Goodbye, cruel world -- have fun without us
A look at a post-human world is interesting trivia,but the bigger issue remains: Who cares?
Reviewed By Michael Grunwald | Washington Post Book World
September 9, 2007
If human beings vanished from the Earth, our ceramic pottery and bronze statues would last much longer than our wood-frame houses. New York's subways would be flooded within days; Lexington Avenue would be a river within decades.
Head lice would go extinct, and predators would make short work of our doggies, but a lot of endangered fish and birds and trees would flourish in our absence. We endangered them, after all.
A diligent and intelligent science writer named Alan Weisman discovered all this while investigating what would happen to this planet if people suddenly disappeared. Now he has converted his thought experiment for Discover magazine into a deeply reported book called The World Without Us, and it's full of interesting facts. For example:
The European starling spread like avian kudzu after some Shakespeare buff introduced every bird mentioned by the Bard into Central Park.
The demilitarized (and therefore depopulated) zones of Korea and Cyprus have become undeclared wildlife sanctuaries; so have Chernobyl and abandoned forests in New England and Belarus.
Almost every ounce of plastic that ever has been manufactured still lurks somewhere in our environment.
And radio waves are forever, so extraterrestrials at the edge of the universe might be able to watch I Love Lucy reruns billions of years after we're gone.
Who knew?
Also: Who cares?
Ultimately, The World Without Us is trivia masquerading as wisdom. By journeying around the world to interview biologists and paleontologists, engineers and curators, Zapara elders and Masai ecoguides, Weisman has done a remarkably thorough job of answering a question that doesn't particularly matter.
Imagining the human footprint on a post-human planet might be fun for dormitory potheads who have already settled the questions of God's existence and Fergie's hotness, but it's not clear why the rest of us need this level of documentary evidence.
When Weisman does make larger points, they are achingly familiar. Yes, man is doing foolishly destructive things -- such as warming the climate with carbon and tearing the peaks off mountains and littering the oceans with plastics -- that will have long-term consequences for the Earth. This no longer qualifies as news.
And, yes, nature and the Earth are resilient, while man and his works -- with exceptions such as Mount Rushmore, the caves of Cappadocia, and Styrofoam -- are fleeting. And though Weisman is an admirable reporter, his prose -- always lucid, sometimes elegant -- has an irritating look-ma-I'm-writing quality.
This is how he describes one guy he meets: "His olive features bespeak Sicily; his voice is pure urban New Jersey." I think he's bespeaking of an "Italian-American." It's not an exotic species around Jersey.
For all its existential ruminations, this is basically an environmental book, an imaginative effort to make us think about our impact on the Earth. It reminds us: This is a nice Earth! It's going to be around for millions of years, and we're not, so let's stop littering it with nuclear reactors and plastic bags that will leave toxic messes long after we're gone!
But as Weisman demonstrates, the Earth will do just fine without us. It's an excellent healer, and time -- especially geologic time -- is an even better one.
Actually, there's a much more compelling reason for us to stop despoiling the Earth and depleting its resources: If we don't, we might create that world without us. As Jared Diamond has shown, unsustainable civilizations tend to collapse; as countless environmental writers have shown, our gas-guzzling, water-wasting, plastic-producing civilization is not sustainable. This is an issue of policy and morality, not just theory.
Weisman knows this, but he believes that people don't like to hear about environmental destruction in those apocalyptic terms. It's too scary. He describes his ruminations as a nonthreatening effort to change hearts and minds through indirection. If we imagine the world without us -- even though Weisman makes it sound as if the world could be better off without us -- we might start taking care of it.
At one of those depressingly apocalyptic environmental conferences, I recently heard a speaker give the best argument I've ever heard for saving the Earth: "It's the only planet we know of that has chocolate." There probably wouldn't be chocolate in a world without us.
And even if there were, it wouldn't do us much good.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Games violence study is launched
 All games in the UK are regulated |
Psychologist Tanya Byron will head the study, which will also examine how to protect children from online material.
