Like so many others we do our little bit regarding plastic but do not properly think about the issue. I have to admit that I am not even sure if all plastics are harmful or just some.
But I comprehend art!
That is why I am republishing, with permission, this article from The Conversation.
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My art uses plastic recovered from beaches around the world to understand how our consumer society is transforming the ocean
Pam Longobardi amid a giant heap of fishing gear that she and volunteers from the Hawaii Wildlife Fund collected in 2008. David Rothstein, CC BY-ND
I am obsessed with plastic objects. I harvest them from the ocean for the stories they hold and to mitigate their ability to harm. Each object has the potential to be a message from the sea – a poem, a cipher, a metaphor, a warning.
My work collecting and photographing ocean plastic and turning it into art began with an epiphany in 2005, on a far-flung beach at the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii. At the edge of a black lava beach pounded by surf, I encountered multitudes upon multitudes of plastic objects that the angry ocean was vomiting onto the rocky shore.
I could see that somehow, impossibly, humans had permeated the ocean with plastic waste. Its alien presence was so enormous that it had reached this most isolated point of land in the immense Pacific Ocean. I felt I was witness to an unspeakable crime against nature, and needed to document it and bring back evidence.
I began cleaning the beach, hauling away weathered and misshapen plastic debris – known and unknown objects, hidden parts of a world of things I had never seen before, and enormous whalelike colored entanglements of nets and ropes.
‘Bounty Pilfered’ (center), ‘Newer Laocoön’ (left) and ‘Threnody’ (right). All made of ocean plastic from the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, installed at the Baker Museum in Naples, Fla., 2022. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND
I returned to that site again and again, gathering material evidence to study its volume and how it had been deposited, trying to understand the immensity it represented. In 2006, I formed the Drifters Project, a collaborative global entity to highlight these vagrant, translocational plastics and recruit others to investigate and mitigate ocean plastics’ impact.
My new book, “Ocean Gleaning,” tracks 17 years of my art and research around the world through the Drifters Project. It reveals specimens of striking artifacts harvested from the sea – objects that once were utilitarian, but have been changed by their oceanic voyages and come back as messages from the ocean.
‘Drifters Objects,’ a tiny sample of the plastic artifacts Pam Longobardi has collected from beaches worldwide. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND
Living in a plastic age
I grew up in what some now deem the age of plastic. Though it’s not the only modern material invention, plastic has had the most unforeseen consequences.
My father was a biochemist at the chemical company Union Carbide when I was a child in New Jersey. He played golf with an actor who portrayed “The Man from Glad,” a Get Smart-styled agent who rescued flustered housewives in TV commercials from inferior brands of plastic wrap that snarled and tangled. My father brought home souvenir pins of Union Carbide’s hexagonal logo, based on the carbon molecule, and figurine pencil holders of “TERGIE,” the company’s blobby turquoise mascot.
On the 2013 Gyre Expedition, Pam Longobardi traveled with a team of scientists, artists and policymakers to investigate and remove tons of oceanic plastic washing out of great gyres, or currents, in the Pacific Ocean, and make art from it.
Today I see plastic as a zombie material that haunts the ocean. It is made from petroleum, the decayed and transformed life forms of the past. Drifting at sea, it “lives” again as it gathers a biological slime of algae and protozoans, which become attachment sites for larger organisms.
Plastic ‘nurdles,’ (left), tiny pellets that serve as raw materials for manufacturing plastic products, and herring roe, or eggs (right). These visually analogous forms exemplify how fish can mistake plastic for food. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND
The forensics of plastic
I see plastic objects as the cultural archaeology of our time – relics of global late-capitalist consumer society that mirror our desires, wishes, hubris and ingenuity. They become transformed as they leave the quotidian world and collide with nature. By regurgitating them ashore or jamming them into sea caves, the ocean is communicating with us through materials of our own making. Some seem eerily familiar; others are totally alien.
A degraded plastic doll arm, from the series ‘Evidence of Crimes.’ Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND
A person engaging in ocean gleaning acts as a detective and a beacon, hunting for the forensics of this crime against the natural world and shining the light of interrogation on it. By searching for ocean plastic in a state of open receptiveness, a gleaner like me can find symbols of pop culture, religion, war, humor, irony and sorrow.
In keeping with the drifting journeys of these material artifacts, I prefer using them in a transitive form as installations. All of these works can be dismantled and reconfigured, although plastic materials are nearly impossible to recycle. I display some objects as specimens on steel pins, and wire others together to form large-scale sculptures.
From the series ‘Prophetic Objects,’ a plastic cap from a Greek manufacturer of cleaning products, found on the Greek island of Kefalonia. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND
I am interested in ocean plastic in particular because of what it reveals about us as humans in a global culture, and about the ocean as a cultural space and a giant dynamic engine of life and change. Because ocean plastic visibly shows nature’s attempts to reabsorb and regurgitate it, it has profound stories to tell.
‘Albatross’ and ‘Hope Floats,’ 2017. Recovered ocean plastic, survival rescue blankets, life vest straps and steel. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND
I believe humankind is at a crossroads with regards to the future. The ocean is asking us to pay attention. Paying attention is an act of giving, and in the case of plastic pollution, it is also an act of taking: Taking plastic out of your daily life. Taking plastic out of the environment. And taking, and spreading, the message that the ocean is laying out before our eyes.
