Saturday 20 October 2007

What is Historical Trekking?

Historical Trekking (also called Period Trekking, Experimental Archeology, or Experiential Anthropology) is a hobby where we as 21st century people attempt a task someone in our chosen time period would have done, using only the tools and equipment they would have used, or the knowledge we have gleaned from research. Whether you are interested in the Longhunter of the 18th Century and you are out on a hunt using only period clothing and flintlock, or if your interest lies in the Mountainman of the 19th Century, and you want to use period traps to try and catch beaver, even if your interest is in cooking, and you limit yourself to the kitchen-ware and foods of your chosen period and a bed of coals for heat, yet you never leave your house, you are involved with the hobby of Historical Trekking. This hobby gives us more insight into the daily lives of the people in our chosen time period, and helps to make us better historians.

Indira days running out..

It began with a decision to quit ISB&M over ideological issues...i joined Indira approximately an year back. The journey has had its ups and downs, bright and dull moments but it has been a journey to remember. College days are always worth savouring; I spent most of my time playing football with Arab students or sweating it out in the gym...or as Dheeraj ( my dear classmate) would have added 'Typing a complaint letter!' I can't forget entering the director's cabin for the first time and seeing Mr Bahl there...the man who had taken my interview at ISB&M. As they say....life takes a full 360 degrees turn! There were many firsts...the first class mates I met (Rohit and Natasha), the first study related conversation with Chetna etc. Chetna...has had quite a role to play from being my permanent group member in the second sem to providing me her notes before the exams...to telling me what others had to say about me.(her last input pertaining to the BAJM juniors turned out to be quite handy!)

Staying away from home has been sometimes boring but because I was in Pune, I had enormous opportunity to travel and Pune is quite strategically located. From Shivaji's forts to biking to Ajanta & Ellora with Rahul. That was quite a journey....Rahul on tuesday heard me say 'be ready on saturday, we're going out' and on saturday morning I tell him that we'll be riding 400 kms one way to Ajanta and Ellora caves! (cant forget the Burhanpur board!!)

As an institute, i don't think there are too many better institutes than Indira but I may dare say that doesn't apply to my classmates! There are several things which will go down memory lane...like Sushil Bahl, internships, late night table tennis...and the various treks. How can I not mention all the bunked lectures, the walkouts, the fights and arguments or winning the Mock UN with Manish..

Arjit's loss has been an irreplacable one..a wound that perhaps even time can't heal...On the brighter side, I've found younger siblings in Dheeraj and Nidhi who will surely continue to be a part of my life post Indira. Their love and support has been unfailing.. Milan paaji and his alternate day tactics also need a special mention.

But now that things are drawing to a close.... Indira has given me two rays of sunshine before the dusk sets in...TCS being the first one via which I can be a part of Pune and Indira for a long time to come and the second being one which will cement Indira's place in my life forever...any guesses??

Oldest Known Reptile Tracks Found

Newly found fossilized footprints show that reptiles walked the Earth a bit earlier than scientists believed.
An unknown animal created the fossilized prints seen above while strolling along the muddy bottom of a nearly dry riverbed.
The tracks were found in the same region of New Brunswick, Canada, where the oldest-known reptile skeletons were unearthed 150 years ago.
But the ancient footprints are preserved in sediments that lay more than half a mile (nearly a kilometer) deeper than those 315-million-year-old bones—which suggests they were made by an animal that lived one to three million years earlier.
Howard Falcon-Lang from the U.K.'s University of Bristol said it was lucky that his team even found the fossil. The slab of rock had fallen from a remote stretch of sea cliffs, and a low sun shining across the surface cast revealing shadows.
"This kind of work was a bit like a crime scene investigation," Falcon-Lang added. "We had the footprints, and we needed to know what kind of [animal] left the prints behind."
Distinctive digits told the tale. Because the tracks showed five fingers and some evidence of scales, they had to have been made by a reptile, the team reports in a recent issue of the Journal of the Geological Society of London.
The find helps fill a critical gap between the oldest reptile fossils and those of an amphibian ancestor that lived some 20 million years earlier, Falcon-Lang said.
The prints also seem to confirm theories of how reptiles evolved to live and breed on land, eventually inhabiting terrestrial ecosystems that amphibians could not.
"The expectation we have is that reptiles, once they evolved, would be moving into dry environments," Falcon-Lang said. "That's exactly what these tracks show us."