The review is due to be launched by Dr Byron - together with Schools Secretary Ed Balls and Culture Secretary James Purnell - at a school in east London.
The games industry's association Elspa said it would co-operate - but it was too often blamed for society's ills.
Paul Jackson, of Elspa (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers' Association), said the body had already met with Dr Byron and would work with the government on the review.
Paul Jackson, Elspa
But he said the industry was "too often blamed for everything from obesity to youth violence".
He said: "It is just not true and it's not appropriate."
He added: "We feel quite positively about this review. It's clear the review is about making sure parents are properly informed about what their youngsters are playing and what they are accessing on the internet."
Dr Byron told BBC News 24: "The study will be about what industry is doing already to protect children and what more could be done to ensure they have a positive experience on the internet and with games."
'Singled out'
Veteran developer David Braben, of Frontier games, asked why games were being singled out.
"A review might be useful but it should not just look at one media, especially when media are intersecting," he said.
He added: "Historically there has always been in government a Luddite sentiment - whatever the new industry is tends to take the blame of the latest ailment of society.
"We do tend to be the people who get the blame first at the moment. And that is a tragedy - because this industry is one of the most interesting media."
Philip Oliver, chief executive of Blitz games, said more education was needed for parents.
"They aren't paying attention to the certificates. That is partly because they don't understand them and have a distorted image of games - that either they are harmless or totally evil."
The review is launched a day after the British Board of Film Classification refused a certificate for Manhunt 2 for a second time.
Mr Oliver said the decision was proof "the system is working".
According to Elspa, only 2% of games released in the UK receive an 18 certificate and the average age of a gamer is 28.
'Higher standards'
Mr Jackson said: "We are a very important British industry. We are very responsible and keen to ensure that our products are only played by those who they are designed for."
Margaret Robertson, a video games consultant and former editor of Edge magazine, said the industry felt it was doing as much as it could.
"The games industry is holding itself to higher standards than the film industry. This is a solved problem.
"Allowing that, everyone is united in not wanting material for older gamers to get into the hands of children."
She added: "This report may start finding some wider ways to do that."
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Burmese exiles in desperate conditions
Last Updated: Saturday, 29 September 2007, 18:29 GMT 19:29 UK 
Burmese exiles in desperate conditions
| By Mark Dummett BBC News, Dhaka |
The Tal camp is not much more than a swamp. It is the squalid home of about 8,000 refugees - the victims of the Burmese military.
They are Muslims, and of the Rohingya minority.
In total as many as 200,000 have settled in Bangladesh, to escape persecution, over the past 20 years. They have been keenly following events in their home country, hoping that military rule will crumble, and that they can soon restart their lives.
They are unwelcome guests here, so they do not receive any support from the Bangladeshi government.
Toyaba Haq, mother of seven
They get barely enough food to eat from scavenging in the forest, begging, prostitution or doing the most menial of work in the nearest town.
Their flimsy houses are squeezed onto a 30m-wide strip of land and mangroves, between a busy road and the Naf River, which separates the most southerly tip of Bangladesh and Burma's Arakan state.
The residents say that already this year 20 children have been knocked down by passing vehicles, and at high tide each day the camp floods.
During the rainy season and when cyclones strike the area, everyone suffers.
"When the sun shines, we get burnt. When it rains, we all get wet. There is not even a spare bit of land for us to sit down, and our houses are so cramped," said Toyaba Haq, a mother of seven.
Necessary exile
Conditions are absolutely appalling, but everyone in the camp agrees they are better off here than in Burma.
"The government is torturing the Muslim community," said Dudu Miah, a health care worker. "It steals our lands to build military camps, it takes our men for forced labour, it refuses us education."
"We need to get permission to marry or even have children," he said. "This is the third time I have come to Bangladesh as a refugee, and my life is totally ruined. I just want to live in my Arakan, my Burma."
Not much information about the demonstrations is now reaching the camp, even though Burma is just the other side of the river.
