Time is of the essence.

Taken from Wikimedia Commons

For thousands of years humans have passed down histories and tales.  First, by spoken word, and song, but as civilization progressed, people developed writing, and with it, the ability to record and preserve complex information.  The media by which we record information and the efficacy of its preservation has changed drastically overtime, but many examples of these historical messages still exist.  Some Egyptian pyramids, for example, contain treasures, or hieroglyphs which speak of rulers and gods.  We know that the Egyptians generally intended for the contents of the tombs to follow the deceased to the afterlife, but were any of these ever meant to be found again one day?  Whether or not this was the Egyptians’ intent, there are indeed objects and containers that have been buried with the express purpose of being opened by future generations, called Time Capsules.

Although historical artifacts are frequently unearthed, Time Capsules (to the best of our knowledge) are a fairly recent occurrence.  One of the earliest documented Time Capsules is called the Crypt of Civilization.  Created by Dr. Thornwell Jacobs in 1936 at the University of Oglethorpe, Georgia; the capsule’s purpose was to contain accurate records of history for future historians to refer to.  The capsule is not to be re-opened until 8113 A.D.  Jacobs decided on the date by taking the earliest known date in history he could find (4241 B.C., recorded on an Egyptian calendar), calculating the difference between then and his time, and then re-adding the difference (of 6117 years) to the then current date.  The swimming pool-sized chamber that is the crypt contains thousands of items, including books, religious texts, toys, many other contemporary items, and even a device to teach English to those who re-discover it. 

Source: Hyperlink

Although the Crypt of Civilization is widely considered the first of its kind, sometimes Time Capsule-like objects are found dating back even further.  More recently, a Stonemason in Nebraska was restoring a limestone buttress in an old library (which used to be a church).  As he pried in between some of the stones, he hit metal and realized it was not a water line, but a container.  When local historians looked inside, they found church records, a list of members, a leather bound Bible, and a hymnal, among other things, dating back to 1870. 

Although finds like these may not have had specific unearthing dates attached with them, the purpose they share with the modern Time Capsule is clear: to communicate with those from the future.  Although there is no such thing as a time machine, these capsules attempt to achieve the same goal of transcending time to connect with others, and to remind them of the past.  Some Time Capsules are purely sentimental; they may contain personal memorabilia, or letters.  Others are meant to make predictions about the future.

The BurbankTime Capsule, sealed in 1959, contained within it predictions about the city’s state 50 years from when it was written.  The writings foretold atomic energy, massive mall-like living spaces, with 88% of the city’s inhabitants living within them, and an end to parking along the side of the street (of all things).  Although some of these types of predictions resemble modern technologies, such as aircraft capable of vertical take-off, in general these theories from the past reveal the kind of imagination, hope, and even naiveté that our predecessors possessed.  But it’s these same drives that direct us to create new technology, and a better environment for ourselves and for future generations. 

Taken from Wikimedia Commons

There are numerous other examples of famous Time Capsules from the past, but what kinds of efforts are we making now to communicate with the future?  One example of a modern Time Capsule is located on the Voyager 1 spacecraft, and is, in fact, not on earth at all.  Voyager 1 is currently approximately 18,473,140,350 kilometers from our sun, in deep space, and among its other purposes, it carries with it the Golden Record, which contains both audio and visual information about humanity.  This capsule, however, is not meant to be intercepted by any of mankind’s future generations, but by extraterrestrial life.  

Evidence such as this displays that man’s desire to communicate is so strong, it extends beyond even our own world, and unto others.  Perhaps one day, thousands of years from now, after all memory of our current civilization has been forgotten, we will rediscover a piece of our past, and in doing so, rediscover a piece of ourselves.  

Smell ya later!

In a clean environment, we like to imagine that the air is pure, without dust and dirt floating through it.  Say you’ve just finished cleaning your home, top to bottom.  With some of today’s chemical agents, your living space may acquire a ‘fresh’ or ‘clean’ scent.  But does this mean the air is pure?  Whether you realize it or not, the air is constantly filled with molecules that are being given off by the objects around you.  These molecules can travel their way up your nose when you inhale.  The particles then find their ways to small hair-like sensors called “Cilia” which they bond with, and your body interprets the information as a smell.  There are thousands of smells that the human nose alone can recognize, but we are not the only creatures with this ability.

