2000 - World Wonders - 121326e

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WORLD HERITAGE SEVEN WRITERS IN A WORLD OF WON DERS WORLD HERITAGE SEVEN WRITERS IN A WORLD OF WON DERS Jerusalem: source of sound and fury Corruption crackdown in Korea and Thailand Ian Tattersall: a fresh eye on human evolution December 2000 Canada:$3.95 Cdn,United Kingdom:£2.5,USA:$4.25

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UNESCO Courrier - publication from 2000, on the wonders of this world

Transcript of 2000 - World Wonders - 121326e

Page 1: 2000 - World Wonders - 121326e

WORLD HERITAGE

SEVEN WRITERS IN AWORLD OF WONDERS

WORLD HERITAGE

SEVEN WRITERS IN AWORLD OF WONDERSJerusalem:source of sound and fury

Corruption crackdownin Korea and Thailand

Ian Tattersall:a fresh eye on human evolution

December 2000

Canada:$3.95 Cdn,United Kingdom:£2.5,USA:$4.25

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World Heritage R e v i e w

S u b s c r i p t i o n s :Ediciones San Marcos, Maldonado 65, 28006, Madrid, Spaintel. : +34 91 309 20 80 fax : +34 91 444 80 51 e-mail: [email protected]

The timeless treasures of ournatural and cultural heritageand the efforts underway to safeguard them for futuregenerations

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UNESCO Publ ishing

n How to influence the emergence of the social andethical dimensions of globalization? Culture might be theanswer.

n Experts, statisticians and artists provide information and analysis and propose new concepts, insights and policyrecommendations.

Attached to the book is the cd-rom Guide to Cultural Resources on the Web, including museums, cultural management sites and otherInternet addresses.

29.7 x 21 cm414 pp.

260 FF/ 39.64

World Culture Report 2000Cultural diversity, conflict and pluralism

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C O N T E N T S

December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 3

DECEMBER 200053rd year

Published monthly in 27 languages and in Braille by the United Nations Educational,Scientific and

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e d i t o rs of the UN E S C O C o u r i e r. Photo captions and headlines arewritten by the UN E S C O C o u r i e r s t a f f. The boundaries on maps donot imply official endorsement or acceptance by UN E S C O or the

United Nations of the countries and territories concerned.

◗ PEOPLE AND PLACES4 The Trans-Siberian’s

grand bazaarPhotos by Frédéric Hermann,

text by Michel Jan◗ PLANET

10 When the rain in Spain is not enoughOctavi Marti

12 Free or foreign: the water battle in BoliviaJorge Cuba

◗ WORLD OF LEARNING14 Hands on: in this museum, touching is the rule

Jorge Wagensberg◗ ETHICS

37 Corruption: striking where it hurts in KoreaGlenn Manarin

38 A Thai crusade for clean politicsLaurence W. Sreshthaputra

◗ CULTURE40 Jerusalem: source of sound and fury

René Lefort

◗ MEDIA44 When computers chip away

at our memoriesIvan Briscoe

◗ TALKING TO…46 Ian Tattersall: the humans we left behind

Detailed table of contents on page 16.© Bertrand Gardel/Hémisphères, Paris

Fo c u s Seven writers in a world of wonders

Maori sculptures in New Zealand

As the third millennium begins, the notion of world heritage continues to break newground. Influenced by Western tradition,UNESCO’s World Heritage List long gave pride of place to monuments. Gradually, natural siteshave gained their rightful place, along withthose described as “mixed” (both cultural andnatural). Finally, sites singled out for theexceptional vitality of their traditions are nowattracting recognition. In this dossier, sevenwriters share their vision of a small selectionof these global wonders.

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T h e Tra n s - S i b e r ian ’

“I can tell any train by the noise of the wheelsEuropean trains beat four four time, in Asia it’s three five or three seven”

Blaise Cendrars, Prosody of the Transsiberian and of Little Jeanne of France, 1913(translated by John Dos Passos)

4 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

◗ P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S

Hawking goods on the platform of a station near Novosibirsk.

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n ’s grand bazaar

December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 5

It takes more than five days to get from Beijing to Moscow throughMongolia—no trip for the impatient.But I have always loved this journey.At one time the departure was a solemn occasion, with deserted carriagespulling out of the station before a row of Red Guards waving Mao’s little redbook to the strains of The East is Red. Nowadays, it is a hectic affair, with amyriad of goods overflowing in jam-packed corridors.

As the train pulls out of the station it seems to lurch in front of thecorner tower rising on the Tartar city’s southeastern edge, a rare vestige ofthe old ramparts, as if hesitating for a last time. Some travellers let their eyeslinger on the outlying neighbourhoods of China’s capital, while others begintheir adjustment to the small, slow-moving cell they will call home for the nextfive days. During the journey’s first few hours, the train clatters through thehilly northern Chinese countryside, where the Great Wall—at first well-restored,later reduced to a state of pitiful ruin—once marked the limits ofthe civilized world. Working through the landscape of loess, ochre andgorges dotted by scrawny willow trees, the train slowly chugs up to theMongolian plateau.Depending on the season, the landscape rolling by is worndown by summer rain or frozen like a rock in the dead of winter.

The train’s steady beat and the spectacle of this epic land,as fascinatingas a receding shoreline, inspires a mood of contemplation—that is until thepassengers are overcome by drowsiness caused by neither boredom norw e a r i n e s s,but a combination of daydreaming, r e a d i n g, c o n v e r s a t i o n ,w h i s p e r e dsecrets and treasured moments liberated from time, which seems forgottenor at least less pressing.After Datong, further north in Mongol country, t h esteppe stretches out monotonously to the horizon.A horseman keeping a herdof camels and a yurt are signs of humanity in the endless space, s p a r s e l ycovered with grass in midsummer, a moonscape from November to spring.

As evening falls, darkness creeps through the train.The lights in the carshave wiped out the outside world. In the heart of a desert that the passengershave forgotten, a strange coziness fills the compartments. The outdateddecor in first class—worn-out velvet the colour of crushed raspberries, p i n kribboned shades on table-lamps next to the windows, bevelled mirrors,imitation mahogany veneer and faded green curtains—keeps up the illusionof past luxury.A closed world, carried by the clickety-clack of steel on steel,advances into the night.The sleeping-car bunks are stacked three high.A weaklight shines on languid bodies dappled in shadow. Skillfully tied-up andstacked luggage fills the rest of the space.

Ulan Bator, the Selenga valley and the shores of Lake Baikal, I r k u t s k ,Tomsk, Novosibirsk,Sverlovsk (renamed Ekaterinenburg), the Urals. Thedays go by ticking off a litany of names that turn like the train’s wheels.

From Moscow to Beijing, travellers have five days to indulge their nostalgia in a legendary journey alongside adventurers and the odd bit of illegaltrade

PHOTOS BY FRÉDÉRIC HERMANN,TEXT BY MICHEL JAN

FRÉDÉRIC HERMANN IS A FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER. MICHEL JAN IS A FRENCHWRITER

SPECIALIZING IN CHINA WHO RECENTLY PUBLISHED

LE RÉVEIL DES TARTARES, EN MONGOLIE SURLES TRACES DE GUILLAUME DE RUBROUCK (PAYOT, 1998) AND LA

GRANDE MURAILLE DE CHINE

(IMPRIMERIE NATIONALE EDITIONS, 2000).

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◗ P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S

The Tra n s - S i b e r i a n ’s grand bazaar

“If I was a painter I’d splash a great deal of red, a great deal of yellow on the end of this journey

Because we must all of us have been more or less crackedAnd an enormous delirium brought the blood

out on the drawn faces of my traveling companions.As we drew nearer Mongolia

That roared like a burning building”Blaise Cendrars, Prosody of the Transsiberian and of Little Jeanne of France, 1913

6 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

The train’s measured pace opens the way to contemplation: here, a Russian woman from Siberia gazes out.

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December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 7

Changes are slow and the passengers have settled into theirh a b i t s.They return from the samovar at the end of the corridorwith faltering steps, following their daydreams, leaning theirelbows against the window; or weary of a journey that seemsendless, they play cards and chess.

The dining car changes with each country.The food’s qualityis uneven and offers a crude gastronomic tour first of China,then Mongolia and finally Russia. But canteen or greasy-spoon,it is part of the trip, attracting a steady flow of passengers andadding its own touch of the exotic.The powerful smell of garlic,the steam of boiled mutton and the bitter aroma of s o l y a n k a

In the Trans-Siberian’sregular cars,

the bunks are stackedthree high.

The “national”wagonsstop at every

border and arereplaced by others.

Russian carsonly run in Russia,

Mongolian ones in Mongolia

and Chinese ones in China.

Along the way,the traveller crosses a

whole cast ofcharacters: soldiers

(below),traders,traffickers,thieves and

other adventurers.

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◗ P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S

The Tra n s - S i b e r i a n ’s grand bazaar

(cabbage soup)juxtapose the swayingand creaking axles.A topening time it’s theliveliest place on thet r a i n , with a variedc l i e n t e l e. A fewWe s t e r n e r s, c u r i o u sabout the smallestd e t a i l , try to strike upconversations with thenatives in a commonl a n g u a g e, C h i n e s ewarily check out theirneighbours and,further away,R u s s i a n shunch over theirb o r s c h t ,disoriented bythe throng off o r e i g n e r s.

Only a fewdiplomats from eastAsia used to take theTrans-Siberian back to the USSR. But inthe past few years,the weekly trainbetween Beijing andM o s c o w,which travels

by way of Mongolia or Manchuria, has been frequented bypassengers travelling for a host of different reasons. The mostcommon is trade,a product of shortages on the opposite side of ab o r d e r,the resourcefulness of merchants and the flurry of peopleswho have now rediscovered bartering after years cut out of marketa c t i v i t y. There are also the “ s p e c i a l i s t s ” drawn to internationalexpress trains, on the lookout for shady opportunities or evenready to commit a crime. Female adventurers looking lost andwould-be immigrants who withhold their names and dream of anelysian Europe still roam the wagons.

The further the train reaches into Siberia, the livelier thecorridors become. Train employees and passengers, all of themC h i n e s e, unwrap cargoes including sacks of rice, bundles ofclothes and plastic utensils.The stops are few and far between,b u twhen they do come, the platform suddenly turns into one giantb a z a a r. Rows of Russian women offer the most unexpectedi t e m s :berries from the neighbouring forests,hot potatoes, t a w d r yl a m p s, shoes designed for discomfort. Men and women walkacross the tracks,wending their way between the cars as they carrysacks bulging with who-knows-what. A teenager flees aftersnatching a pair of trousers offered for sale by a Chinese manleaning out of a train window. S u d d e n l y, the locomotive’s siren

puts an end to the buying and selling,and the passengers rush backon the train, already thinking about the next stop.

And so on—until the Trans-Siberian reaches the area justoutside Moscow, rolling through villages dotted with white orgold church towers resembling the birch trees that blanket theRussian countryside in autumn.

The journey is a source of adventure and a muse. Isn’tBlaise Cendrars’ Prosody of the Transsiberian one of modernpoetry’s most beautiful verses? Travelling across Asia to reachEurope still captures the imagination. It is as if the peopleroaming from one continent to another, frozen in our memories,alone represent what is unchanging in human destiny. ■

“After Irkutsk the journey became very much slower

Much too slow,We were in the first train

that went around Lake Baikal”Blaise Cendrars, Prosody of the Transsiberian and

of Little Jeanne of France, 1913

Some don’t travel light.

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December 2000 -The Unesco Courier 9

A moment of elation before the expanse of Mongolia’s steppe.

R U S S I A

M O N G O L I A

K A Z A K H S T A NC H I N A

MOSCOW

VLADIVOSTOK

BEIJING

Perm

Omsk

Novosibirsk

Krasnoyarsk

Irkutsk

ULAN BATOR

Ulan Ude

ChitaLakeBaikal

Harbin

THE WILL OF THE CZARSThe “real” Trans-Siberian travels9,198 kilometres from Moscow toVladivostok.The train only runson Russian territory, on a linethat was finished in 1916.It wasbuilt to double a line completedin 1904 that the Russiansconsidered too unsafe after theRusso-Japanese war of 1904-1905because it crossed Manchuria.Today, two lines link Moscow andBeijing. At first,they follow the Trans-Siberian route beforeforking southward, one throughManchuria,the other throughMongolia.

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“What we call ‘the water problem’ in Spainis going to become ‘the water war,’ ”predicted Spanish ecologist José ManuelNaredo in 1997. Three years later, t h e400,000 people who marched through thestreets of Zaragoza (a town of 650,000inhabitants) on October 8 appeared toprove him right. Their target was theNational Water Plan (NWP), unveiled bythe government on September 5.

The plan’s centrepiece is the diversionof a billion cubic metres of water eachyear from the River Ebro to occasionallyor permanently arid regions on thec o u n t r y ’s Mediterranean coast. Fo rinhabitants of the province of A r a g ó n ,the 700,000 million pesetas (more than$3.5 billion) that the government intendsto spend on building 529 kilometres ofnew waterways and several dams aresimply 700,000 drops of water in a cupthat is already spilling over.

Aragón feels robbed. The 400,000demonstrators may have beenexaggerating a little when they shoutedthat the waters of “our Ebro” would be

used to keep golf courses green, f i l lswimming pools for tourists and supplyamusement parks while others die ofthirst and neglect. But as Naredoo b s e r v e s, “people no longer accept themainstay of Spanish water policy for thelast century, of taking water where youfind it and transferring it to where it’sneeded.”

The opponents of the NWP havestepped up their attacks. They say watersupplies can no longer be managed ontechnical criteria alone. The planneddiversions are dangerous, they argue,because the Ebro basin has not had awater surplus for the past quarter of a

10 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

OCTAVI MARTI

UNESCO COURIER JOURNALIST

When the rain in Spain is not enoughSpain uses vast quantities of water. To meet its country’s needs, the government has resorted to technical solutions such as diverting the Ebro river—a project that many people have condemned for squandering a precious resource

Irrigation in the Ebro delta: are farmers abusing cheap water?

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December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 11

c e n t u r y.But their main criticism is that the

diversion of the river is completelyu n n e c e s s a r y. Economic history teacherEnric Tello believes the answer to Spain’swater problems lies in “reorganizing thes u p p l y.” He argues that the country issuffering from “water schizophrenia” a n dthat “sooner or later taxpayers will wonderwhy they are still subsidizing the irrigationof crops that are already being subsidizedand are often produced in excessiveq u a n t i t i e s.”

This “schizophrenia” arises, he says,from the huge gap between the price ofwater for irrigation, which is almost free,and the much higher cost of water used incities and industries. So why not try tonarrow that gap? The answer could liein a small detail that both Tello andNaredo point to: Environment MinisterJaume Matas launched the NWP at theheadquarters of the Public Wo r k sEmployers’ Federation.

The ministry offers a quite differents p i n .O f ficials say demand for water will

keep on growing and requires the buildingof costly aqueducts. They agree that theirrigated area of around 3.5 millionhectares should not be increased, b u tdefend the river diversion plan and talk ofbuilding more than 70 new dams at a costof three thousand billion pesetas (about$15.5 billion) over eight years.All of whichclashes with a European Union directived e fining every water catchment area as adistinct management unit and ruling outwater transfers from one area to another.

But the ministry insists it is no longerpossible to “ g ob a c k w a r d s,”declaring that theNWP “will solve thewater problem forg o o d .” S p a i n ’s 1,070big dams alreadymake it the world’sleading country interms of proportionof dam-created lakesto total land mass.The fact is, h o w e v e r,that many serve nop u r p o s e, since for months on end theyare filled to only five or 10 percentc a p a c i t y.

Spain began its first major riverdiversion scheme in the 1960s by linkingthe Tagus in the west and centre-west tothe Segura in the southeast—a transfer of600 million cubic metres of water a year.But in 1999, the province of Castilla,which the Tagus flows through, refused tosupply a drop more than 40 million cubicm e t r e s, less than 10 percent of the amountoriginally planned.

What had happened? Maize growing,which requires a lot of water,expanded inthe regions along the Tagus (the Manchaand the Meseta). To irrigate today’s150,000 hectares of maize, you need todraw heavily on underground water andalso pump more from the Ta g u s. I nMurcia (watered by the Segura), whichbenefits from the diversion scheme,irrigated areas have grown enormously.Biologist José Luis Benito notes that“absurd though it might seem, t h ediversion of the Tagus has turned ahitherto occasional and irregular droughtinto a systematic and permanent one.”

Forty million hectares of Spain havea Mediterranean climate. Because therainy season and warm weather do notc o i n c i d e, there is little vegetation. P l a n t i n gm a i z e,a l f a l f a , potatoes and beans in sucha climate is not a particularly sound ideabecause these crops depend upon a lot of

w a t e r. In the Mancha, for instance, it takesa tonne of water to produce a kilo ofm a i z e. If water was not subsidized, a sPedro Arrojo has noted in his study of theirrigated regions of A r a g ó n ,90 percent ofthis land could not be profitably farmed.

This has led the historian Tello intocalling for a new agricultural policy basedaround sustainable development whichwould preserve subsidies for “ m a i n t a i n i n gbalanced land use and other social andenvironmental reasons,”but hand out theaid directly to farms rather than using it to

bring down the priceof water, fuel andchemical fertilizers.

If water forirrigation were not100 times cheaperthan water fori n d u s t r y, c r o p sunsuited to Spain’sclimate would bea b a n d o n e d .But Te l l ohas proposed asolution alreadyadopted in the United

States through the California Water Bank.This “ m a r k e t ” allows farmers, at certaintimes of the year, to re-sell some of theirwater stocks to cities that need it.B e c a u s ethey make money from this, they can thengrow crops that need less water, even ifthey are less profit a b l e. So the cities getthe water they need,the farmers do not losemoney and water resources are not over-u s e d .

Of the one billion cubic metres ofwater that will be diverted under theNWP, 300 million will go to the Valenciaregion, 430 million to Murcia, 90 to theAndalusian province of Almería and 180to Catalonia.But the latter has no watershortage, and is unlikely to have one forat least another 25 years judging by its

P L A N E T ◗

Water for irrigation

is 100 times cheaper than

water for industry

Atlantic Ocean

MéditerraneanSea

F R A N C E

S P A I N

MOROCCO A L G E R I A

MADRIDBarcelona

Zaragoza

Valencia

Murcia

Almería

C A S T I L L A

L A M A N C H A

A N D A L U S I A

E b r o

J ú c a r

S e g u r a

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A bill to privatize Bolivia’sgovernment-owned water network

recently sparked off a “water war” thatgrew into one of the Andean country’smost serious social crises of the past fewyears.

The conflict erupted in January 2000when the price of drinking water wastripled in the central Bolivian city ofC o c h a b a m b a , and peasants in thesurrounding arid region suddenly foundthat the water they had been drawingfreely for generations no longer belongedto them. City-dwellers accustomed tosubsidized water supplies wereconfronted by the true market price,w h i l ethe peasants—mostly Quechua Indianswho had owned the water for centuries—

involuntarily found themselves customersof Aguas del Tunari, a subsidiary of theBritish firm International Water.

No clean water for one third of the people

These changes were the result of Law2 0 2 9 ,a bill passed at the end of 1999 whichprivatized state drinking water and sewaged i s p o s a l . “ The law’s big mistake was toprivatize the sources of the water as wellsince franchises are usually only applied toadministration of the service,” s a y sBolivian hydrologist Carlos Fe r n á n d e zJa u r e g u i , a UNESCO water expert.F u r t h e r m o r e, the law was pushed throughwithout any kind of public hearings andunder pressure from the French fir m

Lyonnaise des Eaux,which is in charge ofthe water supply in the capital, La Paz,through a local company called Aguas deI l l i m a n i .

In South A m e r i c a ’s poorest country,where a third of the population has noaccess to clean water and 70 percent ofpeople live below the poverty line, there areplenty of reasons for social unrest. O n c eb e g u n , the water conflict escalated into amuch wider rebellion lasting 10 chaoticmonths and causing huge economic losses,an 11-day state of siege and a dozen deaths.

The unrest was serious enough tomake the government cave in.In April,Aguas del Tunari pulled out of thecontract they had signed with the state tobuild a dam at Misicuni aimed at boosting

current population growth. Naredo addsthat after Barcelona’s preparations forthe 1992 Olympic Games,which involvedshutting down old industrial plants thatconsumed a lot of water,“the city’s watertable rose to the point that it had to pumpwater out to avoid flooding the subwayand underground parking lots.”

