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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| Some purported historical research from Mental Floss today. I don't know, but shaking heads is a standard way of approaching a Mental Floss article. Shaking hands seems like a gesture that has been around forever. Indeed, a throne base from the reign of ancient Assyria's Shalmaneser III in the 9th century BCE clearly shows two figures clasping hands. Well, that certainly seems asserious. It might seem like shaking hands is an ancient custom, the roots of which are lost to the sands of time. The story I heard as a kid was that its origin probably came from demonstrating that you're not carrying weapons. That never quite sat right with me. One or both could be concealing weapons in their non-shaking hand. Or behind their backs. And the gesture could be meant by one as "See? No weapons!" and by the other as "I could kick your ass bare-handed." Back in the days when I was learning karate (along with five or six other Japanese words), one of the standard beginner lessons involved using a handshake to draw the opponent off-balance. Still, okay. As untrustworthy as MF can be, it does seem to be true that a handshake can be cross-cultural, and therefore might have shrouded origins. Historians who have pored over old etiquette books have noticed that handshaking in the modern sense of a greeting doesn’t appear until the mid-19th century, when it was considered a slightly improper gesture that should only be used with friends [PDF  ].I took the time to follow and recreate the link to the cited PDF. It's a bit long and I admit I skimmed a lot of it, but it does seem to go into detail about the "negative history" of the non-handshake. Fair warning, though: it contains misspellings that seem to indicate that it's a textified image, such as "niouthpiece," which most likely started off as "mouthpiece." The original text was apparently in Dutch, and translated to English, so, in short, I wouldn't trust it completely through all those different translations. But one bit caught my eye, and latched on to my sense of humor. I present it without edits: When speaking, the Dutch merely used tlie eye and 'a moderate movement of the hand to support [their] words'. Because of their lively gesticulation the Italians were put on a par with peasants or, even worse, the 'moffcn' o r Westphalians, the immigrants the Dutch loved to ridicule.' " It's not the transcription error that sent me, though; it's how the perceived roles of "civilized" and "barbarian" had switched entirely. The early handshakes mentioned above were part of making deals or burying the hatchet... Ironically (or whatever), the term "to bury the hatchet" can be traced. It originated as an idiom for making peace during North American colonization. That worked out great for the American natives.The modern handshake as a form of greeting is harder to trace. The article makes a few references to handshaking in history and literature. As for why shaking hands was deemed a good method of greeting, rather than some other gesture, the most popular explanation is that it incapacitates the right hand, making it useless for weapon holding. Like I said, that's the one I always heard, but a few moments' thought cast doubt. Especially since a disproportionate number of the people I knew were left-handed. Sadly, in a world where obscure Rabelais translations provide critical evidence, the true reason may remain forever elusive. It's good to accept that maybe we'll never know everything. Lots of customs of etiquette seem arbitrary, like "how to set the table properly" or the American institution of not wearing white after Labor Day. Some are invented to deliberately distinguish your culture from the "barbarians;" then, you can say "those barbarians don't even [whatever arbitrary etiquette rule]." But, I suppose, at least handshaking is marginally more hygenic than kissing each other on the cheek, as per the French custom. But it's less so than the mutual bow common in some Eastern cultures, where a handshake might just as easily end with one party on the floor, staring up at a smug blackbelt. |
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