BEGUES, TAKING CARE OF ENVIRONMENT & PEOPLE

Today, The Grandma has finished her formation with Sara in Begues.

 

It has been a great pleasure meeting this wonderful woman, and learning a lot from her.

 

They have been talking about taking care and protecting nature, specially its flora and fauna.

Good luck, Sara, and see you soon!

The wild boar (Sus scrofa), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania.

The species is now one of the widest-ranging mammals in the world, as well as the most widespread suiform. It has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List due to its wide range, high numbers, and adaptability to a diversity of habitats.

It has become an invasive species in part of its introduced range. Wild boars probably originated in Southeast Asia during the Early Pleistocene and outcompeted other suid species as they spread throughout the Old World.

As of 2005, up to 16 subspecies are recognized, which are divided into four regional groupings based on skull height and lacrimal bone length.

The species lives in matriarchal societies consisting of interrelated females and their young, both male and female. Fully grown males are usually solitary outside the breeding season. The wolf is the wild boar's main predator in most of its natural range except in the Far East and the Lesser Sunda Islands, where it is replaced by the tiger and Komodo dragon respectively.

The wild boar has a long history of association with humans, having been the ancestor of most domestic pig breeds and a big-game animal for millennia. Boars have also re-hybridized in recent decades with feral pigs; these boar-pig hybrids have become a serious pest wild animal in the Americas and Australia.

More information: AZ Animals

As true wild boars became extinct in Great Britain before the development of Modern English, the same terms are often used for both true wild boar and pigs, especially large or semi-wild ones. The English boar stems from the Old English bar, which is thought to be derived from the West Germanic bairaz, of unknown origin.

Boar is sometimes used specifically to refer to males, and may also be used to refer to male domesticated pigs, especially breeding males that have not been castrated.

Sow, the traditional name for a female, again comes from Old English and Germanic; it stems from Proto-Indo-European, and is related to the Latin: sus and Greek hus, and more closely to the New High German Sau. The young may be called piglets or boarlets.

The animals' specific name scrofa is Latin for sow.

With the exception of domestic pigs in Timor and Papua New Guinea, which appear to be of Sulawesi warty pig stock, the wild boar is the ancestor of most pig breeds.

Archaeological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated from wild boar as early as 13,000-12,700 BCE in the Near East in the Tigris Basin, being managed in the wild in a way similar to the way they are managed by some modern New Guineans. 

Remains of pigs have been dated to earlier than 11,400 BCE in Cyprus. Those animals must have been introduced from the mainland, which suggests domestication in the adjacent mainland by then. There was also a separate domestication in China, which took place about 8,000 years ago.

DNA evidence from sub-fossil remains of teeth and jawbones of Neolithic pigs shows that the first domestic pigs in Europe had been brought from the Near East. This stimulated the domestication of local European wild boars, resulting in a third domestication event with the Near Eastern genes dying out in European pig stock. Modern domesticated pigs have involved complex exchanges, with European domesticated lines being exported in turn to the ancient Near East.

More information: Animalia

Historical records indicate that Asian pigs were introduced into Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Domestic pigs tend to have much more developed hindquarters than their wild boar ancestors, to the point where 70% of their body weight is concentrated in the posterior, which is the opposite of wild boar, where most of the muscles are concentrated on the head and shoulders.

The wild boar is a bulky, massively built suid with short and relatively thin legs. The trunk is short and robust, while the hindquarters are comparatively underdeveloped. The region behind the shoulder blades rises into a hump and the neck is short and thick to the point of being nearly immobile. The animal's head is very large, taking up to one-third of the body's entire length.

The wild boar produces a number of different sounds which are divided into three categories:

-Contact calls. Grunting noises which differ in intensity according to the situation. Adult males are usually silent, while females frequently grunt and piglets whine. When feeding, boars express their contentment through purring. Studies have shown that piglets imitate the sounds of their mother, thus different litters may have unique vocalisations.

-Alarm calls. Warning cries emitted in response to threats. When frightened, boars make loud huffing ukh! ukh! sounds or emit screeches transcribed as gu-gu-gu.

-Combat calls. High-pitched, piercing cries.

Its sense of smell is very well developed to the point that the animal is used for drug detection in Germany. Its hearing is also acute, though its eyesight is comparatively weak, lacking color vision and being unable to recognise a standing human 10–15 metres away.

More information: Animal Corner

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig.
You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

George Bernard Shaw

(68325) BEGUES ASTEROID, JOSEP MANTECA'S DISCOVERY

Today, The Grandma has returned to Begues to spend a wonderful day with Sara.

 

They have been talking about communications and technology, and they have remembered Josep Manteca, a local neighbour of Begues and astronomer, who discovered 68325 Asteroid, named Begues in honour to his hometown.

An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere.

Of the roughly one million known asteroids the greatest number are located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, approximately 2 to 4 AU from the Sun, in the main asteroid belt.

Asteroids are generally classified to be of three types: C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are generally identified with carbonaceous, metallic, and silicaceous compositions, respectively. The size of asteroids varies greatly; the largest, Ceres, is almost 1,000 km across and qualifies as a dwarf planet.

