Metres Tall Research Articles

William Iseminger: Cahokia mounds: America’s first city

Cahokia is a poorly known archaeological gem in the middle of the United States of America. It is worth coming to know more about this important site and appreciate the lessons it provides to modern society. I first came to learn about Cahokia from reading the book Charles C. Mann’s book (2005), ‘‘1491: New Revelations of the Native Americans before Columbus’’ (A. Knopf, publisher) and became determined to visit. I did so in May 2010 and was truly amazed with what I found and learned. The area of the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers was home to sophisticated mound-building peoples about 1,000 years ago. Cahokia was truly a city, with a population in the thousands, commercial, trade, political, scientific and religious significance. The civilization emerged in about 1000 AD but had collapsed only about 300 years later. The hand-built mounds that remain vary in size shape and style. Some are burial sites, others were used for preparing the dead for burial, others were built for administrative, ceremonial and religious functions. The largest and most impressive mound, called Monk’s Mound, is about 30 metres tall and occupies an area of 5.7– 6.9 hectares. It was built in stages and had large buildings atop. The whole complex extending several kilometres across is dominated by Monk’s Mound and the huge central plaza. Central Cahokia was surrounded by a protective wooden palisade about 3 km long that was replaced several times as the city developed. There is no doubt that a large population lived outside the palisade in the immediate suburbs. Other mounds and archaeological evidence of buildings abound outside the city wall. The ‘‘woodhenges’’, built 5 times with huge posts numbering from 24 the first time, to 72 posts the 5th time has been interpreted convincingly as a astronomical sun-calendar. Why did Cahokia, and the Mississippian civilization collapse? That remains a mystery, but over-exploitation of the immediate environment for building materials (wood), game (meat for food) and agricultural production (corn) has been postulated. Pollution from cooking and heating fires, human waste, malnutrition and soil erosion have also been invoked. Climate changes may also have exacerbated the situation. There is little evidence for hostilities from neighbouring peoples, but perhaps internal squabbling and poor leadership contributed to the collapse. Despite Cahokia’s proximity to the huge Mississippian river system, fish did not constitute much of the people’s diet. This short book is comfortably written for both scholar and the general public. It is sufficiently detailed to be intriguing, but not so detailed as to be turgid. I recommend this book as an eye-opener to an ancient and lost civilization that is mostly unappreciated in North American human ecology.

Olympic tears

Olympic tears

Pinnacle Syngenetic Karst in Nambung National Park, Western Australia

Simultaneous karstification and lithification of aeolian calcarenite in the southwest coastal part of Western Australia produced syngenetic karstic geomorphological features, such as solution pipes, maze caves, collapsed dolines and pinnacles. The formation of these geomorphological features was greatly influenced by the poor cementation and matrix porosity of the calcarenite. Pinnacles, calcarenite pillars up to 5 metres tall with one or more peaks and various types of sediment layers, are most numerous and densest in an area called the Pinnacles in Nambung National Park, Western Australia. $eir detailed characteristics and origin are still partially unknown and controversial. Theories suggest that the pinnacles are the final product of one or more of corrosive expansion and coalescence of solution pipes, cemented sediment surrounding the roots, cemented fill of solution pipes, products of focused cementation or remainders of tree-trunks. This article presents descriptions of pinnacles in Nambung National Park based on my fieldwork and suggests a polygenetic origin for the pinnacles, with roots playing a major role. The genesis of pinnacles is far more complex than the theories presented so far.

