scholarly journals A concise review of lobster utilization by worldwide human populations from prehistory to the modern era

2015 ◽  
Vol 72 (suppl_1) ◽  
pp. i7-i21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ehud Spanier ◽  
Kari L. Lavalli ◽  
Jason S. Goldstein ◽  
Johan C. Groeneveld ◽  
Gareth L. Jordaan ◽  
...  

Abstract Lobsters are important resources throughout the world's oceans, providing food security, employment, and a trading commodity. Whereas marine biologists generally focus on modern impacts of fisheries, here we explore the deep history of lobster exploitation by prehistorical humans and ancient civilizations, through the first half of the 20th century. Evidence of lobster use comprises midden remains, artwork, artefacts, writings about lobsters, and written sources describing the fishing practices of indigenous peoples. Evidence from archaeological dig sites is potentially biased because lobster shells are relatively thin and easily degraded in most midden soils; in some cases, they may have been used as fertilizer for crops instead of being dumped in middens. Lobsters were a valuable food and economic resource for early coastal peoples, and ancient Greek and Roman Mediterranean civilizations amassed considerable knowledge of their biology and fisheries. Before European contact, lobsters were utilized by indigenous societies in the Americas, southern Africa, Australia, and New Zealand at seemingly sustainable levels, even while other fish and molluscan species may have been overfished. All written records suggest that coastal lobster populations were dense, even in the presence of abundant and large groundfish predators, and that lobsters were much larger than at present. Lobsters gained a reputation as “food for the poor” in 17th and 18th century Europe and parts of North America, but became a fashionable seafood commodity during the mid-19th century. High demand led to intensified fishing effort with improved fishing gear and boats, and advances in preservation and long-distance transport. By the early 20th century, coastal stocks were overfished in many places and average lobster size was significantly reduced. With overfishing came attempts to regulate fisheries, which have varied over time and have met with limited success.

Author(s):  
Vera V. Serdechnaia ◽  

The article is devoted to the analysis of the concept of literary romanticism. The research aims at a refinement of the “romanticism” concept in relation to the history of the literary process. The main research methods include conceptual analysis, textual analysis, comparative historical research. The author analyzes the semantic genesis of the term “romanticism”, various interpretations of the concept, compares the definitions of different periods and cultures. The main results of the study are as follows. The history of the term “romanticism” shows a change in a number of definitions for the same concept in relation to the same literary phenomena. By the end of the 20th century, realizing the existence of significant contradictions in the content of the term “romanticism”, researchers often come to abandon it. At the same time, the steady use of the term “romanticism” testifies to the subject-conceptual component that exists in it, which does not lose its relevance, but just needs a theoretical refinement. Conclusion: one have to revise an approach to romanticism as a theoretical concept, based on the change in the concept of an individual in Europe at the end of the 18th century. It is the newly discovered freedom of an individual predetermines the rethinking for the image of the author as a creator and determines the artistic features of literary romanticism.


Diacronia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gheorghe Chivu

The history of the verbal forms sum and sunt, introduced into the literary writing by the Transylvanian Latinist School, reveals a winding process in the elaboration of certain cultured norms proper to the modern literary Romanian. Not at all linear, this process was concurrently influenced by two, often divergent, tendencies that were active from the end of the 18th century up to the beginning of the 20th century: the use of some cultured forms, borrowed from Latin or created according to Latin patterns; and the revitalization of certain linguistic forms with regional diffusion. Initially proposed as literary pronunciations, the two verbal forms were soon adopted and used as etymological graphic forms that corresponded to sîm and suntu from certain conservative patois. During the second half of the 19th century (sum), and during the first decades of the 20th century (sunt), the two graphic forms became orthoepic norms as well, due to the phonological tradition of the Romanian writing.


