British Library investigates the power of maps

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Maps tell us much more about a place than just where to go. The history, culture and biases of mapmakers all find their way into these uniquely geographic works of art. A new exhibition at the British Library titled Magnificent Maps aims to give visitors a closer look at the culture behind maps, bringing together a one-of-a-kind collection of important historic maps from as far back as 200AD, special events and an interactive website.

The maps featured at the British Library exhibition aren’t just your average Rand McNally fold-up. The event’s centerpiece is the Klencke Atlas from 1660, the largest book in the world, coming in at over five feet tall and six feet wide. Among the other 80 some odd display pieces is range of never-before-seen artifacts, including a miniscule coin showing a map of the German town of Nuremberg from 1773. The exhibit aims to show the maps in a new light, one in which they are not just reference tools but works of art, often created by powerful kings and countries hoping to further their own purposes. In connection with the special events, the BBC has also launched a series of content on maps, including special programming and articles surrounding the topic.

It’s easy to take maps for granted as factual, scientific documents. But as Magnificent Maps tries to show us, these documents are open to interpretation. The exhibit is happening from April 30th through September 19th of 2010 at the Library’s headquarters in London.

Water Planet, w/ Leonardo DiCaprio

by Jon Bowermaster on


For ten years the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation has funded social action, education and short films on environmental issues. The actor and environmentalist has a particular fondness – and concern — for the ocean as well as the global need for clean drinking water. Below, he speaks on his passion.

Consider this.

We live on a water planet.

Through the millennium the water cycle has supported all life.

Shaping weather, the seasons, and the climate, providing habitats for most of the world’s living things, and most of them including us are almost entirely made up of water.

Now consider this. Water is a finite source. A limited resource. Only a tiny fraction of the earth’s water is fresh.

It supports everything from agriculture and sanitation to aquatic ecosystems like rivers and streams. Water falls unevenly across the planet, while much of it is locked up in glaciers, permanent snow cover, ice and permafrost. Water is also stuck underground very deep in the earth and hard to reach.

To make matters worse, water is being threatened by pollution, overpopulation, climate change, mismanagement, and war.

Pollution is so severe that diseases are increasing in both humans and animals and habitats are being destroyed. Rain is turning into acid. So many chemicals flow into rivers and lakes that the actual composition of water in some places has been fundamentally changed.
Human encroachment is also drying out aquifers, diverting the natural flow of rivers and straining water supplies. Hidden in everyday consumption is the careless and unnecessary waste of water.

Dams displace millions of people and destroy whole ecosystems.

Global warming is altering the water cycle causing more severe and unpredictable flooding and droughts, ultimately shifting where water flows. Unregulated corporate privatization threatens access to water for the poor. Some governments fail to deliver water where it is needed most. These stresses have created military and political conflicts that will only get worse.

Ultimately, humanity is poisoning, squandering and overburdening water resources. The result is, that billions of people lack access to clean water. Millions of children die every year from preventable water-born diseases. Lack of clean water and basic sanitation cracks people in poverty. People are fighting and dying for it.

We are at a crisis point. We still have time to turn this around. We can conserve water and not waste it. Invest in smart water infrastructure and technologies. Increase environmental regulations from polluting industries. Tell government leaders to fulfill financial pledges for clean water Insure that water is not treated like a commodity.

But most important, we must recognize that access to clean water is a basic human right and the United Nations should adopt a global treaty for the right to water.

Water equals life, there is no separation. By protecting water, we can protect ourselves and this blue planet for future generations.

Utah prehistory week explores state’s amazing past

by Sean McLachlan on

The American Southwest is famous for its traces of prehistoric civilization. One of the best places to see pueblos and petroglyphs is beautiful Utah, also famous for its hiking and canyoneering.

Starting tomorrow, Utah scientists and museums will be celebrating Prehistory Week by inviting the public to learn more about life in the state hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years ago. Events include a chance to watch the excavation of a dinosaur skeleton, visits to ancient inhabited caves, and museum open houses. At Zion National Park an archaeologist will lead a guided hike to a part of the park rich in ancient structures and inscriptions, while Cedars State Park Museum hosts the Four Corners Indian Art Market. There are events throughout the state, including lots of events for the kids.

Exploring Harar, a medieval city in Ethiopia

by Sean McLachlan on

In my last post I wrote about how Harar is an alluring walled city that made me throw away my travel plans and stay for three weeks. A serene atmosphere and an ever-widening circle of knowledgeable, hospitable acquaintances were what kept me there, but what is there to actually see?

Plenty.

The main attraction, of course, is the city itself, with its crowded markets, quiet back alleys, and mixture of Ethiopian, Egyptian, Arab, and Italian architecture. A long wander in the Jegol, as locals call the old city, will give you a feel for life in this unique place. Don’t worry about getting lost. While the winding little alleyways make it inevitable, the city is so small you won’t stay lost for long. Walking at night is safe and very romantic with the right company and a full moon.

Harar’s most famous attraction is the hyena man. Yusuf Mumé Salih is a local farmer who lives just outside the walls. He sits out every night feeding the hyenas with raw donkey meat just like his uncle did before him. The Hararis and the hyenas have an unusual relationship. The city wall has small gates to allow the hyenas in at night and one Harari told me he was more afraid of dogs than hyenas! Hyenas are useful for eating garbage left on the streets and also take away djinn, harmful spirits that sometimes possess people. The hyena man will allow you to feed the animals yourself, and they’re surprisingly gentle. Walking in Harar at night one will occasionally slip by you and disappear down an alley. After visiting the hyena man, I didn’t worry about it.