Tello has looked into the potentialb e n e fits of “a system that would penalizewaste and encourage saving and recy c l i n gw a t e r.” Whenever industry has realizedwater can cost it 10 times less throughcareful planning, it has changed itspatterns of use.Tello has also shown thatinvesting 100,000 pesetas (about $500) toequip every household in Catalonia withelectrical and water appliances that cansave and re-use water would be cheaperthan a projected scheme to channel waterfrom the River Rhône, in southern Fr a n c e,to Barcelona, at a cost of around 200billion pesetas (more than $1 billion).

Taxing water in a more consistent waywould solve another big problem: that ofoutdated piping.Pedro Arrojo has notedthat the water network in Zaragoza was

so leaky that no difference was registeredbetween daytime and nighttimec o n s u m p t i o n . In the market gardeningarea around Valencia, the price farmerspay for water is fixed by the amount ofland they need to irrigate, meaning thatlosses caused by faulty piping aregenerally ignored. Another example isthe Jucar imperial canal, which is builtdirectly in the earth and results in massiveleakage.

The second largest ecologicalreserve under threat

Spain gets 346 billion cubic metres ofrainfall each year, of which 109 billionremains after evaporation. This shouldbe enough to meet an annual demand of35 billion cubic metres,80 per cent of it foragriculture, which usually pays one pesoper cubic metre.

In areas where the price of water forirrigation is higher (30 pesetas a cubicmetre) because it comes fromdesalination plants or from underground,farming is very sophisticated. A l m e r í a ,which 20 years ago was Spain’s poorest

p r o v i n c e, is today the country’s fastestgrowing one and relies upon the mostforeign labour (which is neitherwelcomed nor assimilated). B e c a u s eyields are very high, the province has13,000 hectares of land that are illegallyirrigated.

The diversion of the Ebro is anineffective response to Spain’s cultural,social,political and economic problems.Opponents of the scheme say it evencreates new difficulties:the defenders ofthe environment are especially worriedthat the Ebro delta, the country’s secondbiggest ecological reserve, m i g h tdisappear.

Since the end of the 19th century,sediment in the river has dropped by 95p e r c e n t .As a result, the government has toinvest about 20 billion pesetas ($100million) to add sand to some beaches.O n ething is nevertheless certain: i fd e s e r t i fication continues to advance inS p a i n , the country will not be needing extras a n d . ■

12 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

BY JORGE CUBA

BOLIVIAN JOURNALIST

FREE OR FOREIGN:THE WATER BATTLE IN BOLIVIAShould water be supplied by local authorities or private companies? A violent conflict in Bolivia has recently shown that both can work, but only if the wishes of consumers are taken into account

Water wars

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the Cochabamba region’s water supply.But in spite of the citizens’ victory in the

“water war,”C o c h a b a m b a ’s basic problemshave not been solved.The city has no morethan five hours of water a day,and only 40percent of farmers in the surrounding areahave access to clean water.“ The only wayto end Cochabamba’s water shortage is tobuild the dam,” says Fernández Ja u r e g u i .“ The other solutions are just sticking

p l a s t e r s.” Other plans, such as one to tapinto underground rivers,have so far madelittle headway, while efforts to form acooperative or limited company with theinvolvement of local people have come ton o t h i n g.

Aside from the dam, the Misicuni planincludes building a tunnel, w a t e rp u r i fication plants and sewage farms tothe tune of $300 million. The generous

terms the privatization lawgave to contractors werej u s t i fied in terms of the need toattract enough investment topay for the multi-million-dollarproject on top of the moneyprovided by Boliviant a x p a y e r s. In the end,h o w e v e r,the project backfired onPresident Hugo Banzer’sg o v e r n m e n t :Aguas del Tu n a r iis demanding heavycompensation for having towithdraw from the project,stoking fears that if the statedoes not pay up, B o l i v i a ’sreputation with foreigninvestors will be harmed.

Taking culture andcustoms into account

But the departure of theseforeign firms is not necessarilythe best solution, not even forthe poor. Due to theirinternational experience,multinationals are usuallybetter value for money thanlocal public utilities, they usethe water more effectively andpay better salaries to theirt e c h n i c i a n s. G o v e r n m e n t s, f o rtheir part, must shield citizensfrom the natural commercialappetites of these giant waterc o m p a n i e s.

In Fernández Ja u r e g u i ’so p i n i o n , B o l i v i a ’s waterproblems stem fromadministrative failures, a n dBolivians are paying for theirinexperience in waterl e g i s l a t i o n .“ There aren’t anylaws or institutions and therei s n ’t enough suitableinfrastructure to cope with thewater problem,” he says.

Other Latin A m e r i c a nc o u n t r i e s, in contrast, h a v eacquired useful experience insolving the thorny confli c t scaused by water.C o m m u n i t i e sare very attached to the freesupply of water enjoyed byprevious generations, b u tthrough frank and open

dialogue they can also come to understandthat it is a scarce resource which must nowbe paid for. “ There were obviously otherways to tackle the water problem inB o l i v i a ,”says Fernández Ja u r e g u i .“ Wa t e rlegislation has to be based on consultinglocal people, as other laws are. If localc u l t u r e,customs and ways of life had beentaken into account, all these problemscould have been avoided.” ■

December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 13

“What is ours is ours and cannot be taken away”: m a rching against the hike in water rates in

P L A N E T ◗

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SJORGE WAGENSBERG

SPANISHPHYSICISTAND DIRECTOR OFTHE

LA CAIXA FOUNDATION SCIENCE MUSEUM IN BARCELONA

ome time ago I got into the habit ofleaving my office to eavesdrop on visitorsin every nook and cranny of the La CaixaFoundation Science Museum that I run inB a r c e l o n a .A lot of what they say provesvery interesting, and excellent food forthought about what a modern sciencemuseum should aim to be.

O n c e,I was hot on the heels of a youngfather and his son of about seven. Th e ypaused in front of a mimosa pudica p l a n twhose leaves recoil when you touch them.

Father:Did you see that?Boy:What? What’s happening? Hey!

But is it real or not?

Father:It’s real.Don’t you see?I lingered behind them as they

approached a model of the Amazon thatcompresses a day’s life in the rainforestinto the space of 10 minutes, i n c l u d i n gan electrically-generated storm, t o r r e n t i a lrain and a rainbow. In the middle of thes h o w, the entranced boy looked up to hisfather and asked once again:“ D a d , is thisreal or not?”To which his father replied:“It isn’t real. . . Watch carefully!”

A few minutes later,at an underwaterarchaeology exhibit with a giant aquariumfeaturing a sunken ship and huge morayfish swimming between the furniture in

the captain’s cabin, I heard anotherexchange:

Boy:They’re real,aren’t they?Father:Of course.You can see that.Boy:And the furniture?Fa t h e r : H m m . I don’t know. I think

some of it is.The boy’s metaphysical obsession—

about whether things are real or not,about the difference between experienceand theory, between a replica and “theactual thing”—was much stronger thanhis father’s.U n w i t t i n g l y, this young visitorreopened a critical debate in our museumover when to use a real-life object,when

14 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

Hands on: in this museum,touching is the ruleJorge Wagensberg eavesdrops on visitors to the science museum he runs in Barcelona. The conversations he overhears enable him to imagine

A tactile exploration of our planet in a room devoted to understanding the thriving of life on earth.

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December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 15

to use a replica and whether the two canbe combined.

In any case it’s clear what a museummust not do:namely boil down its exhibitsto excerpts from a book whose crammedpages can be read by the long-sufferingvisitors as they walk down a hallway intorooms full of scale models fordemonstrations and videos andcomputers that look like shopfronts ofelectrical stores. One of the mostelementary mistakes made by today’smuseums is to forget that the absolutepriority is to be real.

Just as classes, conferences andseminars are based mainly on the spokenword, cinema and television on imagesand books and magazines on the writtenword, museums and exhibitions shouldfocus on the real object or event.For it isthe prospect of encountering reality thatdraws people to museums.

In recent years, science museums havebeen at the vanguard in terms of changingtheir collections, methods andengagement with the public. Our sloganthese days is “please touch.” The oldconcept of the display case has beenreplaced by that of experience, and theacademic label has changed into a moreliterary one. Above all, the formerhighbrow attitude has been overtakenby an effort to involve all five humansenses.

A careful mixture oftouch, feelings and thought

Another thing I’ve learnt on mystrolls around the museum is that we stillhave a long way to go before youngstersfeel comfortable there. I recently cameacross a little girl,no more than six yearsold, throwing large stones at a woodenopen-air kiosk used in summertime asan ice-cream shop. It was winter and thekiosk was closed. I reached her just asshe was about to throw another stone.As soon as she saw me,she dropped it andlooked down shamefacedly. I stood theresilently for a moment before she lookedu p, gazed at the kiosk, then turned to meand asked:“Is that yours?”

To get our young visitors to treatthings in the museum with care, they haveto feel they have a stake in them.Th o u g hit is not easy,one way is to try to stimulatetheir senses. In a science museum, t h emost effective stimuli are a carefulmixture of touch,feelings and thought.

L e t ’s take a few examples. Once Iquietly shadowed a boy of about 10 intothe museum’s big vivarium, which hadan exhibit called “Invisible Stillness.”Atfirst he saw nothing. But behind the glassand amid dry leaves, earth and roots, l i v e dthree dozen stick-insects (E x t e t o s o m a

t i a r a t u m) . The boy was puzzled andlooked around,clearly annoyed.He musthave thought it was a joke or that theexhibit was being repaired.

Then he spotted a notice saying:“ Th e r eare 30 big insects in here.” With anincredulous look, he seemed to bewondering how so many insects could beinvisible in such a small space. Then hesaw them—one. . .t w o. . .t h r e e.“ H e y,now Iget it! There they are,” I heard him say as Iwatched his face light up. His eyes hadbeen looking at the insects, but his brainh a d n ’t seen them. That is emotionali n t e r a c t i o n . The boy, like many otherv i s i t o r s, was enthralled by everything hesaw after that.

Next to the vivarium is a window inwhich you can see a mass of scattereddots with no discernible pattern. If thevisitor touches a lever, some of the dotsarrange themselves into the shape of ana n i m a l . This is an example of genuinemanual interactivity:move the lever andthe animal appears; release it and thecreature disappears before your eyes.

It is a small trick that arouses theimagination and makes the point thatmany hunted animals stay absolutely stillwhen a predator is terrifyingly close tot h e m . Applied in daily life (why do wewave to attract the attention of a waiterwho pretends not to see us?), it explainswhat mental interactivity means, a n dallows the visitor to make comparisonsand even reinterpret previous experiences.

The main job of a modern museumshould be to go beyond preservingh e r i t a g e, i n f o r m i n g, training and event e a c h i n g, and to generate this kind ofexcitement through objects and real

p h e n o m e n a . People can then physicallyexperience the feelings of the scientist,who is not seeking either good or evil butsimply trying, like anyone else, to come upwith as much knowledge as he or she canabout the world in an effort to makeh u m a n i t y ’s cosmic solitude bearable.Th a t ’s why scientists do experiments—they are endeavouring to converse withn a t u r e.A museum should strive to makevisitors plunge like divers into thes c i e n t i s t ’s quest.

For the best ideas,tune into the young

Based on my experience as a museumdirector and eavesdropper, I think weshould pay close attention to whatchildren say, because we might learnsomething from youngsters who arelearning themselves. Our museum is forpeople of all ages or education. But theyoungest visitors have what turn out to becertain very good ideas.So we must tuneinto their thoughts, like those of two boysand their mother as they were comingout of our large weather exhibition. O n eboy was about 10 and the other aboutfive and had to run to keep up. The 10-year-old seemed annoyed.

B oy, 1 0 : Mum! Mum! W h a t ’s in theAmazon?

M o t h e r : O K , we’ll go and see. B u tmaybe you’ll be disappointed.

And then from somewhere behind me,a little voice.

Boy, 5:Mum?Mother: Yes dear?Boy, 5:What’s disappointed? ■

W O R L D O F L E A R N I N G ◗

B a rc e l o n a ’s Science Museum

Opened in 1981, the La Caixa FoundationScience Museum is the first of its kind inSpain. Its main aim is to spread scientificand technical knowledge among thegeneral public, especially students. To dot h i s, it encourages contact betweens c i e n t i s t s, teachers and scientificinstitutions. It covers an area of 7,000square metres and another 30,000 arecurrently being added on.To know more:www.fundacio.lacaixa.es

Budding scientists at the helm.

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C o n t e n t s1 8 The past is not just made of stone

Léon Pressouyre

2 0 The soul of Suzhou’s gard e n sLu We n f u

2 3 Irrigating time with the Kinderdijk w i n d m i l l sSerge van Duijnhoven

2 6 The tre a s u res in Mauritania’s dunesMoussa Ould Ebnou

2 9 G u a n a j u a t o : fortunes made of silverRafael Segovia

3 1 Dancing anew on the stairways to h e a v e nAlfred A . Yu s o n

3 4 Jemâa-el Fna’s thousand andone nightsJuan Goytisolo

SEVEN in a Worl

his voyage is a personal one:seven writers share their vision of a small

selection of wonders chosen from the 630 cultural and natural sites on

U N E S C O ’s World Heritage List.The Senegalese poet Charles Carrère sets

forth his approach to heritage, as both an inheritance and a gift to be

passed on, a fruit of many meetings and exchanges, an expression of

memory and hope (p. 17).As Professor Léon Pressouyre explains, the

criteria for selecting world heritage sites have considerably evolved

since the adoption in 1972 of an international convention to protect these

treasures of humanity, now spread across 118 countries (pp. 18-19).

Our journey begins with the wanderings of Chinese writer Lu Wenfu in the gardens of Suzhou (pp.

2 0 - 2 2 ) . Serge van Duijnhoven recalls his childhood near the Kinderdijk windmills, forever threatened

by the sea (pp. 2 3 - 2 5 ) . Mauritanian writer Moussa Ould Ebnou describes how his country’s 12th and

13th century cities are inexorably being reclaimed by the desert sands (pp. 26-28).Rafael Segovia

of Mexico testifies to the unwavering tenacity of Guanajuato, a town that surged from the belly of

the mountain in the 15th century with the discovery of silver and gold mines (pp. 29-30). In the

Philippines, Alfred A. Yuson admires the rare

complicity forged between nature and the

indigenous tribes who have patiently sculpted

the rice terraces of Luzon Island over the past

2,000 years (pp. 3 1 - 3 3 ) . And finally, J u a n

Goytisolo brings life to the notion of ora l

heritage by inviting us to Morocco to hear the

legendary storytellers of Jemâa-el-Fna square,

in Marrakesh.

Dossier concept and coordination by Jasmina Sopova, UNESCO Courier journalist

F O C U S

T

16 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

The World Heritage emblem symbolizes

the interdependence of the world’s naturaland cultural diversity.While the centralsquare representsthe results of humanskill and inspiration,the circle celebratesthe gifts of nature.

The emblem is round,like the world, a symbol

of global protection forthe heritage of humankind.

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Heritage is a timely theme in a worldshaken by an intense and violent crisis,o n ewhich calls into question an entire systemof values while eroding the relationshipbetween people and the environment.Th eeffects of industrial and technologicalevolution testify to this: the sacred pactbetween people, nature and the universehas been severed.The planet is poisoned.And life seems threatened in all its differentf o r m s.

This crisis not only beckons us torethink our approaches to developmentbut the very notion itself. For too long,development has solely been seenthrough the materialist lens of productionand consumption. To d a y, i n t e l l e c t u a l s,artists and writers are increasinglyconvinced that this concept, w h i c hs a c r i fices culture to economic growth,the qualitative to the quantitative, c a nonly bear catastrophic consequences.

To d a y,we renew our longstanding callto place culture ahead of all else.The greatlandmarks in humanity’s history havealways been in the domain of culture. It isnot a question of creating cultural,e t h n i cand geographical ghettoes. On the

c o n t r a r y. Putting culture first meansappreciating the specificity and richness ofour respective identities, building on theheritage of the past and enriching thatwhich we bequeath to future generations.It is a heritage to which all peoples,n a t i o n s, c o n t i n e n t s, in short, all civilizationscould contribute their own irreplaceablev a l u e s.

This would lead us towards ahumanism of “giving and receiving” t h a tthe Martinique poet Aimé Césaire hasso fervently called for. This humanismoffers a new way of conceiving the termsof exchange.The outcome is a symbiosisof cultures so that they don’t becomealike or fuse, but are enriched throughencounters with each other.This “ c u l t u r eof the universal,” cherished by theSenegalese poet Léopold Sédar Senghor,is not a universal culture but a meeting ofcivilizations.

It is in this meeting that humanity’sworld heritage lies. Human beingsdistinguish themselves from animals bytheir creative spirit, with which theytranscend the horizons of the visible. Fi r e,once mastered, is transformed into

rustlings of life, colours and shapes. Thefirst staff our ancestors leaned upon,thefirst stones they chose to rest upon, thefirst cave in which they sought shelter,were all tinged with the colours of light.Human beings were born in beauty fromthe outset: for the beautiful they wereborn.

Created by stardust, peoples crossedthe world, sprinkling it with stones asg u i d e p o s t s, just as in the tale of Hansel andG r e t e l . As time passed, they builtmonuments carrying the stamp of theirgenius and the permanence of theirs p e c i e s.

For coherent action, we need animage of the past and a vision of thef u t u r e. For if science cannot answerquestions regarding their earliest origins,nor those of the afterlife, human beingswill climb many mountains to proclaimtheir faith in life.Their spirit of resistanceand their hope springs from this faith.Itis a faith that is proclaimed, like a vitalneed,on the front of their buildings.

From the cabins of their childhoodto the columns of temples,on each stone,behind every door, this hope will beforever engraved. ■

H E R I TAG E , A LESSON IN GIVING AND RECEIVING

CHARLES CARRÈRE

SENEGALESEPOET AND PAINTER, VICE PRESIDENT OFTHE INTERNATIONAL POETRY HOUSE IN BRUSSELS (BELGIUM).ONE OFHIS MOST RECENTWORKS IS HIVERNAGE PUBLISHED BY L’HARMATTAN (PARIS, 1999).

December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 17

O P I N I O N

WRITERS d of Wo n d e rs

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A professor at the Université ParisI,Léon Pressouyre is president ofthe Commission for theconservation of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s nationalmonuments, within UNESCO. Hewas the ICOMOScoordinator (International Council onMonuments and Sites) for the World Heritage Convention between 1980 and1990 and represented France onthe World Heritage Committeefrom 1990 to 1997.He is theauthor of The World Heritage Convention,Twenty Years Later (UNESCO,1993).

LÉON PRESSOUYRE

18

LÉON PRESSOUYRE

FRENCH UNIVERSITYPROFESSOR

W hat is the common thread runningthrough the U N E S C O Wo r l dHeritage sites featured in this issue,which have inspired a constellationof writers and artists fascinated by

their unique and irreplaceable nature? The sitesmay not be stars on the tourist circuit,nor are theyformally connected with each other, but they aretelling examples of some recent changes in ourattitudes towards heritage.

One is the steadily vanishing division betweencultural and natural heritage.The other is a growingawareness of the value of intangible heritage,w h i c his being undermined and too often brushed aside bythe unstinting advance of globalization.

The World Heritage Convention,adopted by theU N E S C O General Conference in 1972, fashioned av i t a l ,ground-breaking idea into an international legals t a t u t e. But it defined humanity’s heritage veryconservatively under two headings: the cultural andthe natural. This marked the culmination of a longtradition and of a more recent intellectual effort tomatch the splendours of art with the wonders ofn a t u r e.

H u m a n i t y ’s admiration for its own creationswas displayed as far back as the second centuryB.C. in the famous list of the seven wonders of theworld—a world narrowly confined to the easternMediterranean.

Tides, phoenixes and volcanoes:proof of divine power in nature

Few people are aware that the wonders of naturewere in fact listed well before the modern era andthe birth of environmental awareness.A 12t h- c e n t u r yLatin manuscript held in the French NationalL i b r a r y, for instance,contrasts the seven destructibleman-made wonders with seven wonders of naturewhich,the author says, are proof of divine power.