From The Golden Chariot

from The Golden Chariot Salwa Bakr (bio) Translated by Dinah Manisty Anyone who set eyes on Azima, the giant, would have been shocked by her strange appearance. Even the head of the women’s prison was astonished when he took responsibility for her as an inmate of the prison and saw her for the first time; in fact he abandoned the customary reticence of an official in his position and began to ask her about the secret of her amazing height. Naturally Azima did not give a clear answer, because she never knew the secret of her awesome height; she was over two metres tall—heads taller than other women—and even a quarter of a metre taller than her father, who was considered tall. Until Azima was twelve, she was a normal child who seemed slightly tall in comparison to her peers but not remarkably so, nor in a way which caused alarm to her family who were preparing her for marriage like her older sisters, like any ordinary young girl looking ahead to the day she would find a suitable match. When Azima failed to obtain her primary certificate—quite usual for most pupils at this stage, given the state of the schools—she became free to complete her education in domestic affairs considered a priority in grooming girls for marriage. However, not long after this signs of Azima’s problem appeared. She began to shoot up with startling speed, made more obvious by her remarkable thinness and the lack of proportion in her physique: her lower half was extended in contrast with the short upper half and her long neck ended in a small head with big, rather bulging eyes so that when you looked at her you thought she might be a giraffe in a human form. By the time she turned sixteen, she had grown so much that she seemed far taller than any other human being around, and was exposed to a great deal of ridicule in the street and even at home; this put a severe strain on her just as it would on any adolescent girl who wanted to be loved and accepted by people generally, and by the opposite sex in particular. She began to feel so bitter that she attempted suicide, but her attempt failed because when she threw herself from the balcony of her home, which was on the fourth floor in a block of flats, she fell unexpectedly onto a cement cart which was crossing the road. She suffered nothing more than a broken front tooth which she banged against the metal edge of the vehicle as it proceeded, carrying her with it to the end of the street. The broken tooth was a lasting memorial to this abortive attempt. If this incident did not scar Azima, another was to change the course of her life completely. A few months later an uncle of hers died in the flower of his youth. It was a tragic death which shook everyone who heard about it. One night, out of the blue, the building [End Page 1123] where he lived began to fall down. After he had saved his mother, father, and his three sisters from certain death, a neighbor asked him to help save her paralyzed mother. He rushed to carry the old woman, who had crawled out to one of the balconies, and threw her down to the crowd which was waiting to catch her below. However, after the woman was saved, a huge piece of stone fell on the young man and squashed him flat. Then the quarter in which the event took place witnessed a funeral ceremony of the kind which had not taken place since the funeral of the martyrs of the 1919 Revolution, when the people clubbed together to set up the biggest mourning tent possible and hired the best man they could afford to recite the Qur’an. A large crowd paid their respects at his final resting place at the end of an amazing funeral procession which everyone joined in and brought the traffic to a halt for half an hour in Mohamed Ali street, leading to the Citadel. The traffic jam...

Flores after floresiensis: Implications of local reaction to recent palaeoanthropological discoveries on an eastern Indonesian island

In a recent article (Forth 2005) I discussed possible implications for several sorts of anthropology of the discovery, on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores, of skeletal remains interpreted as a new species of Homo – Homo floresiensis. The discovery was, and remains, controversial, not least because the creature so classified, interpreted by the discovery team as an endemic dwarf descendant of Homo erectus, stood just over a metre tall and had a cranial capacity of just 380 cc, thus a brain about the size of a chimpanzee’s. It had also survived until at least 12,000 BP , well within the period modern humans (Homo sapiens) were present in this part of Indonesia (Brown et al. 2004; Morwood et al. 2004).

Does 3D art mean model making?

Children are always impressed by size and shape, whether it's a miniature book, a two metre tall teddy or chairs and tables that fi t perfectly. There are so many brilliant shapes in the world today; towering silver offi ce blocks, sweeping bridges that arch over motorway lines. An endless list of fascinating 3D objects. Given construction toys, children usually build upwards and outwards and for them ȁ size matters; the longest train line, the tallest block tower or an abstract shape that is just BIG.

Skull morphology of giant terror birds

These monstrous birds were probably more agile and less portly than previously thought. Imagine a flightless carnivorous bird three metres tall with a skull the size of a horse's, and a vicious, eagle-like bill. What you are imagining is a phorusrhacid ('terror bird'), an extinct lineage that includes the largest known birds. The discovery of an enormous fossil avian skull from the middle Miocene of Patagonia (Comallo, Argentina) prompts a reanalysis of what the phorusrhacids looked like, and the suggestion that there were marked differences between the morphology of large and small variants.

