History Of The Naked Ape

Reviewed by Susan Price
Warning: This blog is much longer than usual, but it reviews a fascinating book.

          Why does the human race - supposedly intelligent - keep fighting wars, despite all that has been said against the habit?
          Why do empires, such as the Roman and the British, periodically rise and then fall or fade away?
           Why do leaders such as Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler periodically arise to lead their people into war - and why do the people willingly, even eagerly, follow them?
          Why has Europe been, for centuries, a 'cockpit of war' and revolution? 
          Can the EU prevent such 'Wars of Civilisation' in the future?
          Why is the continent of Africa riven with war?
          Why are so many vicious, murderous political gangs - I could say 'IRA' or  'Baader Meinhof' or 'Daesh' - drawn from the nicely brought up and spoken boys and girls of the middle-classes, who, on the face of it, have comfortable lives and little need to fight for 'freedom'?
          And why, in every part of the world and at all times, have the poor always had many more children than the rich, despite being able to afford them less? Why does contraception and education make little difference to this trend?

          All these many questions, and more, can be answered very simply. Niche-Space and Breeding Strategy.
          This theory is argued by Paul Colinvaux in his 'The Fates of Nations.' He was an ecologist, and The Fates of Nations answers all these questions by applying the rules of ecology, not to salmon or brown bears or wildebeeste, but to that other animal, the Naked Ape.

          Colinvaux defines 'niche-space' as 'a specific set of capabilities for extracting resources, for surviving hazards and for competing; coupled with a corresponding set of needs.' It describes not only the amount of physical space an animal requires to live naturally and healthily, but also the animals' requirements in terms of climate, type and amount of food, type and size of home or lair and so on.
         Some niche-spaces are larger than others. An acre of land can support many hundreds of deer, if there is enough water and vegetation. It gives them all they need.
          However, that same lush, well-watered acre would not support a single tiger. As a dedicated carnivore, a tiger needs access to many, many deer to feed itself. Deer run away from tigers and many are too fast to be caught. Also, all deer become skittish when there's a predator about. In Yellowstone, after the reintroduction of wolves, deer stopped standing about, grazing like cows. Even when the wolf-pack was in an different, distant part of the park, the deer continued to move on frequently, snatching a few mouthfuls here and there, but never staying in one place for very long.
         So a tiger needs to be able to shift ground frequently, to find more unsuspecting prey. Every single tiger needs a large territory, which it will defend from others.

          As Colinvaux put in in the memorable title of another of his books, this is Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare. Long before humans became a plague on the earth, before tigers' habitat was remotely threatened, long before they could be efficiently slaughtered for the supposed medicinal value of their bones, even then, tigers were still rare compared to deer or mice or strawberry plants. They were rare because they had a comparatively wide niche-space. Making a living as a tiger demands a lot of resources in terms of space and prey animals.
          Colinvaux calculates that when humans were living their natural, Ice-Age life, as hunter-gatherers, they were about as common as bears. That is, more common than tigers, because bears and humans are omnivorous and will stoop to eating fruit, vegetables and grubs, but a lot rarer than deer or mice.

That's Niche-Space. Then there's Breeding Strategy.
          Every species that has ever lived has always had the same breeding strategy: to have as many off-spring as it's possible to raise to adulthood.
          For most animals, this is more or less fixed, so much so that naturalists can write of the 'typical' litter or clutch size for a particular species. This is because an animal's niche-space is usually fixed. As Colinvaux puts it, a squirrel, or any other kind of animal, is 'highly tuned to a very specialized profession.' A squirrel cannot decide that, hey, it would rather be a tiger - any more than a tiger can decide that it would like to try out life as a dolphin.
          Evolution has therefore roughly fixed the optimum number of off-spring an animal can have. A very good year may result in birds producing a second clutch of eggs or other animals having a second litter, but that's an exception. In a bad year, when the land can't support the numbers, the animals starve and the population falls. The population of predators is linked to that of their prey. A good year for mice and deer means a good year for wolves and foxes - and vice versa.

Evolution has also fixed the approach most species take to child-rearing: low-investment or high-investment. Low investment species, such as salmon, spawn and fertilise hundreds of eggs at a time. Almost all of them will be eaten, either as eggs or fry. One or two might survive and that's all that matters. The salmon might have made an almighty effort to reach its spawning place but once the eggs are laid, it troubles itself no further about its off-spring.
          High-investment species, such as bears, cats and naked apes have one or two off-spring at a time, and they invest a lot of time and effort in feeding and training them. It's a high-risk strategy because, in a bad year, the off-spring might die - or be killed to ensure the survival of older off-spring or the parents. Some animals are known to kill and eat their young if faced with a threat to their own survival. Colinvaux argues that early humans almost certainly regulated their population not only by leaving granny on the ice-flow, but by leaving junior with her. Historically, we know that people frequently abandoned children they did not think they could afford to raise.

Changing Niche Space

Animals can't change their niche-space - not by themselves, anyway. Some have become domesticated, some, such as urban foxes, have adapted to living alongside humans, but that came about as a result of human actions
          The Naked Ape, however, learned to change its niche-space, and has done so repeatedly.

The Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris

          First, they were nomadic hunter-gatherers, as common as bears. But they learned to hunt and gather in almost every part of the world - in the Europe of the Ice Ages, in the rain forest and deserts of Australia, in Africa, on Siberian tundra, in the far North of Alaska. In doing so, they increased the niche-space of their species. Instead of being limited to a local population in the tropics, or the temperate regions, naked apes spread to every part of the world except the extreme poles.
          But this spreading population was still limited by the resources available to hunter-gatherers. They followed the high-investment breeding strategy of having one or two children at a time, and spending much time rearing them. As with all other animal species, their population increased during good times, when more children were born and survived - but might crash during bad times when fewer mothers were in condition to give birth and more children died. So the world-wide population increased somewhat, but remained relatively stable.

But then, astonishingly, these animals learned to stop hunting and to herd the animals they needed - whether reindeer, or goats or cattle. They maintained the population of their prey-animals by protecting them from other predators and helping them to find food. This meant that the naked apes themselves could confidently expect to raise more children to adulthood because there was a more certain food supply. Their population increased - and increased again, because it was much less affected by bad years.
          Moving from hunter-gatherers to herders meant an increase in niche-space: more resources were available. But, as ever, the increase in resources was soon absorbed by the increased population brought about by the unchanged breeding strategy.

Not to worry, though, because herding led on to settled farming, another huge increase in niche-space. Now, not only were the prey animals kept in one place, protected and provided with food, but the neccessary plant foods were too. Food could be produced more efficiently, and also stored more efficiently when it didn't have to be carried with a nomadic group, or hidden in caches.
          These were huge changes in life-style for the naked ape - but the breeding strategy remained the same. A great many more naked apes were born to take advantage of the niche-space - but more niche-space was also being created by the emergence of city-states and a whole new way of life.
          For one, if you could produce more wealth than your neighbour, you could persuade your neighbour to do most of your work for you, in return for a share of your produce. So different classes came into existence.
          Why make your own clothes, shoes and pots when it was more efficient to pay someone else to do it, and pay them in money or kind? Some people found that they were good enough at singing or story-telling to make a living at it.
          New technologies - the smelting of metals, stone-masonry, ship-building - produced other niche-spaces, absorbing the growing population and allowing them to make a living. A governing class. A priest class. A warrior class. They were all sub-niche-spaces, all provided livings.

City State - wiki

Niche Space Runs Out

But eventually, as the population grows, there comes pressure on resources. So long as there's enough space in the world to enable more land to be cleared or mined, this isn't a problem. But if there's another growing city-state over there - and another one over there - then the solution is more difficult.
          One way of avoiding the problem of shrinking niche-space is to impose a very strict caste or class system. Most societies of Naked Ape have tried this, in some form, at many different times over the centuries. For instance, only males are allowed to do certain jobs, usually high-status jobs, while females have to find a male to support them. Or restrictions may be applied to certain ethnic or religious groups, or simply to 'a lower class' who are deemed 'untouchables' or 'serfs.' This tactic buys time, for a while, but the breeding strategy ensures that the population continues to grow - and, ironically, it's usually among the higher classes where the squeeze of narrowing niche-space is felt first and most painfully, by those children born to affluence who suddenly realise there is no space left for them in the wider, freer niche-space their parents enjoyed.

Another way out of the problem is to trade. You go to those states who are crowding your own, and you offer to exchange surplus goods with them. You can even build ships and cross the seas to trade with foreigners. This, for a while, solves the problem. It creates a source of fresh produce and creates prosperous jobs for many.
     But every increase in niche-space means an increase in population - because the breeding strategy rolls on unaltered. Every single person in these growing cities produces as many off-spring as they think they can raise. Up and up goes the population, particuarly among the poorest.

The Poor and Their Children

Why do the poor have more children, even when their more prosperous countrymen crush them into a smaller and smaller niche-space?

'Slum Tourism' - wikipedia

       Because if you live, say, on a sheet of cloth spread on a pavement, and your biggest aspiration for your children is that they eat once a day, then children are cheap. They aren't going to cost you much - indeed, it will possibly cost you more, in all sorts of ways, to prevent their birth. Children will also start earning for you in infancy, so where is the incentive to limit their number?
       If, however, you are rather better off - if your plans for your children include a nursery, then room of their own in a comfortable house, a crib, a nanny, a bed, good clothes and shoes, three or more meals a day, a good education, toys, books, music-lessons, dance-classes, training in a trade, a car (or horse) on their 18th, a good marriage (with a dowry or big wedding) a house of their own, prosperity and children of their own - well, then each child is going to cost you thousands, even tens of thousands. One way or another, you make sure you have fewer. (In ancient Greece and Rome, the well-off exposed children they didn't want to raise.) It's the well-off who sit down with pencil and paper (or Excel) and work out if they can afford a child. The poor, in this as in almost every other life-situation, just get on with it.
     Again, it's about niche-space. The niche inhabited by the poor is narrow. It affords them few choices and, as a result, they have few aspirations. But this narrow niche is cheap. It requires few resources. The people crammed into it are satisfied with little. My aunt, who grew up in a slum, has often told me that, until she won a scholarship to grammar-school and discovered that her classmates had electricity and fridges at home, she'd no idea her family were poor, since everyone else she'd known had been equally poor.

