Newgrange, Ireland

Some 700 years before the main stones were erected at Stonehenge, and even longer before the Pyramids were built in Egypt, a massive tomb was being built in Ireland that can still be seen today. This is at Newgrange, in a loop of the River Boyne between Drogheda and Slane, about 25 miles northwest of Dublin.

The Newgrange ancient monument

A grassy mound, about 40 feet high, stands on top of a hill with extensive views over the surrounding countryside. The mound, which is roughly circular in shape, is more than 260 feet across and occupies an area more than an acre in size. Inside, a stone-flanked passage leads more than 60 feet to a cross-shaped chamber with a corbelled roof, 19 feet high, that has remained watertight for more than 5000 years.

The function of the monument appears to have been that of a communal burial chamber for cremated remains, although those of only five individuals have been discovered to date. There may have been many others that were removed at some time since their original deposit.

Surrounding the mound on the outside is a ring of 97 massive “kerbstones” that are notable for the intricate carvings that they display, in particular the interlocking spirals and lozenges that are typical of Neolithic artwork at such sites. The meaning of these patterns can only be guessed at, but they could represent the beliefs of their creators in some sort of afterlife, with the spirals being maps of some kind. The carvings on the stone marking the entrance to the passageway are particularly intricate.

An unwelcome restoration?

Something that is bound to strike the visitor is the bright white vertical wall on either side of the passage entrance, which is clearly very modern. This was built as part of a restoration project during excavation of the site between 1962 and 1975, and it has aroused a good deal of criticism. The restorers’ belief that the white quartzite stones found at the site were the remains of an original retaining wall have been challenged, not least because, in order to resist the lateral thrust of the mound, the restorers had to use concrete and steel reinforcements, which were clearly not available to the original builders!

During his excavations, Professor Michael O’Kelly of Cork noticed a slot above the entrance that was covered by a granite block that seemed to be designed to slide across it like a shutter. Professor O’Kelly nicknamed it “the roofbox”. There was a local legend that the slot was aligned with the sun at the summer solstice, but Professor O’Kelly did not see how this could be. Instead, he stood inside the central chamber as the sun rose at the winter solstice and was amazed to see how a shaft of light poured though the slot and there was enough light, for just a few minutes, to illuminate the chamber.

Visiting Newgrange

Being such a special site, access to Newgrange is limited in that visitors can only view it as members of a guided tour, starting from the Brú na Bóinne Visitors Centre on the other side of the river Boyne. It is possible to experience the Winter solstice moment, but only if you win a lottery and are lucky enough for the day not to be cloudy. Only 100 places are available and it is usual for tens of thousands of people to apply!

Newgrange is the most impressive of a number of other Neolithic structures in the area, including tombs, henges and standing stones. This was clearly a site of huge ritual significance to the early settlers of this area; for example, the tomb at nearby Knowth contains one-third of all the pieces of megalithic art known in Western Europe. 

Many parallels can be drawn between the Newgrange site and that at Stonehenge, not least the extensive evidence of early occupation with so many individual sites in the area, but the visitor experience at Newgrange is likely to be more satisfactory, given that it is far less well known and therefore not overrun with fellow tourists.

© John Welford

Pirin National Park, Bulgaria

Pirin National Park is a huge area of wilderness in south-west Bulgaria, covering more than 270 square kilometres. This is a sparsely populated mountain region with many rivers, waterfalls and caves. There are more than seventy glacial lakes. Parts of the National Park are forested, but above the treeline are alpine meadows and bare expanses of limestone.

This is a haven for many species of wildlife, and the area is regarded as a living fossil in terms of the flora and fauna that have existed here since the last Ice Age. Many species are endemic to the area and are very rare. This is an excellent place for birdwatchers, as more than 160 species have been recorded, and there also 45 species of land mammal including brown bears.

Despite the location of Pirin in southern Europe (it is not far north of the Aegean) the high altitude means that summers are cool and short and snow cover can be expected for up to eight months.

Pirin National Park has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1983.

© John Welford

Tips for becoming a better listener

These tips are offered by someone who was trained as a Samaritans volunteer (“To Befriend the Suicidal and Despairing”) a number of years ago but who has not been an active volunteer for some time. However, the art of listening, once acquired, is not easily lost, and he hopes that the following will be of some use to anyone who finds themselves in the situation of being a sounding-board for a friend or relative (or even a complete stranger) whose world has fallen apart for one reason or another.

