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Silk Roads

When I was around seven years old, my friend Andrew told me about his father’s plan.  Back then, more than seventy years ago, his father worked for the Great Western Railway in the UK.  Apparently, one of the perks of his position was that he could have one long instance travel trip per year, in his holiday.  He could go from London to York, or to one of the railways stations in Devon or Cornwall.  Andrew told me that his dad had never taken one of these trips, but was saving them up:  when he retired he was going to travel from Paris to Moscow, and from there go on the Trans-Siberian railway all the way across to Vladivostok.

The trip by rail from Moscow would be 9,289 kms on the ‘Rosslya’ could be completed in some 7-10 days.  First class travel was labelled ‘SV’, private two berth compartments, and the train would offer samovars for hot water, dining cars, and attendants.  However, Andrew’s dad would take longer, stopping at various places along the way.  His itinerary included such exotic paces as Kirov, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, and Belgogorsk, with a side route that could take you to Ulaan Baatar and Beijing.

Well, that was it!  For the next few years, it was my plan too, although I had no ideas at to how to accomplish it.  At the time I learnt about it, the train was far less sophisticated than the current express, but I was convinced I would love it, despite any hardship.  However, what I didn’t realises at the time, it also was the start of a lifelong fascination with travel outside of Europe, and especially in Asia.  Of course, fascination is one thing, and being able to realise it is another, and when, some 30 years later, I began regular visits to North East and South East Asia, my travel was by air, and train journeys forgotten.  All of that was reawakened when I received a copy of a book about the Silk Road, and the exotic civilisations and countries strung out across that route.

 Back in 2002, Frances Wood published The Silk Road, a Folio Society volume.  It was lavishly illustrated, full of fascinating information, and, in some ways, a bit like a pirates’ treasure chest in that it was full of intriguing tidbits.  She begins by telling us that the silk road is “one of the most evocative of names, conjuring visions of camels laden with bales of luxurious brocades and diaphanous silks in all the colours of the rainbow.”  She quotes from James Elroy Flecker’s poem, The Golden Journey to Samarkand:

When those long caravans that cross the plain

With dauntless feet and sound of silver bells

Put forth no more for glory of for gain

Take no more solace from the palm-girt well.

Yes, this is about the distant, exotic world of the East – at least as we imagine it.  It has played a role in history over centuries, from Marco Polo to 18^th Century European explorers.  However, Frances Wood does a good job of keeping our feet on the ground, telling us that Silk Road was “only coined in 1877 by the German explorer and geographer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen” (no, not the same one Snoopy was constantly engaging in aerial combat!).

Wood’s book is both engaging and frustrating.  She deftly introduces figures, place, events, and people from the many countries and centuries of Silk Road history.  However, each chapter leaves the reader wanting more, often because the accompanying illustrations are rather like postcards capturing moments in the past that deserve a whole book for each era and group that is depicted.  There is more to the story than this, however, because the image of the Silk Road is also concerned with luxury, riches, items distinctive and special, with luxury merchandise and access to what is exotic.  However, she also reminds us that there are many parts of the Silk Road that go through inhospitable terrain, with mountains, deserts, extreme weather, and frequently days with limited access to anything more than very basis food and drink.  Some days in parts of the journey there is the likelihood of bitter winds, and snow and ice, while at other stages the challenges come from heat, aridity, and isolation.  Now train travel is more like a rather special adventure, but not that long before it was risky and uncertain.  Does it mean we now see the Silk Road as rather exciting, even desirable?

Having read Frances Wood’s book, the Silk Road began to occupy a place in my thinking, and for reasons that I can’t quite explain, I began to wonder about making that cross-continental tri, but the other way round, beginning in Japan (well, OK, starting in Japan, next popping up to Vladivostok and then continuing on from there as my real starting point).  To begin in Japan wasn’t entirely without reason, as that would fit in with another of my fantasies, which was to buy my tickets in Tokyo, and commence this travel saga with a visit to the Mitsukoshi store in Nikonbashi, where I’d be able to purchase travel books, luggage, suitable clothing, cameras and binoculars and more!

Why the Mitsukoshi store?  Well, it is one of Japan’s finest retailers.  It is claimed to be the first store of its kind.  It had started trading in 1673 as a kimono store, until 1904 when it changed had change to become Japan’s first department store.  It is simply stunning.  It is huge, with two large lion statues at the main entrance (since 1914), and the ‘Statue of Sincerity’, an 11 metre wooden goddess in the centre of the building. Italian marble walls showing Mesozoic ammonite fossils surround the floors, combines with luxurious fixtures and fittings including high vaulted ceilings and a pipe organ that is played every week!  It appeals to the nostalgic in a country that revers traditions, although I read that just recently, Mitsukoshi advised the public that each of its department stores will abolish the ‘issuance of receipt by handwriting on Sunday, February 1, 2026.’  Plus ca change!

Clearly, travelling the Silk Road has to begin at Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi.  However, after dealing with a change in starting point and direction, the next issue is that we have to address is the fact the Silk Road isn’t what it once might have appeared to be: today, we know it is all about ‘Roads’.  This was made dramatically clear in 2015 when Peter Frankopan published The Silk Roads – and the key point was the ‘s’ at the end of the tile.  Ambitious, exciting, and for many academics frustrating, what Frankopan did was to help readers see there were new ways to look at the history of the past 2,000 years or more.  To put it simply, he wanted his readers to set aside the traditional view of Europeans that our world emerged from the Egyptians, followed by the Greeks, followed by the Romans.  He challenged this ‘Eurocentric’ view and suggests that the centre of the world was to be found further to the east, in the Caucasus, or in Iran, or even in those places often referred to as the “stans”.

The silk roads he describes are a complex series of trade, transport and migration paths along which people, goods, ideas, religions, disease and much else has flowed.   If Richthofen’s term the “silk road” is relatively recent,  Frankopan uses his term to describe a complex set of routes between China and the Mediterranean Sea, many of which which run through several of the world’s most disturbed and dangerous countries.  Christopher Marlowe called Persia/Iran “the middle of the world” back in 1587 but Frankopan goes much further back.  He notes that 2,000 years ago, as he depicts it, Chinese silks were worn by the Carthaginian elite, wealthy Iranians used Provencal pottery, and Indian spices found their way into Afghan and Roman cuisine.

The transfers were always in both directions.  Alexander’s military campaigns led him to the east, and  brought Greek culture to the Indus valley, as a result of which the Buddha was given a recognisably Greek form and Buddhist sculpture became popular. Christianity spread along the silk roads under the Romans. Islam more obviously did so, too. Scientific advances, philosophical ideas and much else was cross-fertilised by exposure across the east and west.

Not everything was beneficial however, and violence was a regular accompaniment for the traveller .  Frankopan documents the rise of the Mongols, who wreaked havoc as they went, and other chapters cover the spread of the Slavs and the rise of the Rus, as well as later sections documenting British and American meddling that had first been evident since the 19th century.  If his focus is on looking east he makes some salutary points.   The spread of the plague from Asia into Europe decimated Europe’s population, but he notes that because there were fewer workers, the price of labour rose, wealth was spread (a little) more evenly and as a consequence the resulting cultural acceleration of the Renaissance was enabled.

The Silk Roads is sub-titled ‘A New History of the World’.  It wasn’t an ideal choice of words.  Rather it might be better thought of a a corrective to most Western histories, offering insights and facts about some of the events taking place in Asia.  However, we are still awaiting an equally compelling history of the world to appear, one that also embraces Africa and Southern America.  Despite this and within its limits, it is an account that, as one reviewer put it, “is full of intriguing insights and some fascinating details.”  Among other comments he offers a salutary and important argument in support of the view that today the centre of global importance is shifting back to the East, as the international focus moving away from the Western-centric view which has been true of the last few centuries.

 Overall, The Silk Roads consists of 25 thematic chapters that set out to reframe one key part of global history by focusing on the region connecting the East and the West (as we term them), specifically Central Asia.  It examines early trade networks, before moving on to chart the spread of major religions, especially early Christianity’s reach and the rise of Islam.  As we move into later centuries, economics and politics become central, with the interaction between major powers, and growing trade across the steppes and into Northern Europe.  However, politics soon dominate, and we read about the Crusades and European dominance, on side side of the region, and Mongol expansions on the other.

Somehow the story becomes darker, with the impact of the great plague and the rise of new wealth, the latter a result of changing trade dynamics, imperial expansion, and shifting power blocs in the late 19th/early 20th century.  Alas, now Frankopan’s account becomes rather more familiar to many of his readers, with World War I, political compromise, genocide, and the ‘miserable’ ideological conflicts of the 20^th Century.

Professional historians have been rather.critical, perhaps unkindly so, as Frankopan was clearly writing for a broad audience.  According to one anthropologist and archaeologist, each chapter’s heading is highly intriguing: almost every one starts with ‘The Road to/of.  He adds that “Frankopan masterfully balances history with literature, so that the book is accessible even to those who are unfamiliar with history.”  Just so, and that’s a real strength.

Some commentators have concluded that the advent of the Silk Road caused countries to seek shared interests, often doing so as a result of exploitation and a lack of collaboration among European countries.  Certainly, in both East and West the rise fascism of reflected a change in the economic balance of power. In charting the shifting economic and political structure of Western countries, and in contrasting this with the Asian experience, Frankopan suggests the evidence can be seen as indicative of the weaknesses of the liberal democracy approach.

As some commentators have pointed out, Frankopan’s work can be seen as centrally concerned with the debate between Eurocentrism and non-Eurocentrism. Challenging Eurocentrism is amongst the biggest challenges in political economy, given so embedded are its assumptions that it is difficult to detach ourselves from the Eurocentric beliefs of western academics and commentators, not least with the dominant narrative of endogenous western development which emerged from the classic Orientalist distinction between the ‘rational’ West and ‘barbaric’ East.  Just as Edward Said’s Orientalism threw many assumptions into question, so by focusing on Persia and its contribution to the history of the world, Frankopan offers a fundamental and worthwhile assault on Eurocentrism through the re-orienting of world history away from a narrative justifying an inevitable Western emergence.

As Frankopan forges ahead with his re-assertion of the importance of Persia, commentators have observed opportunities are missed for his book to live up to its ambitious subtitle – to be ‘a new history of the world’, an oft-attempted and rarely achieved goal. As one reviewer suggested, if he had limited himself to simply detailing the history of the Persian world system – something he does with remarkable zeal, detail and passion – the scale of his ambition would have been met. But by striving for the world yet settling for just a fraction of the Eastern story of it, he has produced an incomplete world history but at least in doing so has made up for just some of the deficiencies in Eurocentrism.

The Silk Roads ends with the history of the modern-day Middle East. From this vantage point it becomes clear that this former heart of the world has become a bridge between, and product of, other powers – particularly the hegemonic West which, often inspired by Eurocentric assumptions, has remained heavily engaged in the region for more than a century. That this engagement has been either the product, or more contentiously the cause, of a troubled recent history for the region is well documented. Daily news reports still testify to the chaos across areas which once belonged to the Silk Roads.

However, Frankopan ends his volume with a surprisingly optimistic vision for the future of the region. ‘What we are witnessing,’ he claims, ‘are the birthing pains of a region that once dominated the intellectual, cultural and economic landscape and which is now re-emerging. We are seeing the signs of the world’s centre of gravity shifting – back to where it lay for millennia.’  It is a strong point, but having digested the latter portion of his 500-plus-page volume, it seems scarcely obvious that the countries which occupy the former Silk Roads will will ever become anything more than a bridge between the two focal points of geopolitical power: the established European and North American West, and the emerging Chinese and Indian East. It is far from clear that the power, patronage and prestige of seventh-century Baghdad are going to be repeated.