     The niche-space occupied by the better-off is wider, and increases with wealth. Indeed, Colinvaux remarks that the richer a naked ape is, the more their life includes aspects of the old hunter-gatherer life: - acres of beautiful countryside as their 'territory', travel, hunting as a pastime, dogs and horses. But although this niche is broad, offering many choices and freedoms, it is very expensive in terms of resources. It can, therefore, be occupied by far fewer than the narrow niches of the poor. The poor are like deer - hundreds to the acre. The rich become more tigerish as they grow richer. They defend their territory too.

Revolutions and the Middle-Class

Herein also lies the answer to the questions: Why are revolutions always led, not by the oppressed, but by the middle-classes? and Why are so many vicious, murderous political gangs drawn from the nicely brought up and spoken boys and girls of those middle-classes?

Delacroix - wikipedia

      The aspiring and prosperous - from the middle to the upper classes - have always had fewer children than the poor and higher aspirations for the few they have. But the more freedom and choice a niche offers, the more resources it uses and therefore, the fewer people it can support. One child will inherit, and you can give younger sons to the military and the church to find them livings. You can marry some daughters off - but still, if you want your children to remain in your social niche, there's a limit to how many you can find space for. So it's these affluent niches - wide in their choices and freedoms, but narrow in terms of numbers they can contain - which feel the pinch first and most keenly when the pressure on resources mounts.
      The very wealthy are insulated by their extreme wealth - and they also have the most resources to use, tigerishly, in defence of what they have. The Military, the Church, the Judiciary, Communications, the Means of Production - almost all of it is in their control. Threaten their position and they will close rank - hence the strong swing to the Right we are experiencing in politics now.
       The poorest are used to hardship and never expected much anyway. They're grateful to 'have a roof over their head and a loaf on the table.'
      But those caught in the middle, those who grew up expecting that their life would include a comfortable house with a big garden, an interesting, rewarding job, the wherewithal to travel and follow interests, whether it be rock-climbing or pottery - what happens when they find that they are going to have to settle for much less than their parents had? When they find that they can't get a job, can't afford a house, or a car or a holiday - or a child?
       It understandably comes as a humiliating, painful shock. And why shouldn't it? After all, nothing about the situation is their fault. They didn't choose the time they were born in, or the way they were raised. Most of them have never even heard of niche-space and breeding strategy and, even if they had, couldn't do anything about it.

When Trade Is Not Enough

So we've seen that you can increase niche-space by trade and by technological advance - because a new technology, whether it's ship-building or smelting metal, or programming computers, creates jobs.
          But, in some periods there comes a point when no new technology is coming to rescue the naked apes from their breeding strategy and trade is no longer supplying enough resources or enough profit to support the growing population. What then?
          Then it inevitably occurs to the naked ape that if, instead of trading with a particular country, if they just took the country instead, that would be more profitable.
          At any given time, there are always several ambitious apes seeking to be top ape, as apes will. If one of these ambitious apes happens to coincide with a squeeze on niche-space - well, then you have an Alexander, an Augustus, a Clive of India, a Napolean, a Hitler, all of them whole-heartedly supported by their tightly-squeezed countrymen, longing for more niche-space - which answers all those questions about war. Hitler even spoke about 'living-room.'
          Being a pacifist feels much more comfortable when your niche-space isn't too tight. (And is much more courageous when it is tight and all around you are in jingo-istic, empire-building mood.)
          These 'wars of civilisation,' Colinvaux points out, are always a stronger, more technologically advanced state grabbing a weaker (if not geographically smaller), less advanced, less organised country. Whatever high-flown reason is given, whatever excuse is put forward, it is always a straight-forward bullying snatch of land and resources by the stronger state. There has never been an example of, say, a tribe of Bushmen invading and conquering France or Britain. Barbarians took down Rome, yes - but they were, in fact, highly organised and well-equipped barbarians, quite wealthy in their own opinion - just as Genghis Khan's 'barbarians' were at a later period. In each case the 'barbarians' faced large states exhausted by their efforts to find new niche-space; states that had run out of options.

The option of war and colonisation creates niche-space not only by gaining access to resources such as food and materials at less cost - it also creates interesting and generally well-rewarded jobs for the young of the better-off. They become viceroys and governors of the colonies, merchant-traders, spice-growers, tea-planters, even missionaries. The armies needed to enforce colonisation also provide niche-space for 'the sweepings of the gutter.'
          But breeding strategy continues to do its stuff and the new niche-space gained at the cost of war is filled up by the increasing population.
         Sometimes, it takes a while. The colonisation of Australia and the Americas (and the genocide of the native civilisation,) siphoned off surplus population and relieved pressure for several centuries. 'Go West, young man.' There will never, Colinvaux remarks, be such a pressure-release valve again.

Why was Europe the 'cockpit of war?'

Because there were too many nations crammed into one land mass, their populations increasing and aspiring. Every time the pressure of falling resources was felt, another revolution or war was triggered as the prosperous classes felt the pinch and grew angry.