Tip 1: Listening is both active and passive

It might be thought that listening is nothing more than being the receiver of words spoken by someone else. To an extent that is true, but a distinction needs to be made between listening and hearing. If you have the radio on while you are doing other things, are you listening to it or just hearing it? Likewise, if you are not fully engaged with the person who is speaking, you are only hearing their words, not listening to them.

Active listening is about understanding what is being said and what is not (see below). It may involve some words of your own (again, see below) or it may simply mean demonstrating, by your attitude and demeanour, that you are completely on the side of the person in distress.

There is passivity in listening, because the good listener is only interested in the other person and their needs, and does not constantly interrupt with their own comments and views. If they are “pouring it all out” that is exactly what they need to do, and your function is merely to be there.

Tip 2: Listen for what is not being said

This relates in part to body language. When somebody is in distress they may find it very difficult to put their thoughts and feelings into words, but their bodily posture and general demeanour can tell you a lot if you are able to read the signs. Whole books have been written abut body language, but a simple clue may be gained from whether or not they are willing to make eye contact with you; if they do not, it may be that they are holding something back and not being entirely honest with either you or themselves.

Your own body language is also important, because you need to be completely receptive to the other person. Sit next to them and don’t be afraid to touch a hand or put an arm round a shoulder. You can listen with your whole self and not just your ears.

In terms of what is being said, there may be aspects of the situation that you know something about but the person has not mentioned. You might wonder why this is the case, and use some gentle questioning to encourage them to talk about what might be the most painful part of their difficulty.

Likewise, they may spend a lot of time skating round the edge of the problem and never get to the “nitty-gritty”. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to direct the conversation in a particular direction, but this may be necessary at some stage if the person shows no signs of wanting to do this for themselves. They may well be waiting for you to make this move because they cannot face doing so themselves.

Tip 3: Don’t be afraid of silence

The opposite of “pouring it all out” is saying nothing at all. This is a very common response when someone is distressed and it is not something that should worry you as the listener. Silences can go on for a long time because the person either cannot find the words to use or simply wants to “draw down” into themselves in the knowledge that they are not alone.

Listening can therefore be listening to nothing, and that is a valuable thing in its own right. You can show that you are still there, and still listening, by using touch (as above) or by saying things that either need no response or a simple nod or shake of the head. The latter might be just: “Can I get you another cup of tea?”

You must avoid rushing the person into speaking or making gestures that suggest your impatience. If you want to know the time, glance at your watch or clock in a way that is not obvious!

It is possible that this is not the right time for words to be used, and it could be the case that this encounter will need to be ended at some point with nothing having been said. There are many instances in which a person has returned (to the Samaritans for example) having had several long “silent calls” (usually by phone) before being convinced that they can trust the listener. It was the listener’s patience during the silence that created the trust.

Tip 4: Resist the urge to advise

This may seem an odd thing to say, because your friend or relative may have called you for that very reason. They have a problem and want to know what you would advise them to do. However, in cases where listening is required, offering a ready-made solution could be the worst thing you could do.

Very often, the person knows the answer and what they should do, but wants to hear it from someone else. Sometimes this is because they fear, deep down, that the consequences of the action will be bad and they want someone else to blame should this be so. At other times, they just seek reassurance that they are doing the right thing.

The good listener will turn the request for advice back upon the requester. The answer to “What should I do?” is “What do you think you should do?” (maybe not in those exact words, as the circumstances will dictate the correct approach).

Even worse is the urge to offer advice when it is not called for. The listener should never take charge of the conversation with: “If I were you, I would …” The fact is that you are not that other person, so what you would do is completely irrelevant.

There may not be an answer to a particular problem, and there is no point in pretending that there is one. In many cases, listening is about allowing the person to come to terms with a painful situation, in their own time and the way that will best suit them. There is no solution to the problem of bereavement for example, but a good listener can help by being there and by encouraging the person to talk through their feelings.

Incidentally, many people are at a loss about what to say to someone who has lost a loved one. The answer is not to have a “set speech” but to allow the person as much space and time as they need to grieve. Also, don’t be afraid to talk about the person who has died, because remembering the happy times spent together is one of the best ways of coming to terms with the fact that they are no longer there.