Tal camp is home to around 8,000 refugees
Some say that the Burmese military has stepped up patrols along the border to prevent any protest leaders, or news, crossing into Bangladesh.
They have not been entirely successful, and snippets of information indicate that the protest movement had spread to even small towns in Arakan before the army stepped in.
Exiles say that Muslims had joined protests led by Buddhist monks, but there is no way of confirming any of this information.
Mohammed Salim, who feeds his family of eight by carrying mud on building sites, listens to the BBC Burmese Service on his shortwave radio to find out what he can.
"We all support these demonstrations, the monks, and Aung Sang San Suu Kyi. We want the military to go, so we can go home," he said.
But Toyaba Haq is not at all hopeful. "There is no peace in this world," she said. "There is just strife, strife, strife, and I want it to stop."Burmese struggle goes underground
Last Updated: Wednesday, 3 October 2007, 16:13 GMT 17:13 UK
Burmese struggle goes underground
| By Andrew Harding BBC News, Bangkok |
On the telephone from Rangoon, the businessman sounded desperate.
For some Burmese, life appears to be returning to normal...
"I have looked everywhere," he said.
"The soldiers took my daughter off the street last week. I don't know if she is injured or what has happened to her. She is 18."
As Burma's military authorities continue to hunt down and arrest those suspected of involvement in last week's massive street protests, the fate of an unknown number of detained monks and civilians remains unclear.
"I have heard that 6,000 people may be missing - that sounds plausible," said one Western diplomat, on condition of anonymity.
A local United Nations official said his office was still looking for several staff members and their families.
The businessman hunting for his daughter had already visited two places widely thought to have been turned into makeshift detention centres - a sports complex at Rangoon's old race course, and a technical institute in the north of the city.
"The soldiers outside the institute told me it was empty," said the businessman, "but a friend in the neighbourhood told me two buildings were being used - one for female prisoners, and the other mainly for monks. I am at a loss as to what to do now."
"It's frightening to even think about the fate of those monks," said Shari Villarosa, the senior US diplomat in Rangoon.
She said conditions in Burmese prisons were "very grim, with reports of torture".
"The message has to get to the generals that this is not how a legitimate government acts in the 21st Century," she added.
'Sleep deprivation'
But the Burmese authorities have shown no signs of responding to international pressure.
Military vehicles patrol Rangoon's streets before dawn, with loudspeakers announcing: "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests."
... but the anger that erupted last week is bubbling under the surface
A former Burmese political prisoner, who spent a decade in jail for criticising the regime, said it was safe to assume from his own experiences that many of those detained would be tortured.
"The monks will have a very hard time," he said.
"I was blindfolded and subjected to sleep deprivation. They interrogated me in shifts for 11 days."
The man, who lives in Rangoon, wanted to remain anonymous for his own safety but urged the outside world to put pressure on the authorities by publicising the names of those arrested.
"That has to happen now. Not next week or next month."
Military plea
Although the Burmese military has forced the protesters off Rangoon's streets, this does not appear to have broken the resolve of democracy campaigners.
Nilar Thein has been in hiding since the very first street protests, triggered by abrupt fuel price rises, were broken up by police and hired government thugs last month.
Although her husband and many other leading activists from the "88 Generation" (named after the last student uprising of 1988) are now in prison, Nilar Thein is still on the run with a handful of other activists.
Reached by telephone, she broke away from a planning meeting to declare: "There will be more sacrifices ahead. We must find a way to win this battle by joining hands with the monks and the public."
She urged members of the Burmese armed forces to stop fighting for "generals with blood on their hands".
Nilar, 35, left her five-month-old daughter with her mother-in-law when she went into hiding. Police are now guarding the house.
Asked when she thought she would see her child again, Nilar replied: "I hope when we are finally victorious that all our families will be reunited.
"I can't predict how long that will take."