On the list are tides,plant germination, the phoenix(the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes), avolcano (Mount Etna in Sicily), a hot spring nearGrenoble (Fr a n c e ) , as well as the sun and the moon.These were wonders unaffected by age or accident,t h eauthor maintains, and their demise could only comewith the end of the world, whereas the man-madewonders were destined to disappear well before then.

The 1972 Convention reflects this dual Europeant r a d i t i o n . It was not the product of a debate amongp h i l o s o p h e r s, historians and sociologists about the

concept of heritage, but simply the convergence oftwo schools of thought. One came directly from the1931 League of Nations conference in A t h e n s, a n dconcerned preserving cultural heritage as defin e din terms of classical notions of a “ m a s t e r p i e c e ” o r“wonder of the world.” The other stemmed fromthe first international conference on protectingn a t u r e, in Bern in 1913, which was followed up by theBrunnen conference in 1947 and the foundation thefollowing year of the World Conservation Union,whose aim was to pass on to future generations“ u n s p o i l e d ” natural sites untouched by humans.

Vineyards and rice terracesfind their way onto the List

This division between cultural treasures (thoughtof as monuments created by human beings) andnatural ones (which owed nothing to humaninvolvement) long dominated the application ofthe 1972 Convention.In 1994,nearly half the siteson the World Heritage List were cultural ones withinE u r o p e.Nothing could have been further removedfrom the spirit of the Convention.

When in June 1994 the World HeritageCommittee adopted the recommendations ofexperts who had looked into how representative theList was, it absorbed the very different conceptionof culture espoused by anthropologists ande t h n o l o g i s t s, one that encompasses a complexmixture of social organizations,ways of life, b e l i e f s,know-how and expressions of past and presentcultures.

The accession to the List of cultural landscapes,such as the rice terraces of the Philippine Cordillerasand Fr a n c e ’s Saint-Emilion vineyards, is one of the

The Convention Concerning the Protection of the Wo r l dC u l t u ral and Natural Heritage, adopted in 1972 by the

UNESCO General Conference, e n c o u rages states to chooseexceptional sites for preserva t i o n .To date, the Convention hasbeen ra t i fied by 161 countries. In November 2000, the Wo r l dHeritage List consisted of 630 sites in 118 countries—480 ofthem cultura l , 128 natural and 22 described as mixed. ■

To know more:www.unesco.org/whcWorld Heritage Review, published quarterly by UNESCOPublishing www.worldheritagereview.org

The past is not just made of stoneThe world’s heritage is about more than monuments and naturalwonders—the intangible ideas and beliefs that make up our collective memory also have their rightful place

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December 2000 -The Unesco Courier 19

The heritage of a country isessentially itscultural identity,and whether big or small,majestic orsimple, physicalor non-physical, itmust bemaintained andhave a meaningfor every newgeneration. I.M. Pei,American architect (1917-)

positive outcomes of the 1994 change in guidelines.A few years earlier, even though public interest inhistorical gardens (such as those of Shalimar, i nL a h o r e, Pakistan) was fully recognized, s t e r i l edebates would probably have prevented themgaining a place on the List.

The same goes for industrial heritage. Beforethey began being put “ o p e n l y ”on the List, i n d u s t r i a lsites were admitted in disguise: the salt mines atWi e l i c z k a , in Po l a n d , and the royal salt works in theFrench town of Arc-et-Senans, for example, wereaccepted in 1978 and 1988 on the basis of theirarchitectural merit. M e a n w h i l e, the prestige ofmonuments declined as interest grew in roads,railway networks, rivers and canals—all of themlong neglected by the List,perhaps because of legalproblems involved in preserving them.

Moving away from classicaldefinitions of a masterpiece

Such choices reflect a significant change in ourconcept of heritage. By finally questioning the ideainherited from ancient times and firmly rooted inEuropean culture of what a masterpiece is, t h eWorld Heritage Committee opened the way to amore balanced picture of humanity’s heritage. Ashared and indivisible heritage, where theinteraction of people and nature is fully recognized,is gradually winning converts from the incompletevision of heritage that the 1972 Conventionperpetuated despite its best intentions.

No longer is the sacred Maori mountain in New

Z e a l a n d ’s Tongariro National Park seen as verydifferent from Mount A t h o s, in Greece,even thoughthe forests and volcanic craters of the first aremonuments steeped in sacred meaning while thesecond houses the world’s largest collection ofByzantine art.

Legends, beliefs and traditions:safeguards to our collective memory

So intangible heritage—the amorphous bodyof beliefs, l e g e n d s,written and oral traditions alongwith forms of behaviour that make up ourdiversity—has made a vigorous comeback onto theWorld Heritage List. The 1972 Convention madeonly passing mention of intangible heritage andtied it to the existence of material evidence.But afterlong neglect it now seems that intangible heritage isthe key safeguard to humanity’s collective memory,precisely because of its very vulnerability.

What would happen to Marrakesh—whose cityw a l l s, mosques and palaces are preserved likemuseum pieces—if the Jemâa-el-Fna Square was nolonger a vibrant and colourful meeting place ofc u l t u r e s, filled with music and hubbub and thearomas of several worlds that we are lucky to know?

What would the Sri Lankan city of Kandy be likewithout its annual pilgrimage that draws thousandsof the faithful to venerate the remarkable relic thatis the Buddha’s tooth? And what would become ofthe World Heritage site of Sukur, in Nigeria,if thehighly structured society living there suddenly lostall its centuries-old traditions? ■

Pomp and circumstance in Kandy, Sri Lanka,during an annual pilgrimage to venerate the Buddha’s tooth.

S E V E N W R I T E R S I N A W O R L D O F WO N D E R S

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20

The soul of S u z h o u ’s gardensThe Suzhou gardens in southern China recreate nature in miniature to celebrate theharmony between heaven and Earth. An initiate guides us along their winding paths,decoding a host of refined symbols

LU WENFU

CHINESEWRITER

In the 13th century, the Ve n e t i a nmerchant and adventurer MarcoPolo was the first Westerner tointroduce Suzhou to Europe. Fo rh i m , this paradise on Earth was

above all a flourishing silk-productionc e n t r e. L a t e r,other Europeans fascinatedby the city,which is criss-crossed by canals,called it “the Venice of the Orient.” I nthe 1980s, I helped to spread Suzhou’sfame by presenting it as a paradise forgourmets in my novel,The Gourmet.A n dw h e n , in 1997, UN E S C O inscribed Suzhouon the World Heritage List because ofits classical gardens, the town’s reputation

acquired yet another dimension.Cruel as they may be, human beings are children

of nature and cannot live without mountains,w a t e r,g r a s s, t r e e s, sunshine and air. If we are far awayfrom those elements, we feel stifle d , ill at ease,t r a p p e d .As soon as we can,we go on vacation. B u trather than travel,which can be a tiring, expensiveand even dangerous exercise, why not make areplica of nature in miniature,“an artificial nature”

intended for daily use?In Europe, for example,parks are huge.I m m e n s e

forests crossed by abundant rivers stretch as far asthe eye can see without any obstacles to mar nature’ss p e c t a c l e.These parks are actually large stretches ofnature that have been “fenced off” and touched upa bit by adding a building here and there on thebanks of a river or at the edge of the woods.

Chinese landscaped gardens,on the other hand,put more emphasis on the idea of harmony betweenheaven and Earth, a salient feature of Chinesephilosophy. The gardens of Suzhou are actually aman-made landscape. Its designers have replicatedall of nature’s basic features in miniature on flatground.Since it is impossible to move mountains,they built rock gardens. Since the courses of riverscannot be changed, they dug canals into the earthand made water flow through them.And the groundbeneath Suzhou is so gorged with water that all ittakes is a hole three metres deep to create a pond.The people who live there, without a false sense ofs h a m e, acknowledge that they have “ f a l s i f i e d ”mountains and rivers. But that “falsification” is awork of art in the fullest sense of the term and,consequently, fundamentally truthful.

Rock gardens are the soul of Suzhou.The stonesof which they are made—the soul’s receptacle—

NORTHKOREA

SOUTHKOREA JAPAN

BEIJING

Suzhou Shanghai

Yellow Sea

Sea ofJapan

East China Sea

Rocks are the soul of the gardens and trees their most precious good.Here, in the “Garden of the Master of Nets.”

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Born in 1928 in the Chineseprovince of Jiangsu,Lu Wenfu haslived in Suzhou since 1945.Ajournalist,he went on to becomea novelist and has won severalnational literary prizes. VicePresident of the Association of ChineseWriters, he is the founder and editor of the SuzhouMagazine, published monthly. Hisbooks translated into EnglishincludeThe Gourmet and Other Stories ofModern China (ReadersInternational,1987).

LU WENFU

December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 21

S E V E N W R I T E R S I N A W O R L D O F WO N D E R S

come from Lake Ta i , which is located near Suzhou.Worn down by erosion, these delightful, steep rockswere so famous that even the emperors of the distantnorth sent their builders to bring them back todecorate their gardens. The most famous andprecious among them are called “rock peaks.”Th eassessment of their quality is based on three criteria.They must be “ s l e n d e r ” rather than “ b u l k y,” t h e ymust contain horizontal as well as vertical “ t u n n e l s ” ;and their surface must be wrinkled rather thans m o o t h .

But there is more to creating a work of art thanpiling up beautiful rocks. The first rock gardenm a s t e r s,highly skilled and very cultured craftsmen,appeared at Suzhou under the Tang (618-907) andSong (907-1271) dynasties, a period when gardenswere flourishing everywhere in China. Th esuccessors of these first landscape designers were sonumerous and talented that under the Ming dynasty( 1 3 6 8 - 1 6 4 4 ) , the town and its surrounding area wasdotted with between 200 and 300 gardens.To d a y, 7 7are left,of which 27 have been designated nationall a n d m a r k s. But many of them are actually just largecourtyards containing small gardens decorated withflo w e r s, p l a n t s, bamboo and rocks, like the onesthat were once found in most of Suzhou’s houses.

Changing the landscape with everystep: a rule of garden design

Qing Gu Yliang was an undisputed master underthe Qing dynasty (1644-1840). He created thelimestone “Mountain of the Villa of EmbracingB e a u t y ”1 (H u a n x i u) . Gu Yliang went blind towardsthe end of his life, but his followers completed thework under his supervision. And therein lies thesecret of the mountain’s beauty:it was built by themaster’s soul,rather than his hands. It is the exactr e p l i c a , in miniature,of the real mountain that livedin his heart. Its dimensions are modest—it coversless than 500 square metres and its peaks are nomore than seven metres high. But the moment yougo inside,you feel as though you are walking into theentrails of a huge, wild mountain located on theedge of a winding gorge. And you think of thesewords by Chen Congzhou,a current-day specialiston Chinese gardens:“the mountain that looks likea rock garden is strange; the rock garden that lookslike a mountain is a thing of wonder.”

H o w e v e r, it takes more than a mountain tomake a landscape.Water is another of the gardens’crucial features. But to bring water to the gardens,it is necessary to either make use of an already-existing pond or stream,or dig into the ground.Inany case, the builders must know how to opentrenches and make water flow through them, t ocreate and then re-unite the branches of a river. In

short,they must know how to imitate the bends ofa river in order to obtain what we call “ s i n u o u sc u r r e n t s.” The masters of Suzhou excelled in this art.

Rivers mean bridges.The gardens of Suzhou aredotted with all manner of miniature stone and woodens p a n s. For example, the “Garden of the Master ofN e t s ”1(Wa n g s h i y u a n) has a very pretty little bridgethat can be crossed in two or three strides.

Suzhou has mountains, r i v e r s,bridges—but whatabout trees? A landscape with neither plants norflowers is a desert.Old trees are the most preciousfeature of classical Chinese gardens becauseanything is possible, including laying out a Suzhougarden in the United States, except making an oldtree. In the “Lingering Garden” 1(Liuyuan) thereis a thousand-year-old ginkgo tree.The shade of itsfan-shaped foliage is where the master decided tobuild the rock garden.

Visitors to Suzhou must not be impatient.U n l i k eVe r s a i l l e s, where the splendid vista of palace andpark can be taken in with a single, sweeping glance,the gardens of Suzhou are hidden behind narrowstreets like demoiselles in a boudoir.When you walkinto a garden, you might even feel a bit disappointed:the first thing you see is a long, zig-zagging gallery.This is the “winding path leading to serene beauty,”a basic feature of the garden’s architecture.At fir s ts i g h t , it may not look very interesting.But before youknow it, a patch of garden behind a wall will wink atyou through the latticework of a sculpted window.Trees and pavilions can be made out in the distance.After a few steps on a winding path, a magnific e n tgarden appears before your eyes.

“Changing the landscape with every step” i sthe second rule that must be observed in classicalChinese garden design.The scene shifts as you walkalong. To avoid the impression of monotony andr e p e t i t i o n , the designers erected walls pierced withsculpted windows that divide the gardens into

The gardens are dotted with miniature stone and wooden spans.

1.Site inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.2 . Two sentences of which certain words set uprelationships between them with correspondingmeanings and sounds. U s u a l l y, these “ m a t ch i n g ”words occupy the same position in both sentences.

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several sections without obstructing a view of theentire complex. Your eyes are never at rest in agarden of Suzhou.At every turn, the sight of a rock,a stand of bamboo or a banana tree takes the visitorby surprise. Each plot of land has been designed toresemble a splendid painting. A dead angle here

would be like a failed brushstroke.This method of dividing up space with doors,

w i n d o w s, g a l l e r i e s, rock gardens and streams createsthe impression of contemplating a scale-model ofn a t u r e. It provides what we call “a glimpse ofgrandeur through the miniature.”

Gardens inspired by poets,painters and calligraphers

To d a y, landscape architects design projectsbefore building a park or playground.The mastersof the gardens of Suzhou had no plans. They tooktheir ideas from poetry. They also drew plenty ofinspiration from Chinese painters, who oftenreturned the compliment by exalting the beauty oftheir works. Th u s, many painters, poets andcalligraphers helped to create the gardens ofSuzhou.

The gardens were never really fin i s h e d .As timewent by, they were enlarged, enhanced andp e r f e c t e d .Once a rock garden,a stream or a pavilionwas completed, the masters had the custom ofinviting their lettered friends to savour famousliqueurs and give free reign to their fertilei m a g i n a t i o n s. The guests inscribed calligraphy onthe door lintels and parallel sentences on theu p r i g h t s2.They also gave advice on where to build anew bridge or pavilion. L a t e r, the mastersembellished the garden heeding the advice they hadreceived and invited their friends back to have adrink and write poetry.

Had it been any other way, the gardens ofSuzhou probably would not have the refinementthat has made them so famous. ■

One must choosepebbles the

size of a gooseegg so that the paving

resembles thebrocade of the

Shu region.Ji Cheng,

Chinese landscape artist(1582-circa 1634)

Latticed windows sculpt space in the “Garden of Harmony.”

Classical Chinese garden design,which seeks to recreaten a t u ral landscapes in miniature, is nowhere better

i l l u s t rated than in the four gardens in the historic city ofSuzhou.Universally recognized as masterpieces of the genre,they were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1997. Thegardens reflect not only the profound importance of naturalbeauty in Chinese culture, but also the political, economic andcultural changes that took place in classical China.Created between the 16th and 18th centuries, when classicalChinese landscape design was at its height, the gardens ofSuzhou were designed to deeply satisfy both the minds and thesouls of the city’s inhabitants.To d a y, these microcosms, w h i c henclose all the basic features of nature and culture – water,s t o n e, p l a n t s, b u i l d i n g s, poetry and painting – contribute to thestudy of China’s architecture, human sciences, a e s t h e t i c s,p h i l o s o p h y, b o t a n y, h y d raulic engineering, e n v i r o n m e n t a lsciences and folk culture.The “Humble A d m i n i s t ra t o r ’s Garden” is the largest of thefour gardens (52,000 square metres). It contains a lake, w h i c hcovers one-fifth of its surface area, and a wide array of plants p e c i e s, including lotus,w i s t e r i a ,f o r s y t h i a s, trees and flo w e r i n gs h r u b s. Its central part is a reproduction in miniature of thelower Ya n g - T s e u - K i a n g , the world’s third-longest river after

the Amazon and the Nile.The “Lingering Garden,” which stretches out over more than23,000 square metres, contains the famous “cloud-shroudedp e a k ” (a 6.5-metre-tall limestone formation) and the gardens’most beautiful collection of engraved stele. It was designed byXu Taishi and dates back to the late 16th century.The much smaller “Garden of the Master of Nets” ( 5 , 4 0 0square metres) was built in the 18th century. Its mostdistinguishing feature is a magnificent house with foursuccessive courtyards built in strict observance of feudal rules.The smallest of the four gardens (less than 2,200 squarem e t r e s ) , and probably the oldest, is the “Garden of theMountain of the Villa of Embracing Beauty”, which belonged tothe royal academician Shen Shixing and housed the famous“ m o u n t a i n ” designed by Qing Gu Yliang (see article). I t sa r t i ficial glens, t ra i l s, g r o t t o s, g o r g e s, c l i f f s, crests and cliffs viewith nature. ■

REFLECTIONS OF CHANGE IN CLASSICAL CHINA

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A s a child, I thought of windmills ashelicopters flying over the landscape ofmy imagination. Their astonishingshapes looked both archaic andfuturistic to me. They were strange,

timeless machines sailing on the elements: earth,water and wind.

Sometimes my father, a hydraulic engineer innorthern Brabant, took me on a polder (landrecovered from the sea),where a humpbacked mill-keeper taught me the “ l a n g u a g e ” of windmills: “ awindmill with its sails puffed out walks ‘on its head,’ ”the gentleman told me. “During a storm, it walks‘ b a r e - l e g g e d .’ ”Windmills could be either “ h a p p y ”o r“in mourning,”they could work alone in the solitudeof a polder or in couples on the banks of a b o e ze m(the basin of a polder near a river and above itswater level). Each visit was an adventurousexpedition to a land of make-believe,a world madeup of still, dark water covered with white foam, o fmusty reservoirs, rustling wind and strong scents.

When I went to Kinderdijk-Elshout, l o c a t e d

northwest of the Alblasserwaard (“land on thew a t e r ’s edge”), I joyfully discovered that it smelledlike the pumping stations of my childhood.A smellof fresh water, cool stones, diesel fuel,grease and tools. C u r i o u s, the first thing Idid was walk over to the plant. I wanderedaround the big machines,and ended up inthe repair shop. The sight from the baywindows took my breath away. Th ep o l d e r, the dikes along two canals, t h ebroad bed of the Lek river, the wavingreeds in the two upper basins, the 19windmills stretching out as far as theh o r i z o n , proudly holding up a dark andthreatening sky, looked as if they hadbeen painted by Ruysbroeck,R e m b r a n d t ,Mesdag or some other brush-wieldingm a g i c i a n . Only a distant grey building and an odd-looking apartment complex shaped like a ferryboatreminded me that I was in the present.

The A l b l a s s e r w a a r d , which lies close by the seaand at the mouth of several swollen rivers, h a salways been threatened by water. It has beenflooded at least 30 times. The last deadly tideswamped the area in 1953, killing 1,800 people. B u tthe saddest,and most famous flood is still the one

S E V E N W R I T E R S I N A W O R L D O F WO N D E R S

SERGE VAN DUIJNHOVEN

DUTCHWRITER

Irrigating time with the Kinderdijk windmillsIt’s impossible to picture the Netherlands without windmills,but they have done far more than inspire the great Flemish painters. Without them, half the country wouldn’t exist

When winter arrives,out come the skates:a feast on ice in Kinderdijk.

The HagueRotterdam

Amsterdam

B E L G I U M

North Sea

Kinderdijk

December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 23

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A writer and historian,Serge vanDuijnhoven is an all-round artist.Born in 1970in Oss (Netherlands),he livesand works in Brussels (Belgium)where he created the group DeSpooksprekers, with the rapper Def P. and thesaxophone player and poet Olaf Zwetsloot.In collaboration with a theatretroupe, he also founded the MillenniuM review.His works include Obiit in orbit, a CD of poems and music(Bezige Bij/Djax Records, 1998),as well as poetry collections and fiction.

