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Friday, February 25, 2011

Traditional textile (ulos)


A long time ago before people knew Batak textiles made out, ulos are everyday wear.When men wear top called "Hande, Hande" while the bottom is called "singkot" then the head covering is called "the ropes" or "sizzle."
Bia used women, the lower chest to the limit is called "Haen", to cover pungung called "Hoba-Hoba" and when used in the form of a scarf called a "ampe
-ampe" and used as a head covering called a "saong".
If a woman was holding a child, back cover is called "hohop-hohop" is a tool for holding so-called '"parompa".
Until now a tradition to dress this way we can still see Tapanuli inland areas.
Not all Batak ulos can be used in everyday life. For example ulos jugia, live yeast, yeast Hotang and runjat. Usually are stored and only used at certain times.

The process of making Batak ulos:

For the layman feels very unique. Ulos basic material in general is the same kind of yarn that is woven from cotton. What distinguishes a ulos is the manufacturing process. It is a measure of determining the value of a ulos.

To give basic colors of yarn ulos, a type of plant indigo (salaon) is inserted into a pot of soil that has been filled with water. The plant was soaked (digon-gon) for days until gatahnya out, then squeezed and the pulp discarded. The result was a black liquid bluish-called "itom".

Pot soil (palabuan) filled with rain water collected on a stone groove (AEK ni nanturge) mixed with lime water to taste. Then the black liquid that had been inserted bluish, then stir until dissolved. This is called "manggaru". The depth of the fluid is dyed yarn.
Before dyed, the yarn wound around the first of other threads on the portion-specific portion according to the desired color, then dyeing process starts over and over again. This process takes a very long time and even months and there is a defeat there are up to so many.

Having achieved the expected color, yarn was then plated with water sludge ashes mixed with water, then cooked until boiling until earlier thread looks shiny. This is called "mar-sigira". Usually done in the morning on the edge once or dipinggiran river / lake.

When color is expected to be mature enough, winding yarn and then opened to "diunggas" for yarn to be strong. Yarn soaked into the pot containing the rice to soak the entire thread. Done diunggas, dried yarn.
The thread was dry rolled (dihulhul) every kind of color.
After the thread is complete in the volume of each type of color required further work is "mangani". The finished yarn is then entered Diani weaving process.
Batak ulos If we look carefully, it would appear that a relatively primitive way of making a very high artistic merit.

As already stated above, Batak ulos have the same raw material. The difference is the manufacturing poses have a certain level. For example, for the virgin, who is learning to weave only be allowed to make ulos "parompa" is called "mallage" (ulos used for carrying children).
This level is measured by the number of sticks used to give the desired color motif.High level is if she has been able to use the seven fruit stick, or called "marsipitu lilies." Concerned have been considered quite able to weave all kinds of Batak ulos.

Type Ulos :
1. Jugia Ulos
2. Yeast Life ulos
3. Yeast Hotang
4. Sadum ulos
5. Runjat ulos
6. Sibolang ulos
7. Ulos-suri Suri Ganjang
8. Mangiring ulos
9. Star Maratur
10. Sitoluntuho-Bolean
11. Uos tipping
12. Lobu ulos-Lobu

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Saturday, February 5, 2011

Brazil reveals 'uncontacted' Amazon tribe

Hi Friends,
I'd like to share with you about 'uncontacted' Amazon tribe in Brazil. Some of the amazing things I'm going to talk about are their area of living, taboos and livelihood — Brazil's government agreed to release stunning photos of Amazon Indians firing arrows at an airplane so that the world can better understand the threats facing one of the few tribes still living in near-total isolation from civilization, officials said Friday.
Anthropologists have known about the group for some 20 years but released the images now to call attention to fast-encroaching development near the Indians' home in the dense jungles near Peru.

Shot in late April and early May, the foundation's photos show about a dozen Indians, mostly naked and painted red, wielding bows and arrows outside six grass-thatched huts. Meirelles told The Associated Press in a phone interview that anthropologists know next to nothing about the group, but suspect it is related to the Tano and Aruak tribes. Brazil's National Indian Foundation believes there may be as many as 68 "uncontacted" groups around Brazil, although only 24 have been officially confirmed.

Turning backs on civilization
Anthropologists say almost all of these tribes know about western civilization and have sporadic contact with prospectors, rubber tappers and loggers, but choose to turn their backs on civilization, usually because they have been attacked.

Brazilian officials once tried to contact such groups. Now they try to protectively isolate them. The four tribes monitored by Meirelles include perhaps 500 people who roam over an area of about 1.6 million acres. He said that over the 20 years he has been working in the area, the number of "malocas," or grass-roofed huts, has doubled, suggesting that the policy of isolation is working and that populations are growing. Remaining isolated, however, gets more complicated by the day.

The last thing I want to share with you is, I'd like to talk about their livelihood.

Closing in and converging on

Loggers are closing in on the Indians' homeland — Brazil's environmental protection agency said Friday it had shut down 28 illegal sawmills in Acre state, where these tribes are located. And logging on the Peruvian border has sent many Indians fleeing into Brazil, Meirelles said.