Burmese play tense waiting game
Last Updated: Wednesday, 3 October 2007, 15:26 GMT 16:26 UK
Burmese play tense waiting game
Burmese play tense waiting game
 The mood is one of watching and waiting |
The world is still trying to gauge the mood in Burma following the clampdown on pro-democracy demonstrations by the military regime.
Foreign media, including the BBC, are not allowed to report from Burma, but we have received this report from a correspondent in the main city of Rangoon.
To a casual observer, the Burmese city of Rangoon looks the same as it did before the pro-democracy marches of the past few weeks.
Although security levels are still high - military trucks often rumble past, and soldiers and riot police are still milling around at key locations - local people are trying to get on with their everyday lives as best they can.
Most of the shops and temples are now open, the street hawkers and beggars are back in place and people are once more spending their time travelling on overcrowded buses and sitting in the many tea shops to avoid the monsoon rain.
It is almost as if the events of the past week - the mounting anti-government protests by thousands of the city's Buddhist monks, followed by a bloody three-day crackdown - are just a distant memory.
But if you go down one of the city's back streets, or try to engage in a conversation with anyone, it immediately becomes apparent that the mood has changed.
People are frightened, but they're also really angry - angry that the junta dared to attack unarmed monks; angry that many of these monks are now locked up; and angry that once again, protests against this brutal government seem to have come to nothing.
Small-scale defiance
"I really want change," a middle-aged man whispered to me in a tea shop, "but they have guns and we don't, so they'll always win."
The arrests are continuing, with people picked up under cover of nightfall and corralled into large, heavily guarded buildings on the outskirts of the city, and no information released to relatives.
Despite this, many people are determined not to give up and some are resorting to smaller-scale ways to defy the military.
One woman told me she was getting T-shirts printed with the inscription "no to guns". A man said he refused to make eye contact with any of the soldiers.
In case these arrests are not enough to stop Rangoon's citizens from re-starting the protests, the government is doing all it can to persuade - indeed compel - any dissenters to think twice.
The media is awash with accusations about lies in the foreign media - the BBC is particularly targeted - and soldiers are strictly enforcing a government-imposed curfew.
They are also preventing even small groups of men from gathering together. 
Monasteries are still refusing to accept alms from the military
One man said he was chatting to a group of about 20 friends on a street corner on Friday when troops suddenly began to shoot, and they all had to run for safety.
There are also persistent rumours, which the military have not denied, that a notoriously violent group of pro-government thugs was part of the force sent to quash the monks' protests last week.
This group is rumoured to be still around, helping to pick up those on the military's wanted list.
Fighting back
To many people in Burma, this situation seems all too familiar.
There are stark parallels with the last large-scale protests in 1988, when government troops and their henchmen brutally crushed pro-democracy protesters, imprisoning thousands.
Gen Than Shwe heads the ruling junta and controls the army
On that occasion, an estimated 3,000 people were killed. The number of dead this time is much lower - eyewitnesses estimate about 40, although it is extremely hard to get accurate figures.
However many people here fear that the worst is yet to come.
And that is because, despite the fear that pervades every part of this city, there remains an equal amount of defiance.
Those with the courage to speak out say the Burmese are not just afraid but intensely angry, and that this is definitely not the end of the protests.
"It's unbelievable what the military has done," one woman said. "In 1988 they attacked civilians, and now they have attacked monks. It's the worst thing they could do."
"We cannot stop our fight now. We just have to think of other ways to go on protesting," she added.
Lying low
Behind closed doors, anti-government campaigners are almost certainly planning their next move.
One man said he thought that while the majority of protesters were currently lying low, because their leaders had been detained, they would soon be back.
And it appears that the monks have not given up either. Monasteries around the country are still refusing to accept alms from the military - a hugely symbolic act in such a devoutly Buddhist nation.
Sources have also told us that the detained monks are refusing to change out of their traditional robes, and many are on hunger strike.
In several pockets of Rangoon, people are even reportedly guarding monasteries against night-time government raids.
