always thought were alien-made shapes. I had a book that was called “Unsolved Mysteries” which I dug out from my bookcase at home, published by Collins in 1996. Its chapters went like this:
Beasts from the Deep
Monster Footprints
Puzzling Pyramids
Flying Saucers
The Baffling Bermuda Triangle
Lost at Sea
Vanishing Acts
Things that Fall from the Sky
Supernatural Stones
Lines, Circles and Pictures
Spooky Stories
People who Float, Hypnotise, and Explode
Mysterious People
All in the Stars?
All in the Mind?
I now think that this book is kinda creepy and one that is full of crappy facts and theories. Although at the time I got this book, I really did think it was fascinating.
The chapter “Lines, Circles and Pictures”, goes exactly like this:
“In ancient times people drew strange pictures in the landscape. There are spiders in South America and horses in southern England. What do these pictures mean and why were they drawn?
Ancient Lines
In 1927 a surveyor flew above the remote Nazca desert in Peru to plan a new road. He saw huge pictures cut into the ground below. They were drawn by the Nazca Native Americans around 200BC. As well as pictures of animals, there are also 13,000 absolutely straight lines etched into the rock. Some of them are more than 32km long. The only way the Nazca lines can be understood is from the air – so how did the Nazca Native Americans draw pictures they wouldn’t be able to see?
High-flyers?
A theory has been put forward that the Nazcan people could fly. Evidence shows that they had the technology to put together a hot-air baloon.
…or just a lot of hot air?
So the Nazcans may have been able to organise the drawing up of the lines and figures from the air. But the theory has yet to be proved.
Other theories
Some people think the lines are landing directions for spacecraft. Others believe they are maps of the stars, used by the Nazcan people to tell them when to plant and harvest their crops.
Circles from space?
Between 1980 and 1991 strange shapes suddenly began appearing in farmers’ fields in the south of England. Huge, perfectly shaped circles were etched into cornfields overnight – at first no one knew how they were made or who created them. Crop circles are now known to be elaborate hoaxes, but there are still those who dismiss the logical explanation and believe that the circles were made by aliens trying to get in touch with us.
HORSE BOX
The White Horse at Uffington in Oxfordshire measures 114 metres across and, like other carvings, can be seen from many miles around.
No one knows why horses, human figures and other pictures were carved on chalk hillsides in southern England during Iron Age times. Were they tribal symbols to warn off rival tribes? Were they fertility idols, worshipped to bring good harvests”
The book says this much, leaving a lot of questions unanswered, and of course, talks about a few barely related topics to seperate fact and fiction For a kid, this might seem very mysterious and impossible to know the answer, ever, as it did for me. But I now know about the Nazca lines and how and why they have been made.
You could either check the wikipedia entry on Nazca lines, or continue reading the same thing right here:
The Nazca Lines are a series of geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert, a high arid plateau that stretches more than 80 kilometres (50 mi) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana in Peru. Although some local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, these are largely believed to have been created by the Nazca culture between 200 BCE and 700 CE. There are hundreds of individual figures, ranging in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks or orcas, llamas, and lizards.
The lines are shallow designs in the ground where the reddish pebbles that cover the surrounding landscape have been removed, revealing the whitish earth underneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes, and more than seventy are natural or human figures. The largest are over 200 metres (660 ft) across. Scholars differ in interpreting what the lines were for but generally ascribe religious significance to them. “The geometric ones could indicate the flow of water or be connected to rituals to summon water. The spiders, birds, and plants could be fertility symbols. Other possible explanations include: irrigation schemes or giant astronomical calendars”
The dry, windless, stable climate of the plateau has preserved the lines to this day, for the most part. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs.
Construction
One explanation for the method of construction employed by the Nazca people involves the use of simple tools and surveying equipment. Wooden stakes in the ground at the end of some lines (one of which was found and used to carbon-date all of the figures) support this theory. Researcher Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky has reproduced the figures using the technology available to the Nazca people of the time and without aerial assistance. With careful planning and simple technologies, a small team of individuals could recreate even the largest figures within days.
The lines were made by removing the reddish-brown iron oxide-coated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca desert. When the gravel is removed, the light-colored earth beneath creates lines which contrast sharply against the surrounding desert. There are several hundred simple curvilinear animal and human figures. The area encompassing the lines is nearly 500 square kilometres (190 sq mi), and the largest figures can be nearly 270 metres (890 ft). The lines persist due to the extremely dry, windless, and constant climate of the Nazca region. The Nazca desert is one of the driest on Earth and maintains a temperature around 25 °C (77 °F) all year round, and the lack of wind has helped keep the lines uncovered to the present day.
Purpose
One theory of the purpose of the lines is that the Nazca people’s motivations were religious and that the images were constructed so that gods in the sky could see them. Kosok and Reiche advanced one of the earliest reasons given for the Nazca Lines: that they were intended to point to the places on the distant horizon where the sun and other celestial bodies rose or set. This hypothesis was evaluated by two different experts in archaeoastronomy, Gerald Hawkins and Anthony Aveni, and they both concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support an astronomical explanation.
In 1985, the archaeologist Johan Reinhard published archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data demonstrating that worship of mountains and other water sources played a dominant role in Nazca religion and economy from ancient to recent times. He presented the theory that the lines and figures can be explained as part of religious practices involving the worship of deities associated with the availability of water and thus the fertility of crops. The lines were interpreted as being primarily used as sacred paths leading to places where these deities could be worshiped, and the figures as symbolically representing animals and objects meant to invoke their aid. However, the precise meanings of many of the individual geoglyphs remain unsolved as of 2009.
Henri Stierlin, in his 1983 book, linked the Nazca Lines to the ancient textiles found wrapping mummies of the Paracas culture. The lines and trapezes may have been used as giant, primitive looms allowing for the fabrication of the extremely long strings and wide pieces of textile that are typical of the area. In this theory, the figurative patterns (smaller and less common) have only ritualistic purposes.
Some, such as Jim Woodmann, have proposed that the Nazca Lines presuppose some form of manned flight in order to see the figures properly and that a hot air balloon was the only possible available technology. Woodmann actually made a hot air balloon using materials and techniques that he believed would have been available to people at the time, in order to test this hypothesis. The balloon flew, after a fashion, but there is no evidence in support of Nazca-era hot air balloons, and Woodman’s work has been rebutted.
Yet others, such as Swiss author and investigator Erich von Däniken suggest the existence of structures and artifacts such as the Nazca lines represent higher technological knowledge that is presumed by von Däniken to have existed at the time these glyphs were manufactured. Von Däniken maintains that the Nazca lines in Peru are landing strips for an ancient airfield.
Environmental Concerns
According to Viktoria Nikitzki of the Maria Reiche Centre, an organization dedicated to protecting the Nazca Lines, pollution and erosion caused by deforestation threaten the continued existence of the lines. She is quoted as saying “The Lines themselves are superficial, they are only 10 to 30 cm deep and could be washed away… Nazca has only ever received a small amount of rain. But now there are great changes to the weather all over the world. The Lines cannot resist heavy rain without being damaged.” Mario Olaechea Aquije, the archaeological resident from Peru’s National Institute of Culture in Nazca, Peru, and a team of specialists surveyed the area after the flooding and mudslides occurring in the area in mid-February 2007. He announced that “the mudslides and heavy rains did not appear to have caused any significant damage to the Nazca Lines,” but that the nearby Southern Pan-American Highway did suffer damage, and “the damage done to the roads should serve as a reminder to just how fragile these figures are.”
Here is the picture of the most famous monkey from the Nazca desert:
