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Hey everybody! Sorry I went awol for a little sabbatical from writing. It is summer plus I felt burned out after the last two (or 20) years, and none of my blogging pleasure centers were registering any joy. However today there is something to be quite joyous about: the President of the United States released the first deep field image from the James Webb Space telescope, a colossal near-infrared eye in the sky, which is now unfurled, debugged, and fully operational at Earth’s second LeGrange point! Huzzah!
And what a picture it is. It is so good and so spectacular that it almost looks like background art from a disco album rather than a colossal galaxy-studded expanse of outer space as it existed billions of years ago. The image is a composite of multiple scans taken with the space telescope’s Near-Infrared camera over a 12.5 hour window (the world famous ultra deep field photo from Hubble which rocked the world back in 2004 required closer to 12 days of scope time and did not peer early so deeply into the universe).
The Webb image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 which is 4.6 billion light years away. Because this galaxy cluster is (or was?) so massive, it acts as a gravitational lens and much more distant galaxies can be glimpsed in the curvy fisheye at the center of this image. I am no galactic astronomy expert (here are some vague pointers about what the color means from an earlier post), but the beauty and grandeur of the image is evident to even the rankest layman…and this is the first real image. There are going to be lots and lots of additional pictures coming in of every conceivable sight out there in the universe and we are going to be blown away by what we see. I can hardly wait for more!
Winter always stays a bit too long, and, after the blustery snow storms of March, you can always find me out in the garden frowning at the mud and waiting the first living things to pop up out of the thawing earth. Usually the hellebores bloom first followed by the crocuses, and then the whole symphony of blooms truly begins in earnest. This year, however, featured an unexpected player sounding the first note of the overture. After a light snow, I went out into the garden and found that the dark, cold earth was packed with pretty little mushrooms strewn across a portion of the garden about the size of a queen sized mattress. The mushrooms ranged in size from pencil eraser to a quarter-dollar-piece and were a lovely shade of burnt sienna.
Mushrooms are really the fruiting bodies of much larger underground organisms which are composed of delicate networks of threadlike hyphae. These elaborate filament networks are mutualistic with the roots & bacteria which make up the mysterious subterranean ecosystem. I would tell you more about this, but I don’t know more. Mushrooms are a truly mysterious hidden kingdom of life to me. I know some strange factoids about their cellular structure: primitive fungal cells are motile (!) whereas higher fungi have cellular septae, which allow organelles to be shared by many cells! I know the largest living organism known is a fungus. And of course everyone knows about the aesthetic (and chemical) range of mushrooms which come in all sorts of shapes and sizes (and can be poisonous, medicinal, nutritious, or horrid, depending on mushroom type).
These mushrooms were quite pretty (in an earthy way) however my camera was not very good at differentiating them from the bark and leaf litter. In real life, they did stand out to the human eye, which raises yet more questions about their nature and composition. I am glad they are there, waiting underground and I will think about them as a larger part of the true garden (along with strange wasps, brown creepers, pseudoscorpions and tiny fluorescent dayflowers). If anyone knows any actual facts about these little fungi, kindly let me know. We will commence the regularly scheduled floral part of the spring symphony in the immediate future!
A sculpture of the Yellow Emperor in the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor in Shaanxi
The Han people claim to be descended from a mythological cultural hero known as the Yellow Thearch, the Yellow Emperor, or as “Huangdi.” Chinese history is long and complicated and so is the history of Huangdi! At times the Yellow Emperor was regarded as a real person–the first emperor of China. In other eras he was regarded as a matchless Daoist sorceror or as a great shaman or even as a god of the Earth itself. Modern scholars argue endlessly about how the myth came into being. The Communists tried to ban the cult during the cultural revolution, but quickly realized that it was a dreadful mistake. Different eras imagine him differently, but he is always there at the beginning. Imagine if Moses, Aeneas, George Washington, and Merlin the Magician lived five thousand years ago and were somehow one person–that would be the Yellow Emperor.