          To win big, final victories and establish an Empire lasting hundreds of years, as the Romans did, you have to go against less well-armed and organised opponents with a tactic they cannot withstand. Alexander won his victories with the phalanx. The Romans had the legion and the tortoise.

Wikipedia: printing press

          But in Europe was developed a piece of technology that not only created a lot of niche-space, but meant that no war-like state was going to be able to win crushing, final victories in Europe ever again:- the printing-press. Once the printing-press was invented, any new tactic was, within a few years, available to everyone else. Hence the endless round of revolutions and wars in Europe, which had no direction, not north, west, south or east, to send its restless and disappointed young and no way of winning new niche-space by winning a lasting victory over another European state.
         This is also why Africa is riven with so many wars now - and why Europe probably will be again.

Oh, but the European Common Market was created, in part, to prevent war in Europe ever happening again. I had little faith in this argument before I read The Fates of Nations. I have none now. All over Europe are nations seething with people whose niche-space has just crashed in on them, crushing them into a place where they don't want to be. Revolution and war will follow.
          In the last couple of months, the IRA have started attacks again. Daesh commit atrocities while journalists confess themselves puzzled that the boys and girls who run away to join Daesh are not only 'middle-class' but appear to know little about Islam. Nor, often, it seems, do the people who recruit them.
          That's because it's not, at bottom, about religion or politics. It never was. It is, and always was, about niche-space made tight by breeding strategy.
          Left-wingers in the UK at the moment are puzzled and despairing at the political swing to the right - by the fact that the 'Nasty Party' keeps being re-elected, despite their proving, again and again, just how nasty they are. Good-hearted people are dismayed by the increasing xenophobia, the increasing tendency to stigmatise and isolate the poor. They are distressed by the push to turn schools into academies which can refuse admission to pupils who, to be blunt, they consider not good enough and by the push to privatise the NHS, which would take us back to my great-grandparents' age, when one of their children died because sending for a doctor would have cost twelve and a half pence. Which they didn't have to spare.
          Colinvaux isn't puzzled. The shift to the right, the hardening of class-barriers, is shrinking niche-space in action. As niche-space shrinks those with the widest niche-space move, like tigers, to protect their territory. They harden their attitude, become more callous, more prejudiced and xenophobic, less open to argument or new ideas. They vote to protect their niche-space.
          As the niche-space of others contracts, that of the very wealthy becomes ever wider and more comfortable. We'll soon be back to those good old Victorian Values so beloved of the Tories - when servants were plentiful and cheap, when the lower-classes knew their place and Labour was the lowest cost of production.

Humans have changed their niche-space again and again but, like all other animals, they have never changed their breeding strategy. They stubbornly continue - as they have throughout history - to have as many children as they think they can raise to adulthood within the niche-space they occupy at the time. It's ruinous, to human society and the planet.

We now not only have as many children as we think we can raise, massively increasing demand on resources year on year on year - but we are now occupied in trying to escape death for longer and longer, in trying to ensure that infertile couples can have children too, and in preserving the lives of those who would have naturally died young. The science that enables us to do these things is a niche-space: it provides an interesting living for many. Its researches enable us to increase the population even faster, and to produce more food to feed that growing population. Which ensures that the population will grow even faster still - because breeding-strategy always ensures that niche-space is filled.

I first read Colinvaux's The Fates of Nations over 20 years ago. It lit up my head then, and it does now. I look around, I watch the news, and see the theories of niche-space and breeding-strategy at work everywhere. Indeed, my family are becoming fed-up with hearing me mutter, "Niche-space," at regular intervals.

The book is fascinating. Not cheerful - in fact, rather depressing - but clarifying. Clarity is often depressing.

It's particuarly uncheering for a left-winger like me; but it's hard to deny the truth behind it. The theory doesn't justify war, cruelty, infanticide and so forth. It simply makes clear the pattern that is expressed through them.

In short, a great book if you want to think. But not if you want to sleep easy.

Find Colinvaux's books here. 

Postscript. I wrote and scheduled this post before Britain went to the polling-booths to vote on remaining in or leaving the EU. As I write, I don't know what the result will be. But an MP has already been murdered by a man shouting, 'Britons First!' (Niche-space.)

In  The Fates of Nations, Colinvaux tries to predict which nation will start the next big war. It won't be any of the usual suspects, he says. It will be a small, crowded island state which 'lives on other nations' territory.' In other words, imports most of its goods. It will happen because the people of this small island state, especially the 'middling-sort' feel thwarted and angry as their niche-space shrinks and as they grow more bitter and disappointed by the failure of their politicians' solutions. It will be begun, he predicts, either by Japan or Great Britain.

Cheers!

Lost In The Dunes

Knight: Lewis Chess Set

          Look at this little fella. Isn't he great?
          I imagine most, if not all, of my readers will immediately recognise him  - even without the caption - as a knight from the Lewis chessmen. The photograph above, though, was taken by me of one that sits on my shelf. It's a replica, quite a good one, I think, and it allows you to hold the little character in your hand and get a good close look at him.
          He's very like a Norman (norse-man) knight, with his kite-shaped shield and his conical helmet with a nose-piece. His horse is a sturdy little beast - I think its size, proportionate to its rider, was probably accurately observed. (What do you think, Madwippet?) The rider has stirrups, and the horse has a caparison.
          I only own two pieces. Here's the other: a Bishop.

