Alter Ego

 

So I just saw a French science documentary, "Alter Ego", on Swedish TV about cloning. Artificial human cloning of non-human animals, to be exact. Remember Dolly the cloned sheep? For whatever reason, the European Union bans this kind of cloning, so the industry thrives in the rest of the world. In the docu, they interview Americans and Argentinians who clone horses (including race horses), Chinese who clone pet dogs, and a hyper-modern lab in the United Arab Emirates financed by the Emir of Dubai which clone dromedaries (camel races are popular in some nations). In the United States, there are supposedly cloned deer with exactly the qualities a wild-game hunter wants!

There are also discussions to clone mammoths and other extinct animals, such as the dodo. Maybe this is a bit too much hype? One scientist actually believes that cloning birds is extremely difficult to impossible. Another opines that "cloned mammoths" would really be genetically enhanced elephants which can live in cold weather! However, the cloned foal of a Przewalski´s horse (this species or sub-species is extinct in the wild) is real, so here is a possible avenue to save endangered species. It seems cloning can even enhance the genetic diversity of a species. The two-humped Bactrian camel (which is almost extinct in the wild) is mentioned as the object of another possible rescue mission. 

The documentary doesn´t discuss human cloning and no Raëlians are interviewed. The production is clearly pro-cloning and I do wonder after watching it why the EU has banned cloning. How does this help us? How does it help the animals? Is it just some weird superstition? On our "enlightened" continent! In reality, the applications are almost endless. Imagine killing off all wolves, but keeping their DNA around for future re-creation just in case. 

Hmmm...    

The first one thousand years

 

“Olympiska spelen: De första tusen åren” (Olympic Games: The first one thousand years) is a book in Swedish, written by classicist, archeologist and tourist guide Allan Klynne. It was published this summer – obviously to coincide with the Olympic Summer Games in Paris (which many Swedes follow on TV). Despite only being 180 pages long, it´s packed with information, and even feels a bit unwieldy! And no, it´s not primarily about the modern unwieldy multi-sport event known as the Olympic Games, but rather about their ancient precursors.

In Olympia in ancient Greece, Olympic Games were organized every four years between 776 BC and 389 AD. In 393 AD, the Christian Roman emperor Theodosius ordered the “pagan” games to close down, and the planned event that year was swiftly cancelled. At least, that´s the traditional view. Klynne believes that the real story is more complex (obviously). Some kind of athletic competitions may have existed in Olympia even before 776 BC, and there is no real evidence that Theodosius banned the games (as opposed to de-paganize them). Perhaps the games continued to be held until some unspecified point during the 5^th century AD when the temple dedicated to Zeus at Olympia burned down, never to be restored? The “Isolympic” Games in Antioch weren´t banned until 524 AD by Emperor Justin after sports fans had staged a massive riot in the city! (The term “Isolympic Games” means “equal to the Olympic Games” and was part of the ancient Olympic “brand”.)

Obviously, the games at Olympia had their ups and down over the centuries, but it *is* intriguing that they were organized in some form for about one thousand years. My impression is that the religious character of the games had something to do with it. The games were held in honor of the Greek high god Zeus. The idol of said god in the local temple was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world. Large sacrifices of cattle to Zeus took place during the championships. There was also a female “competition”, the Heraean games, which may have been an explicit worship service of Zeus´ divine consort, the goddess Hera, although the question is apparently controversial. It´s precisely these connections to pagan cults that made many historians suspect that the Christians suppressed the games for religious reasons. However, the Christianized population of the Roman Empire loved sports just as much as the pagans, so the real reason for the decline of the Olympic Games and similar competitions was the general crisis of the Empire, which made it difficult to sustain large-scale events of this kind.

When the French baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens, historians had very romantic and frequently erroneous views of the ancient games. For instance, there was a widespread misconception that the ancient Greek athletes had been amateurs and only competed for the glory. But as Klynne demonstrates in this book, money or other gifts (from olive oil to mules) were always part of the picture. So were bribes, cheating and all kinds of scandals. During the second century AD, when Greece had long been part of the Roman Empire, an enormous bureaucracy around the Olympic Games and other sport championships was created and the prize money sums became even larger. Sounds familiar? Klynne even compares the sports bureaucracy to the modern-day International Olympic Committee! And no, the ancient athletes weren´t “amateurs” by any stretch of the imagination.