The total mass of all the asteroids combined is only 3% that of Earth's Moon. The majority of main belt asteroids follow slightly elliptical, stable orbits, revolving in the same direction as the Earth and taking from three to six years to complete a full circuit of the Sun.

More information: Science Alert

Asteroids have been historically observed from Earth; the Galileo spacecraft provided the first close observation of an asteroid. Several dedicated missions to asteroids were subsequently launched by NASA and JAXA, with plans for other missions in progress. NASA's NEAR Shoemaker studied Eros, and Dawn observed Vesta and Ceres.

JAXA's missions Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 studied and returned samples of Itokawa and Ryugu, respectively. OSIRIS-REx studied Bennu, collecting a sample in 2020 to be delivered back to Earth in 2023.

NASA's Lucy, launched in 2021, will study eight different asteroids, one from the main belt and seven Jupiter trojans. Psyche, scheduled for launch in 2023, will study a metallic asteroid of the same name.

Near-Earth asteroids can threaten all life on the planet; an asteroid impact event resulted in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. Different asteroid deflection strategies have been proposed; the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, was launched in 2021 and intentionally impacted Dimorphos in September 2022, successfully altering its orbit by crashing into it.

Only one asteroid, 4 Vesta, which has a relatively reflective surface, is normally visible to the naked eye. When favorably positioned, 4 Vesta can be seen in dark skies. Rarely, small asteroids passing close to Earth may be visible to the naked eye for a short time.

As of April 2022, the Minor Planet Center had data on 1,199,224 minor planets in the inner and outer Solar System, of which about 614,690 had enough information to be given numbered designations.

More information: NASA

In 1772, German astronomer Johann Elert Bode, citing Johann Daniel Titius, published a numerical procession known as the Titius–Bode law, now discredited. Except for an unexplained gap between Mars and Jupiter, Bode's formula seemed to predict the orbits of the known planets.

By 1851, the Royal Astronomical Society decided that asteroids were being discovered at such a rapid rate that a different system was needed to categorize or name asteroids. In 1852, when de Gasparis discovered the twentieth asteroid, Benjamin Valz gave it a name and a number designating its rank among asteroid discoveries, 20 Massalia. Sometimes asteroids were discovered and not seen again. So, starting in 1892, new asteroids were listed by the year and a capital letter indicating the order in which the asteroid's orbit was calculated and registered within that specific year. For example, the first two asteroids discovered in 1892 were labeled 1892A and 1892B. However, there were not enough letters in the alphabet for all of the asteroids discovered in 1893, so 1893Z was followed by 1893AA.

A number of variations of these methods were tried, including designations that included year plus a Greek letter in 1914. A simple chronological numbering system was established in 1925.

Currently all newly discovered asteroids receive a provisional designation (such as 2002 AT4) consisting of the year of discovery and an alphanumeric code indicating the half-month of discovery and the sequence within that half-month. Once an asteroid's orbit has been confirmed, it is given a number, and later may also be given a name (e.g. 433 Eros). The formal naming convention uses parentheses around the number -e.g. (433) Eros- but dropping the parentheses is quite common. Informally, it is also common to drop the number altogether, or to drop it after the first mention when a name is repeated in running text. In addition, names can be proposed by the asteroid's discoverer, within guidelines established by the International Astronomical Union.

The first asteroids to be discovered were assigned iconic symbols like the ones traditionally used to designate the planets. By 1855 there were two dozen asteroid symbols, which often occurred in multiple variants.

The first discovered asteroid, Ceres, was originally considered a new planet. It was followed by the discovery of other similar bodies, which with the equipment of the time appeared to be points of light like stars, showing little or no planetary disc, though readily distinguishable from stars due to their apparent motions. This prompted the astronomer Sir William Herschel to propose the term asteroid, coined in Greek as ἀστεροειδής, or asteroeidēs, meaning star-like, star-shaped, and derived from the Ancient Greek ἀστήρ astēr star, planet. In the early second half of the 19th century, the terms asteroid and planet (not always qualified as minor) were still used interchangeably.

More information: NASA

If you were to stand on an asteroid in the main belt
of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter in our solar system,
you might be able to see one or two asteroids in the sky,
but they would be very far away and very, very small.
So you wouldn't have this 'dodging through tons of rocks'
business you get in the movies.

Carrie Nugent

VISIT BEGUES, PROTECTING & TAKING CARE OF NATURE

Today, The Grandma has started a new formation with Sara in Begues, a beautiful town in Baix Llobregat. 

 

Begues is a municipality in the comarca of Baix Llobregat in Catalonia.

 

It is situated in the south-west of the comarca, and its municipal territory covers most of the Garraf massif including the peaks of el Montau and La Morella.

Sara and The Grandma have been talking about computing, communications and nature, and they have been discussing about the convenience of progressing without destroying nature and educating in nature and human values.

Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub is a biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature.

The biome is generally characterized by dry summers and rainy winters, although in some areas rainfall may be uniform. Summers are typically hot in low-lying inland locations but can be cool near colder seas. Winters are typically mild to cool in low-lying locations but can be cold in inland and higher locations. All these ecoregions are highly distinctive, collectively harboring 10% of the Earth's plant species.

The Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome mostly occurs in, but not limited to, the Mediterranean climate zones, in the mid-latitudes:

-The Mediterranean Basin

-The Chilean Matorral

-The California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion of California and the Baja California Peninsula

-The Western Cape of South Africa

-The southwest and southern Australia

More information: Insights on India

The biome is not limited to the Mediterranean climate zone. It can also be present in other climate zones (which typically border the Mediterranean climate zone), such as the drier regions of the oceanic and humid subtropical climates, and as well as the lusher areas of the semi-arid climate zone. Non-Mediterranean climate regions that would feature Mediterranean vegetation include the Nile River Valley in Egypt (extending upstream along the riverbanks), parts of the Eastern Cape in South Africa, southeastern Australia, southeastern Azerbaijan, southeastern Turkey, far northern Iraq, the Mazandaran Province in Iran, Central Italy, parts of the Balkans (including Northern Greece), as well as Northern and Western Jordan.

Vegetation types range from forests to woodlands, savannas, shrublands, and grasslands; mosaic habitat landscapes are common, where differing vegetation types are interleaved with one another in complex patterns created by variations in soil, topography, exposure to wind and sun, and fire history. Much of the woody vegetation in Mediterranean-climate regions is sclerophyll, which means 'hard-leaved' in Greek. Sclerophyllous vegetation generally has small, dark leaves covered with a waxy outer layer to retain moisture in the dry summer months.

Phytogeographers consider the fynbos (South Africa) as a separate floral kingdom because 68% of the 8,600 vascular plant species crowded into its 90,000 square kilometers are endemic and highly distinctive at several taxonomic levels. This is equivalent to about 40% of the plant species of the United States and Canada combined, found within an area the size of the state of Maine. The fynbos and Southwest Australia shrublands have flora that are significantly more diverse than the other ecoregions, although any Mediterranean shrubland is still rich in species and endemics relative to other non-forest ecoregions.

-Forest. Mediterranean forests are generally composed of broadleaf trees, such as the oak and mixed sclerophyll forests of California and the Mediterranean region, the Eucalyptus forests of Southwest Australia, and the Nothofagus forests of central Chile. Forests are often found in riparian areas, where they receive more summer water. Coniferous forests also occur, especially around the Mediterranean. Pine and deciduous oak forest are widespread across California.

-Woodland. Oak woodlands are characteristic of the Mediterranean Basin and in California. Pine woodlands are also present in the Mediterranean Basin. California additionally has walnut woodlands.

-Savanna and grassland. The California Central Valley grasslands are the largest Mediterranean grassland eco-region, although these grasslands have mostly been converted to agriculture. The remaining woodlands feature mainly oak, walnut and pine. The cork oak savanna in Portugal, known as montado, is a good example of a mediterranean savanna.

-Shrubland. Shrublands are dense thickets of evergreen sclerophyll shrubs and small trees. They are most common near the seacoast, and are often adapted to wind and salt air from the ocean. They are called chaparral (California and southern Portugal), matorral in Chile and southern Spain, garrigue or maquis in France, macchia or gariga in Italy, phrygana in Greece, tomillares in Spain, fynbos, renosterveld, Succulent Karoo, and strandveld in South Africa, kwongan in Southwest Australia and batha in Israel. Northern coastal scrub and coastal sage scrub, also known as soft chaparral, occur near the California coast. In some places shrublands are of the mature vegetation type, and in other places are the result of degradation of former forest or woodland by logging or overgrazing, or disturbance by major fires.

More information: Eden Project

Fire, both natural and human-caused, has played a large role in shaping the ecology of Mediterranean ecoregions. The hot, dry summers make much of the region prone to fires, and lightning-caused fires occur with some frequency. Many of the plants are pyrophytes, or fire-loving, adapted or even depending on fire for reproduction, recycling of nutrients, and the removal of dead or senescent vegetation. In both the Australian and Californian Mediterranean-climate eco-regions, native peoples used fire extensively to clear brush and trees, making way for the grasses and herbaceous vegetation that supported game animals and useful plants.

The plant communities in these areas adapted to the frequent human-caused fires, and pyrophyte species grew more common and more fire-loving, while plants that were poorly adapted to fire retreated. After European colonization of these regions, fires were suppressed, which has caused some unintended consequences in these ecoregions; fuel builds up, so that when fires do come they are much more devastating, and some species dependent on fire for their reproduction are now threatened. The European shrublands have also been shaped by anthropogenic fire, historically associated with transhumance herding of sheep and goats.

Though adapted to infrequent fires, chaparral plant communities can be eliminated by frequent fires. A high frequency of fire (less than ten years) will result in the loss of obligate seeding shrub species such as Manzanita spp. This high frequency disallows seeder plants to reach their reproductive size before the next fire and the community shifts to a sprouter-dominance. If high frequency fires continue over time, obligate resprouting shrub species can also be eliminated by exhausting their energy reserves below-ground. Today, frequent accidental ignitions can convert chaparral from a native shrubland to non-native annual grassland and drastically reduce species diversity, especially under drought brought about by climate change.

Mediterranean ecoregions are some of the most endangered and vulnerable on the planet. Many have suffered tremendous degradation and habitat loss through logging, overgrazing, conversion to agriculture, urbanization, fire suppression, and introduction of exotic and invasive species. 

