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After peering back through the mists of time to the mythical origin of ancient Greece’s ancient center of prophecy, Dodona (which was purportedly founded by a black, talking pigeon) I bet you are asking yourself “hey wait, do black pigeons exist in nature?” The answer is a glorious and emphatic yes! The black imperial pigeon (Ducula melanochroa) is a splendid black pigeon (with a bit of white trim along its wings) which can be found living throughout the Bismarck Archipelago.
Although I found this to be of great ornithological interest, I found it to be geographically challenging.To wit, where on earth is the Bismarck Archipelago? Does Germany have a hitherto unknown chain of black-pigeon haunted isles stretching out into the Baltic? Germans will be relieved (albeit a bit disappointed) to learn that it does not. The Bismarck Archipelago obtained its name during the desperate last phase of European colonialism, when imperialists-run-amuck stuck flags (and un-regional names) on anything that wasn’t fast enough to get away from steam powered battleships. The Bismarck Archipelago is a chain of very volcanic islands off the north east coast of Papua New Guinea with a collective area which is approximately equal to Vermont and New Hampshire combined.
The discovery of a substantial part of the world wholly unknown to me is sort of a consolation prize for the fact that I can not find out very much about these black imperial pigeons (other than the fact that they exist). I doubt they had much to do with anything that was happening in Greece long ago (or ever), but it is extraordinary to see how diverse animal life is on our home planet and to know that even in the age of the internet there are entire species–and places–which keep their mysteries.
Sometimes when my mind has been hopelessly corrupted by the pointless drudgery of my dayjob (a syndrome which, alas, also impairs efficacious blogging) I like to look at the exquisite golden objects from Indonesia which are on display at the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. Through some strange accident (which almost certainly involved vast fossil fuel wealth) the Houston museum has the finest collection of Indonesian gold outside of Jakarta. We have seen some of these otherworldly status objects here on Ferrebeekeeper before, but today’s golden crown suits my taste even more than previous selections. Unfortunately, the Houston museum’s collection is poorly explained, and the internet simply identifies this as an ancestral gold crown from the Moluccas circa 15th to 17th century. Why are the greatest beauties always so mysterious?
The Moluccas (AKA Maluku) are a pretty mysterious place in their own right, having been continuously inhabited by humans since the first great migration out of Africa 80,000 years ago (dates may be subject to variance!). As Austronesian, Melanesian, and eventually Malay (and then, in historical times, Chinese and European) people traveled through the great ecological and cultural crossroads, all sorts of ideas became mixed together. This headress though is not 100% alien… it has certain similarities to some of the Balinese carvings I have seen–which is to say it comes from a Hindu cultural tradition coming southwards from Malaysia and South East Asia. There are shades of the fantastical headdresses of the apsaras here! Yet I don’t see this piece as completely Hindu or southeast Asian either. The ornament and the figures have a vigorous & sumptuous aspect which strikes me as thoroughly Indonesian. Whatever the case, I could look at this enigmatic crown all day! If anyone out there knows anything about it (or even has any speculative ideas like mine above) I would love to hear from you!
In years past, Ferrebeekeeper has celebrated Saint Patrick’s Day with a series of short essays about Irish folklore. We started with leprechauns and worked our way through the doom of Oisin (who could have had eternal youth and endless love), the Sluagh (evil spirits who ride the clouds), the Leannán Sídhe, the Fear Gorta, and the great Gaelic flounder (which is not even a thing, but which should be). You should read that story about Oisin–it’s really plaintive!
Anyway, this year we are going to take a break from the disquieting beauty of Irish folklore to showcase a category of obscene Medieval sculpture, the “Sheela na gig”, a sort of stylized stone hag who is portrayed holding open her legs and her cavernous womanhood (a word which I am primly using as a euphemism for “vagina”). These grotesque female figures appear throughout Northwest Europe, but are most prevalent in Ireland. Nobody knows who carved them or why. Their name doesn’t even have a coherent meaning in Gaelic. Yet they are clearly connected to fertility and to the great mother goddess of the Earth. As you can imagine, they are the focus of furious speculation by religious and cultural mavens of all sorts. However no definitive answer about the nature of the figures has ever been found…nor is such an answer ever likely to be forthcoming.