Sports at the ancient games included running, discus, javelin, boxing, wrestling, pankration (could be compared to modern MMA), horse-races and more. The horse-races were considered to be competitions between the owners of the horses, many of the actual riders being slave-boys. One sport *not* included was marathon – the sport is named after an event following the Battle of Marathon in Greece in 490 BC, but the sport itself is wholly modern and seems to have been invented especially for the 1896 revival games. In ancient times, only males were allowed to compete in the games at Olympia (but see below), and both athletes and trainers were nude. During Greek times, only male spectators were allowed, but under the Romans, at least unmarried women were also allowed to watch. There was one partial exception to the rule prohibiting female competitors: female horse-owners were allowed to participate, since the actual riders were male. But as already mentioned, the prize money and recognition went to the owners. The first female to win an Olympic prize in this way was Cynisca, a Spartan princess.

Klynne discusses the various ancient Olympic disciplines in some detail. The running competition known as “stade” (about 200 meters) was considered the most ancient one and seems to have had the highest status, at least nominally. The most popular sport among the spectators, however, was the pankration. The most dangerous may have been boxing. It´s not clear to me why the athletes were nude, but I doubt that it had anything to do with equality or democracy! The Greeks themselves claimed that the runners originally wore garments, but one day, a Spartan realized that he could run faster without it and simply dropped it during the race, winning naked. To me at least, this suggests that nudity may have been the most practical “outfit” for an ancient athlete, making his movements unhindered. After all, this was long before modern aerodynamic sport-related clothes. At Olympia (but nowhere else), trainers also had to be nude, supposedly because of a famous incident involving a boxing trainer who turned out to be woman dressed as a man!

But what about the results? How good were the ancient Greco-Roman athletes? The simplest answer is that we don´t really know, since the ancient sources almost never discuss such matters. Everyone could see who was the winner, so why bother with details? In all likelihood, ancient athletes were at least technically speaking worse than modern ones, but I assume that “worse” is a relative term. Throwing a discus a certain distance may be “good” or “bad” depending on what technique you use, your physique, and so on. The most original Olympic disciplines were contests for heralds and trumpeters. Or perhaps not so original, since these were a necessary part of the program. The winners´ name, for instance, was announced by a herald, and obviously this person needed to have a voice both strong and beautiful.

The Olympic peace is well known – the idea that the constantly warring Greek city-states should lay down their arms during the Olympic Games – but it wasn´t always successfully upheld (surprise). Elis and Pisa even fought for control of Olympia itself, and in 364 BC Elis and the Arcadian League fought a battle in Olympia during the actual games! The sources don´t mention how the spectators survived the melee. The “treasure houses” in Olympia were filled with trophies the Greek states had stolen from each other during various wars. The previously mentioned Spartan princess Cynisca may have entered the games on behalf of the Spartan king as a diplomatic sleight to Athens. It´s also interesting that the Athenians organized their own multi-sport event, the Panathenaic Games, as an alternative to the Olympic Games. Think Ionians versus Dorians. Under Roman rule, the worst scandal took place when Nero (yes, *that* Nero) forced the organizers to accept him as a competitor. The tyrant did indeed “win” every discipline he chose to enter, from playing the lyre to racing with a chariot with ten horses (despite falling off the chariot during the race).

I already mentioned the 1896 modern revival of the Olympic Games several times and will end on that note. Judging by Klynne´s description, Coubertin´s invention comes across as a gigantic LARP: modernized versions of the original sports, no women allowed, only amateurs, and Athens in the modern nation-state of Greece as the venue. Later Olympic Games also added artistic competitions, which had been on the program in other Panhellenic games in Antiquity. They also allowed women to compete, however. The strange ritual among the ruins of Olympia where the Olympic flame is lit before the games came later, but fits the picture. 

