href="#litres_trial_promo">Life on the threshold
Terrestrial mud bank community
6. Caves Through the Pleistocene
Pleistocene survivors and recent colonists
Cave conservation and the caver
External threats to caves, groundwater pollution and public safety
Impact of human activity on cave faunas
Conservation of cave-roosting bats
Acid rain, caves and flue gas desulphurization
To man, caves are the original shelters, sought since Palaeolithic times hundreds of thousands of years ago. To the adventurous amongst us, they are challenges to be explored, dark passages leading to unknown underground palaces and waterways, sometimes of amazing beauty. To the naturalists amongst us, they arouse our interest by their curious and unique life-forms, selected by the restrictive environments, and by their presence in areas of limestone country of outstanding beauty. Yet, as with other life, the plant and animal communities of caves form a cohesive and interacting collection of organisms, from bacteria to mammals, from lower to higher plants, depending on the varied local environments within the cave systems.
Here, then, is an ideal subject for the New Naturalist, taking into account not only the living natural history of caves, but also their origin, habitat characteristics, and what they tell us of past times. Indeed, as well as their living content of caves, the sediments within them are often the graveyard of past denizens of caves, such as the hyaena, as well as the prey of cave carnivores; and, of course, these sediments reveal past habitation by man through the present of bones and tools. So we have a fourth dimension of time to add to the natural history of caves.
It may be thought that cave communities would be one of the few remaining natural ecosystems surviving in the British Isles, protected by difficulty of access. As with other living communities more apparent and better known to us, this is not the case; they are perhaps more fragile than above ground communities, more easily disturbed and affected by man’s activities. To the natural historian the subject of caves demands a broad multidisciplinary approach. Dr Chapman has extensive experience of the many aspects of cave natural history. He has been able to integrate this variety, dealing with the essential geological and geomorphological background, the historical theme, and the natural history of caves, so presenting the naturalist with an outstanding and cohesive account of a unique and extraordinary ecosystem of wide interest.
There is a curious fascination about caves that seems to affect people of all ages and all cultures. Even as children, we have a kind of longing for caves, seeing them perhaps as a place of safety, but equally as a source of adventure and excitement – a gateway to the unknown.
Our remote ancestors used the entrances of caves as habitations, but reserved their depths as hiding places for their most precious and powerful secrets – the painted, magical symbols which would ensure a continuing supply of game for hunting, and the earthly remains of their dead. Religion was born in caves, and even now the buildings of our Christian cultures retain atavisms of those earlier forms of worship; under the central part of the church lies the crypt, secret and dark – originally the burial place of saints and martyrs. It is perhaps also significant that the Mother of God should have appeared to Bernadette in a grotto at Lourdes, and should have consecrated the cave spring which welled up from underground.
In Japanese mythology the sun-goddess Amaterasu retreated at night to a cave, plunging the world into darkness. The ancient Greeks too gave prominence to caves in their mythology. Zeus, chief of Gods, was born in a cave, and of course the Greek hell lay below ground, and at its gates Charon the ferryman waited in his boat to row the souls of the departed across the black waters of the River Styx into a land of grief and eternal pain. In our own mythology, King Arthur, his knights and hounds are said to slumber still beneath a Welsh mountain, eternally awaiting the call to battle. Even today in parts of New Guinea, tribesmen will say that their ancestors were born directly from the earth through the womb-like opening of a cave.
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