Book #8 - Underland by Robert Macfarlane

[Moonchime]

Underland by Robert Macfarlane



From goodreads.com:

In Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time—from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come—Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind.

Global in its geography and written with great lyricism, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change the way you see the world.

As this book is non-fiction we can read it as we please - in bite size bits - small chunks that we can digest at our leisure - but perhaps not too much leisure!!!

The book is split into 3 main parts or Chambers - so I suggest we start with the first:

Descending

Part I
Burial
Dark Matter
Understorey

Before embarking on this book I had never really given much thought to the ground beneath our feet. There was a brief moment at university when I almost joined the caving society, but I don’t know what sort of hysteria had gripped me to think that was a good idea. Claustrophobia is a friend of mine and I hesitate to get in a lift, let alone snuggle through a snug rock tunnel with no sign of light. In an Escape room in Cambridge there was one room where you had to get into a metal box (like a coffin) to pass to the next room and although I did it, it wasn’t without second thoughts. It never occurred to me that there was so much below ground that I know nothing about; that there is a whole world of discovery in the darkness of the deep.

The following comments I make are on the Burial section so once you have read those then feel free to read mine - or read them before it doesn't really matter, but I think it is better to read what I comment on for yourself first even though there is no chronology to the book. My last paragraph makes reference to the other sections.

Spoiler:

What struck me here was the incredible beauty of the burial section. The woman who dies in childbirth with her son lying on the wing of a swan is such a poignant and beautiful image that I stopped reading for a while just to let that image find space and purchase in my mind. 6,000 years ago and the emotion and care taken in that burial lives on. So much that is different now and so much that is the same. We tend to think of those who lived so long ago as different and yet we cannot help but recognise the tenderness and love that such a burial must have evoked. The swan has always been a popular bird in myth and legend and I love the idea of the wing enclosing the child with its mother in an eternal embrace lifting it beyond the confines of the earthly and the human.



From dailygrail.com:
In Vedbæk, Denmark, 6000 years ago, a young woman was laid to rest beside a baby, with the dead infant placed upon a swan’s wing.

Grave 8, the most famous of the burials, contains a young woman, who may have died at childbirth, and a premature baby. The symbolism of the baby on the swan wing has been much debated with suggestions including purity and the ability of a water bird to transcend water, land and air. Certainly both bodies were cared for in death (the disorderly state of the mother’s ribs suggest that she may have been resting on an organic ‘pillow’), which suggests a belief that the spirit remained with the body.


This burial is a beautiful example of the Underland as shelter – as a place for holding precious memory; something it continues to do.
However Macfarlane explains that we use the underland in three ways and the yield and disposal purposes have much that is disquieting. The section about the fault known as Ghost Dance I found hugely disturbing. I’ve never thought about it before but how do you warn future beings that they should never disturb something; that it is not of value but is dangerous? That very idea of warning has happened before with the pyramids and other burial sites – don’t disturb it or something terrible will happen. It never seems to have stopped anyone – but radioactive pellets encased in iron, then copper will last for millions of years and will REALLY harm anyone tampering with them.

[Dee]

Thanks Mz MC for suggesting we read this book together.

I’ve just read the introduction before the chapter you’ve set for discussion. What a fascinating subject for a book, I’m very excited about diving into this.



So beautifully written - I’m already drawn in.

Funnily enough we are just watching Stranger Things - all about the Upside Down world!

Like you, Moonchime, I have a fascination about caves but with a very strong aversion to them as well. Especially after accidentally getting drawn into watching a horror film (like rabbit in the headlights I couldn’t move away from it) about a group of girls trapped in a cave where flesh eating monsters lived, who couldn’t see but had excellent hearing. I think this film will haunt me forever. The description of the little boy trapped in a hideously narrow passage of a cave is so vivid - I could barely breathe reading it. The story of the young footballers trapped in that cave in Thailand, and the rescue operation with a diver ending up giving his life for these boys, is one of the most powerful stories of our time, I believe, and I’ve got a poem-song in-the-making about that. This book might inspire me to go back to it and finish it.

So I’m thrilled to get into this!! Thanks Mz MC!

[Dee]

I finished the first chapter ‘Burial’ this morning, just before I tuned into the broadcast of the Queen’s funeral… all so timely. Thinking about the beliefs behind all the burial ceremonies and perceptions of the afterlife.

Watching the Queen’s funeral service I’m in awe of what humans have accomplished : building cathedrals, languages, learning to sing, creating music with sophisticated instruments, religions, ceremonies, elaborate clothing, jewellery… and how strange a lot of these things really are.