Sheela na gigs were mostly carved between the 9th and 12th centuries (AD) and seem to be affiliated with churches, portals, and Romanesque structures. Although they are located throughout central and western Europe, the greatest number of Sheela na gig figurines are located across Ireland (101 locations) and Britain (45 locations). To the prudish Victorian mind they were regarded as symbols for warding off devils (which would be affrighted by such naked womanhood?), however more modern interpretations empower the sculptures with feminist trappings of matriarchy, self-awareness, sexual strength, and shame-free corporeality. Perhaps the stuffy Victorian misogynists were the devils who needed to be scared off! Other scholars think of the Sheela na gig figurines in the vein of the pig with the bagpipes or the “Cista Mystica“–which is to say a once widespread figure which had a well-understood meaning which has become lost in the mists of long centuries (it is easy to imagine future generations looking at Hawaiian punch man, Bazooka Joe, or the Starbucks logo with similar bafflement).
Some scholars have theorized a connection with Normans–and hence with Vikings–but I see little of Freya in the images (which seem more connected to prehistoric “Venus” statues).
It is probably ill-advised to opine about such a controversial figure, but if I were forced to guess, I would suspect that the Sheela na gig is a symbol of the generative power of Mother Nature (or the godess Gaia) which is so overt as to barely be a symbol. All humans were born through bloody expulsion. We do not come into the world through a magic emerald cabbage or a portal of light. Whatever else the Sheela na gig betokens, it is a reminder of this shared heritage (which you would think would be impossible to forget…until you talk to some of the people out there).
Boy, this has been an intense week for astronomy news. First there was the largest neutron star ever discovered (it would take an eighth grader nearly an hour to bicycle a distance equivalent to its diameter!), then there was the story about Tabby’s Star gulping down exoplanets and pulverizing a moon (Ferrebeekeeper didn’t post that one, but you can read about it here) and now, today brings reports of another extra-solar mystery object akin to the mysterious Oumuamua which caused such a sensation back in 2017.
C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) in the middle of the image: Note the faint tail!
Back in August 30, 2019, Gennady Borisov, an amateur astronomer from Ukraine, spotted an unknown comet which has been dubbed “C/2019 Q4 (Borisov)”. Not only is the comet traveling at the blazing speed of 150,000 kilometers per hour (93,000 mph), it also has a hyperbolic orbit (meaning the object is not bound to the solar system) and it is approaching from a strange angle which in skew to the planar disk of the solar system.
At present the comet is far away from Earth and yet approaching on a path which puts the sun between us and the object (astronomers don’t like pointing their telescopes into the sun for some reason), however the mysterious object should approach as close as Mars at which point we will be able to learn more about it. Right now all we know is that C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) has a diameter between 2.4 and 15 kilometers (1.5 to 10 miles) and doesn’t seem to be from around here. Whereas Oumuamua zipped through before we could get a good handle on it, we should have a chance to properly study this comet. Since comets (unlike strange asteroid shards) are volatile, we should be able to get a sense of its composition by studying the makeup of the tail. Stay tuned for more news about this peculiar object!
Hey, did anybody notice there is a massive spooky ghost galaxy right next door to us? Well, actually the answer turns out to be “no: not really…not until November of last year.” It was only in November of 2018 that astronomers discovered Antlia 2, a galaxy which is a mere 130,000 light-years away from the Milky Way–which really is right next door in terms of cosmic distances (to contextualize this number, the diameter of the Milky Way itself is between 150,000 and 200,000 light years).
Ant2, as it is affectionately (?) called, is closer than the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy with 30 billion stars which is 163,000 light years away and is generally regarded as our closest galactic neighbor. How did we miss this thing? And why are we calling it a ghost galaxy (aside from the fact that that sounds impossibly cool)?