Coubertin´s games weren´t the first during the 19^th century to use the name “Olympic Games”. For instance, a large sports event in Athens in 1870 for Greeks from all over the world used the same designation. But Coubertin had created a larger apparatus around his idea and…well, here we are. Of course, today the Olympic Games have almost nothing in common with either Coubertin´s 1896 version or the ancient version, the latest edition in Paris even including breakdance! Note also the Winter Games, unknown in ancient times since (of course) there were no winter sports in the Eastern Mediterranean. Paralympics would also have been impossible in ancient times, since the rules expressly forbade disabled males from participating. *Sometimes* there really is progress.

But will the modern Olympic Games last for one thousand years? That would be until 2896. Somehow, I doubt it…

With that reflection, I end this review. 

The myth of the smallpox goddess

 

The closest thing to Shitala´s "Tantric" form
I could prompt the prude AI to generate 

“Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India. The Healing Power of Sitala” is a 2015 book by Fabrizio M Ferrari, a scholar of religion based in the UK. I bought the book on a clearance sale (no academic pricing!), read a few chapters and skimmed the rest. Polemical exchanges between Ferrari and the more mainline scholars he is critiquing could be interesting and, perhaps, entertaining. I noticed that the work is used as a text book in religious studies departments in Sweden.

All across northern India, people worship a goddess known as Shitala or Sheetala (as I would render her name given the limitations of my Latin alphabet computer). However, during his extensive field trips around India, Ferrari noticed something peculiar. The “scholarly” view of Shitala is that she is a wrathful and terrifying deity, a “smallpox goddess” who demands worship and punishes those who refuses with the dreaded disease. Since smallpox is eradicated, presumably she now attacks people with other infections! However, this is *not* how most people in India actually see Shitala. Quite the contrary, the Cold Mother is always worshipped as a benign protectress, principally of women and children, from disease (including smallpox before 1979) and other kinds of misfortune. In some parts of India, she isn´t associated with disease-related topics at all, but is rather worshipped as a fertility goddess. Both poor villagers (whose worship of the deity can be pretty wild) and the urban gentry look upon Shitala as a mild-mannered mother goddess, not as a psychotic ghoul spreading deadly illness.

Something´s clearly up, and this book is the result of Ferrari´s reflections on the Shitala problematique.

The original form of Shitala was strikingly “Tantric” and wild. The goddess was depicted as a white-skinned and “sky-clad” (nude) young woman with big breasts and disheveled hair (the similarity with a male Shaiva ascetic is striking). She was riding on an ass (a wild donkey), considered an unclean and borderline evil animal in India. Later versions of Shitala were more civilized, with the goddess wearing a red sari and a golden tiara. Ferrari believes that while most deities and spirits associated with asses/donkeys are indeed inauspicious, Shitala is one of the few exceptions. Her riding the ass is symbolically a victory *over* evil and inauspiciousness, not an identification with it. Her other attributes include a pitcher filled with water (symbolizing her power to “cool” diseases), a broom (to get rid of impurities) and a winnower (perhaps suggesting an origin among poor peasants).

Beginning in the 17^th century, Bengali poets composed a number of Shitalamangalkavyas, stories in which Shitala played a decidedly sinister role. Excerpts known as Shitalapalas were staged in theatrical form and became popular. The “official” view of the goddess as capricious and brutal comes from these poems and theater plays. Indeed, Shitala is associated with a number of unsavory characters in these stories, including blood demons and what not! These stories have been taken at face value by many Westerners as descriptions of actual religious beliefs, when they are really literary fiction. Ferrari believe that the Shitalamangalkavyas give voice to the class prejudices of the privileged poets who wrote them. The point of these narratives is to describe the village folk and their religion as stupid and superstitious. It´s a form of very primitive bhakti based on fear: the peasants worship Shitala only after she has afflicted them with smallpox (which she then cures). However, even the underprivileged themselves find these tales entertaining, often due to the inclusion of ghouls, vampires and what not. The author makes a comparison to modern zombie flicks!

When India was a British dependency, the colonial power drew all the wrong conclusions from worship of Shitala during outbreaks of smallpox. This was especially the case after the British banned variolation in favor of smallpox vaccines. Variolation (a crude form of smallpox “vaccination”) continued to be carried out despite the ban. The colonial authorities often blamed outbreaks of smallpox on variolation. The practice was combined with puja (worship service) to none other than Shitala. Since the British authorities interpreted Shitala as a dangerous “smallpox goddess”, they concluded that the Hindus were in thrall to a dangerous superstition and rejected modern vaccines out of fear of offending her. This attitude was taken over by the secular health authorities after Indian independence, and inculcated into foreign doctors and WHO officials who participated in India´s vaccination campaigns. Scholars also believe in this negative version, and still today – generations after smallpox have been eradicated – the Cold Lady is still depicted as a personification of smallpox in learned literature. Rampant Orientalism?