One man described how locals took it in turn to wait outside the monastery gates, to flash warning lights on to any military trucks coming near. Some are even said to be armed with handmade weapons, such as slingshots and arrows made from the spokes of bicycles.
Even now, there continue to be reports of small-scale demonstrations around the country.
It is obvious that despite their best efforts to stifle any opposition, the question Burma's ruling generals need to ask themselves is not if the anti-government protests will return, but when.More arrests in Burma crackdown
 Soldiers in Rangoon keep a low profile during daylight hours |
Security forces are said to be using recordings of the demonstrations to compile lists of activists for arrest.
A source has told the BBC that as many as 10,000 people - many of them monks who led the demos - have been rounded up for interrogation in recent days.
The body of a Japanese reporter killed during the protests has arrived home.
Kenji Nagai, a video journalist with Japan's APF News, was shot dead while filming in Rangoon.
Japanese officials say he was shot at close range, contradicting earlier claims by the Burmese authorities that he was hit accidentally by a stray bullet.
Dozens are feared to have died during the bloody suppression of the protests last week.
Tactics of fear
Residents of the main city, Rangoon, say the streets are quiet during daylight hours, with the police and army keeping a low profile.
But during the overnight curfew, they say raids by the security forces continue.
The BBC's Chris Hogg, in neighbouring Thailand, says if it is a tactic designed to scare people, it is working.
Shari Villarosa, the most senior US diplomat in the country, described how arrests were occurring every night.
She said discontent in Rangoon had been "simmering for years", but has now turned to a mood of "anger and fear".
"It's been heightened by anger by what has been done against the demonstrators, the atrocities that have been committed against the monks," she said.
One Burmese who was rounded up has told the BBC that between six and 10,000 people have been held in detention camps for interrogation over the protests.
Many of those were monks. US diplomats said they had visited 15 monasteries and found them empty. Others were being barricaded and guarded by soldiers.
Reuters news agency reported that a slow trickle of monks and nuns were being freed from detention centres near Rangoon.
Some told the agency they had witnessed monks being beaten while they were asked about their identity, birthplace, parents and involvement in the protests.
Diplomatic visit
The Burmese regime - led by reclusive General Than Shwe - has been condemned for its actions across the world.
Monks became the focal point of the protests
The UN's special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, met the general in Burma to relay concerns, and is due to report his findings to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon later.
Mr Gambari, who will brief the UN Security Council on Friday, also met opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit.
Burma has been under military dictatorship since 1962.
Multi-party elections were held in 1990 and were won comprehensively by Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.
But the ruling junta - known for its corruption and mismanagement - dismissed the results and continued to exercise a stranglehold on power.
The hardship that sparked Burma's unrest
| By Jonathan Head BBC News, Bangkok |
On 22nd February, a small group of around 25 people attracted little attention at first in the crowded Rangoon market. Then they brought out home-made posters, and began shouting.
Their complaints seemed innocuous enough. "Down with consumer prices," read one poster. "We want 24-hour electricity," read another. They pointedly avoided saying anything critical about Burma's military government. 
Many Burmese simply concentrate on survival
That did not spare them. Nine were rounded up and jailed, accused of acting "totally against the law". They were later released, but they had touched a very raw nerve.
Though small, these were the first street protests seen in Rangoon for at least a decade.
And they highlighted the growing economic distress that was beginning to push huge numbers of Burmese families to the brink of destitution - distress caused by the government's incompetence.
Chronic mismanagement
When the military took power in 1962, then-military strongman Ne Win decided to take the country down an isolationist path, the "Burmese Way to Socialism" as it was called, which stressed self-sufficiency, and called for the nationalisation of almost all private companies.
Military officers took over these companies, as well as many civil service positions. It was their mismanagement that led to chronic inflation and near economic collapse by 1988, and the mass protests that came close to overthrowing the government at that time.
After that, the military tried opening up the economy to market forces and foreign investment, but it has never been willing to release its grip on crucial areas of the economy:
- Imports and exports all require licenses, confronting entrepreneurs with mountains of red tape, and opening opportunities for corruption.