Antlia 2 is a weird sort of celestial object. It has the lowest “surface brightness” of any known galaxy and is approximately 100 times more diffuse than any known ultra diffuse galaxy. Gee! that is really extremely diffuse. Antlia 2 is also a dark matter galaxy: the exiguous stars of which it consists are insufficient to hold it together without a great deal of unknown mystery mass. The ghost galaxy may be more than 99 percent dark matter. Additionally, Ant2 (insomuch as it exists) is hidden by the occlusion cloud above the spiral of the Milky Way. Only with the advanced astrometry readings of the European Space Agency’s satellite observatory Gaia were astronomers finally able to pinpoint this dark shadow in the sky above the southern constellation Antlia (which itself is named after an 18th century air pump).
What the jazz? This post is making less sense than usual, but I am not making any of it up…
I worry that this post is too abstruse for comfort. It concerns an all-but-invisible phantom galaxy made of unknown dark matter. The only reason we even found it to begin with is that astronomers were on the lookout for a hidden galaxy. Some unknown mass must have caused the stylish ruffles in the spiral arms of our own bright & lively Milky Way. Thus the fashion sensibility of space topologists helped us to find Antlia 2. Remind me about this thing in October. I want to draw some ghost galaxies to celebrate Halloween this year!
Today, through the magic of the internet, Ferrebeekeeper is visiting a graveyard halfway around the world in Armenia (alas, I am visiting through words and images only; as always, my body remains stubbornly in New York City shackled to an office chair and a bunch of elusive dreams). This exquisite spot is Noratus Cemetery, beside Lake Sevan, in eastern Armenia, not far from the Azerbaijan border. This region has been a crossroads for people for millennia. Although Noratus is today a small village, during the Middle Ages it was a large prosperous town. A bronze-aged hillfort stands nearby. Prehistoric travelers passed through this region on humankind’s great migrations, and the region is not far from the first palace civilizations of the ancient world. Persians, Greeks, Romans, mysterious steppe peoples of all sorts, Turks, Mongols, Russians, caravan folk from east and west, Chinese, Soviets, and contemporary world travelers have all passed through the region. However, this post is not a history of Armenia (thank goodness: I could never begin to explain the beautiful tangled chronicle of that crossroad nation): we are talking about Noratus Cemetery. The oldest stones in the complex date back to the 10th century, but the cemetery has been utilized off-and-on right up to the present.
The most famous stones of Noratus are the khachkars—the cross stones. These are intricately carved stele with Christian crosses carved upon them in syncretic Asian styles. Once upon a time (by which I mean, in the nineteen nineties), the greatest concentration of ancient khachkars was in the Armenian cemetery in Julfa (in Azerbaijan), but the Azerbaijan government destroyed these beautiful ancient works in order to further some self-aggrandizing lie or another, so today, the largest concentration of medieval khachkars is in…Noratus cemetery.
You can see here how the maelstrom of cultures has influenced khachkar makers from over the centuries. The mysterious gravestones look, by turns, Scythian, Romanesque, Persian, Indian, and even Jewish: yet they are none of these styles (although they are influenced by each)—they are Armenian. But beyond the ancient exquisite graves, and the Romanesque chapels, look at the mountains and the lake beyond. I have stolen these pictures from around the internet so I don’t really know what is in each (apparently the cemetery is easy to visit (if you are in the hinterlands of eastern Armenia) but badly labeled so it might take some specialists in Eastern medieval art to unravel the meanings and eras of these stones anyway, but their artistic excellence and spiritual splendor is readily evident.
Omura’s whale or the dwarf fin whale (Balaenoptera omurai)
At the end of last month (October 2015), marine researchers in the Indian Ocean captured the first ever moving images of Omura’s whale (Balaenoptera omurai) a “dwarf” rorqual about which very little is known. I put “dwarf” in quotation marks because Omura’s whale is still a rorqual, a family which includes the largest animals to have ever lived. Adult Omura’s whales range in length from 9.6 to 11.5 meters (31.5 to 37.7 feet)—not exactly a miniature animal.