A new road being paved from Peru into Acre will likely bring in hordes of poor settlers. Other Amazon roads have led to 30 miles of rain forest being cut down on each side, scientists say. While "uncontacted" Indians often respond violently to contact — Meirelles caught an arrow in the face from some of the same Indians in 2004 — the greater threat is to the Indians.

"First contact is often completely catastrophic for "uncontacted" tribes. It's not unusual for 50 percent of the tribe to die in months after first contact," said Miriam Ross, a campaigner with the Indian rights group Survival International. "They don't generally have immunity to diseases common to outside society. Colds and flu that aren't usually fatal to us can completely wipe them out."

Survival International estimates about 100 tribes worldwide have chosen to avoid contact, but said the only truly uncontacted tribe is the Sentinelese, who live on North Sentinel island off the coast of India and shoot arrows at anyone who comes near.

Last year, the Metyktire tribe, with about 87 members, was discovered in a densely jungled portion of the 12.1-million-acre Menkregnoti Indian reservation in the Brazilian Amazon, when two of its members showed up at another tribe's village.

OK guys, maybe you want to know more about them. Do you have any questions?

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Friday, January 7, 2011

The Sphinx-Egypt


The greatest monumental sculpture in the ancient world, the Sphinx is carved out of a single ridge of stone 240 feet (73 meters) long and 66 feet (20 meters) high. The head, which has a markedly different texture from the body, and shows far less severe erosion, is a naturally occurring outcrop of harder stone. To form the lower body of the Sphinx, enormous blocks of stone were quarried from the base rock (and these blocks were then used in the core masonry of the temples directly in front and to the south of the Sphinx). While a few stubborn Egyptologists still maintain that the Sphnix was constructed in the 4th Dynasty by the Pharaoh Chephren (Khafre), an accumulating body of evidence, both archaeological and geological, indicates that the Sphinx is far older than the 4th Dynasty, and was only restored by Chephren during his reign. There are no inscriptions on the Sphinx, or on any of the temples connected to it that, that offer evidence of construction by Chepren, yet the so-called 'Inventory Stele' (uncovered on the Giza plateau in the 19th century) tells that the Pharaoh Cheops - Chephren's predecessor - ordered a temple built alongside the Sphinx, meaning of course that the Sphinx was already there, and thus could not have been constructed by Chephren.
A much greater age for the Sphinx has been suggested by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, based upon geological considerations. Schwaller de Lubicz observed, and recent geologists (such as Robert Schoch, Professor of Geology at Boston University) have confirmed, that the extreme erosion on the body of the Sphinx could not be the result of wind and sand, as has been universally assumed, but rather was the result of water. Geologists agree that in the distant past Egypt was subjected to severe flooding. Wind erosion cannot take place when the body of the Sphinx is covered by sand, and the Sphinx has been in this condition for nearly all of the last five thousand years - since the alleged time of its 4th Dynasty construction. Furthermore, if wind-blown sand had indeed caused the deep erosion of the Sphinx, we would expect to find evidence of such erosion on other Egyptian monuments built of similar materials and exposed to the wind for a similar length of time. Yet the fact of the matter is, that even on structures that have had more exposure to the wind-blown sand, there are minimal effects of erosion, the sand having done little more than scour clean the surface of the dressed stones.

Additional evidence for the great age of the Sphinx may perhaps be indicated by the astronomical significance of its shape, being that of a lion. Roughly every two thousand years (2160 to be exact), and because of the precession of the equinoxes, the sun on the vernal equinox rises against the stellar background of a different constellation. For the past two thousand years that constellation has been Pisces the Fish, symbol of the Christian age. Prior to the age of Pisces it was the age of Aries the Ram, and before that it was the age of Taurus the Bull.

It is interesting to note that during the first and second millennia BC, approximately the Age of Aries, ram-oriented iconography was common in Dynastic Egypt, while during the Age of Taurus the Bull-cult arose in Minoan Crete. Perhaps the builders of the Sphinx likewise used astrological symbolism in designing their monumental sculpture. The geological findings discussed above indicate that the Sphinx seems to have been sculpted sometime before 10,000 BC, and this period coincides with the Age of Leo the Lion, which lasted from 10,970 to 8810 BC.

Further support for this vast age of the sphinx comes from a surprising sky-ground correlation proven by sophisticated computer programs such as Skyglobe 3.6. These computer programs are able to generate precise pictures of any portion of the night sky as seen from different places on earth at any time in the distant past or future. Graham Hancock explains in Heaven’s Mirror that, “computer simulations show that in 10,500 BC the constellation of Leo housed the sun on the spring equinox - i.e. an hour before dawn in that epoch Leo would have reclined due east along the horizon in the place where the sun would soon rise. This means that the lion-bodied Sphinx, with its due-east orientation, would have gazed directly on that morning at the one constellation in the sky that might reasonably be regarded as its own celestial counterpart.”

The foregoing discussion means that the monumental sculpture of the Sphinx may have existed at a time when (according to prevailing archaeological theory) there were no civilizations on earth and humans had not yet evolved beyond hunter-gatherer lifestyles. This matter is so radical that scholarly reticence in acknowledging it is understandable. If the Sphinx is indeed this old then contemporary assumptions regarding the development of civilization must be entirely reworked and the mystifying question of Plato's Atlantis should be given very serious consideration.


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