If an extremely unlikely situation, if I were to find myself to travelling on the Iron Road (rather than on a Silk Road), what would I see as I progressed from Vladivostok to Moscow?  Perhaps I’d do no more than notice the residues of once great centres, the remains of a focal region.  Or perhaps I would see that the middle, the crossing point between East and West, was beginning to rise again, and realise it is only our Eurocentrism, or our North American perspective, that is likely to ensure we are about to miss another iteration of the Silk Roads and their key role in human affairs.  Geomagnetic poles can reverse, and so can human affairs!

Cruising

In an age when words take on increasingly diverse meanings, it can be challenging to make the nature of your intended topic clear.  Take the word ‘cruising’ as an interesting example. It can refer to driving slowly or repeatedly along a popular road route for fun, to see and be seen, and to socialize, a practice popular in many towns and cities.  Another meaning is that it refers to walking or driving around looking for a sexual partner, often in specific locales, and in this use, it is a term that became historically associated with gay male culture in the second half of the 20^th Century.  In my use of the term, I am taking up another common use of the term, referring to ‘ocean cruising,’ which describes taking a vacation on a large ship, and calling in at different ports for sightseeing, entertainment, and relaxation.

The ocean cruise market has grown dramatically, and in 2025, an estimated 37 million passengers enjoyed a holiday travelling by ship for a number of days.  Industry projections suggest the global cruises market revenue is expected to grow from $44 billion today to reach r around $54 billion by 2029.  There are around some 323 cruise ships currently in operation globally, managed by 51 ocean cruise lines, and a further 27 river cruise lines.  It isn’t just a growing area of business, but the ships are growing, too!  Today, on average a cruise ship can host around 3,000 passengers.  One final statistic:  it is an activity somewhat focussed on older passengers, with an average age of around 47 years old.

In practice, cruise ships are really rather large passenger ships, and they are run in a way that suggests the best way to think of them is basically as floating hotels, with a large number of hospitality staff in addition to the usual ship’s crew. Given what are often significantly high passenger numbers, ships restaurants often organize two dinner sittings per day, and besides having one or two formal dining rooms, most cruise liners also have one or more casual buffet-style eateries.  Total meal outlets on a ship can number eight to fifteen of more.

Cruising began to be a serious vacation pastime in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, but the industry experienced fluctuations in popularity over the next hundred years, almost ceasing in the 1970s and 1980s.  However, this began to change in the late 1980s with the appearance of  “megaships” built specifically for the mass cruising market.  Cruise ships appeared with such innovations as having multi-story lobby, often  with a glass elevator and one or more decks with cabins each with a private balcony.  In more years, cruise ships have been designed to maximize the range of passenger amenities including several different kinds of cuisine in the various restaurants and other meal venues, meeting spaces, cinemas and cabaret venues.  They have been described as ‘balcony-laden floating condominiums’.  It is not uncommon for the more luxurious ships to have more crew and staff than passengers.

Since the 1980s, the pace of change has been amazing.  One clear indicator is that between 1988 and 2009, the largest class cruise ships have grown a third longer from 268 to 364.7 metres, (879 feet 3inches in 1988, up to 1,196 feet 8 inches), they have doubled their widths (going from 32.2 to 65.7 metres, (105.5 feet up to 215.6 feet 7), nearly tripled the total passenger count (2,744 to 7,600), and more than tripled in volume (going from 73,000 to 248,000 gross tons).  In addition they have changed from offering  a single deck with verandas to all decks having cabins with verandas.  However, to offer a sense of perspective it remains the case that hotels still dominate, with the total number of cabins on all of the world’s cruise ships amounting to less than 2% of the world’s hotel rooms.

Cruise ships are organized much like floating hotels, with the numbers of hospitality staff equal to exceeding those for the ship’s crew.  They’re needed, as most cruise ships offer a wide variety of facilities, including:

• Buffet restaurants
• Card room
• Casino – Only open when the ship is at sea to avoid conflict with local laws
• Childcare facilities
• Cinema, and/or theatre with Broadway-style shows
• Fitness centre
• Hot tubs
• Indoor and/or outdoor swimming pool with water slides
• Library
• Lounges, often including an ‘Observation lounge’
• Indoor activities including karaoke, ping pong and pool tables
• Shops – usually only open when the ship is at sea to avoid merchandising licensing and local taxes
• Spa
• Teen lounges

Some of the huge ships travelling on the oceans today can also include such features as bowling alleys, ice skating rinks, rock climbing walls, sky-diving simulators, miniature golf courses, video arcades, ziplines, surfing simulators, water slides, basketball courts, tennis courts, ropes obstacle courses, and even roller coasters.  They are floating cities!

Most cruise ships sail the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, but some travel to other areas including the Arctic and Antarctic oceans (pack-ice free areas, of course), the South Pacific, the Baltic Sea and New England, among others.  There are also ‘Expedition ‘cruise lines, which usually operate small ships, and visit certain more specialized destinations such as ports in the Arctic and Antarctica, or the Galapagos Islands.

The Caribbean region is one of the largest cruising areas in the world, responsible for over $2 billion in direct revenue to the Caribbean islands in 2012, employing over 45,000 locals.  An estimated 20 m cruise passengers visited the islands annually, with The Bahamas, Virgin Islands, Jamaica and other locales seeing at least 1 m visitors a year.  Alaskan cruises see more than  5 million passenger and crew visits, annually, but Europe is the world’s second-largest cruise market, only a little behind North America. Over 8 million European passengers cruised globally in 2024, with around 18 million passengers going  through EU ports in 2023.  Today, there may be 100 million people going ocean cruising annually.

All this data leaves to one side the nature of life aboard a cruise ship.  If these huge ships are often described as similar to a small – and exclusive – town, that description slips past many of the interesting interpersonal issues.  Perhaps that takes us to another meaning of the word ‘cruising’, in this case referring to spending time with a previously unknown group of people, where there are no continuing ties to be considered (even if people often create friendships).  This gives the people on a cruise ship a novel kind of freedom, both between themselves and other passengers, and between themselves and crew.

There are a number of aspects to this – including the much discussed ‘shipboard liaisons’ in popular literature.  However, a rather different perspective comes from looking at matters to do with class, status and social deference.

Social status issues on ocean liners historically involved stark class divisions (steerage vs. cabins), crew-passenger hierarchy, national/ethnic segregation among crew, and challenges for marginalized groups like female seafarers facing gender bias, all affecting access, amenities, and respect, and creating distinct social classes or segments which mirrored or even exacerbated real-world inequalities.  In many ways it might seem ocean liners offer a microcosms of society, reflecting and sometimes amplifying existing class structures, a function of ticket prices, crew demographics, and operational structures.  Together these can create distinct social worlds within the same vessel.  For many ocean liners, their business model is to identify top-of-the-line customers and, for a minimum of $10,000 a week, to pamper them with special amenities like a full-time butler, house them in an elegant suite with two-story views of sunsets over the waves, with access to a private swimming pool and the guaranteed company of  elite people like themselves.

Is that also true for cruise lines?  Some of the research suggests that there is some softening of these distinctions.  Modern cruise lines target a middle-class audience, creating contained “metaspaces” that can ameliorate existing social hierarchies, although there is always a clear distinction between the passenger experience of luxury and escapism, and the working conditions of the crew.  The workforce is often segmented by nationality and race, with workers from the “global South” (particularly the Philippines and the Caribbean) frequently occupying lower-waged, service-oriented roles like cabin cleaning.  In many ways, it is the divisions between crew from different backgrounds and in lower level positions that most clearly mirror global economic inequalities.

Another criticism of the cruise line industry is that it presents ‘Europeanised’ representations of destinations, which some have compared to ‘plantation tourism’. Some have built private destinations (like Royal Caribbean’s Labadee, Haiti, and CocoCay, Bahamas), and most vertically integrate their services, ensuring passenger spending generally stays within the company’s ecosystem rather than significantly benefiting local economies.  However, cruise operations can bring some revenue to local governments through port fees, which have been increasing in recent years, and through the commercialization of local culture to meet tourist expectations, creating a potential disconnect between the insulated onboard experience and the realities of the destinations visited.  However visits can be so well managed, using carefully chosen transport and tour guides, that the local experience is essentially curated.

All this is true, but part of the ‘luxury’ on being on a cruise is that, albeit briefly, passengers can forget about the realities of daily life.  The overall broad homogeneity of the people on the ship in terms of relative social status is reinforced, by some cruises lines, in making certain there are no obvious class-based activities or areas.  In that sense, the cruise is an ‘out of the everyday world’ experience, an escape.  Isn’t this the intention of a holiday, to get away from normal work, tensions and social issues, and indulge in a fantasy by living in a way that is unlike everyday life.  The guest on the cruise ship knows this, just as the same form of artificial living is evident by enjoying hotel and resort experiences, experiences that are costly and special and thereby quite different from and ‘outside’ normal activities.

Perhaps this is like going to the cinema or reading a book.  You are being ‘transported’ to another realm, albeit briefly, where you can enjoy a series of experiences that you know aren’t ‘real life’.  This alternative is far more expensive, of course, but people will save for that ‘once in a lifetime’ chance to escape and enjoy a life that is otherwise inaccessible.  As with reading, there is a distinction between being merely entertained and learning.

It is helpful to distinguish between two aspects of ocean cruising.  These are the experiences on the ship itself, and then the visits and tours of the places that are included on any cruise itinerary.  The ways these two aspects of the cruising experience are managed are very revealing.

Some cruises are almost exclusively focussed on the on-board experiences.  Ships offering this approach are often full of entertainment options, with cinemas, gambling, functions and even libraries to give the passengers alternative activities. Of these, there is one, the swimming pool, that is an attraction for many.  All these experiences are focussed on the same underlying purpose:  you eat, sleep and enjoy yourself on board, an approach that can easily turn into mindless relaxation.  This is the ‘indulgence’ side of ocean cruising.

The alternative focus in cruising is to call at many ports on the itinerary, and arriving at some ports there can be ten or more different onshore visits available for ship guests.  Some support that theme of indulgence, offering  a day at a spectacular beach, or dining at a special  restaurant.  Many provide opportunities to learn and explore, visiting sites in famous cities, museums, stately homes and other attractions.  Here, the explicit aim is educational, inviting those passengers going on land tours to learn, and broaden their understanding of past events and present communities.  This is the ‘learning’ side of ocean cruising.

Another perspective on cruising is to step aside from cruise lines and ships and focus instead on the varieties of passengers.  As noted at the beginning of this essay cruising can refer to “driving slowly or repeatedly along a popular road route for fun, to see and be seen, and socialize, a practice popular in many towns and cities.  Another meaning is that it refers to walking or driving around looking for a sexual partner  …  [but] another common use of the term, referring to ‘Ocean Cruising,’ which is taking a vacation on a  large ships, visiting different ports for sightseeing, entertainment, and relaxation.”  What are those cruise line passengers seeking when they go on a cruise?