- The trade in rice is entirely controlled by military-connected companies.
- Internal transport is hobbled by poor infrastructure and frequent military bans on access to troubled areas.
- Many commodities are subsidised, but available in very limited quantities.
There is an official exchange rate for the local currency, the kyat, which is 200 times lower than the black market rate.
Add to that the fact that more than half the annual budget goes to the armed forces, and that Burma is subject to strict sanctions by the United States and the European Union, and it has proved impossible for Burma to lift itself out of poverty.
The construction of a secretive new capital city since 2005, hacked out of the bush 400km (249 miles) north of Rangoon, must have added considerably to the government's financial difficulties, although it has given no figures for how much this mega-project is costing.
A decision to raise admittedly paltry civil service salaries by up to 1,200% last year did not help either, although civil servants could scarcely survive on salaries that sometimes fell below $3 a month.
Grinding poverty
The result is what the United Nations describes as a largely unreported humanitarian crisis.
UN figures show that one in three children is chronically malnourished, government spending on health and education is among the lowest anywhere in the world, and average income is below $300 a year.
LIFE IN BURMA Population - 50m Children in primary education - 85% Life expectancy at birth - 61 years Infant mortality - 76 per 1,000 births Health spend - 2.8% (World avge - 10.2%) Under 5s undernourished - 31.8% Source: World Bank 2004
Diseases like tuberculosis and HIV/Aids are increasing at frightening rates.
"The World Food Programme [WFP] provides food aid to 500,000 people across Myanmar [Burma] but that really only represents the poorest of the poor," said Paul Risley at the WFP in Bangkok.
"What we've found is that over the last decade, opposite to virtually every other country in Asia where slowly poverty is being gnawed away at and food security is becoming more commonplace, in Myanmar there are more people living below the poverty line and more people facing food insecurity," he said.
Towards the end of last year, prices of basic commodities began rising sharply in Burma. Rice, eggs, and cooking oil all went up by around 30-40%.
For a population that on average spends 70% of its income on food, this was very difficult to absorb. It is not clear why this happened, but the inherent distortions and rigidities in the military's economic management can easily lead to sudden bottlenecks in the supply and prices of basic necessities.
Dramatic decision
Then came the rise in fuel prices on 15 August. There was no warning. Gas prices rose by 500%, and diesel - which more or less powers everything in Burma, from transport to the essential generators - doubled in price.
The impact was immediate. People could not afford to go to work, and the increased cost of transport started pushing food prices even higher.
Within days activists were out on the streets in protest. When they were arrested, the monks - who can accurately measure economic distress by the food put into their begging bowls every morning - took their place.
Like so many decisions made by the reclusive generals, the sudden hike in fuel prices is hard to fathom.
The IMF had advised weaning the population off subsidised fuel, because with rising world oil prices it was becoming an unsustainable burden for Burma, which although rich in natural gas, relies on imports for almost all of its refined petrol and diesel.
But it is unlikely the IMF would have supported such a dramatic, and unannounced price rise.
'Parallel world'
At the time some speculated that perhaps the generals were trying to provoke an uprising, to see who their enemies were.
But their ubiquitous intelligence networks would surely already have that information. More likely it implies they did not understand the shocking economic impact the move would have.
Living in a privileged, parallel world, Burma's armed forces are virtually a state within a state, subject to none of the chronic economic insecurity that afflicts the rest of the country.
Many of the generals have become immensely rich - the video of the wedding of senior general Than Shwe's daughter, dripping in diamonds worth many millions of dollars, is testimony to that.
Secluded in their luxury villas in Naypyidaw, cut off from the squalor of Rangoon and other towns, Burma's military rulers probably had no idea that their clumsy decision would cause such immediate economic pain - that thousands would override their fear of the soldiers, and come out to join the monks on the streets.The African foundations of New York
The African foundations of New York
| By Jane Beresford BBC producer of I Too Am America |
 The remains of 20,000 Africans are said to be buried under New York |
The remains of 20,000 African men, women and children have lain beneath the busy streets of New York for 300 years, waiting to tell their stories on the extent of slavery in the city.
