Strategies of China Ancient Capitals Planning in Ritual Society

2012 ◽  
Vol 174-177 ◽  
pp. 1595-1599
Author(s):  
Meng Lin Wang ◽  
Jie Tan

On the influence of "ritual", the planning of China ancient capitals showed unique and national characteristics. The layout of capitals usually pursued the isomorphism with sky. It performed the forms that, square shape, palaces in the middle and in the north of cities, axial symmetry, left imperial ancestral temple and right Country Altar, three courts and five gates, courts front and bedrooms behind, etc. These strategies of ancient capitals planning still had continue to be used in modern cities. Grid road system can bring out unit system. Both of them benefit for cities dividing. Learning from the past experience, we can direct our urban designning today.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9s8 ◽  
pp. 79-114
Author(s):  
Robin Coningham ◽  
Lisa J. Lucero

Abstract: Narratives of lost cities and the exploration of ruins have captivated scholars and travellers for hundreds of years with explanations for their demise ranging from invasions to cataclysmic environmental events. This article explores three case studies to consider the impact of climate change, disaster and risk on urban infrastructure in the past, as well as to reflect on potential lessons of adaptation and resilience for modern cities and their inhabitants. The first examines the degree to which historic urban infrastructure can tell us about seismic adaptation in pre-modern Nepal, as well as recognising the increasing challenges to vernacular architecture from climate change. The second, Sri Lanka�s Medieval cities in the North Central Province, examines the intricate relationship between the ancient city of Anuradhapura and its artificial hydraulic landscape, a relationship which saw resilience defeated by irreversibly engineered adaptation. The final example is drawn from the experience of another tropical society on the other side of the globe, the low-density urban Classic Maya of Central America, which offers different yet relevant insights into alternate urban lifeways, both ancient and contemporary. Focusing on issues of successful and unsuccessful adaptations in urban settings over an archaeological time range and evaluating how archaeologists and historians have explored and presented this evidence, we conclude by considering how archaeology and archaeologists can also play a greater role in future sustainable urban planning.


Servis plus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-25
Author(s):  
Татьяна Адашова ◽  
Tatyana Adashova ◽  
Наталья Косарева ◽  
Natalya Kosareva ◽  
Виктория Лапочкина ◽  
...  

Economic efficiency of tourism industry and its benefits for the territories have fundamentally changed the attitude of the Russian regions to tourism in general for the past decade over the past decade. The regions that had traditionally specialized in other sectors of the economy began to show interest in its development. It leads to a natural reinforcing competition of those who took its place in the tourist business long ago, and those who has just started. One of the successfully developing regions, well-known among Russians as the leading oil-producing region – ​the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (Yugra), is taking active steps not only to promote their tourism resources and ready tourism products, but also to strengthen their competitiveness in both domestic and foreign markets. Events (tourism exhibitions, forums, investment activities associated with the development and introduction of new tourist routes and participation in projects, creation of tourism websites, portals and many others. etc.), which take place in the district, contribute to the promotion of the territory as one of the most interesting Russian tourist destinations, and, as a consequence, lead to increasing of the tourist stream. Various tourism resources (ethnographic, ecological, cultural, historical and other) are the basis for building new and, most importantly, competitive tourism products. Among the promising directions are considered ethno-tourism and acquaintance of tourists with the national characteristics of the resident indigenous peoples of the North – ​Khanty, Mansi, Forest Nenets, Komi-Zyrians. The attractiveness of Ugra as a center of business tourism, which makes on its territory a variety of business, scientific, cultural and sporting events of all-Russian and international level, increases. Successful marketing policy for the promotion of the tourist potential of the Autonomous Okrug in the domestic and foreign markets contributes to the formation of a new image of Ugra as an attractive tourist center.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (07) ◽  
pp. 20492-20498
Author(s):  
Aborisade Olasunkanmi ◽  
Christopher Agulanna

This work interrogates federal character principle (FCP) in Nigeria. The FCP was designed to fundamentally address the striking features of Nigeria politics of intense struggles for power among the different ethnic groups in the country between the elites from the North and their Southern counterparts and the various segments, but the practice of FCP in Nigeria so far raises curiosity and doubts. Given the outcome of the interrogation, this research work discovered and conclude that federal character has not indeed achieve its objective in the Nigeria, the study finds that Ethnocentrism, Elitism, Mediocrity, Mutual suspicion amongst others accounts for some inhibiting factors of the FCP in Nigeria. Like many other provisions of the Constitution, the Federal Character principle was meant to correct some imbalances experienced in the past, but it has created more problems than it has attempted to solve. Rather than promote national unity, it has disunited Nigerians. There is an urgent need to use more of professionals and result oriented Nigerians to carry out national tasks, than to use unprogressive people due to this "Federal character" issue. Nigeria should be a place where one's track records and qualifications are far greater than just "where they come from" or their lineage if Nigerian truly want to progress.


2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Reader

Concerns that established temple Buddhism in Japan is in a state of crisis have been voiced by priests in various sectarian organizations in recent years. This article shows that there is a very real crisis facing Buddhism in modern Japan, with temples closing because of a lack of support and of priests to run them, and with a general turn away from Buddhism among the Japanese population. In rural areas falling populations have led to many temple closures, while in the modern cities people are increasingly turning away from the prime area in which Japanese people have traditionally engaged with Buddhist temples — the processes of death and their aftermath. Partly this is due to competition from new secular funeral industries, but partly also it is because public perceptions of Buddhism — which has become over-reliant on death rituals in Japan — have become highly negative in modern times. Even practices which have often been seen as areas in which Buddhist temples have been able to attract people — such as pilgrimages — are proving less successful than in the past, contributing further to a sense of crisis that threatens to undermine Buddhism’s roots in Japan.


Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.


Author(s):  
Magdalena Zarzyka-Ryszka

The paper describes the past and present distribution of Colchicum autumnale in the vicinity of Cracow, highlights the role of Stanisław Dembosz (who published the first locality of C. autumnale near Igołomia in 1841). Gives information about the occurrence of C. autumnale in Krzeszowice in the 19th century (reported by Bronisław Gustawicz), presents new localities noted in 2012–2014 in meadows in the north-eastern part of the Puszcza Niepołomicka forest and adjacent area (between the Vistula and Raba rivers), and gives a locality found in Cracow in 2005 (no longer extant).


1994 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. G. Cazemier

In the past, the anadromous salmonids, Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and sea-trout (Salmo trutta), have formed natural populations in the river Rhine. From the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, the greater part of the drainage area of the river has been gradually altered from a more or less rural and agricultural area, into a highly industrialised one with subsequent industrialisation, river-engineering and heavy pollution. These developments are considered to be the major cause for the disappearance of the populations of anadromous salmonid fish in the 1950s. The water quality has recovered significantly during the past 25 years. From about 1975 onwards, this process gave rise to a recovery of the anadromous trout population. Results of recent studies of the sea-trout migration pattern are presented. They reveal that nowadays these salmonids can complete their up- and downstream migrations from the North Sea to places, situated at hundreds of kilometres upward the river and vica versa. The numbers of recorded Atlantic salmon and catch locations in inland waters are presented. They show a significant increase since 1989. These phenomena can be understood as promising signs of the recovery of the Rhine aquatic ecosystem.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey Lawrence

This chapter turns from a historical account of the development of the US literature of experience and the Latin American literature of reading to a textual analysis of the US and Latin American historical novel. Hemispheric/inter-American scholars often cite William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) as exemplifying instances of literary borrowing across the North–South divide. As I demonstrate, however, each of the later texts also realigns its predecessor’s historical imaginary according to the dominant logics of the US and Latin American literary fields. Whereas the American works foreground experiential models of reconstructing the past and conveying knowledge across generations, García Márquez’s Latin American novel presents reading as the fundamental mode of comprehending and transmitting history.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 752
Author(s):  
Liu ◽  
Bao ◽  
Bao

Chinese pine (Pinus tabulaeformis Carr.) plays an important role in maintaining ecosystem health and stability in western Liaoning Province and the southern Horqin sand land, Northeast China, with benefits including sand fixation and soil erosion. In the context of climate change, developing a better understanding of the relationship between climate factors and growth rates of this species will be extremely valuable in guiding management activities and meeting regional conservation objectives. Here, the results based on two groups of tree-ring samples show that the radial growth of Chinese pine is controlled primarily by water conditions. The longer chronology had the highest correlation coefficient with the January–September mean self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI); therefore, drought variability was reconstructed for the period 1859–2014. Statistical analysis showed that our model explained 41.9% of the variance in radial growth during the 1951–2014 calibration period. Extreme dry and wet events, defined as the criteria of one standard deviation less or greater than the mean value, accounted for 19.9% and 18.6% of the 156-year climate record, respectively. During the past century, the regional hydroclimate experienced significant long-term fluctuations. The dry periods occurred from the early-1900s–1930s and 1980s–2000s, and the wet periods occurred from the 1940s–1970s. The drought reconstruction was consistent with the decreasing trend of the East Asian summer monsoon since the late 1970s. The reconstructed temporal patterns in hydroclimate in western Liaoning were closely related to the large-scale climate drivers in the North Pacific and the tropical equatorial Pacific. The teleconnections were confirmed by spatial correlations between the reconstructed sequence and sea surface temperature (SST) in the North Pacific, as well as the correlations with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indices. Aerosols played an important role in affecting drought variations over the past several decades. Moisture stress caused by global warming and interdecadal changes in the PDO will have long-term effects on the growth of pines in the study area in the future.


Author(s):  
Partha Sarathi Datta

In many parts of the world, freshwater crisis is largely due to increasing water consumption and pollution by rapidly growing population and aspirations for economic development, but, ascribed usually to the climate. However, limited understanding and knowledge gaps in the factors controlling climate and uncertainties in the climate models are unable to assess the probable impacts on water availability in tropical regions. In this context, review of ensemble models on δ18O and δD in rainfall and groundwater, 3H- and 14C- ages of groundwater and 14C- age of lakes sediments helped to reconstruct palaeoclimate and long-term recharge in the North-west India; and predict future groundwater challenge. The annual mean temperature trend indicates both warming/cooling in different parts of India in the past and during 1901–2010. Neither the GCMs (Global Climate Models) nor the observational record indicates any significant change/increase in temperature and rainfall over the last century, and climate change during the last 1200 yrs BP. In much of the North-West region, deep groundwater renewal occurred from past humid climate, and shallow groundwater renewal from limited modern recharge over the past decades. To make water management to be more responsive to climate change, the gaps in the science of climate change need to be bridged.


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