%Gallery-91953%There are also a few museums. The Harar Museum and Cultural Center has a reconstructed traditional home that should not be missed. Harari homes consist of several rooms, including a common room with different platforms for sitting and colorful basketry hanging from the walls. If you stay in Harar for any length of time you’ll be invited into a real home, but it’s nice to poke about here because you can see the private quarters that are otherwise off-limits. Another excellent museum is the Abdullahi Sherif Private Museum, run by a descendant of the prophet Muhammad who has devoted his life to collecting, preserving, and studying artifacts from Harar’s past. The museum is housed in the palace that Emperor Haile Selassie grew up in. Examining the various coins, swords, dresses, and medieval manuscripts will show just how eventful Harar’s history was, and how it was a nexus of influences from all over the world.

Admirers of literature will want to see Rimbaud’s House, an elegant mansion that, in a surprising display of honesty, the curator told me was never Rimbaud’s. Be that as it may, it is now devoted to the memory of the poet, with many of his photos of old Harar and information about his life and work. Rimbaud introduced photography to Harar when he moved here in 1880 and his photos are priceless documents of life in the city more than a hundred years ago.

And there’s much more to explore. I’m planning to go back for two months next year to do an in-depth research project on some aspect of Harari culture. Exactly what aspect I’m not sure. As one Harari friend advised, “Don’t come here with an idea in your head. Let the city give you the subject.” Harar is that kind of place.

An excellent introduction to the city and its people is Harar: A Cultural Guide (Shama Books, 2007) by David Vô Vân and Mohammed Jami Guleid, with beautiful photographs by Alain Zorzutti.

Don’t forget to read the rest of my series on travel in Ethiopia.

Next time: some final thoughts on travel in Ethiopia.

Stories From a Blue Planet, w/ Alexandra Cousteau

by Jon Bowermaster on

In 2009, Alexandra Coustau’s Blue Legacy Expedition took her and a small team of documenters to five continents in one hundred days, in search of clean drinking water. Though occasionally far from the ocean, she found herself constantly seeing the link between the sea and mankind’s sustainability, as well as to her grandfather, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who would have been one hundred years old this year. Below, as excerpted from OCEANS, The Threats to Our Seas and What You Can Do To Turn the Tide she reflects on her career.

The ancients told of water. Carved deeply in stone and crafted carefully in story and song, their superstitions and histories and wisdoms cascade across centuries and flow through our lives today: “From the heights of a mountain…” “By the banks of a river…” “Upon the shores of a homeland…” and so the stories go. And so we tell them still. For history has always been written in water.

And yet, for all the wonder and worship, throughout most of human history, the mysteries of this water planet were out of sight and beyond understanding. The oceans were vast unknowable surfaces across which ships sailed bravely in search of wealth or distant lands and adventure. Beneath this plane lay a mysterious void filled by the wild creatures of myth, an inexhaustible supply of fish, or some combination of both. Rivers cradled civilizations, nurturing the evolution of societies while carrying away the waste and transgressions of communities. And the rains came as they would for reasons most everyone could explain but seldom in the same way or for the same purpose. So man spoke of water as one who sees without knowing- hoping somehow to explain the wonders beyond and beneath the water planet he called home.But as time passed, the siren call of exploration tempted the hearts of both pilgrims and wanderers to pierce the dark night of ignorance and see the planets spinning-to step beyond the binding traditions of mortality and think the thoughts of gods. And they too told of water. Some throwing sheets into the wind would rush to the edge of the world to drown echoes of scorn beneath a bending horizon. Some would chart water’s course through our veins and some would harness its steam to build a bigger and better life. So story follows story as man wielded reason and exploration to unravel the mysteries of his world.

But in spite of centuries of charting the expanses of her boundaries, no one had yet searched out the depths of her oceans and this frustrated my grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Tethered to shallow, short dives by the aching in his lungs he longed to see more, to know more and so, as centuries of explorers before him had done, he sat down with a friend to rewrite the boundaries. The invention they would call the “Aqua Lung” in 1943, allowed humans to explore the underwater world for the first time, opening new fields of study and changing how we understand much of our natural surroundings.

The thrill of what he saw-of what he discovered-was more than he could contain and soon, he was back at the drawing board to design gear for my grandmother Simone and eventually even for my father Philippe.

Just four years old when his father taught him to dive, my father was so exuberant about all he saw beneath the calm surface of the water – a darting school of fish here, a brightly colored coral there, a waving forest of life just beyond – that he repeatedly tried to call out to my grandfather. He was blissfully unaware that each exclamation caused the regulator to fall out of his mouth, which my grandfather deftly and repeatedly replaced to keep his small, excited son from drowning.

When they finally got back aboard the ship, my grandfather scolded my father for his reckless enthusiasm saying, “You must be quiet underwater because it is a silent world.” My grandfather’s description of the new world to which he had introduced my father that day later became the title of his best selling book and Oscar-winning documentary The Silent World. And so we Cousteau have joined the generations of those who tell the stories of water.

Twenty-six years, a host of inventions, discoveries and awards would pass from that day. President John F. Kennedy would bestow the National Geographic’s Gold Medal on my grandfather at a White House ceremony honoring his work. The award-winning series he developed with my father, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, would be welcomed into living rooms around the world. His storytelling would launch a new generation of environmentalists and forever change how we see the oceans. And then Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

I remember my grandfather telling me that the day he saw the headlines “Two Men Walk on the Moon” (knowing my grandfather, probably not without some healthy envy) was the day he knew our perception of the world would forever change. For the first time, we saw ourselves from outer space and realized unmistakably that our planet is in fact blue. Finally, people would see what he saw everyday from the deck of the Calypso: We live on a water planet.