Geografie ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-207
Author(s):  
Zdeněk R. Nešpor

The article introduces the field of necrogeography to Czech social geography and provides information on existing (nationwide) data sources. The author takes the issue of Protestant confessional cemeteries as an example, briefly outlines the history of these special types of burial fields (established principally from the end of the 18th century until approximately the mid-20th century), and provides a historical geographical analysis of their regional distribution in the Czech Lands. The article proves the impact of religious and geographical factors on the emergence (and eventual demise) of non-Catholic Christian confessional cemeteries and, at the same time, the research unveiled a number of important research questions to be addressed by Czech necrogeography in the future.


Author(s):  
Thomas H. Fehring ◽  
Terry S. Reynolds

The engineering involved in transportation provided one of the points from which the modern mechanical engineering profession in the United States emerged. The shops that produced the steam engines for river boats and the locomotives for railroads had, by the 1840s, become a leading training ground for the first generation of professional mechanical engineers. As railroads became the primary means of long-distance transport for goods in the late nineteenth century, they also became a leading employer of mechanical engineers. Not surprisingly, the Rail Transportation Division was one of the original eight divisions created when ASME in 1920 adopted a divisional organization; it remains among that organization’s most active divisions. Unfortunately, despite the rail industry’s importance to American history and to the history of mechanical engineering, few articles dealing with the history of this form of land transportation have appeared in Mechanical Engineering magazine over the past fifty years. None were selected for this volume.


2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuomo Wallenius ◽  
Markku Larjavaara ◽  
Juha Heikkinen ◽  
Olga Shibistova

To study the poorly known fire history of Larix-dominated forest in central Siberia, we collected samples from 200 trees in 46 systematically located study plots. Our study area stretches ~90 km from north to south along the River Nizhnyaya Tunguska in northern Irkustk district. Cross-dated tree-ring chronology for all samples combined extended from the year 1360 AD to the present and included 76 fire years and 88 separate fire events. Average fire cycle gradually lengthened from 52 years in the 18th century to 164 years in the 20th century. During the same time, the number of recorded fires decreased even more steeply, i.e. by more than 85%. Fires were more numerous but smaller in the past. Contrary to expectations, climate change in the 20th century has not resulted in increased forest fires in this region. Fire suppression may have contributed to the scarcity of fires since the 1950s. However, a significant decline in fires was evident earlier; therefore an additional explanation is required, a reduction in human-caused ignitions being likely in the light of historical accounts.


Author(s):  
Norman Etherington

Christianity came very early to Africa, as attested by the Gospels. The agencies by which it spread across North Africa and into the Kingdom of Aksum remain largely unknown. Even after the rise of Islam cut communications between sub-Saharan Africa and the churches of Rome and Constantinople, it survived in the eastern Sudan kingdom of Nubia until the 15th century and never died in Ethiopia. The documentary history of organized missions begins with the Roman Catholic monastic orders founded in the 13th century. Their evangelical work in Africa was closely bound up with Portuguese colonialism, which both helped and hindered their operations. Organized European Protestant missions date from the 18th-century evangelical awakening and were much less creatures of states. Africa was a particular object of attention for Evangelicals opposed to slavery and the slave trade. Paradoxically this gave an impetus to colonizing ventures aimed at undercutting the moral and economic foundations of slavery in Africa. Disease proved to be a deadly obstacle to European- and American-born missionaries in tropical Africa, thus spurring projects for enrolling local agents who had acquired childhood immunity. Southern Africa below the Zambezi River attracted missionaries from many parts of Europe and North America because of the absence of the most fearsome diseases. However the turbulent politics of the region complicated their work by restricting their access to organized African kingdoms and chieftaincies. The prevalent mission model until the late 19th century was a station under the direction of a single European family whose religious and educational endeavors were directed at a small number of African residents. Catholic missions acquired new energy following the French Revolution, the old Portuguese system of partnership with the state was displaced by enthusiasm for independent operations under the authority of the Pope in Rome. Several new missionary orders were founded with a particular focus on Africa. Mission publications of the 19th and 20th centuries can convey a misleading impression that the key agents in the spread of African Christianity were foreign-born white males. Not only does this neglect the work of women as wives and teachers, but it diverts attention from the Africans who were everywhere the dominant force in the spread of modern Christianity. By the turn of the 20th century, evangelism had escaped the bounds of mission stations driven by African initiative and the appearance of so-called “faith missions” based on a model of itinerant preaching. African prophets and independent evangelists developed new forms of Christianity. Once dismissed as heretical or syncretic, they gradually came to be recognized as legitimate variants of the sort that have always accompanied the acculturation of religion in new environments. Decolonization caught most foreign mission operations unawares and required major changes, most notably in the recruitment of African clergy to the upper echelons of church hierarchies. By the late 20th century Africans emerged as an independent force in Christian missions, sending agents to other continents.


