How nature became "man’s" pet/ hobby/life source/ and nightmare all at once.

The pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, Big Ben in London, Eifel Tower in Paris, Washington Monument in Washington, DC, or the Taj Mahall in India. Man makes his mark wherever he goes.

Eifel Tower

Taj Mahall

For centuries man has been doing just this, but maybe I should clarify “man” - Western man. Nature is something to be feared, to be changed, or to retreat to when in need of spiritual release. Think about it…

Greeks/ Romans Myths – Charybdis was once a nymph-daughter of Poseidon and Gaia who flooded lands for her father's underwater kingdom until Zeus (or in some cases by Circa) turned her into a monster and have her suck in and out water three times an day (the tides). She lived in a cave at one side of the Strait of Messina, opposite the monster Scylla (sea monster), the two of them forming a dangerous threat to passing ships.

American Folklore- Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is purportedly an ape-like creature that inhabits forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Bigfoot is usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid. This ape-man draws plenty of media attention, and though presented as hoax and folklore still makes people more cautious about entering certain forests.

French Tales– The Beast of Gévaudan is a name given to man-eating wolf-like animals alleged to have terrorized the former province of Gévaudan in the Mountains in south-central France from 1764 to 1767. There were always said to be eye-witnesses. Women, children, and eventually men were discouraged by their community and official guardsmen to go into forests or high grass during this time period. The beast was also said to have connections to Satan and therefore everyone should be attending Mass and services as often as possible.

Mexican Folklore – The chupacabras is a legendary cryptid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas. It is associated more recently with sightings of an allegedly unknown animal in Puerto Rico (where these sightings were first reported), Mexico, and the United States, especially in the latter's Latin American communities. The name comes from the animal's reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats.

All of these cultures were scared – to some extent – to venture into nature and leave the civilized world at their backs. They created stories and myths that not only instilled a fear of nature into its citizens, but also blamed nature for all of the deaths that somehow occurred in nature, therein giving it an all around negative connotation.

This ignorance and fear stems from a lack of knowledge about the environment that they were living in. When housing became easy, and the food source changed from personal livestock and agriculture to people obtaining their necessities from market places and others, western society as a whole (any of the different societies) gradually forgot about how to coexist with the land, what it meant to plant/ harvest your own food, and the mutually determining relationship between Nature and Culture.

Case and Point: The Kayapó.

Researcher Darrel Posey discusses the indigenous people’s (Kayapó) management of the land, and recognizes that the forest patches are often in very close vicinity to villages, initially estimating that about 75% of those patches are manmade. He writes about how the Kayapó create mosaic forests that actually mimic nature (biomimicry). The forests rely on these people for their great biodiversity and the people need the forest for basic necessities.

BBC Article including the picture above

They are coeval (University of Washington - Professor Peña’s term) – they grew and developed together, balancing out.

They too created myths – however these, though still considered“stories” were simply a way of translating real, factual information to the general public (being studied in Ethobiology) instead of legitimately stating fiction as fact based on loose accounts by many people that were probably incredibly similar to the game “telephone” in terms of dependability.

The Kayápo people believed in a metaphysical eel, a sacred entity know as “Kr’yak.” This eel was said to have frequented certain ponds or streams along the Xingu River during certain times of year and while it occupied the water, no fisherman would fish there. The times during which this sacred eel occupied the water coincided with the spawning season of native fish species. The lesson to be learned from this story is that just because a group of people does not use the “language” of conservation biology does not meant that they are ignorant of relationships between organisms in their environment or that they don’t have their own reasons/ methods for conservation of their “place.”

Why does the typical “western man,” or western society in general fear nature and desire control over instead of cooperation with? Because they do not understand it; they forgot about that possibility.

Stephanie