SERGE VAN DUIJNHOVEN

24

that occurred on the night of November 18 to 19,1 4 2 1 ,when the water swallowed up some 60 villages.Legend has it that a cat managed to keep a babyrocking in its cradle in the middle of the roilingw a v e s. The dike that the cradle landed on wasnamed Kinderdijk,“the child’s dike.”

Ready to serve if modernequipment breaks down

Dutch history owes much to the windmills.Tr u e,the western Netherlands could not have been builtwithout the dikes, but the windmills are what keepthe diked land habitable. Without them, half ofpresent-day Holland would not exist. The Dutchwould have ended up leaving the land,worn downby their futile struggle against water.

“God created the world, but the Dutch createdH o l l a n d ,” said René Descartes. The Fr e n c hphilosopher was very familiar with the country forhaving lived there a while, but he wasn’t entirelyr i g h t . More than 5,000 years ago, many places thathad been wrenched from the sea were alreadyi n h a b i t e d . The remains of a canoe and a femaleskeleton (named Trijntje) were discovered duringwork on the Betuwlijn, a new, highly controversialrailroad line.

The A l b l a s s e r w a a r d ’s earliest long drainagecanals were built in the 11th century. A hundredyears later, a dike already surrounded almost theentire area and the basins of the two rivers thatflow across the Alblasserwaard,the Alblas and theG i e s s e n , were developed.They became the districtsof the Nederwaard (“the low land”) and theOverwaard (“the high land”). In 1277, Count FlorisV of Holland set up the district’s Water and Po l d e rAdministration,an organization in charge of dikeupkeep. But these efforts would not suffice. In the

aftermath of a major flood in 1726, it becameobvious that drainage mills were indispensable.

A first row of eight round,stone mills was builtin the Nederwaard in 1738. Two years later, t h esame number of mills was erected in the Overwaard,parallel to the first row, but this time they wereconstructed of wood and had eight sides withthatched roofs. As the years went by, this complexgrew with the addition of new mills, locks andpumping stations. This innovative hydraulicirrigation system acquired a reputation and becameknown as “drainage by stages.” Fi r s t , the millsdrained water in the lower basins and polders.Th e n ,they channeled it to raised reservoirs. Lastly, theexcess water passed through half a dozen locksbefore draining into the river.

To d a y, the mills are kept in working order,r e a d yto serve in the event modern equipment breaksd o w n . And all of them are inhabited. A swing in alittle yard, vegetables in a garden, a fis h e r m a n ’srowboat moored between reeds provide a glimpseinto the occupants’ everyday lives. Just one mill isopen to the public during the summer. I n s i d e, you cansee not only the impressively-sized cogwheel,but alsopicture the frugal life of a mill-keeper and his family.

Inside the mill itself, you feel as if you’re on a boatin the middle of the sea.As it turns,all the ribs in thewoodwork creak. In the entrance, a dead muskrathangs in a cage.At the beginning of the last century,the muskrats were imported for their fur fromAmerica and the present-day Czech Republic, b u tthey soon became a veritable scourge for thei n h a b i t a n t s ; their digging and scratching causedmajor damage to the dikes. Even today, they arehunted on a massive scale, cooked in wine sauceand eaten under the more appetizing name of “ w a t e rr a b b i t s.”

“I wouldn’t live in one of those windmills for

UNESCO inscribed the Kinderdijk-Elshout network ofwindmills on the World Heritage List in 1997. Th e

network attests to the ingenuity and bravery of the Dutchp e o p l e, who developed a highly intelligent hydraulic systemto stabilize and cultivate a large stretch of peat bog in theNetherlands.Located on the northwest edge of the A l b l a s s e r waard (“landon the water’s edge”),the complex helped drain the innerdistricts of the Overwaard (“the high land”) and theN e d e r waard (“the low land”) until 1950, when the millswere closed. The 19 remaining mills are still in opera t i n gcondition.The site and its upstream and downstream polders, e q u i p p e dwith natural drainage systems, rivers and streams, w i n d m i l l s,pumping stations and spillwa y s, have remained virtuallyunchanged since the 18th century.Today this typically Dutchlandscape is officially protected as a cultural monument anda natural reserve. ■

Hear the creaking ribs of the woodwork.

AN INGENIOUS SYS T E M

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December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 25

anything in the world,”says Henk Bronkhorst, w h omanages them for the polder authority.“ Th e y ’re toohumid, too cramped and too inconvenient!” Andyet,he feels passionate about the mills and is gladto see them on UN E S C O’s World Heritage List.“ Th a trecognition will probably help us save them frombeing torn down”,he says.

Wine and poetry for thenew windmill inspectors

I n d e e d ,Dutch windmills have suffered a terriblef a t e. There were nearly 10,000 of them in 1860.To d a y, just 900 remain. I n d e e d , it is nothing short ofa miracle that so many mills at Kinderdijk havebeen preserved. In 1950, the Polder A d m i n i s t r a t i o nwas preparing to tear down all the mills that were“out of service.” Replaced by diesel-poweredhydraulic pumps that could evacuate water muchf a s t e r, they were perceived as useless and tooexpensive to maintain.But the worldwide renownthey have acquired will help to assure their future,and Bronkhorst hopes it will be easier for him toraise money for their restoration.“We really needit.The stone of the round mills has become porousover the years and a fifth mill is collapsing,” he says.

Managing the windmill area is no easy task. Th elocal communities,f a r m e r s,Calvinist ministers,b u s i n e s speople and officials regularly quarrel over their upkeep,the building of access roads and parking lots and thecost of restoration projects.The site’s inscription on theWorld Heritage List has spurred the creation of anorganization in charge of managing the interests ofall the windmills within the designated area.

At the entrance to Kinderdijk,west of the locks,stands the Gemeenlandshuis, the community house.This is where officials gather to assess the danger ind i f ficult times and decide onwhich measures to take.During senior-level meetings,they share a large meal in aroom adorned with paintingsby 17th-century masters.Th eOverwaard inspectionauthority used to welcomeits new high-level membersby serving them wine in cupsthat could contain up to onel i t r e.Each new member wasasked to drink it all in oneg u l p, before writing a poemin the community houseb o o k .One of them goes liket h i s : “the cup was offered tomy lips/with these words:drink up, c o m r a d e / b e c a u s eyou took the risk/here wepush away water, not wine.”The inspectors used everymeans at their disposal intheir war against water—even the muses!

I t ’s easy to reach theOverwaard windmills fromthe community house. Thecloser you get to the central

dike, the further back you go in time.Automobilesgive way to peacefully grazing cows and sheep.Th eonly sounds you hear are the chattering of aquaticbirds such as bitterns,purple herons and sea martins,the crowing of a rooster and reeds rustling in thew i n d .You can smell the fragrance of ripe apples thathave fallen from the trees. I remain silent at thesight of five moss-green umbrellas sheltering thepatience of a few old men fishing.The wings of themills turn stubbornly as gales can reach force six onthe Beaufort scale.

But what are the windmills draining? What arethey transporting from one place to another?

The Kinderdijk landscape symbolizes anendangered species, the typical Dutch windmill.But for the people of the Netherlands, it alsosymbolizes their never-ending struggle to keep theirl a n d . “ The land is still sinking,” says HenkB r o n k h o r s t ,“and the water level has risen in the pastfew decades. We had to add another reservoir, asort of funnel, to the upper basin to be able tocollect more water, as well as an extra pump for thelocks.”

Weapons to push back the sea’s never-ending advance

Galloping on his nag Rocinante, Don Quixotetried to attack the windmills. With windmills astheir only weapons, the Dutch are trying to pushback the sea’s never-ending advance.According tosome forecasts, in a few hundred years theNetherlands will no longer exist because of globalwarming. Water will take back from people whatthey have taken from her.Time will tell if they willhave been as bold as the lord of La Mancha, DonQuixote.

The farms andcottages lie quietand dejected inthe barren landand the onlythings alive arethe windmills . . .whose strongsails catch theforce of windthrashed with the rains.Henri Polak, Dutch politicianand writer (1868-1943)

S E V E N W R I T E R S I N A W O R L D O F WO N D E R S

Being inside a windmill is not unlike stepping onto a boat rocked by the seas.

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The tre a s u res in Mauritania’sd u n e sOnce, Mauritania’s ksours were thrivingcentres of trade and learning. Today, thecountry is struggling to save them fromsand, wind and oblivion

26

MOUSSA OULD EBNOU

MAURITANIAN WRITER

Waves of white, beige and red sandincessantly blow from the north ands o u t h , crashing against the purplishmass of the A d r a r,a mountain rangethat crosses Mauritania between the

Majabat El Koubra and Aouker deserts.The dunesconceal four jewels:Ouadane and Chinguetti in then o r t h ,Tichitt and Oualata in the southeast.These old,stone-built cities date back to the 12th and 13thcenturies and were once very prosperous,but todaythey only barely survive in such a hostile

e n v i r o n m e n t . O u a d a n e, C h i n g u e t t i ,Tichitt and Oualata may be drawing theirlast breath, but they are essential tounderstanding the history of this area,whose fate was closely linked to the watertable and the trade routes that span theM a g h r e b, the Sahel and black A f r i c a .

These cities, known as k s o u r s— o fwhich Chinguetti was probably the mostfamous—were located on major caravanr o u t e s, and over the centuries turnedinto metropolises of trans-Saharan trade,especially in gold and salt. Th eChanaguita [inhabitants of Chinguetti]

were skilled merchants who established regularcontacts with the Maghreb, Egypt and Arabia to then o r t h , and Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria tothe south,playing an important part in the spread ofboth Arabic and Islamic culture. Trade caravansfrom Chinguetti sometimes employed over 30,000camels carrying salt, w o o l ,g u n p o w d e r,d a t e s,m i l l e t ,wheat and barley. They returned from the southwith gold powder, slaves, ivory, animal hides andostrich feathers. These goods were subsequentlyresold in Cairo, S i j i l m a s s a , Fez and above allT l e m c e n , where Venetians and Genoese tradersstocked up in the two f o n d o u k s that were speciallyset aside for them.

According to some sources, the origins ofO u a l a t a , which means “shady place” in Berber,probably date back to a period preceding Islam. B ythe 13th and 14th centuries, Oualata had become

such an important trading centre that its nameappeared on European maps. A great Muslimf a m i l y, the Maqqaris,had built a warehouse there forgathering goods from the south and storingmerchandise from the north before they wereresold.Oualata was also where pilgrims from westAfrica assembled before travelling on to Chinguetti,a departure point for the annual caravan to Mecca.This pilgrimage had made the city so famous that fora long time Mauritania was known as BiladChinguel—the land of Chinguetti.

Libraries and schoolsguard priceless manuscripts

A major trade route connected Oualata withO u a d a n e,which was a very prosperous city,e s p e c i a l l ybetween the 14th and 18th centuries.But trade was notits sole source of wealth. Learning has always beenextremely important to Mauritanians. S u n n i t eMuslims of the Malikite rite, they turned their k s o u r sinto renowned intellectual centres that attractedmany foreign students.To this day, their libraries andm a d r a s a s [ Koranic schools] have jealously preservedsome 40,000 priceless manuscripts.At one time up to

M O R O C C O

S E N E G A L

A L G E R I A

NOUAKCHOTT

Chinguetti Ouadane

OualataTichitt

M A U R I T A N I A

Atlantic Ocean

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40 scholars lived on the same street in Ouadane,or atleast that’s what people say.And if the etymology ofthe city’s name is any indication,that was most likelyt r u e, since it means “the city of the two wadis”: t h ewadi of the palm trees and the wadi of knowledge.

Benefiting from its location on the routebetween Oualata and Ouadane,Tichitt grew into am a g n i ficent city.The town’s multi-storied houses—with blind walls on the ground flo o r, a door foronly opening to the outside and façades built ofcoloured stones—are fragile remnants of typicalMauritanian architecture.

The buildings’ subdued polychrome stands insharp contrast to the exuberant façades in Oualata,where the doors, porches, vents and windows aretrimmed with white drawings against a reddish-brown undercoat. The rosettes around the lustralstones are especially beautiful. People living herebrush their fingers over them before performingritual ablutions with water that has often been inshort supply in a town whose narrow streets arestifled by sand and dust.

But Oualata’s most famous paintings adorn thewalls of inner courtyards. Composed of simple,

endlessly repeated designs, these arabesques showthe stairs, d o o r s, w i n d o w s, alcoves and openings offto their best advantage. They are usually paintedwith a substance made of brown ochre, c h a r c o a l ,gum and cow pat.

Children’s laughter replaced bythe stubborn whistling of the wind

These decorations are typical of Oualata. I nO u a d a n e, on the other hand, the houses were builtof pink or grey sandstone and a mortar made ofclay and straw.All the walls in the city were coveredwith clay to protect them from the scarce rain,g i v i n gthem an extremely sober,r e fined appearance.To d a y,this coating only remains in places, testimony to thedecrepit state that the entire city has fallen into.The laughter of children running through the narrow,astonishingly angular streets and up cramped stairsbetween two blocks of houses has faded away.Th eteeming throngs have vanished forever. A singlesound now breaks this realm of silence: the whistlingof the wind as it stubbornly blows against ghostlyf a ç a d e s. O u a d a n e ’s families have moved to a smallpart of the “upper town,” deserting all the other

S E V E N W R I T E R S I N A W O R L D O F WO N D E R S

The arabesques onOualata’s wallsstill inspire the

drawings tracedon women’s hands(see photo p. 26).

Deserts stir ouremotions becausethey representNature as it wasbefore humanbeings came onthe scene. Theyalso show uswhat it may belike after wehavedisappeared.Théodore Monod,French naturalist (1902-)

December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 27

Defying time: the entrance to a mosque in Chinguetti.

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s a n d . Legend has it that seven towns have beensuperimposed on this site, and the one that hascome down to us today is irretrievably sinkingbeneath the dunes. Only the upper stories of a fewhouses are visible—the rest has been swallowedby the sand.As recently as a century ago, this oasiswas farmland that produced enough food to feed apopulation of several thousand inhabitants.To d a y,the few wind-battered palm trees are dying, half-buried in sand.The final blow came last year, w h e ntorrential rains destroyed 80 percent of the town.L u c k i l y,the splendid mosque and its square minaret,the most beautiful building of all,survived.

Musicians still sing the gloryof life in the ksours

Although Mauritania’s old towns have lostground to the Sahara in the north and the Sahel in thes o u t h , along with suffering a devastating, d e c a d e s -long drought,they refuse to go quietly into the night.The creative genius of ancient civilizations is stillthe driving force behind Mauritanian culture. Th edesigns on Oualata’s walls are the same as those stilldrawn on the hands and feet of Mauritanian women.They can also be found in jewelry, leatherwork andw o o d w o r k , the embroidery on men’s garments, t h edye of women’s veils,the weave of traditional carpetsand even the bills of the nation’s currency, t h eo u g u i y a. The melodies of Va l a , a famous musicianfrom Chinguetti who has become an emblematicfigure of Mauritanian music, are still played on thet i d i n i t, the Moorish lute. Other traditionalc o m p o s i t i o n s, such as the a w d i d , which was onceperformed as the Tichitt caravans were being loaded,immortalize the various aspects of life in the k s o u r swhen they were at the height of their glory.

Thus tradition is passed down from onegeneration to the next, like the beams that stillpump water from old wells in the small farm plotsand nonchalantly bow up and down across thecenturies. ■

In 1996, the old Mauritanian k s o u r s of Ouadane, C h i n g u e t t i ,Tichitt and Oualata were included on the World Heritage List

as the last vestiges of traditional desert life. Each of these townsis typical of the settlement pattern of nomad populations. E a c hhas a few main streets that served as the cara vans’ accessroads or led directly to the palm groves and cemeteries. A l lwere surrounded by defensive wa l l s, today reduced to a fewf ra g m e n t s, which marked the limits between the old k s o u r a n dnewer neighbourhoods.Their architecture also developed to meetthe requirements of nomad life: houses were used to storegoods most of the year, while the inhabitable rooms fulfil l e dvarious functions depending on the season or time of day.These four medieval towns are the last existing ksours. Theywere trade and religious centres as well as focal points ofIslamic culture that housed tens of thousands of ancientm a n u s c r i p t s. Despite local and regional confli c t s, d r o u g h t ,f a m i n e s, epidemics and the end of the cara van tra d e, they havesurvived to this day. I s o l a t i o n ,new administrative and economiccentres in other parts of Mauritania and the constant outflo w

of their inhabitants have nevertheless further jeopardizedtheir existence.At the request of Mauritania’s government, UNESCO launchedan international campaign in 1978 aimed at preserving thesecities and funded restoration and conservation work, e s p e c i a l l yto save the mosques.Two years later, the Mauritanian ScientificResearch Institute set up a photographic and documentaryarchive. In 1993, the Mauritanian government created theNational Foundation for the Preservation of Ancient Towns,whose purpose is to help the towns overcome the causes oftheir decline and revitalize them with integrated preserva t i o nand development progra m m e s. A project to preserve andrenew Mauritania’s cultural heritage funded by the Wo r l dBank also includes the old towns in its remit. ■

The author is one of Mauritania’sgreatest Frenchlanguage novelists.He currently serves as culturaladvisor to his country’s president.Moussa Ould Ebnou has writtentwo novels, L’amour impossibleand Le Barzakh, published byL’Harmattan in Paris in 1990 and1994 respectively.

MOUSSA OULD EBNOU

Intricate designs adorn the interior of a house in Oualata.

n e i g h b o u r h o o d s. And if a few buildings are stillstanding in the rest of the city, it is thanks to theforesight of their builders,who provided them withledges to protect them from rain and wind erosion.

In Chinguetti too the sand has slowly invadedthe courtyards of abandoned houses, to the pointthat the floors of formerly inhabited rooms lyingunder collapsed stone walls are now more than onemetre below street level. But this city remains “ t h esoul of the country,” and population loss has beenless severe than in Ouadane, Tichitt and Oualata.The square minaret of its famous mosque, which wasthe national symbol of Bilad Chinguel for a longtime, is still afoot and defying time.

By contrast, Ti c h i t t , located in a basin at thefoot of the Adrar, is much less protected from the

T R A D E , RELIGION AND CULT U R E

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RAFAEL SEGOVIA

MEXICANWRITER

Nestled in a narrow gorge of the SierraMadre in the heart of Mexico,Guanajuato is one of those post-Columbian towns hewn out of rock thatseem to spring straight from the

m o u n t a i n s. Contrasting with the arid landscape ofCuanaxhuata (“the hill of the frogs”), this elegant4 5 0 - y e a r-old dame of the Spanish Era continues toprotect herself behind fortifications from the region’sfierce winds, just as she did for three centuries againstrepeated attacks by the nomadic Chichemecap e o p l e, sworn enemies of the Spanish conquerors.

The town lies above a network of subterraneans t r e e t s. Its majestic old mansions, baroque and neo-classical churches, palaces, convents and hospitalshave all the charm of a bygone era.

Narrow winding streets that faithfully espousethe uneven terrain echo with the footsteps of timespast and the crystalline tinkle of fountains splashingonto stone slabs.And a touch of forbidden romancestill hovers on the Callejón del Beso (“Street ofthe Kiss”), which is so narrow that a Romeo andJuliet who once lived opposite each other stolefurtive embraces leaning from their balconies.Th e i rstory ended sadly: she was shut away in a conventand he was forced to flee into exile.

The tale of a zealous explorerwho dug for hidden treasure

The spirit of Guanajuato, guarded by its stonew a l l s, is impregnated by a rich memory whichd o e s n ’t trap the town in a sleepy past.Once upon atime, it had just a single street that wound its waythrough the rocks to reach a vast esplanade,now thePlaza de los Pastitos. Today, modern highways cutthrough the mountains, giving better access to thistourist and university town, which is also aneconomic and cultural centre.

The little provincial burg of 50,000 inhabitantshas been stirred from its slumber by the thousandsof tourists crowding its outdoor cafés, b ybusinessmen drawn to its prosperity, by miners who,like their forebears, still dig gold and silver out of theg r o u n d ,and by students who liven up a multitude ofsmall squares with their youthful enthusiasm.

Not to mention the din that has engulfed thetown every October for the past 20 years or so whenthe Cervantino dramatic arts festival draws leadinginternational performers along with hordes ofonlookers—and not always the most educated sort.Their noisy revelling drove the townspeople to ask

the federal government toabolish the prestigiouscultural event.