Inquiring of the Dao at the Cave of Paradise (Dai Jin, ca. mid 15th century AD) ink on silk
From time to time Ferrebeekeeper refers to the Chinese calendar (this is year 4716, the year of the Earth Pig). That calendar was putatively started by the Yellow Emperor (which sort of puts a date stamp on him, come to think of it). An incomplete list of the other accomplishments/inventions/innovations which have been attributed to Huangdi includes:
- invention of houses
- domestication of animals
- first cultivation of grains
- invention of carts/the wheel
- invention and successful use of the war chariot
- invention and popularization of clothing
- the invention of boats and watercraft
- discovery of astronomy
- invention of archery
- creation of numbers and mathematics
- the creation of the first diadem
- the invention of monarchy
- The invention of writing and the creation of the oracle bone script
- the invention of the guquin zither
Huangdi did not invent sericulture (the cultivation of silkworms): that was accomplished by his main wife, Leizu. Yet, as you can see above, he still has a fairly impressive CV. I haven’t even gotten into his military accomplishments or his physical prowess. Suffice to say they were very great–like the time he defeated the bronze-headed monster, Chi You, and his 81 horned and four-eyed brothers…or the time he defeated the nightmare sorcerers from the mirror dimension and imprisoned them forever in mirrors (although it is a bit disturbing to think that that figure in the bathroom every morning is a dark magician who is forced to dress like you and act like you and LOOK like you because of the Yellow Emperor’s magic).
Because Chinese history is so long and so vast it encompasses different cosmologies and pantheons. Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism have somewhat pushed out the ancient religions of the Han Dynasty (although figures like Nüwa linger on in the background). Huangdi sort of transcends change itself though and so he is in myths with great primordial Daoists like Guangchengzi and in stories with the now moribund goddess Xuannü, “the mystery lady” who was goddess of war, sex, magic, and longevity (we should maybe look into her backstory at some point). Also he was maybe a yellow dragon.
Although there are many stories about the Yellow Emperor’s life and accomplishments (and about his birth, which I will write about some other time), the stories about his death are somewhat exiguous. He met a quilin and a phoenix and moved on from this world. He has two tomb in Shaanxi (including the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, which is pictured up there at the top of the post), in addition to other tombs in in Henan, Hebei, Gansu, and other places. Perhaps these stories are unsatisfying by design. Like King Arthur or Durin, the Yellow Emperor might not be entirely dead, but might be lying low somewhere, waiting for a moment of crisis which requires him.
Like a currency crisis?
To my point of view, there is no afterlife or magic, but the dead aren’t really gone–they live on in their descendants. This is a satisfying conclusion to me because it means that the Yellow Emperor IS the people of the Han. He is China the way Uncle Sam is the US (except 4500 years longer). He never really existed yet the Yellow Emperor is 1/6 of humankind…or at least their mascot.
Once again, the hours of the day have flown by me. In order to illustrate this point I am going to feature some beautiful antique timepieces from the 16th century, the first century of watchmaking. The first watches originated in 16th century Germany. A hundred years earlier clockmakers had invented the mainspring movement, and by the 1500s, there were clocksmiths with sufficient skill to miniaturize this apparatus into miniaturized timepieces meant to be worn. This first generation of “watches” were really more like pendant clocks meant to be worn (how much else does Flava Flav owe to reformation-era Germany?). These pendant watches only had an hour hand (often behind a heavy lid of glass or crystal). They needed to be wound twice a day and they were not very reliable (sometimes losing multiple hours in a single day), however they became popular with the aristocracy because of the eternal love of novel cutting-edge technology and because they were human-made portable accessories which moved on their own—a wonder in that age.