Pam at one point describes the ocean plastic”… because ofwhat it reveals about us as humans in a global culture, and about the ocean as a cultural space and a giant dynamic engine of life and change …”. It raises questions that I can only ponder the answer. Ultimately, are there too many inhabitants on this planet? What does the next generation think? Is there an answer?
A dog that was stranded near a frozen waterfall in Utah on Christmas Eve was saved by search and rescue officials and reunited with her owner.
According to the Weber County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue, a local man was hiking near Waterfall Canyon on Saturday when he became separated from his dog Nala.
The unidentified hiker couldn’t find Nala by nightfall and resumed his search the morning of Christmas Day, the sheriff’s office wrote on its Facebook page.
The hiker’s family members contacted authorities around 1:00 p.m., local time, saying he wasn’t responding to their calls or text messages, officials said.
Nala’s owner answered one of the phone calls once he regained cellphone service and was able to let people know that Nala was around the waterfall, but couldn’t reach her because of the steepness and the icy condition of the terrain, according to Weber County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue.
A grab from video posted by Weber County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue shows the dog Nala at Waterfall Canyon in Ogden, Utah, Dec. 25, 2022.
Weber County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue
The search and rescue team responded to the call and were able to save a skittish Nala after a little coaxing, officials said.
“Nala was cold with a few minor injuries, but was able to hike down with the rescuers,” officials wrote. “She is one tough puppy! Once reaching the trailhead parking lot, both human and canine couldn’t have been happier to be reunited.”
According to Waterfall Canyon it is a “moderately challenging,” 2.4-mile trail near Ogden, Utah, according to AllTrails. Ogden is around 38 miles north of Salt Lake City.
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I’m sure you read that the human and the dog were very grateful to be reunited.
This story from the Dodo caught my eye. Don’t know why because the articles about dogs being rescued are not rare! But anyway, whatever the reason it seemed a good article to share with you all today.
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Dog Trembling In A Pile Of Rubble Is So Grateful Someone Finally Noticed Her
“Her legs were shaking so hard” 💔
By Ashley Ortiz, Published on the 23rd December, 2022
The first time Donna Lochmann searched a crumbling, abandoned apartment building in St. Louis, Missouri, she couldn’t find who she was looking for. A Good Samaritan called Stray Rescue of St. Louis (SRSL) to report a dog sighting, but Lochmann, the shelter’s chief life saving officer, came out empty-handed.
“We searched every floor and never saw anything,” Lochmann told The Dodo. “There was not one dog, nothing.”
With temperatures dropping and more calls coming in about a dog barking from inside the building, Lochmann decided to go back again and keep searching. This time, she found someone.
“When I got to the backside of the building, I saw a dog lying in the grass,” Lochmann said. “I saw her run towards the back of the building and she went in, so I followed her.”
Unfortunately, by the time Lochmann made it inside the building, the dog had already disappeared into one of the many empty apartments. She couldn’t find the pup on her own, so Lochmann went back to the shelter and recruited the help of other staff members.
Lochmann and her team went back to the building the next day, and as they went from room to room searching for the scared pup, they suddenly heard barking coming from inside.
“I got over there and there was a poor dog just lying in the rubble of this building,” Lochmann said. “She was absolutely trembling, her legs were shaking so hard.”
The weather was cold that day, but Lochmann knew that the dog’s shaking was caused by fear more so than lack of warmth.
“I felt so bad for her,” Lochmann said. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen one shaking that hard, and it’s just gut-wrenching to see them so scared of you.”
To get the dog out of the building, Lochmann decided to use a plastic crate instead of attempting to walk her out on a leash. Not only would it be physically difficult to lead the pup out of the crumbling building on a leash, but Lochmann feared it would stress her out even more.
So Lochmann used the leash she had to guide the dog into the plastic crate, then quickly closed the door behind her.
“Once she was in the crate, she was calm,” Lochmann said.
Lochmann and her team carried the crate out of the building, then gently loaded it into her Jeep. They brought her back to the shelter, where she underwent a medical evaluation. Luckily for the pup, she passed with flying colors.
The dog, whom Lochmann named Habenero, was OK physically, but she was still a little nervous when she first got to the shelter.
“She was still pretty scared at first,” Lochmann said. “But she came around fairly quickly. Within a few days, she wasn’t growling anymore and she stopped shaking when we would talk to her.”
Habanero has since been spending time with Lochmann and her crew at the shelter, slowly getting used to her surroundings. Together, they go on walks around the neighborhoods surrounding the shelter and enjoy plenty of snuggles throughout the day.
Now that Habanero is feeling more comfortable, Lochmann believes that she’s finally ready to go into a foster home. It’ll be yet another change for the 7-year-old pup, but Lochmann is confident that she’ll thrive.
“Once she gets into a home, she’s gonna have a bit of adjustment to do,” Lochmann said. “But she’ll do great. I’m just glad she’s not trembling anymore.”