As I make my waythrough this crowd, I cannothelp wondering what lifewould have been like hadthis town followed a moretranquil course than itsturbulent history.At times abustling metropolis, a tothers a sleepy village,Guanajuato has evolvedwith the flow of political events and the ups anddowns of the mining industry.This chequered courseseems to have left its stamp on the local mentality.Aware of their precarious existence,living off chanced i s c o v e r i e s, forever waiting for riches while fearing

December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 29

G u a n a j u a t o : fortunes made of silverOnce home to the world’s largest silver mine, this Mexican town has bred many zealousand fiercely devout souls. Today, flocks of tourists, university students and a prestigioustheatre festival kindle its spirit

S E V E N W R I T E R S I N A W O R L D O F WO N D E R S

BELIZE

U N I T E D S T A T E S

GUATEMALA

MEXICO

Guanajuato

M E X I C OGulf of Mexico

Pacific Ocean

The town’s 50,000 inhabitants are aware of their fragile existence.

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To say the least,this Mexicanwriter, born in 1951,feels at

home in all the arts, fromphotography and filmmaking tothe theatre, television and video. Aliterature professor and prolificauthor of literary essays, RafaelSegovia has co-ordinated a stringof cultural events. He notablystaged a performance presentedat the 1986 Cervantino festival ofdramatic arts, The Poets’Altarpiece, or Love and Death inthe Golden Age.A collection of hisnumerous literary essays isforthcoming.

RAFAEL SEGOVIA

30

p o v e r t y, the inhabitants of Guanajuato are cautious,stubborn and fiercely devout.

To prove the point, take the zeal of one A n t o n i ode Ordoñez, who convinced himself that he wouldunearth a hidden treasure. When the Va l e n c i a n am i n e,five kilometres from the town,was abandonedin 1760, he refused to believe its resources wereexhausted and began a long and arduous prospectionof the area.The adventure took him to the brink ofdeath and despair but his belief was not to be shaken.

After four years, his companions nearly gave upon him, but he used his gifts as a preacher,alternating sermons and prayers, to persuade themto continue with their quest. Four more years ofordeals and suffering passed. And then the longed-for miracle occurred. Antonio de Ordoñezdiscovered the Veta Madre, the Valenciana motherlode, one of the richest in the world.

A 525-metre descent into the bowels of the earth

Ordoñez became wealthy and Guanajuatoturned into the world’s biggest silver mine. L i k emany other mines in the region, it is still inoperation.Its main shaft is 525 metres deep and ithas almost 40 kilometres of galleries. In thebeginning, the workers went down slanting stepsmore than 700 metres into the bowels of the earth.Each miner had to climb them 14 times a daycarrying 75 kilos of ore every time.This gives an ideaof the wealth the Spanish Empire amassed overthree centuries.

To thank God for rewarding his efforts, O r d o ñ e zdecided to offer part of the riches he had drawnfrom the earth, so he built a magnificent church, o n e

of the most impressive in the whole country. Thealtarpiece covered with gold leaf, the rich decorationand still largely intact paintings and artifacts makeLa Valenciana church a unique example ofChurrigueresque art, the Mexican baroque thatsmoothly combines Indian and Spanish styles.

Once the bastion of the strictest Catholic morality

A quick tour of Guanajuato suffices tounderstand the predominant role played by theCatholic church. In the 17th and 18th centuriesa l o n e, more than 15 convents, t e m p l e s, c h u r c h e sand chapels were built in an area of less than twosquare kilometres,which is today the old city centre.Such religious zeal is also reflected in the streetn a m e s.Calle del Campanero (“Bellringer Street”),for example, commemorates Luis A n t o n i oS o l o r z a n o, the Santa Fé parish bellringer who ruledthe townspeople’s lives at the beginning of the 20thc e n t u r y, letting them know when it was time form a s s, when wakes for the dead were being helda n d , if necessary,when the curfew hour had arrived.

For many years Guanajuato was a bastion of thestrictest Catholic morality. The inhabitants, l o c k e dinside the town as if in one huge house,all knew eachother and anyone who broke the rules of decency wassingled out for reproach. It was fertile ground for allkinds of outlandish passions, which Jo r g eIbagüengoitia wove into thoughtful and humorouss t o r i e s. The work of this warm-hearted, t a l e n t e dGuanajuato native, who died young in 1983, s t i l linspires Mexican playwrights and new wavefil m m a k e r s, immortalizing the surreal andconservative mood of this little town slowly beingeclipsed by modern life. ■

Founded by the Spanish at the beginning of the 16thc e n t u r y, the town of Guanajuato, capital of the state of the

same name, became the world’s leading centre of silvere x t raction in the 18th century. Located in the centre of Mexico,Guanajuato has always had a symbiotic relationship with itsm i n e s. Everything in the town testifies to this: its picturesque“ s u b t e r ranean streets,” its sumptuous churches like LaCompañía and La Valenciana which are considered to beamong the finest examples of baroque architecture in Centra land South A m e r i c a , the construction of numerous dams andh y d raulic installations, not to mention the mines themselves.The deepest shaft, the Boca del Infierno (“Mouth of Hell”)plunges down a breathtaking 600 metres. The historic townof Guanajuato and its adjacent mines were added to the Wo r l dHeritage List in 1988. ■

Narrow lanes echo tales of forbidden romance.

MARRIED TO THE MINE

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December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 31

S E V E N W R I T E R S I N A W O R L D O F WO N D E R S

ALFRED A.YUSON

FILIPINOWRITER

Filipinos often refer to the Banaue riceterraces as the eighth wonder of the world,and understandably so.Of all the exquisitelysculpted rice terraces which climb the slopesof the Cordillera in Luzon, the largest island

in the Philippine archipelago, those of Banaue are thefinest expression of the genius of local tribes.With theterraces of Mayoyao,Kiangan and Hungduan, t h e yrepresent a “ t r a d e m a r k ” of Ifugao culture. As theFilipino architect and conservationist Au g u s t oVillalon has written, “the terraces are the onlyPhilippine monument constructed without anyforeign influence or intervention, and withoutenforced labour of any kind.” They endow theprovince of Ifugao with a unique landscape,born ofa harmonious complicity between human beingsand their environment.

For the past two millennia, rice hasbeen planted under the harshest conditions,at an altitude of over 1,000 metres. Toconstruct their terraces, farmers first haveto identify concave areas, place stonemarkers there and fill the cracks in theslope with gravel to avoid slippage.As eachlayer of walling is added,the level of soil isr a i s e d ,with some walls reaching six metresin height. Without animals and onlyrudimentary tools, these farmers have patientlyrecarved the steep mountain slopes, respecting theirnatural curves.Sometimes no larger than three metres,the terraces are irrigated by an ingenious system.Bamboo conduits of different diameters deliver justthe right amount of water to the young rice shoots. Acomplex system allows the water run-off to flo wdownhill and flood the terrace next in line.

The best rice is cultivated by the poorest farmers on the highest,most inaccessible terraces.

Dancing anew on the stairways to heavenSafeguarding the spectacular rice terraces of the Philippines begins withpreserving the culture of those who created them.In August, after nearly 50 years of silence, the drums of Ifugaopriests once again resounded across the mountains of LuzonIsland, marking a revival of ancestral customs

MALAYSIA

MANILA

Bontoc

Sulu Sea

South China Sea

Banaue

Philippine Sea

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Author of poetry collections,novels, essays and children’sstories, Alfred A.Yuson is vicechairman of the Writers’ Union ofthe Philippines.A documentaryfilmmaker and scriptwriter, heteaches literature at Ateneo deManila University. He has receivedseveral literary distinctions,including the Centennial LiteraryPrize (marking the independenceof the Philippines) for his novelVoyeurs & Savages (AnvilPublishing Inc.,1998).His mostrecent work is an essay entitled The Word on Paradise (Office ofResearch & Publications,Ateneode Manila University, 2000).

ALFRED A.YUSON

32

Here, men and women repeat the gestures andpractices of their ancestors.Like 2000 years ago, t h e yuse only organic fertilizers and pesticides of planto r i g i n , harvested in the neighbouring forests.Th o s ewho own the lower, larger terraces are the wealthye l i t e, while the peasants till the upper, n a r r o w e rs p a c e s. The Ifugao people prize their t i n a w o n, afragrant homegrown upland rice,preferring it to thecommercial lowland variety. Other staples such assweet potatoes are also grown in forest clearings,b u tonly rice is prepared during celebratory feasts—along with chicken and pork.

After Ferdinand Magellan reached thePhilippines in 1521, the Spanish easily occupied thelowlands. But they encountered stiff opposition inthe mountains from what they called “restless andwarlike tribes.” Headhunting by certain tribesparticularly appalled and infuriated the Spanish,who mounted punitive expeditions with suchregularity that today the episodes read like a gameof tag carried on between two cultures over threecenturies.

But the Spanish never pacified the mountainp e o p l e s. It was not until the American occupation thatbegan in 1898 and the opening of the highlands byarmy engineers that the tribes were finally subdued.American Episcopalian missions then met with moresuccess than the Spanish attempts at Christianization.

Selling the gods forlarge sums of money

Despite a strong missionary presence that lasteda full century, the Ifugao continued to cling to theiranimistic beliefs.The b u l - o l or rice god is a particularlyrevered figure in their pantheon. A pair of b u l - o lfigures carved from hardwood stands watch overeach family’s granary. During ceremonial rituals,Ifugao elders slaughter chickens, recite divineincantations and pour the sacrificial blood over thehead of the b u l - o l s for a good harvest.Even thoughthe tradition of honouring the b u l - o l remains strong,it has become difficult to find a finely carved,a n t i q u erice god strapped to the wall of an Ifugao house.Families have long since learned to part with theirheirlooms in return for large sums from itinerantc o l l e c t o r s.

There have been other changes:fewer of thesefamilies can now claim to live solely off the terraces.They require extensive repairs, and the irrigationsystem must be dredged periodically.With a growingp o p u l a t i o n , each child inherits a smaller plot ofland.And sadly, most of the younger generation—attracted to the lures of city life—are reluctant toundertake the laborious chore of rice farming.Th ehighlands account for seven percent of the totalland area of the Philippines, but are home to lessthan two percent of the country’s population.

Aware that the rice terraces are at risk, t h eFilipinos have made them a national affair. Th egovernment declared them “national treasures”in1 9 7 3 ,and a little over a decade ago, established theautonomous Cordillera Administrative Region(CA R) to encompass all the land-locked provincesof the Cordillera mountains.

But while several programmes have focused onthe physical preservation of the terraces, using a

scientific and technological approach, few effortshave been taken to preserve the indigenous culturesthat created them.And it is widely believed that ifthis culture dies, the farming practices will go aswell.

In mid-August 2000,the National Commissionfor Culture and the Arts (N C CA) spearheaded therevival of a farming ritual called Pa t i p a t w h i c hm u m b a k i (Ifugao holy men) had celebrated for thelast time in 1944. So after many years of silence, t h etagtags once again resounded in the village ofA m d u n t o g. Beating rhythmically on these woodens h i e l d s, menfolk dance through the rice fields todrive away evil spirits and rats, which eat crops anddig burrows, causing seepage and erosion.

“After chanting invocations and offering animals a c r i fic e, the mumbaki joined several males from thevillage in the beating of the tagtag,” observed theFilipino writer Dexter Osorio. “All were dressedin the traditional red loincloths of the Ifugao andadorned with the crimson leaves of the Ti plant ord o n g l a, which are used for special rituals. Th epercussive sounds resulted in a complex rhythm ofinterlocking beats, to which the line of performersh a l f - a r c h e d , half-danced as they made their wayaround the village. Leading the line was a spear-

Filipinos are intent on

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December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 33

wielding m u n g g i h i g i, who punctuated the beat withspear thrusts and an occasional whoop echoed by theother participants.At the edge of the rice terraces, thegroup was met by another parade of dancers from theneighbouring village of Nalnay, half of whom werechildren who beat their shields with an enthusiasmthat rivalled those of their elder counterparts.The twolines of paraders merged in a controlled orgy of sound,colour and motion,and proceeded to make their waydown through the terraces toward the river,where therats and bad spirits were meant to drown.A member ofthe Nalnay contingent confessed that their older mendid not want to join the ritual, so it was the children whodid.”

Like Dexter Osorio,we might well wonder whetherIfugao culture itself isn’t suffering from erosion.“ E v e rsince standardized Western education and Christianitywas introduced to the Cordilleras,” he writes,“age-oldrituals have been set aside and traditional beliefsforgotten, resulting in apathy and an eroded sense ofidentity.”

Still the enthusiastic participation of children in theritual is a promising sign. Cultural erosion may not bei r r e v e r s i b l e. H o p e f u l l y, it isn’t too late to keep alive thegenius of our ancestors, who shaped these magnific e n tstairways to bring us closer to heaven. ■

Located in the northern Philippines, Luzon is the largest of 7,000 islands dotting thePhilippine archipelago.Rice terraces blanket steep mountain slopes, spreading across an

area of 20,000 km2. Inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1995, the four clusters of terra c e sfound in the municipalities of Banaue, M a y o ya o, Kiangan and Hungduan are all located inIfugao province.The terraces evoke a harmony that has been preserved between the inhabitants and theire n v i r o n m e n t . Each cluster is surrounded by a buffer ring of private forests (m u y o n g) ,m a n a g e daccording to tribal pra c t i c e s. Covered by steeply pitched thatched pyramidal roofs,the villages’one-room dwellings are raised above the ground on four posts and reached by a ladder whichis pulled up at night.A centrally located ritual rice field is the first parcel to be planted or harvested. Near thedwellings is the ritual hill,usually marked by a grove of sacred betel trees where the holy men(m u m b a k i) carry out traditional rites.For the past 2,000 years,knowledge of these rituals and farming practices has been passedo ra l l y.These methods are the expression of the Ifugao’s mastery of watershed ecology andt e r race engineering. In the past decades, many terraces have been abandoned anddeforestation has caused serious damage.As farming of the terraces is intricately connectedwith religious,c u l t u ral and social tra d i t i o n s,a whole system of values has to be preserved.Th eabsence of a broad vision having led to sporadic attempts at preserva t i o n , the Ifugao Te r ra c e sC o m m i s s i o n , created in February 1994, developed a six-year master that takes a holistica p p r o a c h . ■

S E V E N

To this day, theterraces endure,but moreimportantly, they continue to function. Fidel Ramos, former Philippinepresident (1928-)

THE ENDURING ROLE OF RITUA L

© McCurry/Magnum, Paris

on preserving their rice terraces,which were declared “national treasures”in 1973.

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34

JUAN GOYTISOLO

SPANISHWRITER

Je m â a - e l - F n a ’s thousand and o n e

My first contact with oral tradition onMarrakesh’s Jemâa-el-Fna squareled me to start thinking about thes p e c i fic nature of written literature,and the differences between these

two modes of expression.In oral communication,the speaker can refer to the context at any time:inother words, to a specific situation with which thelisteners are familiar. In written literature, the authorand reader have nothing in common aside fromthe text written by the former and membership (bybirth or learning) in the same linguistic community.Oral literature establishes a line of communicationbetween a speaker and a listener, both of whomexperience the world in a similar or even identicalw a y. Reading a novel,on the other hand, e s t a b l i s h e scommunication between a narrator and a reader; t h e

former is unable to verify whether the latterp o s s e s s e s, at the time of reading, s u f f i c i e n tknowledge of the context to understand the text.That is why the reader, distant from the text inspace and/or time, needs an intermediary to recreatethe context and fill in the gaps. Hence the presencein translated novels of the editor’s or translator’sexplanatory notes.

In the h a l c a, the circle of listeners and spectatorsthat forms around the storyteller, none of that isnecessary. The storyteller addresses these peopled i r e c t l y ; they are his accomplices.The text he recitesor improvises functions like a score, leaving theperformer a wide margin of freedom. In the oraltradition,changes in voice and oratorical rhythm,expressions and gestures, play a fundamental role:even a seemingly sacred text can be parodied and

Born in 1931 in Barcelona,JuanGoytisolo lives in Paris and Marrakesh.His numerous essays, shortstories and novels—including inEnglish Marks of Identity, CountJulian, The Marx Family Saga, Space inMotion, Quarantine: a Noveland Juan the Landless—havewon him international renown.His most recent works publishedin English are Marrakesh Tales(Serpents Tail), Landscapes ofWar (City Lights Books) andInferno and Paradiso (ActarEditorial).

JUAN GOYTISOLO

The oral traditions of Marrakesh’s famous square are unique in the worldfor their richness and variety. They are also the roots of a new concept:humanity’s oral and intangible heritage

There is no other square like this in the world.Every day, musicians,storytellers,dancers,jugglers and bar

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S E V E N W R I T E R S I N A W O R L D O F W O N D E R S

lowered to a scatological level. In children’s storiesand chansons de geste, the frequent use of para-linguistic devices and cynegetic sketches (whichevoke hunting), stresses the magic, power ordramatic aspects of the episodes being told.

As my knowledge of d a r i x a ( M o r o c c o ’s A r a b i cdialect) improved, I was able to appreciate therichness and variety of the oral traditions preservedwithin Marrakesh’s Jemâa-el-Fna square. I attendedperformances of classical works like The T h o u s a n dand One Nights a n d A n t a r i a, legends based on X e h a,A i ch a and K a n d i x a—to mention just three popularfolk heroes—comic improvisations,and a number ofsexual pantomimes by highly talented h a l a i q u i s( s t o r y t e l l e r s ) , of whom Saruh and Bakchich, b o t hnow dead, merit a special mention.They expressedthemselves effortlessly in the spectators’ dialect,using euphemisms which only those sly folk with longexperience of the h a l c a could decipher.

Jemâa-el-Fna is a great melting pot of folkcultures where the Berber and g n a w i t r a d i t i o n sc o n v e r g e.The Berber tradition is characterized bysongs and recitals in Ta m a z i g h t , the language of themajority of Berbers, or in Soussi, the language ofBerbers from the Agadir region.Performances range

from love poems to elegies to works of moral and socialc r i t i c i s m . G n a w i are the descendents of slaves whobelonged to a popular confraternity.Their vast repertoryincludes invocations and prayers that are part of ritualtrance ceremonies. Professor Hamid Hogadem hasrecently assembled recordings he has made of present-day h a l a i q u i s from the three traditions in a single volume,which will be soon be published with the support ofUN E S C O.

Everything belonging just to thepresent is doomed to perish with it

As the years go by, my thoughts on the specificity ofliterature have extended to the relationship betweenoral and written traditions. In the European and A r a bcultures I am familiar with,their interdependence showsthat a codified and listed oral tradition has nurtured thedevelopment of written literature, which returned thefavour by seeping into the circuits of oral story-telling.Many lyrical and narrative medieval texts have beenwritten for public performance,and can only be properlyunderstood when their acoustic and para-linguisticdimensions are taken into account. It is highly signific a n tthat the 20th century’s most innovative and sensitivenarrative authors, including James Jo y c e,L o u i s - Fe r d i n a n dC é l i n e,Arno Schmidt,Carlo Emilio Gadda,G u i a m a r a e sRosa and Guillermo Cabrera Infante, combined writingwith basic features of the oral tradition.Their novels—featuring a whole range of competing voices—sound asif they were meant to be read aloud,enabling readers toappreciate the true value of the underlying literarye x p l o i t s. For my part, I would point to how much thes q u a r e ’s oral cross-winds inspired me in writing my novelM a k b a r a.My work would probably have been differentwithout them. The act of listening—in other words, t h esimultaneous presence of the author or storyteller and anattentive audience—gives a new dimension to poeticand narrative texts, as it did in the time of Chaucer,B o c c a c i o, Juan Ruiz, Ibn Zayid, and Al Hariri.A buriedthread links the Middle Ages to the literary avant-gardeof the twentieth century. As the great Russian theoristMikhail Bakhtin subtly showed,a work cannot survive thecenturies to come unless it has beennurtured by the centuries that have goneb e f o r e. Everything belonging just to thepresent is doomed to perish with it.

