Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence. Made by highly specialised craftspeople (scribes, illuminators, book binders) with labour-intensive processes using exclusive and sometimes exotic materials (parchment made from dozens or hundreds of skins, inks and paints made from prized minerals, animals and plants), books were expensive and built to last. They usually outlived their owners. Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts.

These activities accelerated in the fifteenth century. Most manuscripts made before 1390 were bespoke and made for a particular client, but those made after 1390 (especially books of hours) were increasingly made for an open market, in which the producer was not in direct contact with the buyer. Increased efficiency led to more generic products, which owners were motivated to personalise. It also led to more blank parchment in the book, for example, the backs of inserted miniatures and the blanks ends of textual components. Book buyers of the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century still held onto the old connotations of manuscripts—that they were custom-made luxury items—even when the production had become impersonal.

Owners consequently purchased books made for an open market and then personalised them, filling in the blank spaces, and even adding more components later. This would give them an affordable product, but one that still smacked of luxury and met their individual needs. They kept older books in circulation by amending them, attached items to generic books to make them more relevant and valuable, and added new prayers with escalating indulgences as the culture of salvation shifted.

From: M Rudy, Kathryn. Piety in pieces: how medieval readers customized their manuscripts. Open Book Publishers, 2016.

Image: Parchment diptych with the measurements of Christ’s length and side wound, inserted into a French book of hours. Paisley, Renfrew District Museum and Art Gallery, Ms. 1, fol. 13–14 forming a diptych. Photo © Author, CC BY 4.0.

“In 1909, inventor George Cove posed in front of an early rooftop solar panel of his own design for a photograph. One hundred and ten years later, the resulting image was reprinted in the official journal of the US’ most prestigious research institute – but Cove was nowhere to be seen.

Using a range of sources such as newspaper archives and historic city maps, Bellingcat sought to establish the seeming mystery of Cove’s ‘disappearance’ from the photograph. This analysis of archival material from the pioneering days of solar energy tells a cautionary tale about the ease of misattributing historic photos.”

Read more: Untangling the Mystery of the World’s First Rooftop Solar Panel. Foeke Postma, Bellingcat, August 2023. Image by Bellingcat.

Quoted from: Hough, Walter. The lamp of the Eskimo. US Government Printing Office, 1898.

Though the Eskimo live at a temperature of zero Fahrenheit, travelers have noticed their idiosyncrasy with regard to cold. The clothing is designedly left open at intervals around the waist and the bare skin exposed to the cold air. As a rule the Eskimo strip when in the house and sleep naked. Another indication of their feverishness is the consumption of great (quantities of ice-cold water. No explorer has failed to notice the Eskimo lamp, around which the whole domestic life of this people seems to focus. Far more remarkable than being the unique possessors of the lamp in the Western Hemisphere, the Eskimo presents the spectacle of a people depending for their very existence upon this household belonging. Indeed, it is a startling conclusion that the lamp has determined the occupancy of an otherwise uninhabitable region by the Eskimo, or, in other words, the distribution of a race.

Not the least value of the lamp to the Eskimo is the light which it affords. Simpson remarks that the Eskimo never seem to think of fire as a means of imparting warmth,- and Kane observes that their lamps are used for cooking, for light, for melting snow, and for drying clothes, rather than to warm the air.’ Nevertheless, the lamp does afford con- siderable warmth, as Simpson admits in another place. Light, however, is highly necessary during the long darkness of winter and the darkness of the Eskimo dwelling. Nanseu has several times remarked that the Eskimo do not sleep in the dark like other people. Perhaps the inconvenience of rubbing out fire with the fire drill to relight the lamp is one reason. Likewise the feeling of companionship, security, or sociability given by light is appreciated by the Eskimo in common with all other human beings. These instinctive feelings determined in no small degree man’s first overtures to his fire ally.

The Eskimo hut may be likened to an inhabited oven with the lamp as its internal heat. The utilization of the heat is as complete as in the Samovar. The lamp is placed upon its support, above it hangs the cooking pot, and above this, suspended from the ceiling, the frame of slats, network of pegs, on which are placed articles to dry in the ascending warm air. Thus the lamp, which has a single function in other parts of the Avorld, has added among the Eskimo that of the fireplace and cooking stove. The Eskimo Lamp is classifically the homologue of the fireplace in the center of the houses among the majority of tribes in America and Asia.