All images by STRAY RESCUE OF ST. LOUIS with whom copyright rests.
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The thing about dogs is the way that we, as in humans, bond so well with the majority of dogs, and that the majority of dogs bond so well with us.
I was just saying this to Jeannie yesterday morning when Oliver jumped up on to the three-seat settee, admittedly onto his special cushion, next to me and proceeded to snooze with his head on my thigh. Dogs are the perfect companions and they are incredibly conscious of the states of mind of their loving humans.
It goes back much further than the Christian church.
Jean and I are atheists and have been all our lives. Therefore we tend to take more notice of the Winter solstice (that is today as the day that I am preparing this post) rather than Christmas Day and our sense that it is a product of Jesus Christ being born on the 25th; or so I thought!
But the tradition of a Christmas tree in particular goes much further back, as this article from The Conversation sets out.
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The Christmas tree is a tradition older than Christmas
Public Christmas trees, like Rockefeller Center’s famous tree, didn’t start appearing in the U.S. until the 20th century. Nicholas Hunt/WireImage via Getty Images
Why, every Christmas, do so many people endure the mess of dried pine needles, the risk of a fire hazard and impossibly tangled strings of lights?
Strapping a fir tree to the hood of my car and worrying about the strength of the twine, I sometimes wonder if I should just buy an artificial tree and do away with all the hassle. Then my inner historian scolds me – I have to remind myself that I’m taking part in one of the world’s oldest religious traditions. To give up the tree would be to give up a ritual that predates Christmas itself.
The solstices, when the Sun is at its highest and lowest points in the sky, were major events. The winter solstice, when the sky is its darkest, has been a notable day of celebration in agrarian societies throughout human history. The Persian Shab-e Yalda, Dongzhi in China and the North American Hopi Soyal all independently mark the occasion.
The favored décor for ancient winter solstices? Evergreen plants.
Whether as palm branches gathered in Egypt in the celebration of Ra or wreaths for the Roman feast of Saturnalia, evergreens have long served as symbols of the perseverance of life during the bleakness of winter, and the promise of the Sun’s return.
Christmas slowly emerges
Christmas came much later. The date was not fixed on liturgical calendars until centuries after Jesus’ birth, and the English word Christmas – an abbreviation of “Christ’s Mass” – would not appear until over 1,000 years after the original event.
While Dec. 25 was ostensibly a Christian holiday, many Europeans simply carried over traditions from winter solstice celebrations, which were notoriously raucous affairs. For example, the 12 days of Christmas commemorated in the popular carol actually originated in ancient Germanic Yule celebrations.
The continued use of evergreens, most notably the Christmas tree, is the most visible remnant of those ancient solstice celebrations. Although Ernst Anschütz’s well-known 1824 carol dedicated to the tree is translated into English as “O Christmas Tree,” the title of the original German tune is simply “Tannenbaum,” meaning fir tree. There is no reference to Christmas in the carol, which Anschütz based on a much older Silesian folk love song. In keeping with old solstice celebrations, the song praises the tree’s faithful hardiness during the dark and cold winter.
Bacchanal backlash
Sixteenth-century German Protestants, eager to remove the iconography and relics of the Roman Catholic Church, gave the Christmas tree a huge boost when they used it to replace Nativity scenes. The religious reformer Martin Luther supposedly adopted the practice and added candles.
German Protestants sought to replace ornate Nativity scenes with the simpler tree. Wikimedia Commons
But a century later, the English Puritans frowned upon the disorderly holiday for lacking biblical legitimacy. They banned it in the 1650s, with soldiers patrolling London’s streets looking for anyone daring to celebrate the day. Puritan colonists in Massachusetts did the same, fining “whosoever shall be found observing Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way.”
German immigration to the American colonies ensured that the practice of trees would take root in the New World. Benjamin Franklin estimated that at least one-third of Pennsylvania’s white population was German before the American Revolution.
Yet, the German tradition of the Christmas tree blossomed in the United States largely due to Britain’s German royal lineage.
Victoria’s style of rule both reflected and shaped the outwardly stern, family-centered morality that dominated middle-class life during the era. In the 1840s, Christmas became the target of reformers like novelist Charles Dickens, who sought to transform the raucous celebrations of the largely sidelined holiday into a family day in which the people of the rapidly industrialized nation could relax, rejoice and give thanks.
His 1843 novella, “A Christmas Carol,” in which the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge found redemption by embracing Dickens’ prescriptions for the holiday, was a hit with the public. While the evergreen décor is evident in the hand-colored illustrations Dickens specially commissioned for the book, there are no Christmas trees in those pictures.
After the London Illustrated News published an image of Queen Victoria’s tree, the public eagerly sought to mimic the tradition. Wikimedia Commons
Victoria added the fir tree to family celebrations five years later. Although Christmas trees had been part of private royal celebrations for decades, an 1848 issue of the London Illustrated News depicted Victoria with her German husband and children decorating one as a family at Windsor Castle.
The cultural impact was almost instantaneous. Christmas trees started appearing in homes throughout England, its colonies and the rest of the English-speaking world. Dickens followed with his short story “A Christmas Tree” two years later.
