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TENANTS OF THE
LAND: Part
3 The following is Copyright
© 2016-2020 by Clayton Barker, all rights reserved. It was published on the
editorial page of The Burford Times, Feb. 18th 2016, in Burford,
Ontario, Canada.
In
this year 2016, human beings claim ownership over nearly every inch of the
globe - How does such miniscule, multi-celled-organism, such as a human
being, end up having so much power and control over an entire planet? Will it
always be this way? The former is easy, if you understand the basic history
of the world and how mankind has harnessed nearly every aspect of his
surroundings to survive, and also understand man’s occasional desire for
world domination. However, the latter is unknown, as we can only hope that we
will continue to cling to this “big blue ball,” endlessly - status quo. In
College I studied Urban Design and part of this program included
Environmental Psychology. This course was by far the most interesting of all
the College courses I took. Environmental psychology is the study of the relationship between the
physical environment and human behavior. It focuses on both natural and
man-built environments, and it looks at how people notice and perceive their
environment. The course also looked at “territoriality,” which is a term associated with nonverbal communication
that refers to how people use space to communicate ownership or occupancy of
areas and possessions. (Wikipedia).
A very old former village
pub in Staxton, about 7 miles from Scarborough. It was built in 1649 as can
be seen by the date stone near the apex of the gable end. This is where my
ancestors would have come to “water” up, as the intersection in front of this
building was known as “The Beck Hole,” which is the place where three springs
come together and pumps had been installed nearby for drinking water and
water for livestock. The fiddler out front is of course yours truly on my
U.K. visit autumn 2015. The “Beck Hole” was also the location where the
village of Staxton held their street dances, as far back as the 1600’s. Photo
by E. Cooper, 2015. Burford’s first peoples did not have any concept of land
ownership, and though their villages and cemeteries were protected by wooden
palisades, they did not consider the land under their feet to be an
“own-able” item. On the other hand, they did however exhibit territoriality
and understood that though they did not personally own land, they did however
control large areas of land in the name of their people for seasonal hunting
grounds. When the early settlers came through this area, on their way to what
is now Detroit, they remarked in their journals on the fact that there was
carved “totems” at the junction of the Thames River and somewhere south of
the present-day city of London, a very large tree in the middle of the “road”
that had a carving of a “cat” on it. This is said to have been the
territorial boundary of the former hunting grounds of the Erie people, who
were also known as “the people of the cat.” (Maj. Littlehales & D. W.
Smith journals 1793). Museums
all over the world display and house the remnant traces of ancient
civilizations and through these finds we are able to learn about past
civilizations and how they lived. Going back nearly 12,000 years ago, the
ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, in the present area of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, was the
site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic age. It has been
identified by archaeologists as having "inspired some of the most
important developments in human history including the invention of the
wheel.” Though Mesopotamia is considered one of the six greatest
civilizations of the ancient world, it still became a battleground between
the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia coming under ephemeral
Roman control (Wikipedia). The
Roman Empire was also a major ancient civilization that came and went over
the last 2000 years, and they managed to leave their mark on the landscape
all over Europe and Britain and in the Middle East. Who knows, maybe they
would have owned much of the world by now, had they not “fallen.” They were
great “control freaks” some have said, but also great recorders of nearly
every aspect of their daily lives. Because of this, they also had great
control over their own recorded history and the way future walks of life saw
them. In
the history of North America, other great civilizations, which still exist,
came to this continent in search of a new world and a chance at a clean
start. They had hoped that they could create a better civilization far from
their homelands in Europe for their children and children’s children. These
included the Vikings, Spanish, Italians, Portuguese, Dutch, French and
English who, at one time or another, believed this part of the world was
going to be their very own someday…
This is one of
Burford’s oldest remaining former Hotel/Tavern stands, built in c1822-23
possibly by the Ives Family. Click Here to Go To Our Built Heritage |
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