Hans Egede gives the following description of the lamps of the Greenland communal houses: “Though ten or twenty train-lamps burn at once in the houses of the Greenlanders one does not perceive the steam or smoke thereof to fill these cottages. They take care in trimming the lamp, taking dry moss rubbed very small, which they lay on one side of the lamp, which, being lighted, burns very softly and does not cause any smoke if it is not laid on too thick or in lumps. This fire gives such a heat that it not only serves to boil their victuals, but also heats their rooms to that degree that it is as hot as a bagnio. But to those who are not used to this way of firing the smell is very disagreeable.” Parry, in his Second Voyage, presents a view of an Eskimo interior which shows in an interesting way the lamp and its appurtenances. It is described as follows:

The fire belonging to each family consists of a single lamp or shallow vessel, its form being the lesser segment of a circle. The wick, composed of dry moss rubbed between the hands until it is quite inflammable, is disposed along the edge of the lamp on the straight side, and in a greater or smaller quantity lighted, according to the heat required or the fuel that can be afforded. When the whole length of this, which is sometimes above 18 inches, is kindled, it affords a most brilliant and beautiful light without any perceptible smoke or offensive smell. The lamp is made to supply itself with oil, by suspending a long, thin slice of whale, seal or sea-horse blubber near the flame, the warmth of which causes the oil to drip into the vessel until the whole is extracted.

Immediately over the lamp is fixed a rude and rickety framework of wood from which their pots are suspended, and serving also to sustain a large hoop of bone, having a net stretched tight within it. This contrivance, called Unnetat, is intended for the reception of any wet things, and is usually loaded with boots, shoes, and mittens. The fireplace just described, as situated at the upper end of the apartment, has always, two lamps facing different ways, one for each family occupying the corresponding bedplace. There is frequently also a smaller and less-pretending establishment on the same model, lamp, and all, in one of the corners next the door; for one apartment sometimes contains three families, which are always closely related, and no married woman or oven a widow without children is without her separate fireplace.

With all the lamps lighted and the hut full of people and dogs a thermometer placed on the net over the fire indicated a temperature of 38°; when removed 2 or 3 feet from this situation it fell to 32°, and placed close to the wall stood at 23°, the temperature of the open air being at the time 25° below zero.

The Eskimo lamp has always been regarded a fixture of the house, subject only to the removals of the family. There are, however, small lamps which are carried by travelers or hunters on journeys whose use is primarily for light, but not less important as a means for lighting the indispensable pipe.

Most observers have spoken in terms of praise of the excellent light given by the Eskimo lamp. The flame in a well-trimmed lamp is from 1 to 2 inches, very clear and steady. The oil and fat of the northern animal furnish illuminants of the best quality. In the snow houses of the east the white walls reflect the light, adding to its power.

The Eskimo drink great quantities of water. It is curious that with its world of congealed water the Arctic should be a veritable Sahara. Water is usually supplied by melted snow or ice and the lamp is brought into requisition for the purpose, though sometimes the warmth of the hut is sufficient, especially if the vessel containing snow is placed near the flame. Dr. Kane figures a snow melter of considerable ingenuity which is reproduced here (fig. 2). Sometimes travelers carry watertight pouches containing snow, which they put under the clothing to be melted by the heat of the body.’

“Even the oil lamp began in simplicity and evolved into a machine with multiple wicks, clockwork oil pumps, specialized chimneys, hydraulic, pneumatic, and other variants. This story will take you through the history of illumination methods in lighthouses.”

Read more: Lighthouse lamps through time, Thomas Tag.

Many societies, ancient and contemporary, have innovated ways of supplying their fields with fixed nitrogen and phosphorus—two crucial ingredients for crop productivity. One is crop rotation, which alternates nitrogen-fixing and nitrogen-exhausting crops. Farmers around the world make use of chickens, ducks, and geese to add “fresh” guano to their fields. Cattle manure is another useful alternative—although it often lacks in phosphorus. Much more labor intensive than simply adding fossil-fuel derived synthetic fertilizer, these practices tend to build up soil, limit greenhouse gas emissions, and lead to less run-off into rivers, lakes, and oceans.