The challenge sits in that word ‘cruising’.  It implies entertainment and relaxation.  Certainly, many of the passengers seem to be focussed on those two, perhaps with the addition benefit of eating and drinking without preparation or washing up!  For them, the cruise ship is one big service provider, and all they need to do is to sit back, relax and enjoy, although they may indulge in some sightseeing, taking videos or photographs to show to family and friends back home.  Key in for many people who go on cruises is to avoid housework, cooking, washing clothes and bed linen, and bedmaking.  It is like going on a beach holiday, but in this case the bedroom goes with you, along with facilities and staff to meet your needs.

For others, the cruise is an adventure, not a merely a way to relax.  They want to see new places, to go on trips to visit towns and buildings all the way from hamlets to palaces and cathedrals, and look at novel vegetation, landscapes and mountains.  Not just to see, but to learn, to tour with an expert who will point out the obvious and the hidden, and who will provide a historical overview to sights on each trip.  For them, the ship is more like an elegant caravan, principally a place where they can eat and sleep.  Their moving hotel is taking them to places they really want to explore.  While they enjoy having meals prepared for them, sleeping and resting in a cabin kept clean by staff, while being able to look out of their window and see the passing scenery, they want more than the ship and its facilities .  It is possible this might be a minority of cruise passengers today, these are the people for whom it is the places they visit, rather than merely what is on the ship that is at the core of their enjoyment.  They are in a hotel that takes them to fascinating new places every day!

St Martin’s Cathedral Utrecht

Major cities across Europe become packed in the summer months.  It’s not just Paris, Rome and Berlin:  a day in Vienna, Bucharest or Prague is going to be equally overwhelming, and today the tide of tourists is sweeping through Split, Dubrovnik and Valletta.  Packed cities have to respond to the needs of their visitors, and so the roads in the centre of these cities are lined with shops selling souvenirs, food (tea rooms and cafes offering snacks), and cheap summer clothing alongside the usual range of international fashion stores.  Municipalities are trying to work out how to manage the influx, which often runs for six, eight or even ten months.  Cars may be banned, tourist buses have to go to special areas, and public transport is limited in most inner city areas.  In the centre holidaymakers can be found sitting at a streetside coffee shop while another member of the family braves the flood to go shopping.

So it was in Utrecht in the summer of 2025, as this formerly quiet city in the Netherlands now receives hundreds, no thousands, of enthusiastic visitors.  After a coffee and pastry at the Winkel van Sinkel and continuing to battle through the streets, they can see a church tower behind some of the shops.  It is the 112-metre-high (367 ft) Dom Tower, the hallmark of the city.  Navigating the narrow streets, you eventually arrive at the Domplein, where you realise the church tower is quite separate from the Domkerk, the gothic cathedral!

Well, perhaps we’ll leave that a sight for a moment ‘over there’ and return to the Winkel van Sinkel.  Anton Sinkel was born in 1785, and in 1806 he established a store selling fabrics and textiles.  He was a pioneer in  retail business with his haberdashery store which dealt in clothing fabrics, stockings, hats, and more .  His ambition is described in the popular song “In de Winkel van Sinkel is van alles te koop” (In the Winkel van Sinkel, everything is for sale)”. However, the store became famous because of four caryatids that supported the building’s façade colloquially known as the ‘British harlots’, as “Due to their visible décolleté, these figures were believed to be a potential threat to the moral values of the citizenry.” Today they are seen as less offensive, but according to legend, “only at midnight, the caryatids swiftly and inconspicuously fly across the canal to the opposite side and back again.”

Returning to the cathedral, the best way to see it is from the air, a balloon flight out of the reach of most of us.  However, the proportions become clear, a massive spire towering above much of the city, separated by a small park area, and the other side of the open space the remains of the rest of the church, a major building in its own right, but its height diminished by that spire:

So much for what you see.  The story of St Martin’s is fascinating in its own right.  Wikipedia reveals the first chapel was founded around 630 AD by Frankish clergy, but it was destroyed during an attack shortly after, and its site remains unknown.  It was the beginning of a cycle of rebuilding and destruction.  A second chapel devoted to Saint Martin was built close to the site of the current building soon after, but was destroyed by the Normans during a raid on Utrecht in the 9th century .  It was rebuilt by Bishop Bladeric in the 10th century, by which time St Martin’s had become the principal church of Utrecht, the site of the see of a bishop.

The life of the cathedral remained challenging.  The church was repeatedly destroyed by fires and then rebuilt.  Then Bishop Adalbold built a Romanesque style church, which was  consecrated in 1023, only to be  partially destroyed in the fire of 1253 which ravaged much of Utrecht.  Undaunted, another bishop, Henry van Vianen, began building the next cathedral in 1254. but the  construction of the Gothic style cathedral was to continue into the 16th century.  The work was in stages: the Dom Tower was started in 1321 and finished in 1382.  By 1515 financial difficulties prevented completion of the building, and in 1566, the Iconoclast Fury swept across the region, a movement based on the Calvinist doctrine, which asserted statues in a house of God were idolatrous images which must be destroyed. As a result, many of the ornaments on both the exterior and interior of Utrecht’s cathedral were destroyed.

In 1580 the Utrecht city government decided to delegate some of its controls over the Diocese of Utrecht to local Calvinists, and now it became a centre for Protestant services.  However, the building’s saga continued, and in  1672-3, during the upheavals of the Franco-Dutch War, Catholic Masses recommenced – for two years!  After the French retreat, the unfinished nave collapsed on 1 August 1674 during a massive tornado. From that time on, much of the building fell into further neglect.  Despite significant renovations in the early twentieth century, much was left incomplete and the nave was never rebuilt.

Images and history are important, but both can only offer a partial insight to a place.  However, as the saying goes, ‘you have to be there’.  Visually, there are two very different perspectives on St Martin’s today.  For the visitor to Utrecht standing outside the cathedral area , the only visible perspective from a short distance away is of the tower as it rises above the surrounding buildings.  It soars above the shops and other buildings in the town centre, but you are well aware you are only seeing the upper part of the construction.

Moreover, although you can see it from a distance away, it is hard to reach.  As you get closer, passing the Winkel van Sinkel, it seems to be one of those illusions where the tower retreats behind buildings and never appears to become any closer.  There are some streets that take a straighter line, but for the visitor walking alongside the Oudergracht, which takes a couple of 90° around the area, any direct line of sight at ground level is impossible.

The second perspective is from the Domplein itself.  Once you are there, there are buildings close by to the West and North.  The best perspective is from the South, but even then the tower seems to reach up so high you can’t really encompass what it is like.  It’s an impressive sight, as is the cathedral building and other offices and meeting rooms across the way, but close by the tower rises above any normal sight line.  It is a little frustrating.  In many other cities the authorities, or possibly the church itself, would be able to keep quite a large area clear.  In Utrecht, the height of the tower combined with closeness of the retail area, and some offices, means that a real appreciation of the height is impossible. That balloon flight mentioned earlier would be ideal.

A completely different way of seeing the cathedral is from the inside.  On entering you’re shocked as it appears almost empty.  Just two stained glass windows to grab your attention, and the internal decoration is simple to the point of being austere.  There’s an altar in the Choir, with a beautiful screen and carving behind.  Overall the church has a simple beauty, but it is found in its simplicity, the very opposite of so many cathedrals in other places.

However, then you turn around and see the organ.  The case and pipes are set on one of the side walls, with the keyboards and pedal board below.  Built by Jonothan Batz, the instrument dates from 1831, although it incorporates parts of an earlier organ, built by Pieter Janszoon de Swart between 1569-1571.  It is said to precisely conform to the type of instrument that was being built in the Netherlands throughout the 19th century.  Some research revealed that a “church architect, Tieleman Franciscus Suys, from Brussels, designed the case and ornaments, as well as constructing a small building at the back of the church to house the nine wedge-shaped bellows. The case is in a kind of neo-classical style, although in size and proportion  (the length of many of the front pipes are far longer than what is required for the pitch needed ), not strictly functional.”

Wikipedia advises that the organ had  been superbly designed internally “so that every pipe and each division, with all of its parts can be easily accessed for maintenance and tuning, which was very favourably commented on by probably the greatest organ builder of the 19th century, Aristide Cavaille’-Coll (1811-1899), about the spacious internal layout during a visit he made here in November 1844.”  There were many changes over the years.  Eventually the organ finally “underwent an extensive restoration between 1972-73 by the Van Vulpen company, which replaced all the stops that had been removed over the last 107 years, and a new modern wind supply with internal regulators was built within the main case, because there was nowhere outside to house a bellows chamber based on the space as originally constructed.”

The organ today is said to be widely acclaimed for its “mild tone and expressive tremulants which makes the instrument far more suitable for the late romantic or modern periods of composition, rather than for the strict Baroque counterpoint or fugal music of Buxtehude and Bach.“  It was wonderful to see.  Alas, I don’t know if it was wonderful to hear, as there was no-one playing on the organ, or even practicing when we were there.  Despite this it was a gem in a rather surprising building.

Barges

When I was at school, I discovered and loved Cargoes, a poem by John Masefield:

Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

(Salt-Water Poems, © 1902).

How could you not love the images.  A cargo for distant Ophir with ivory, peacocks, sandalwood, sweet white wine.  A galleon returning with diamonds, gold and other jewels – probably plundered for another ship, out there on main.  And then that lovely British coaster, dirty, carrying dirty industrial materials – and fighting its way up the English Channel.  Nostalgic, vivid, and somehow pulling off the trick of making that British coaster just as noteworthy as a quinquereme or a galleon.

The sailing ships of old were romantic and exciting., especially when they appeared in films packed with swashbuckling sailors.  There’s the Black Pearl,  the pirate ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, captained by Jack Sparrow.   The Black Pearl was originally a merchant vessel named the Wicked Wench, sunk and  resurrected by Davy Jones, renamed, and with its new name became infamous for its black sails and hull.  It was a symbol of freedom for Jack Sparrow, known for being “nigh uncatchable, and a symbol for freedom on the high seas.

The Black Pearl was far more exciting than the captain of that legendary ghost ship The Flying Dutchman, who once found himself struggling to round the Cape of Good Hope during a ferocious storm.  He swore that he would succeed even if he had to sail until Judgment Day. The Devil heard his oath and took him up on it; the Flying Dutchman was condemned to stay at sea forever.  Even the Hispaniola, the ship on which Jim Hawkins sailed to Treasure Island, plays a minor part in that adventure.  In contrast to these, the Black Pearl was rather more exciting as it kept sinking and reappearing!

Against such alternatives, Masefield’s short poem provides us with a brief but vivid commentary on the history of ships, shipping, consumption, and empire.  Much had changed. If Masefield is to be believed, once ships had exotic names and sailed through idyllic climes to and from faraway destinations with strange and marvellous cargoes. However,  by the turn of the 20^th Century, dirty, polluting ships made their way through bad weather in the English Channel, with a cargo not only produced in the same country it was shipped to, but was cheap and plentiful—a cargo for the masses instead of the kings and queens of yesterday. These three snapshots offer us both the lushness of poetry, and an insight into change.

I suspect that even that British coaster is just about lost to change.  Today, if you travel by sea, one of the more familiar sights among the huge cruise liners are container ships.  Massive, slow-moving, they always seem top-heavy.  Cargo ships provide the essential underpinning for trade, and these ships can be separated into two broad categories by the goods they transport:  bulk cargo and break bulk cargo.  Bulk cargo refers to material in either liquid or granular form, and includes such goods are crude oil, grain, coal, and gravel.  Bulk cargo is usually dropped or poured into a ship’s hold.  Break-bulk cargoes, in contrast, are transported in packages, and are generally manufactured goods.

