UNESCO Courier articles from April 1998

UNESCO Courier archives from April 1998

The first stirrings of creation. (rock art)
April 1, 1998... Rock art, found in almost all the world's regions, is a mine of information about early man's intellectual development Prehistoric rock art is by far the largest body of evidence we have of humanity's artistic, cognitive and cultural...

The writing on the wall. (prehistoric rock paintings)
April 1, 1998... Prehistoric rock paintings and engravings may be a language with its own grammar and syntax All over the world, in more than 120 countries, groups of human beings have left behind examples of rock paintings or carvings. Rock seems to have been...

The prehistoric imagination. (rock art)
April 1, 1998... Prehistoric art combines unity of subject and technique with an astonishing symbolic diversity in different cultures and periods Prehistoric art was an art closely bound up with the lives of the hunters and herdsmen who created it, an art of...

'For Australian Aborigines, rock painting is a title to their land.'
April 1, 1998... Tim Fox talks to three Australian Aborigines invited to a UNESCO Forum on rock art The Aborigines of Australia have always been hunter-gatherers, living in harmony with their surroundings. They believe that through ritual they help sustain the...

The shaman's journey. (implication of shamanism to the understanding of rock paintings)
April 1, 1998... Shamanism may provide a clue to the meaning of rock art With very few exceptions (in some parts of Australia, for example) rock art all over the world is a fossil art. Its creators disappeared long ago, and with them went the myths and beliefs...

An endangered art. (rock art)
April 1, 1998... Rock art, whether the kind found deep inside caves or out in the open, constitutes a vital feature of the history of humanity. Fragile and thus exceptionally precious, its survival bears witness to the ancient human urge to leave footsteps in the...

An open-air museum in the Sahara. (rock art in Messak plateau in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya)
April 1, 1998... Hunter-gatherers have left a vivid collection of petroglyphs on the Libyan plateau of Messak "The rock art of the Sahara is one of humanity's most astonishing books of hours. There may be different, older ones, but there are few that are so...

Rock art of sub-Saharan Africa: a thumbnail guide.(Cover Story)
April 1, 1998... Africa has a vast heritage of rock art which three main factors have helped to preserve: belief systems, inaccessibility, and secrecy. The sites are generally located in highlands and comprise rock shelters, caves and smooth open rock surfaces....

The ethics of the future. (UNESCO's advocacy of preserving human cooperation and the culture of peace)
April 1, 1998... "Our inheritance was not willed to us". With these words, the French poet Rene Char reminded humanity, amid the ruins of the Second World War, of its basic responsibility towards history. Thus, a generation of survivors took up the cause of...

Cuba's biosphere reserves.
April 1, 1998... The Soviet-made jeep, an aged vehicle with many thousands of kilometres on the clock, turned off the motorway leading from the Cuban capital, Havana, and headed for Playa Giron, on the Zapata peninsula. This was where the Third National Seminar...

Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the gaon of Vilna. (Jewish spiritual leader)
April 1, 1998... A great 18th-century Jewish scholar and spiritual leader who marked the thinking of eastern Europe's Jewish communities Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, who was born in 1720 in Seletz, near Grodno, was considered to be a genius from his childhood....

It's rumba time! (includes related article on a music festival celebrating the abolition of slavery in France)
April 1, 1998... The deportation of million of Africans to the Americas during the dark centuries of the slave trade was one of the worst tragedies of history. It also gave rise to an extraordinary process of cultural exchange. The story of the rumba shows this...

'Poetry is on the side of love.' (quote from Bosnia's poet Izet Sarajlic)(Interview)
April 1, 1998... * Poetry has been part of your life for half a century. How do you see this art-form today? Izet Sarajlic: I'm sorry to see that poetry has lost the place it should occupy in people's lives, Poets are partly responsible for this, but the...