For many reasons, the fragility andprecariousness of Jemâa-el-Fna causesme ongoing concern. The spectacleoffered by the square is the product of afortunate combination of circumstances(some documents indicate that it existedas far back as the mid-16th century), b u tit may vanish,swept away by the assault ofunbridled modernity that jeopardizes ourlives and our works. Considered until recently as a vestigeof the Third World by a large part of Morocco’sEuropeanized elite (causing the square to be temporarilyclosed after independence before popular pressurecompelled the authorities to re-open it), it is paradoxicallyappreciated for its very anachronism.Urban planners andtechnologically-advanced societies from “ d e v e l o p e dc o u n t r i e s ” even consider it a desirable model, w o r t hemulating as a site where people from all walks of lifecome to meet and talk with each other,as well as eat,s h o pand stroll, enjoying the richness and variety of a place that

A L G E R I A

M A L I

RABAT

Marrakesh

M A U R I T A N I A

Atlantic Ocean

ne nightsbards stage new shows to teeming crowds.

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is continuously in motion.As I wrote in these pagesyears ago, the square may be destroyed by decree,b u tnot created by one. Becoming aware of that willprobably help to save it.

E v e r-increasing traffic, e n v i r o n m e n t a ldeterioration and,above all, certain building projectsthat flagrantly violate a law passed in 1922—projectswhich, if they are actually built, will disfigure theenvirons of Jemâa-el-Fna forever—are seriousenough to merit a worldwide campaign to save thesquare’s endangered oral and intangible heritage.Since the meeting of experts from many differentand sometimes very distant regions organized byUN E S C O in Marrakesh in June 19771,we have beenacutely aware that this is the only place on theplanet where musicians, s t o r y t e l l e r s,d a n c e r s, j u g g l e r s

36

and bards put on a new show before large crowdsevery day of the year. The square offers us anongoing spectacle in which the distinction betweenactors and spectators fades: everyone can be one orthe other if he or she desires. We live in a worldwhere the information technology juggernaut ishomogenizing and impoverishing our lives bybottling them up in the remote-controlled darknessof privacy. Jemâa-el-Fna offers the exact opposite:a public space that fosters social life through amixture of humour, tolerance and diversity createdby its poets and storytellers.

In 1997, UN E S C O’s general conference adoptedthe concept of humanity’s oral and immaterialheritage, giving vital backing to plans to protect avast number of oral and musical traditions,crafts andk n o w l e d g e, not to mention the “living humantreasures”who possess them.2

Today, it is no longer possible to deny that allcultural richness, which sowed the seeds of what wecall “high culture,” will be swept away if we do notrush to its rescue. ■

1. During this international consultation of expertsfocusing on the preservation of places where folkculture thrives, a new concept of culturala n t h r o p o l o g y, the oral heritage of humanity, w a sdefined.2. The individuals who embody the skills andt e chniques necessary for carrying out certain aspectsof a people's cultural life and ensuring the long-term survival of its tangible cultural heritage.

La n g u a g e s, o ral litera t u r e, m u s i c ,d a n c e, g a m e s, m y t h o l o g y,rites, customs and craftsmanship are among the “ cultural

e x p r e s s i o n s ” that UN E S C O has been committed to protectingsince 1997.At of the source of this innovative undertaking was the Jemâa-el-Fna square and the commitment of one man,Spanish writerJuan Goytisolo, who spends part of each year in Marra ke s h .“ I tall started a few years ago, when I wrote an article against theplan to build a 15-story glass tower on the square,” he says.“I fought the project,because I’m convinced that any changein the layout of Jemâa-el-Fna would endanger the mira c l ethat has taken place there every day for five centuries [seea r t i c l e ] . I think the authorities were receptive to my argument,especially when I told them,‘What would happen if they cut60 metres off the Eiffel Tower? Such a decision involves notjust the Paris city government,but humanity as whole!’ Theproject was abandoned.”Not much later, another project was born: creating a list ofh u m a n i t y ’s masterpieces in the fields of oral and intangibleh e r i t a g e. O ral traditions and other forms of expression of folkc u l t u r e, as well as the places where they flo u r i s h , could soonboast that new title. UN E S C O D i r e c t o r- G e n e ral Ko ï c h i r oM a t s u u ra has named a nine-member jury that will be renewedevery four years. The earliest applications can be filed by

December 31, 2 0 0 0 , and the first gems on the list of humanity’so ral and intangible heritage will be named in June 2001. N e wworks will be added every two years.“UN E S C O’s backing,” says Juan Goytisolo, “can be used tochange the minds of the authorities and opinion-leaders andto encourage many people to take a fresh look at certainc u l t u ral phenomena. It is important to understand that theloss of a single halaiqui (storyteller) is much more serious forhumanity than the death of 200 best-selling authors. Unescocannot save the halaiquis a l o n e, but it can help. We haverecorded their voices and their tales are going to be published,but even that is not enough.We must avoid turning somethingwhich is living into a museum piece, but help to keep it alive.We must see to it that storytellers do not end up begging onthe streets at the end of their lives. It is not hard to imagine, f o re x a m p l e, schools taking their student to listen to the h a l a i q u i s,introducing them to their own culture and teaching them thatnot all tales belong to Walt Disney.” ■

U N E S C O TO T H E R E S C U E O F THE H A L A I Q U I S

A public space that invites conviviality.

Marrakesh wasthe city where

black and whitelegends crossed,

languagesmingled and

religions clashedwith the

immutablesilence of the

dancing sands.Fatima Mernissi,

Moroccan sociologist and writer

(1940-)

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E T H I C S ◗

GLENN MANARIN

SEOUL-BASEDJOURNALIST

Striking where it hurtsCivic groups in Korea led an unprecedented campaign to blacklist corrupt politicians in recent elections,but the old guard is blocking the will to reform

here is an old saying in South Korea thatif a man rose to high political offic e, h i sfamily would be financially set for threeg e n e r a t i o n s.But in their young democracy,Koreans are discovering that they have thepower to topple corrupt politicians andband together to battle political vice.

The National Assembly elections lastApril will go down as a landmark for civice m p o w e r m e n t . On January 10, t h eCitizens’ Coalition for Economic Ju s t i c e( C C E J ) , a non-governmentalo r g a n i z a t i o n , released a list of 167 “ u n fit ”c a n d i d a t e s. Past involvement incorruption scandals, violations of thenation’s Election Law, and resistance todemocratic and anti-corruption reformswere among the criteria for beingblacklisted.

In the following days, a temporaryalliance of 470 civic groups formed theC i t i z e n ’s Alliance for the 2000 GeneralElections (CAGE) in an effort to buildboth unity and power in numbers.CAG Ecame up with an additional 47 names,threatening that if the nation’s partiesd i d n ’t nominate different candidates,t h e ywould launch full-scale rejection campaignsagainst the allegedly unethical politicians.

To no one’s surprise, parties accusedCAGE of “political terrorism” and drewattention to electoral laws preventing non-political groups other than labour unionsfrom engaging in political campaigning.But with the public steering the agenda—opinion polls showed that 80 percentwould not vote for blacklistedcandidates—President Kim Dae-jung and

the Assembly amended the Election Law,permitting CAG E ’s existence.Groups alsosuccessfully lobbied the government forthe mandatory release of candidates’ pastc r i m i n a l , tax and military service records.

The new legislation was a deadly blowfor corrupt politicians. Fearing rejectionc a m p a i g n s, parties screened candidatesmore carefully and nominated manyyounger hopefuls.S i m u l t a n e o u s l y, m a n yparty heads nominated blacklistedpoliticians in spite of CAG E ’s pledge.The coalition responded with a “ r e j e c t i o n -list”of 86 candidates and highlighted 22main targets, most of whom were long-time political heavyweights.

In with the young andout with the string-pullers

CAGE held street rallies, p e t i t i o ndrives, phone and e-mail campaigns andset up websites aimed at the youth vote inparticular. The sites, which featured theendorsements of popular fil m ,t e l e v i s i o nand music stars, received almost onemillion hits during the run-up to theelection.

On April 14,Koreans awoke to a new,much younger polity.Voters had rejected70 percent of the blacklisted candidates.Of the 22 special targets, only seven weree l e c t e d . First and second-term lawmakers,many in their 30s or 40s, made up 80percent of the new assembly.The electionwas heralded as a turning point in Ko r e a np o l i t i c s : a new force had emerged, t h ecivil society sector,determined to rid thecountry of crooked politics.

The rise of this broad coalition can betraced to Ko r e a ’s powerful democracymovement that peaked in 1987, w h e nmiddle-class workers and labourersjoined students to demand fair anddemocratic elections, forcing PresidentChun Doo-hwan to accede. “ The anti-corruption movement succeeds thedemocratic movements of the pastd e c a d e s,” says Kim Geo-sung of the A n t i -Corruption Network in Korea (ACNK).“This wasn’t possible before because we[civil society] didn’t have enough powerfor these kinds of activities.”

But mobilizing a citizenry accustomedto reading about influence-peddling andpayoffs in headlines would not have gained

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Demanding the right to engage in political campaigning.

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LAURENCE W. SRESHTHAPUTRA

BANGKOK POST JOURNALIST

A THAI CRUSADE FOR CLEAN POLITICSNew watchdogs now have the teeth to fight corruption but old-style politics aren’t going to disappearovernight. Some say this will take no less than a revolution in political culture

Not a day goes by in Thailand withoutsome new tale of corruption being

aired in the press. Some see a revolutionunderway while others question the useof attacking such a long-accepted disease.So what chances do the anti-corruptioncrusaders have?

If events this year are anything to go by,they might well be gaining the upper hand.The first senatorial elections by popularvote held in March turned into a veritablesoap opera with the newly establishedElection Commission ordering more thanhalf the races to be run again because ofirregularities or vote-buying. In the end, i ttook five rounds of voting to fill all thes e a t s.

Later in the month, S a n a n

K a c h o r n p r a s a r t , the all-powerful interiorminister and secretary-general of theruling Democrat Party, was forced toresign after the National Counter-Corruption Commission (NCCC)accused him of falsifying documentsconcerning a $1.2 million loan.Anotherkey event was the rioting in the southernprovince of Nakhon Si Thammarat setoff in early September by policecorruption.

The crash that killed tolerance for bribes

The list of scandals gets longer eachday in a country where corruption drainsaway 10 to 20 percent of the nationalbudget—about 2.25 to 4.5 billion dollars.

“There’s clearly a knock-on effect,”says Pasuk Phongpaichit, an economicsprofessor at Bangkok’s ChulalongkornUniversity and author of several books oncorruption.According to the drafters ofthe NCCC programme, “there is broadconsensus in favour of a national crusadeagainst corruption aimed at reformingthe whole society.”A recent poll showedthat Thais saw government corruption asthe country’s third most serious problem,behind the economic crisis and the risingcost of living, and just ahead of drugs.

This great urge for change is theculmination of a long process that began inthe late 1970s when the army agreed to ap o w e r-sharing deal. Since then, Th a i l a n dhas seen civil society grow and become a

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Striking where it hurts

such momentum without the shock of the1997 financial crisis,which brought on themost economically painful recession since1 9 5 3 . Policies that nurtured collusionbetween the government, the ch a e b o l s(industrial conglomerates) and banks werewidely believed to have precipitated thec r i s i s.“ The crisis was the responsibility ofthe politicians who were pulling the stringsof the economic system,”says Kim Yo u n g -r a e,a political scientist at Ajou Universityin Suwon. In July 2000, a report by theKorea Economic Research Institute statedthat corruption had eroded nationaleconomic growth by 1.5 percent.

“ We took the opportunity of electionsthis year to end the irrational cycle of re-electing people who had been connectedwith corrupt dealings,” says Woo Pil-ho aco-ordinator of the People’s Solidarityfor Participatory Democracy (PSPD).

Following the election,problems withinthe civic sector itself threatened to derailthe nascent movement.Several prominentcivic leaders were involved in scandals,including accusations of accepting moneyfrom influence-buying corporations. O n eCAGE official was arrested for acceptinga large bribe from an election candidate.

M e a n w h i l e, in the National A s s e m b l y,junior lawmakers keen to push further anti-

corruption reform vowed to cross partyl i n e s,an act once unfathomable in Ko r e a np o l i t i c s. They met fierce opposition,h o w e v e r, from the old guard whodemanded party unity. And althoughPresident Kim has pledged his support for

the election reform bill, the splinteredA s s e m b l y, in which no party holds anoutright majority,has been deadlocked formost of the year. In November, a f t e ranother bribery scandal erupted, t h epresident reaffirmed his government’sdetermination “to mobilize prosecutors,

police and financial watchdogs to eradicatecorruption with a resolve that this be thelast battle.”

Organizations like ACNK know thattheir mission involves wholesale societalc h a n g e. “ We need to change the systemand public consciousness,” says AC N K ’sK i m , drawing attention to the emphasisput on the group over individual initiative.“ We have a kind of system for preservingc o r r u p t i o n . Anyone could be a whistle-b l o w e r,but if he is,h e ’ll become an outcast.”

But CAG E ’s success encouraged then a t i o n ’s top civic groups to form theKorean Civic Social Solidarity Alliance.This permanent coalition is seekinglegislation requiring politicians to accountfor all funds and guarantee democraticparty structures,particularly with respectto nominations, as well as greater publicparticipation in monitoring andevaluating elected officials.

As one of A s i a ’s most developedcountries and a young democracy, Ko r e ais being watched closely by the rest ofthe continent. “Serving as a model canbe one of the best practices of Ko r e a nN G O s,” says Kim. “ We believe othercountries can adopt such activities, b u tthe situation depends on the power oftheir civil society.” ■

“ We took theo p p o r t u n i t yof elections

this year to end theirrational cycle

of re-electing peoplewho had been

connected with corruptdealings.”

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player on the political scene, notably bytaking a strong stand against an attemptedmilitary coup in May 1992. What wastolerated 30 years ago is no longera c c e p t a b l e.

Several political leaders have stoodout in this period of transformation. InNovember 1985, Chamlong Srimuang,an austere former army commander,

became the most popular mayorBangkok has ever had.A few years later,police lieutenant Prathin Santiprapop,known as “Mr Clean,” ran an effic i e n toperation to stamp out a profitablenationwide timber-smuggling scheme.

Then, in 1997, came two events thathastened the course of Thai history:theAsian financial crash and the enactmentof a new constitution.“People toleratedthe waste of money in bribes when thingswere going well,but much less at a time ofeconomic crisis,” says Phongpaichit.

In July 1997,a 40 percent devaluation

of the national currency led to a slumpthat immediately threw millions of peopleout of work.But the crash also opened theway to reform and restructuring,especially in the financial sector, wheresecrecy encouraged corruption.

People knew economic recovery couldonly come through political reforms.Th edrafting of a new constitution, the 16th inthe country’s history, switched into higherg e a r. It introduced new checks andb a l a n c e s, such as a constitutional court, t h eN C C C, a national election commissionand a human rights commission.

Parliament followed up with a lawgiving everyone access to administratived o c u m e n t s. “ The new constitutionprovides the legal means to investigategovernment officials after complaintsfrom citizens and organizations,” s a y sPhongpaichit.The NCCC can prosecuteand punish deputies, senators and cabinetministers and has various legal weapons.The most feared is the obligation todisclose financial assets,which has alreadycaused a few heads to roll, and the so-called “50,000 signatures law,” which canforce authorities to investigate someonesuspected of corruption.

But these weapons can be difficult tohandle. “Someone who wants to start apetition first has to appear before theSenate and then prove that the minimum50,000 signatures collected are genuine,”says Deunden Nikomborirak,of the Th a iResearch and Development Fo u n d a t i o n .

Beyond these practical considerations

is a sense that corruption is profoundlyrooted and all-pervasive—even amongdoctors, teachers and monks. The latterhave been involved in many recents c a n d a l s, even though the law still forbidslooking into the assets of their temples.

“ I t ’s very hard to make people realizethat what they’ve done all their lives is infact illegal and can land them in court,”says Abhisit Vejjajiva,head of the primem i n i s t e r ’s office. “ You really have tochange the political culture and that’snot going to be easy.”

A daunting task awaitscorruption investigators

Many aspects of Thai culture and socialvalues—such as respect for hierarchies, adistaste for confrontation and the beliefthat wealth and a powerful job go hand inhand—tend to encourage corruption.

The task ahead might seem daunting:“ We haven’t done very much so far,”admits Krirkiat Phipatseritham, a formerrector of Thammasat University and amember of the NCCC, who reels offfigures to prove his point.Seventy percentof cabinet ministers, 60 percent ofparliamentary deputies and 30 to 40percent of senators are involved incorruption,he asserts.“We have to keepan eye on about 5,000 people,” he says.“ We ’ve inherited 3,300 case fil e s,of whichonly 700 have been dealt with so far.”C l e a r l y, the anti-corruption crusaders arenot about to claim victory but the bigclean-up has well and truly begun. ■

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A giant hand advertises the Democrat Party’s campaign for “Politics with Clean Hands.”

E T H I C S ◗

The obligationto disclose

financial assetshas already

caused a fewheads to roll

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I

◗ C U L T U R E

RENÉ LEFORT

DIRECTOR OFTHE UNESCO COURIER

Je r u s a l e m :s o u rce of sound and furyIn a small precinct of Jerusalem’s Old City, 4,000 years of history have generated a religious, symbolic and mythical intensity unmatched anywhere in the world

sraelis and Palestinians do agree upon atleast one point: their most recentnegotiations at Camp David stumbledover the future status of Jerusalem,andespecially a tiny 15-hectare area—aprecinct perhaps more holy, sacred andexalted in the eyes of several religionsthan any other in the world.

The heart of the problem—a quasi-rectangular area measuring just under500 metres by 300, carved out of the rockat its northern end and elevated on theeast and west sides where the landslopes—is about a fifth of Je r u s a l e m ’sOld City, forming its southeast corner.

Temple Mount to the Jews and theHaram al-Sharif (The Noble Sanctuary)to Muslims forms a platform that seemssuspended in the air: its walls, s o m e t i m e srising up 40 metres, tower above theentire Old City and far beyond.

The approaching tourist, pilgrim orworshipper is confronted by these colossalwalls of hewn stone blocks up to 10 metresl o n g. They were built under Herod theG r e a t .Recognized by the Romans as kingof the Je w s,he rebuilt the top of the Je w i s htemple from 19 B. C. and completed mostof the reconstruction by around 9 A . D.

Detailed descriptions have survivedwhich talk of the temple’s size andsplendour—50 metres long,wide and high,

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This article is based on the work ofOleg Grabar, an Islamic art expert who isprofessor emeritus at the Institute forAdvanced Studies at Princeton University( U. S. ) , and of Ernest-Marie Laperrousaz,honorary professor in the religious studiesdepartment of the École Pratique desHautes Études in Paris and author of a1999 book about the temples of Je r u s a l e m .

Inside the Dome of the Rock.

The Kotel,also known as the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall.

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on an esplanade bordered by hundredsof white marble columns,some of them 30metres high. Giant doors and stairwaysled out onto the square itself. But after afire started by the legions of the Romanemperor Titus in 70 A . D. ,what remains ofthis building besides religious beliefs,m y t h sand even ideology, all of them strongerand more powerful than before? No traceof the Temple has been found. Fr o mH e r o d ’s building, only a few largegateways and most of the walls haves u r v i v e d .

One part of the walls, on the west

s i d e, was called the Wailing Wall byChristians in the Middle Ages. The Jewssimply refer to it as the Western Wall (theKo t e l ) , the place where they came to prayand mourn. For centuries they haveconsidered it the holiest place of Ju d a i s m .Some say it was built on the foundationsof the wall around the first Jewish Te m p l e.Archaeologists, however, think the onlyremains of this earlier wall are actuallypart of the present eastern wall.

“And behold, I propose to build ahouse for the name of the Lord my God,as the Lord spoke to my father David,

saying ‘ Your son, whom I will set on yourthrone in your place, he shall build thehouse for My name.’”

Thus spoke Solomon, son of KingDavid,who united the 12 tribes of Israelinto a kingdom with Jerusalem as thec a p i t a l . Solomon bought a hill calledMount Moriah and it was there, m o r ethan 3,000 years ago, that he built thefirst Jewish temple, between 960 and 953B. C. Its dimensions might have beenmodest—only about 30 metres by 10 wideand 15 metres high—but literary sourcespraise the splendour of its interiordecorations made of gold,silver, bronzeand Lebanese cedarwood.

An eternal Covenantand rules to respect

Above all else, it housed at its centrethe Ark of the Covenant, placed insidethe Holy of Holies whose sole entrancewas a door that from the 6th century B. C.only the high priest could pass through. I twas the home of the Eternal.