The first generation of watches were heavy and ostentatious—more like mechanical jewelry than modern chronographs. The disk shape familiar in personal timepieces for the last half millennium was not yet standard (or even achievable) and so all sorts of novelty shapes prevailed. Thus the first generation of watches featured all sorts of gilded ticking eggs, books, astronomical bodies, animals, fruit, flowers, insects (look at that crowned queen bee watch!), body parts, and religious symbols. These are a bit strange to modern eyes but they are also refreshing in our age of ubiquitous sleek black tablets. I suppose these are really the great great great grandparents of all of the personal devices which define this era. Yet looking at the strange clunky shapes of these precious odd mechanical survivors is refreshing too. Imagine if your mechanical death’s head was off by several hours and didn’t beep intrusive emails at you all day!
Oumuamua is an asteroid which came from beyond the solar system. Perhaps it was ejected from a star system in the Carina–Columba association (which is not an Italian fraternal organization but rather a vast nebula by Eta Carinae about 100 parsecs) around 50 to 100 million years ago, but its age and point of origin are unknown. It is whipping past the sun and then back into the vast darkness between the stars at a prodigious velocity (apparently it was traveling through interstellar space at something like 26 kilometers per second (58,000 miles per hour). The object, which measures between 100 and 800 meters (300 to 2500 feet), was initially classified as a comet, but its speed, its orbital eccentricity, and its bizarre shape–which is like an icicle or a shard–caused astronomers to realize it was deeply strange interloper from beyond.
The object has been closely observed by many of the Earth’s great observatories and it is apparently a dark red—which is caused by cosmic radiation striking it for 100s of millions of years (Kuiper belt objects have similar coloration). It is traveling far too fast for any existing human craft too reach (although we may be able to build such crafts in the near future), however scientists are assessing it for traces of life or civilization by means of radio telescopy. It will be out by Jupiter next year and far beyond are kin soon after that, but scientists have learned a great deal from the visit. Additionally they speculate that other such objects come through the solar system at the rate of one or two per year (which does not seem like a lot considering how large the solar system is). We are lucky to have spotted this shard, but its catastrophic shape makes one speculate that there is a lot about planetary formation (and destruction) which we don’t know yet.
Apples (Malus pumila) originated in Central Asia somewhere around Turkey/Georgia/Armenia–where the wild apple (Malus sieversii) still grows. These delightful members of the rose family have been continuously cultivated, hybridized, grafted, and cloned since prehistory. Apples are shockingly promiscuous and their seeds are different (sometimes extremely different) from the parent, so varieties (“cultivars”) are cloned and grafted. There are more than 7500 cultivars of apples grown and each is really a clone—or a still living clonal scion–of the original tree they come from. The history and meaning and delight of the apple is beyond my ability to even begin to discuss, however I want to talk about the best variety of apple which is widely available in the United States, the Golden Delicious, because it comes from the same place as me. The first Golden Delicious tree comes from Clay County, an obscure county in West Virginia where my whole family hales from (well, at least for the last 250 years or so, I guess we are from Africa by way of Europe originally).
Golden Delicious apples are a bright yellow (or yellow green) apple which are extremely sweet and fragrant. The original tree was found on the Mullins’ family farm in Clay County and the fruit was locally known as “Mullin’s Yellow Seedling” and “Annit apple” until 1914/15 when it was renamed the Golden Delicious by Stark Brothers Nursery to whom Anderson Mullins sold the cultivation rights and the tree (for the then princely sum of $5000).
Golden delicious apples are wonderful for cooking, salads, and sauces, but their sweet taste makes them perfect for eating too (although their bright crisp flesh and nearly transparent skin makes them susceptible to bruising). Wikipedia tells us that “In 2010, an Italian-led consortium announced they had decoded the complete genome of the Golden delicious apple. It had the highest number of genes (57,000) of any plant genome studied to date.” To my eye, Golden Delicious apples also look like the golden apples of Aphrodite which sometimes play a saucy role in Greek mythology or even the forbidden apples of the Hesperides which conferred immortality (if you could get past Hera’s dragon). Anyway I picked a bunch of them upstate this past weekend and I can’t stop thinking about them…or eating them. After Halloween week is done, I will share my favorite apple pie recipe. However next week is not about apples…it is about snakes!
