On Nature

Part 2

I believe that humanity, as a species, has lost connection with nature. I’m not trying to state individuals, or some communities don’t appreciate nature, or debate the Green Movement. What I mean is that humans, as a whole, no longer experience, appreciate, and live in, nature as we used to.

Humans have evolved from a previous species, homonims, which were present on Earth approximately 7 million years ago. Over the millions of years, we have evolved into what we are today. For the vast majority of our existence on the planet, we have lived within nature. Our lives were defined by the seasons, by the environment, and to a large extent, at the mercy of the elements. In western Europe, settlements were made up of buildings made of natural materials. Think round houses (or square in France) made of mud, or wattle and daub, with thatched roofs. People would choose locations based on not just the area’s ability to sustain wildlife, but the local ecosystem’s ability to provide, and sustain, wood, rushes, and other natural building materials.

Pre-roman civilizations discovered the ability to forge and smelt, giving rise to the metal ages, bronze and iron. But it wasn’t until the Roman Empire that manufactured materials started to be used for building; concrete, masonry, plaster, etc. With the growth of the Roman Empire, small settlements turned into towns, and grew into cities. Romans used, as much as possible, a grid pattern for their towns, in the same way the US still does. Defined interlaced streets, with buildings along the roadways. A time travel vacation back to a Roman city would not be that unfamiliar to a 21st century city dweller, in terms of street layout and the built-up environment. This, I believe, was the beginning of the end of humanity's connection with nature.

But of course we have the fall of the Roman Empire and the Saxon, and ‘middle’ ages. One of the reasons the misnomer ‘Dark Ages’ is used, is because, according to antiquated historians, we went backwards. No longer did we live in cities, but reverted back to settlements with the familiar thatched round houses. Also of note, is that in the East of England at least, religion ‘reverted back’ to pagan beliefs at the beginning of the Saxon period, only to return to Christian beliefs at the end of the 7th century. These pagan beliefs work on the multi-god or polytheism system. Assigning gods and spirits to all aspects of life and nature.

Then as the ‘medieval period’ progressed up to, and through, the 16th and 17th centuries, humans built more compact towns and cities and became more industrialized. The Industrial Revolution, when water power was overtaken by steam power as the preferred motive force for industry, began in the early 18th century. Very quickly, relatively speaking, the equivalent of mega factories were created for the processing of wool and textiles. Whole towns sprang up around these new factories and mills, that were usually located with good transport links, or access to ports. As exemplified by the vignette in Part 1, it was not uncommon for mill owners to provide housing for their workforce. The factories and mills not only spurred the local economy, but also the local geography.

Suitable areas were literally flattened, forests felled, rivers diverted, to enable the building of factories, mills and their associated town expansions. This was the start of humanity’s mass building efforts. Look at modern cities and even modern housing estates and neighborhoods. Large areas are literally bulldozed flat to make space for as many houses as possible, with small tiny lawns, all built as legally close to their neighbors as possible. I realize and appreciate the need for expansion and growth, I live in a house and utilize all the luxuries of modern life. But I still cringe when I see a site being prepared for a building project.

Let’s explore my theory of a lost connection. What do I mean by that? I don’t want to get mixed up with the climate change debate, environmental issues, or the Green Movements. I’m not referring to recycling, or being conscientious and not littering. I mean a deep seated, rooted understanding of nature that everyone was very familiar, and reliant on. A spiritual connection with nature, in the truest sense. Look at the earliest discovered examples of cave art, or personal jewelry; all have depictions of animals, or natural iconography. Leap forward to the neolithic period in western Europe and there are striking examples of monuments. These have strong connections with the seasons, the Moon, and have been theorized to be used for ceremonies relating to the harvest and the cycles of spring and autumn. The ebb and flow of life; the rebirth and renewal in spring, and the decline and hibernation of late autumn and winter, were vital aspects of ancient life. Something the ancestors clearly held in such high regard, they devoted many years to marking and celebrating it in their monuments.

I’m personally a little envious of Cenrith in the vignette in Part 1. Being able to wake up with the sun and be immediately immersed in the environment. To be so intune with nature, and comfortable in its presence. The closest we have to that now is camping. I’d wager the average human has no interest in such a pursuit. We’ve become too dependent on technology, modern conveniences. Could the average person today be able to tell when the weather was about to change, be able to track a deer through woodland, be able to forage enough to produce a nice soup, or be able to navigate, or tell the season from the stars? I’m confident with a resounding no.

The Antikythera Mechanism is, in my opinion, a great example of pre-Roman understanding of the solar system. Not only is it a perpetual calendar, able to indicate the date. It can also predict eclipses and measure Earth’s precession, the complex cyclic relationship of the Moon’s orbit, and also the Earth’s point in its orbit around the Sun. I don’t think we should be staggered or amazed by this, I think that is an injustice to the designer’s intelligence. What I think we should take away from it is a deeper respect for human’s understanding of nature and of complex relationships that are not immediately apparent. Clearly, humans spent a long time observing and growing an understanding of cyclic events, to such a degree that the wobble of the Earth’s axis could not only be detected, but understood to such a degree as to mechanize the maths behind it.

This is an understanding that was grown over time, over the millennia of existence. Likely to such an degree that the average neolithic person could smell the rain on the horizon and would know when to plant the crops to ensure maximum yield. In my post about happiness I alluded to the fact that the thought of a vacation in nature, walking on an old trackway, camping in the wilds and disconnecting from modernity, is something of an ideal for me. I’m fortunate in that I grew up in a rural setting, and was able to walk many miles with a pair of pet dogs. I taught myself to tell the time from the sun, identify trees and appreciate the small details of the world. I still live in a rural setting and, usually, wake up before the sun and get to experience the sun rise as I drive to work. Seeing a low mist burn off as the sun rises over a copse of trees, is as close to paradise a living human can get, in my humble opinion.

I feel sorry for people who have always grown up in an urban setting. Only experiencing nature in the manufactured settings of a city park. Over the millennia we have lived in the wild, only recently moving to urban environments after the Industrial Revolution, as I mentioned earlier. A couple of hundred years later, with the expansion of the railways in Britain, people flocked back to the countryside. Like a collective reflex, and need, to get into more open spaces and fresher air. The irony, at the time, was that weekend excursions and mass holidays were so popular, that the destinations were as busy and populous as the town the vacationers came from.

Shakespear suggested that Nature has music, all you had to do was slow down and pay attention to hear it. The Japanese have a word for the sound of wind rustling tree leaves: “matzukaze”. There is also psithurism, derived from the Greek word psithuros meaning whispering. I think both are beautiful, and conjure up thoughts of the trees having whispered conversations. There are fewer things that relax me more deeply, than the sound of rain, the rustling of leaves and the rhythmic sounds of a woodpecker or a calling dove. It’s an unfortunate side effect of the progress that Cedric bemoaned, that we have lost the connection that we so obviously still long for, deep down in our genes. Should we all do away with modern housing and convenience in favor of mud round houses? Of course not. But I do think we should hold nature and outdoor environments in higher regard than they are in vast parts of the world. Inclusion of environmental studies that are less to do with how to rely less on fossil fuels, and more on what it is we’re trying to preserve, may have more of an impact than the endless scaremongering of climate change.

I’ll end with a snippet from the Poem “How Many Bards Gild The Lapses Of Time”, by John Keats:

…’tis a pleasing chime.

So the unnumber’d sounds that evening store;

The songs of birds - the whisp’ring of the leaves-

The voice of waters - the great bell that heaves

With solemn sound,- and thousand others more,

That distance of recognizance bereaves,

Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar.

Keats - 1817