The ecoregions around the Mediterranean basin and in California have been particularly affected by degradation due to human activity, suffering extensive loss of forests and soil erosion, and many native plants and animals have become extinct or endangered.

More information: Botany Wisconsin

 Of course I prefer to have nature around me,
but it doesn't have to be with the exact
original vegetation for nostalgic reasons.
Nature is moving and making new things.

 

Theo Jansen

DISCOVERING THE HISTORY OF BEGUES WITH MONTSE

Today, The Grandma has spent a special day with her friend Montse in Begues, a beautiful town near in El Baix Llobregat, Barcelona.

Montse and The Grandma have visited some stone structures like La Cabana de Pedra de Begues and El Pou de Glaç, and they have tasted the local beer, a homage to the Neolithic past of the town.

Dry stone, sometimes called drystack or drystane, is a building method by which structures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind them together.

Dry stone structures are stable because of their construction method, which is characterized by the presence of a load-bearing façade of carefully selected interlocking stones.

Dry stone construction is best known in the context of stone walls, traditionally used for the boundaries of fields and churchyards, or as retaining walls for terracing, but dry stone sculptures, buildings, bridges, and other structures also exist. The term tends not to be used for the many historic styles which used precisely-shaped stone, but did not use mortar, for example the Greek temple and Inca architecture.

More information: 'El Pou de Glaç' of Begues, The Importance of Ice

The art of dry stone walling was inscribed in 2018 on the UNESCO representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, for dry stone walls in countries such as France, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Switzerland and Catalonia.

Some dry stone wall constructions in north-west Europe have been dated back to the Neolithic Age. In County Mayo, Ireland, an entire field system made from dry stone walls, since covered in peat, have been carbon-dated to 3800 BC.

In Belize, the Mayan ruins at Lubaantun illustrate use of dry stone construction in architecture of the 8th and 9th centuries AD.

Great Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe, Africa, is an acropolis-like large city complex of immense importance, constructed in dry stone from the 11th to the 15th centuries AD. It is the largest of structures of similar construction throughout the area.

The cyclopean walls of the acropolis of Mycenae, Greece, have been dated to 1350 BC and those of Tiryns slightly earlier.

The style and method of construction of a wall will vary, depending on the type of stone available, its intended use and local tradition. 

Most older walls are constructed from stones and boulders cleared from the fields during preparation for agriculture (field stones) but many also from stone quarried nearby. 

For modern walls, quarried stone is almost always used. The type of wall built will depend on the nature of the stones available.

More information: Catalunya

Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age.
We define entire epics of humanity by the technology they use.

Reed Hastings

ENJOY BEGUES! SANT CRISTÒFOL, LA RECTORIA & EL MUR

Today, The Grandma has returned to Begues to spend a wonderful day with her friend Montse. They have visited some of the most beautiful places in a village that has thousands of years of history to tell and hundreds of places, buildings and archaeological remains to display.

If you want to enjoy history, nature and some extraordinarily fantastic people, visit Begues, and you will discover how time stops and catches you and nature liberates you at the same time. It is always an unforgettable experience and a great pleasure to go to Begues.

More information: Ajuntament de Begues

First, Montse and The Grandma have visited the primitive church of Sant Cristòfol whose first reference to is a notarial document from the year 981, of which no remains are known. The characteristics of the facing of some walls made of large ashlars of red sandstone, found in archaeological excavations carried out in the sacristy, seem to correspond to the second Romanesque or transitional one (12th-13th centuries). They must not correspond, then, to the primitive temple of the ninth or tenth centuries, but to a later one, Romanesque, which has not been preserved either.

The fact that the church did not appear as a parish until the middle of the 13th century may indicate that it was formerly a church built by the community of smallholders in the area, but without the character of a parish, as the tax linked to the functions paid by all the inhabitants in the parish of Sant Miquel d'Eramprunyà and, in any case, to the lords of the castle as lords of the church.

The first mention of the existence of this parish with a rural notary is from 1264. A document from 1279 refers to the rector of Sant Cristòfol de Begues and in 1413 we have a first explicit mention of the rectory, because in the pastoral visit the repair of the rectory is demanded. It must be assumed, then, that the Romanesque temple became insufficient to cater for the growing number of attendees in the parish due, above all, to sixteenth-century French immigration.

Thus, between 1575 and 1579 this new church was built on what had been the parish cemetery. It is a nave church, with a polygonal apse and covered with very homogeneous Renaissance Gothic vaults. The most outstanding element is the Renaissance portal, with a triangular pediment supported by 2 columns, above which is the image of Saint Christopher and on the sides those of Saint George and Saint Michael the Archangel. The sundial on the cover dates from 1878, and corresponds to a 19th century renovation, at which time the red and yellow glazed flake roof that covers the bell tower must also be placed.

Download Història de l'Església Vella de Sant Cristòfol de Begues (Catalan)

Later, Montse and The Grandma have visited La Rectoria. It is adjacent to the apse of the church and with the south façade facing south. It is a building with the appearance of a farmhouse, presided over by a porch that occupies the entire main façade. Until 1930, the old rectory was still the rector's house, and probably only on the ground floor did farmers live. It ceased to be used as such when the new church and rectory in the centre of the village was built in 1931, and later the old one was sold to Mr. Queralt, a person who actively participated in the arrangement of the road from Gavà to Begues in the 1940s.