Persian pigeon towers are one of the more elegant solutions to the nitrogen-phosphorus problem. These are essentially castles built for thousands of wild pigeons, strategically placed in the middle of the fields. Their droppings were shoveled up once a year and sold to nearby farmers. While most pigeon towers existing today are in disrepair, the oldest still standing are dated to the 16th century (but they are assumed to have existed over 1,000 years ago) and helped fuel the cultivation of Persia’s legendary orchards, melons, and wheat production.[1]

Snakes

The basic design of pigeon towers is simple. Its main structure is conically shaped and made of mud bricks. At the center of the structure rests a large cylindrical drum, surrounded by smaller pillars, also made of the same brick—this design maximizes the potential surface area, allowing some towers to house up to 10,000 pigeons. The bricks are indented to create a small cove and ledge for the pigeons to nest in. At the very top of the tower there are holes that allow pigeons to come and go as they please. These holes are also designed to be inaccessible to snakes—the pigeon’s main natural predator in the region.

The structural cracks in many pigeon towers are said to be due to the tremors caused by thousands of birds in panicked flight when they spot a snake. The central drum also houses a stairway, and most towers have one or two doors to allow someone to collect droppings and check in on their guests. Sometimes the pigeons are provided with grain and water, making the tower a free bed and breakfast. In other cases, pigeons ate from the surrounding fields. Never mind AirBnB: this is the true sharing economy.

Pigeon towers are an example of what’s called vernacular architecture—a type of structure that is architecturally unique but has no single creator. Likely passed down by families throughout the ages, the design of the pigeon tower tends to be isomorphic with regional variations.

 Source: Flickr.

One unique aspect of the Persian pigeon towers is the ledge of the bricks on the inside of the structure. The repetitive feature creates a mesmerizing honeycomb effect, in which the whole becomes greater than the parts. It is also amazingly inventive, in that it enables the maximum number of coves with a minimum of building material. The bands of smooth plaster around the exterior of the tower may seem decorative, but are also highly functional: unlike the rest of the bricks, snakes have trouble climbing up this low-friction surface.

10,000 years

For centuries pigeons played a significant role in the Persian economy and political system. Farming first evolved in Iran 10,000 years ago, and considering this long tradition, the focus has been on sustaining yields over time rather than short-term maximization of profits.[2] Pigeon towers became a crucial part of the agricultural economy, providing much-needed fertilizer for melons, cucumbers, and other nitrogen-demanding crops—cornerstones of Persian cuisine. With characteristic enterprise, rulers even taxed owners of pigeon towers—the equivalent of taxing salt or fossil fuels.

Pigeons also featured significantly in Persian culture—to such an extent that most European travelers, starting with Marco Polo, felt the need to make remarks about them in their travel diaries. Pigeon dung was also used to make gunpowder, well before Europeans started playing with explosives.

Most pigeon towers still around today are in the area of Isfahan, the second most populous region in Iran. However, many of these lie in disrepair. There are also pigeon towers in Eastern Turkey, but these differ greatly in their design. These look like small shacks that dot the hillside, but are actually entrances to larger caves dug into the limestone bedrock, providing large empty spaces for the pigeons to nest in. Often villagers will hang baskets in the shacks and caves as nests for the pigeons. These dovecotes are often still in use, but, like the ones in Iran, are more and more falling into disrepair.[3]

Low Maintenance

While Iran was almost self-sufficient in food production in the 1960s, the increased use of synthetic fertilizers actually lowered food productivity, as they scorched the thin soil. Water scarcity is increasingly a problem in many areas of Iran—Isfahan being one of them [9], and high-input agriculture is using up most of what’s left.

This confluence of problems indicates the need to start practicing alternatives to high-input agriculture. Despite their decreased use, pigeon towers have some benefits over other low-tech alternatives in use today, such as the practice of some organic farmers to roll chicken coops over their fields. Another example is the flightless Indian runner duck, which some farmers let stampede fields in hordes, laying droppings and eating pests.

