Ligabue Magazine 52

My first working experience in the field was with the Ligabue Study Centre over 25 years ago. Now I have been asked to work on a different but no less exciting aspect. I’m delighted to embark on a new adventure with Giancarlo Ligabue, just as we did so many times in the past. Our various shared expeditions took us to the Sahara Desert, Mongolia or the Rift Valley savannah in search of lost armies, dinosaurs or prehistoric man. Those expeditions left me with indelible memories which come to mind again now: hours spent chatting about evolution round campfires in the most out of the way places, or pouring over maps laid out on the bonnet of a jeep with compass in hand (there was no GPS then), vehicles stuck in sinking sands, smiling huntsmen armed with bow and arrows showing us round their camps, and so on. I’m sure this new adventure will always bring just as many surprises.

To introduce this issue of the magazine I’d like to begin with a question. If you want to survive in the Amazon Rainforest, is it more useful to have some poisoned arrows or a body covered with painting and tattoos? We would all probably go for the poisoned arrows. They would at least guarantee a meal a day. But we would be wrong. With no knowledge of hunting techniques in tropical forests, we would hardly be able to capture any game. And even if we did, we wouldn’t be able to light a fire to cook our catch. And then where would we find drinking water? How would we heal our wounds, or treat an attack of fever? Having a tattoo, on the other hand, might help us. In fact, if you have a tattoo or your body is painted, it means you belong to a tribe or a group. And being part of a group means survival, because within the group individuals help each other. Some make poisoned arrows, some look after the children, some light fires to cook the catch from hunting, and others take care of the sick. Each individual works for the group or community, although the relative importance of the roles may at times be surprising. In almost all tribal groups in the world, the men go hunting while the women stay nearer the camp and go gathering. What most people don’t know is that hunting is only occasionally successful, whereas gathering always brings precious calories to the community every day. That is the way it has been since prehistory: the women have ensured the whole group survives.

We should bear these considerations in mind when reading Maurizio Leigheb’s fascinating article, accompanied by some stunning photographs. A leading anthropologist, Leigheb takes us on a unique trip among the last representatives of the Caduveo ethnic group living in Mato Grosso. Their incredibly vivid body painting is a kind of identity card for the group and its traditions. It’s a badge or way of “dressing”, denoting the fact of belonging to a culture which has survived for so long in such a hostile place. But those photos are nearer to the Western world than we might expect. Just think: every morning we comb our hair in front of the mirror and dress according to the latest fashion. We talk with the typical inflection of the region we live in. Why? Because unconsciously we are afraid of being “excluded from the group”. This ancestral fear comes directly from the prehistoric savannah, where if, left alone, our forebears would have died in no time. In short, a tie matching your jacket or the Caduveo’s body arabesques made by dipping Naantau juice in lampblack are basically the same thing, a powerful means of survival for humankind: culture. In this issue of our magazine, we travel thousands of kilometres. After exploring the world of the American Indians, in serious danger of extinction, we come to another world that has already disappeared-18th-century Venice.

How do we know what people walking in the streets or Piazza San Marco looked like at that time? There were no anthropologists equipped with cameras. And yet we know the details of their clothes or headgear. Bruno Berti reveals how by illustrating the works of some artists, especially Giovanni Grevembroch, who painstakingly described the life and fashions of his time with the paintbrush. Through his work we can delve back in time and admire the ordinary dress, gaudy brocades, velvet gowns, fancy hats or even ladies’ hairstyles. This also gives us insight into everyday life and the mood in Venice as the Republic was nearing its end and the final curtain of history about to come down on all its actors.
A few years after the end of this extraordinary period for Venice, in a place tens of thousands of kilometres away and in a completely different context, an anonymous Chinese goldsmith made a unique piece of jewellery. In a second article, Bruno Berti describes one of the most stunning jewels you might ever chance upon: a hairpin made by combining a kingfisher’s beautiful dorsal feathers with gold elements. Once worn by an unknown lady of court, the hairpin was later transformed into a pendant for a necklace. This combination of masterpieces from nature and art has produced a truly fascinating work.
But man, and nature don’t always get on so well, as Giorgio Rivieccio reminds us in his article on volcanoes. We are all fairly familiar with the kind of damage that volcanoes do in their local areas. But Rivieccio gives us a much broader, detailed vision of a darker side to the phenomenon. In this case volcanoes are like murderers striking from a distance of thousands of kilometres, provoking year- long winters, halting the flooding of the Nile in the land of the Pharaohs, or even accounting for the appearance of great ice blocks in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Today these natural phenomena still shock us for their violent power and spectacular nature. But just imagine what it must have been like in the ancient world when people had none of the scientific knowledge we have today. What was lightning? What caused earthquakes? What was a comet? In the past people attached very different meanings to such phenomena. One of these phenomena from the ancient world attracted the attention of Gabriele Rossi Osmida. In fact, he set out to investigate the strange light said to have lit up the night sky seven years before the birth of Christ. According to tradition, this was the comet guiding the Three Wise Men. In a well-documented passionate account, Rossi Osmida reveals that it wasn’t a comet at all but another even more exceptional astronomical phenomenon: the conjunction of two planets, Jupiter and Saturn. His investigations then lead him even further as he goes on to suggest the Magi’s real names.

This is not the only journey taking us back to ancient times in the East and Asia. Another article in the current issue of Ligabue Magazine features a whole forgotten chapter of history by showing the splendid images from an ongoing archaeological excavation in Turkmenistan. In an archaeologist’s dream come true, we can explore the neglected ruins of one of the most powerful empires in history – the Parthian Dynasty. The Parthians were the most troublesome enemies the Ancient Romans encountered in the East and the archaeological sites of the dynasty have yielded objects of me beauty, such as 50 rhytons (ivory horns) used for ceremonies and sacred banquets. Since 1990 these sites have been excavated by an Italian mission from the Turin Centro Ricerche Archeologiche e Scavi, which has made a number of major discoveries. Carlo Lippolis tells the story of the research and describes an extraordinary local culture combining the typical traditions of the steppe with those of Greek and Iranian origins. It’s quite simply a remarkable “lost world”.

Giandomenico Romanelli, on the other hand, takes us on an ” unreal ” journey by describing how it became possible to contemplate our planet from above without moving from the comfort of our homes. This is the fascinating world of globes, armillary spheres, and world maps. You will probably be surprised to learn that some globes were 6 metres in diameter and could contain up to 30 people. In the past, before the age of satellites and astronauts, globes were the only way of enjoying an overall view of the planet we live on.
Another method of armchair journeying was to read travellers’ or explorers’ accounts. For generations people listened to descriptions by adventurers returning from exciting experiences and discoveries in distant lands. We get a feel for this in the words of Giancarlo Ligabue, who takes us to the ruins of an almost legendary place, lost in history and time in the borderlands between Afghanistan and Iran. Here a king called Gondophares once lived and ruled. Many believe that he was the real-life king giving rise to the figure tradition came to call Caspar, one of the Three Wise Men.

Bon Voyage!