La Rectoria is a building attached to the old church of Sant Cristòfol. It has its origins in the thirteenth century, having small several later reforms. The characteristic porticoes galleries on the façade must date from the 18th century.

For centuries the church and rectory were isolated in depopulation, until in 1828 the rector was allowed to parcel out the bad lands of the environment for economic and security reasons, thus beginning the suburb of La Rectoria. 

The suburb of La Rectoria was set up from 1830 on the lands of the diocese in order to give protection and economic resources (censuses) to the rector who, until then, lived in the open, in a very vulnerable situation to the insecurity of the age. The houses on Carrer de Sant Cristòfol, Cal Traginer and Cal Fusteret were built during the 19th century, while Cal Gaietano could well be from the 18th century.

To the south of the church and next to the road to Gavà is Cal Paulo, a building with a square floor plan, three floors and a roof on four sides, following the classicist models starting to build in 1840 and completed in 1896. It was owned by the canon, and it seems that initially it was supposed to be a convent, but in fact throughout the twentieth century it was a farmhouse with its neighbourhood and various terraced sheds.

More information: Municipis Catalans (Catalan)

Finally, Montse and The Grandma have visited El Mur, a wonderful place located in a privileged environment. This viewpoint is an ideal place to enjoy the silence and contemplate a totally panoramic landscape of the south of the Baix Llobregat. It is a space dedicated to reflection, tranquillity and meditation. For this reason, it has been christened the Space of Silence.

The viewpoint includes a park with trails designed to stimulate the senses of sight, smell and hearing, with four sensory walks along the paths of the viewpoint. Colours, smells, contemplation and meditation are the four axes that guide these routes.

It has public benches, services and a material store to store the equipment needed to organize activities around meditation and contemplation.

One of the main attractions of the viewpoint is the paths that run just below the vaults of the entrance. You can walk along the paths until you reach the so-called viewpoint of the cave, from where you can see an extensive panorama of the Llobregat Delta.

More information: Komoot

 We are not makers of history.
We are made by history.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

'EL POU DE GLAÇ' OF BEGUES, THE IMPORTANCE OF ICE

Today, The Grandma has returned to Begues, a place she loves a lot.

 

She has had a meeting with her friend Montse, and after eating some delicious loquats and taking some drinks, they have gone to visit el Pou de Glaç, a large circular plan structure excavated in the calcareous subsoil to fill it with snow or ice after the snowfall, in order to dispose of them during the rest of the year. Water is life, and obtaining and keeping it has been a human work since Prehistoric ages.

Begues is a wonderful place where you can discover the past, enjoy the present and plan your future if you like nature, peace and quietness. The town is a place full of kind people who are proud of their history and fight to conserve their heritage.

El Pou de Glaç is a large circular plan structure that does not retain the roof, which was possibly in the shape of a dome.

It measures 13 m in outside diameter (10.95 m inside) and has a preserved depth of 10 m. It is largely excavated in the calcareous subsoil, while the powerful walls are made of ashlars of limestone and sandstone, bound with lime mortar.

At the top there are two hatches, one facing west and one to the east, which would access the interior. At the top of the south face, there is a third opening, small and in the shape of a peat, which may have been used to introduce straw and the bowl with which they covered the ice. In the lower part of the well, on the north façade, there was a sewer that drained the water towards the Riera de Begues. This, however, is not currently visible, as it is possibly covered in rubble.

The location of this well is not free: it is located next to the stream, just at the end of the Pla de Begues, where the stream has already collected much of the water from the tributary torrents. At this point, in addition, there would be natural pelagic that accumulated water, favoured by the clayey and impermeable substrate of the sector. It is shady, a few meters above the stream and very close to the Via Mercadera, the road that connected Barcelona with Vilafranca and Tarragona, passing through Begues. In addition, this is the sector where the plan has lower altitude, and where therefore the thermal investment created by encircling the mountains produces the strongest frosts (-10 to -12º are not exceptional) and frequent (currently 40 to 60 days of frost per year).

More information: El Pou del Glaç de Begues (Catalan Version)

The refrigerator, freezer, snow house, ice well, snow well, well or cava is that construction made by drilling the ground in the mountains where it snows during the winter.

These holes, often rectangular but with an elliptical tendency, are made with the purpose of filling them with snow or ice after the snowfall, in order to dispose of them during the rest of the year. Usually a refrigerator was a circular well.

The upper part was closed with a vaulted roof that had openings to allow the introduction and extraction of snow or ice, although they sometimes had a lower entrance for the extraction operation.

It should be noted that the plant is between 10 and 16 meters long and between 5 and 8 meters wide. The depth is usually between 4 and 8 m. The construction protrudes to the surface approximately one meter and is all dry stone to conserve the snow as long as possible and to avoid that the formation of water by fusion affects the ice, since with the dry stone, the water could to go out.

These snow houses were always covered and included a porch or housing for snowmen, some walls, and driveways. Snowmen's paths are cobbled horseshoe paths.

 

Before there were ice factories, ice storage and distribution became an important business involving a significant part of the rural population. Examples are found throughout the eastern Mediterranean.

The activity of artificial glaciers has been known since Roman times; their great development took place between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and they have been used until the middle of the twentieth century, when, with the advent of the first refrigerators, they fell into disuse.