Much has changed since Masefield’s day.  Up until the 1950s, break-bulk items required manual loading, lashing, unlashing and unloading from the ship one piece at a time.  The only interesting variations prior to this time came through the development of standardized load units, which I learnt were first used in the late 18th century for shipping in England. In 1766, James Brindley, an engineer, was asked to assist in the transportation of coal, and designed the box boat “Starvationer” with 10 wooden containers, which operated between Alford and  Manchester via the Bridgewater Canal.

The idea was slow to catch on, but by the 1930s ships were used to carry the baggage of luxury passenger train customers in containers from London to Paris on flat rail cars.  In February 1931, the first container ship in the world was launched; the Autocarrier, owned by the Southern Railway, with 21 slots for containers.  Slowly the idea progressed, and the earliest recognised container ships appeared after the Second World War.  They were  converted oil tankers.  In 1951, the first purpose-built container vessels began operating in Denmark and in the USA between Seattle and Alaska.  Wikipedia records the first commercially successful container ship was the Ideal X, developed by Malcolm McLean, which on its first voyage on April 26, 1956, carried 58 metal containers between Newark, New Jersey and Houston, Texas.

It marked the beginning of a revolution in modern shipping, and from then on, progress accelerated.  By 1964, Adelaide Steamships had launched the world’s first fully cellular, purpose-built container ship.  This was the critical step in eliminating requirements for the individual hatches, holds and other storage dividers. The hull of a typical container ship is similar to an airport hangar, or a huge warehouse, which is divided into individual holding cells, using vertical guide rails. These cells are designed to hold cargo containers, typically constructed of steel, though some are made from aluminium, fiberglass or plywood.

Today, about 90% of non-bulk non-worldwide goods are transported by container, with around 50,000 container ships. Containers vary in size, carrying anything from, 1,000 to 3,000 cubic feet (28 to 85 m³) of cargo, with the result each can move up to about 64,000 pounds, (29,000 kg), at a time.  Global maritime container traffic is now around 160 Million TEUs (estimated to be more than 3 bn tons of goods).  TEU, the Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, is the standard unit of measurement used for cargo capacity in shipping, particularly for container ships and ports.  It is based on the volume of a standard 20-foot long container.

All very interesting, but my fascination isn’t with ships of old, pirate ships, British working ships or with container ships.  No, it’s with barges.

Just recently, I saw some Rhine barges.  Many of these are flat-bottomed, non-self-propelling vessels that are pulled (and can be pushed) by tugboats.  The ones I saw  were the powered versions, the flat bottomed design allowing them to deal with falling river levels.  Many of these barges are very large, far from easy to manoeuvre, and often rather slow moving.  They don’t share the immediately attractive features of many other varieties of shipping, but they are curiously hypnotic.

However, my enjoyment in looking at barges is really an exercise in nostalgia.  My childhood home was close to the Grand Union Canal.  Barges, known in those days as ‘narrowboats’ were the vehicles for  commerce on the canal from the late 1700s until the 1970s.  Initially horse-drawn, they were one of the most important ways to transport raw materials and finished goods .  It was competition from railways and the growth of  road traffic in logistics that led to the decline of traditional commercial barges in the mid-20th century, but when I was young I was just in time to see the horses disappear, and the transition to motorized and steam-powered vessels take place

That transition had begun in 1934 on the Grand Union Canal, when a company was formed to modernize the waterway, allowing the introduction of new, larger boats and modernizing locks to accommodate these wider barges, an initiative supported by the government in the hope of making the canal more competitive with railways.  There was some respite from the. decline in usage when the canal and its barges played a vital role in transporting war supplies during WWII.  Women even took on the work of operating the barges, as many men were in the armed forces.  Despite this, traffic continued to decline after the war ended.  The last regular long-distance cargo service ended in 1970. While some traffic continued into the 1980s, mainly sustained by the transport of aggregates, the rise of containerization and growth in road transport led to the commercial decline of the Grand Union Canal.

Today Britain’s canals are no longer the functional working canals of former centuries.  Instead, these water highways provide visitors and holidaymakers an opportunity to enjoy the tranquillity of the countryside, taking a barge holiday.   A few professional boatmen still live in communities on canal boats throughout Britain – gliding easily through the locks, keeping their self-decorated boats in good nick and going about their daily lives.  This is documented in Life on Britain’s Canals and Waterways  : a history of the canals of Britain and their people, (denhamhistory.online).

A part of my childhood, I wasn’t aware back then that waterways and canals had been a lifeline for British industry and agriculture for a very long time.  Indeed, canals can be traced as far back as Roman times when the Romans used canals for irrigation purposes and to connect existing waterways with one another.  Indeed, Romans built the Foss Dyke in Lincolnshire for drainage and navigation and the Caer Dyke around AD 50, shortly after the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD by the armies of Emperor Claudius.

What did I see?  I was watching the so-called “slow” boats on the canals, which often worked twelve to fourteen hours each day, and only in some cases tied up on Sundays. On the narrow canals these boats were operated by one man and a boy, occasionally two men, and later one man and his family. Slow boats were slow in another sense, as they didn’t operate on a strict timetable and would often wait until they had a full load before starting out.  They were distinguished from from the faster, lighter so-called “fly” boats which were first introduced in Scotland in 1830 to provide and “express” service for some commodities. No, I liked the slow boats!

The narrowboat was less than 7 feet in width and could be pulled by a single horse. They were designed for the waterways,  traditionally 21 m (70ft) long, just short enough to fit in the locks, which were usually 22 m (72 ft) long.  Most carried a load of approximately 25 tons.  They were usually horse drawn up until around World War I, and the steam engines which some boats used were considered to take up too much space.  However, diesel engines began to take over boats in the 1920s, and after the Second world war, horses were hardly ever seen.  The fly boat trade tended to be concentrated in the hands of big public carriers such as Pickfords who operated large fleets of boats and employed many men and horses.  After 1840 much of this trade was lost to the railway companies, and the last company, Fellows, Morton & Clayton failed  in 1948 – though its name and livery can still to be found, rather nostalgically, on boats on the canals today.

To protect and deliver the cargo safely and as quickly as possible, the boatman captain needed to steer a barge and keep a horse moving on the towpath.   The faster he got the cargo to its destination, the quicker he got paid.  The boat captain could earn extra money if he (and/or his family) could unload the cargo as well.  A woman who lived on board the barge would be expected to steer the boat occasionally and sometimes lead the horse on the towpath.  Reformers sought to remove female and child labour from the boats,  concerned with sanitation, morality and education rather than working conditions.  The number of women working on canal boats increased during the First World War to make up the gaps in the labour force which were created by men leaving to join the armed forces.  The number of men working independently on their own account appeared to double after the first World War.  At the same time the female labour force increased by 50 percent, and the proportion of women remained high until after WWII.

For a boy, the barge and life travelling along the English canals seemed attractive (and perhaps I thought it would have meant I could avoid going to school.  Did I think about the downside – no Meccano, no Eagle comic, little free time, and cramped living quarters?  I think what attracted me was the idea of freedom, always travelling.  I never whent on a barge, not even when barge holidays began to become available, but I suspect that sense of wandering that appealed to me was part of the source of the desire to move often in my adult life.

Hagia Sophia

Seeing a great building is a fascinating experience.  By a great building, in this case I mean one that is historic (there is quite a different commentary to be made about seeing a new but equally extraordinary construction, like one of the new Guggenheim museums).  To be clear, there are two reasons to consider a building as ‘great’:  first there are those considered so because of their history, the events in which they have played a part, the people with whom they’ve been associated; and second, those that are great in their own right, architecturally compelling and internally rich in such ways as to be striking, imposing, or simply intriguing.  Quite often the attraction of historic great buildings lies in the stories in which they played a part, the past events in which they were implicated, or even those which were based at home, a resting place or a meeting place, places that mattered in the conduct of human affairs.

This building, the Hagia Sophia, has been important for centuries, as a religious centre, as a landmark, and as a meeting place. The photograph shows it in 2025, with one of its minarets under repair.  If it’s only seen from the outside, the building offers only a limited sense of its amazing interior, and the history that interior reveals.  To the casual external observer, it is big, somewhat squat, with some evidence of its complicated past.  Briefly, from around 360 AD through to 1453 AD (with a few minor interruptions), it was a major Eastern Orthodox church, the greatest in Christendom, with a dome that was unequalled until Brunelleschi’s in Florence in the 15^th Century. One of the Hagia Sophia’s interruptions was between 1204 and 1261 when for a short time it became a Roman Catholic church.  Following that, from 1453 to 1934, it was a Sunni Moslem mosque.  Then, in 1935 it was deconsecrated and became a museum, a major attraction for visitors to Istanbul.  In 2020 it reverted back to being a Sunni mosque once more, but this time one that is still allowing tourists to visit.

For those who might be hoping for a kind of striking beauty, outside it appears to be rather big but not especially graceful.  One of the minarets was under refurbishment in 2025 which was somewhat disconcerting to those who want their travel photographic images to mirror some kind of unrealistic form of perfection.  The reality of repair got in the way!  There are gardens around the building, nicely tended, but unremarkable.  More to the point, the few trees tin the gardens gave rather little shade, in a location that is often hot, and sometimes unrelentingly so.  It is only on entering that you realise the true beauty is inside.

What you see was built by Justinian 1 between 532 and 537 AD and was formerly called the Temple of God’s Holy Wisdom.  It was the world’s largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, and was considered as the quintessential example of Eastern Orthodox church design.  In various iterations it was to remain a religious centre until 1931, when it was closed to the public, only to re-open in 1935 as a museum.  In 2020, it was reclassified back as a mosque, a controversial decision which remains widely debated.  As a major tourist attraction, visitors today can freely enter the first floor of the building, but the ground floor is restricted to worshippers and their invitees.

It is impossible to briefly describe the many features of the Hagia Sophia.  It is regarded as one of the greatest surviving examples of Byzantine architecture.  It used masonry in its construction, but it is the decorations inside that have ensured its fame.  The interior is decorated with mosaics, marble pillars, paintings, and other items of great artistic value. As it was being constructed in the Sixth Century AD, Justinian achieved his vision by his determination to oversee the completion of what was to be the greatest cathedral ever built up to that time.  The basilica was simultaneously the culminating architectural achievement of late antiquity together with being recognised as a masterpiece of Byzantine architectural style. Its influence, both physically and liturgically, has been widespread and enduring .

Of particular interest is the complex structure of the vast interior. The central nave is covered by a huge dome, which rises to 55.6 metres (182 ft 5 in) above floor level and rests on an arcade of 40 arched windows. Not perfect, however, as repairs to its structure have left the dome somewhat elliptical, with the diameter varying between 31.24 and 30.86 metres (102 ft 6 in and 101 ft 3 in).   At the western entrance and along the eastern liturgical side, there are arched openings extended by half domes of identical diameter to the central dome, built up to create an overall vast oblong interior crowned by the central dome with its uninterrupted span of 76.2 metres (250 ft).

