An early cultural tourist
In the 15th century, the Italian merchant Cyriacus of Ancona journeyed in search of the Mediterranean's classical past. In doing so, he laid the groundwork for today's cultural holidays
Today we take it for granted that we travel around the world to admire the monuments of the past. We prepare for such trips by reading about what we are going to see, set out on the journey with a good idea of how we will get there and where we will stay and have a sense of what we will encounter on location. Cyriacus of Ancona (1391-1452), the first cultural tourist since antiquity, lacked these advantages when, in the first half of the 15th century, he sailed around the Mediterranean in search of the remains of Greek and Roman civilisations.
Cyriacus first became fascinated by ancient monuments while walking in his home city Ancona and looking at the marble arch, erected in AD 115, to the Roman Emperor Trajan. He suddenly saw the structure in a new light. He no longer saw it as just a familiar and generally overlooked landmark, but as a doorway to the wonders of ancient imperial Rome. Not many people of Cyriacus's time were interested in historical travel, they generally ignored old buildings and structures, or worse, dismantled them for their building materials.
Cyriacus decided to see the world for himself and to record details of whatever other antiquities remained to be discovered. His training as a merchant did not prepare him for this vocation; he did not know ancient languages, history or art. However, he set out to solve these failings, first by learning Latin at the age of 30 and then adding ancient Greek. Having done this, he then set off on voyages around the Mediterranean to find, investigate and understand ancient cultures from their buildings, sculptures and inscriptions. Thus he became the first archaeologist and cultural tourist, predating other antiquarians by some 200 years.
Travel in the 15th century, however, was anything but simple or enjoyable. Overland journeys by foot or mule along bad roads, under constant threat from bandits, were bad; voyages by seas were even worse. When the weather cooperated, sailing went relatively smoothly, ships proceeded along coasts from one recognizable landmark to another. However, when there was no wind the ship did not move. Strong winds were no friends either, they drenched the ship with lashing waves and blew it off course. Water swamped the desk, splashed into the cabins and soaked mattresses, clothes and food. Remarkably, Cyriacus never complained about the miseries of travel. Optimistic by nature, he endured such hardships unafraid and saw opportunities where other people saw setbacks.
Among many of the important records made by Cyriacus was his crucial documenting, in 1431, of the remains of Cyzicus, an ancient Roman city that had relied on commerce for its financial success. He hired a local person to take him to site and then had to work out for himself the significance of the ruins he was looking at because there was no guidebook on ancient architecture to help him. Indeed, his contemporary knowledge about the ruins. Cyzicus had been a splendid city in its prime. Unfortunately, the area was highly seismic and in AD 123 the city was so devastated by a major earthquake that, when the Roman Emperor Hadrian visited it the following year, he was so saddened that he decided to subsidise a campaign to reconstruct Cyzicus. He made a substantial donation for a new temple to the Roman god Jupiter. Cyriacus thought the ruined city was awe-inspiring. He found the remains of the temple and examined it in great detail, looking for clues in ancient texts to help him understand what he was seeing. He sketched the great doorway adorned with carved foliage and mythological characters. Cyriacus's account of this temple is the only record of this building as in the following centuries it was entirely stripped of all its stonework and all that remains is its base.
Cyriacus also visited mainland Greece, in 1436, when no one went to Greece in order to see the country's ancient ruins. One of his destinations was the sanctuary of Delphi. The ancient Greeks considered Delphi as being situated in the most beautiful spot in Greece. When Cyriacus arrived at the site of Delphi, however, he found war, earthquakes and avalanches had all but obliterated its ruins. Determined to find any ancient traces, Cyriacus spent six days walking all over the areas, peering at odd stone blocks sticking out of the ground, running his hands over inscriptions to trace fragments of words, and trying to puzzle out the few surviving structural remains. Climbing uphill towards the rocks that tower over the site, he came upon a theatre built into the slope. Soon after his visit, the site was buried by a rockslide and was not seen again until archaeologists began to excavate the area systematically in the late 19th century.
Cyriacus had hoped to visit Egypt and Ethiopia but he never got there.Tg:@originalexams. However, in his life he did record for posterity countless ancient monuments around the Mediterranean, paving the way for future archaeologists and cultural tourists.
AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL ASTRONOMY
A Australia's Aboriginal people, living under a dazzling canopy of constellations, absorbed the night skies into their cultural, social and spiritual life. The position of the stars, the motion of the planets, and astronomical events such as comets, meteorites and eclipses have informed their cosmology and traditions. "Spirituality, sacred law, kinship, cultural rules about who you can marry, where you can go, what you can do, how society works...all of this social structure is written in the stars", says Dr Duane Hamacher, a lecturer at the Nura Gili Indigenous Programs Unit at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
B Hamacher, working closely with Aboriginal elders, is uncovering a wealth of astronomical knowledge. He takes the example of the Pleiades, one of the closest star clusters to Earth. He explains that the Pleiades rise early in the morning, just before the sun comes up, and are visible for about 15 minutes. This signals the time at which flowers appear on one type of tree, the start of winter, and the orca* migrating north. These observations indicate that the early Aboriginal astronomers took an intellectual approach that sought meaning in, and application of, astronomical phenomena. And no more is this evidenced than in how they used this knowledge to navigate their vast, and sometimes featureless, island continent.
C Professor Ray Norris, an astrophysicist at the Australian Telescope National Facility and adjunct professor in Indigenous Astronomy at Macquarie University, Sydney, recounts an occasion while bushwalking with Bill Yidumduma Harney, an Aboriginal elder: 'Bill can name about 5000 stars. Most Western astronomers can name only 20 or 30 on a good day ...He looks up at the sky and knows how it changes with the seasons, with the time, in ways I don't actually quite understand. And for him it's completely intuitive .... he looks at the sky and knows it reflects what's on the land.
William Stevens, an Aboriginal astronomy guide who conducts the Dreamtime ** Astronomy tour at Sydney Observatory, explains how some Aboriginal people use the constellation of Scorpius for navigation: 'We don't see a scorpion; it's actually a map for us, says Stevens, adding that people use the stars to travel from one clan group to another.
D Norris considers the study of Aboriginal astronomy an opportunity for Aboriginal communities to gain access to information that may have been lost after European colonization of Australia. This giving back of knowledge as Norris describes it, 'could promote community pride and provide educational material for young Aboriginal people.
This could also provide an opportunity to help foster a better understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal culture among the wider Australian society.
E Perhaps the most beguiling application of astronomical observation is associated with the behavior of one of Australia's most iconic birds, the emu. 'The Emu in the Sky', as it is called, describes a carving that is clearly visible on a rock located in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, north of Sydney. It depicts an emu in somewhat unnatural position for a real emu, with the legs folded behind it. That is, until it is observed that there is a huge and dark shape in one of the 'dark' areas of the Milky Way that resembles an emu. This 'emu' swings around the sky each night, its starting point at dusk changing as the year goes by and the seasons change. In April the body of the 'Emu in the Sky' reaches a certain angle, and people know it is the season to go and find fresh emu eggs, a rich highly valued food source. When the angle of the representation of the emu on the rock face matches the 'Emu in the Sky', the harvest might begin. The folded legs signify that the emu is sitting on the nest.
The Emu in the sky exemplifies one of the key principles of Aboriginal cultures: what is in the sky is of what is on Earth. Aboriginal people also apply this concept to construct annual calendars. Often based on six seasons, Aboriginal calendars are relatively complex and are generally constructed from the heliacal rising of stars (i.e when the star first becomes visible above eastern horizon for a brief moment just before sunrise)
F Dr Philip Clarke of Federation University Australia has documented how the Kaurna Aboriginal people of South Australia use the rising of what they call Parna, one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Its appearance just before sunrise indicates that the hot, dry summer is ending and the autumn rains will soon arrive. The lands of Kaurna include the Adelaide Plains, which are prone to flooding. Therefore, knowledge of when the arrival of autumn is imminent allows them time to build their large, waterproof huts, which are known as wurlies.
Not only were the positions and movements of individual stars used to predict seasonal changes, the scintillation of stars also informs Aboriginal astronomers of a change in the weather or season. ” They can tell by the degree of how much the star twinkles or changes colour to gauge the amount of moisture in the atmosphere”, explains Hamacher. “They then know whether a storm is approaching or the wet season is coming”.
G It is clear that aboriginal cultures contain a wealth of astronomical knowledge. Tg:@originalexams. This knowledge incorporates a deep and sophisticated understanding of celestial and terrestrial events and should be viewed through the prism of an interconnected world-view: a paradigm in which the Aboriginal people saw themselves not a separate external observer, but integral component of nature and the universe.