Until now, food preservation was carried out thanks to brine, fertilizers, preserves or the use of snow. The latter system was the basis for a job and a profession that survived until about 1931.

In classical antiquity, doctors already prescribed the use of cold for medicinal purposes. This use recovered strongly in the Renaissance.

The most common therapeutic uses of ice have been: lowering the temperature in febrile processes, those caused by the cholera epidemic, as a sedative in cases of cerebral congestion and particularly in meningitis, to stop bleeding and as an anti-inflammatory or in trauma, sprains or fractures.

The progressive establishment of ice factories from 1890 in several cities was leaving aside the network of artificial glaciers and ice production taking advantage of the climate. Until then, it took advantage of a natural resource (renewed annually) sustainably, although depending on the climate, which gave times of ice shortage in front of others of great snowfalls that filled the snow mountains and day labourers.

Until the sixties, in the twentieth century, it was necessary to go and buy ice bars to feed the first domestic refrigerators. With the advent of refrigerators and the production of ice in industrial form, dependence on meteorology is avoided. The ice and snow warehouses, as well as the techniques of collection, storage, extraction and transport, were then obsolete.

More information: Mental Floss

History is not a burden on the memory
but an illumination of the soul.

 

John Dalberg-Acton

L'ENCANTAT DE BEGUES, HOW LIFE WAS 6,500 YEARS AGO

Today, The Grandma has returned to Begues, one of the most beautiful places you can visit in your life. She has not travelled alone, but Joseph de Ca'th Lon has joined her.

Joseph and The Grandma love Archaeology, and they have visited Can Sadurní cave, an amazing site where was found L'Encantat de Begues, a Neolithic figurine that is considered the oldest in the Iberian Peninsula in its category.

Joseph and The Grandma have been accompanied by Montse, a friend of them who lives in Begues and who has explained them all the secrets about these incredible Neolithic discoveries. They have been talking about a report edited by Universitat de Barcelona explaining the singularities and the importance of this figure.

Begues  is a municipality in the comarca of Baix Llobregat in Catalonia.

It is situated in the south-west of the comarca, and its municipal territory covers most of the Garraf massif, including the peaks of el Montau (658 m) and La Morella (594 m).

In the course of the excavation process in Can Sadurní cave in Begues, members of the Col·lectiu per la Investigació de la Prehistòria i l’Arqueologia del Garraf-Ordal (CIPAG), together with the UB Seminar of Studies and Prehistoric Research (SERP), found in summer the torso, with one complete arm and the initial part of the other, of a human figurine made of pottery. Its chronostratigraphic unit makes it, until now, the most ancient human figurine of the Prehistory in Catalonia; it is dated 6500 years ago.

The figurine, which is also the most ancient one found in the Iberian Peninsula, is an important indicator of the relevance that Can Sadurní might have had as a meeting point for the inhabitants of the closest areas during the Neolithic Age.

This is not the first discovery that has been made in the cave, where the CIPAG researchers have been working for 34 years, and where the most ancient evidence of production and consumption of beer were previously identified. These discoveries point that Can Sadurní might have hosted some feasts, in which rare products might have been consumed. Moreover, other rituals with a mark symbolic nature might have been hosted there, any kind of crucial celebration to bring together groups scattered around the area and to ensure their economical, ideological and sexual reproduction.

The figurine matches with the beginnings of the Middle Neolithic, exactly the discovery has been made in the layer 11 (post cardial Middle Neolithic 1a), on its contact with the layer 11b (post cardial Early Neolithic 0).

The figurine, only found until now in its torso, its neck and its right arm, represents a human figure, probably a male one. The preserved fragment is 8 cm height, 1.90 cm thick and its width depends on the point from which we measure: 2.5 cm from its waist, 4 cm from its chest (if we only take into account the preserved arm), and about 5.5 cm on the same point, but we imagine both arms stretched out. The development of the rest of the body make think about a 16-18 cm height figurine.

Although it is impossible to notice them clearly to the naked eye, when the figurine is observed with grazing light two different lines can be noticed; they could be carvings that seem to reproduce some elements of clothing and ornaments. In fact, this kind of images used to be dressed up as humans, and they do not show clearly sexual attributes, so normally the only element that allows to know the sex of the figure are breasts.

More information: Citta Slow

In the case of Begues discovery, the absence of female breasts makes think that probably it is a male figurine. This male attribution means a novelty in the Iberian Peninsula because, up to now, more than the 80 % of similar Mediterranean and European representations are female ones.

The existence of a left arm is quite obvious because of the loosening fracture observed on the opposite side. In fact, this arm will probably be found in future excavation procedures. Both arms are holed vertically. This feature indicates that the original position that the artisan imagined was the one of a figurine hanged from a cord or a leather strap. The cord might have been used in order to hang the figurine on a person’s neck or on a site inside the cave. The figurine’s neck is nearly all preserved and, as most of that time figurines, it is possible that the head was mobile and interchangeable, in order to fit it into the neck’s hole.

Some examples of detached heads made of stone, terracotta or pottery have been found in sites of Neolithic Balkan and West Mediterranean cultures. A great number of researchers believe that these heads were interchangeable and, in many cases, made of wood, a fact which explains why they have not been found.