In March 1992, leading African-America archaeologist Michael Blakey arrived at the burial ground in downtown Manhattan.
"I had read about these people documented as chattel, " he said. "Now I was going to learn about these Africans in New York as human beings."
A haunting sight greeted him. Being winter, work was taking place under a translucent plastic tent.
"I'd really never seen an excavation like that one," he said. "There were mini excavators working and kerosene heaters going."
"By the time I got there, about a dozen burials were in the process of being exposed. One could see very clearly the positions that were meant to put them at peace when they were buried."
Many had their arms crossed. One female skeleton had tiny bones by her side, suggesting a woman cradling a new born child.
Sign of slavery
They had devastating secrets to share, information that would reveal the extent of slavery in New York.
"Quite early on, we found the skull and thorax of an individual with filed or 'culturally modified' teeth - and that stunned me because that is very rare," Mr Blakey said.
There are only about nine skeletons in the whole of the Americas that have been discovered with filed teeth, he said.
African slaves helped create the city
"In the African burial ground we found at least 27 individuals with filed teeth."
This suggested these people had come to New York directly from Africa before importation was banned in 1808 and American slaveholders started "breeding" slaves on the plantations in the South.
"These kinds of irreversible identifiers put people at risk who might want to escape," Mr Blakey said.
Runaway adverts in newspapers seeking to re-capture the many escaped enslaved Africans often mentioned dental modification, he said - so no one would not choose to have that kind of marker.
'Worked to death'
But these enslaved Africans helped create the city of New York. They worked as stevedores in the docks and as labourers building the fortification known as Wall Street, which protected the city against attack from Native Americans.
Evidence from the burial site revealed, for the first time, the enormous human cost of such work.
Half of the remains were of children under the age of 12. Women were usually dead by 40.
"It seems that it was cost effective for slave traders to work people to death and then simply to replace them, so they sought to get Africans who were as young as possible, but ready to work," said Mr Blakey.
From royalty to slavery?
The woman designated "Burial 340" was a very intriguing person.
"She was in her 40s - and for the burial ground population that makes her kind of old", said archaeologist Sherrill Wilson, now director of interpretation at the African Burial Ground.
"Around her waist the woman wore a belt of over 100 beads and cowrie shells," she said.
"In some parts of Africa in the 1700s, it's illegal for people who are not members of royal families to own even one of these beads - and she has over 100 buried with her," she added.
Such treasures are known to belong to Akan-speaking people. Had this woman been born into royalty in Ghana and died a slave in New York City?
And who chose to bury her with the waist belt of beads?
"These are very valuable items," said Ms Wilson. "It implies that whoever buried her... could have chosen to sell those items to feed themselves - but they made the choice to bury them with her."
Perhaps it was a tradition, a rite, or an act of defiance against those who had enslaved a woman of noble birth.
The skeletons of 18th Century slaves have spoken to those living free today to remind us that New York - one of the world's great immigrant cities - destroyed as well as created destinies.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
New York opens slave burial site
Last Updated: Saturday, 6 October 2007, 01:17 GMT 02:17 UK
New York opens slave burial site
New York opens slave burial site
 A museum is also planned for the site |
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and poet Maya Angelou attended a dedication ceremony for a monument at the site.
The late 17th Century burial site was gradually built over as New York expanded, but was rediscovered during an excavation in 1991.
Some 400 remains, many of children, were found during excavations.
Half of the remains found at the burial site were of children under the age of 12.
The entire project has cost more than $50 million (£24 million) to complete.
The burial site in Manhattan was rediscovered during excavations for a federal building.
Forgotten sacrifice
Now a 25ft (7.6 metre) granite monument marks the site.
