In an essay in which cultural historian Helen M. Rozwadowski traces the intellectual climate surrounding Jacques Cousteaus aquatic utopias, which he managed to manifest temporarily in his Conshelf-experiments (see my post here), she concludes: "The story of 'Homo...
(This text is from the site by the University of Pittsburg.) "The Miao people in Southern China have no written records, but they have many legends in verse, which they learn to repeat and sing. The Hei Miao (or Black Miao, so called from their dark chocolate-colored...
Berlin once had the biggest, cylindric aquarium in the world, the Auqua Dome. In fact it was a hotel lobby dome, a modern cathedral with a giant tank filled with over 1.500 fish in the middle. The architectural concept is a twist on the submarine city, as we can find...
UNESCO World Heritage site in Ayutthaya (Thailand) province - inundated with floodwaters on October 10, 2011. More than 250 Thais have died after two months of heavy rainfall have inundated large swathes of the country and hit provinces on the northern outskirts of...
In his book Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World (2019), Glenn Albrecht elaborated the term ‘solastalgia’. A portmanteau coinage, embracing ‘nostalgia’ (longing for the past) and composed of the Greek term algos (pain) and...
Lecture by US journalist Jeff Goodell on his book "The Water Will Come" with alot of examples and images around rising sea level and sinking cities. From 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcPbLJEDy50 I find this to be one of the really useful and smart talks on...
In a very nice, comprehensive and extensive article, Dutch author Thijs Weststeijn, describes the role of culture in forming a climate conscience. The article not only describes the threats to cultural heritage the world over, particularly flooding, and the efforts to...
Most ancient cultures share the idea of creation out of water. Be it a cosmic ocean, primordial waters or a more abstract idea of fluid, amorphous chaos. But why is that so? How come that so many creation myths that were formed long before any scientific knowledge...
In Hindu cosmology there are seven oceans. One of them is the ocean of milk. In one of the most colorful episodes of Hindu scripture, the Samudra Manthana, the devas (gods) and asuras (demi-gods) team up to churn the ocean of milk to gain the nectar of immortality....
The Devi Upanishad is one of 19 sanskrit texts that lay out the philosophical concept of Hinduism. Written somtime before 1400 CE, the text describes the goddess Devi as the highest principle, and the ultimate truth in the universe. According to this text the...