A careful observation allows identifying the figurine’s breast and back: on its back there is a central and vertical depression which marks its spine and shoulders. The position of the longitudinal section of the right arm indicates that the arms are stretched out, in a reception attitude. In addition, the pelvic area has an angle that is less than 180º between the waist and the beginning of the lower limbs, what makes think that the figurine was in a sitting down position or with the legs bent.

It is unknown how the legs end, but probably they do in flat feet, as it happens in a great number of figurines found from France to the Near East, going through Italy, the Balkans and Anatolia. We hope that next excavation works document other fragments of the figurine to better understand the whole artefact.

All the know factors show that the figurine has a great symbolic and spiritual value. Generally, literature about this kind of images considers them to be images with divine attributes. To sum up, all its characteristics points towards what, in prehistory, can be defined as an idol. Researchers took into account this magical religious component, and the fact that traditionally Begues inhabitants have always received the nickname Els Encantats, in order to name the figurine as L'Encantat de Begues.

Can Sadurní excavations belong to the project La prehistòria al sud-est del Llobregat. De la costa al massís del Garraf-Ordal, coordinated by the professor at the UB Department of Prehistory, Ancient History and Archaeology, Josep Maria Fullola, and the prehistorian and archaeologist Manuel Edo, the CIPAG president.

The excavations, led by the researchers Manuel Edo and Ferran Antolín, are supported by the Begues Town Council, the Culture Department of the Government of Catalonia and the Centre d'Estudis Beguetans, as well as by other organizations and local enterprises, such as the caves Montau of Sadurní, where the cave and Can Sadurní masia are located.

More information: Universitat de Barcelona

In archaeology, context is everything.
Objects allow us to reconstruct the past.
Taking artifacts from a temple or an ancient private house
is like emptying out a time capsule.

Sarah Parcak

LOGISTICS, HOW TO ORGANIZE COMPLEX OPERATIONS

The Grandma visits Gavà, El Baix Llobregat

Today, The Grandma has been in Gavà participating in a new course about the importance of new technologies and digitalization in Logistics.  It is a very interesting theme and she has wanted to know more things about it. The Grandma has spent a fantastic day because she has been sharing this course with some old friends from Gavà and Begues and they have been talking about past experiences, present chances and future dreams.

Before going to Gavà, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Ms. Excel course.

19. Sharing Documents (I) (Spanish Version)

Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics is the management of the flow of things between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet requirements of customers or corporations.

The resources managed in logistics may include tangible goods such as materials, equipment, and supplies, as well as food and other consumable items.

The logistics of physical items usually involves the integration of information flow, materials handling, production, packaging, inventory, transportation, warehousing, and often security.

Logistics management is the part of supply chain management that plans, implements, and controls the efficient, effective forward, and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet customer's requirements. The complexity of logistics can be modeled, analyzed, visualized, and optimized by dedicated simulation software. The minimization of the use of resources is a common motivation in all logistics fields. A professional working in the field of logistics management is called a logistician.

Logistics

The term logistics is attested in English from 1846, and is from French logistique. The Oxford English Dictionary defines logistics as the branch of military science relating to procuring, maintaining and transporting material, personnel and facilities. However, the New Oxford American Dictionary defines logistics as the detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many people, facilities, or supplies, and the Oxford Dictionary on-line defines it as the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. As such, logistics is commonly seen as a branch of engineering that creates people systems rather than machine systems.

According to the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (previously the Council of Logistics Management), logistics is the process of planning, implementing and controlling procedures for the efficient and effective transportation and storage of goods including services and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption for the purpose of conforming to customer requirements and includes inbound, outbound, internal and external movements.

More information: Project Manager

Academics and practitioners traditionally refer to the terms operations or production management when referring to physical transformations taking place in a single business location (factory, restaurant or even bank clerking) and reserve the term logistics for activities related to distribution, that is, moving products on the territory.

Managing a distribution center is seen, therefore, as pertaining to the realm of logistics since, while in theory the products made by a factory are ready for consumption they still need to be moved along the distribution network according to some logic, and the distribution center aggregates and processes orders coming from different areas of the territory. That being said, from a modeling perspective, there are similarities between operations management and logistics, and companies sometimes use hybrid professionals, with for example a Director of Operations or a Logistics Officer working on similar problems.

Logistics

Furthermore, the term supply chain management originally refers to, among other issues, having an integrated vision of both production and logistics from point of origin to point of production. All these terms may suffer from semantic change as a side effect of advertising.

Inbound logistics is one of the primary processes of logistics concentrating on purchasing and arranging the inbound movement of materials, parts, or unfinished inventory from suppliers to manufacturing or assembly plants, warehouses, or retail stores.

Outbound logistics is the process related to the storage and movement of the final product and the related information flows from the end of the production line to the end user.

One definition of business logistics speaks of having the right item in the right quantity at the right time at the right place for the right price in the right condition to the right customer. Business logistics incorporates all industry sectors and aims to manage the fruition of project life cycles, supply chains, and resultant efficiencies.

The term business logistics has evolved since the 1960s due to the increasing complexity of supplying businesses with materials and shipping out products in an increasingly globalized supply chain, leading to a call for professionals called supply chain logisticians.