Photo: Safavid dovecotes near Isfahan. Mohammad Reza Pourjafar, Mohammad Reza Leylian, Farid Khodarahmi & Farhang Khademi Nadooshan

First, unlike chickens or ducks, wild pigeons are extremely low-maintenance. Provide water and shelter, and they will come. A pigeon tower is also stationary: no need to spend the whole day rolling an enormous shed around your field, or herding ducks. Like chickens, you can also eat pigeons and harvest their eggs—although peasants in Iran seemed to have abstained, in part due to the important place of pigeons in Islamic cultures. Best of all, pigeon towers are extremely low-tech: no wheels, electricity, or tractor needed: just bricks and a shovel to harvest the droppings, and some maintenance work every couple hundred years.

They may lie in disrepair today, but pigeon towers stand as monuments to the enduring importance of low-tech solutions to contemporary crises. It’s no surprise that the region that gave birth to agriculture has also refined innovative sustainable agriculture methods for thousands of years. Pigeon towers were one such innovation—and they helped Persian farmers cultivate all kinds of crops on previously arid, thin-soil land.

Aaron Vansintjan

[1]. Beazley, Elisabeth. (1966) “The pigeon towers of Isfahan.” Journal of Persian Studies: 105-109.
Bekleyen, A. (2009). The dovecotes of Diyarbakır: the surviving examples of a fading tradition. The Journal of Architecture, 14(4), 451-464.

[2]. Koocheki, A., & Ghorbani, R. (2005). Traditional agriculture in Iran and development challenges for organic agriculture. The International Journal of Biodiversity Science and Management, 1(1), 52-57.

[3]. Bekleyen, A. (2009). The dovecotes of Diyarbakır: the surviving examples of a fading tradition. The Journal of Architecture, 14(4), 451-464.

[4]. Before Europeans ‘discovered’ the enormous islands of bird droppings—guano—off the coast of South America, Andean people collected and sold the fecal gold for over 1,500 years.

[5]. http://www.nature.com/news/one-third-of-our-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from-agriculture-1.11708

[6]. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fertilizer-produces-far-more-greenhouse-gas-expected

[7]. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#nitrous-oxide

[8]. Rockström, Johan, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton et al. “A safe operating space for humanity.” Nature 461, no. 7263 (2009): 472-475.

[9]. Erdbrink, Thomas. (2015) “Scarred riverbeds and dead pistachio trees in a parched Iran.” The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/world/middleeast/scarred-riverbeds-and-dead-pistachio-trees-in-a-parched-iran.html

In May next year she will set out on a voyage from Norway to Newfoundland via Iceland and Greenland, and the project organizers have just announced they are accepting applications for volunteer crew.

You need at least two months of free time to do it and presumably should have some sort of useful skill to boost your chances of being selected.

Conditions aboard look to be very Spartan by modern standards, with no shelter except for a tent on deck, but by traditional Viking standards it should be a veritable luxury cruise.”

Read more: Calling all Vikings. More sailboat news.

“The simplest homes in town were built using cratchets — natural forks in trees — as support for the ridgepole of the roof. The walls are built up with “wattle” — small sticks for the lattice structure — and “daub” — a mortar of clay, earth and grasses. Instead of using the traditional English lime wash to protect the walls, the colonists took advantage of the plentiful wood in the America and created clapboard siding by cleaving wood into thin boards. For the thatch roofs, large bundles of water reed or wheat straw are woven with a giant needle by two people working in tandem (one outside and one inside). “It’s like a giant quilt made of grass,” explains Brault, “which makes a water-tight roof that essentially acts as a giant sponge. It absorbs water and laps it off.”

Watch the video. Picture: a wattle and daub wall in Germany.

“First People” hosts a large and wonderful collection of American Indian photographs online, dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Aside from the portraits (which include, among others, the Edward S. Curtis archives), there are picture galleries of tepees, boats, pottery and basketry.

Previously: Walter McClintock’s glass lantern slide collection of the Blackfoot Indians.

A Zumi girl.

Medicine man.

An old woman.

Mountain chief, Piegan.

All pictures: First People. Follow the link to see more.

It was in these long, beer-fuelled ringing sessions that change ringing was invented, as a codification of the disorganized ringing that Hentzner describes. It seems to have started in London and southeast England in the early seventeenth century; it spread, and by the 1660s was a fashionable recreation, with societies springing up all over south, central, and eastern England to further the practice.

Change ringing operates on a simple but strict system of permutations. All the bells in a church tower are rung in rounds; each ringer rings a single bell, and the bells are hung such that the ringer is able to control the sound, making the bell strike once and only once per pull. Every bell must be rung once in each round, and the order in which the bells are rung (that is, the order of the round) may never be repeated. Change-ringing notation uses numbers, with each number standing for a bell.