Adopting the tradition in America
During this period, America’s middle classes generally embraced all things Victorian, from architecture to moral reform societies.
Sarah Hale, the author most famous for her children’s poem “Mary had a Little Lamb,” used her position as editor of the best-selling magazine Godey’s Ladies Book to advance a reformist agenda that included the abolition of slavery and the creation of holidays that promoted pious family values. The adoption of Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863 was perhaps her most lasting achievement.
An engraving of Queen Victoria’s tree in Godey’s Ladies Book popularized Christmas trees in the U.S. Godey’s Lady’s Book
It is closely followed by the Christmas tree.
While trees sporadically adorned the homes of German immigrants in the U.S., it became a mainstream middle-class practice when, in 1850, Godey’s published an engraving of Victoria and her Christmas tree. A supporter of Dickens and the movement to reinvent Christmas, Hale helped to popularize the family Christmas tree across the pond.
A Christmas tree was erected on the White House South Lawn for the first time in 1923. Library of Congress
Christmas trees go global
As both American and British cultures extended their influence around the world, Christmas trees started to appear in communal spaces even in countries that are not predominately Christian. Shopping districts in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and Tokyo now regularly erect trees.
The modern Christmas tree is a universal symbol that carries meanings both religious and secular. Adorned with lights, they promote hope and offer brightness in literally the darkest time of year for half of the world.
In that sense, the modern Christmas tree has come full circle.
I can’t put it better than the email that I received recently from Chris. Here it is:
Hi Paul
Happy Thanksgiving. Hopefully you had a far better one than the last time I celebrated with American friends when I lived in Indonesia. We ended up having to evacuate the house (including the deputy US ambassador) as the kitchen caught fire!
It’s been a bit of a journey writing the post as so many adventures with the dogs came back to me. In the end I focussed on the first one Princess and the latest Tinker. I hope it’s OK. Let me know if not, as I can always rewrite it. There are so many other dogs I could have mentioned which is the scary thing! Still, the copy is attached and I’m sending photos using WeTransfer.com. They’ll send you an email with a link to download the pics. It’s totally safe and free (It’s been a godsend for designing book covers as it stops emails getting clogged up). I’ve put far too many pics in there so please feel free to use the ones you like and discard others.
Thank you so much for letting me do this post. It’s been quite emotional, but put a huge smile on my face all week.
Countless numbers of people have dreamt that they can communicate with animals and I would imagine an enormous percentage of those would have dreamt that they can communicate with dogs.
Certainly of the three dogs we have alive still here at home (we had in the past some fifteen dogs) Oliver below appears to understand much of what is said to him by me and Jean
If one goes to the YouTube website then one is introduced to Anna Breytenbach who has made it her life’s passion to better communicate with animals. Here’s a small piece from the extensive WikiPedia entry:
In her twenties she decided to pursue her passion for wildlife (big cats in particular) by becoming a cheetah handler at a conservation education project. On moving to America, she explored wolf and other predator conservation. She has also served on committees for wolf, snow leopard, cheetah and mountain lion conservation.
Anna Breytenbach and friend
So now we come to this video of Anna and Diablo, more properly called Spirit, (and the video will make that clear).
Arjan Postma explains the background to the film:
I just want to share this message as much as possible without any commercial intent, personal benefit or whatsoever. All used materials and therefore copyrights do not belong to me. I hope you enjoy discovering and watching this story and skill as much as I did: What if you could talk to animals and have them talk back to you? Anna Breytenbach has dedicated her life to what she calls interspecies communication. She sends detailed messages to animals through pictures and thoughts. She then receives messages of remarkable clarity back from the animals. In this section, Anna transforms a deadly snarling leopard into a relaxed content cat. The amazing story of how leopard Diabolo became Spirit… I found the source of this amazing documentary here: http://www.cultureunplugged.com/docum… This is the first full length documentary film on the art of animal communication. Nominated for Best Long Documentary, Best Director of “Jade Kunlun” Awards of 2012 World Mountain Documentary Festival of Qinghai China. Director: Craig Foster | Producer: Vyv Simson | Narrator: Swati Thiyagarajan Genre: Documentary | Produced In: 2012.
As recently as 50 years ago, the pit bull was America’s favorite dog. Pit bulls were everywhere. They were popular in advertising and used to promote the joys of pet-and-human friendship. Nipper on the RCA Victor label, Pete the Pup in the “Our Gang” comedy short films, and the flag-wrapped dog on a classic World War I poster all were pit bulls.
With National Pit Bull Awareness Day celebrated on Oct. 26, it’s a fitting time to ask how these dogs came to be seen as a dangerous threat.
Stella, a pit bull owned by author Colin Dayan. Colin Dayan, CC BY-ND
Starting around 1990, multiple features of American life converged to inspire widespread bans that made pit bulls outlaws, called “four-legged guns” or “lethal weapons.” The drivers included some dog attacks, excessive parental caution, fearful insurance companies and a tie to the sport of dog fighting.
As a professor of humanities and law, I have studied the legal history of slaves, vagrants, criminals, terror suspects and others deemed threats to civilized society. For my books “The Law is a White Dog” and “With Dogs at the Edge of Life,” I explored human-dog relationships and how laws and regulations can deny equal protection to entire classes of beings.