* orca – a type of whale
** Dreamtime – the time of the creation of Earth, the sun and stars according to Australian Aboriginal people
*** scintillation - twinkling
Learning to be bilingual
Dr Chisato Danjo, Lecturer in Japanese and Linguistics, examines the bilingual family home
Few people would consider mastering more than one language a bad idea. Consequently, parents who speak different languages from each other are generally keen for their children to learn both. They understand that the family setting they create is central to this, and seek ways to ensure their children thrive bilingually. One of the best-known approaches is the 'one-parent-one-language' strategy (OPOL). Each parent uses their native language when communicating with their children, so the children learn both simultaneously. OPOL emphasises consistency - each parent sticking to one language - as key to its approach. But this creates the myth that mixing languages should always be avoided. My recent study, part of a new wave of multilingualism studies, would suggest that this received wisdom is just that: a myth. My research looked at Japanese-British families living in the UK with pre- and early school-age children who were following a more-or-less strict OPOL language policy. I was particularly interested in examining the impact of OPOL in the family home - how does this unique language environment affect the way children use languages?
Most of the Japanese mothers who participated were fluent in Japanese and English, while the fathers possessed merely an elementary grasp of Japanese. This made English the primary language of communication between the parents and outside the home. For this reason, the mothers were careful to carve out additional space for more sustained Japanese language learning with their children. In other words, this dedicated space for communicating in Japanese was time the children spent exclusively with their mother. This seemed to create a connection between 'Japanese language' and 'motherhood' in the children's perception. This link became apparent in the way the children used Japanese as a means of emotional bonding with their mother. In addition, they adopted a broader behavioural repertoire than that which is usually associated with a language. For example, switching to Japanese could sometimes serve as a method to appease Mum when she seemed unhappy. At other times, refusing to communicate in Japanese was a useful means of defiance, even when the dispute was not related to language.
The OPOL approach emphasises the need for parents to monitor children's language closely and correct them if they mix the two languages. In practice, many parents speaking the minority language are bilingual themselves - so they understand what their children are saying even when they do mix the two. In addition, parents feel it's problematic to keep correcting children when they mix languages. This is particularly the case when children show annoyance at being corrected. The parents believe it is a lot more important to have a meaningful conversation with their children.
But what if a child uses language that cannot readily be categorised as either one language or the other? An example from my study involved the use of English words adapted to accommodate Japanese pronunciation. One of these borrowed words, 'ice cream', is usually pronounced 'aisukurimu'. The distinction between singular and plural does not exist in Japanese nouns in the English language sense, so whether using singular or plural, even in a borrowed word, 'aisukurimu' is the form normally used. But one of my child participants showed his mother a drawing of two cones of ice cream and described them as 'aisukurimuzu', with a Japanese pronunciation but in English plural form. The child had created something in between.
Another example from my study focused on the interaction between Japanese-English bilingual siblings. In one case, a six-year-old girl was trying to convince her four-year-old brother to let her play with his toys. Following firm rejections by her brother, the girl drew on her communicative repertoire to convince him. To start with, she shifted from an authoritative demand to a softer and humbler appeal. She rephrased the question by using various polite forms. Then, her voice became more nasal, suggesting she was about to burst into tears. Even more interestingly, while the negotiation had begun in English, in the middle she shifted to Japanese. Although this may give the impression of language mixing, a considerably more complex process was taking place. The shift was accompanied by the incorporation of Japanese cultural elements, such as honorific titles that emphasise emotional attachment, a relationship of dependence between sister and brother, and an assumed obligation to care on the part of the brother. She succeeded.
These examples show how creatively and strategically human beings use language in their daily communication. Whether bilingual or not, we all constantly select from our repertoire anything that will best serve our purpose. For instance, imagine you want to ask a neighbour a favour. You would use polite language in a friendly voice. But what about your facial expression? Your body language? It is likely you would make appropriate choices. For bilinguals, shifting between languages is all part of their repertoire.
Our language repertoires are shaped by meaning, based on knowledge gathered throughout our lives, and the ways we use language also shape its meaning. The use of OPOL in the family brings specific meaning to language used at home, and children make full use of emergent meaning in their own interactions.
The popularity of OPOL amongst parents rests on the simplicity of its message, which is that it should be applied consistently. But when we see a child actively using, adapting and negotiating their repertoire, it casts doubt on the belief that it's bad for children to mix languages. What they could actually be doing is demonstrating high-level flexibility and interpersonal skills.
Being bilingual isn't simply about an ability to speak two languages. Rigidly policing consistency in the OPOL approach could actually inhibit bilingual children's linguistic ability and creativity.TG:@originalexams. And in the same way, it could also limit their parents' ability to reveal their own bilingual skills, using their own repertoires.