Lewis chess men: the bishop

          He may look as if he's making a rude gesture, but I think it's a blessing.  Here's the back of him, showing the beautiful carving of his elaborate chair, and mitre ribbons.

Lewis Chess men: the bishop's back side.

          I wish I owned more of them. I'd really like to have one of the berserkers who's biting his shield. And a Queen. And a King. Well, the whole set, really.
          The chessmen were found on the west coast of the Outer Hebridean island of Lewis, in 1831, one of history's great accidental finds.
          There are several differing stories about how they were found. One says they were unearthed by a cow. The first I came across said that they were found in a sand-dune, in a little 'cave', and that the superstitious Highlander who found them, Malcolm Mcleod, was frightened and ran away, thinking he'd stumbled on a gathering of 'the little people' or fairies.
 

Lewis is to the left of Scotland, marked with a red dot

         I was always suspicious about this story: it assumed that a Highland crofter was a fool, and I'm pretty sure that if you want to find a fool among the Highland crofters, then or now, you'd have to take one with you.
          If there was any truth in the tale at all, it sounded to me like a story Mcleod might have told to amuse his friends - and which was taken at face value by the antiquarian gentleman who later took an interest in the chessmen.
          It seems I was right to doubt it. Far from being afraid of the chessmen, Mcleod exhibited them for a while in his byre, before selling them to a Captain Roderick Ryrie. (Mcleod's family were later evicted from their land during the Clearances, so I hope he drove a hard bargain.)
          So, what is known about the pieces? Well, most of them are carved from walrus ivory, though a few are made from whales' teeth. Their manufacture has been dated pretty firmly to the 12th Century, in Norway, probably in Trondheim, where there was a market for such expensive, high-status articles, and where similar figures have been found. Dr. Alex Woolf, director of the Institute for Medieval Studies of the University of St. Andrews, argues that the armour worn by some of the figures is a perfect replica of that worn in Norway at the time.
          There is some disagreement, however. Gudmundur G. Thórarinsson has published a paper which makes a case for the chessmen being made in Iceland. He points out that the chessmen are the oldest known to make a connection between the Church and chess, and that only two countries in the world call the piece above 'bishop', and those countries are Iceland and Britain.
          Some have also argued that the small horses ridden by the knights look like Icelandic horses.
 

Several of the chessmen - Wikimedia Commons

           They're called 'the chessmen' rather than 'the chess set' because there are figures from more than one set. There are, altogether, 19 pawns (which look rather like standing stones), 8 Kings, 8 Queens, 16 bishops, 15 knights and 12 rooks. Some of them seem to have been stained red, suggesting that Viking chess pieces were red and white, rather than black and white. As you can see in the photo above, the pieces differ quite a lot in size and style.
           Probably the biggest mystery about them is why on earth so many pieces from several different, high quality, expensive chess sets were buried in a sand dune, in a little stone 'kist', beside a bay on a remote Outer Hebridean island.
          Well, of course, in the 12th Century - and for most of the Viking Age preceding it - these islands weren't 'remote', as we think

of them. Take another look at that map. The Hebrides were ruled by Norway at the time - as were the Orkneys and Shetlands, and large parts of Scotland and Ireland. The Hebrides were in the middle of thriving maritime trade-routes, with ships coming and going from Scandinavia to Scotland, the Islands, Ireland, the Faroes, Iceland - and even Greenland and America. They traded in soapstone, timber, amber, walrus ivory and walrus hide - oh, and slaves. The Vikings were big in the slave-trade.
          One theory - which seems pretty convincing - was that the chessmen were part of the stock-in-trade of some merchant travelling these whale-roads. He'd bought from craftsmen in Trondheim, and hoped to sell to wealthy jarls in Shetland, Orkney or the Isles. But that still leaves us wondering why he buried them in the sand dune on Uig Bay. What happened? Was he attacked by pirates? Did he hope to return and recover them? - they must have been worth quite a bit.
          A friend suggests that perhaps the merchant was in debt, and hid these valuable items rather than see them taken in payment. And was then done in by the loan-shark before he could recover them. You have to admit, a Viking loan-shark is a pretty formidable notion.
          For whatever reason they were hidden, they then stayed in the dark, in their little cave, for nearly 600 years.
          They carry a lot of information, these little figures. Look at the Kings and Queens here. The Kings have different faces and different beards, though similar crowns and draperies. Both hold their swords across their knees. My friend suggested they were whetstones, ancient symbols of royalty - but I think, looking closely, they are swords. The kings seem to be holding a hilt at one end, and the carving suggests a scabbard. Sitting with a sword across their knees is how Viking kings and lords received vows of fealty.