In my experience with these dogs – including nearly 12 years living with Stella, the daughter of champion fighting dogs – I have learned that pit bulls are not inherently dangerous. Like other dogs, they can become dangerous in certain situations, and at the hands of certain owners. But in my view, there is no defensible rationale for condemning not only all pit bulls, but any dog with a single pit bull gene, as some laws do.
I see such action as canine profiling, which recalls another legal fiction: the taint or stain of blood that ordained human degradation and race hatred in the United States.
English artist Francis Barraud (1856-1924) painted his brother’s dog Nipper listening to the horn of an early phonograph in 1898. Victor Talking Machine Co. began using the symbol in its trademark, His Master’s Voice, in 1900. Wikipedia
Bred to fight
The pit bull is strong. Its jaw grip is almost impossible to break. Bred over centuries to bite and hold large animals like bears and bulls around the face and head, it’s known as a “game dog.” Its bravery and strength won’t allow it to give up, no matter how long the struggle. It loves with the same strength; its loyalty remains the stuff of legend.
For decades pit bulls’ tenacity encouraged the sport of dogfighting, with the dogs “pitted” against each other. Fights often went to the death, and winning animals earned huge sums for those who bet on them.
But betting on dogs is not a high-class sport. Dogs are not horses; they cost little to acquire and maintain. Pit bulls easily and quickly became associated with the poor, and especially with Black men, in a narrative that connected pit bulls with gang violence and crime.
In 1987 Sports Illustrated put a pit bull, teeth bared, on its cover, with the headline “Beware of this Dog,” which it characterized as born with “a will to kill.” Time magazine published “Time Bombs on Legs” featuring this “vicious hound of the Baskervilles” that “seized small children like rag dolls and mauled them to death in a frenzy of bloodletting.”
Presumed vicious
If a dog has “vicious propensities,” the owner is assumed to share in this projected violence, both legally and generally in public perception. And once deemed “contraband,” both property and people are at risk.
This 2010 report describes the successful rehabilitation of dogs rescued from Michael Vick’s Bad Newz dogfighting operation.
Debating breed bans
Pit bulls still suffer more than any other dogs from the fact that they are a type of dog, not a distinct breed. Once recognized by the American Kennel Club as an American Staffordshire terrier, popularly known as an Amstaff, and registered with the United Kennel Club and the American Dog Breeders Association as an American pit bull terrier, now any dog characterized as a “pit bull type” can be considered an outlaw in many communities.
For example, in its 2012 Tracey v. Solesky ruling, the Maryland Court of Appeals modified the state’s common law in cases involving dog injuries. Any dog containing pit bull genes was “inherently dangerous” as a matter of law.
This subjected owners and landlords to what the courts call “strict liability.” As the court declared: “When an attack involves pit bulls, it is no longer necessary to prove that the particular pit bull or pit bulls are dangerous.”
Dissenting from the ruling, Judge Clayton Greene recognized the absurdity of the majority opinion’s “unworkable rule”: “How much ‘pit bull,’” he asked, “must there be in a dog to bring it within the strict liability edict?”
It’s equally unanswerable how to tell when a dog is a pit bull mix. From the shape of its head? Its stance? The way it looks at you?
Conundrums like these call into question statistics that show pit bulls to be more dangerous than other breeds. These figures vary a great deal depending on their sources.
Any statistics about pit bull attacks depend on the definition of a pit bull – yet it’s really hard to get good dog bite data that accurately IDs the breed
Prince George’s County, Md., is negotiating with advocates suing to revoke the county’s pit bull ban.
Pit bulls demand a great deal more from humans than some dogs, but alongside their bracing way of being in the world, we humans learn another way of thinking and loving. Compared with many other breeds, they offer a more demanding but always affecting communion.
That is a very interesting account of the breed and shows the complexities of owning Pit Bulls in certain States, or rather local communities enacting breed-specific bans.
However, in our experience, we have found them to be smart, loving animals, and we know we are not alone in having those thoughts.
I have said it many times before and, knowing me, will undoubtedly say it many times again. That is that this blog wouldn’t still have in excess of 4,000 followers if all these good people had only me to read.
I know you will enjoy Jackie’s post and it is a most important post looking at the history of the dog. Jackie and her husband look at the dog back in Roman times. You will love this!
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Pup Pompeii – Discovering the Dogs of Ancient Rome
Research has now proven that dogs have been companions to humans for 40,000 years. DNA analysis of a 35,000-year-old bone fragment from an ancient wolf, discovered on the Taimyr peninsula in Siberia, presented evidence that dogs diverged from the wolf species much earlier than previously thought. The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, state that Siberian Huskies and Greenland Sled Dogs share many genes with the Taimyr Wolf.
As such, it is no surprise to learn that, a mere two thousand years ago, the ancient Romans kept dogs. However, on a recent road trip to the ruined city of Pompeii with The Fab Four, our four Cavapoos, my husband Mark and I discovered some fascinating facts about the relationship between ancient Romans and Man’s Best Friend.
