Happy Urban Dirt

Have you ever wondered why fig trees are considered a symbol of abundance and fertility in different cultures? What exactly makes these trees So unique? Read on and discover the secrets behind the candy of nature.

Below is a fragment Gods, wasps and stanglers Mike Shanahan. Has been adapted to the network.

10 facts about figs

Here is some Figy Facial Facts To arouse interest:

1. They are over 750 known Ficus Species in the world, native around the world.
2. Almost every species of Fig tree is pollinated by their own separate species of Fig, everyone is a fascinating example of coevolution.
3. Although the average female Figowa wasp has less than two millimeters, it often has to travel Tens of kilometers in less than 48 hours Put your eggs on a different fig – a truly heroic journey!
4. Fig trees are key species in many rainforests, producing fruit throughout the year, which are crucial food sources for thousands of animal species, from bats to monkeys to birds.
5. Figa trees flowers are actually hidden inside Fruits that led many early cultures to believe that plants are without a flower.
6. The figs played a significant role in every main newfangled religion, including Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism.
7. Some species of figs are trees, others are vines, shrubs and even epiphytes.
8. Females rhinos are sealed in empty trunks trees to hatch by their male partners, who also provide them with figs to eat through narrow gaps.
9. Strangler’s figs grow down from the tops of the resident trees, ultimately killing and replacing them.
10. Banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) It may resemble a miniature forest Thanks to false trunks grown from air roots. The largest record is in India and covers over four acry.

Trees of life, trees of knowledge

Ficus Species are an example of variability – that the key feature of Wallace identified as enabling evolution. And so they should. Every day, in the last 80 million years, Fig trees around the world have been combining their DNA and pack them into trillions into billions of seeds. In this way, they tested the stunning number of genetic combinations, each of which is an experiment in the fight for existence. It’s a fight, fig trees look basic.

These plants not only survived the disaster, which saw giant dinosaurs and many other species. Flourished. When they spread all over the world, they have created hundreds of fresh species and have become the most diverse group of plants on the planet. Side effects were deep. These plants fed our pre -ancestors and offered other gifts to the creators of the first great civilizations. Our predecessors rewarded these trees in one of the oldest of our stories.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam agree, for example, that Fig trees are part of the human story from the first day. In the story of creating these three religions are divided by a fig tree in the garden of Eden together with the first people, whose English they call Adam and Ewa. God gave the couple everything they needed and the freedom to do what they liked, but with one reservation – they cannot eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In Western Europe, it is often said that this fruit was an apple. However, it can be simply because of the Latin Bible, which began to spread in the Middle Ages – although they sound different, Latin nouns for apple and evil are the same: known. Some Jewish rabbis came to the conclusion that the forbidden fruit was actually a fig

Ewa and Adam eat figs from the knowledge tree, in the photo for the first time drawn by the Spanish monk in 994

History says that Ewa ignored God’s rule and swallowed fruit. Adam followed in their footsteps. Suddenly they were aware of their nudity. According to the Book of Genesis: “Their conservatives were both open and knew that they were naked; and sewn fig leaves and made aprons. A fig tree came to the rescue, But the lack of Adam and Ewa’s clothes was the smallest of their problems. God banished them from the Eden Garden, so preventing them from consuming the fruit of a tree of life and gaining immortality. This three religions agree, where all our promise and our problems began.

Like hundreds of millions of people around the world, I heard the story of Adam and Ewa at a very juvenile age. Dozens of years later and after years of studying biology of fig trees, history gained fresh meaning when I began to learn how fig trees were also crucial for other stories about creation. I learned about Mithra, Persian deity and “soul judge.” Some versions of his story say that he was born from the rock under the holy fig tree. Naked and hungry, Mithra hid from an extremely winding wind in the branches of the tree, ate figs on her first meal and dressed from fig leaves.

Then I heard about creating a story from thousands of kilometers in the Congo Pool in Africa. They describe how the first hunter was born of a tree species Fig. Icy and naked, pulled the bark of the tree and shaped her clothing to protect itself.

