Desert: Nature and Culture

247 Pages·2013·6.972 MB·English

by  Roslynn D. Haynes

desert
The Earth series traces the historical significance and cultural history of natural
phenomena. Written by experts who are passionate about their subject, titles in the
series bring together science, art, literature, mythology, religion and popular culture,
exploring and explaining the planet we inhabit in new and exciting ways.
Series editor: Daniel Allen
In the same series
Desert Roslynn D. Haynes
Earthquake Andrew Robinson
Fire Stephen J. Pyne
Flood John Withington
Volcano James Hamilton
Waterfall Brian J. Hudson
Desert
Roslynn D. Haynes
reaktion books
For my husband Raymond and our daughters Nicola and
Rowena, who have shared my fascination with deserts
Published by
Reaktion Books Ltd
33 Great Sutton Street
London ec1v 0dx, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2013
Copyright © Roslynn D. Haynes 2013
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publishers
Printed and bound in China by Toppan Printing Co. Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn 978 1 78023 169 3
contents
Preface 7
1 The Diversity of Deserts 11
2 An Armoury of Adaptations 39
3 Desert Cultures Past and Present 65
4 Museums of Our Ancestors 88
5 Desert Religions 108
6 Travellers and Explorers 125
7 Deserts of the Imagination 151
8 Deserts in Western Art 175
9 Exploitation and Opportunity 197
the world’s major deserts 210
glossary 213
references 217
select bibliography 232
associations and websites 235
acknowledgements 237
photo acknowledgements 238
index 241

Preface
The grandeur of deserts derives from their being, in their aridity,
the negative of the earth’s surface and of our civilized humours.
They are places where humours and fluids become rarefied, where
the air is so pure that the influence of the stars descends direct from
the constellations . . . a silence that exists nowhere else.
Jean Baudrillard, America(1986)
‘Desert’ is not an innocent term. Geographically it is defined in
terms of rainfall, but unlike other landforms there is, inbuilt in
its very name, a sense of foreboding. The English word ‘desert’
and its equivalents in the Romance languages all derive from
the Latin desertum, meaning ‘abandoned’, which is also the sense
of the Egyptian tesert. In Hindi the original meaning of the
word for desert, marustahal, was ‘a place of death’, and the name
of the Taklamakan Desert is most likely the Uyghur version of
an Arabic word meaning ‘a place to leave alone’. Given the strong
probability in deserts of dying from heat, cold, starvation or
thirst, or of becoming disoriented and lost, these connotations
are unsurprising.
Deserts also threaten the inner self. Their immensity, solitude
and silence pose questions about identity and meaning that are
not easily dismissed. As the British explorer Ernest Giles (1835–
1897) wrote of his experience in the Australian desert:
I felt somewhat lonely and cogitated that what has been
written or said by cynics, solitaries, or Byrons of the delights
of loneliness, has no real home in the human heart. Nothing
could appal the mind so much as the contemplation of
eternal solitude.1
Yet for many people deserts have been intensely alluring. For
the Old Testament prophets and the Desert Fathers they were
Sossusvlei salt pan,
Namib Desert, 2009. places of purification and spiritual renewal; explorers have sought
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desert
out deserts ‘for the burning charm of seeking something new’
and to be the first to set foot there;2for travellers, the attraction
is often the challenge of life at the edge, braving extremes of heat,
cold and endurance, or discovering a place to regain simplicity and
a sense of priorities; for artists, deserts mean brilliant colours,
simplified forms and clarity of vision;for astronomers, they pro-
vide the dry atmosphere that grants them the best observing
conditions from Earth; for writers, they represent silence, soli-
tude, the edge of the sacred; for many indigenous peoples, desert
is home.
This book explores the great diversity of the world’s deserts,
hot, cold, coastal, inland, sandy, rocky and salt, and includes the
largest desert of all: ice-bound Antarctica. We know now that on
a geological time scale, deserts are transitory: they have appeared
and disappeared, leaving a trail of intriguing evidence, from
marine fossils to cave paintings, that tells us about their former
state. Even more diverse than deserts themselves are the astonish -
ing adaptations of plants and animals to these life-threatening
environments, and the human societies that have managed to
survive here, leaving records of their life in art and in millennia-
old mummies, but almost everywhere experiencing new hardships
in their economic and political struggles. Equally intriguing is the
question of why the world’s great monotheistic religions all arose
in the desert and what influence, if any, the ethical values ascribed
to it continue to have on believers. The next three chapters engage
with those who have constructed the deserts of our imagination:
explorers and travellers who recorded their fascinating stories
and the motives that lured them into strange and dangerous
places; the writers and film-makers who envisaged and peopled
these alien landscapes; and the artists and photographers who have
persuaded us to look past monotony to new and beautiful aspects
of deserts.
The cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan has pointed out that,
from the time of Herodotus, the most common Western response
to deserts has been denial of their existence, resulting from either
ignorance, a desire to preserve the reputation of the Creator from
Erg Chebbi, Morocco,
the slur of bringing such appalling places into existence,3or – in 2005.
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