The overall design is clearly geometric and is said to be based on mathematical formulae from Heron of Alexandria, which avoided the use of irrational numbers for its construction.  Research suggests the architects used Hero’s proposed values for constructing the vaults. The measurements were calculated using a side-and-diagonal number progression, which results in squares defined by the numbers 12 and 17, with 12 defining the side of the square and 17 its diagonal, numbers which had been used as standard values as early as cuneiform Babylonian texts.  Each of the four sides of the great square at the centre is approximately 31 metres long, previously thought to be the equivalent of 100 Byzantine feet. However recent research has determined the side of the central square of Hagia Sophia is not 100 Byzantine feet but instead 99 feet. This measurement is not only rational, but it is also embedded in a system of number progression (70/99) used in the applied mathematics of antiquity.

Over the centuries, there have been restorations and enhancements.  One remarkable moment was in 1453 when 21 year old Mehmet II decided not to obliterate all the mosque’s Christian mosaics when he conquered Constantinople:  he was not there simply to destroy.  Another and more recent phase was the 19th-century restoration ordered by Sultan Abdulmejid I, which was completed between 1847 and 1849 by eight hundred workers supervised by the Swiss-Italian architect brothers, Gaspare and Guiseppi Fossati.  Given concerns about stability and evident slippage, the brothers consolidated the dome with a restraining iron chain.  At the same time they strengthened the vaults, straightened the columns, and revised the decoration of the exterior and the interior of the building.   Upper gallery mosaics were exposed and cleaned, but many were re-covered ‘for protection against further damage’.

Restoration did more than preserve.  Eight new gigantic circular-framed discs were hung from the cornices on each of the four piers on either side of the apse and the west doors, designed by Kazasker Mustafa Izzet Efendi, and emblazoning the names of Muhammad, Allah, the first four caliphs and the two grandsons of Muhammad.  They are simply stunning.

Given continuing deterioration and problems, the need for restoration continued, aggravated  by decisions like those during in the Second World War when the minarets of the mosque housed machine guns!  Sadly, today the condition of the structure continues to deteriorate, and it was included in the 1996 and 1998 Watch Lists of the World Monuments Fund.  The building’s copper roof had cracked, causing water to leak down over the fragile frescoes and mosaics. Moisture entered from below, increasing the humidity level within the mosque.  Work has been undertaken to repair of the cracked roof, and preserve the dome’s interior.  Despite all the care that has been shown, major problems remain.  Most experts have concluded the dome will collapse soon, a tragic outcome signaling the end of this remarkable building. Thrilling to see, the Hagia Sophia is close to the end of its life, unless amazing and unlikely efforts are made to save it:  indeed some suspect it might collapse before 2040.

Aigai

We were in the second half of our cruise, travelling down the eastern coast of Greece, when the ship stopped at Thessaloniki.  As on other days, there were various land tours we could select, but at this stage in our cruise there was only one choice, to go to Vergina, on an excursion described as In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great.  To be going to Vergina might seem rather odd:  it  is a relatively new town, established in 1922 in the aftermath of the Treaty of Lausanne, an agreement that had officially resolved the conflict that had initially arisen between the Ottoman Empire, and various European countries including Greece.  The treaty delimited the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, and, among other provisions included the agreement that all the islands, islets and other territories in the Aegean Sea (Eastern Mediterranean in the original text) beyond three miles from the Turkish shores were ceded to Greece, (with some minor exceptions).

If Vergina is a recent establishment, it is best known as the site of ancient Aigai  the first capital of Macedon.  Back in 336 BC Philip II was assassinated in Aigai’s theatre and his son, Alexander the Great, was proclaimed king. While the resting place of Alexander the Great is unknown, researchers uncovered three tombs at Vergina in 1977, in a location that was part of what had been Aigai.

This was to be an extraordinary visit, and even the first stage of the visit was memorable!  The coach trip from Thessaloniki stopped in Vergina, and we had a fairly long walk to a park area, in which all we could see was an open grassy area, and around it several trees, and small modern building, and some slightly raised areas.  Our tour guide went off, and we tried to find shade from a very hot sun.  When were we going to go to the site of the tombs?  The tour guide returned and led us over to an almost invisible entrance that took us inside that slightly raised area:  the tombs had been uncovered by archaeologists and then re-covered once they had been studied.  Just inside, we stopped, to get accustomed to the darkened interior.

This gave us the opportunity to learn about Aigai.  The area where it was built was formerly  covered by a series of  villages, which together formed an important population centre by 1,000 BC.  In the 7th century BC, the Macedonian expansion in the region subdued local populations, establishing the dynasty at Aigai.  Archaeologic research has shown  Aigai developed as an organized collection of villages, a group of aristocratic tribes,  and it never became a large city.  From Aigai the Macedonians spread to the central part of Macedonia.  In the first half of the 5th century BC Aigai became the capital of Macedonia, characterised by court luxury supported by merchants coming from all over the ancient world bringing  valuable goods including perfume, carved ornaments and jewellery.

At the beginning of the 4th century BC, the Macedonian capital was moved northeast to Pella, but Aigai retained its role as the sacred city of the Macedonian kingdom, the site of a royal palace and royal tombs.  However, by the 3^rd Century BC Alexander’s heirs were involved in bitter struggles.  The city never recovered, and visiting mercenaries plundered many of the tombs.  Collapse continued, the Romans overthrew the Macedonian kingdom in 168 BC, and withing the next six hundred years the city disappeared, first by human means and later a landslide destroyed what had been remained or had been rebuilt.  Aigai disappeared.

In the middle of the 19^th Century, archaeologists had become interested in the burial mounds around Vergina, some believing the long-lost site of Aigai was in the vicinity. Excavations began in 1861 but had to be abandoned because of the risk of malaria.  In 1937, the University of Thessaloniki resumed the excavations, by the 1950s and 1960s much of royal capital had been uncovered.  One Greek archaeologist  was convinced that a hill called the Great Tumulus covered the tombs of the Macedonian kings, and in 1977, a dig at the site revealed four buried tombs, two of which had never been disturbed.  It was concluded these were the tombs of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, and Alexander IV, his son.  Further research in 1987 revealed a burial cluster of  queens, including Queen Euridice (mother of Alexander II, and Grandmother of Alexander the Great).

All this does little to prepare visitors for the treasures that have been found.  The museum of the tumulus of Philip II was built over the tombs,  leaving them in situ and showing the site as it was before the archaeological excavations.  Inside there are four tombs.  The two most important (tombs II and III) had not been ransacked and contained the main treasures of the museum.  The larger room in Tomb II included a marble chest, and in it was a closed coffin (larnax) made of 24-carat gold and weighing 11 kilograms (24 lb). together with a golden wreath of 313 oak leaves and 68 acorns, weighing 717 grams (25.3 oz), the golden grave crown of Philip II.   This room also included the richly carved burial bed on which Philip II was laid, several exquisite silver utensils for the funeral feast, along with such items as gold-adorned suits of armour and weapons.  All are now on display for visitors.

In the antechamber was another chest with another golden coffin containing the bones of a woman wrapped in a golden-purple cloth with a golden diadem decorated with flowers and enamel, indicating a queen,  possibly Philip II’s Thracian wife, Meda, who by tradition sacrificed herself at the funeral.

In 1978 Tomb III was discovered, also near the tomb of Philip, which is thought to belong Alexander IV of Macedon, son of Alexander the Great.  Like Tomb II, but smaller and also undisturbed, the main room contained a cremated body, in a silver funerary urn a golden oak wreath.

As with Tomb II, inside exquisite silver utensils and weaponry indicating royal status were still in place.  A narrow frieze with a chariot race by a great painter decorated the walls of the tomb. The remains of a wooden mortuary couch adorned with gold and ivory is regarded as notable for its exquisite representation of Dionysos with a flute-player and a satyr.

Finally, the tomb has one other remarkable and moderately well-preserved feature.  This is an astonishing mural, dated from around 350 BC.  It depicts the Abduction of Persephone by Hades,  the God of the Underworld, with a silent Demeter and the three unprejudiced Fates present at the event, accompanied by Hermes, the Guide of Souls, leading the way, and a scared nymph witnessing the horrifying event.   Regarded as a unique example of ancient painting, it is believed to be the work of the famous artist Nicomachus of Thebes.  It is also considered to be one of the few surviving depictions of the ancient mystic views of afterlife.  The image below shows part of the painting

The challenge with visiting a site like this is there are so many extraordinary visual images – and they make my words rather superfluous.  Sadly, next to Tombs II and III is another, the remains thought to be those of Philip II, but tomb robbers stole all of Tomb IV’s  contents.

How had these tombs been preserved?  The tumulus was constructed at the beginning of the third century BC by Antigonos Gonatas, perhaps over smaller individual tumuli to protect the royal tombs from further pillaging after marauding Galati had looted and destroyed the cemetery. The hill material contained many earlier funeral stele.  Could Gonatas have imagined that some 2,200 years later his actions had ensured we were able to enter the tumulus and, despite tomb robbers destroying some of the original material, much of the original structure and contents remained, a remarkable testimony to a key historical era.

Caravaggio

Why do we become especially focussed on some artists or, to be more precise, on some works of art?  There is often no obvious logic:  for me the disparate and idiosyncratic range goes from Bach’s Goldberg variations and Beethoven’s last string quartets on to Alice in Wonderland and Wind in the Willows. and finally ending with people like Edward Hopper and Hokusai.  There are several more I could list, of course, from Mozart and Shostakovich through to Rembrandt, Rubens and Renoir, Philip Pullman and so it goes on.

However, one among these is Caravaggio.  I was forcibly reminded of the impact of his work when we visited St John’s Co-cathedral in Malta recently, and saw that extraordinary painting, The Beheading of St John the Baptist.  It is one among several quite astonishing Caravaggio paintings, many of which are violent, and several extraordinarily compelling, but to see this work of art up close is to be reminded what an exceptional painting it is.

Why exceptional?  Perhaps I should start with the artist.   Caravaggio, whose name was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, was born in Milan, and moved to Rome when he was in his twenties.  He rapidly achieved considerable renown as an artist, but this was balanced against his reputation as a violent and short-tempered man.  Frequently involved in vicious fights, he was often in trouble with the authorities.  Then, in 1606, after killing a man in a brawl, he faced a death sentence for murder, and he fled to  Naples. There he sought to rebuild his reputation, and work from that period was to result in him being recognised as one of the most prominent Italian painters of his generation.  However, his temper was never under control.  After spending time in Malta and Sicily, he returned to Naples, where he was involved in yet another terrible fight.  He survived, escaped, but soon after died in 1610, on his way from Naples to Rome, at that time in hope getting forgiveness for past sins.  The cause of his death remains controversial:  it was claimed he died of a fever, but some have suggested he was murdered or even died of lead poisoning.

Looking at the ‘Beheading’ canvas in terms of  its demonstration of technical skills by a painter, art historians have commented on two features of this painting: the realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, and the dramatic use of lighting, a form of chiaroscuro often referred to tenebrism. Bringing these characteristics together, the result was that he would paint his subjects highlighted against a dark setting by shafts of light.  However, elements of his paintings were very dark in another sense, with scenes often focussed on violent struggles, torture, and death, highlighted against shadowy backgrounds.

His working approach was distinctive.  He frequently used live models, generally dispensed with drawings, but instead painted historical  or allegorical scenes directly on to the canvas.  His innovative approach was key to inspiring what was to become known as the Baroque style, using contrast, movement, vivid detail, deep colours, and even elements of surprise to achieve a sense of awe.  The style evolved and dominated for a time, but eventually and inevitable fashions changed, and Caravaggio fell out of favour. It was in the 20th century that renewed interest in his work suddenly catapulted him to fame, to the point one art historian remarked: “What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting” (André Berne-Joffroy in Gilles Lambert’s book Caravaggio, Taschen, 2000).