It may sound uncomfortable, but Barkloth is a real thing. Culture in Africa, Asia and South America has independently developed how to turn the bark of local fig trees into plastic material that they could wear or write. People in Uganda are still producing material from fig trees. The United Nations has classified the process that they exploit as “a masterpiece of oral and ethereal human heritage.” Scientists and designers around the world now designate material for fresh applications, from furniture and fashion to yachts, cars and aircraft.

Fig Figs also in other origins. Kikuyu, the inhabitants of Kenya have a grove of holy fig trees at the center of their creation history. The story from Indonesia describes how two gods created the first pair of fig tree, carving horizontal wood slices to create a woman and vertical slices for a man. The myth told by the Kutia Kondh in Odish in India says that the creator of the goddess Nrantali created the language of the first man from the continuous leaf of the Holy Fig (Religious ficus). Another story says that Nirantali provided the first people with the seeds of another Fig (Ficus benghalensis) for planting. The resulting trees provided a shadow with dense leaves and, on the orders of Nrantala, also fed their first people with their milk latex until the grain appeared in the world.

What figure trees represent

Ficus Species do not appear only in the stories of creation. They also represent gods and serve as a seat for ghosts. They can be symbols of divine food or ethereal bridges that connect heaven and earth. In East Africa, people from the Masai tell stories that say when the earth and heaven were separated, everything that combined them was a holy fig tree. It was thanks to the air roots of this tree that the Masai God provided people with cattle. Among the Akan Ghana, on the other side of the continent, one of the first classic duties of OHEMAA – the ruler of women also called the Queen – was to create a holy place by planting a fig tree. Figs are also cosmic trees in CandombléThe religion, which was founded in north -eastern Brazil, when the slaves took there from West Africa found fig trees as impressive as the holy figs from which they were separated.

In Hong Kong, where people speak Ficus microcarpa Fig trees are home to ghosts, Two of these trees have become eminent as “trees’ wishes. For many years, people came to throw the oranges into the treetops. They wrote their wishes on stripes of crimson paper, which they attached to oranges with a string. If the branch of the tree wishes caught the bullet, their desires could hang and be blown into the air to heaven. But in 2005, when the burden of all these wishes caused the uninement of the ward and hurt the man and the child, the government banned this practice.

Far from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, People, the baking track has figs for their “world tree”. This is mythical Benjamina ficusThe same species that I dusted as a child. Batak say that their tree is growing among the stars and that its roots reach to the ground. Maternists can grow them to reach heaven. On the island of Borneo Iban and other native peoples traditionally forbid the cutting of Strangler Figs, because ghosts live among their roots. In Myanmar, in the Millennium, before Buddhism became the main religion, people worshiped the ghosts called “Nats”, including Nyaung Bin, an aged man who lives on a fig tree. In the Philippines it is said that fig trees are home for supernatural beings, such as giant demons of trees, goblins and semi-human, half tikbalang horses.

Northeast, on the Japanese island of Okinawa, Folk stories contain compact, red -haired ghosts called Kijimuna, which live in fig trees. Far in the south, in Timor-Wome, it is said that the God of the Sun Upulevo settled on a fig tree to impregnate his wife, mother of the earth. In the area of ​​the sepik river in Papua Novel Guinea, people consider fig trees to be the seat of crocodile ghosts. Meanwhile, in Australia, the Aboriginal community warns against Yara-Ma-Yha-Who, a mammal creation similar to the blood that lives on fig trees and feeds on sloppy travelers. And on the island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, thousands of kilometers from the nearest land mass, and the family ghosts called taotomonas live among the roots of fig trees.

These are just snapshots. There are bigger, better and much deeper stories to tell. Look for these stories and you will find them in a great swath of the planet. These are historic stories. They come from the time when nature was the foundation of faith, and when science did not yet ask their first questions. Since then, science has shown that there are good reasons for the advantage of fig trees in various religions. This indicates the lessons of our newfangled world and potential bridges between skeptical and romantic minds.

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