Maybe. However, I noticed when reading/skimming this volume that even Ferrari mentions a couple of examples when Shitala *is* considered dangerous. At village level, she is often seen as one of “seven sisters”, a collection of goddesses who apparently are dangerous and capricious unless properly worshipped. He describes a Tantric temple, in which the auspicious Shitala is surrounded by decidedly wilder deities (and the inevitable mortuary iconography). Finally, he seems to suggest that the south Indian, specifically Tamil, goddess Mariyamman is a smallpox goddess for real, inflicting diseases on people who refuse to pay her homage. Mariyamman is known in northern India thanks to Tamil migrant workers and is often identified with…guess who…Shitala. So perhaps there is more to explore here?

An interesting chapter deal with the folk worship of Shitala. The author visited a temple where the most popular Shitala festival started with a virtual stampede during which the crowd jostled for the best places inside the temple grounds. A long string of goat sacrifices followed (the animals were beheaded) and the blood offered to the goddess. Hijras played a prominent role during the ritual. Hijras are self-castrated biologically male transgenders, usually regarded as a third gender, but considered “male” for the duration of the sacrificial ritual (only males can offer goats to Shitala). The best and most expensive goat is usually offered by the local hijra community. During the festival, young women can be possessed by the goddess, act as if mad, and angrily denounce males (sometimes including family members or husbands). While many males naturally fear or dislike such behavior, others are sexually aroused by it (the male onlookers didn´t realize that Ferrari speaks Bengali and hence understood their lewd remarks). Worship of Mariyamman is even wilder. It can include piercing rituals, including piercing of cheeks and tongues with arrows and spears?! Apparently, these festivals are often sensationalized in the Indian media.

The last chapter of “Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India” deal with the gentrification of Shitala. Usually regarded as a “folk” or “village” goddess, her worship is spreading upward on the social ladder. This leads to inevitable changes. The middle class, animal rights activists and Vaishnavas frown on the animal sacrifices described earlier. Shitala has therefore gotten new looks. She has become more similar to Lakshmi, rides a dignified white ass that looks almost like a horse, and is associated with Hanuman (although somewhat contradictorily also with Bhairava). Another strategy is to make Shitala more similar to Durga, since the festival of this goddess is popular all over India. In this form, she is no longer associated with disease at all.

Concluding remark: yes, religions change, our perceptions of the gods and goddesses change, as well, suggesting either that they don´t exist or that their myths and legends can´t be taken as literal truth. But you knew that already. So here I end.

My kingdom for a quagga

 

- Daniell´s Quagga? Yeah, I vaguely remember him, 
annoying as heck, always tried to steal the best grass!

When I was a kid, Swedish school dictionaries only contained two words beginning with the letter Q. One was quisling. The other was quagga (spelled "qvagga"). That´s a kind of zebra. These days, the Quagga is no longer classified as a separate species, but as a subspecies of the Plains Zebra (which is somewhat confusingly known in Latin as Equus quagga). Confusingly, since the "real" Quagga is extinct! 

Below, I link to two blog posts by Karl Shuker, who had some fun trying to track down information about two freak specimens of the Quagga once assumed to represent entirely new species. Apparently, it wasn´t easy! Today, Daniell´s Quagga and the Isabella Quagga are only known from illustrations in old books. 

Fun fact: when I asked Bing AI to generate a picture of a Quagga, it produced pictures of perfectly plain zebras instead. So yeah, the Quagga does seem to be extinct, alright. Maybe next time, I´ll ask the AI to make a picture of a quisling instead... 

The Isabella Quagga - a long-lost, long-forgotten equine enigma

Daniell´s Quagga and Ward´s Zebra - another two striped curiosities of the equine kind

The logick of the Houyhnhnms

 

Isn´t this dangerous or something? I mean, the Houyhnhnms could catch some dangerous disease from that pesky little Yahoo! 