Today’s post is taking us all the way back. We are going to the beginning of civilization ca. 3700–3500 B.C. when the first cities sprang up from the mud of Mesopotamia and the near East. This figurine is one of thousands and thousands which were found in Tell Brak, a vast mound which is what now remains of one of humankind’s first cities—an urban settlement which was built at around the same time as Ur and Sumer (although Tell Brak was in what is now–or recently was– Syria). Tell Brak is the name of the mound of rubbish, dirt, and artifacts where the ancient city once was—the original name of the city is unknown (although the city which sprang up nearby, after the destruction of the first metropolis, was known as Nagar).
The urban inhabitants of Tell Brak loved these evocative little eye statuettes, but sadly we don’t really know what they are either. The best guess is that they were votive statues. Supplicants would leave them at the temple as a sort of offering for the god or goddess. An alternate theory is that they are simplified idols of Inanna–THE goddess of war, sex, and the planet Venus. The wide eyes are thought to betoken adoration or excitement or maybe the attentiveness of the gods. Sometimes there are multiple sets of eyes or smaller eyes beneath a larger pair. Some of the statues had ornamentation or even jewels.
As you have probably surmised from this meandering speculation, we don’t really know what the eye statues symbolized or what reason people made them (although it was almost absolutely certain that they are religious). Whatever their original purpose was, I love them. I can’t think of a more evocative religious artform to come from a nameless early city. The simple haunting lines and wide-eyed knowingness of the unknowable mystery forms is exhilarating. You can practically feel them looking at you out the internet (to say nothing of when you are in an abandoned corner of the Met with other objects from 6,000 years ago…or on some mud hill in Syria). Ferrebeekeeper has long been fascinated by the art of the first cities…and by cities in general. I am going to be writing more about urban culture and meaning…and I will be featuring more art. So keep your eyes open!
Happy April Fools Day—or Happy April Fish! (as it is known in France). This is a special day for several reasons.
Most importantly today is the anniversary of Ferrebeekeeper which came into existence 7 years ago today! Since then, there have been lots of snakes, Goths, catfish, and colorful stories. I have gotten some things completely and utterly wrong, but I have always tried to do my best and be honest and keep the content coming, even when I was tired or sick or sad at heart. This is the one thousand five hundred and twelfth post! That’s a lot of clams and crowns! To celebrate, I am putting up three flounder-themed artworks (literal poissons d’Avril) and I am also announcing the rollout of a bizarre and compelling new online toy to appear here soon. I won’t tell you what it is (although I guess a prophet could tell you) but I will drop hints during next week’s blog posts.
Unless you are a Dagon-worshiper or a Micronesian, April Fish is one of the few fish-themed holidays on the calendar and so it is very precious for me, as a fish-themed artist. Additionally, today celebrates being careful in the face of obviously fake news stories. Now lately there have been lots of weird propaganda statements and transparent lies issuing from certain albescent domiciles in Washington DC, so the waters are even more muddied than usual (almost as if antagonists to the east are deliberately throwing up lots of lies and fake stories to make the real news seem suspect to people who are not very good at reading), but it is wise to be eternally on guard. Getting to the bottom of things is difficult, but a good rule of thumb is that real news is messy and complicated and offers more questions than answers (and lots of seeming contradictions), whereas self-serving puffery is generally gloriously simple and shifts all blame onto some third party (like Freemasons, foreigners, witches, or journalists).
Thank you all so much for reading. I treasure your attention and your patience. Forgive me for being so tardy in responding to comments and kindly pardon my errors or mistakes in judgement. Keep reading and looking and I will keep on writing, drawing, and floundering. There are glorious things ahead for all of us.
