Monat: Juli 2010
Gioura – civilization over 10.000 years
Gioura Island presents a rugged mountain wilderness from sea-level to 800 meters altitude. Human habitation always must have been confined to some plain stretches of land with clay soil. Steep lime-stone ridges surround these earlier cultivated areas like natural fortifications. One has to consider changes in sea-level of up to 85 meters below recent marks.…
Kyra Panagia – monastic life
The so called Deserted Islands of the Northern Sporades were sparsely inhabited, but continously cultivated for more than one millenium by monastic communites.
Kyra Panagia – goats
On Kyra Panagia Island the traditional pastoral system as illustrated by my photographs of 1976 (and the 16 mm footage shot at the same time) has been abandoned since the conservation area Northern Sporades was established. The goats are not herded and milked anymore. Already earlier cattle grazing was discontinued (cf. my article: Endemic cattle…
Kyra Panagia – the Holy Island
In the conception of early human civilization there existed nothing supernatural because the spiritual dimension was an essential part of the natural world. Hence holiness, if defined as the essence of the natural, existed before mankind began to recognize and to distinguish the qualities of the spiritual versus the natural world. So it remains a…
Piperi – coast of the monk seals
Piperi Island, Northern Sporades – the Last Unknown in the Aegean Sea. Refuge for the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus), Eleonora’s falcon (Falco eleonorae), endemic reptile (Podarcis erhardii weigandi) and plant species (Campanula rechingeri). Core zone of the Marine Park.