If a ring of five bells starts ringing from highest bell to lowest, with 1 representing the highest bell and 5 the lowest, the first orderly round can be written as 12345. The following round might be 21345, then 23145, and so on; each new round is known as a change. The aim, in theory at least, is to exhaust all the possible orders in which the bells can be rung, without ever repeating a round; different ways of exhausting all the possible orders are known as “methods.” Strict rules govern which bells can swap places with which, and ringers developed a terminology—words all full of motion: bobs and dodges, hunts and “extream” changes—to describe the various ordered swaps the bells need to make so that they successfully exhaust the circuit and return to the original round, 12345.

Read more: Campanologomania — the fascinating history of church bell change ringing. Picture: St Mary le Tower.

Detail of an engineered landscape in the Bolivian Amazon. Artwork by Clark Erickson.

“In contrast to the Western obsession to drain what are considered marginal wetlands for agriculture, farmers in the Bolivian Amazon may have intentionally expanded wetlands and wetland productivity through earthwork construction, which impedes, rather than enhances, drainage.

The precolumbian farmers did not use causeways as dikes to prevent inundation of fields and settlements, but rather to expand and enhance inundation for agricultural production.

At the same time, impounding water with well-placed causeways and the creation of canals improved and extended the season of transportation by canoe across the landscape. The grid-like structure also permanently marked land tenure in a highly visible manner.”

“Causeways are flanked by canals on one or both sides where earth was removed to raise the road platform. Although badly eroded by cattle farming and farming activities, causeways are visible from the air as dark straight lines of trees and bushes that stand out against the grasses of the savanna.

Canals are marked by aquatic vegetation and standing water during the wet season and darker vegetation and soils during the dry season. Causeways range in elevation from 0.2 to 2 m  and in width from 1 to 20 m. Most causeways are straight over lengths ranging from tens of meters to kilometers.

Some of the most impressive causeways, canals, and raised fields are found on the Middle Apere River, [covering] an area larger than 60km2 along both sides of the river.”

Precolumbian causeways (wide white lines) and raised field blocks (thin white lines) overlaid on an aerial photograph.

“For the precolumbian peoples who built them, these earthworks would have significantly extended growing seasons and reduced agricultural risk. Instead of wholesale diversion of overbank flow from the river onto the levee backslope, the primary hydrological function of the causeways may have been to create local catchment areas where local rainfall and floodwater were harvested for agriculture and the period of canoe access to wetlands during the dry season was extended.

Throughout the year, access to the wetlands for fishing, hunting, and collection of aquatic resources was improved through causeway construction and impounding of water. The resulting expansion of seasonal wetlands on the levee backslopes also improved nutrient capture and production within the blocks of causeways.”

Quoted from: “Precolumbian Causeways and Canals as Landesque Capital” (PDF), Clark L. Erickson and John H. Walker, in “Landscapes of movement: Trails, Paths, and Roads in Anthropological Perspective”, edited by James E. Snead, Clark L. Erickson and J. Andrew Darling, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Philadelphia, 2009.

“Dr. Charles Tripler, Surgeon and Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, writes in a letter of November 1861 the following description of “a modification of the Crimean Oven”, devised and put into operation by Surgeon McRuer, the surgeon of General Sedgewick’s Eighth Brigade:

A trench 1 foot wide and 20 inches deep to be dug through the center and length of each tent, to be continued for 3 or 4 feet farther, terminating at one end in a covered oven fire-place and at the other in a chimney. By this arrangement the fire-place and chimney are both on the outside of the tent; the fire-place is made about 2 feet wide and arching; its area gradually lessening until it terminates in a throat at the commencement of the straight trench. This part is covered with brick or stone, laid in mortar or cement; the long trench to be covered with sheet-iron in the same manner. The opposite end to the fire-place terminates in a chimney 6 or 8 feet high; the front of the fire-place to be fitted with a tight movable sheet-iron cover, in which an opening is to be made, with a sliding cover to act as a blower.

