City Words
#Weaving
Rain
Thinking is weaving,
Writing is weaving, nesting
Birds singing working.
CityWords
Plein Air
Oh, throw a pebble,
The old pond makes a ripple...
With a brush, you too.
DavidDavid
🎶like, up first, algo feed dropped reel of little yellow birds making nests...maybe too real...another AI, artificial intelligence enhancement...throw a pebble, the pond makes the ripple...with a brush, the pond ripples on your canvas...a 5x7x5 there...?...hmmph...maybe too real as it is really annoying how entertaining the enhancements are!...and AI just begun...the comments are crazy...usual stuff, with a few " this is AI"..."this is AI slop"...mixed in with the golly gees...and it is a golly gee, a curio, how birds make nests...the making, and the learning...we learned basket weaving from watching birds make nests...?...how can birds learn to make nests?...maybe my "provenance" search can say...
✨️provenance of basket weaving provenance of bird nest weaving
provenance of basket weaving provenance of bird nest weaving
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The origins of human basket weaving may trace back to early hominins observing and mimicking the intricate, hanging structures built by weaver birds millions of years ago. [1, 2]
Provenance of Bird Nest Weaving
Evolutionary instinct: Avian nest-building is an innate, genetically driven behavior perfected over millions of years, famously mastered by family groups like the Ploceidae (weaver birds). [1]
Technique and materials: Birds use their beaks and feet to perform hundreds of precise locking, knotting, and interlacing actions, utilizing flexible grasses, palm fibers, and spider silk. [1, 2]
Natural engineering: Species like the Baya weaver construct pendulous, durable suspended structures featuring reinforced rings, entry tunnels, and false compartments. [1]
Provenance of Human Basket Weaving
Early inspiration: Anthropological hypotheses suggest early hominins (such as Homo habilis) co-existed with prolific avian builders around two million years ago, likely drawing conceptual inspiration from visible nests in the landscape. [1, 2]
Archaeological timeline: While fine perishable basketry leaves few direct fossils from the early Paleolithic, regional traditions like those in the American Southwest trace secure physical artifacts back at least 2,000 years, utilizing local plants like yucca, willow, and bear grass. [1, 2, 3]
Cultural significance: Indigenous weaving traditions, such as those practiced by Karuk master weavers, pass down generational knowledge, cosmology, and deep technical relationships with fire-adapted local flora. [1, 2]
If you would like, I can dive deeper into:
🎶"conceptual inspiration from the landscape"...fump...that's
enhancement...throw a pebble, the pond makes the ripple...with a brush, the pond ripples on your canvas
weaving is braiding...
✨️provenance of braiding
Hair braiding originated over 30,000 years ago in ancient Africa and across various global cultures. [1, 2]
Ancient Origins
Earliest Artifacts: The Venus of Willendorf figurine from around 25,000–30,000 years ago features carved patterns that many experts interpret as braided hair. [1, 2]
🎶been there in old post...
✨️provenance of braided mosaics
Braided or guilloche mosaic borders originated in ancient Greece and became widespread across the Roman Empire as a standard decorative framing technique. [1, 2]
History and EvolutionAncient Roots: Interlaced and braided patterns, often referred to as guilloche or plaits, first appeared structurally in late Roman art and Hellenistic floor mosaics. [1]
Hellenistic Period: Early precursors of braided motifs appeared in Greek-influenced regions by the 4th century BCE, such as the famous Beauty of Durrës mosaic, which highlights elaborate braided hair.
Roman Expansion: By the 2nd to 4th centuries CE, geometric braided ribbon borders became a hallmark of Roman villas across Europe, North Africa, and Anatolia (such as the Iznik Roman mosaics) to frame central mythological or natural scenes. [1, 2]
Medieval Migration Period: The technique evolved into broader interlace patterns found in Insular, Celtic, and Byzantine art. [1]
Early Beginnings (3rd Millennium BCE)
Mesopotamia: The earliest known examples appeared in temples and palaces, such as clay cones embedded in mud walls in Uruk, and decorative works featuring shell and limestone.