The whale is mysterious because it is rare. The specimens which were observed (or killed) were thought to be a small subspecies of Bryde’s whale. Only in 2003 did Japanese cetologists demonstrate incontrovertibly that the whale was a separate species (largely through genetic evidence preserved from specimens taken in infamous hunts/research expeditions).
An Omura’s whale underwater lunge feeding (photo by Cerchio et al. 2015, Royal Society Open Science)
Insomuch as we know anything about it, the Omura’s whale (which is named in honor of a famous Japanese whale scientist) is like other rorquals. It is a huge pelagic filter feeder which captures plankton or small fish and invertebrates in its great baleen mouth and strains the water out. It superficially resembles Bryde’s whale, however DNA reveals that it is an early offshoot from the rorqual lineage (its skeleton also differs greatly from Bryde’s whale)
We didn’t even know this was a species until 12 years ago—which illustrates how vast and unknown our own oceans still are. The Omura’s whales in the video/film were spotted in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar. Hopefully they are not as isolated as they seem and the oceans will continue to be graced by this mysterious creature far into the future.
Dusky leaf monkey, Trachypithecus obscurus – Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand. Photo by Thai National Parks.
I have been wanting to expand Ferrebeekeeper’s “mammals” categories by writing more about primates…but primates are really close cousins. They are so near to us on the tree of life that it is tricky to write about them. Monkeys and apes venture into the uncanny valley…that uneasy psychological chasm that contains things that are very much like humans, but clearly are not humans.
The Dusky leaf monkey (Trachypithecus obscurus)
Therefore, in order to ease us into the subject of primatology, I am going to start with the spectacled langur aka dusky leaf monkey (or, more properly Trachypithecus obscurus). This is a beautiful langur which lives in the dense rainforests of Malaysia, Burma, and Thailand, but realtively little seems to be known about the creatures. Adult male dusky leaf monkeys weighs approximately 8.3 kilograms (18 pounds). Females are somewhat smaller. The monkeys live in troops of about ten or a dozen and they subsist on a variety of tropical fruits and nuts (supplemented perhaps occasionally with other vegetables or small animals). Infants are born orange, but quickly turn dark gray with the distinctive “spectacles” for which the species in known. I don’t really have a great deal of information about these monkeys, but I am blogging about them anyway because they are adorable! Just look at these young langurs. This is exactly the sort of cute introduction which we need to get us started on the topic of primates. We will work on the serious grim monkeys later!
Dusky Leaf Monkey (Trachypithecus obscurus) photo by Petfles
Large bronze head (Sanxingdui, Circa 1300-1200 BC, cast bronze)
The traditional narrative of Chinese civilization is that the Han people (who originated on the fertile central plains around the Yellow River) invented cities, writing, advanced agriculture, bronzework, and Chinese civilization in general. The first great era of Han Chinese civilization was the Shang “dynasty” which lasted from 1600 BC to 1046 BC (although stories persist of an earlier—perhaps mythical—Xia dynasty). After the Shang age, the superior Han gradually spread through all of China incorporating lesser peoples into their greater hegemony (which endures to this day as the mighty nation we call China). This narrative was called into question in 1986 when workers at the Lanxing Second Brick Factory in Sichuan discovered an ancient pit full of exceedingly weird and magnificent bronze statues.
Archaeologists flocked to the site and began researching the civilization which was behind these strange works or art. It became apparent that the bronzeworks came from a culture which was contemporary to Shang dynasty China, but which was not directly connected. These ancient people are known as the Sanxingdui culture. They flourished in the Sichuan region, but, aside from the self-evident fact that they were gifted bronze artists, very little is known about the. Archaeologists speculate that the Sanxingdui people lived unified under a strong centralized theocracy in a walled city; also some Chinese scholars identify the Sanxingdui with the Shu kingdom (which is mentioned occasionally in extremely ancient Shang-era sources). I would love to tell you more, but since the Sanxingdui left no recorded history, that is virtually all we know about the creators of these exquisite bug-eyed sculptures and masks. It is believed that some natural disaster or invasion wiped out their city-state and the survivors became integrated with the Ba culture which were in turn swallowed up by the Chin Empire.