The Ark enclosed the two blocks ofstone—the Tablets of the Law—whichMoses received from God on MountS i n a i .These sealed the Covenant betweena “chosen people”and the single God ofthe Israelites, whom they later proclaimedthe sole God of all humanity.M o n o t h e i s mwas born.

The Covenant was a contract. G o dordered the faithful:“You shall have noother gods before me” and “you shall notmake graven images,” and laid down themain moral and liturgical rules. If theyrespected God’s law, the faithful wouldnot only become “a great nation”living inhappiness and prosperity,but God wouldalso give them a land of their own.

Because the Covenant was eternal,they would own the land for eternity. I fthey carried out their divine obligations,they could live there. If they did not,G o dwho gave the land could take it back andrelinquish his people to the miseries ofe x i l e.But an eventual return was promised:“if you return to Me, and keep Mycommandments and do them, t h o u g hsome of you were cast out to the farthestpart of the heavens,yet I will gather themfrom there, and bring them to the placewhich I have chosen as a dwelling for Myn a m e.”

Exiles there were. Israelites from thenorthern kingdom of Samaria were exiledin Assyria seven centuries before Christ.Jews from Judea were exiled in Babylonafter the destruction of the First Templeby Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B. C.And afterthe destruction of the Second Temple by

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Aerial view of TempleMount/Haram al-Shariffrom the southwest. Inside the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Reconstruction of the Second Herodian Te m p l e, by Israeli archaeologist Leen Ritmeyer, 1 9 7 7 .L

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the Romans in 70 A . D. , Jews were exiledfor nearly 2,000 years. During all thist i m e, religious Jews implored God, t h r e etimes a day, 365 days a year, to restore theTemple and thus the Covenant betweenG o d , them and their land,at the centre ofwhich was Temple Mount.

“If I forget you, O Je r u s a l e m , Let myright hand forget its skill! If I do notremember you,Let my tongue cling to theroof of my mouth” (Psalm 137). Th e s ewords are recited at every Jewish marriage.

Where exactly was the First Te m p l e ?Historians and archaeologists generallyagree it was on Mount Moriah.The A l t a rof Holocausts was probably at the veryt o p, in line with the rules of the timeabout choosing the site of a shrine anderecting it.There is a rock on the Mountthat the Torah—the first five books ofthe Bible—says was the rock whereAbraham proved, 1,000 years before itwas written,that he worshipped God tothe point of being ready to sacrifice hisson Isaac. The first Covenant was made.

Abraham—or Ibrahim in the Ko r a n —is usually considered the ancestor of bothJews and A r a b s. More than 2,000 yearsl a t e r, it was from this same rock,a c c o r d i n g

to Muslim tradition, that the ProphetM o h a m e d , arriving from Mecca after amystical night journey, ascended toh e a v e n .The faithful can see the supposedvenerated footprint of the Prophet.

In 638, Caliph Umar conqueredJe r u s a l e m . The esplanade the A r a b sdiscovered was by now a wastegroundlittered with ruins and had not been used for

religious purposes for centuries, as if tosignify that the city had lost its Je w i s hc h a r a c t e r. Written sources say that theesplanade was even used as a rubbish dumpafter serving as the site of a Roman temple.

Later writings described how Umar

cleaned up the esplanade and the rock.Since then, because more remains havebeen found, speculation has given way toc e r t a i n t y.Construction work and what onewould call today restoration were done tomake the esplanade a religious and socialcentre for the new Muslim community. I twas enlarged over several centuries.

The Haram takes itspresent-day shape

The southern and eastern walls werepartly rebuilt. The two present-dayplatforms on the esplanade were laid out.It was probably on the southernmost ofthe two that the first mosque—in fact justa shelter to keep the sun off worshippers—was built, the Al-Aqsa mosque (“thefurthest mosque” in A r a b i c ) . On the otherhigher platform, the Dome of the Rockwas built soon afterwards, around the turnof the 7th and 8th centuries. Ever sincet h e n , its dome,atop an octagonal buildingwhich Suleyman the Magnificent lateradorned with coloured tiles that are stillt h e r e, has towered over the Haram andnearly all of the city and its suburbs.The A l -Aqsa mosque was then rebuilt severalt i m e s.

42 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

UNESCO has regularly been asked since 1967, c h i e fly by A ra bc o u n t r i e s, to help “preserve the cultural heritage of EastJ e r u s a l e m ,” which includes the Old City and the Temple Mount,

the Hara m .At UNESCO’s general conference in fall 1999, they reitera t e da request that “no measure and no action likely to modify the religious,cultural,historical and demographic character of the city or the overallbalance of the site be taken.”This appeal was mainly based on the fact that the United Nationsconsiders Jerusalem to be “an occupied city.”Those seeking UNESCO’shelp cite the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultura lProperty in the Event of Armed Conflict and the 1972 Convention forthe Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. J e r u s a l e mhas been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1981 and on the List ofWorld Heritage in Danger since 1982. The 1972 Convention requiresthe country responsible for a site to ensure it is not damaged or altered.The A rab countries are mainly concerned about the measures taken by theI s raeli authorities in the Old City, especially those involving populationchanges and archaeological digs.“In the Middle East confli c t , each sideestablishes its legitimacy by digging into the ground,” wrote Ja c q u e sTa r n e r o,of the Paris-based Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Jews andD i a s p o ra s.“Symbolic and archaeological strata signal the precedence of

one side over the other.”The Israelis want excavations to help reconstruct the history of their holyp l a c e s. In principle, they cannot undertake them because a 1956 NewDelhi recommendation by UNESCO forbids an occupying power fromdoing this kind of work.The Muslim authorities fear Israeli excavations willundermine the foundations of the esplanade and cause the mosques toc o l l a p s e.I s rael rejects these criticisms, and says they have more to do with politicsthan preserving heritage. The current Israeli ambassador to UNESCOsays that in current negotiations on the matter, “any move… by anoutside body, especially an international organization like UNESCO,would create ill feeling and be considered an unwelcome interference.”UNESCO decisions on the issue are based on the opinions of experts.The next such mission to Isra e l , to be led by Professor Oleg Gra b a r, i sa waiting the green light from Israeli a u t h o r i t i e s. ■

Abraham, or Ibrahim in the Koran,

is usually considered the

ancestor of both Jews and Arabs

UNESCO AND JERUSALEM’S OLD CITY

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The Crusaders (1099-1187) took overthe entire esplanade but did notpermanently alter it. When Saladinrecaptured Jerusalem from them, h eremoved all trace of their presence andrestored the buildings to their previouss t a t e. It was his dynasty, the Ay y u b i d s, a n dthen above all the Mamluks, rulers fromthe 13th century to the beginning of the1 6 t h , who transformed the Haram intowhat it is today.

They increased the number of placesfor prayer and built religious schools(m a d r a s a s) , along with libraries,retirement homes and hostels for pilgrims.The Haram now had both religious andsecular buildings, which jutted out overthe edge of the walls.

The Koran makes no clear referenceto Jerusalem as a holy place.At the outset,Muslims were to face towards the citywhen they begin to pray. But right fromthe start, the mosque the Koran calls “ t h efurthest sanctuary,” where it says theProphet went after his celestial journeyfrom Mecca,was associated with the holyplaces that were developing in Je r u s a l e m .

Th e n , probably from the 8th century,the stories of the mystical journey andof Mohamed’s ascent merged and a verypowerful emotional, i n t e l l e c t u a l ,r e l i g i o u sand personal link grew between al-Quds(“the holy”),which is the Arabic name forJerusalem,and the Muslims.

3,000 years of demolition,rebuilding and restoration

It became the third holiest city ofIslam,after Mecca and Medina in SaudiA r a b i a , and a very important place ofp i l g r i m a g e. Some Muslims believe thatthe Kaaba, the construction that stands inthe centre of the mosque in Mecca andwhich contains the Black Stone attributedto Ibrahim,will be transported at the endof time to stand near the Dome of theR o c k .Th e r e,all Muslims will face God onJudgment Day.

The Haram, the Temple Mount, hasseen never-ending construction,d e m o l i t i o n , rebuilding and restorationfor nearly 3,000 years now. The samestones have perhaps been used in thesame places to build temples both topagan gods and to the one God of theworld’s three monotheistic religions.

Over the centuries, the variousmasters of the city, because they werealways both religious and secular, e r a s e dall trace of their conquered predecessorsand used new monumental buildings toflaunt their power on the esplanadeoverlooking the entire city.

This Je r u s a l e m , around which exiledJews built their identity,was a celestial one.“Somewhere between heaven and earth,often closer to heaven than earth, Zion [ahill near Temple Mount] beckoned andgave meaning to the lives” of these exiles,say Jean-Christophe Attias and EstherB e n b a s s a , authors of a recent article inthe French magazine Notre Histoire.

From the end of the 19th century, t h eZionist movement, although mostlycomposed of secular Je w s, “made theancient myths relevant to the presentd a y ” and “took possession of the holinessof the land,” according to Attias andBenbassa. Jerusalem was seen as both aphysical and a celestial place, as apromised land and a national territory.

Compromise vs coexistence:resolving religious conflict

In 1980, the Israeli parliament decreedthat “all of reunified Jerusalem is thecapital of Israel.” At the same time,nationalism was rising among theP a l e s t i n i a n s, partly in response to theIsraeli move, and one of their principalgoals became the proclamation ofJerusalem as the capital of a future

Palestinian state. The Umma, t h eworldwide Muslim community, i n s i s t e dthat the Haram was inalienable.

Temple Mount or the Haram: todaythis site is doubly sacred to the faithfuland to many non-religious people, a n dsometimes exploited by two nationalistc u r r e n t s.Will there be a conclusion whereone side wins all and the other agrees tolose everything? Can the two sides sharethese strata of historically interwovenmasonry steeped in such passionateemotion? Shimon Peres, who as Israeliforeign minister was one of the architectsof the Oslo Accords, is fond of pointingout that political conflicts can be solved bycompromise, but religious ones can onlybe settled through coexistence. ■

December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 43

L a n d m a r k s■ circa 2000 B.C.: according to the Bible,A b raham leaves on God’s orders to thePromised Land chosen for him,which stretchesbetween the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean.This same biblical source states that Abrahamwas ready to sacrifice his son Isaac to Godfrom the rock at the summit of what willbecome known as Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif.■ circa 1200 B.C.: Moses receives the Tabletsof the Law from God on Mount Sinai.■ circa 953 B.C.: the construction of the FirstTemple is completed under the reign of KingSolomon.■ circa 587 B.C:destruction of the First Templeby Nebuchadnezzar.■ 515 B.C.: the construction of the SecondTemple is completed.■ from 19 B.C. to A.D. 64: reconstruction ofthe Second Temple under King Herod theGreat. The size of the working site led some tobelieve that he had in fact built a Third Temple.■ 70:destruction of the Second Temple.■ 132-134:theories point to the constructionof a new Temple, which would have been thefourth one.■ 6 3 2 : death of the Prophet Mohamed.According to Muslim belief, he rose to the skyfrom the rock on the esplanade following amystical night journey from Mecca.■ 638: Caliph Umar seizes Jerusalem andbuilds a first mosque there.■ 691-92: construction of the Dome of theRock.■ 1 0 9 9 - 1 1 8 7 : the Crusaders occupyJerusalem.■ 1187-beginning of the 16th century: theAyyubid dynasty and to a greater extent theMamluks (from 1250) give the Esplanade, inparticular the Al-Aqsa Mosque, its currentfeatures.■ 1917:beginning of the British mandate overJerusalem.■ 1948: following the first Arab-Israeli war,West Jerusalem is annexed by Israel and EastJerusalem, which is home to the Old City,comes under Jordanian administration.■ 1967: Israel seizes East Jerusalem.■ According to the Jewish religion, the ThirdTemple will be constructed once the Messiaharrives.

Can the two sides share these strata

of historicallyinterwoven masonry

steeped in such passionate

emotion?

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◗ E T H I Q U E S

44 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

E T H I Q U E S ◗

December 2000 -The Unesco Courier 44

I

◗ M E D I A

IVAN BRISCOE

UNESCO COURIER JOURNALIST

When computers chipaway at our memoriesGalloping advances in information technology promise to give us instant access to all the world’sknowledge. But how will human memory fare against the rise of the super-machine?

f the architects of technology’s next greatleap forward are to be believed, a l lknowledge may soon be shrunk tovanishing point. N a n o t e c h n o l o g y, o rcomputing carried out at the scale ofa t o m s, is their byword for the future.Wi t hits awesome potential,scientists at IBMhave recently argued,around 11 million400-page volumes—the entire contents,s a y,of Fr a n c e ’s National Library—couldbe stored and primed for instant viewingon a device the size of a human palm.

The ink may still be fresh on theseb l u e p r i n t s, but the elixir of portableomniscience no longer seems so far away.Seemingly cast-iron laws of everincreasing computer power, along withthe rise of powerful new technologies,appear to point to a horizon where allthat can be known and remembered canbe transferred to machines with whichhuman beings then interact at will.And itis a future that for some is already spellingbig trouble for the brain.

Surveys point to yawning gapsin general knowledge

“Computers not only distract us fromcontemplation of deeper values; t h e ydiscourage us from contemplation itself,”declares Stephen Bertman, a classicsprofessor at Canada’s University ofWi n d s o r, and author of the recent bookCultural A m n e s i a. In his opinion, s o c i e t y ’slove affair with fast and far- r e a c h i n gmachines—online computers, p a l m - t o p sand mobile phones, all just for starters—leads inexorably to memory loss ratherthan gain.

As surveys repeatedly show,k n o w l e d g eof history, l i t e r a t u r e, geography and evencurrent affairs seem to be on a steepd e c l i n e : 60 percent of adult A m e r i c a n scannot recall the name of the presidentwho ordered the dropping of the fir s tatomic bomb, just as 77 percent of youngBritons are perplexed by the words Magna

C a r t a .The day of the nano-shrunk librarycould soon come,but will any of its users beable to remember a single line of poetry?

The connection between theseyawning gaps in general knowledge andinformation technology is by no meanse s t a b l i s h e d , but a host of thinkers indifferent fields are sure the issue is onethat will shortly become all too pertinent.“External support for our memory has adirect effect on our memory,”argues Je a n -Gabriel Ganascia, a leading neuro-scientist based in Paris’ Pierre et MarieCurie University.“At the same time as ithelps us and extends our physicalc a p a b i l i t i e s, it diminishes our individualf a c u l t i e s.This is a vital question,one which

has been around for a long time. E v e nPlato speaks in the P h a e d r u s of writingbeing both a good and an evil for ourm e m o r y.”

Good or evil,writing has neverthelessformed one of the main tools in theevolution of human memory. Indeed itis civilization’s unrelenting hunger forplacing memory in external stores—cave-p a i n t i n g s, then manuscripts, l i b r a r i e s,printed works and finally computers—that has supported the entire march of thes p e c i e s. As the Canadian

neuropsychologist Merlin Donald haso b s e r v e d , each of these new technologieshas helped humans “ o f f - l o a d ” t h e i rm e m o r i e s. Pre-literate societies, f o rinstance, depended on oral tradition fortheir expertise—a practice underminedby the flaws of overworked brains, t h o u g hfertile ground for epic poetry.Through thewritten word,memories were freed fromthe head:knowledge could be stored forretrieval in books,and then recrafted intothe sort of novel and complex codes onwhich modern society is founded:“examples might include the servicingmanuals for a rocket engine, t h eequations proving the Pythagoreant h e o r e m , a corporate income taxhandbook, or the libretto and score forEugene Onegin,” states Donald.

Becoming goodmemory managers

The benefits of storing memoryoutside the brain are unquestionable,b u tthe invention of printing over 500 yearsago followed by the post-war onset ofcomputing have added a new note to theprocess:that of thundering acceleration.One simple equation has come toembody this. Known as Moore’s Lawafter its inventor Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, it stipulates thatcomputing power—defined in terms ofcapacity and speed per unit cost—doublesevery two years.The trend has held for thelast 40 years. Should it continue asexpected to around 2020, a personalcomputer by that year will have exactlythe same processing power as a singlehuman brain.Add the promised marvelsof nanotechnology, optical and quantumc o m p u t i n g, and machines might reachutterly daunting proportions. “ O n epenny’s worth of computing circa 2099will have a billion times greatercomputing capacity than all humans onE a r t h ,”breezily announces Ray Ku r z w e i l ,an American supremo of artificiali n t e l l i g e n c e, in his book The Age ofSpiritual Machines.

Kurweil may well be too confident inhis predictions,but the quandary remains:if computers become so quick, so mighty,

44 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

According to Moore’s Law,

computing power doubles every

two years.By around 2020,

a personal computer will have exactly

the same processing power as a single

human brain

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December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 4545 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

so cheap, then where will the relativelyimpoverished human mind fit in? Threeyears ago, I B M ’s Deep Blue computerbeat the world’s finest fle s h - a n d - b l o o dchess player , Garry Kasparov, over thecourse of six games. If human functionsultimately resemble moves of chess, t h e nmust the brain and its stores submit to thesuperior wisdom of the microchip?

For many cognitive scientists, r e l a t i o n sbetween mind and machine are alreadyundergoing drastic reconfiguration.“Distributed intelligence” is the newm a x i m , encapsulating all systems in whichindividuals and computers mesh to carryout a collective task,whether it be landingan aircraft or tracking share prices. TheInternet is so far the crowning glory—asystem that in principle might combineindividual users into a potent “ g r o u pm i n d .” For Norman Johnson from theSymbiotic Intelligence Project at the LosAlamos Laboratory, New Mexico, t h ecollective power unleashed by such asystem could solve problems far beyondany individual’s capacity.

All of this may sound abstract,but theeffects on memory are being felt now.Facts and figures no longer take pride ofplace in school curricula. Within the pasttwo years, South Ko r e a , Singapore andHong Kong—havens of rote learning—

have debated plans to axe huge swathes ofstandard classroom study. Experts ineducation stress that students must learnto be adaptable, skilled in manipulatings y m b o l s, able to respond to new situations;in short, ready to deal with the newe c o n o m y, a realm where the computer isk i n g.

“ We will need a lot of new skills,”declares the neuro-psychologist Donald.“ We have to become good memorym a n a g e r s — w e ’ve moved away frommanaging a lot in our heads to managingmemory devices.We have to devote morespace to this executive control and less torote memory storage.”

Nurturing imaginative thinking at school

As he acknowledges, the result is aninevitable reduction in “ i n d i v i d u a lpresence.” It is a form of mental life thathas unsurprisingly earned bitterr e c r i m i n a t i o n s. Earlier this year theAlliance for Childhood joined the fray bypublishing a report entitled Fool’s Goldattacking the numbing effects ofcomputers at school, above all primarys c h o o l : “A heavy diet of ready-madecomputer images and programmed toysappears to stunt imaginative thinking.Teachers report that children in our

electronic society are becomingalarmingly deficient in generating theirown ideas and images.”

While proponents of the electronicfuture insist on the liberating, e l e v a t i n gpotential of machines—Kurzweil evensuggests that we could “ p o r t ” our mindsonto super-powered computers for anintellectually and sensually richer life—suspicion continues to fester.As Ganasciao b s e r v e s, human memory is much morethan simple information processing.Th e r ea r e, for instance, at least five systems ofhuman memory, making up aninordinately rich web of self-refle x i v e,interweaving recollection that nocomputer has even come close to imitating.But if memory is increasingly stored inmachines that we then manage for ourl e a r n i n g, work and leisure, then how willthese systems in the brain fare? And howwill imagination, intelligence andunderstanding—all of which depend onan efficiently functioning memory—beaffected? The simple answer is:we still donot know.

Yet one image stalks the debate. It isnot the old science fiction fear of amalevolent computer (the HAL of 2 0 0 1 :A Space Odyssey p e r h a p s ) ,but of a citizenwithout a personal memory to speak of.B e r t m a n , for one, is convinced that

December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 45

Virtual competition:Garry Kasparov on his way to losing against Deep Blue, IBM’s chess playing computer .

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46 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

◗ T A L K I N G T O . . .

A model of Lucy (left) and her mate. With 40 percent of her skeleton remaining,Lucy gives us a glimpse of one of our oldest upright ancestors, A. afarensis, dating back over three million years.