Rodney Leon
It was designed by Rodney Leon and is made out of stone from South Africa and from North America to symbolise the two worlds coming together.
The entry to the monument is called The Door of Return - a nod to the name given to the departure points from which slaves were shipped from Africa to North America.
"The tragedy was that for so many years, for centuries, people passing by this site did not know about the sacrifices they [the slaves] had made," Mr Leon said.
"Now we have an opportunity to right some of the wrongs of the past."
Enslaved Africans helped create the city of New York.
They worked in the docks and as labourers building the fortification known as Wall Street, which protected the city against attack from Native Americans.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the excavations had revealed "one of the most uncomfortable and tragic truths in our city's history. For two centuries, slavery was widespread in New York."
Friday, October 05, 2007
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Scans reveal lost gravestone text
Last Updated: Wednesday, 3 October 2007, 08:32 GMT 09:32 UK
Illegible words on church headstones could be read once more thanks to a scan technology developed in the US.
Scans reveal lost gravestone text
| By Cristina Jimenez |
 On the left is the original tombstone and on the right is the recovered text |
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon university are making high resolution 3D scans of tombstones to reveal the carved patterns in the stone.
A computer matches the patterns to a database of signature carvings which reveals the words.
The technique could one day also be used by doctors to examine a patient's tongue for signs of illness.
Scientists often find it difficult to distinguish between natural phenomena and man-made art works carved into stone, due to the build-up of algae and surface dirt.
At the moment, archaeologists are forced to do hand-tracing work with plastic sheets and to examine objects first hand in order to decipher obscured writings.
Carved figures
And sometimes, it is just impossible to read what lies beneath the dirt.
The new scanning method detects carved figures such as writings and drawings through 3D scans and computer analysis.
"This technology is expected to reduce guessing work in field inspection," said Dr Yang Cai, director of the Ambient Intelligence Lab at Carnegie Mellon Cylab.
In recent weeks, Dr Cai's research team have been testing the new technique at a 200-year-old cemetery close to the university in Pittsburgh.
The scientists have been scanning unreadable gravestones at Old St Luke's Church to help its Episcopal pastor identify all the names on the cemetery's tombstones.
The technology has been built on top of existing 3D reconstruction techniques. But the team at Carnegie Mellon is focusing on surface signatures.
The scan revealed the name "Isabella, wife of John Seville" on the headstone
"We have designed special filters of 3D data that can detect curvature or linear features on a surface," Dr Cai said.
The scientists scan the important areas in very high resolution and the rest in lower resolution, in order to avoid unmanageable digital file sizes.
"This is similar to the human visual experience - we usually see the gazed area in high resolution but the peripheral area in a blurred vision," Dr Cai said.
The team is also developing "template matching methods" to detect particular patterns such as carved shapes.
For example, tombstone carvings usually contain continuous lines for letters.
The new technique allows them to define patterns of "typical" lines and curves and store them in a database.
"If the computer finds the data matches the patterns in the database, then it will highlight the area," Dr Cai said.
Experienced archaeologists have lots of accumulated pattern descriptions.
For example, natural holes on the rock normally have rounded edges but man-made carvings in rock usually have rather sharp edges around the holes. This knowledge can be encoded thanks to the new technique.
Digital cemetery
The database of 3D scan data can also be mapped onto other datasets, such as geographical information systems, historical weather databases and high-fidelity models of archaeological sites.
In addition to discovering who is buried in the cemetery, Dr Cai's team is developing a digital cemetery for Old St. Luke's Church in order to help visualise the scanned data.
It will be available for internet browsers, on DVD and interactive computer demos.
The researchers believe the technology will also have practical applications in other industry sectors, such as the security and medical fields.
Dr Cai said: "We may use the technology for the future UAVs (Unmanned Aviation vehicles) to detect ground signatures of ancient ruins and help medical doctors to diagnose patients' well-being through tongue inspection."
The technology could also be used to predict a possible tsunami by examining the patterns on the surface of the world's oceans.
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