Pompeii in southern Italy is the most extraordinary time capsule. It grants the onlooker a fascinating and sometimes painfully intimate window into an ancient civilisation. Snuffed out almost instantly by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, metres of volcanic ash preserved the entire city for two millennia, exactly how it was on those two fateful days in 79 AD.
My husband, Mark, and I visited in April this year with The Fab Four, our four Cavapoos (Cavalier/Poodle cross.) Within thirty minutes of leaving our campsite, I had bought my first Pompeii souvenir – a coaster portraying the striking black-and-white mosaic of a dog wearing a spiked collar crouched and ready to pounce, along with the words Cave Canem – Beware of the Dog.
Cave has nothing to do with underground chasms. It comes from the same Latin root as caveat, as in caveat emptor – buyer beware. The original mosaic is in the entrance to the House of the Tragic Poet. Since we were investigating Pup Pompeii, we had to find the real thing and when we got there, The Fab Four thrilled me by lining up in front of it, unasked!
If you think about it, Rome’s canine connections go right back to the beginning. According to the legend, a she-wolf suckled the twins, Romulus and Remus. Although Remus was killed, Romulus went on to found Rome.
Many objects and artefacts confirm Romans kept dogs. It is no surprise to find pooches employed as guardians, hunters, soldiers, and entertainers; both on the racetrack and as gladiators in the arena. Sculptures, paintings, and mosaics often depict these large and muscular dogs wearing spiked collars to make them look fierce, or protect them from the dangerous predators that were their prey, such as wolves, bears, and boar.
They also protected against the supernatural. Trivia, the Roman goddess of sorcery and witchcraft, held sway over places of transition, such as graveyards and crossroads. Also known as ‘The Queen of Ghosts’, she wandered during the night and, like her Greek counterpart, Hecate, was silent and invisible. Yet, the Romans believed dogs could see and hear her, so a dog seemingly barking at nothing was warning its owner that Trivia or her ghosts were approaching.
I was touched to discover a softer side of dog ownership, too. Romans also kept dogs as companions, status symbols, used them as hot water bottles, and revered them as an emblem of loyalty and devotion. Infrared analysis of a dog’s collar discovered in Pompeii carries praise for it saving its master’s life in a wolf attack. The archetypal mutt’s name, ‘Fido’, is the Latin word for ‘trust’ or ‘fidelity’, which explains why dogs were popular gifts between lovers.
There was no Kennel Club in ancient Rome, so dog breeds, as we know them today, did not exist. Ever practical, the Romans classified dogs according to their function, or place of origin.
In 2020, archaeologists in Pompeii discovered the skeleton of a tiny adult dog, about 10 inches (25 cm) at the shoulder – the size of a Yorkshire Terrier or Maltese. Malta is just 60 miles south of Sicily, and the “Roman Ladies’ Dog”, Canis Melitae or Melitan, was an expensive status symbol, affordable only to the upper classes. Besides providing companionship and warmth, the Romans believed they drew fleas away from their owners.
The Cave Canem mosaic of a black-and-white dog wearing a spiked collar possibly depicts a Molossian, forbear of the Roman Canis Pugnaces. In modern English, pugnacious means ‘ready to fight’, so there are no prizes for guessing the purpose of CanisPugnaces!
The legions imported Molossians from Epirus, a mountainous region in the southern part of modern-day Albania. The name Molossian derives from the ruling dynasty of Epirus at the time. Alexander the Great’s ‘terrible mother’, Olympias, was a Molossian princess. Historian Plutarch suggested she slept with snakes in her bed!
Molossians may also have found their way to Britain with the Phoenicians, where they founded the Pugnaces Britanniae, which the Romans not only faced in battle, but subsequently captured, imported, and selectively bred with their own Pugnaces, because the British version was “inflamed with the spirit of Mars, the god of war.”
Roman classical poet Virgil praised the Molossian’s abilities as a guard dog. “Never, with them on guard, need you fear for your stalls a midnight thief, or onslaught of wolves, or Iberian brigands at your back.”
The Molossian and Pugnaces Britanniae are the ancestors ofthe Neapolitan Mastiff and the lighter Cane Corso. The Romans used both types in war, notably as piriferi (fire bearers).Greek writer Polybius notes thesefearless canine warriors charging towards enemy lines with containers of flaming oil strapped to their backs.
In 300 AD, the Greco-Syrian poet, Oppiano, described the Molossian as,
“A dog of large size, snub nosed, truculent with its frowning brows, not speedy but impetuous, a fighter of great courage and incredible strength, to be employed against bulls and wild boar, undaunted even when confronted with a lion.”
Alexander the Great’s favourite dog, Peritas, is believed to have been a Molossian. It reputedly changed the course of history by saving Alexander’s life twice; protecting him from a war elephant at the Battle of Gaugamela, and holding off Malian troops until reinforcements arrived, even though it was mortally wounded. The legend says it died with its head in Alexander’s lap.
Among the fabulous mosaics that adorn the floors of the house of Paquius Proculus in Pompeii, a rather regal lurcher-type dog guards the door – perhaps a Vertragus – ancestor of the modern Greyhound. The Romans prized this sighthound as a hunter as well as guarding, and, like the smaller lapdogs, also cuddled them for warmth.
