This newsletter presents a small collection of geographic, historical, archaeological, cultural and/or artistic articles that have caught my attention. As a fantasy writer, I am fascinated by the nooks and corners of our real world and constantly find inspiration for my own world building and storytelling — it’s my hope that these newsletters are an inspirational resource for other writers, too, or for anyone who wants to learn more about our world. This post is free so please share it with your friends!
The history of human interaction with nature is complex. Sometimes it’s charming — who doesn’t giggle a little when we read what our ancestors just a few hundred years imagined lived out in the ocean? Sometimes it’s a sad commentary on what’s lost in the rush to modernize — Salish woolly dogs provided companionship and more for thousands of years, only to disappear entirely within a few generations of Western colonialism.
Sometimes it’s simply horrifying. I live in California and know first hand (though not at close hand) what it’s like when the sky fills with smoke and ash. It’s not hard to imagine a Mordor-like transformation of the landscape as climate change and human impact on the environment continue to take their toll. Who will be left, I wonder, to exhume our remains from future tar pits as they try to piece together the mystery of our demise — and will they take it as a warning for their own future?
Will we?
On The Backs of Whales
The island whale came from millennia-old lore that dates to Alexander the Great’s Letter to Aristotle around A.D. 300. The ancient story told of two sailors who rested at what they thought was an island. They came ashore, made a camp and then lit a fire. That’s when their troubles began.
“It turns out it wasn’t an island, but a whale. The whale felt the fire, plunged into the ocean deep and took the men with it,” Van Duzer says.
Read more: This 16th-century map is teeming with sea monsters. Most are based on a real mammal.
“And Then Their World Burned to the Ground”
Ice-age humans may have set megafires in what is now Southern California, making the region uninhabitable for a thousand years, new research suggests.
These massive wildfires may have been a major contributor to the extinction of megafauna in the area, fossils from the La Brea tar pits suggest. The findings were published Aug. 18 in the journal Science.
"When fires like this happen, it's almost like a bomb has gone off. It was like a wasteland for 1,000 years," study lead author F. Robin O'Keefe, a biologist at Marshall University in West Virginia, told Live Science.
Man’s Best Friend
“A dog is a man’s best friend,” the old adage goes, but Salish woolly dogs—who were considered extensions of the family—were doted on by women. Blankets, robes, and regalia of the region incorporated the dog fleece, mixed with plant fibers, goat wool, and waterfowl down. Wearing a woolly dog blanket wasn’t just like throwing on any old coat, says Pavel. The dogs were revered as spiritual creatures, and their fur retained not just heat, but prayers, he says. Some Western scholars previously suggested that dog fleece blankets went out of fashion with the arrival of colonial, machine-made blankets, popularized and traded for furs by the Hudson’s Bay Company, but this ignores the spiritual and cultural value they held, the researchers say. “That doesn’t pay attention to the cultural importance or 4,000 years of intentional breeding, and what it meant to have those blankets,” says Coast Salish textiles researcher Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa, of the Smithsonian and Vancouver Island University. “Hudson’s Bay blankets provided warmth, but they didn’t provide cultural protection.”
Read more: New Clues Emerge About the Fluffy Dogs Once Bred for Their Wool
Artist Spotlight
A final note: As I said in my previous letter, I am not planning on turning on paid subscriptions on until and unless Substack resolves some of its current issues (e.g. Nazis). But until then, if you’d like to support my work, you can Buy Me a Coffee.
Love these articles as always! So informative and poignant