Oldal 182 [182]
180 GAsor MATE
in abstract terms, just like artists or researchers today. Archaeological investigations
have severally proved that not only “high civilizations”, but also illiterate groups
of people and cultures were capable of observing the coordinates of the environment
from above, from a perspective detached from matter, and after interpreting them,
they could visualize the landscape (Mileson — Brooks 2021: 317-318; Tilley 1994:
202-208). The same has been registered by anthropological examinations which
found navigating knowledge which served practical purposes and environmental
knowledge used to evoke the ancestors and providing the basis of the belief system
among the far from primitive “natives” (on the attitude of the Australian aborigines
to the landscape: Morphy 1995). A relative of these systems has been created by
humans of the 21“ century who make GPS trackers of the routes covered in the
landscape, erect and protect monuments, make excursions, or decode with their
sense organs the information gained from the landscape and share it with others,
today typically on online platforms.
THE BEDOLINA MAP
In Val Camonica in North Italy, we find rock drawings in the open, similar to the works
of land art so fashionable today. Tens of thousands of “artworks” were made over the
course of some 8000 years in this long Alpine valley. The representation on the Bedolina
rock has several layers. Researchers date the engravings to the Bronze Age (1500-1400
BC) and the Iron Age (800 BC). On the rock with an undulating surface above the
valley, we can see a map-like rendering of a landscape measuring 4.3 x 2.4 meters,
depicting houses, roads, corn fields, and people in a typical scene of everyday human
life in the environment of that time (Anati 1961: 242). Researchers are at variance as
to whether the image is an accurate copy of the valley or an imaginary, symbolic map
(Craig 2007: 387). Whatever the aim was, the makers carved into the rock a compact
and interpretable spatial formation.
“THE TAIGA IS THEIR HOUSE”
The Khanti along the Vasyugan river in Siberia used to live on hunting and fishing
before the appearance of oil mining. Zoltan Nagy’s research has found that the indigenous
people (the “Ostyaks”) are characterized by a different perception of the environment
than the newcomers, the relocated “Russians”.
“The “Ostyaks’ know the forest excellently; they can find their way in it perfectly. They
comprehend it as a whole and recognize its tiny differences. Their environment is
internalized in them as a coherent and articulated system or entity. They perfectly know
its paths, not only approximately whence and where they lead, not only the endpoints,
but also their exact location in it. (...) The ‘Russians’ report the same thing. The game
warden of the territory says that “an Ostyak never uses a compass in the woods. He
goes out, looks around, well, yes, that’s where I must go, he says and sets out. And he
really arrives exactly at the destination. They were born here; they subsisted on it. The
taiga is their house.” (Nagy 2021: 244). (...) Their excellent sight or sense of space is
eloquently proven by my host, who had never used a map, but when I showed him
one, in a few seconds he understood it and having leant the cartographic symbols, could
immediately orientate himself by it, and show me the places and roads I was inquiring