MORE STUFF MORE IDEAS FROM THE ‘JOURNEY’ It is hard work for John and I to discuss the meaning of the ‘journey’ as our brains work so differently – they are not surprisingly gendered but gender difference is always a surprise. John looks for ‘facts’ and I look for ‘significances’ though that ‘difference’ is perhaps crude as explanation. We were trying to find similarities in our various physical experiences of our journey. John says there are more differences between campsites within a country than between campsites in all the countries we have visited. I suggested that humans have been making journeys and choosing campsites for millennia and the conjunction of road, river and plain is desirable and explains what campsites, cities and settlements provide for us.Campsites=settlements=cities – we commented on the fact that the conjunction of roads rivers and flat places seem to be chosen for all kinds of human habitation. We disagreed about the significance of the river to the settlement nowadays. I think that humans are attracted to rivers even today though the link between the river and drinking water and washing facilities is not apparent. I think that our universal preference for peeing into water systems that empty into the sea is hard-wired into the human brain from primeval times. We are water creatures first of all and love rivers, lakes, and the sea. Rivers cleanse us, carry away our waste, but also give us an eternal home in the encompassing oceans. What has struck me as well as the importance of rivers, is the fact that many roads we use now are very old – that perhaps animals made them before humans begun to evolve civilisations. It was animals that showed us the way through mountains and along river banks to safe places to camp. African roads through the mountains are supposed to follow the migratory routes of elephants who also unerringly found the best fords across the great rivers. We are animals first. What shocks me is the blood spilt again and again at the same significant places on the globe. Those are the places that sit strategically at crossroads, in passes, on rivers, on trade routes, where watchtowers can be set, or bastions made. You would think that with all the space in the world that there would be enough places to live without fighting for them but no, somehow the significant places are the ones we need as well as want. Again and again people ascribe to places qualities of goodness or evil as if the place created the events – perhaps it is true that we are subject to geography and the mix of dirt and water that is a human dictates our behaviour more than we would like to acknowledge.
