Yesterday after having been inside for most of the day I decided to go for a little walk, in fact I felt quite tired so I was going to go up to the grounds of Piercefield and find somewhere to lie down in the grass for a bit. I followed along the Wye Valley walk for a while on the path we normally go to walk Meghan. I had in my head that I wanted to see some bird action (I still want to watch a woodpecker for longer than a few seconds) so I stopped for a bit at a small tree which I could lie down on and wait for some birds or possibly other bigger creatures (though I didn't really expect a deer or badger to come bounding along a path frequented by humans). This story has a bit of a boring ending if you are expecting lots of animals as apart from the usual calls of magpies, blackbirds and tits the only mildly exciting thing I heard was a Nuthatch tapping lightly on a tree to release some tasty insect grub (in both senses of the word). But lying on the tree I looked up through the branches and got a lovely multi-layered view of branches at different heights and pondered the possibilities of successfully recording such a view through a lens, either still or video. I took a picture with my phone camera, which didn't record it successfully!
Here is the photo I got, OK but resolution TOO small!
I also took a couple more pictures, one of which was taken from the same tree but facing to my left and slightly behind me. The low afternoon sun is shining through a few thin trunks. I liked the oblique angle of the tree in the top right corner, gives it some minimal framing and contrasts the vertical trunks.
The tree seems to loom over the image don't you think?
I carried on walking and got a phonecall from my friend Heather when I was round near the back of Piercefield House, looking up the river to the north. Was nice to have a chat and funny as I had been thinking of her earlier. She is going to a dry stone walling place in Derby soon where they also have an exhibtion of walls made from different stones around the country. It sounds like a good trip but am trying to save money at the moment. It is annoying as when I get a job I will have more money but less time for visiting people and places, frustrating! Whilst I was talking with her I noticed some bramble leaves that had an odd marking on them. It was visible on both the top and bottom of the leaves with the colour changing from white on the top to red on the bottom. My thoughts were that it was either caused by some kind of fungus or by an insect boring into the leaves for food. I took a photo so if anyone knows you could leave a comment, I would like to find out. After all curiosity is my middle name! It seems to follow the same pattern on both sections of the leaf, growing in thickness from its start point at the edge to its finish point near the centre from less than a mm to 3-4mm. It begins at the edge and at some point follows one of the divisions inwards towards the centre of symmetry.
What do you think this could be?
I have also been reading more of my book "The Prehistory of the Mind". His argument grows and he has just got past the stage of interpreting the mental processes of Homo neanderthalensis. In his view it seems to be the case that from the circa. 6 M.Y.A. common ancestor to Neanderthal man and other early humans that on top of the module for general intelligence have grown separate modules for technical intelligence (represented by stone tool making so far culminating in the Levallois spear points made by Neanderthal man), natural history intelligence (relating to the ability to hunt in groups and understand distribution of plant food items and behaviour patterns of prey animals) and social intelligence (relating to interactions between group members and vying for primary positions within the group etc.). It is from the social intelligence module that language grew, as a means of replacing the function of grooming which takes up more time with increasing group size and therefore removes time which could be used for hunting and gathering. Also language can express feelings to more than one group member at a time. The initial language is considered to be more of an advanced form of cat purring, like the oohs of pleasure and aahs of pain we use now. However by Neanderthal man it appears, from both reconstructions of braincases (endocasts) and the presence of a modern hyoid bone (a bone attached to the larynx and pharynx and important in vocalising complex sounds) that speech similar to our modern language was at least technically possible.
But I fear I may be getting too technical in my descriptions, the point is that although these modules allowed advance behaviours, Mithen postulates that there were still no connections between the modules that would allow thought filled with cross pollination of ideas so vital to our modern minds. In other words when making tools they could only think about making tools in a general sense and couldn't think about making tools for killing specific prey animals for example. This was because any knowledge about prey animal behaviour or physical makeup was purely contained within the natural history intelligence module. In general I think its a good theory though I question some assumptions he makes based on limited evidence, for example the use of chimpanzee behaviour as analagous to the behaviour of the common ancestor due to lack of fossil evidence and the over use of archaeological and fossil evidence of Homo neanderthalensis due the greatest evidence of early humans being of these. However he is working with what he has and he backs his ideas up with evidence wherever possible. Plus the book has an extensive notes and bibliography section which is always good in a popular science work.
I would have finished writing this earlier but I was distracted by Radiohead on my iTunes and then I wondered if they were still together and went to their website. Yes they are and the site is excellent, lots of interesting tidbits to browse over. I feel it only fair that I link to it here so you can all check it out. Also here is a link to Guapo's website, they're a great band I saw years ago supporting Kid606 in Cardiff and I want to see them play again. But they seem to be only playing in Belgium lately, bah!