Tip 5: Don’t conduct an interview

Listening to someone in distress is a completely different ballgame to trying to get them to give you answers to questions. You may find it difficult to understand what lies at the heart of their problem, but behaving like a policeman or a court lawyer is not the way to find out.

There is a way to get to understand what is going on, but the good listener does this by being endlessly patient and waiting for the answers to come out in their own good time. You can ask questions, but the best way to do this is to turn what the person says back upon them and prod gently for more information. For example:

Friend: I don’t think he loves me any more.

You: You don’t think he loves you any more?

Friend: I’m sure of it.

You: Can you say why?

Friend: He doesn’t want to be with me like he used to.

You: He doesn’t want to be with you? Since when?

And so on. By the way, when asking questions, try to keep them open rather than closed (i.e. avoid those that ask for yes/no answers) and try not to lead the person in directions that might fit your own assessment of the situation but not that of the person in question.

The above tips are far from complete, because listening is a complex and subtle art and there are many variations on the theme. However, attending to these points should certainly help to make you a better listener.

© John Welford

The four colour conjecture

If you have a map of any part of the world, or even one of an imaginary world, what is the smallest number of colours you can use in order to ensure that no two adjacent “territories” will have the same colour?

The answer is four. You can’t do it with three colours, because sooner or later two areas that are next to each other are bound to have the same colour. However, if you allow yourself four colours, it doesn’t matter how intricate your map is, you will always be able to colour it in such a way that any confusion can be avoided.

The next question is, how can you prove it? That is a very different matter, and it took until 1976 for an acceptable proof to be produced. This was done by mathematicians at Urbana, Illinois, who used thousands of possible scenarios and computer modelling to get to their solution. The final proof was nearly 1,000 pages long.

It sounds as though you ought to be able to imagine a map in which only four colours are used but in which there are adjacent territories that have the same colour, but just you try it! It doesn’t matter how convoluted your shapes are, or whether you have several large areas that adjoins dozens of tiny ones, you will never need to be in a situation where the rule is broken.  

If you look at the United States map in the illustration, you will see that most of the map only needs three colours, with the crimson being needed on relatively few occasions – and it would also have been possible to use for orange for Wyoming and blue for Maryland.  However, you can’t use “three and a half” colours so it has to be four!

Of course, if you want to keep your kids quiet on a wet Saturday afternoon, you could always get them to prove the rule the hard way!

© John Welford

Fancy a debate with a computer?

IBM has built a robot called Project Debater, designed to carry out public debates with humans. It has a female voice and it relies on a database of several hundred million articles covering about 100 subjects. It can put forward arguments to defend a point of view and respond to arguments put forward by human debaters, using speech recognition to “listen” to what is being said.

In a recent debate it held its own in a public forum, although it did not win hands down, according to observers. Its delivery was not as good as that of the human debater, but it did convey more information. It was criticized for its speech construction in that sentences did not always flow naturally from one to another.

In order to get Project Debater to construct an argument one must first propose a motion for debate and wait a short time for the robot to search its database for the most telling arguments, which it will assemble into a speech and for which it will sometimes give proper citations.

So should professional debaters, such as British Members of Parliament, be worried that machines will take over their jobs? Or - based on current evidence of what is heard every day in the House of Commons – can we sure that they have not already done so?

© John Welford

The Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

The Serengeti National Park, in northern Tanzania, is an amazing natural resource that is, not surprisingly, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

The Park occupies nearly 15,000 square kilometres that comprise treeless savannah plains and the magnificent Ngorongoro Crater (which has a diameter of 27 kilometres). At the eastern edge of the Serengeti is the Olduvai Gorge where Louis and Mary Leakey made some important discoveries of early hominid remains in the 1950s and 1960s. The name Serengeti means “wide land” in the Masai language.

The stars of the show in the Serengeti are the animals. The population includes a million wildebeest, 150,000 Thompson’s gazelles, 1,000 elephants, 7,000 giraffes and 3,000 lions, as well as 500 different bird species.

The days of big game hunting are fortunately long gone in the Serengeti, although there have been problems associated with illegal poaching of elephants and rhinos. Instead, safari tourism is now a vital source of revenue for Tanzania. The Serengeti has also been a happy hunting ground for makers of wildlife documentaries who have been able to bring to TV screens all over the world their vivid portrayals of African big cats hunting their prey, jackals and vultures performing their clean-up operations, and the lifecycles of elephants, hippos and many other species.