Poet, Grattius, who lived from 63 BC to 14 AD, during the time of Emperor Augustus, praised the Vertragus for its speed and refined features, noting rather splendidly that it runs “swifter than thought or a winged bird.”
The Celtic people originated in the upper Danube basin and expanded their culture across great swathes of continental Europe, including France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Balkans, as well as in the east in places such as Asia Minor and Anatolia (part of Turkey) – and took their dogs with them.
Curiously, despite its Celtic connections, studies in the 1970s and 2000 confirm that prior to Roman occupation, Greyhound-type dogs did not exist in Britain. The wooden Vindolanda tablets, the oldest handwritten account of life in the north of Roman Britain, do mention that Imperial troops either knew of the Vertragus, or had them with them.
Julius Caesar allegedly castigated Roman citizens for caring more for their dogs than their children. As is so often the case, funerary goods shed light on ancient civilisations. Many inscriptions on Roman tombs highlight the high regard in which the Romans held their dogs. They also suggest that in the past, dogs may have lived longer than in modern times, perhaps because of the interbreeding required to create pedigree strains.
These heartrending inscriptions will strike a chord with any modern dog owner. The first two could easily refer to Canis Melitae:
“Behold the tomb of Aeolis, the cheerful little dog, whose loss to fleeting fate pained me beyond measure.”
“Bedewed with tears I have carried you, our little dog, as in happier circumstances, I did fifteen years ago. So now, Patrice, you will no longer give me a thousand kisses nor will you be able to lie affectionately ’round my neck. You were a good dog and, in sorrow, I have placed you in a marble tomb and I have united you forever to myself when I die. You readily matched a human with your clever ways; alas, what a pet we have lost! You, sweet Patrice, were in the habit of joining us at table and fawningly asking for food in our lap, you were accustomed to lick with your greedy tongue the cup which my hands often held for you and regularly to welcome your tired master with wagging tail.”
Yet it wasn’t just lap dogs who earned tributes from their owners. Here is a truly beautiful and touching dedication on a Roman marble tablet from the first century AD in the British Museum, contemporary with Pompeii. It is written in verse, from the point of view of a prized hunting dog, Margarita (Pearl), from Gaul, who died giving birth. With allusions to the poetry of Virgil, who stated “Mantua gave birth to me”, the care taken over this memorial proves Margarita was clearly a very beloved family member.
“Gaul gave me my birth and the pearl-oyster from the seas full of treasure my name, an honour fitting to my beauty.
I was trained to run boldly through strange forests and to hunt out furry wild beasts in the hills, never accustomed to be held by heavy chains nor endure cruel beatings on my snow-white body.
I used to lie on the soft lap of my master and mistress and knew to go to bed when tired on my spread mattress and I did not speak more than allowed as a dog, given a silent mouth
No-one was scared by my barking but now I have been overcome by death from an ill-fated birth and earth has covered me beneath this small piece of marble.
Margarita (‘Pearl’)”
In the Monty Python film, The Life of Brian, an anti-Roman revolutionary famously asks, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
Yet, besides roads, aqueducts, plumbing, sanitation, and fast food, they have clearly passed on a deep love and appreciation of dogs!
Attributions:
Photo of Romulus and Remus with the she-wolf courtesy of Benutzer:Wolpertinger on WP de, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
FREE Tickets – these are available for visits on the first Sunday of every month. They must be downloaded online and the gates close once a mere 15,000 have been admitted
Self-Guided Walking Tour App – there are few interpretive signs on the site. ‘These two expert-designed self-guided walking tours to explore Pompei, Italy on foot at your own pace. You can also create your own self-guided walk to visit the city attractions which interest you the most.’
Author Bio:
Jacqueline Lambert is an award-winning author and blogger, who gave up work in 2016 to tour Europe full-time with her husband and four dogs. “Laugh out loud funny and a great travel guide.” is just one of many five-star reviews of Jackie’s ‘Adventure Caravanning with Dogs’ series of light-hearted road trip memoirs.
Follow her blog www.WorldWideWalkies.com to keep up to date with their latest expedition, get travel tips and advice, or find out how they live their dream without a lottery win.
ooOOoo
The photograph below is from a collection of photos on the tombstones of ancient Roman dogs. More images may be seen here!
It just goes to show how long these incredible animals have been associated with humans.
Showing that droughts have been in evidence for 1,000 years or more!
It is very easy, well it is for me, to think that the changes we are seeing in the climate are purely recent. There is no question that we are experiencing changes in the global climate. But it would be too easy to think that these changes are only the result of recent times.
1,000-year-old stalagmites from a cave in India show the monsoon isn’t so reliable – their rings reveal a history of long, deadly droughts.
Published on the 19th September, 2022 by:
Gayatri Kathayat Associate Professor of Global Environmental Change, Xi’an Jiaotong University
Ashish Sinha Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences, California State University, Dominguez Hills
In a remote cave in northeast India, rainwater has slowly dripped from the ceiling in the same spots for over 1,000 years. With each drop, minerals in the water accumulate on the floor below, slowly growing into calcium carbonate towers known as stalagmites.