Two each of the eight Kings and Queens - Wikimedia Commons

          The Queens are dressed almost identically, and sit in a similar pose. Each has one hand pressed to her face - though one supports this hand by placing the other under her elbow, and one is holding a drinking horn. They teach us a lesson in being wary of thinking we understand the past, because these little figures seem comic to us. Do their woeful, pained expressions convey toothache or indigestion? Is the one with the drinking horn drunk? Are they thinking about household chores, or just fed up with being surrounded by drunken Vikings? (Spam, spam, spam, spam - spam, spam, spam, spam...)

Compassion and wisdom - not toothache. Wiki Commons

          In fact, they were surely never intended to be comic. Vikings took their chess seriously. The Queens' pose is part of a complex visual code that would have been understood at the time (just as we understand many of the poses and 'uniforms' used in that modern propaganda we call advertising.) The Queen's glum face, and hand to her cheek, convey compassion and mercy - with perhaps just a dash of wisdom. That was understood to be a Queen's job - to leaven her husband's demands for loyalty and fighting men, with a little gentleness and understanding.
          You can see the strips of 'tablet-weave' decorating the edges of the queen's sleeves and cape. These strips were woven in bright colours and patterns on small 'tablets' or miniature looms. And is that a striped under-sleeve, or a pile of many bracelets?
          It's worth mentioning that the King, Queen and Bishop are seated in chairs to convey their high social status. They could just as easily have been carved standing. But no, the High-Ups didn't stand. They sat, in grand chairs with arms and high backs, while the hoi-polloi stood or knelt.
          Here's possibly my favourite - one of the two 'warders' or, in

A Lewis berserker

modern terms, 'rooks', shown biting his shield in berserker rage. There's an argument about whether berserkers, or belief in them, ever existed in the Viking Age (6th-8th centuries AD), or whether it was a later fantasy. It's pointed out that there are no depictions of berserkers from the Viking Age itself - and the Lewis berserker, sadly, dates to the medieval period.
          Not all the warders are about to run mad. The one below is stalwart and on guard with sword and shield at the ready, but not even tempted to give his shield a nibble. These figures aren't meant to be comic either, however funny and cute they seem to us. They're meant to convey ferocity in battle, a readiness to fight for their lord - the one they swore fealty to while he held his sword across his knees - and die in his service, if necessary.
          Perhaps one

Lewis Warder

of the selling points of these chess men was that you could choose the figures you liked best - berserkers if your taste ran that way, or sober guards, if not. I imagine many figures spread out on the table of a jarl's hall - perhaps the jarl allowed his children to choose which warders, kings, queens and bishops he bought. Or, maybe you could buy replacements for pieces lost or broken?
          Maybe they were carved to order? If so, several people were left wondering what had happened to their ordered chess set. Runic letters were dispatched by ship to Trondheim: 'I ordered a chess set last Egg-Month, and now it's Blood Month and they still haven't come.'
          My friend suggests that perhaps they were one massive chess-set, where players chose pieces according to their character or mood. "Tonight, Thorstein, I shall have the berserkers, the Queen with the drinking horn, the Bishop who's clutching his crosier as if he's going to bash somebody with it, and the King with the leer." It's an attractive idea, but I think the sizes of the pieces are too varied for them to be part of a single set.

          Why were they buried in that stone kist, in a sand dune? Why were they left there and never collected? - I so much want to know, and I never shall. There's a story there, somewhere. I wish somebody would write it.

For more information, go to http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Lewis_chessmen

Or here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/LcdERPxmQ_a2npYstOwVkA

A Day Out In History

The Black Country Museum from the Chapel steps

          I visited the Black Country Museum the other day.

          It’s an open air museum, dedicated to the industrial history of the Black Country, with many reconstructed buildings, illustrating what life was like in the area from the late 1700s to the 1930s.

          We chanced on a day  when many steam engines were chuntering around the site, and as we stepped from the entrance building, we breathed in coal-smoke, and ash I hadn’t smelled in many a long year.  It was the smell of my childhood. (Davy, a Scot and country boy, started coughing immediately, and said that he wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in Ye Olde Blacke Countrie.  My family lasted, but it’s true that we have generations of bronchitis, severe coughs, sinus trouble and catarrh behind us.)

          We saw the ‘nodding donkey’ Newcomen engine steaming away.  It’s one of the oldest surviving engines, dating from 1712, and originally built to pump water from Lord Dudley’s mines, only a couple of miles from where it stands now.

          From there we visited the mine.  It’s a ‘fake’ mine, but within the constraints of not actually injuring or killing visitors, an effective one.  As you go round, tableau are illuminated, and a recorded voice – supposedly that of an old miner – tells you about the work done by the miners in the 19^th century. 

          The low, narrow, dimly lit tunnels give a very real sense of the claustrophobic, awful conditions: and the mock ‘blasts’ and roof-falls are scary.  We emerged into the daylight profoundly grateful, yet again, for having been born in the 20^th Century, and not having spent a childhood crouching in total darkness, to open air-doors.

          The mine also provides a vivid impression of the dangers of the Black Country’s famous ‘thirty-foot seam’ (9 metre seam) – the only place in the world where you climbed a tall ladder to cut coal.  Bringing the roof down was no game.