Dålig förlorare

 

Kan inte låta bli att länka till denna... 

Gone forever, happy anyway

 

"Sure hope I get extinct soon!"

Mesopotamian murals depict a horse-like mystery animal 500 years before the introduction of the domesticated horse to the Middle East. Known as the kunga, its exact identity was recently revealed by genetic research: it´s a hybrid between a Syrian wild ass and a domestic donkey. 

The hybrids were probably sterile, making the kunga dependent on human-overseen cross-breeding for its very existence. When the horse was introduced, kungas fell out of favor and so disappeared. Today, the Syrian wild ass is extinct due to overhunting, so the kunga cannot be restored (at least not at the current level of genetic engineering). 

But then, who the heck wants to be a kunga anyway, pulling the chariot of some Bronze Age Mideast king?

Let´s all do the kunga!  

Kunga (equid)

My republic for a horse

A fascinating article about one of the first animal rights crusades. The year was 1872.

Note the similarities with modern environmentalist activism. Bergh (the woke animal rights guy) was super-rich, aristocratic and had the support of a "progressive" state. His opponents were "capitalist", to be sure, but he also made working class people miserable. Eventually, technological development rather than woke preaching or state legislation made life easier for the horses (and, I suppose, the workers).

And no, I'm not a cornucopian libertarian or horse-hater. I'm just reminding the young and the idealistic about what they are really up against. Somehow, the situation in 1872 sounds eerily reminescent of something closer to our own time...

Flu virus shut down the economy by infecting horses

The dog that ate my donkey

“The Guardiam Team” by Cat Urbigkit is a children's book with a seemingly unbelievable plot, set on a ranch in Wyoming. Rena is an over-sized dog of a breed known as Great Pyrenees (or Pyr for short). The dog looks photo-shopped! Roo is a burro, a wild donkey. The U.S. wildlife service apparently catches burros (there are too many of them), and gives them away to ranchers. Together, Rena and Roo (a dog and a donkey, remember?) are supposed to guard and protect the ranchers' sheep?! This year's hard-to-believe award, or what?

However, it seems that the scenario is true. Yes, Pyrs really do exist. I've actually seen one…right outside one of Stockholm's largest shopping malls! That's a long way from the plains of Big Wyoming. I wasn't the only one to stop and stare… I never seen a burro, but this particular kind of donkey is sometimes used as a livestock guardian. If Big Doggy and Cowboy Donkey can cooperate, I don't know, but the colour photos in the book looks genuine enough. Of course, their guardian instincts don't always work properly, as when they try to stop a ram from approaching the sheep! LOL.

OK, four stars. ;-)

On the guard

This might be the ultimate guide to dogs, donkeys and llamas as livestock guardians. It's written from a North American perspective and covers all aspects of the issue. The author, Janet Vorwald Dohner, has raised and worked with guardian dogs for 26 years and is the past vice president of the Kangal Dog Club of America.

An introductory chapter of “Livestock Guardians” deals with predators likely to attack livestock: wolves, coyotes, cougars, feral dogs, etc. Even smaller animals such as skunks can be dangerous, for instance as vectors of rabies. The bulk of the book is about guardian dogs, introducing the reader to 31 different breeds. Some are relatively well known, such as the Great Pyrenees, the Anatolian Shepherd Dog and the Kangal. Others are more exotic, such as the Hungarian “Komondor”, a bizarre and very aggressive breed that looks like a giant mop! There are also more general chapters on dog training and health issues, and interviews with farmers sharing their experiences with various livestock guardians. Most illustrations are black-and-white drawings, but a colour photo section has been included. My favourite photo shows an Akbash Dog guarding chicken!

The book ends with somewhat shorter sections on llamas and donkeys, and a list of resources. The list, somewhat curiously, include addresses to the Predator Conservation Alliance and the Mountain Lion Foundation! More obvious (perhaps) resources include Llamapaedia, the Middle Atlantic State Komondor Club and the National Anatolian Shepherd Rescue Network.

In sum, “Livestock Guardians” is a book about everything you needed to know about these issues, but were afraid (or unable) to ask! Five stars.