Hominids, hairy hominoids and the science of humanity

1Details of the discovery were first published on 28 October 2004 in the journal Nature, in an article and three shorter pieces. See Mirazon Lahr and Foley 2004, Brown et al. 2004, Morwood et al. 2004, Dalton 2004. 2With regard to finds of Homo erectus on Java, this position is argued at some length in a semi-popular book by Curtis et al. (2000). 3In a newer classification, the term is ‘hominin’— referring to a member of the ‘hominini’, which includes the genus Homo and several others but excludes extant apes. ‘Hominid’, however, is still the better known general term for the different species of Homo. 4This second team member was another geologist, Gert van den Bergh, the same man who in June 2004 informed me of the discovery of H. floresiensis. At that time and in subsequent emails, we also discussed my interest in ebu gogo, and the possibility that the representation might be grounded in some zoological reality. 5Actually, the Dutch did not ‘settle’ Flores—and in the part of central Flores evidently referred to, they established a colonial administration only in the early 20th century. According to genealogical and other evidence provided by Nage, I estimate that their extermination of ebu gogo would have occurred sometime between 1750 and 1820. 6These comprise hairy man-like creatures sometimes identified as ancestors in Manggarai clan traditions, including those named Maja, Empo-Wulu, Paju La'e (Verheijen 1967), and Reba Ruek (Fointuna 2004). Writing on central Manggarai, van Bekkum (1946) refers to hairy aboriginals named Rua (apparently meaning ‘wild’). Apart from other references, the Manggarai category poti wolo denotes what Verheijen describes as an ‘ape-man’ (1950) or a ‘creature resembling an orangutan’ (1967). (There are no zoologically attested orangutans or other apes on Flores.) 7In fact, another inconsistency would appear to be the pot belly, since this is symptomatic of plant-eating, whereas the archaeological interpretation suggests Homo floresiensis was substantially engaged in hunting. Also, while Roberts says ebu gogo were ‘about a metre tall’, most Nage describe the creatures as between one and 1.25 metres, and some claim their height did not differ significantly from that of modern Florinese (who are, however, considerably shorter than most Europeans). 8‘Spirit’ or ‘spiritual being’ can be defined as a polythetic class, the most common criteria of which include a fundamentally human psyche, an ability to assume human or animal form, the ability to change shape, and the power to become invisible or separate from any corporeal form or limitation. 9An example of this sort of treatment is the Daily Mail article I refer to below, the author of which also describes modern Florinese, quite inaccurately, as themselves barely emerged from caves. Both Richard Dawkins and Henry Gee have criticized the application of ‘hobbit’ to Homo floresiensis, although in the end Gee judges it superior to other possible pseudonyms—including ebu gogo! I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising the interesting question of whether this application of ‘hobbit’ by academic researchers might be considered a denigration of human subjects and therefore a breach of professional ethics. 10The term possibly means something like ‘false monkey’. According to the article, the name is babo mamo, but this in fact is a Lio expression referring collectively to ‘ancestors’.

The deviating eyes of Michelangelo's David

In 1501 Michelangelo received a commission from the Guild of Wool Merchants of Florence to carve out a giant statue for one of the buttresses of the Cathedral of Florence. The David was started in 1501 when Michelangelo was only 26 years of age, and finished in 1504, when he was not yet 30, and stands as a testament to Michelangelo’s mastery of the human form and sculpture. Previous works had shown the subject just after he had slain and beheaded Goliath. Michelangelo’s David broke new ground by depicting a ‘most beautiful animal preparing to kill—not by savagery and brute force, but by intellect and skill’.1 Direct anatomical dissection was forbidden during the Renaissance and artists who wished to view the inside of the human body had to do so almost in secret. When Michelangelo fashioned a life-sized wooden crucifix altarpiece for the Santo Spirito in Florence, the prior allowed him access to bodies awaiting burial.2 The practice of anatomy became a passion for Michelangelo and his works correctly demonstrated numerous anatomical structures. He even contemplated publishing a treatise on anatomy together with his physician, Realdo Colombo, who treated him for kidney stones and later rose to become professor and medical consultant to the Vatican.3 So real were Michelangelo’s works that they were used as models by other artists of the era and for centuries afterwards. In addition, ‘pathological’ features in his paintings and sculptures have attracted much attention in medical journals.4 For all Michelangelo’s mastery of human anatomy, the David possesses certain anatomical imperfections. The right hand is bigger than the left with an enlarged abductor digiti minimi—suggested as a device to draw attention to the stone as a symbol of his courage and physical power.5 Yet the most significant anomaly is in the David ’s eyes, which seem to manifest an exodeviation. The right eye is in the primary position while the left eye appears to be looking out to the left (Figure 1). The likely reason why this detail has been unrecognized for hundreds of years is that most viewers have been physically unable to examine the David at eye level and at arms-length. The statue, about 5 metres tall in addition to its supporting pedestal, was meant to be viewed from below and, presumably, at a distance. In 1999, the Digital Michelangelo Project, led by Stanford University and Marc Levoy, professor of computer science and engineering, rendered a three-dimensional computer model that permitted the work to be viewed from different angles and with varying light intensity and colour modulation.6 A digitally rendered direct frontal image—a perspective not easily attainable by photography and