By this contrivance a perfect draught may be obtained, and use more cold air admitted within the furnace than just sufficient to consume the wood and generate the amount of heat required, which not only radiates from the exposed surface of the iron plates, but is conducted throughout the ground floor of the tent so as to keep it both warm and dry, making a board floor entirely unnecessary, thereby avoiding the dampness and filth, which unavoidably accumulates in such places.

All noise, smoke, and dust, attendant upon building the fires within the tent are avoided; there are no currents of cold air, and the heat is so equally diffused, that no difference can be perceived between the temperature of each end or side of the tent.”

Read more: 1 / 2 / 3.

“We set out to sea but kept close to the canoe occupied by the two fishermen. Off the island the old fisherman gradually played out the kite. As it swung in the breeze we noticed that the webbing just had enough length so that it touched the surface of the sea with every soft fall of the canoe as it rose and dipped. Presently there was an agitation in the sea behind the canoe and we could see several fish coming to the surface. Apparently intrigued by the tantalizing touching of the surface by the webbing, the fish were jumping for it. Finally one caught the webbing in his mounth and with a shout, the old fisherman neatly hooked it in with a hand net.”

Picture: Kite-Fishing off Pitilu (Admiralty Islands) as photographed in 1908 by H. Vogel of the Hamburg Südsee Expedition.

The account of the first Dutch visit to the Moluccas in the summer of 1599 includes a panorama of Ternate [Illustration below]. It is quite common that such depictions of coastal towns and roadsteads show, scattered upon the waters, a number of native craft.

Among the boats is one illustrating a fishing technique which has been specific to Indonesian waters (and to the Moluccas in particular), to the Caroline Islands and parts of the Southwest Pacific, namely kite-fishing. The panorama of Ternate is the earliest record of kite-fishing in European literature. (In addition to kite-fishing the Ternate panorama also offers the earliest depiction in European sources of flying a plane kite).

Illustration: Panorama of Ternate, published in the account of the ‘Second Voyage’ under J. van Neck and W. Warwijck 1598-1600.

Kite-fishing involves a kite and cordage, the first length of which serves as a kite-line and the second as a combined tail and fishing line. At the end of the latter is attached a lure, usually, and according to region, consisting of a baited running noose or a wad of spider-web. Fishing is carried out from the boat, involving one or two people for paddling, flying the kite and hauling in the line when a fish is caught. It is a rather specialised method targeting one particular kind of fish, i.e. certain members of the needlefish family.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century this fishing technique entered the purview of Western observers in these regions. The etnographic record is uneven and intermittent, leading to a somewhat more complete picture only by the late twentieth century. It seems all the more remarkable therefore, that in 1599 an anonymous member of a Dutch voyage should observe and describe the practice, and that it found its way into an illustration of the voyage.

Ready Grown Kite

The description neatly mentions two details typical of Indonesian waters: the single-leaf kite and the pole. In various localities (among them the Thousand Islands, Bawean and Ambon), fishing kites were directly derived from a single plant leaf, without any, or sometimes just one, further constructive element: a strengthening of the central axis.

A typical plant providing a ‘ready grown kite’ was and is the Oak Leaf Fern, and as such it was also reported relative to Ambon and Seram in the second half of the seventeenth century by Rumphius. The other detail, the use of a pole for flying the kite rather than flying it from the hand, has also been documented in recent etnographic observations. This method often accompanies the use of a single leaf kite. A minor but precise detail is the hole at the tip of the pole.

Illustration: Moluccan kite-fishing, Banda, 1899.

Some fishing kites bear all the marks of the ‘proper’ kite — a frame with a sail fixed onto it (even if the materials are simple) — which can reach considerable altitudes. The single-leaf kite, as it was observed in 1599 and in later centuries, is quite different. Its small size and its form create certain problems with lift and flight stability.

A Plaything of the Wind

It does not reach a high altitude and its flight is characterized by jerky and erratic movements, suddenly dipping and soaring again, and jumping to right and left: more a plaything of the wind than something cleverly controlled by man. In this context, the pole is important for it helps keep the leaf kite at an altitude which corresponds roughly to the length of the pole (which would be relatively long: about three to six metres). Also, the total line length is considerably shorter than for other types of kite, which allows some degree of control.