More information: Flash Global

In business, logistics may have either an internal focus (inbound logistics) or an external focus (outbound logistics), covering the flow and storage of materials from point of origin to point of consumption. The main functions of a qualified logistician include inventory management, purchasing, transportation, warehousing, consultation, and the organizing and planning of these activities. Logisticians combine a professional knowledge of each of these functions to coordinate resources in an organization.

There are two fundamentally different forms of logistics: one optimizes a steady flow of material through a network of transport links and storage nodes, while the other coordinates a sequence of resources to carry out some project.

Logistics automation is the application of computer software or automated machinery to improve the efficiency of logistics operations. Typically this refers to operations within a warehouse or distribution center with broader tasks undertaken by supply chain management systems and enterprise resource planning systems.

Industrial machinery can typically identify products through either barcode or RFID technologies. Information in traditional bar codes is stored as a sequence of black and white bars varying in width, which when read by laser is translated into a digital sequence, which according to fixed rules can be converted into a decimal number or other data. Sometimes information in a bar code can be transmitted through radio frequency, more typically radio transmission is used in RFID tags. An RFID tag is card containing a memory chip and an antenna which transmits signals to a reader. RFID may be found on merchandise, animals, vehicles and people as well.

More information: Enjoy a new course-Introduction to Logistics

When we talk about 'smart transportation,'

it is more than moving cargo from A to B.

Digitization within transport and logistics means 

seamless service to our customers, visibility in the supply chain, 

and driving a more efficient business.

Soren Skou

THE ASTRONAUT, THE WISE, THE ROBOT & THE GRANDMA

Old memories in Eramprunyà Castle, Gavà

Today, The Grandma has visited Eramprunyà Castle again. She enjoyed her last visit some days ago and she has wanted to return. The Grandma has had a meeting with some friends from Gavà and Begues and she has also met three new friends, Ю́рий aka Iuri, Myrddin aka Merlin and Johnny 5.

Ю́рий is a Russian pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space; Myrddin is an enchanter featured in Arthurian legend and medieval Welsh poetry and Johnny 5 is an American robot from Astoria, Oregon.

Perhaps thanks to the environment, perhaps thanks to her new friends, The Grandma has remembered one of the most beautiful masterpieces in literature of all times, The Little Prince written by Antoine de Saint-Eixupéry, a wonderful novel that talks about friendship, feelings, knowledge and experiences, summing up, it talks about life.

The Little Prince is an incredible novel that must be read slowly enjoying its literature and its drawings and understanding its meaning, a deep reflexion about human relationships.

It has been a great pleasure to visit Eramprunyà Castle again and meet old and new friends. The Grandma has got amazing memories of this experience and she is very sure she is going to return very soon.

As The Little Prince said, It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important. It is the time we have dedicated to learn new things, that makes this new knowledge so important and this time has been a fantastic experience. Thanks to all Gavà Team.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, in Russian Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин (9 March 1934-27 March 1968) was a Soviet Air Forces pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space, achieving a major milestone in the Space Race; his capsule Vostok 1 completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. 

Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин

Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honour.

Vostok 1 was Gagarin's only spaceflight but he served as the backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission, which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Gagarin later served as the deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was subsequently named after him.

Gagarin died in 1968 when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting crashed. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale awards the Yuri A. Gagarin Gold Medal in his honour.

More information: SISTER

Merlin, in Welsh Myrddin, is a legendary figure best known as an enchanter or wizard featured in Arthurian legend and medieval Welsh poetry. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures.

Myrddin

Geoffrey combined existing stories of Myrddin Wyllt or Merlinus Caledonensis, a North Brythonic prophet and madman with no connection to King Arthur, with tales of the Romano-British war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus to form the composite figure he called Merlin Ambrosius, in Welsh Myrddin Emrys. Geoffrey's rendering of the character was immediately popular, especially in Wales. Later writers expanded the account to produce a fuller image. Merlin's traditional biography casts him as a cambion: born of a mortal woman, sired by an incubus, the non-human from whom he inherits his supernatural powers and abilities.

Merlin matures to an ascendant sagehood and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic and intrigue. Later authors have Merlin serve as the king's advisor and mentor to the knights until he is bewitched and forever sealed or killed by the Lady of the Lake. He is popularly said to be buried in the magical forest of Brocéliande.

More information: ITV

Number 5 or the name chosen by Johnny 5, is a fictional character from the movie Short Circuit (1986) and Short Circuit 2 (1988).

Johnny 5

The character was created by the writers Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson. His voice is played by actor Tim Blaney in his original version.

It is a robot originally created for military purposes, after being suddenly gifted with consciousness after being struck by lightning. Therefore, it is considered alive: it has emotions and is autonomous.

Short Circuit is a 1986 US comic science fiction film directed by John Badham and written by S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock.

The film's plot centers upon an experimental military robot that is struck by lightning and gains a more humanlike intelligence, with which it embarks to explore its new state.

Short Circuit stars Ally Sheedy, Steve Guttenberg, Fisher Stevens, Austin Pendleton and G. W. Bailey, with Tim Blaney as the voice of the robot named Johnny 5. A sequel, Short Circuit 2, was released in 1988.

More information: Johnny-Five

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;

what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint-Eixupéry