The sense of smell (or Olfaction) in humans is used for many different purposes.  Anyone who’s ever been to a gym could tell you that deodorant is a must.  But instead of simply trying to mask their scents, people often go beyond, and try to apply smells to themselves that they enjoy (or that they think others will enjoy) smelling.  We also attempt to change the scents of the things around us.  Scented candles, incense, car/air fresheners, detergent, the list goes on.  Some of these methods have been in use throughout history.  But even so, is smell simply an aesthetic enhancer, or are there other reasons to possess such an interesting ability?

Animals often have senses of smell far superior to humans.  Dogs, for example, can smell anywhere from 10,000-100,000 times better than humans, one quote succinctly putting this figure into perspective: “If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well.” (Tyson, 2012)

Even if you’re not a mathematician, if you compound this with the previous statistic of how many smells a human can perceive, it seems our understanding of this sense as a species really only scratches the surface of its potential.  

Animals in the wild use scent for any number of purposes, including: detection of predators, finding mates, locating food, and even communication.  Many species rely heavily on scent, and may have (comparatively) poor vision, but animals with good noses make up for what they lack.  Dogs, for example, cannot speak the way humans do, but can communicate using what are called Pheromones, which are a type of scent a species can produce, usually to elicit a response from a member of the same species.  Animals may use these pheromones to express a range of things, like mood, territory, sexual availability, and gender, among other things.  For some species, like the ant, scent communication is so important, that they can be tricked into believing a fellow ant is dead, and carry them off to an “Ant Graveyard”, when in reality, the “dead” ant is still alive. (Krulwich, 2009)

Ever since these kinds of discoveries, people have wondered if humans, too, might use this form of communication.  Studies in which scientists collect sweat from participants and offer the samples to be smelled by others suggest that humans may indeed be subconsciously aware of things such as gender, or compatibility.  The theory behind this is that humans may use these senses to locate or determine potential mates, by deciding whose immune system would complement their own, in order to create healthy offspring. In a particular study to see whether smelling tears would create empathy, researchers asked women to watch a sad movie, and actually managed to gather the women’s tears (which sounds like a bizarre ingredient in a potion).  They placed the tears in an unlabeled container and other participants were allowed to sniff them.  Although they did not seem to elicit an empathetic response, men’s testosterone levels and sexual arousal dropped after smelling the samples. (Everts, 2012)

Some have decided that if there is a scent to turn someone ‘off’, that there must be one to do the opposite.  As the saying goes, “Sex sells,” and as research into human pheromones grows, so too does the market for products that advertise being able to enhance your sex appeal through pheromones.  Although these products claim to be scientifically backed, there is still no definitive research in this area so far.  This does not mean, however, that people don’t respond to the smells of others, and perfumes, colognes, and body sprays still remain quite popular.

The world of smell, through the good and the bad, can be a fascinating place. We clearly should continue to research and to discover to what full extent humans can use it to communicate.

Sources:

Everts, S. (2012, March). The truth about pherommones. Smithsonian Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Truth-About-Pheromones.html

Nordqvist , C. (2011, August 11). What are pheromones? do humans have pheromones?. Retrieved from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232635.php

How does the sense of smell work?. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/question139.htm

Human pheromones. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/UBNRP/pheromone10/human pheromones.html

Tyson, P. (2012, October 4). Dogs' dazzling sense of smell. NOVA scienceNOW, Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-sense-of-smell.html

Krulwich, R. (2009, April 1). 'hey i'm dead!' the story of the very lively ant. NPR, Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2009/04/01/102601823/hey-im-dead-the-story-of-the-very-lively-ant

Potential Sources

Finding other blogs with similar themes to mine has, and continues to be, a challenge.  But as with anything, the more you work at it, the more you improve, and I have, after much effort, been about to locate a few blogs (for now) that seem promising.

The first of the two that I will list for now is called Decoding Communication.
Although its author seems to focus at times on business communication (about 80% of the "communication" results on a search engine seem to be business related), he has a number of good posts on general human communication.  Additionally, this blog is clearly active, with its most recent posting on Monday (2/11/13).  Although it doesn't have a large following, I hope it continues to release frequent content that I can use/interact with.

The second blog, Skeptical Humanities is also active, with the last post being on Sunday (2/10/13).  I thought at first it focused on linguistics (with many of its recent posts being about "non-historical fringe linguistics") but it appears to contain a wide variety of topics that are of interest to the author.  Although I may have to sift through some posts that are unrelated to my focus, there is potential.