1986 ◽  
Vol 168 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Willinsky

The place of writing in the curriculum has recently increased in importance under a series of new approaches based on a processing model of how writers write. An overlooked aspect of these new programs in the schools is the degree to which they parallel aspects of an earlier, popular literacy. In a brief recounting of incidents in the history of literacy with a focus on Renaissance Europe, 17th- and 18th-century England, and the 20th-century United States, three historical elements are brought to light which now play a strong part in the new programs. In these programs literacy (a) is sociable, (b) has its roots in nonstandardized language, and (c) places a premium on performance and publication. Insofar as the new writing takes up these aspects of popular literacy, there is reason to feel that it will work to some degree in meeting the current literacy crisis. However, the traditions of popular literacy have both political and social ramifications which warrant our attention. Popular literacy in the past has been entangled in the sensational and subversive and has not always been well received. This history raises questions as to what can be expected and what is desired of this new thrust in writing. The advocates of the new writing programs need to confront the potential of this increased voice, this latest form of popular literacy, which they have begun to encourage.


2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaclav Smil

AbstractModern economic globalization would be impossible without our ability to move billions of tonnes of raw materials and finished goods among the continents and to fly at speeds approaching the speed of sound. These realities were made possible by the interaction of economic and technical factors. Much has been written about their organizational and political underpinnings (ranging from the role of multinational corporations to the history of free trade agreements), but much less on the history of the two prime movers that made these realities possible. Neither steam engines, nor gasoline-fuelled engines could have accomplished comparable feats. Diesel engines made ocean shipping the cheapest mode of long-distance transport and without gas turbines there would be no fast, inexpensive, mass-scale intercontinental travel. This paper examines the history, advances, benefits and costs of the two prime movers.


2008 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 1071-1082 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver G. Pybus ◽  
Eleanor Barnes ◽  
Rachel Taggart ◽  
Philippe Lemey ◽  
Peter V. Markov ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The hepatitis C virus (HCV), which currently infects an estimated 3% of people worldwide, has been present in some human populations for several centuries, notably HCV genotypes 1 and 2 in West Africa and genotype 6 in Southeast Asia. Here we use newly developed methods of sequence analysis to conduct the first comprehensive investigation of the epidemic and evolutionary history of HCV in Asia. Our analysis includes new HCV core (n = 16) and NS5B (n = 14) gene sequences, obtained from serum samples of jaundiced patients from Laos. These exceptionally diverse isolates were analyzed in conjunction with all available reference strains using phylogenetic and Bayesian coalescent methods. We performed statistical tests of phylogeographic structure and applied a recently developed “relaxed molecular clock” approach to HCV for the first time, which indicated an unexpectedly high degree of rate variation. Our results reveal a >1,000-year-long development of genotype 6 in Asia, characterized by substantial phylogeographic structure and two distinct phases of epidemic history, before and during the 20th century. We conclude that HCV lineages representing preexisting and spatially restricted strains were involved in multiple, independent local epidemics during the 20th century. Our analysis explains the generation and maintenance of HCV diversity in Asia and could provide a template for further investigations of HCV spread in other regions.


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