I’m also thinking about getting older, getting closer to our predictable death, and how we must give more and more thought to that eventuality, and how we might like to make some decisions about how we’d like our bodies to be dealt with after our hearts stop beating.

We have a very good thread here on the forum about burials/graveyards.

So the story of the buried mother with her baby on a swan wing was breathtaking for me too: this kind of symbolic thinking and gentleness from our (perhaps not so) primitive ancestors…

The need to bury to somehow preserve, to help remember and keep a connection with the dead by visiting their burial place … is all rather fascinating.

Excavating burial chambers is a very questionable - and in my view - a terrible thing. Of course it’s also irresistibly fascinating. Human curiosity has no bounds, and its often inappropriateness is very difficult to rein in. Of course we have learnt so much from these excavations about the past, but did we have the right to disturb these places?

My other chain of thought reading this first chapter was how stubborn humans are in their need to unravel every nook and cranny of the planet that can be accessed, no matter the cost, the danger to life it imposes. Divers, mountaineers, cavers… How it takes a certain person to have that kind of courage, but more than just courage, a single mindedness, a fixation even, whether it’s to see, to experience, to know, to conquer…

That last little caving experience Robert had with Shaun, described so vividly I felt I was there too…. goodness. It could have ended in disaster at any moment. The story of the young lad that died in the cave stuck in a shaft, oh dear lord. No matter how Robert argues that you need to experience the complete silence and darkness of the underland before you can fully appreciate the sounds and glorious colours of nature… I very happily opt for a lessened experience of sounds and colours if I can also opt out from paying the price of experiencing the deepest silence and dark - wrapped in sheer fear and terror.

Onwards to the next chapter!

[Moonchime]

I’m also thinking about getting older, getting closer to our predictable death, and how we must give more and more thought to that eventuality, and how we might like to make some decisions about how we’d like our bodies to be dealt with after our hearts stop beating.

Indeed it becomes harder and harder to avoid these thoughts as the years pass like a scene from a train window and the onset of evening marks the sky.

Excavating burial chambers is a very questionable - and in my view - a terrible thing. Of course it’s also irresistibly fascinating. Human curiosity has no bounds, and its often inappropriateness is very difficult to rein in. Of course we have learnt so much from these excavations about the past, but did we have the right to disturb these places?

I agree this is a very difficult area and I know just what you mean about excavating burial chambers. I also think about those things when I stand in a museum and look at un-earthed bones and skulls and wonder what that person would have thought about being an exhibit like that. Tollund Man and such like get no voice in their part in the excavation - our search for knowledge is insatiable and although cemeteries have rules about disturbing the dead there seems to be very little concern when excavating for archaeology. On the other hand if we had not examined some of these buried folk our knowledge of how they lived and died would be so much the poorer. Yet I realise that may not be a good enough argument for treating them in this way, but our search for knowledge is something very hard to stop.

From Nationalgeographic.com:
“Written records are mostly biased towards wealthy individuals and men, especially if we’re talking about the medieval period,” she says. “If we want to know anything about the experience of women, children, and poor people, very often the only way we can get at that is by looking at skeletal data.

In Israel, during the 1990s, ultra-orthodox Jews—who believe the human body should never be desecrated—rioted against the excavation and study of human remains. The law in Israel now stipulates that any Jewish remains found at an archaeological site must be transferred to the Ministry of Religious Affairs for burial.

Native Hawaiians believe bones are a connection between the spirit world and the physical world. But southern Europeans, Mays says, rarely oppose the excavation of human remains, since bodies are typically buried just long enough for them to decay, at which point the bones are removed from graves and placed in ossuaries.

Ultimately, when assessing the ethics of recovering human remains, the key issue, according to Indiana University’s Zimmerman, is whether “the stakeholders have a level of say in it, beyond just the stakeholders who are in the scientific community.”

”

On the question of whether or not we had the right to disturb those places and those people I find very difficult indeed. Is it morally justifiable? I think there are arguments either way and although it's a grave thing to disturb the dead I suspect the longer ago it is they died the less we feel their weight.

[Lori]

Well, well….a little light reading ladies? Goodness! I received the book today and am partway through “Burial”. Fascinating subject and historical references.

“I’ll be back!” Xoxo

[Moonchime]

You're right Lori - light reading it is not but I think we could have a lot of fun learning some new things. There's a lot to find out more about - albeit briefly in some cases. We look forward to your return. x

[Moonchime]

Dark Matter

Some questions for possible focus on Descending.
Please feel free to comment on the previous parts - these are just for structure but fly free if you want to.