I will continue to seek out new blogs, ever homing in on the perfect sources for my final analysis paper, but these first few have been encouraging finds.

On a Wing and a Prayer

How many ways can you send a message nowadays?  Text a friend, to say you’re on your way.  Email a professor to ask a question about an upcoming test.  The list goes on, but many, if not most of the items found on it haven’t existed for the majority of human history.  So how did people send messages before the advent of electricity, and even organized postal services? 

Those of us that have taken Geometry, or have any common sense at all would know that the fastest way to travel from point A to point B is a straight line.  But with unpredictable, or difficult terrain, getting a message to point B quickly as possible is a challenge, if not impossible.  The expression “As the crow flies,” speaks of the assumption that a bird is not as limited by the lay of the land, and can generally fly in a very straight line.  Because of this, pigeons, also called to as Messenger or Carrier pigeons, have been domesticated and used in communication for thousands of years. 

As early as 2900 B.C.E. Egypt was making use of these birds, by releasing them from ships to announce important visitors.  These useful birds continued to be used throughout history by many different cultures, such as Greece, China, Persia, and India.  The Greeks purportedly used pigeons to announce the winners of the Olympic Games.  Messenger pigeons have also been used as valuable tools in war.  There is an account of Crusaders intercepting a messenger pigeon that carried a message to a city under siege, announcing reinforcements.  The Crusaders forged another message instead which read that there would be no more reinforcements, and re-released it, so the city under siege surrendered to King Richard’s army, three days before their reinforcements came.  (Fang, 2008)

In both WWI and WWII messenger pigeons were widely used, even when radios and telegraphs were available, having 95% success rates.  There are many stories about the birds.  One tells of a pigeon named “Cher Ami” sent out by a battalion who was under friendly fire.  The opposing side saw the bird and opened fire, wounding it, but it continued back and successfully passed its message on, despite having been blinded in one eye, shot in the breast, and having its leg (the one with the message) nearly severed.  Cher Ami and other Carrier pigeons like it received special medals after the war. (Greelis, n.d.)

For a long time it’s been a mystery how pigeons are so good at finding their way “home”, but it is now believed that they use both the sun, and earth’s magnetic fields to navigate.  But how can an animal be sensitive to magnets?  It was believed that they read the fields using special white blood cells called “Macrophages”, but more recently it was discovered that macrophages are not in fact sensitive to magnetic fields, and this confused scientists even more.  (Suzuki, 2012)

In another study, research showed that that Pigeons now also commonly use man-made road systems to navigate, as, it is believed, the path is easier to remember than open countryside.  They make left and right turns at intersections; they have even been documented flying around roundabouts before taking their desired exits. (Davies, 2004)

Clearly, regardless of the means, these birds are remarkable navigators, and have been extremely effective messengers for humans for millennia.  Without their expedient services, there’s no telling how mankind would be different today.

References: 

Greelis, J. (n.d.). Pigeons in military history. Retrieved from http://www.pigeoncenter.org/militarypigeons.html

Suzuki, Y. (2012, April 15). How do homing pigeons find their way home? the mystery thickens.. Retrieved from http://www.sott.net/article/244132-How-Do-Homing-Pigeons-Find-Their-Way-Home-The-Mystery-Thickens

Davies, C. (2004, February 5). How do homing pigeons navigate? they follow roads. The Telegraph, Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1453494/How-do-homing-pigeons-navigate-They-follow-roads.html

Fang, I. (2008). Pigeon post. Retrieved from 

http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/archive/pigeonpost.html

Whistle while you work

Sometimes you get a song stuck in your head.  You keep thinking about it all day, and maybe you even start to whistle the tune.  But whistling isn't always used just for music.  Have you ever been out in public, and a parent (perhaps yours) whistles for their child’s attention?  Or maybe you were talking a walk in the park, and a dog owner is whistling for his dog to come.  The individual who is whistling in these cases is usually not using the sing-song type of the whistle, but instead, almost a talking, or shouting kind of whistle, that really caries no tune.  But it’s really very different from talking, right?  After all, you can’t speak by whistling… But, in fact, you can.
On one of the Canary Islands known as La Gomera, off the northwest coast of Africa, the inhabitants have been using a whistling language since before the Spanish colonized the island in the 15th century.  Due to the landscape of rocky hills and valleys, the people of La Gomera developed a unique, but simple method of transcribing their spoken language (and later Spanish) into series of whistles that could be heard from up to two miles away.  When Spanish became the primary language on the island, the whistle (or, El Silbo, which comes from the Spanish verb 'silbar', 'to whistle',) changed to accommodate the different sounds and structure of the Spanish language.
The language is made up of two whistled vowels, and four consonants.  A demonstration can been seen below:

It was particularly useful to shepherds, as they communicated over vast distances, but also to the rest of the people, as they often lived far apart from one another.
After the invention of telephones, the language began to decline, and was in danger of extinction, as many regarded it as “something from peasants” (Plitt, 2013).  However more recently, there has been a resurgence as the government of La Gomera now views it as an important part of their culture, and has even made it a compulsory school subject on the island.  Today it is a major tourist attraction for the relatively small island.  It has also revealed insights into the human brain for the field of linguistics.   A study using an FMRI showed that when those who “Spoke” El Silbo listened to recordings of it, the parts of the brain associated with language and comprehension were activated, whereas those who were not accustomed to El Silbo did not even recognize it as a language. (Schwarz, 2005)

This, as well as evidence of other languages such as American Sign Language, prove that humans are indeed capable of interpreting stimuli other than spoken word into language (Although some argue that El Silbo is not quite a full language).
Although El Silbo Gomero is not the only recorded whistling language/communication method, (others have been documented in Greece, Turkey, China, and Mexico) it is the most well studied, and widely spoken of them.
El Silbo Gomero is a great example of how the different methods by which we connect are infinitely vast and diverse and how humans will not allow distance to stop them from communicating with one another.

References: 
http://www.lagomera.travel/en/about/history-of-the-island-of-la-gomera.aspx

Plitt, L. (2013, January 10). Silbo gomero: A whistling language revived. BBC News Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20953138

Schwarz, J. (2005, January 5). Shepherds whistle while they work and brains process sounds as language.UW Today, Retrieved from 
http://www.washington.edu/news/2005/01/05/shepherds-whistle-while-they-work-and-brains-process-sounds-as-language/

"Tag", you're it.

So you’re walking down a street, an alley, or by some railroad tracks.  You turn and notice some brightly colored, highly stylized, nearly calligraphic strings of words on a nearby wall, or train car, surrounded by other, similar but distinctly unique graphics.  It is instantly recognizable to you as graffiti.  Perhaps you or someone you know has been unfortunate enough to have had their property “tagged” in the past.  It is generally regarded as vandalism, or defacement of property, as it can be somewhat difficult to remove the paint from a surface (which can be an attractive element to those who are doing the tagging), but just because graffiti generally employs the use of aerosol paint cans or permanent markers, doesn't mean it is a solely modern phenomenon.

Numerous early displays of graffiti can be found in places such as the “Church of the Holy Sepulcher” in Jerusalem, left by the crusaders, or in Rome, where an apparent satirical representation of “Christ” on the cross (but with the head of an “ass”), depicts a man worshiping, and reads “Alexamenos worships [his] God”, variously dated from between the 1st and 3rd century A.D.  These fascinating examples help to recreate an understanding of the political and religious sentiments at the time.

Today, people use graffiti for many purposes. Some simply want the thrill of breaking the law, and leaving their mark.  Others, such as gangs, will use specific tags to mark their territory to other gangs.  Due to these uses, graffiti has garnered an often negative reputation.  But there are many who see it as more than vandalism.

The, motivations are varied, but for many, the walls, streets and bridges of a city are a canvas, their tools including stencils, stickers, posters or paint.  They would not see their graffiti as defacement, but as art, and free expression.  Others wish to use the medium as a tool to project their social/political views.  More recently, graffiti has been used in places like Cairo, calling for the overthrow of the (then) current regime, being an extreme example of a political statement.  It is sometimes argued, especially in the west, that these street artists should have the right to express themselves in such ways, but in cases like that of Kyle Magee, who painted over an advertisement at a bus shelter, the law of the land showed not to support this kind of an argument.  The charges against those caught may range from vandalism, to intentional destruction of property or criminal trespass (among others).  Because of the subjective nature of art itself, it may be difficult to make or enforce strict laws, especially where forms of “Freedom of Speech” rights exist, and thus this style of expression continues. 

But even where Freedom of Expression is barred, the desire to communicate ideas, dreams, and beliefs will always remain.  When all ulterior motives are torn away from graffiti, the need to share experiences and connect with others is all that is left.