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WILD AND BROKEN SOUNDS: Sonic Miracles, The Creativity of Evolution, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, by David George Haskell
Since the Middle Ages, travelers have set out on one of the most beautiful medieval routes through the rugged Massif Central region of southern France. Camino de Santiagoin northwestern Spain, St. Pilgrimage to the so-called tomb of James.
Thousands of hikers still go to the temple each year. Like their medieval ancestors, some seek a miracle. David George Haskell If only each and every one of us knew about the evolutionary miracle buried in the rocky Massif.
In his delightful new book, Sounds Wild and Broken, Haskell reveals that animals have evolved over hundreds of millions of years without saying a word, calling out, or peeking. As she searches for the origin of life’s songs and sounds, she is drawn towards a revolutionary chirping. A fossilized insect wing in Permian rocks in the French countryside bears an unusual ridge. By rubbing the two wings together, the old cricket played a scratchy rasp and broadcast like a loudspeaker over the flat wing surface.
“There must be a shrine here,” Haskell writes. “A monument to honor the first known earthly voice.”
Instead, pilgrims walk unannounced; Symbols of everything we miss in the world of disappearing bird chirps, insect crescendos and frog choirs. The world’s most powerful species no longer listens to others, but silences them with devastating speed. “The vitality of the world depends, in part, on whether we turn our ears to the living world.”
Haskell’s own joy of discovery makes listening irresistible. From its pages and from the swamps above New York, spring enthusiasts are calling; male tree frogs post not only their location, but also their size and health. Mating calls are heard over 50 meters away, allowing females to check for a potential mate before getting too close. In Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Haskell records the song of the red crossbill as it soars through evergreen trees to a higher pitch than the wind, revealing how ground has helped shape the evolution of sound. In the noise of the Ecuadorian Amazon, beyond communicating danger, it decodes animal alarm calls that reveal complex, interspecies cooperation networks in the rainforest.
Just as “birds living in loud, dense clusters can extract acoustic details from a noise” Haskell is a deeply nuanced, meditative writer who finds beauty amid the noise of exploitation. He celebrates his songs that have survived even as he witnesses profound sensory losses. In a chapter on ocean sounds, she considers her 1970 album.Humpback Whale Songs” became a rallying cry for the environmental movement. Stressing with these records today is the ultimate self-deception. Oceans humming with millions of whales and billions of fish once singing from their breeding grounds have become acoustic nightmares of sea sonar and ship noise.
Haskell is the point at which sensory connectivity can inspire people to engage in ways that dry statistics never can. The assertion of katydids and house sparrows that their songs can motivate ethical action is both impossibly fanciful and undeniably imperative.
Haskell’s previous books, “Songs of the Trees” and “The Invisible Forest” – the story of a one-square-metre old forest over the course of a year and a Pulitzer finalist – suggested the emergence of a great poet-scientist. . “Sounds Wild and Broken” endorses Haskell as a prize winner for the earth, his finely tuned scientific observations made stronger by his deep love for the wilderness he hopes to save.
In the 12th century, “Pilgrim’s Guide,” one of the world’s first guidebooks, offers detailed routes and practical advice for travelers along the Camino de Santiago, while promising future miracles: “Health is given to the sick, the sight-blind. … Hearing is explained to the deaf.”
Haskell has given us an amazing guide to the miracle of life’s sound. It helped us hear. will we listen? Will we heed the alarm calls of our comrades?
Cynthia Barnett is the author of The Sound of the Sea: Shells and the Fate of the Oceans and an environmental journalist residing at the University of Florida.
WILD AND BROKEN SOUNDS: Sonic Miracles, The Creativity of Evolution, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, by David George Haskell | Viking | 448 pages | $29
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