1.What did you find interesting/surprising in the number of underground tunnels and chambers that support the modern world?

2. In reply to Macfarlane's question (P. 67) "Why are you searching for dark matter?" Christopher answers "to further our knowledge and to give life meaning. If we're not exploring, we're not doing anything. We're just waiting." Do you agree with this view?

3. In pages 75 - 79 Macfarlane asks the question "Are we being good ancestors?"

What do you think?


4. "Sometimes in the darkness you can see more clearly."
Can this be true?


I found Dark Matter difficult to grasp in parts - especially as my scientific knowledge is not strong but it is worth skim reading at the very least and his actions on the last page of the chapter will be familiar to us all. What will be your lasting impression?

[Lori]

I've spent a sunny Sunday finishing "Burial" and enjoying your comments above about this fascinating and somewhat disturbing text.

I am learning so much from this author. While the stories are truly horrific and cloying, I find my mind wondering about such a human as Robert Macfarlane - those extremists who flirt with the edge to further knowledge but in reality attempt to feel life thru this approach, no doubt. At what point does it shift from being worth it to regret, I ponder, particularly thinking of that young man entombed forever in the shaft where his father cemented him for all time until one day he may surface again with a new generation dipping into the below? This concept is new to me and fascinating that the earth gives up its depths in a manner I hadn't imagined or gleaned. (It's really hard to casually explain the context of this book, isn't it?) The baby and swan wing captured me as well - so tender and beautifully intentional. Sad beyond all measure.

I don't claim to enjoy this as I suffer from claustrophobia to an extent, just as you all do. (So, I will say I am enjoying the book from painful standpoints that elicit growth and that is...good.)

I stopped reading at one point and accessed a video of Robert addressing a crowd at a bookstore regarding this book. I needed to understand the author a bit better before proceeding. I wanted to see him work in the flesh.

I so agree Robert Macfarlane is truly a lyrical writer, and at times I need to catch my breath. I think some explanation to the rush involved in his exploits is summed up beautifully throughout the book when he resurfaces:

"Colour is preposterous, gorgeous again. Blue is seen utterly as blue, green known fully as green. We are high on hue, high on the wild noise of the wind, high on the last of sunlight that glosses the streamers of the veering swallows, high on the huge vault of the sky and the boiling clouds it holds."

That is such a beautiful inhale.

And again,

"...then I am out of the swallet and into the hollow, and warm air is rolling around me and my bones grow again in the storm of light and ferns find their green over and into me and moss thrives on my skin and leaves teem in my eyes, and Sean and I sit laughing, knowing for those few moments that to understand light you need first to have been buried in the deep-down dark."

Of course this is an age-old wheel that is applicable to life in general. We must know sorrow to truly know joy, etc.

I am interested in the expanding recurring prompt, "We are often more tender to the dead than to the living, though it is the living who need our tenderness most.” Plus, I look forward to his assertion that this exploration of the “below” yields a feeling of hope and meaning as a species rather than futileness in this ocean of time.

[Lori]

I’m also thinking about getting older, getting closer to our predictable death, and how we must give more and more thought to that eventuality, and how we might like to make some decisions about how we’d like our bodies to be dealt with after our hearts stop beating.

I found it fascinating the revelation that this generation and the coming generations will possibly be the first to fly in the face of burial tradition. That we can nearly flippantly cast our bodies to the breeze probably denotes a wide variety of changes, among which might involve sheer populous and shrinking land mass, a stepping away from body/soul connection and perhaps even religion itself or belief in any semblance of afterlife. Although I do take tiny umbrage with the concept as American Indians (now Indigenous People) and other early cultures did cremate. I think about those tree seed burials and wonder how you keep a corpse safe in these situations from the ever-expanding idiocy and disrespect we see in all areas. Oh, this book is bringing on the macabre thought or two.

Indeed it becomes harder and harder to avoid these thoughts as the years pass like a scene from a train window and the onset of evening marks the sky.

Beautifully, beautifully put. Did we think we were unlike those before us? How often did our parents and grandparents give us knowing looks and sage advice regarding this cycle that we now must strive to embrace? Perhaps it is a simultaneous gift of youth to be so sure and a curse to not have this flood of wisdom earlier in life.

Excavating burial chambers is a very questionable - and in my view - a terrible thing. Of course it’s also irresistibly fascinating. Human curiosity has no bounds, and its often inappropriateness is very difficult to rein in. Of course we have learnt so much from these excavations about the past, but did we have the right to disturb these places?