Materials: Early artisans used locally sourced items like rounded pebbles, bone, shells, and stones pressed into mud or bitumen. [1, 2, 3]
Evolution in Classical Antiquity
Ancient Greece (4th Century BCE): Greeks transformed pebble mosaics into a refined art form, creating geometric patterns and detailed mythological scenes using uniform natural pebbles. [1, 2]
Ancient Rome (1st Century BCE onward): Romans adopted and expanded Greek techniques, developing opus tessellatum—using cut stone, marble, and glass tiles called tesserae (individual mosaic pieces) to decorate public spaces and elite villas. [1, 2, 3]
Medieval and Byzantine
🎶teasing AI...and...
✨️people mimicked natural tesselations with mosaic art
Why Mosaics Mirror Nature
Tessellation in the Wild: Nature builds repeating geometric structures to maximize strength or efficiency, such as basalt columns or cellular plant tissues. [1]
The Human Echo: Ancient and modern artisans use tesserae (individual mosaic pieces) to replicate these interlocking networks on walls and floors.
Historical Examples:Islamic geometric art uses complex, repeating star polygons and tilework (zellige) that mirror mathematical symmetry found in natural crystal structures. [1]
Organic Flow: Artists like Antoni Gaudí used broken ceramic tiles (trencadís) to mimic the fluid, non-uniform tessellations seen in waves, bones, and reptile skin.
+4
A viral hypothesis suggests that ancient Egyptians used heated or molten natron (sodium carbonate) to chemically etch, soften, or crack hard granite—such as at the Unfinished Obelisk in Aswan—though mainstream archaeology views this as speculative and unproven compared to traditional pounding and abrasive methods. [1, 2, 3]
The Natron Theory and Granite
The Concept: Proponents suggest that when natron is heated to around 851°C (1562°F) or higher, it melts and reacts with the quartz and silica content in granite. [1, 2, 3]
Proposed Mechanism: The molten salt allegedly helps break down or "soften" the crystalline structure of the stone, potentially explaining smooth scoop marks and depressions found in ancient quarries. [1, 2, 3]
Geopolymer Connection: Some online theories further extend this idea to claim that the resulting reaction produced water glass, which could then be mixed with crushed granite to cast artificial stone blocks rather than carving them. [1, 2]
Here is why that metaphor works so beautifully:
• A Mosaic of Stone: It is made of over 2.3 million individual stone blocks, precisely cut and fitted together like a giant, three-dimensional mosaic.A Woven Structure: The interior chambers, shafts, and structural layers are engineered to distribute immense weight, interlocking much like a tightly woven basket to survive millennia of earthquakes.A Sacred Nest: Ultimately, it was built as a monumental "nest" or resting place—a launching pad designed to protect the pharaoh's body and safely shepherd his soul into the afterlife.Are you writing a poem, story, or description using this concept? I would love to help you develop it further if you share what you are working on!
If you would like, I can dive deeper into:
The Lesson from Birds
Shared Architecture: Both a bird nest and a woven basket use tension, friction, and local fibers to create a sturdy home or container.
Natural Instinct to Craft: Just as a bird knows which twig bends without breaking, master weavers hold a deep, physical memory of plant behavior.
The Echo: Long before human looms, animals shaped their environments through interlocking materials. Human craft is an extension of this primal ecosystem habit.
The Language of the Land
Reciprocal Care: Indigenous traditions do not just take from plants; they tend them. Burning small patches of land helps basket sedge grow straight and strong.
Material Knowledge: Weavers know the exact season to harvest willow, hazel, or pine root based on water flow and sun exposure.
Living Archive: The materials themselves carry the history of weather, fire, and soil in their grains.
Weaving as Cosmology
Mapping the Universe: The patterns on a basket often map sacred geography, rivers, star paths, or the backbone of the world.
Order from Chaos: Weaving turns wild, chaotic brush into a sacred, ordered object that holds food, water, and babies.
Spiritual Continuity: Passing down a stitch passes down a worldview, linking the ancestors who gathered the roots to the hands shaping them today.
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