Boom-De-Ada?

[pyat]

“Camps, villages, towns, cities! Here to-day, up and off to somewhere else to-morrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that's always changing!”

velvetpage and I have been gradually working our way through Michael Palin’s latest BBC exploration series - New Europe. It is not as weird and wild as his previous ventures, but then Palin is pushing 70, and the journey is through post-Soviet Europe, rather than the Himalayas or Africa. Still, it is curious just how alien this world manages to be in contrast with the comparatively homogenous and shallow roots of transplanted European culture in North America.

He meets, for example, a fortune teller living amongst the Cones of Cappadocia, who (through a beautiful translator who is dressed like some combination of gyspy and wood elf) tells Palin he will meet and fall in love with a rich woman before his journey is over.

“Where will I meet her?” asks Palin.

“Internet chat room,” replies the fortune teller.

There are various other striking scenes. He rides a boat along the Danube in Romania and is surprised to see the massive face of the ancient Dacian king, Decebalus, carved in stone… like something from Tolkien. Near the statue is a commemorative plaque, placed by Roman conquerors in the first century CE.



He explores a Soviet radio telescope, fitted with 1950s technology and still maintained by a group of astronomers who protected it from destruction. He explores Transdniester, a country whose existence is not acknowledged by any other nation. He rides a working steam locomotive, carrying lumberjacks to seasonal camps in the Vaser Valley. He visits Dracula’s castle, only to find it inhabited by really cheesy Lugosi imitators.

I am also intrigued by the variety of beliefs that have emerged (if they ever died) following the fall of the USSR.

Palin, for example, joins a party of petitioners in Albania, who spend hours climbing a mountain to visit a Muslim holy man, bringing him a goat for ritual sacrifice. He sits in an ancient Orthodox cemetery and listens to a priest read out the names of everyone who has ever died in that village. In Slovenia he visits the site of Soviet-era manifestation of the Virgin Mary that has become a major pilgrimage destination. In another episode, he journeys with hundreds of sun-worshippers to greet the dawn in the mountains. In the episode we watched last night Palin takes part in a pagan Latvian Midsummer festival, and wears a garland of oak leaves while singing long into the night.



In Estonia, he visits a modern medical clinic, where a traditional barber-surgeon leeches and cups his chest. He then visits a commune of artists, who walk across hot coals, and live in very cozy-looking pyramids. And, in Lithuania he explores the Hill of Crosses, an extraordinary spontaneous holy site that was bulldozed and flooded with sewage during the Soviet Era, yet kept reappearing.

Many of the things we as North Americans regard as elements of fantasy and wonder are simply the foundation of history. To us, Ancient Rome is essentially the same as Melnibone or Mordor. To a farmer in rural France, they're the guys who built crumbling wall over by the barn.

It makes me realize just how narrow a view we have of the world, simply because it would be impossible to encompass it all. But I should like to try, someday, and travel beyond North America. While I pride myself on my general grasp of the odd corners of the world and history, there are untold swathes of knowledge and wonderment that continually swim into view.

(PS: Like, I mean, did you know that Mexico had three emperors in the 19th century, and the last one also happened to be the Archduke of Austria? And that he was put into power by the French, who invaded Mexico under the direction of Napoleon III? I had no idea. Why didn’t someone tell me about this stuff in history class?)

Comments

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

The constant presence of old, old things is one of the major reasons I want to see Europe at some point.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's a totally different mentality.

My first host family in France owned the local textile mill, and so were one of the richest families in the area. They lived on the grounds of the local derelict château. Nobody went into the castle much. There were no tourists, no admission, no attempt to preserve it even - because there are just so many derelict châteaux in France that it wasn't necessary. The town I was in and the town next to it had a standing feud that went back to the time of Charlemagne, according to the version of the local legend that I heard - and kids were still told that they couldn't date so-and-so because that person came from the other town.

When you've lived with it for a while - not just seen it but been deep inside it - you start to see how it was that Yugoslavia broke up so violently. To us, the creation of Yugoslavia was ancient history, buried in the midst of post-war remapping of Europe ninety years ago. To them? Serbs still drink to a great prince who held back the Ottomans in the fourteenth century, and take their national pride from that. You can't bury a culture deeply enough to stamp that out in eighty years.

[leonard-arlotte.livejournal.com]

And yet, that's just what Cortez and Pizarro did with the Aztec and Inca civilizations respectively. I often wonder what it would have been like if those cultures hadn't been conquered, but made allies by the Spanish, and given a chance to grow and experience more advanced technology.

In October I'm going to be attending a convention near St. Louis, and am planning on taking a visit to the Cahokia Mounds (http://www.legendsofamerica.com/IL-Cahokia.html). That's a place that was at its peak at around the year 1100, but was founded somewhere around 700 or 800 CE. 700 years BEFORE Columbus stumbled upon the 'new world'.

There's lots of old stuff on this hemisphere. It's just been more thoroughly buried (literally).

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Correct me if I'm wrong - my knowledge of Inca and Aztec civilizations is much sketchier than my knowledge of Europe - but wasn't literacy a much more limited phenomenon in Central America? The existence of three religious traditions that guided but exceeded the countries of Yugoslavia, all of them with histories of scholarship going back a millenium or more, plus the long literary traditions and the comparatively high rate of literacy at that time, contributed greatly to the ability to preserve culture.

Also, my impression has always been that the Soviets saw the Serbs as their little Orthodox brothers, and didn't suppress their culture beyond the necessary to keep them in line because of that. I know that was the feeling pre-WWI, but I'm not sure how much it held up after 1917.

[leonard-arlotte.livejournal.com]

Not knowing the answer myself, I did some digging. For the Aztec and Mayans at least, literacy was largely limited to the Priest and Scribe classes, as well as the Nobility.

The point of the matter, though is that these cultures were not preserved as well as Europe because there was a conscious effort to destroy them. The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was literally taken apart stone by stone and thrown into the lake, then covered with dirt to serve as the foundation of Mexico City.

But despite those efforts, there is still some neat ancient stuff on this side of the world. I've stood atop the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan (I'll have to dig up my photos from that trip some day), and I have to say it's overwhelming to be surrounded by something that old and huge. I also someday want to visit Machu Picchu in Peru, and of course go to the grandaddy of old stuff, the pyramids in Egypt. (Not Western Hemisphere, I know, but hey, it's OLD)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Well, I would argue that the other reason the cultures weren't preserved as well was that the European cultures were all so close together and involved so much cultural exchange, as well as a high rate of literacy in the general population, that records of the culture existed in places that couldn't be stamped out very effectively, even when the attempt was made.

In any case, my experience is with Europe rather than North America. Someday I'd like to explore both the New World and a few corners of the Old that I haven't been to yet (which is a lot of it, actually.)