Page 51 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1828 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Bamboo

Bamboo is a versatile plant (actually a grass) that
has many indigenous uses throughout East, South-
east and South Asia and is an important import Minoan Crete, engendering pressures on these societies
for the western world. The following excerpt and civilizations. Deforestation also has engendered cli-
describes how bamboo was used to build houses in mate changes and precipitation. The removal of the
rural Burma at the end of the 1800s. forests cools the lower atmosphere while warming the
ground surface. The reduction of evapotranspiration
The houses are usually marquee-shaped and con-
causes aridity. Forest loss also means that there is a reduc-
sist of one or more rooms with the floor raised
tion in carbon sequestration as the trees fix carbon and
on posts seven or eight feet from the ground and
metabolize carbon compounds. This loss exacerbates
another in front much lower and forming a kind
the process of global warming. Recent studies have sug-
of veranda, sometimes open in front.The poorer
gested that this process has been an ongoing for at least
classes use posts of common wood or even of
6,000 years following the spread of agriculture that had
bamboo and make their walls of mats; the richer
facilitated the removal of the forests.
use Pyeng-ga-do (Xylia dolobriformis) or some
other durable and more expensive timber and Sing C. Chew
planked walls. The roof is sometimes composed
See also Deforestation
of small, flat tiles but more generally of thatch; in
some places of dhanee leaves soaked in salt water
to protect them from the ravages of insects; in
Further Reading
others of wa-khat, a kind of flat tile six feet long
Chew, S. C. (2001). World ecological degradation (accumulation, urban-
by two feet broad made of coarse bamboo mat- ization, and deforestation) 3000 BC–AD 2000.Walnut, CA: Alta Mira
ting; in others of bamboos split in half longitu- Press.
Perlin,J.(1989).A forest journey. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.
dinally and, with knots removed, placed side by Marchak, P. (1995). Logging the globe. Kingston, Canada: McGill/
side and touching each other with the concave Queen’s University Press.
Williams, M. (2003). Deforesting the earth. Chicago: University of
side upwards, extending from the ridge to the
Chicago Press.
eaves, over these is placed another series with the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development. (1999).
concave side downwards so that the roof looks Our forests, our future. New York: Cambridge University Press.
like one of the elongated pan tiles; elsewhere the
leaves of the Tsa-loo (Licuala peltata) or of the
Taw-htan (Livistona speciosa): in some of the
larger towns shingles are being introduced. The Time,
flooring consists of planking in better houses,
and of whole bamboos laid side-by-side on bam- Conceptions of
boo cross-beams and tied with cane in the
poorer.
e all live in time, but we almost never ask our-
Source: Gazetteer of Burma (p. 408). (1893). New Delhi: Cultural Publishing
House. Wselves about its nature. Moreover, people in the
industrialized West are generally unaware that their typ-
ical understanding of time embodies a set of assumptions
problems of soil erosion leading to flooding and silting (for example, a linear “flow”) that have changed through-
of rivers and canals also occurred in early Mesopotamia out history, are not shared by all cultures, and are even
and had a severe impact on economic production. The fundamentally at odds with current science.Appreciating
effects of soil erosion and its consequences also appeared the diversity and evolution of cultural and scientific views
in northwestern India, China, Mycenaean Greece, and of time requires a wide-ranging journey through history,