Today Is Not Over Yet

In today’s fast paced society, we are all about the newest electronic device.  From cell phones to laptops, we need everything small, convenient, and fast.  In the past GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) devices were for the real adventures, or the really lost. Now, though, most people have GPS in their phones, making road maps nearly obsolete.  No more trying to get a glimpse at the map while driving or figuring out which highway your on, simply type in your beginning and ending destinations and the GPS will tell you exactly where to go.

We are quite fortunate to have such accurate navigational tools.  Early discoverers such as Christopher Columbus did not even have an accurate world globe or map.  To navigate, they used the stars as well as a navigational system called Dead Reckoning.  Dead Reckoning involved throwing a rope that was knotted every few feet into the water and measuring the time passed with an hour glass.  This helped them calculate how fast and how far they had traveled. They would also use a compass to determine the direction they were heading and make sure they were on the right course.  Perhaps with a GPS, Columbus would have made it to India after all.

There was a time, before satellites and space ships, that scientists had to study space and the plants from the surface of earth.  They would use telescopes and complex mathematic equations to calculate the distance of each of the plants from earth and the speed at which the earth is rotating.

So the next time your GPS acts up and you wind up in the middle of nowhere or you scoff at a well meaning map gift, remember the great lengths others before us had to go to discover new places and things and be grateful for our sometimes pain-in-the-neck technology.

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Whether we are looking at a road map, a world map, or a world globe, it is hard to imagine the earth as anything but round. Before modern science, airplanes, and space shuttles, the most popular belief was that the earth is flat or disk-like. However, despite the popularity of this theory, there were some that were ahead of their time in believing the earth is round.

One such believer was the Greek scholar Crates of Mallus. He created the first globe in 150 BC, much like the one that sits on the back of the popular sculpture Famese Atlas that is on display at the Naples Museum in Naples, Italy. Celestial globes of the Old World detailing the positions of stars and comets began appearing during the Middle Ages. It was not until 1507 that the first globe with the Americas on it was made by German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller.

The theory that the earth is round was not the only battle to be fought. There were many, especially high ranking political and religious figures, that believed the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun and planets revolved around earth. Great scholars such as Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus were persecuted for suggesting that perhaps the sun was the center of the universe. It was not until Sir Isaac Newton began to develop theories about gravity nearly 200 years later that people began to accept heliocentric theory.

Despite their ancient origins, globes offer a far more accurate view of the earth. Each of the countries is more accurately sized and shaped in relation to other countries. It also gives us a more realistic view of what our earth looks like without distortion. So the next time you look at a globe, remember the battles that were fought to make it.

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The first director of the botanical garden in Cape Town, the Kirstenbosch Garden, was Harold Pearson.  Pearson is buried in what is one of the most famous reserves of the world, surrounded by the indigenous fauna and flora of Table Mountain. There is a grave marker in the shape of a Celtic cross that reads…”If you see his monument, look around”…which is poetry inscribed in granite.  The garden was founded and constructed in 1913, and is filled with trees and plants native to the country, with water from the Liesbeek River flowing throughout.  The natural forests are on either side of the slopes of the mountain range, leaving the area just about half cultivated and half natural reserve.  Just outside of the gardens, many Cape Town five star hotels offer tours and maps of and for the gardens, and throughout the year this remains one of the top tourist destinations in the country.

The garden is a live display that features more that four thousand of the twenty thousand species of flora that is indigenous to the country.  This makes up fifty percent of the flora for the entire Peninsula.  In the central part of the garden, the cultivated flora and fauna are set up in a pattern similar to that of the spokes of a wheel.  This is sectioned off with various themes, such as the Cycad Amphitheater.  The Cycad hosts the fossils of the living South African world.  Many famous species such the silver trees in the Protea Garden, exist here growing up and on the sides of the mountain slopes.  Part of the “spokes” include a rock garden, named for the garden’s first curator JV Mathews, which is also the grounds for the various succulents that grow throughout the country and are so indigenous to all desert environments.  While traveling throughout the city of Cape Town, this is a day trip that is so well worth, for the beauty and for the education and understanding of the natural culture of this incredible country.

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