These stalagmites are more than geological wonders – like tree rings, their layers record the region’s rainfall history. They also carry a warning about the potential for catastrophic multiyear droughts in the future.
By analyzing the geochemistry of these stalagmites in a new study published Sept. 19, 2022, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we were able to create the most precise chronology yet of the summer Indian monsoon over the past millennium. It documents how the Indian subcontinent frequently experienced long, severe droughts unlike any observed in the last 150 years of reliable monsoon rainfall measurements.
They show how the decline of the Mughal Empire and India’s textile industries in the 1780s and 1790s coincided with the most severe 30-year period of drought over the millennium. The depth and duration of the drought would have caused widespread crop failures and the level of famine discussed in written documentsat the time.
Another long drought encompasses the 1630-1632 Deccan famine, one of the most devastating droughts in India’s history. Millions of people died as crops failed. Around the same time, the elaborate Mughal capital of Fatehpur Sikri was abandoned and the Guge Kingdom collapsed in western Tibet.
Buland Darwaza (Door of Victory) at Fatehpur Sikri, India.
Our findings have important implications today for water planning in a warming world, particularly for India, which, with its vast monsoon-reliant agriculture industry, is on pace to soon be the most populous country on the planet.
Why the monsoon’s history matters
Scientists began systematically measuring India’s monsoon rainfall with instruments around the 1870s. Since then, India has experienced about 27 regionally widespread droughts. Among them, only one – 1985 to 1987 – was a three-year consecutive drought or worse.
The apparent stability of the Indian monsoon in that data might lead one to surmise that neither protracted droughts lasting multiple years nor frequent droughts are intrinsic aspects of its variability. This seemingly reassuring view currently informs the region’s present-day water resource infrastructure.
However, the stalagmite evidence of prolonged, severe droughts over the past 1,000 years paints a different picture.
It indicates that the short instrumental period does not capture the full range of Indian monsoon variability. It also raises questions about the region’s current water resources, sustainability and mitigation policies that discount the possibility of protracted droughts in the future.
Timeline of major societal and geopolitical changes in India and the oxygen isotope record from Mawmluh cave. Gayatri Kathayat
How do stalagmites capture a region’s monsoon history?
To reconstruct past variations in rainfall, we analyzed stalagmites from Mawmluh cave, near the town of Cherrapunji in the state of Meghalaya – one of the wettest locations in the world.
Stalagmites are conelike structures that grow slowly from the ground up, typically at a rate of about one millimeter every 10 years. Trapped within their growth layers are minute amounts of uranium and other elements that were acquired as rainwater infiltrated the rocks and soil above the cave. Over time, uranium trapped in stalagmites decays into thorium at a predictable pace, so we can figure out the age of each stalagmite growth layer by measuring the ratio of uranium to thorium.
The oxygen in rainwater molecules comes in two primary types of isotopes – heavy and light. As stalagmites grow, they lock into their structure the oxygen isotope ratios of the percolating rainwater that seeps into the cave. Subtle variations in this ratio can arise from a range of climatic conditions at the time the rainwater originally fell.
Stalagmite formation are marked inside Mawmluh Cave, where the new study was based. Gayatri Kathayat
A cross-section of a stalagmite shows differences in its ring formation as climate conditions changed. Gayatri Kathayat
Our previous research in this area showed that variations in oxygen isotope ratios in rainwater, and consequently, in stalagmites, track changes in the relative abundance of different moisture sources that contribute to summer monsoon rainfall.
During years when monsoon circulation is weak, rainfall here is primarily derived from the moisture that evaporated from the nearby Arabian Sea. During strong monsoon years, however, atmospheric circulation brings copious amounts of moisture to this area all the way from the southern Indian Ocean.
The two moisture sources have quite different oxygen isotope signatures, and this ratio is faithfully preserved in the stalagmites. We can use this clue to learn about the overall strength of the monsoon intensity at the time the stalagmite formed. We pieced together the monsoon rainfall history by extracting minute amounts of calcium carbonate from its growth rings and then measuring the oxygen isotope ratios. To anchor our climate record to precise calendar years, we measured the uranium and thorium ratio.
Stalagmites grow from the ground, and stalactites grow from above. These are in Mawmluh Cave, where the authors conducted their research. Gayatri Kathayat.
Next steps
The paleoclimate records can usually tell what, where and when something happened. But often, they alone cannot answer why or how something happened.
Our new study shows that protracted droughts frequently occurred during the past millennia, but we do not have a good understanding of why the monsoon failed in those years. Similar studies using Himalayan ice cores, tree rings and other caves have also detected protracted droughts but face the same challenge.
In the next phase of our study, we are teaming up with climate modelers to conduct coordinated proxy-modeling studies that we hope will offer more insight into the climate dynamics that triggered and sustained such extended periods of drought during the past millennium.
ooOOoo
So there we are. Droughts are a thing of the ancient past. But only a partial understanding for why the monsoons failed is known. Despite these modern times with so much general access to knowledge there are still things that we do not know!
Finally, one hopes that the next phase of their study will be along in reasonable time! I would love to report on it.
Learning from Dogs 