As his work developed, he produced some quite literally amazing paintings.  Among earlier and well-known examples are The Fortune Teller, showing a boy having his palm read by a Romani girl, who is stealthily removing his ring as she strokes his hand; and The Cardsharps, in which a naïve but well-off youth falls victim to card cheats (both 1594).  Despite the quality of these masterworks, it is probably his paintings on religious themes that so clearly demonstrated his ability to combine realism with spirituality. Just as an example, one among the many outstanding images he produced was the Penitent Magdalene (1597), painting Mary at the moment when she has turned from her life as a courtesan and sits weeping on the floor, her jewels scattered around her.  Another, offering an explicit and demanding example of his often violent, realistic and yet compelling style is Judith Beheading Holofernes (1598).

Among so many others at this stage in his life, it’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas that is considered by many to be one of his most famous paintings, completed around 1601–1602.  It shows the episode known as ‘Doubting Thomas’.  The image achieves its intent by using a demonstrative gesture, as the doubting apostle puts his finger into Christ’s side wound, the latter guiding his hand. Thomas the unbeliever is depicted like a peasant, dressed in a robe torn at the shoulder and with dirt under his fingernails. The picture is presented in such a way that any observer is directly involved in the event, but also feels its intensity.

Teju Cole, in an essay in the New York Times in 23 September 2020 offers a superb introduction to Caravaggio’s work in his essay ‘In Dark Times, I Sought Out the Turmoil of Caravaggio’s Paintings’.  He tells us how the works the artist completed near the end of his life changed his understanding of both beauty and suffering. At one point he writes about visiting Naples, and wandering in the crowded “Spanish Quarter,” where Caravaggio lived and where he found the combination of high culture and low life that so appealed to him. “The streets of the quarter were narrow, the buildings tall; many walls were decorated with graffiti. It was easy to imagine it as a place where life had been boisterous and cheerful for a long time, a place of concealment and informality — just the thing for a man on the run.”

He went on to the Museo di Capodimonte, to see Caravaggio’s The Flagellation of Christ. “Christ stands at the column, life-size, and around him are three assailants, two of whom pull at him and the third of whom crouches, preparing a whip. As so often with Caravaggio, there is the story that is depicted, but beyond it, and often overwhelming it, is an intensification of mood accomplished through his use of unnatural shadow, simplified background and a limited colour palette. It is an image of brutal injustice, an image that makes us want to demand an answer to the obvious question, why should anyone be tortured.”

To return to The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, it is described as a very large oil painting by Caravaggio, measuring 3.7 m by 5.2 m, and is located in the Oratory of St John’s Co-Cathedral, in Valetta, Malta.  It is generally considered one of the greatest works of art.  According to Andrea Pomella in ‘Caravaggio: An Artist through Images’ (2005), it is not just widely considered to be Caravaggio’s masterpiece, but as well it is “one of the most important works in Western painting”.  Jonathan Jones  described it as one of the ten greatest works of art of all time: “Death and human cruelty are laid bare by this masterpiece, as its scale and shadow daunt and possess the mind.” (Jones, on ‘The 10 Greatest works of art ever’, The Guardian, 21 March 2014).

Saint John was the patron saint of the Knights of Malta and of the cathedral.  Caravaggio received a commission to paint this canvas for the church’s new oratory. Completed in 1608, it turned out to be his largest work, and the only one he signed, perhaps prophetically in his own blood, blood depicted as flowing onto the pavement from the saint’s neck.  Gruesome, terrifying even, but despite this The Grand Master of Malta was delighted, and it is recorded that he presented Caravaggio with a gold chain, two slaves, and various other rewards; the picture’s frame bears his coat of arms.

In his essay, Teju Cole offers a compelling account of his visit to Malta.  As he entered to room to see The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, he comments  “The effect is of having walked in on something horrible, something you wish to unsee.  The seven people depicted in the painting feel like real people in a real space, dwarfed by the dark background. The lighting, the monumental scale … the height at which the picture is hung and the distribution of dark and light all add to the impression that what you are seeing is an actual event: the two prisoners watching the execution; the servant girl with the gold plate; the old woman; the man directing the killing; the executioner reaching for the knife with which to finish the job; and St. John himself, prostrate on the floor, his neck spurting blood.”

A website devoted to his work describes the painting in detail:  “The structure recalls the monumental murals that Caravaggio must have studied in Rome. The building is Caravaggio’s most detailed architectural setting, and the only one that records an existing structure, the entrance and adjacent window in the main facade of the Grand Master’s Palace (now the Armory) in La Valletta.  The composition is classically simple, a large shallow space with a cluster of figures on the left balanced by a wall and a window on the right.  The dramatic impact of the composition almost obliterates its effectiveness as an abstract construction. It is a silent painting, intimate despite its great scale. The focus is first on the pointing index finger of the business-like warden, who forms the single vertical axis in the figure group, directing the operation. Only secondarily can Saint John’s body be found. It is over-life size, and the only horizontal figure. From the centre of the warden’s finger, the action fans out – to the executioner’s left hand, holding Saint John’s partially severed head in place like a butcher in an abattoir while he reaches with his right for his dagger to finish the process off neatly; to the platter, held low by Salome in anticipation of receiving the head; to the old woman. She is horrified, the only character responding sympathetically to the execution. Incredibly, she covers her ears rather than her eyes; are the sounds – those of the actual decapitation – worse than the sight?   Finally, we must allow – or force – ourselves to look past the deadly line of the glittering blade at the pathos of Saint John’s painfully bound body. A moment before he was a seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking human being like the others; now he is reduced to a mere fleshly carcass.”

Researching the painting, I discovered the existence of The Caravaggio Research Centre, ‘a project by the Factum Foundation, established in 2010 to provide academic and enthusiast access to three high-fidelity facsimiles of paintings by the renowned Baroque artist Caravaggio’.  The Foundation’s primary goal is to create high-resolution, accurate digital documentation of cultural heritage sites and artworks around the world. This documentation is intended to serve as a record for posterity and to enable the production of indistinguishable facsimiles, especially in cases where the original has been damaged, destroyed, lost, looted or where it is inaccessible to the wider public.  It does wonderful work.  However, facts are one thing, but does the Foundation or any of the many other commentaries explain the impact of the painting, or the extraordinary and ultimately tragic life of Caravaggio on the viewer?

The painting was completed in 1608.  Yet, by late August, he slipped from fame to being arrested and imprisoned, almost certainly  likely the result of yet another brawl, this time with an aristocratic knight, during which the door of a house was battered down and the knight seriously wounded. The result was simple:  Caravaggio was imprisoned by the Knights in Valetta.  However, he managed to escape. By December, he had been expelled from the Order “as a foul and rotten member”, a formal phrase used to banish people in all such cases.

He was in trouble.  Contemporary reports depict a man whose behaviour was becoming increasingly bizarre, which included sleeping fully armed and in his clothes; ripping up a painting at a slight word of criticism; and mocking local painters.   After only nine months in Sicily, Caravaggio returned to Naples in the late summer of 1609.  The news from Rome encouraged Caravaggio, and in the summer of 1610, he took a boat north to receive a pardon.  While facts are uncertain, it seems he died of fever on his way from Naples to Rome.

Over the years, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist had become badly damaged. though it did receive some restoration in the 1950s prior to going on exhibition in Rome in 1955-6, a key step in rebuilding Caravaggio’s reputation.  From March 1997 to March 1999, the painting underwent restoration in the Opificio delle Pietre Dure and Restoration Laboratories of Florence.  The state of the painting to be seen today represents a stunning recovery.  Following this work, in the summer of 2023 the windows in the oratory of the decollato were permanently shuttered and blocked off natural light in 2023.  Good or bad, it was a decision causing a public outcry amongst art historians, scholars and Maltese citizens.

The painting is really well presented at St Johns, done in such a way you cannot avoid its power, its horror, and its spiritual significance.  To visit the Cathedral and be able to see it restored to the state Caravaggio had intended is a memorable opportunity.  Can it be moved for exhibition in other countries?  I suspect that is unlikely.

I’m not competent to comment on whether or not it should be considered one of ‘the ten greatest works of art ever’.  What I can say is that it is an image that I can’t and don’t want to  shake off.  It is often said that great art should unsettle us:  for all his limits, mistakes and stupidities as a man, to my mind the artist Caravaggio achieved that end, absolutely.

DD69 – The Alchemist

There is a vast literature devoted to the business of ‘finding yourself’.  One way is to overcome some demanding tests, to confront challenges to realise your key nature.  This is the path of explorers and adventurers, people who push themselves to extremes, to achieve, but at the same time wanting to know themselves and their limits.  There are others who see the path to knowing yourself is internal, that the truth that really matters is inside you, waiting to be uncovered and understood.

I recently wrote about Ernest Shackleton, one of the many amazing people whose adventures are one of the highlights in the so-called ‘age of exploration’, that ran from the middle of the 19^th Century to the middle of the 20^th. Shackleton’s expedition in 1914-17 was intended to be the first to cross the Antarctic but it faced huge and often almost overwhelming challenges at every stage.  It began when the expedition’s ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice and eventually was crushed and sank.  After camping on moving ice floes, and unable to march across to the mainland, the explorers launched three lifeboats for Elephant Island.  Then Shackleton and five others set off in an open boat for South Georgia some 800 miles away.  As if they hadn’t faced sufficient disasters, they reached the island only having to cross it on foot to reach a whaling station.  Amazingly, some three years after the expedition began, he returned to collect the others without loss of life.

The polar regions acted as a magnet for explorers.  Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was Norwegian, who began his career as a polar explorer as first mate on a Belgian Antarctic Expedition.  From then, in 1903 to 1906, he led the first expedition to successfully traverse the Northwest Passage.  As if that were not enough, he planned to reach the south  pole in October and  became the first to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911.  Next, he wanted to reach the North Pole, and after a first failed attempt, he began planning an aerial approach. On 12 May 1926, Amundsen and 15 other men in the airship Norge became the first to have reached the North Pole.  .

The two poles have always drawn explorers!  Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen, a Norwegian, led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, traversing the island on cross-country skis.  He wasn’t just an explorer  After 1896 his main scientific interest switched to oceanography, making scientific cruises, mainly in the North Atlantic, and then devoted himself primarily to the League of Nations, as its High Commissioner for Refugees from 1921-1930.  He was determined.  His crossing of Greenland was hampered by disasters, but he overcame them and later claimed a record for reaching the northernmost latitude in a North Pole expedition (1893–96).

If the Arctic and Antarctic were two key destinations for explores, they weren’t the only ones in this age of adventurers.  David Livingstone was an African explorer.  He was obsessed with finding the sources of the Nile, especially as he thought this might help him end the slave trade.  His travels through central Africa proved to be the culmination of the European geographical discovery of Africa and the colonial penetration of the sub-continent.  Livingstone was hailed in England with having “opened up” Africa, (although there was a long-established trans-regional network of trade routes, and Portuguese traders had reached the middle of the continent from both sides).  However, the near-mythical status held by David Livingstone is not without merit. He’s probably best known for more than crossing the African continent (in 1852-56), he also navigated the Zambezi river (1858–64) and sought the source of the Nile (1866-73).