Much has been learned over the years about the behaviour of species because it has been possible to study them in an environment that is both natural and protected. It is now on record, for example, that hippos spend much of the day in water to protect their skins from the hot sun, but emerge at night to feed and may travel as much as ten kilometres to find suitable grazing.

Similarly, the movements of elephants have been studied closely as they migrate in family groups in search of food and water. Given that a fully grown elephant needs to eat around half a ton of vegetation every day, they can cover enormous distances in their travels, especially during the dry season.

As mentioned above, the Serengeti has not been without its problems. Economic crises during the 1970s, coupled with an increasing demand (especially in Asia) for elephant ivory and rhino horn, led to poaching on an almost industrial scale. It was estimated that at one time there were only 100 elephants left in the whole of the Serengeti, and only two rhinoceroses. Fortunately, the situation has improved since then and the populations of these two iconic species have recovered. That said, the problem has not disappeared and park rangers still need to maintain constant vigilance.

It is to be hoped that this wildlife paradise will continue for the foreseeable future to offer sanctuary to its many animal and bird species, some of which have been driven to extinction elsewhere.

© John Welford

The classification of igneous rocks

Igneous rocks are solid forms of magma that has been extruded by volcanic processes. The word “igneous” derives from “ignis”, the Latin for “fire”. Magma is molten rock that rises from deep within the Earth’s crust and which cools and solidifies as it approaches the surface. Igneous rocks can therefore be classified according to the manner in which the cooling took place, and also according to the chemical composition of the magma from which they were formed.

Chemical Composition

Nine elements make up about 99% of all igneous rocks, with the most common compound being silica (silicon dioxide, SiO₂). The rocks can therefore be classified according to the proportion of silica they contain. If this is greater than 65% the rock is said to be “acid”, and if lower than 55% it is “basic”. Rocks between these points are “intermediate”, whereas those with a silica percentage lower than 45% are “ultrabasic”. Where the silica percentage is low, that of other (basic) oxides is high, and vice versa.  Acid rocks are generally lighter in colour and weight than basic rocks.

Examples of rocks of the various types are:

Acid: granite, obsidian

Intermediate: diorite, andesite

Basic: gabbro, basalt

Ultrabasic: peridotite

Cooling of the Magma

Where the magma cools has much to do with the rate at which it cools. Not all magma reaches the surface, and it may therefore cool slowly at some point below the surface. The magma from a single event can cool at different rates depending on how close it gets to the surface, and may therefore produce a wide range of igneous rocks.

Rocks formed from magma that has reached the surface are termed “extrusive” whereas those formed below the surface, and exposed by later erosion or earth movements, are termed “intrusive”.

Cooling magma will produce crystals of nine silicate minerals, each being produced at different temperatures, from olivine to quartz.

The rate of cooling will determine the size of the crystals, such that the longer the process takes, the larger will be the crystals, with some having been found at 40 feet of length in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Rocks formed from very slow cooling of intrusive magma are termed “plutonic” and are compact, coarse-textured and large-crystalled, examples being granite, diorite, gabbro and peridotite.

Rocks formed from rapid cooling at the surface are termed “volcanic”. These contain very small crystals or are glassy in appearance (e.g. obsidian). Non-glassy volcanic rocks include rhyolite, andesite and basalt.

Sometimes magma will penetrate weaknesses in the original rock and cool at a rate that is intermediate between plutonic and volcanic rocks. The magma may cool at different rates as it progresses, thus producing crystals of varying sizes. These are termed “hypabyssal”, of which porphyry (in its various forms) is an example.

The Igneous Rocks Matrix

The two classifications mentioned above, namely according to chemical composition and rate of cooling, cross each other and thus produce a matrix.

We can therefore distinguish the following groups of igneous rocks (with examples; but note that not every logically possible combination is apparent in terms of actual rocks):

Acid plutonic (granite)

Intermediate plutonic (diorite)

Basic plutonic (gabbro)

Ultrabasic plutonic (peridotite)

Acid hypabyssal (granophyre)

Intermediate hypabyssal (porphyries)

Basic hypabyssal (dolerite)

Acid volcanic (rhyolite, obsidian)

Intermediate volcanic (andesite)

Basic volcanic (basalt)

Mention should also be made of “pyroclasts”, which are rocks formed during volcanic eruptions from rough balls of material that are spat out and comprise a mixture of lava, cinders, ash and dust.

© John Welford