Nature by Design Part 2
How colorful landscapes attest to cultural exchange.
In part 1 of this series, we laid the groundwork by presenting aspects of culture, art, and cultural history. In this installment, I’ll go through the colorful landscapes that humans have fashioned and their interactions with each other.
Natural resources are necessary for settlement. Forests provide wood that has many uses. Harbors and calm waters are attractive as they provide shelter from the elements. Land that is good for farming and rivers that are filled with fresh water to irrigate them is very important to sustaining life year-round. Time, however, defines our rhythm as a species and marks when we use the space provided by our immediate environment.
Time and future
Our diurnal rhythm, of being active in the daytime, has played a decisive role in organizing our world and being productive. Calendars are an explicit scheme for timekeeping by using natural units: the day, the solar year, and the lunar month. They have determined important activities: predict the future, decide on auspicious dates for battles, marriages, harvests, and so on. Depending on the environment, calendars were either painted on cotton cloth, carved from wooden boards, limestone, or even bamboo shoots.