'The Ghost Wife' ebook by Susan Price - Art by Andrew Price

          Walking around above ground, I pointed out the dark ‘Staffordshire Blue’ bricks that topped most of the walls, and made the pavements and roadways.  I realised that the red and blue brick, the grey smoke and the greenery in the gardens made up the colour palette of my childhood – as my brother has so well captured in his cover for my ‘Ghost Wife’, set in the Black Country.  I hadn’t realised that until I visited the museum.

          We joined a lesson in the school, chanted our times tables, and practiced our handwriting on the slates, and we toured the 1920’s fairground with its helter-skelter and swingboats.  We went into the cinema – we got two of the better seats, avoiding the hard benches – and watched a showing of Chaplin’s ‘Getting Acquainted’, which I have to say I found completely incomprehensible, though Davy was chuckling.

The Dudley canal tunnel

          But what Davy really wanted to do was go through the canal tunnels under Dudley’s hill.  So we joined the narrow boat and were taken into the dark, dripping tunnels that have been there since 1792.  It’s not very comforting, when you have a whole hill hanging above you, to think that the boat battered brickwork around you, seeped through with calcite from the limestone, is 220 years old.

          It’s a memorable – if wet – experience, as your boat passes the sinister openings of old limestone mines, or floats from darkness into a brilliantly lit, green basin, open to the sky and birdsong.  In many places the walls of the tunnel are hung with beautiful calcite ‘curtains’ of crystals in glittering lacy folds.

          After the boat-trip, we visited the ‘Bottle and Glass’ Inn, where they will serve you a pint of old ale – but the place was grimly comfortless compared to a modern pub, even in the saloon bar (and no respectable woman would have crossed the threshold).  Opposite the pub, of course, was the Methodist Chapel, which is used for carol services at Christmas.

          There are several shops, of different dates.  Davy liked the one displaying old motorbikes, and I always enjoy Emile Doo’s Chemist’s.  The grocery shop was being swept out by a woman in Victorian dress.  A visitor called out to her, mockingly, “I’ll have ten pounds wuth of grey pays!”

          The shop-keeper replied, tartly, “I doubt yo’ve got ten pounds to yer nairm, madam – look at the sight on yer – wearing a mon’s trousers, and on a Sabbath!  Yo should be ashairmed!  Out on it – goo on!”  The visitor was laughing too much to think of asking why the shop was, disgracefully, open on the Sabbath.

A Black Country pike

          I was sorry to miss the magnificent shire horses which are sometimes to be found on site (at other times they’re at the Sandwell ValleyFarm) but there were a couple of very happy Gloucester Old Spot pigs grubbing around in a cottage garden; and the stretch of canal down by the old lime kilns has become something of a nature reserve.  Davy, a fisherman, was much impressed by the clarity of the water and the big fish (including a small pike) – and I liked the moorhen and chicks.

Happy pigs

          All in all, a good day out and one which, if great lumps of imagination are used, can give you a glimpse of the old Black Country.  But the real thing, it needs to be pointed out, was much grimmer, dirtier and far more cruel.  The men who worked those lime-kilns, for instance, were blinded: and there was no ‘nanny-state’ either to change the conditions that caused the blinding or to look after them once they were blind.

 

A Sterkarm Pud

          If you're like me, you only eat the meal so you can get to the pud.

           Oh, stop pretending – you know very well that you’ve chosen your pudding before your starter – a simple task for me, as it’s just a matter of deciding what has the most chocolate in it.

          In The Sterkarm Handshake, the pudding is a great disappointment to Windsor, as it’s simply a repetititon of the creamy, buttery ‘grewts’ the meal began with, but served with honey and berries instead of raw meat.

          The Sterkarms could probably have honestly claimed to ‘not have a sweet tooth’ since they would rarely, if ever, have eaten anything sweeter than honey and fruit – and their fruit would have been closer to the wild varieties, seasonal, and much less sweet than the kinds we have today.

Honeycombe

          Honey was seasonal, and although stored for use throughout the year, was relatively scarce and valuable and wouldn’t have been used with the carelessness that we use sugar.  Poorer Sterkarms, unless they had the time and skill to keep bees, would have counted themselves lucky to taste it on ‘high days and holidays.’

         Sugar was available, but in the early 16^th Century was only just beginning to be produced in bulk, and it was still, like other spices, extremely expensive.  The soft sassenachs might have been going mad with it down in London until every tooth in their head was black, but I doubt if the fashion for it, or much of the stuff itself, was yet to be found on the Borders.

         So, for this Sterkarm dessert, you can either serve groats again, with honey, small wild strawberries, raspberries and bilberries – or may I suggest something a little different, that very ancient British pud, frumenty?

Doesn't that look tempting?

          I’ve no doubt the Sterkarms enjoyed frumenty on many another day.  Perhaps they thought it too good for Windsor.  (Isobel didn’t want to waste her spices on him.)

          You take 140g of cracked wheat, or bulgar wheat, or semolina.

          Half a litre of ale.

          Two eggs

          A couple of handfuls of raisins.

          Half a teaspoon, or a large pinch, of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.

          Three to four tablespoons of single cream.

          Honey or sugar, some water to top up and – if you’re feeling really extravagant – a pinch of saffron.

