Lost libraries of Timbuktu February 15, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , 2 commentsOn Thursday, I found another little gem on that treasure trove that justifies the licence fee, BBC4. It did exactly what TV ought to do, and showed me something I never imagined existed.
If you live in London Timbuktu is the back of beyond, but if your world is North West Africa, and your culture and trade look to the North African coast, Egypt, Arabia and west to Ghana, then Timbuktu is is the centre of it all. It’s on an important river linked by overland trading routes through the Sahara, and in the 15th century was a major centre of Islamic scholarship.
Over the years, manuscripts were written or brought here, and bookselling was a major industry. When European explorers came and during the disruptions of modern times, the locals sensibly hid them away from light-fingered collectors, so, rather than gracing the museums of Europe they are still kept in the hot but very dry climate of the region.
And there are thousands upon thousands of them, written in Arabic script but many languages. The look on a Malian conservator’s face as he talks about finding ancient writing in his own language says it all. This is such an important treasure, only just being opened up to scholars.
The BBC4 documentary ‘The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu’ should be available on iplayer for another week or so.
Another Reason to Pay My Licence Fee October 28, 2008
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , 1 comment so farThe BBC should get rid of Russell Brand and Johnathan Ross, and spend more money on programmes such as the wonderful series of maths documentaries they’ve been running on BBC4. That’s right, maths.
If you’re in the UK, pop over to iplayer and pick up ‘The Story of Maths‘ for a 4 episode trip through the history of maths from the Greeks, via the middle east to eighteenth century Europe and beyond. They’re presented by Marcus du Sautoy, who has apparently just been appointed to Richard Dawkins’ Chair for the Public Understanding of Science*, and a very interesting geek he is too.
But it’s not just this series. A couple of weeks ago, we had ‘High Anxieties: The Mathematics of Chaos’, introducing chaos theory and its implications. Its easy to think of science presenting a definite, mechanistic view of the world, but chaos theory suggests that not only are some things unknown, but perhaps unknowable. In a sufficiently complex system such as the weather a very small change in initial conditions can send the system into unpredictable territory where it may be impossible to predict the outcome. Is that what’s happening to the climate? Or to financial markets? James Lovelock thinks the greenhouse effect is already irreversible and we watch the stock market gyrate wildly. Who needs gods and demons when this is around?
*hat-tip to Ben Goldacre on his del.icio.us feed