Bronze Mask with protruding Eyes (Sanxingdui, circa 1300-1200 BC, bronze)
Whatever the truth about them, they made amazing art. In addition to the huge alien faces, animals such as snakes, fish, and birds abound in Sanxingdui artwork—as do zoomorphic combination animals and fantasy creatures like dragons. Practical items such as axes and chariot wheels were also found. Naturally there is a vocal minority out there who insist that Sanxingdui culture was influenced by aliens, Atlantis, or whatever other supernatural entity du jour is selling books, but to find out more about them, we are going to have to wait for more discoveries.
A sacrificial altar with several four-legged animals supporting bronze humanoid figures (Sanxingdui, ca. 1300-1200 BC, bronze)
Giraffids–extinct and extant (painting by Mauricio?)
The Giraffoidea are a superfamily of artiodactyl mammals. They first evolved in the Miocene and they share a common ancestor with the deer and antelopes (and a slightly more distant common ancestor with hippos, pigs, and cows). Once the giraffes were numerous and mighty—twenty different genuses of these huge long-necked grazers spread throughout Eurasia and Africa. There were giraffids of all sizes and sorts—magnificent creatures bristling with hornlike ossicones and flourishing their long black tongues! But in the modern world the once-great family has shrunk down to two single species. The giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) is well known and features prominently in all sorts of cartoons and literature. The other last giraffe—the forest giraffe (more commonly known as the okapi) is much more obscure and was not known to science until 1901.
A male okapi (Okapia Johnstoni) at the Dublin zoo
Legends existed of a shadowy unicorn-like beast which lived deep in the jungle. Horse-crazed European adventurers and administrators tended to imagine it as a sort of jungle zebra. Although ethereal rumors and sightings of this creature were reported, no western zoologist or biologist succeeded in finding out more about it until a strange meet-up between master trackers and a European colonial official took place late in the nineteenth century. According to the story, an evil impresario had abducted a group of pygmies in order to exhibit them in a circus (which does not make me feel any better about human nature). When the British colonial administrator of Uganda, Sir Harry Johnston, found out about this cartoonishly evil plot, he rescued the forest people and sent them home. In gratitude, the pygmies became his friends and shared their forest-lore with Sir Harry, showing him the tracks of an okapi. The hoofprint which was distinctly cloven—as a equine print would not be. Johnston doggedly pursued the furtive creatures through the Ituri forest and he eventually obtained a bit of striped hide and a skull. Today the Okapi’s scientific name is Okapia johnstoni (although it sounds like it should really be Okapia pygmidae).
Okapi and calf at San Diego Zoo
Of course this latter name would not really fit Okapis—which are fairly large creatures. Adults stand 1.5 to 2.0 meters (4.9 to 6.6 ft) tall at their shoulders—and they have long necks. For such graceful animals they are also muscular and heavy–weighing from 200 to 350 kilograms (440 to 770 pounds). They live in the watery mountain rainforests in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (and perhaps slightly into Uganda). [Coincidentally, I’m sorry that I am continuing Congo week for one extra day, but I could not resist adding the okapi] Because their habitat is so constantly rainy, they have oily waterproof coats. Their distinctive brown, white, and red color pattern allows them to melt into the shadowy rainforests like wraiths.
An okapi in a rainforest
Okapis are herbivores. They do not just graze on leaves but they also eat berries, shoots, fruits, and fungi (many of which are toxic to humans). They are solitary animals which wander alone along narrow forest trails. Sadly (but unsurprisingly) okapis are endangered due to habitat loss and poaching. Interestingly, although it took Europeans a long time to discover the forest giraffe, it was seemingly known to ancient civilization. There is a carving of one of the creatures in Persepolis—being presented as tribute from a delegation of Ethiopians.
sculpture from the facade of the Apadana, at Persepolis
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