It would be mistaken to see in it a ‘proto-form’ or ‘primitive kite’, the precursor of ‘proper kites’. The jerky flight of the leaf kite is not the result of deficiencies in, or ignorance about, construction (which would later be overcome), because the jerkiness is intended. It keeps the lure in motion without the necessity for moving the pole to and fro, while the jerky movements of the lure attract the fish. In other words, in the technical process of making a device adapted to a particular target, the ‘simple’ kite is simply perfect.

In addition, in the process of fishing, the kite is exposed to wear and tear and eventually breaks (for this reason, and in certain localities, people chose to replace the leaf with plastic sheet), so it would make little sense to expose an elaborate and artistic kite to such conditions. Thus the identification of a suitable leaf (not just any will do) from a plant which grows naturally makes optimal use of environmental resources for a specific technical use.

Different kite configurations throughout the Indo-Pacific, Hans Plischke,”Der Fischdrachen“, 1922. The designs range from an astute selection of a leaf tailor-made for flying without modification to complicated kites assembled from processed leaves and sticks with enhanced flying abilities obtained from magic attachments.

Quoted from:

• “Flying a kite and catching fish in the Ternate panorama of 1600” (PDF), Stefan Dietrich, in The Journal of the Hakluyt Society, August 2012.
• “This Ingenious and Singular Apparatus: Fishing Kites of the Indo-Pacific” (Google Books), Gerry Barton and Stefan Dietrich, 2009

More low-tech fishing. More kites.

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Update:

Mathew Lippincott sends us the following comment:

Kite fishing is one of my favorite topics. Here are my collected links and resources from over the years. The videos of SE Asian kite fishing are the most fun part. While SE Asian kite fishers go exclusively after gar, sport fishers in the Gulf of Mexico and especially New Zealand have developed divergent techniques for going after a variety of other fish. Kite fishing is a stellar example of contemporary high-strength synthetic materials combined with simple mechanical principles to create very effective low tech systems.

SE Asian kite fishing for gar:

contemporary indonesian kite fishing
http://youtu.be/apFsC4yxgNk

melanesian kite fishing with a leaf kite:
http://youtu.be/mdDFZphXAiw

contemporary/traditional kite fishing in SE Asia (spanish):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFSBnmAC4L8

Clive Hart’s “Kites: an Historical Survey” has the most extensive chapter I know of on SE Asian, Melanesian & Polynesian kites.  I highly recommend it: http://drachenstore.easystorecreator.net/items/books~media/publications/kites-an-historical-survey-p025-detail.htm

(Paul Barnes is the master of this)

They’ve started flying with helium balloons to help their kites lift, and also use weights to fly off-wind.  Not sure where they got the square kites, but these are much closer in style to SE Asian kites.
http://youtu.be/TRomyZTkGAQ

There are quite some photo reportages about factories, and this one in particular is noteworthy: a forgotten flour mill with part of the machinery still in excellent condition.

The author does not reveal any location for any of the buildings on the blog.

The Britons worked out how the heavens move thousands of years before the Greeks started thinking about it. That is, in a nutshell, the story of engineer and author  Jonathan Morris.

His hypothesis originated from a solar renewable energy concentration system which he developed, using small fixed pieces of flat reflectors.

By chance, he discovered that the structural support of the solar energy system appears to be duplicated at Stonehenge, the enigmatic monument built 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Every single one of the technical features required are precisely duplicated in size, height, location and orientation at Stonehenge.

Morris outlines his ideas in a novel (“The Broken Stone”) and a technical outline, available via his website: “Heavens’ Henge: A geocentric worldview“.

After quitting Soberton Down, we came up a hill leading to Hambledon, and turned off to our left to bring us down to Mr. Goldsmith’s at West End, where we now are, at about a mile from the village of Hambledon.

A village it now is; but it was formerly a considerable market-town, and it had three fairs in the year. Wens [large overcrowded cities] have devoured market-towns and villages; and shops have devoured markets and fairs; and this, too, to the infinite injury of the most numerous classes of the people.

Shop-keeping, merely as shop-keeping, is injurious to any community. What are the shop and the shop-keeper for? To receive and distribute the produce of the land. There are other articles, certainly; but the main part is the produce of the land. The shop must be paid for; the shop-keeper must be kept.

