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10 November 2005 Volume 2, Issue 5 Although we still have a daily freight train going through town just up the street from us, long gone are the days when our neighboring communities used their train stations or rail beds for regular passenger travel. But the current uses are certainly creative. Our Great Barrington train station becomes a wonderful farmer’s market on Saturday mornings in the warmer months. And the train depot in nearby
Humankind has always been on the move, whether by foot, camel, bicycle, or spacecraft. Transportation through the ages and around the globe is the theme of this issue of World History to Go. One of the First Travel Guides—The Codex CalixtinusIn the Middle Ages, the pilgrimage was a form of travel in which a person, as a form of devotion or penance, walked from his or her home to a shrine. Located at the shrine were relics—bits of clothes and/or body parts of saints, to which the travelers could pray for intercession.
CamelsThe Sahara and Arabian Deserts are home to Bedouins who specialize in raising the dromedary (one-humped) camel for food and transport. They derive other income by extorting dates from oasis farmers, raiding other nomads for camels, selling camels for the caravan trade, and serving as mercenaries. Nomads who only raise camels live mostly in Arabia (the peninsula of southwestern Asia including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf states) and have the widest migration circuits, which allow them to exploit deep desert pastures where only camels can survive because water is so scarce. A larger number of nomads in North Africa and other parts of the Middle East combine camel and sheep raising but have a much more restricted migration cycle because sheep need to be watered regularly.
The rise of camel-raising societies was also facilitated by the growing demand for camels to be used for transport. Camels so effectively replaced wheeled vehicles as the more economical way to move goods that wheeled vehicles completely disappeared from the region until the arrival of cars and trucks during the twentieth century. [From “Pastoral Nomadic Societies” in the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History] The Venetian GalleyInside the Berkshire Encyclopedia: For more on transportation, try articles like Airplane, Automobile, Caravan, Navigation, Railroad,
Silk Roads, and Transportation—Overview. The Venetian galley, ranging from 39- to 50-meters long, often with two banks of oars and one mast with lateen-rigged sails, dominated the medieval Mediterranean beginning at the end of the ninth century. By the fourteenth century Venetians began building “great galleys”—bigger, longer vessels with two masts for commercial and passenger traffic. During the sixteenth century a new Mediterranean ship emerged, the galleass, a huge galley designed for warfare. Galliasses had both oars and sails and crews of up to seven hundred. Six galleasses fought at the Battle of Lepanto in Greece’s Corinthian Gulf in 1571, helping to defeat the Ottoman Turkish fleet. Galleys and galleasses also formed part of the Spanish Armada in 1588. [From “Sailing Ships” in the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History.] 
Here's a review of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History by John Lawrence of Lawrence Looks At Books:
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Although train stations of the past two centuries may have become restaurants, galleries, and open-air markets, we’re glad that the same isn’t true for most of our treasured libraries. That’s why we invite you to help us find “The Libraries We Love.” Visit our website, www.LibrariesWeLove.org, and make nominations for your own favorite library—or libraries. We want to be sure to give every library in America and Canada the opportunity to appear in Heart of the Community: The Libraries We Love when it is published next year. With warm regards, |
One of the most popular pilgrimage routes for medieval Christians led to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela, located in Galicia, the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Surpassed in importance only by Jerusalem and Rome, the cathedral at the end of the 800-kilometer route housed the relics of Saint James, one of the twelve apostles. Pilgrims from all parts of Europe followed the route through the mountainous northern coast of Spain to Galicia. Because of the popularity of the route, the cleric Aimeric Picaud, between 1130 and 1140 CE, edited the Liber Sancti Jacobi (The Book of Saint James), also called the Codex Calixtinus. The fifth book of the Codex was essentially a pilgrim’s guide and described to pilgrims the terrain and conditions of the land, pointed out major sights along the route, and warned them of hazards that could waylay the unfortunate pilgrim. [From the article, “Travel Guides,” in the 
The camel is a late domesticate (c. 1500 BCE); the nomads who specialized in raising camels emerged in an environment in which the urban civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt had already been in existence for two millennia. Camel-raising Bedouins became politically important only after the introduction of the North Arabian camel saddle between 500 and 100 BCE. This saddle allowed camel-mounted warriors to fight more effectively and gave them control of the lucrative incense trade routes that ran through Arabia. Such camel-mounted warriors became the core of the early Islamic armies who conquered the Near East and North Africa during the seventh and eighth centuries.
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