Everybody loves squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses…and we all love all of the crazy belemnites, ammonites, nautiloids, and orthocones which came before them. But, if you are like me, you have probably been sitting around wondering what came before that. How old are cephalopods, really, and what were the first ones like? Yet, although cephalopods are amply represented in the fossil record from the Ordovician onward, their very earliest origins are shrouded in controversy and mystery. Although there are various fossils which might be cephalopods (or their antecedents) at present the oldest animals to be indisputably classified as cephalopods are the Ellesmerocerida. This order of nautiloids flourished at the end of the Cambrian and into the Ordovician 9approximately half a billion years ago).
Although they were definitely cephalopods, the Ellesmerocerida were somewhat mysterious themselves. They were typically quite small—or even minute. They seemingly had ten arms–although this is a conjecture based on where the muscles attached to their shells (and based on what we know of their descendants). The soft parts of the first cephalopods were not preserved and so we don’t exactly know.
Their shells reveal close-spaced septa–closed off interior spaces within the shell, which provided buoyancy. The Ellesmerocerida also had relatively large ventral siphuncles—tissues which pass longitudinally through the septa to allow buoyancy control. So the first cephalopods we know about were more or less built on the same line as the subsequent ones (until belemnites internalized the shells). I wonder what else we will find out about the origins of this fascinating group of animals as we learn more about paleontology.
The oldest known epic is The Epic of Gilgamesh, which was composed during the Third Dynasty of Ur (circa 2100 BC). It is regarded as the first great work of literature–a masterpiece which examines humankind’s quest for transcendent meaning in the face of our mortality.
It is a beautiful work about friendship, sorrow, and heroism. I have always meant to write about it here–for the epic’s two greatest scenes take place in a forest and in outer space. The crushing moral denouement is delivered by a water snake. However I have always hesitated because, although it seems outwardly straightforward, The Epic of Gilgamesh defies easy categorization. Suffice to say, humankind reaches out for godhood, yet, though our fingers tantalizingly brush the numinous, apotheosis slips ineluctably away. We are only what we are. Even the greatest human heroes–kings who founded dynasties and pursue mysteries to the ends of the solar system–are still sad and lonely. And everyone must die.
And so it has been for 4 millennia. One does not expect updates to literature written before chickens were domesticated or iron was forged. However this week featured an unexpected gift from the ancient past. Twenty new lines of The Epic of Gilgamesh were discovered!
The story of how scholars in Iraq found the new text is amazing in its own right: the Sulaymaniyah Museum in the Kurdistan region of Iraq has been offering cash compensation for cultural treasures with no strings attached. Since so many antiquities have been displaced by the war and have gone wandering, this Indiana Jones-like scheme is regarded as the best way to protect the ancient heritage of the region. Unknown looters showed up with an cuneiform fragment. The museum director paid them $800.00 for the piece (which would only be chicken scratches to anyone other than a great scholar of Akkadian). As it turns out, the extant version of Gilgamesh comes from an incomplete collection of tablets unearthed at different times and in different places. This clay tablet features 20 entirely new lines from tablet V of the epic.
The best part of this story is that the new fragment is really good! It is an important and meaningful addition to the story. In tablet V, the heroes of the epic Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight and kill Humbaba, the monstrous guardian of the great cedar forest. In the twenty new lines they reflect on the fact that Humbaba was a king, trying to protect his realm. They rue the destruction of the cedar forest (where they encountered monkeys and other exotic creatures) and they realize that they have disturbed the divine order of things and incurred the wrath of Ishtar.
The fragment thus gives the characters a more refined conscience and introduces an environmentalist theme. The idea that humans can injure the planet and permanently destroy irreplaceable life forms is new and alien to many contemporary people. It strikes a powerful chord appearing in the first work of literature. Yet it seems to me that themes of environmental devastation (and consciousness concerning our own destructive nature) are hardly out of place in a story which deals with the creation of civilization and the liminal edges of humanity.
ferrebeekeeper 