When fairs were frequent, shops were not needed. A manufacturer of shoes, of stockings, of hats; of almost anything that man wants, could manufacture at home in an obscure hamlet, with cheap house-rent, good air, and plenty of room. He need pay no heavy rent for shop; and no disadvantages from confined situation; and then, by attending three or four or five or six fairs in a year, he sold the work of his hands, unloaded with a heavy expense attending the keeping of a shop.

Quoted from: “Rural Rides“, William Cobbett, 1830.

A very well documented and illustrated website on the history of everyday home life, housekeeping and domestic objects: Old & Interesting. A few examples:

“Featherbeds were only for the rich in the 14th century, but by the 19th century they were a comfort that ordinary people could aspire to – especially if they kept a few geese. The beds, also called feather ticks or feather mattresses, were valuable possessions. People made wills promising them to the next generation, and emigrants travelling to the New World from Europe packed up bulky featherbeds and took them on the voyage. If you didn’t inherit one, you needed to buy up to 50 pounds of feathers, or save feathers from years of plucking until there were enough for a new bed.”

“For centuries in small cottages there were people who could not afford any kind of candle. For them a cheap alternative was a rushlight made from a rush dipped in grease, or a burning splinter of wood. These were held pinched in a nip like pliers or tongs on a stand. Nips were also called nippers or a pair of nips. They could be combined with a candle-holder for people who used both kinds of light, depending on their needs and budget at different times.”

“When you stop and think about it, you probably realise that brooms got their name because they used to be made of branches of broom, a yellow-flowering shrub – except when they were made of birch or heather. Many other shrubby plants have been used across the world for sweeping and brushing. Tie a bundle of good local twigs together, with a tight, narrow grip at one end, and you can whisk dirt away. If you attach the broom to a broomstick, so much the better.”

More: Old & Interesting

The “Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle” is an overwhelming reference work consisting of 9 books (some 5,000 pages in total) on medieval and renaissance architecture in France. It is written in French, as you already suspected, but the detailed illustrations make it worthwhile for all architecture and history devotees. There is really all you need to know to build, for instance, a gothic cathedral, including the gargoyles. The work appeared in 1856 and was written by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, an architect known for his restorations of medieval buildings. The separate volumes can also be found on the Internet Archive.

“The Dugout Canoe Project (.pdf) began as an experiment to use traditional Native American technologies. Archaeologists are reliant on just a few ethnohistoric sources that mention how Native Americans made dugout canoes using stone tools and fire. Numerous contemporary examples of dugouts exist, particularly Plimouth Plantation’s Wampanoag Indian Program, made by burning and scraping out logs. However, to the best of our knowledge, no one has attempted to fell a tree using only stone tools and fire. We wanted to see if we could cut down a live tree using these technologies, something that may not have been done in this area for several hundred years.”

“Dugout canoes are probably the first type of boat ever made. People from all over the world made dugouts. They were widely used in North America before the arrival of Europeans. Dugout canoes were made by Native Americans across North and South America for transportation and to hunt fish with a spear, bow and arrows, or with hooks made from antler or bones. In Eastern North America, dugout canoes were typically made from a single log of chestnut or pine. Carefully controlled fires were used to hollow out these logs. The fires were extinguished at intervals to scrape out the burned wood with wood, shell or stone tools, giving the canoes a flat bottom with straight sides.”

Courtesy of the Fruitlands Museum. More posts on primitive technology.

“In July 1907 the official report of the Committee was issued, and through the courtesy of the secretary of the Motor Union the following extracts are taken: The Committee have carefully considered the various substitutes for petrol which have been brought before them, and have unanimously arrived at the conclusion that the main efforts of the Motor Union should be in the direction of encouraging in every way the use and development of a substance, such as alcohol, produced from vegetation.”

“Alcohol offers a complete and satisfactory substitute for petrol so far as its properties are concerned, and hence probably the most important recommendation of the Committee is that connected with the production on a large scale of alcohol for the purposes of a fuel. It may be noted that the argument added to all others, but which to many in this country would probably appear the most important of all, is the fact that it would form a home industry, especially if produced from some substance, such as peat, potatoes, or beet, which would place the country in an independent position with regard to foreign supplies, a consideration which, it should be noted, is leading the Governments of France and Germany, particularly the latter, to give every encouragement to the use of alcohol as a fuel.”

Quoted from “Commercial peat: its uses and possibilities“, Frederick T. Gissing, 1909. Picture: the 1909 Alco Six Race Car.