Flores Woman

Flores Woman Tracy K. Smith (bio) A species of tiny human has been discovered, which lived on the remote Indonesian island of Flores just 18,000 years ago. . . . Researchers have so far unearthed remains from eight individuals who were just one metre tall, with grapefruit-sized skulls. These astonishing little people . . . made tools, hunted tiny elephants and lived at the same time as modern humans who were colonizing the area. —Nature, October 2004 Light: lifted, I stretch my brief body. Color: blaze of day behind blank eyes. Sound: birds stab greedy beaks Into trunk and seed, spill husk Onto the heap where my dreaming And my loving live. Every day I wake to this. Tracks follow the heavy beasts Back to where they huddle, herd. Hunt: a dance against hunger. Music: feast and fear. This island becomes us. Trees cap our sky. It rustles with delight In a voice green as lust. Reptiles Drag night from their tails, Live by the dark. A rage of waves Protects the horizon, which we would devour. One day I want to dive in and drift, Legs and arms wracked with danger. Like a dark star. I want to last. Tracy K. Smith Tracy K. Smith is author of The Body's Question, a collection of poems. Her poems have also appeared in numerous periodicals, including Gulf Coast, PN Review, Harvard Advocate, and Callaloo. She teaches at Princeton University. Copyright © 2005 Charles H. Rowell

An analytical model on the simulation of the wind field in a typhoon boundary layer

An analytical model has been developed for calculating the velocity field in a moving typhoon boundary layer. The present model has an upper inviscid region of cyclostrophic balance and a lower friction region controlled by surface drag coefficient and eddy viscosity. The velocity in the inviscid region is first described using an assumption that wind field moves with translation velocity of typhoon. A perturbation analysis is then perfonned to obtain the tangential and radial boundary layer velocity in the friction region. Validation of the model is carried out by comparing observed wind speed and direction records obtained from three typhoons in 1991 to those predicted by the model itself. The wind velocity and direction predicted are in good agreement with those observed at a one-hundred metre tall tower. Rapid variation of the wind velocity depends on the surface roughness and topograpy around the tower. Finally, a case study is conducted to examine the characteristis of the ratio of surface to gradient wind speeds G (r) and the inflow angle γ in the typhoon boundary. Previous typhoon observations data in coastal regions are well explained by this model.

The seismic design of an industrial chimney with rocking base

An industrial reinforced concrete chimney, of cruciform cross-section and thirty-five metres tall, has been designed and built with the high degree of seismic protection afforded by allowing the base to rock during large earthquakes. As a precaution a pair of purpose-made yielding steel dampers have been installed to assist in the control of the most violent response that might occur.
 This paper discusses the advantages in the adoption of this revolutionary design and describes the hand dynamic analysis carried out during the design process. Subsequent time-history computer analysis carried out to confirm the design method is reported on.

Establishment and early growth of species in farm plantations near salt seeps

Clearing of native forest has caused a rise in soil watertables and increased the salinity of land and streams in south-western Australia. Reforestation is a possible method of increasing the use of water on cleared catchments, lowering watertables and reducing the output of salt from hillside seeps. One of the first needs is evidence of suitable species for such a project. This paper describes the comparative success of twenty-eight species (mainly Eucalyptus spp.) in establishment and early growth when grown on and near saline seeps during 1976–77. Plantations were located in 850, 500 and 420 mm annual rainfall zones of the Hotham River valley about 150 km south-east of Perth, Western Australia. The sites had saline confined aquifers and seasonal perched watertables which were typical of many landscapes in the region. Though rainfall was below average and only one watering was given, nineteen species had greater than 80% establishment in upslope, midslope and downslope positions. In late winter 1977, 15 months after planting, the leading species were 1–2 metres tall and carried leaf area up to 5.5 m2 per tree where current rainfall was highest. The results indicate a high potential for plant establishment and early growth within the rainfall zones. Eucalyptus spp. from many regions of southern Australia were successful at the wettest location. Success at the two driest locations was limited to species from dry climates of southern South Australia and Western Australia. Planting on seep areas decreased the establishment of three species. Eucalyptus wandoo, E. globulus and E. camaldulensis, which performed well on non-seep areas at one or more locations. Implications for a source of further test species and for planting strategy near seeps are discussed.