It wasn’t only men, of course.  Isabella Bird left Britain in 1872 at the age of 41, first going to Australia and then Hawaii.  Next, she moved to Colorado, travelling  over 800 miles in the Rocky Mountains in 1873.  In 1878 was travelling again, to Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaya.  Nearly a decade later, in  February 1889, Bird visited India, the borders of Tibet, Iran, Kurdistan and Turkey.  A mere two years later she travelled through Baluchistan to Iran and. Armenia.  Was that the end?  No, in 1897, when she travelled up Yangtze and Han rivers in China, before she went to Morocco.  Not bad for a 67 year old!

If we consider explorers from times other than the 19^th Century, others equally famous preceded them.  Captain James Cook was known for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 to the Pacific and Southern Oceans. He completed the first recorded circumnavigation of the main islands of New Zealand and was the first known European to visit the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. He mapped coastlines, islands and features from New Holland to Hawaii, on a scale not previously charted by Western explorers. He contacted numerous indigenous peoples and claimed various territories for Britain.

In the same way, and a little later the Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was a United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country.  President Jefferson had purchased the territory of Louisiana from France (for about 4 cents per acre). He needed the newly acquired land explored and mapped as well as fixing a route across the western half of the continent.  Captain Lewis and Clark followed the Missouri river westwards, overcame rapids and hostile conditions, establishing (often tense) relations with indigenous populations as he went. They arrived at the Pacific Ocean in late 1805.

Time for Australia?  The Burke and Wills expedition was organised by the Royal Society of Victoria in Australia in 1860–61. Initially comprising nineteen men led by Robert Burke, with Wills as a deputy commander, its objective was to cross of Australia from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance of around 2,000 miles.   They left in winter, made slow progress, and only reached Cooper Creek at the beginning of summer, and never arrived at the northern coastline.  The return journey was equally dreadful, and when Burke and Wills reached Cooper Creek, it had been abandoned just hours earlier:  they died on or about 30 June 1861. Seven men died, and only one, John King, crossed the continent and returned alive to Melbourne.

Going back even further, Marco Polo the Venetian merchant, explorer and writer travelled through Asia along the Silk Road in the latter part of the 13^th Century, with his father and his uncle.  In an  epic journey to Asia, he explored many places along the Silk Road until he reached ‘Cathay’.  Later he went on many missions in Kublai empire and Southeast Asia, including journeys to present-day Burma, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.  He also travelled around China, living there for 17 years, and in doing so visited many places previously unknown to Europeans.

These are all examples of explorers travelling foreign, often dangerous and inhospitable regions, pushing back frontiers and discovering unfamiliar countries and civilisations.  There’s another sense of travelling, where the issue is about a journey having an internal character.  There are many such stories, and of these, one of the most famous has to be Paulo Coelho’s novel, The Alchemist.

The Alchemist concerns a shepherd boy,  Santiago, who dreams of a treasure while in a ruined church.  A Gypsy interprets his dream, telling him it’s a prophecy, and he will discover treasure at the Egyptian pyramids.  On the way, he meets Melchizedek, the ‘king of Salem’,  who tells him to sell his sheep to fund his travel to Egypt and accomplish what has become his ‘Personal Legend’.   Arriving in Africa, he is robbed, and has to work for a merchant to earn enough to continue his journey.   He joins up with an Englishman, who is searching for a famed alchemist, who can change any metal into gold.  Next he meets and falls in love with an Arabian girl, Fatima, who promises to marry him only after he completes his journey.  Frustrated, but he is beginning to learn some deep truths, that true love will not stop nor must one sacrifice one’s destiny to it.  To do so robs it of truth.

As he continues, eventually meets the wise alchemist, who teaches him to realize his ‘true self’. Together, they take a journey through the territory of warring tribes, where Santiago is forced to demonstrate his oneness with the “Soul of the World” by turning himself into dust storm  before he is allowed to proceed.  When he reaches the pyramids and begins digging, he is robbed by thieves.  They ask him what he is doing, and he explains his dream has led him to buried treasure.  After laughing, their leader relates a dream he once had about treasure under a tree at a ruined church.  On hearing this, Santiago realizes the treasure he sought was where he had his original dream all along.

The plot of The Alchemist draws on a traditional folktale.  In the Arne-Thompson-Uther Index of  folktales, this is an example of ‘Treasure at Home’:  “A man dreams that if he goes to a distant city he will find treasure on a certain bridge. Finding no treasure, he tells his dream to a man who says that he too has dreamed of treasure at certain place. He describes the place, which is the first man’s home. When the latter returns home he finds the treasure.” (no. 1645).  It’s a traditional tale, found both as a poem by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, and also in the ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, a collection of tales.  As with these other examples, this is a story on the theme of finding one’s destiny.  The advice given to Santiago that “when you really want something to happen, the whole universe will conspire so that your wish comes true” is the core of the novel’s thinking.

Ignoring for the moment the complexities in saying this, at one level it is reasonable to claim fiction and fact are different.  Fact is the material of our shared world, drawing on empirical data.  Fiction is invention, imaginative accounts that may or may not draw on some ‘facts’ to help the story along.  However, such simplicity ignores some important subtleties.  In particular, there is a category of what might be called ‘self-help’ books., and in these there is a common theme of ‘finding yourself. Kelly Nickels in her blog Wakeful Travel.com, commented on the issue and travel and finding oneself.  Her commentary begins with a quote from by Emily Mcdowell:

“Finding yourself is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. Finding yourself is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering of who you were before the world got is hands on you.”

Santiago’s story is a great example of finding yourself.  As Kelly Nickels goes on to comment, “Traveling can help you ‘find yourself’ by:

• Throwing you into the unknown, so the only known that remains is you
• Helping you realize traveling isn’t the answer, but rather a helpful ‘tool’
• Opening up new perspectives and ways of thinking
• A reminder to be grateful for what you have, adding “If we continue to externalize our search for love, we will not find lasting, satisfying love in this lifetime.”

If Coelho was writing a self-help book, a story to illustrate the importance of searching for happiness, success, or love outside of yourself, but the paradox is that you won’t find it until you internalize that search as well. You may find glimpses, but eventually all roads lead back to introspection. They lead back to yourself.

Traveling can help on this journey because until you do it, you may think that the reason you are unhappy is because you haven’t travelled enough. “Maybe if I see more of the world or move to a new city, then I’ll feel complete.” But you could talk to someone who has travelled from Nepal to Thailand and every other beautiful place you can think of, yet they still share that same restlessness.  Jim Carrey once said, “I wish everyone could get rich and famous and everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that’s not the answer.”  I think what he was getting at is that seeking fulfillment outside of yourself will never yield peace. If you had all the toys you’ve ever wanted, accomplished every goal or dream you’ve pined after, and travelled to every country on Earth, would you be satisfied?  I  don’t think so.  Then why travel at all? Well, if you can find yourself anywhere, then you can find yourself anywhere. Might as well embrace your wanderlust! Go to Costa Rica, visit the Hobbit Holes of New Zealand, take that plane flight to South America.  However, remember Coehlo’s one important insight;  Finding yourself is internal work.

If The Alchemist isn’t entirely satisfying, there’s an army of therapists to give you more than Coehlo’s rather trite story.  Back in 2023, John Kim, wrote a blog about finding yourself.  While it is one among thousands, it does make good sense.  He begins by proposing “finding yourself is important because it is the key to living  … When you truly know yourself, you can make decisions that align with your values, passions, and purpose. It’s about understanding who you truly are, embracing your unique story, and living authentically.

Face value that seems rather simplistic, so let’s continue with his proposals.  So, what does “finding yourself” really mean?  “Your story is what makes you unique and powerful. Take the time to reflect on your life experiences, both positive and negative. What have you learned from them? How have they shaped you?   Embracing your story means accepting every part of it, even the challenging moments. By doing so, you can gain a deeper understanding of yourself and what the universe has in store for you.”

Not sure about the universe’s role in this.  However, he goes on to suggest “When you find yourself, you can live authentically, being true to who you are at your core. This means embracing your strengths, accepting your weaknesses, and showing up in the world as your genuine self. Living authentically allows you to attract people and experiences that align with your true essence.  After noting there are though patterns that can hold you back, he goes on to observe: finding yourself helps you uncover your purpose in life. By understanding your values, passions, and unique gifts, you can identify the path that brings you the most fulfillment and meaning. Your purpose gives you a sense of direction and guides your decisions, leading to a more purposeful and satisfying life.”

But he isn’t satisfied with staying as you are.  “Think about what new behaviors or thoughts can replace the old ones. This step requires conscious effort and practice. By consistently implementing these new thoughts and behaviors, you’ll start to see a shift in your life.” He adds:  “when you know who you are, you develop a strong sense of self-confidence.”

One powerful way to find yourself is by shifting your focus from yourself to others. When we constantly worry about how we are perceived, our light can feel dimmed. Instead, focus on how you want to be remembered and the impact you want to have on others. By making it about others, you’ll feel a sense of purpose and invincibility.  Finding yourself allows you to attract and cultivate meaningful relationships.

Finally he warns us “finding yourself is an ongoing process. Embrace change and growth as you navigate through life. Be open to new experiences, challenge yourself, and step out of your comfort zone.  Remember, it’s in the moments of not knowing and feeling lost that our true potential emerges.  Knowing yourself helps you make choices that align with your values and aspirations. You become more aware of what truly matters to you and can make decisions that support your personal growth and well-being. This leads to a greater sense of fulfillment and satisfaction in life.  Finding yourself is a deeply personal and unique journey.”

He finishes: “Remember, finding yourself is a continuous journey of self-discovery. It’s about exploring, learning, and evolving as you navigate through life. Embrace the process, be patient with yourself, enjoy the adventure of uncovering your true self, and know that you’re not alone. We’re all trying to find ourselves.”

I guess we are.  To be truly alive is keep questioning who you are and what you are seeking.

What’s Going on?

Browsing in the library is a dangerous pastime.  I exercise this foolish endeavour in the Dickson Public Library in Canberra.  Like many ‘professional’ browsers, I have my favourite places.  There’s a wall section where some books are left on display to tempt you.  Some in this small selection are for normal loans, while others can be borrowed for one week only.  However, that’s for beginners.  Past those temptations, I go over to the stacks, where there’s short display sections with books that are being recommended.  After glancing at those and checking for anything new by my favourite writers, I browse the shelves.  In Fiction I look for books by an individual author, and then decide if I’ve found a writer to sample.  Non-fiction is harder.  So many categories, it can feel overwhelming.  I’ve learnt to make a note of the Dewey number for books I’ve read and enjoyed, and then see what else has been shelved in and around that section.  I think that’s how I discovered Ed Yong’s book An Immense World, which explores the complex and diverse sensory world of animals.  As the book’s subtitle explains, it is a study of  How Animal Senses Reveal The Hidden Realms Around Us.

Two examples in the book are moderately well known.  In fact, Yong explains that back in the 1880s, John Lubbock, who was something of a polymath, decided to use a prism to shine light broken up into the colours of the rainbow on to some ants.  Why he decided to do that, I have no idea, but I have to assume it was a typical example of the ‘gentleman doing science’ world that existed back then.  Anyway the ants scurried away from the light, but this included exiting a region just beyond the rainbow’s violet end, which looked dark to Lubbock.  This was a region of ultraviolet (or UV) light, largely invisible to us, but must have been “apparent to the ants as a distinct and separate colour (of which we can form no idea)”,  Lubbock presciently wrote.  He added, “It would appear that the colours of objects and the general aspect of nature must present to them a very different appearance from what it does to us.”