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December 2000 - The Unesco Courier 47

Ian Ta t t e rs a l l :the humanswe left behind

We have a history of diversity andcompetition among human species whichbegan some five million years ago andcame to an end with the emergence ofmodern humans.Two million years ago,for example, there were at least fourhuman species on the same landscape.Maybe they got along by basicallyignoring each other or even havingpeaceful interactions.We don’t know.

In any event,we are now the solesurviving twig on a big branching bushproduced by this process of evolutionarye x p e r i m e n t a t i o n .We ’re n o t the pinnacleof a ladder that our ancestors laboriouslyclimbed.

How do your views on human evolutiondiffer from traditional Darwinian notions?

According to Darwin, you havelegions of organisms that over timeevolve themselves into a new species.It’s like a fine-tuning process, guided bynatural selection, in which the individualsbest-adapted to their environmentreproduce and pass on their “ f a v o u r a b l e ”characteristics, so that each generationimproves upon its predecessor.

So we tend to think of evolution interms of characteristics, rather thans p e c i e s. For example, we speak of the“evolution of upright walking” or the“evolution of the hand,” often withoutrealizing that legs and hands can onlybe part of the story. The reality is thatnatural selection is a blind mechanismwhich can vote up or down only on entireo r g a n i s m s, warts and all. I n d i v i d u a lorganisms are mindboggingly complexand integrated mechanisms: they succeedor fail as the sum of their parts, n o tbecause of a particular characteristic.

I t ’s the same with populations ands p e c i e s.Species are out there competingwith others in a real world of limitedr e s o u r c e s.Wh a t ’s more, the ecologies ofwhich they form a part have an alarmingt e n d e n cy to change abruptly. If yourhabitat is covered by an ice sheet, i t ’spretty irrelevant how well you areadapted to the meadows and forests nowburied beneath the ice.

Finally in the Darwinian notion youhave a slow accumulation of changes overgenerations leading to the creation of anew species [when individuals of the samelineage can no longer reproduce].However a population will changemorphologically [biologically] with time

i ke most people, I was taughtto think of human evolutionas a linear chain, with a“missing link” connecting apesand a series of pro t o t y p ehumans in a process of

perfection reaching the pinnacle that weoccupy today. This is the traditional viewof paleoanthro p o l o g i s t s, veritable humanfossil hunters who try to piece together ourh i s t o r y. But the field is now incre a s i n g l ydivided and you are seen as the leader ofa new and growing camp. Please explain.

This notion of human evolution asbeing a linear trudge from primitivism toperfection is totally wrong. I came topaleoanthropology from the study oflemurs [monkey-like primates] inMadagascar where you have a hugediversity of animals. You cannot helpa s k i n g,“How did these creatures becomeso diverse?” Yet this question is notasked in paleoanthropology becausethere is only one species of humanstoday. Somehow we believe it is normaland natural for us to be alone in thew o r l d .Yet in fact, if you look at the fossilr e c o r d , you find that this is totallyunusual—this may be the first time thatwe have ever had just one species ofhumans in the world.

A world renownpaleoanthropologist cuts downold notions of our family tree toreveal a host of unknownancestors: extinct humanspecies

L

Tattersall’s sketch of our family bush.

Millionsof years

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48 The Unesco Courier - December 2000

Neanderthals have been known for 150 years now. What can we possiblyfind that nobody has noticed before ?

but this doesn’t necessarily lead to thecreation of a new species.For meaningfulgenetic changes to take hold, t h epopulation must be small. [ The larger thep o p u l a t i o n , the more difficult it is formajor genetic changes to spread.]

So why haven’t we seen this diversity inthe fossil re c o rd? A c c o rding to tra d i t i o n a lre a d i n g s, t h e re are about six or sevenspecies of humans. Yet you argue thatthere are at least 17 and probably more.

Paleoanthropologists have basicallynot paid enough attention to morphologywhen comparing fossils and tend tooverlook differences in the shape of thes k u l l , for example, the jaw or the spine.They seem to think that once they havemeasured the age and the brain size of thef o s s i l , they can shoehorn it into aparticular species. It is very clear that overthe long haul, the brain size of hominidshas increased.H o w e v e r, this “ t r e n d ”h a sdistracted attention away from diversityand led scientists to focus on continuity,thereby reinforcing the notion that ourevolutionary history has been one of as l o w, single-minded progress fromprimitiveness to perfection.

In addition,paleoanthropology hasbeen practiced largely by people whocome from a human anatomicalbackground.So many don’t know whatthe rest of the living world is like.

You’ve spent the past seven years tra v e l l i n ga round the world with a colleague, Je f f re yS c h w a r t z ,to study every major human fossilever found.Why?

We started out looking at theN e a n d e r t h a l s, thinking “My God, t h eNeanderthals have been known for 150years now. What can we possibly fin dthat nobody has noticed before?”Andthe very first one we picked up we sawsome structures inside the nasal cavitythat had never been noticed before. Byextracting more information out of therecord, we hope to get a better idea ofthe diversity that exists out there.

I don’t think anyone has ever seen thee n t i re fossil re c o rd . How did you get pastthe politics in the field to gain access?

It is very diffic u l t , especially formore recently discovered fossils.They are

often very personal discoveries and thereis a tendency to say,“How can y o u m a k ecomments about a fossil I f o u n d ? ”A l s o,most human fossils are found in the Th i r dWorld and are sometimes seen asbargaining chips for extracting moneyfrom We s t e r n e r s. There can be atremendous amount of commissions,bureaux and administrative hoops to jumpthrough before you can get access to thef o s s i l s. But I have been very impressedby the ways in which our colleagues havehelped us.The whole process could havebeen a lot more gruesome and a lot more

e x p e n s i v e.T h e re ’s a pile on your desk of about 2,000pages describing the fossils which, a l o n gwith photos, will be published in a thre e -

volume set beginning this Marc h . T h ephotos alone will mark a major step in thefield because most PhD students nevereven see the fossils they study.Why is it soimportant just to describe, let alonea n a l y z e, fossils that have been known forover a century?

One of the big problems has beenthat everyone describes fossilsd i f f e r e n t l y. They use differentterminologies that are all based onHomo sapiens and are not necessarilyappropriate for other kinds of fossilhominids. By using Homo sapiens as akind of reference point or template, theexisting body of literature tends to distortthe fossil record. We ’re describingeverything the same way so that even ifyou haven’t seen the original fossils, y o ucan consult and compare thesedescriptions and come to your ownc o n c l u s i o n s. For the first time, h u n d r e d sof fossils will be compatibly described.

By studying lemurs, you may havedeveloped the critical eye needed torecognize diversity in human fossils. Butcan you hold up the skull of one of ourancestors, say a Neanderthal, and reallymaintain the same detachment as whenlooking at a monkey’s skull?

I don’t think that you should lookat a human fossil with a different eyethan you would use for any other fossil.They are both documents of species thathave now vanished.They are part of thew o r l d ’s history of diversity. Besides ifyou study hundreds of fossils, you don’thave time to ponder the existentialaspects of being human.

Some might argue that this detachment isyour weakness. By focusing solely onbiological differences between fossils, y o upigeonhole them into narrow categoriesthat ignore other factors, namely culture.

I don’t think that we’re excludinga n y t h i n g. But if you don’t start withm o r p h o l o g y, y o u ’re going to be misled allthe way down the line. Once you have asystematic structure into which to placeyour species, then you can mix ineverything else—like the tools that theyused or their settlement patterns.

Do you ever find it surreal to try to piecetogether such a vast history with suchm e a g re clues—bits of jaw here, some bra i ncase fragments there? It must take a solid

Mystery hangs over the top skull:scientists are not sure if it is Neanderthal,

as below, or from a related species.

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T A L K I N G T O . . . ◗

molecules have and we should alwaysbelieve molecules above morphology.”But I don’t think that is true.There are nomagic bullets.We can widen the field withgenetic and isotope studies but we willlearn the most by persuading people tolook more closely at the existing fossils.

A battle is raging between sociobiologistsand cultural anthro p o l o g i s t s. B a s i c a l l y,sociobiologists believe that humans alls h a re some kind of essential natureshaped by evolution. C u l t u ra lanthropologists, in contrast,vehementlyreject universal statements about humann a t u re and focus on local context inexplaining our behaviour. Where do youstand?

I’m not certain about what thecultural anthropologists stand for.But thegeneral feeling is that history is driven insome way by cultural factors.Yet I see a lotof randomness and contingency in history.

On the other hand, t h e s eevolutionary psychologists [sociobiologyapplied to our species] are completelym i s l e d . For example, say they want toexplain something like violence.They willtreat it as a separate category and thendevelop just-so stories as to why thatparticular characteristic emerged ine v o l u t i o n ,all the while forgetting that anycharacteristic is embedded in a verycomplex organism.

You’ve raised the issue of violence.Why doyou think we have a tendency toward sa g g ression? Why can’t one genera t i o nlearn from the next and avoid conflict?

We are psychologically so

Specimen:Ian Ta t t e r s a l lSpecies:Homo sapiensAge: 5 5O r i g i n : Born inEngland, raised inEast A f r i c a

S t a t u s : Curator of Anthropology at theAmerican Museum of Natural History, N e wYork City Pe rsonal evolution: Followed in thefootsteps of his illustrious predecessor CharlesDarwin by studying at Cambridge University’sChrist’s College of where he majored inanthropology and archaeology. H o w e v e r, h es t rayed from the path of human evolution asa PhD student by leaping to the study ofp r i m a t e s, notably lemurs (small monke y - l i kecreatures) in Madagascar as well as monke y sin Mauritius.Distinguishing feature s : Two unusualt raits resulted from time spent in the junglewith our primate cousins:fir s t ,a critical eye torecognize the diversity of our humana n c e s t o r s ;s e c o n d , a deep respect for naturewhich has led to the conclusion that his ownspecies is a monster,whose ravenous appetiteand irrational behaviour imperils the world.Historical significance: Leader of thecamp to knock our species off the pedestalof human evolution. ■

ego to come to a firm conclusion.N o, because you’re not creating

a n y t h i n g. Yo u ’re doing your best toreconstruct evolutionary history and youknow that science in general is a systemof provisional knowledge—it’s not anauthoritarian system of belief where youmake “ a ” discovery and that staysdefinitive for the rest of time. All thatscientists know is that what we believetoday is probably not going to be whatwe believe tomorrow. Science isgrounded in doubt.

But some people are more willing toaccept this provisional nature than others.You probably have colleagues fuming withyour ongoing list of human species.

I t ’s just because they’re not usedto it. I t ’s hard to convince people toreconsider fossils they thought they haveknown for over 30 years. But they aremore flexible with new fossils becausethey don’t have any received wisdomabout species no one knew existed before.

This seems to be the heyday of geneticists.There is a strong feeling that if they canjust manage to extract the DNA fro mhuman fossils, we will finally get to thebottom of our evolutionary history. D oyou think genetic re s e a rch will tra n s f o r mthe field of paleoanthropology?

My feeling is that the two sets ofdata are still pointing in the same generaldirection of multiple human species.A n dthat is comforting. But there are paleo-anthropologists out there feelingdepressed and saying, “Oh God! Ourdata don’t have the resolution that

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If you really want to understand humann a t u re, don’t look to the past,look to how people are in the pre s e n t

complex—or perhaps screwed up—at leastpartly because of the way in which ourbrains were built up over the ages,structure on structure.While the old notionof an inherent conflict between older andnewer brain structures and functions seemso v e r s i m p l i fie d , it is self-evident that it is inour controlling organ, the brain, that wemust search for the keys to thecontradictions that we all exhibit, e v e r yd a y.

Hold on. I thought you just rejected theevolutionary biologists’ penchant forlooking to biology to explain our behaviour.

In my book Becoming Human, Iwrite that it may seem odd to devotehundreds and hundreds of pages to waysof looking at the fossil record and thenconclude that you cannot learn muchfrom it about how people behave today.If you really want to understand whathumans are, don’t look to the past,lookto how people are in the present.

Not only do we look to the past tou n d e rstand the present but we pro j e c tthe present on interpretations of the past.For example, the Neanderthals areveritable icons, yet they were just one

actor on a huge stage. How do you explainthis emotional attachment?

Neanderthals were very happyliving in Europe for 200,000 years andsuddenly modern Homo sapiens s h o wup and BOOM! Th e y ’re gone. So tomake it more palatable, some peoplehave been suggesting,“ We l l , maybe theywere just genetically swamped by hordesof invading modern humans.” I don’tthink that can possibly have been thecase. Neanderthals and modern Homos a p i e n s are just too different to haveinterbred successfully. But if it makespeople feel better about poor oldNeanderthal being genetically swampedthan physically annihilated, then so be it.

One thing truly sets us apart from everyother species: c o n s c i o u s n e s s. H u m a nconsciousness has been described as akind of inner eye, which allows the brain toobserve itself at work and there f o repermits us to have the complexi n t e r p e rsonal relationships that far exceedthose of any other animal. Modern humananatomy goes back over 100,000 yearsbut it wasn’t until maybe 40,000 yearsago that modern cognition suddenly burs ton the scene, as evidenced by the caveart of the Cro - M a g n o n , for example, i nE u ro p e. What triggered this cognitiveexplosion?

It is impossible to be sure what

this innovation might have been,but thebest current bet is that it was theinvention of language. For language isnot simply the medium by which weexpress our ideas and experiences toeach other. Rather it is fundamental tothe thought process itself. It involvescategorizing and naming objects andsensations in the outer and inner worldsand making associations betweenresulting mental symbols. It is impossiblefor us to conceive of thought (as weknow it) in the absence of language,a n dit is the ability to form mental symbolsthat is the fount of our creativity, f o ronly once we create such symbols can werecombine them and ask questions like“What if…?”

Why haven’t other species developedspoken language?

Many species have very complexv o c a l ,gestural and scent-based systems ofcommunication but even in the greata p e s, vocalizations seem limited toexpressing emotional states. We havemanaged to separate vocal sounds frome m o t i o n , and instead to attach them tosymbols that we form in our minds.As faras we know, this is a unique ability thatwas only relatively recently acquired. I nf a c t , if we were to set the evolutionaryclock back only a few hundred thousandyears and run the whole process all over

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T A L K I N G T O … ◗

of us are in states of disgrace and alwaysshall be.

S e c o n d , ethics are all products ofthe human mind. We cannot derive anyconcepts of morality or of natural lawfrom contemplating nature. The reasonwhy is that nature is indifferent toindividual suffering or success and to callsuch indifference amoral would be toa n t h r o m o r p h i z e.

Human evolution has come to a standstill,you say. We haven’t really changed sinceacquiring cognition and we cannot expectany major innovations in the future.Wh a tis holding us back?

Yo u ’ve got to have smallpopulations in order to get meaningfulgenetic innovations. The population isgetting larger all the time, individuals arei n finitely more mobile now and theprospect of isolation of populations islower than it ever has been. We canimagine some sci-fi scenarios of isolatedspace colonies but they would inevitablybe sustained by a lifeline from Earth. O r

we can imagine genetic engineering.H o w e v e r, a r t i ficially produced genotypescould only be sustained by sequestering“ e n g i n e e r e d ” individuals which I doubtand hope would never be deemedp e r m i s s i b l e. But if it was, these geneticinnovations would remain only amongthese small “ l a b o r a t o r y ”p o p u l a t i o n s.

So to hope that a bit moreevolutionary fine-tuning will solve ourproblems is foolish optimism.We have tocope with ourselves as we currently copewith the world and the problems that wecause in it.We have reached a pinnacle inthe sense that Homo sapiens is trulysomething unique.Whether you think itis superior or not is up to you. I suspectthat if other species were capable ofcontemplating this question, they wouldnot conclude that we represent ap i n n a c l e.

In the world’s richest, most industrializedc o u n t r y, the United States, a debate ra g e sover the teaching of human evolution inh i g h s c h o o l s.The “ c re a t i o n i s t ”m o v e m e n twants to impose Biblical scriptures in thec l a s s ro o m . Has this movement hampere dyour work? The Internet has a long list ofsites in which creationists not only attackyour work but also pray for your soul.

I t ’s absolutely appalling.This is theonly country where this is happening.I t ’sdue to a certain group of fundamentalistProtestants who seem to feel that humanbeings need the word of God in order tobehave properly. Th e y ’re threatened,insecure and looking for a scapegoat.

I get an occasional letter fromcreationists who are very concernedabout my soul and insist that I follow the“true path.” But I’ve never received anythreats or felt any restrictions in my work.

For a man who studies dead people, youseem to go out on a limb politically. Youcannot avoid the ire of the creationists butyou have gone a step further by writingthat attempts to limit women’sre p roductive rights are “the ultimateexample of human hubris” at a time whenglobal human population growth iscausing ecological havoc.Why go so far?

I just draw conclusions on the basisof what I see around me in the world asa human being, not as ap a l e o a n t h r o p o l o g i s t . I’m concernedabout this emphasis on the quantity of lifebecause it’s ultimately going to have adeleterious effect on its quality. Th e r eare three times as many people in theworld as there were when I was born.But it cannot go on indefin i t e l y … ■

INTERVIEW BY AMY OTCHETUNESCO COURIER JOURNALIST.

Décembre 2000 - Le Courrier de l’UNESCO 51

I ’ve never had a more profound orpowerful experience. It is suchextraordinary art in such anextraordinary environment—the age isonly a secondary part of that experience.This symbolic activity appeared sos u d d e n l y : art and carving, e n g r a v i n g,notation music, people decorating theirbodies and burying each other inelaborate styles and so on.

You’ve maintained that this kind ofsymbolic activity was for the most partreserved to Euro p e. Perhaps it wasoccurring elsewhere in Africa or Asia butjust slipped through the cracks of a spars efossil re c o rd? You could be accused ofEurocentrism.

We have some early hints in A f r i c aof humans transporting exotic materialsover long distances, some traces of fli n tmining and 50,000-year-old ostricheggshell beads and so on. People mayhave even been navigating to Au s t r a l i a60,000 years ago.These are all things thatprobably required the same kind ofcognitive apparatus that producedL a s c a u x . But the record is tantalizinglyp o o r.

This isn’t to suggest that any of thiscognition and creativity originated inE u r o p e.Apparently the first Cro-Magnonbrought these capacities with them butfrom where we don’t know. It may wellhave begun in A f r i c a . But right now, t h ebest record that we have is in Europe.And that’s why it attracts so mucha t t e n t i o n . H o p e f u l l y, w e ’ll be learningmore from other parts of the world aswe make more discoveries.

You’ve suggested that the art at Lascauxreflected a body of mythology, a view ofthe world and humanity’s place in it. Doyou think this thirst or quest to unders t a n dour origins is a distinctly human trait?

Oh yes.This intense curiosity aboutour origins, this intense need to know“ w h y ” is a profound part of us.I think thebottom line is that the ability and desireto ask these questions are deeplyembedded in the human psyche.We aretrying to satisfy this curiosity when westudy human evolution. Indeed we maynot be learning nearly as much aboutourselves as we think we are.

For many people, the ultimate question iswhether primitive man was more noble or“better off” than civilized man. In youro p i n i o n , did a state of gra c e, so to speak,exist before or after the advent ofcivilization as we know it?

(Burst of laughter) Fi r s t , a state ofgrace is a concept which humans devisewhile knowing that it doesn’t exist.M o s t

En haut, un crâne d’Homo sapienst rouvé en Afrique du Sud et vieux d’environ

100 000 ans. En bas, un crâne daté d’environ un million d’années

et qui reste à classifie r.

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Focus:

■ Is globalization stifling rural life?■ Diary of an Egyptian fellah■ The landless arise in Brazil ■ Chinese agriculture: down on taxes and the WTO■ Farmers and consumers join forces in France■ The death of a dream: the sequel to South Asia’s GreenRevolution ■ Filipino farmers take on the GM industry■ Indian bio-villages: a model for sustainable development

Features include:■ A river journey through Senegal■ How Bangladesh fell victim to arsenic■ Palm Beach and beyond: options for electoral reform in the United States■ A tale of two Russian schools■ The rise and fall of online racism■ Yul Choi: the figurehead of South Korea’santi-nuclear movement

In the next issue

many voices one world

FOCUSJanuary 2000:

Free trade and Frankenstein

food: the newpeasants’ revolt

@ www.unesco.org/courier

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