I agree this is a very difficult area and I know just what you mean about excavating burial chambers. I also think about those things when I stand in a museum and look at un-earthed bones and skulls and wonder what that person would have thought about being an exhibit like that. Tollund Man and such like get no voice in their part in the excavation - our search for knowledge is insatiable and although cemeteries have rules about disturbing the dead there seems to be very little concern when excavating for archaeology. On the other hand if we had not examined some of these buried folk our knowledge of how they lived and died would be so much the poorer. Yet I realise that may not be a good enough argument for treating them in this way, but our search for knowledge is something very hard to stop.

From Nationalgeographic.com:
“Written records are mostly biased towards wealthy individuals and men, especially if we’re talking about the medieval period,” she says. “If we want to know anything about the experience of women, children, and poor people, very often the only way we can get at that is by looking at skeletal data.

In Israel, during the 1990s, ultra-orthodox Jews—who believe the human body should never be desecrated—rioted against the excavation and study of human remains. The law in Israel now stipulates that any Jewish remains found at an archaeological site must be transferred to the Ministry of Religious Affairs for burial.

Native Hawaiians believe bones are a connection between the spirit world and the physical world. But southern Europeans, Mays says, rarely oppose the excavation of human remains, since bodies are typically buried just long enough for them to decay, at which point the bones are removed from graves and placed in ossuaries.

Ultimately, when assessing the ethics of recovering human remains, the key issue, according to Indiana University’s Zimmerman, is whether “the stakeholders have a level of say in it, beyond just the stakeholders who are in the scientific community.”

”

On the question of whether or not we had the right to disturb those places and those people I find very difficult indeed. Is it morally justifiable? I think there are arguments either way and although it's a grave thing to disturb the dead I suspect the longer ago it is they died the less we feel their weight.

That is such a hard question and interesting in the breadth of consideration it requires. I get the same feelings as you all in museums and when a grave is disturbed. Does life and the earth itself belong to the living? With so much care and preparation for the afterlife, it is obvious the place itself held so much import with its protections, etc. I would guess if they could have a vote they would curse and banish anyone messing with their eternity!

[Dee]

Lori, it’s so lovely to have you joining us to journey through this book together.
Like you, I instantly needed to find out more about the author and hear him talk, he fascinates me, and so does this reckless faith moulded of part invincibility, part “If I die, I’ll die happy doing what I love doing most” attitude. I think after this book I’m going to read his book on mountains too.

Thank you for quoting above those most beautiful poetic descriptions following the emergence from the cave where he could have easily died.

I am interested in the expanding recurring prompt, "We are often more tender to the dead than to the living, though it is the living who need our tenderness most.”

This was a very interesting little seed planted so early on. I have seen this before on quite a few occasion. Perhaps at my own father’s funeral too. I think it’s particularly true for people who had difficult personalities, who were hard to get to know or challenging to love. A funeral ceremony, as a last act of kindness and honouring can be strangely free of all previous misgivings, conflicts and resentments. It can allow love flow more freely in an act of letting things go. It can bring some understanding that was not possible before.

But even for people who were deeply loved and cherished in their lifetimes, a funeral is a last chance to demonstrate their love, with them still being somehow physically present.

Often though, things that are read out in eulogies and said in ways of farewell, might not have been said or said enough whilst that person was still alive. It’s good to be aware that sometime, moving forward, not to make that mistake again with the still living.


Plus, I look forward to his assertion that this exploration of the “below” yields a feeling of hope and meaning as a species rather than futileness in this ocean of time.

Yes. This I’m looking forward to experiencing too. I’d have expected the opposite, so I’m really intrigued.

[Dee]

Indeed it becomes harder and harder to avoid these thoughts as the years pass like a scene from a train window and the onset of evening marks the sky.

Even a throwaway comment from you reads like poetry, Mz K.

[Dee]

That is such a hard question and interesting in the breadth of consideration it requires. I get the same feelings as you all in museums and when a grave is disturbed. Does life and the earth itself belong to the living? With so much care and preparation for the afterlife, it is obvious the place itself held so much import with its protections, etc. I would guess if they could have a vote they would curse and banish anyone messing with their eternity!

Absolutely they would. It goes against everything they’d wanted. Their intention was very clear, and excavating and displaying these things in museums goes against all of that.
We are all torn about this, and we can certainly argue that we become richer with the knowledge gained from these excavations. I wonder if some middle ground could have been found, such as respectful reburial after excavation. Of course, after such revelations these burial sites should have full protection not to be disturbed again, which would be impossible to provide in many of these places. So it remains very complicated.