          Soak the wheat overnight in the ale.  Most of the liquid will be absorbed.

          Put the wheat in a pan over heat, and add a little more ale, or water.  Add the spices and boil until the wheat is soft.  The smell is pretty wonderful.

          Remove from the heat and allow to cool a little, then add the raisins and stir them in.

          Then add the cream and two beaten eggs.  Don’t add them while the mixture is too hot, or the eggs will cook like scrambled egg.

          Return to a low heat and cook.  Add sugar or honey to taste – and the saffron if  you’re using it.

Expensive foreign almonds! Not for the Sterkarms.

          You can add nuts, or berries when you serve it.

          This also used to be served with meat, such as venison or pork, as well as being a sweet dessert.

          For the Sterkarms, this would have been a real luxury, celebratory dish, something only for special occasions, such as Hogmanay, weddings, christenings and such.  Eggs, cream, fruit and honey were all seasonal - something we tend to forget - and therefore prized.  The spices and raisins would have been extremely expensive.  About the only thing that was common-place was the ale, which was drunk instead of water – and even though ale would have been brewed every week, and was served at every meal, it still represented hours of work.

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A Sterkarm Dinner-Party: The Main

A soay sheep posing as a Sterkarm sheep      Now for the main course of the Sterkarm dinner party.      It’s a delicious meat pudding.  In The Sterkarm Handshake, Per Sterkarm went out especially to catch a deer for it, and the deer was hung for several days - but if you can’t put your hands on a deer, fallow or red, you can use a sheep, goat, or even a cow, though  obviously, the size of your pudding will vary, and the amount of other ingredients will have to be adjusted.        The recipe below assumes you are using a sheep.        Take the stomach, liver, heart and lungs.        You’ll also need three onions, 250 grams of beef lard, 150 grams of the inevitable oatmeal, salt, and about 150 mls of stock.         Also some of that expensive spice, pepper – the little dried berries of a vine, picked and dried half a world away.  Their price reflects the distance they’ve travelled.           Start preparing this dish at least a day before you need it because first you must clean the stomach well, emptying it of what the animal was last keeping in it, and washing it out.  Soak it overnight (in a wooden bowl or tub, probably).           In the morning, turn the stomach inside out, and boil it for one and a half hours in good stock.  (There would always be a stock-pot full of bones and bits boiling in the Sterkarm kitchen.)  Make sure that the weasand – that it, the windpipe – hangs over the edge of the pot, to allow drainage – though drainage of what I’d rather not ask, if you don’t mind.           While the belly-bag is boiling, slap the heart and lungs on a table-top or large chopping board, and mince them with a big knife.           Get hold of the liver and chop up half of it.  (The other half isn’t needed for the pudding, so Per Sterkarm probably had it as a treat, and a reward for catching the deer.)           Keep chopping! –chop  up the onions and the beef lard.           In a large crock or tub, mix together the chopped heart, lungs, liver, lard, onions and oatmeal.  Season well with salt.           Then the peppercorns need to be ground.  If you are the lady of the tower, Isobel, then obviously you can use your own pepper as you like.  If you’re a mere cook, you will need to ask for the peppercorns, as they are so valuable they will kept locked away.  Grind them in a pestle and mortar, and add to the mix.           Add sage, thyme and parsley, if liked.  They will have been grown by Isobel, or gathered wild, and may be either fresh or dried.           Take some of the water the belly was boiled in, and add enough to the mixture to make it a little watery.           Now take the belly-bag and put it in another bowl, to support it, with the opening at the top.  Fill it with the mixture of oatmeal and offal until it’s half-full.           Squeeze out the air, and sew it up with thread.           Put it back into the boiling stock, top up with water, and boil for three hours, without a lid.  Don’t let it boil dry, and  if the stomach starts blowing up, prick it with a needle.           When it’s done, bring to table and cut into steaming slices.  Serve with its own gravy and boiled neeps – that is, turnips.  Some turnip greens, would also be good, if  in season, as would carrots – which, in the Sterkarm’s time, the early 16th Century, would be purple, not orange.  (They would never have called their redheads ‘carrot-top.')           No potatoes. The plant hadn’t yet been introduced to Britain.           They would expect you to tuck in enthusiastically, and Isobel Sterkarm would be beside herself with disappointment and shame if you didn’t.  After all, she and her maids had worked long and hard in a stifling kitchen to offer you their very best.           The offal was far more nutritious, juicy and tasty than the tough, dry, lean muscle meat from their hardy little beasts – and they’d put expensive pepper in it, just for you!           Isobel would press second and third helpings on you, because it was a terrible slight to be called mean, or for anyone to say that they left your table hungry.  It would be a matter of pride, too, to show that they didn’t need to care about saving food. And, of course, the more you ate, the more Isobel could pride herself as a hostess.           However politely you refused, she would heap your plate anyway.  She wouldn’t be able to help herself.         Toorkild and Per Sterkarm would probably make sure the pudding was finished but if, somehow, there was any pudding left over, it would turn up at breakfast, fried.  And, because you were a guest, the envious Sterkarm men would be denied it, and it would land on your plate.  With a clonk.  Good appetite!