Few subjects have progressed as rapidly in recent years as the study of prehistory and ancient history. The ability to decode the human genome has upended everything. In retrospect, archaeologists and linguists got an amazing amount right; the advent of DNA analysis (backed up by huge amounts of computing power) provided a layer of scientific confidence, allowing the other disciplines to progress faster and more accurately.
Author: Peter Gordon
Once upon a time, “storytellers” (who predate writers by a great margin) were respected members of the communities they served: entertainers, yes, but also playing a crucial role in preserving memories and lore by retelling old stories and creating new ones. If the blood of this tradition doesn’t actually run in Subi Taba’s veins, she is at the very least a vehicle for its spirit.
Ankara-born Chris Aslan spent seven years living in Khiva, an old Silk Road town in what is now Uzbekistan, where he founded a silk carpet workshop. Expelled in 2005 during a purge of foreign NGOs, he then spent three years in Khorog, a town on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border. Told by the authorities that perhaps he’d better leave there as well, he had a spell in Kyrgyzstan. In each place, Aslan clearly intends to “help”, whether by attempting to provide livelihoods at a time of chronic unemployment in Uzbekistan, help yak herders commercialise their animals’ down (competitive with cashmere, it seems) or to establish a school for carving walnut wood.
Had the eminent physicist Ernest Rutherford actually once said that “all science is either physics or stamp collecting”, he might have botany in mind, a discipline the very basis of which is collecting and labelling plants according to strict taxonomies. In her (perhaps aptly entitled) new book, Unmaking Botany, Kathleen C Gutierrez sets about describing not just the history of botany in the Philippines but how the practice of it intersected with the imperial projects of Spain and the United States.
Japan is a favourite destination for tourists the world over, but one reason it appeals to Hong Kong tourists (for whom it is a particular favourite) is that Kanji allows them to more or less work things out despite not knowing Japanese at all. Zev Handel’s new book Chinese Characters Across Asia tells the story of how the Chinese writing system was adopted—and adapted—in Japan as well as Korea and Vietnam.
Quite a lot of archaeological water, to say nothing of history writing, has flowed under the bridge since Early Southeast Asia’s first edition in 2014.
The Dead Sea—and its environs of Jericho and the Jordan River—is perhaps second only to Jerusalem as a place where history, archaeology, religion, politics and international relations meet and mix. It is, as Nir Arielli points out in his new book, quite a bit older, and today is as much a place of environmental as political dispute.
China has been one of the leading sources of overseas visitors to the Maldives in recent years. Bin Yang, a professor of history at City University of Hong Kong, makes the argument in Discovered but Forgotten that this is to some extent a rerun of the situation in the 14th and 15th centuries when the Maldives were firmly on Chinese maps of places to visit.
A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Gonçalo Lobo Pinheiro’s photographs of Macau are certainly worth that and more. This latest collection consists of 100 photos taken during the last five years, a period which included Covid-19. The photojournalist, who been resident in Macau for well over a decade manages both to capture something of the inexpressible essence of the city, as well to provide visuals that will intrigue and engage anyone interested in either cities and the people that live in them. The “poética” of the title is apt.
Most people “collect” stuff, but Paul Bromberg is a “collector”, the difference being that he proceeds with intent and purpose, focusing on a relatively narrow group of objects.
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