Yong writes that back then many scientists believed that animals were either colourblind or saw the same spectrum that we do.  Lubbock’s experiment seemed to suggest ants were exceptional, but today we now know they aren’t.  Half a century later, researchers had found that bees and minnows could see ultraviolet, too, although they assumed this was a rare ability.  By the 1980s, researchers had shown that many birds, reptiles, fish, and insects have UV-sensitive photoreceptors, but not mammals.  Then in 1991, yet further research showed that mice, rats, and gerbils have cones in their eyes that were ‘tuned’ to UV, so small mammals could have UV vision, too.  There was more!  In the 2010s, researchers found that reindeer, dogs, cats, pigs, cows, ferrets, and many other mammals can detect UV.  They probably see UV as a deep shade of blue rather than as a separate colour, but they can sense it, nonetheless.  Incidentally, there’s evidence that so can some humans.

Perhaps you aren’t surprised to read this.  Nor will you be surprised to read about echolocation by bats.  This was realised some 80 years ago, when scientists discovered bats were emitting high pitch calls, and were using the echoes that bounced back off the objects around them to navigate and hunt in total darkness.  Bats ‘see’ with their ears.  I had always assumed that this was an ability unique to bats.  However, Yong’s book reveals that once the bat’s ability had been identified, so examples of echolocation in other creatures were identified. Dolphins and toothed whales can do it, some other animals, some bird varieties, several small mammals too, and, surprise, a small number of ‘special’ humans as well.

Ed Yong’s point is that the existence of examples like UV vision and echolocation makes clear how human-centric we are in our thinking.  As Yong comments:  “Things like ‘bird’s-eye view’, I suppose. A bird doesn’t see like we do. We just think of it as being from really, really high up.  You’re right, but if a human actually tried to take a real bird’s-eye view, many weird things would happen. We would have close to wrap-around vision. Just watch a duck in a pond, like a simple duck that no one even thinks about. That duck can probably see the entirety of the sky without having to move its head, which seems incredible to me. They can also see a whole range of colours that we can’t perceive. So, yeah, even when we use language like ‘a bird’s-eye view’ to talk about perspective taken by other species, we radically underestimate the differences.”

Of course, a phrase like ‘a bird’s eye view’ implies we observe as a bird does.  The only problem is that we can’t!  That was brought home to me when I first read Thomas Nagel’s wonderful article on What It’s Like To Be a Bat.  When I first read that title, I thought this should be interesting.  Little did I know.  This was a deeply analytical piece, powerful and, for me, convincing – even if there are some who disagree with elements of Nagel’s argument.

As you might have guessed (or know if you have read the paper), Nagel’s analysis was focussed on consciousness.  Central to this perspective is the view that consciousness is and can only ever be a subjective experience.  Only you can ‘know’ consciousness.  You can describe what you know, of course.  You can describe what you see in your visual field.  You can explain what words mean to you.  You can set out the steps you have used in reasoning.  However, all that ‘objective’ description doesn’t take away from the fact that only you can know what it means to be you.  Our subjective experience cannot be explained in material terms.  It is how we experience from our individual point of view.

To make his argument clear, Nagel focussed on the bat.  Why bats?  Well, they are mammals, and it seems likely they have conscious experiences (today, many writers argue consciousness is a property shared by most living things, but that wasn’t the case back in the 1970s).  More to the point, they have that very sophisticated echolocation sensory system, which allows them to fly, at night, and yet identify objects in their flight path.  You could say they navigate and see using a system something like a sophisticated form of sonar.   That analogy is useful, because we can’t observe the sound waves and their reflection as an ‘aural’ picture:  we have to translate it into a visual form, using a sonar image created through a transducer (converting sound waves into visual equivalents).  However, Nagel points out the limits of that analogy: bats use echolocation by “detecting reflections, for the objects within range, of their own rapid, subtly modulated, high frequency shrieks”.  Their brains “correlate the outgoing impulses with the subsequent echoes, and the information thus acquired enable bats to make precise discriminations of distance, size, shape, motion and texture”, all inflight and at a high speed (from page 170 of Nagel’s 1979 essay, ‘Mortal Questions’).

Since its publication, there’ve been many critiques of Nagel’s essay, but Yong argues his conclusion is hard to challenge:

“we won’t know, because it is fundamentally impossible to really understand the subjective experience of another creature, which is why, firstly, you always need to make an imaginative leap. You always need this little speck of faith, this little willingness to be creative to get to that destination, and you need a bit of humility and understanding, like, ‘I actually won’t ever quite get there but it’s the journey that matters. It’s the effort that matters.’ And so, for me writing this book, like I know I don’t have all the answers, but I can give you everything we know, and I can give you informed speculations about what the animal might be going through. And that’s what I tried to do. I tried to take us to like the very edge of that chasm between our subjective experience and other animals. Like let us peer over the edge, maybe do that thing where I’m like, woah, and then pull you back. And it’s not easy. One thing that made it a little easier was just asking people who work in these fields and who think about these creatures, and to ask them how they think about the creatures that they study. Because all of this I’ve just talked about, like these imaginative leaps, they tend to not be in papers, right? They’re a little antithetical to what we shove into the scientific literature. But I guarantee you that everyone who really works in this field, every sensory biologist, has thought long and hard about what the creatures they study might experience. And if you ask them, you just get some really cool stuff.” (Yong writing in Nature, 1 July 2022)

Each chapter of Yong’s book is concerned with a different form of sensory input.  The more we travel into the unfamiliar, the harder it becomes to imagine what it might be like to have access to a rather different form of experience.  One example that brought this home to me was the ability to ‘feel’ electricity.  I had read about electric eels.  These dubious creatures kill their prey using electric shocks, with zaps up to 860 volts.  Naturally enough, reading about them made me slightly nervous until I discovered they were only to be found in the northeast part of South America – in Guiana, norther Brazil and the lower reaches of the Amazon.  Also, and again contrary to my somewhat worried imagination, they are fish eaters, and don’t wander the rivers waiting for an unwary human to shock into oblivion.

However, electric eels are not quite as interesting as electric fish, fish with a relatively weak electric field that they use to sense their environment.  They do this by creating this electric field around their bodies, and the field get ‘distorted’ by the objects around them, both items that can conduct electricity, like much vegetable matter, or non-conductive material like rocks and riverbanks.  Amazingly, these fish can not only sense the distortions, but appear to use it to ‘map’ the environment around them.

Actually, that’s old news.  Apparently, scientists have been studying electric fish for a long time, and there is good understanding about both how the electric field is generated and how it is ‘sensed’.  However, Ed Yong asked a really great question of  one of the neuroscientists working in the area:  what do the distortions in the electric field feel like to the fish?  His reply?  “[He] imagined that if the fish is swimming past, like a rock, for example, you might imagine like a cool sensation moving down its flank that would indicate an insulating object is in the environment. So, he imagined it as something akin to touch, but operating in a distance several inches away from the fish’s body. And that gives me a little portal to what it might be like for the fish. Is that exactly what it’s like? Absolutely no idea”.

Inevitably, investigations into various animal senses can lead to speculation about human ‘extrasensory perception’ or ESP.  This area received a boost back in the 1930s, when a psychologist, J B Rhine, with his wife, Louisa E Rhine, started research ESP, using the so-called Zener cards, each with one of five symbols (circle, square, wavy lines, cross, and star) on the face.  A typical pack (an ESP pack) has five of each type of card in a pack of 25.

The cards were used in three forms of experiment’. To test for ‘telepathy’, the ‘sender’ looks at a series of cards while the ‘receiver’ guesses the symbols.  In a more complex test, for clairvoyance, the pack of cards is hidden from everyone while the receiver guesses.  Finally, to test for precognition, the order of the cards is determined after the guesses have been made. Rhine’s results were exciting, but, sadly, staff in psychology departments have attempted and failed to repeat them.  At Princeton University W. S. Cox tried, with 132 subjects over no less than 25,064 trials in 1936.  He concluded “There is no evidence of extrasensory perception either in the ‘average man’ or of the group investigated or in any particular individual of that group. The discrepancy between these results and those obtained by Rhine is due either to uncontrollable factors in experimental procedure or to the difference in the subjects.”  Despite many claims since, there has been no reliable evidence for ESP.

Most apparent findings turn out to be flawed as a result of methodological problems.  First many ESP studies confront what is known as the ‘stacking effect’.  Studies using a “closed” ESP target sequence (as is the case with Zener cards) violates the condition of independence used for most standard statistical tests. Multiple responses for a single target cannot be evaluated using statistical tests that assume independence of responses.  Such an approach increases the likelihood of card counting and, in turn, increases the chances for the subject to guess correctly . Another common flaw involves cues through sensory leakage, as when the subject receives a visual cue. This could be the reflection of a Zener card in the holder’s glasses, with the result the subject in the study can ‘guess’ the card correctly because they can see it!   On top of all that, poor shuffling can make the order of the cards easier to predict.

All over?  Probably, but I do admire Ed Yong.  As he explains that while much of what he writes has been researched and proven, “I think if you didn’t do any of the imaginative stuff, the book would just be joyless. Whereas if you just went on like flights of fancy all the time, it would feel like almost like a work of science fiction. This is very much a non-fiction book. And I’m trying to show both what we know but also the limits of that knowledge”.

In an interview with Benjamin Thompson he gives one more example, based on research on the larger whales.  Apparently, they make ‘very deep infrasonic calls’, at a level well below what humans hear.  These can travel long distances, even from one end of an ocean to the other.  How has this been discovered?  Well, scientists near Europe using hydrophones picked up the sound of a blue whale ‘singing’, the sounds coming from a whale swimming off the coast of America!  However, he suggests the real question is not whether whales can hear each other across an ocean.  Rather, what can they communicate through sounds across thousands of kilometres?  Harder to imagine, but not impossible.  So, do whales talk when right next to each other, in visual proximity? Can they be separated by miles, even tens or hundreds of miles?  We don’t know.  But Ed Yong likes to stretch our minds.  As he points out, the sound travels, whales are intelligent, they’re social animals, and … and who knows.  It’s a ‘flight of fancy’, but it’s an example to make us think.  Our sensory abilities are limited to the point we may not know what’s going on with whales, or many other creatures.

Yong finishes his speculations with a few thoughts about  magnetoreception – the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic fields – an ability that songbirds, turtles and probably a lot of other animals have too. He suggests magnetoreception remains one of the biggest mysteries in sensory biology. “It is the only sense where we don’t actually know what the sense organ is or what the receptor is – the cell that actually detects magnetic fields. We know that for everything else, right? So, vision, very obviously, is a thing that eyes do. I know exactly which cells inside my retina are responsible for detecting light. I can trace all the pathways from those cells to my brain. But with magnetoreception, we don’t have any of that. We don’t know what the receptor is. We don’t know how they could work.”  Yong wouldn’t say it, but in suggesting that this is the ‘last great unknown sense’, I can’t help wondering if it really is the last sense to be found.  I agree ESP is nonsense, but the ability to communicate with others using a sense we don’t yet understand or even recognise, that’s certainly possible.  My sense is that this is an area with which it’s worth keeping in touch!