Journal articles on the topic 'Atlantic Ocean Region – History – 18th century'

This article focuses on the underwater cultural heritage (UCH) located across the Pacific Ocean by sampling three temporal themes: living heritage and traditional indigenous cultural heritage, the global connections of the Manila Galleon trade, and the modern warfare of World War II (WWII). Many of the traditional cultural practices (living heritage) and tangible cultural heritage related to indigenous people of the Pacific are coastal and sea related. Their world encompasses the sea, which was not seen as a barrier as but a much-used connection to people occupying the thousands of islands. The Pacific contains an extensive maritime cultural heritage, including UCH, which reflects the cultural identity of people living in the region. From the 16th to 18th centuries, the Spanish Empire prospered through an elaborate Asia-Pacific trade network. The Manila Galleon trade between Manila, Philippines, and Acapulco, Mexico, connected into the existing Atlantic trade transporting commodities such as porcelain, silver, spices and textiles from Asia to the Americas and Spain. Of the 400 known voyages between 1565 and 1815, approximately 59 shipwrecks occurred, of which only a handful of galleons have been investigated. The scale of WWII heritage in the Pacific region reflects the intensity and impacts of global conflicts fought across the world’s largest ocean. Associated UCH includes near shore defensive infrastructure, landing and amphibious assault craft, submerged aircraft, and a wide range of ships and submarines, auxiliary, combatant and non-military casualties alike. Twentieth century warfare involved massive losses of material. The legacy of submerged battlefields in the Pacific is complex. Interest is high in the discovery of naval UCH, but critical aspects are often intertwined. Archaeology, history, reuse, memorialisation (gravesites), tourism, unexploded ordnance, environmental threat (fuel oil), ownership and salvage all shape what we can learn from this resource.

We document the fire history and associated ecological changes of an old-growth forest stand in western Maryland, U.S.A. The study area is located on the side slopes of a ridge system (Savage Mountain). Twenty basal cross sections were obtained from old trees cut in 1986, which provided evidence of 42 fires from 1615 to 1958. Nine fires were recorded in the sample trees in the 17th century, 13 in the 18th century, 12 in the 19th century, and eight in the early to mid-20th century. However, there were no major fire years after 1930. The Weibull modal fire interval was 7.6 years. Oaks recruited consistently from the early 1600s to the early 1900s, but there was increased Acer rubrum L. and Betula lenta L. recruitment with fire suppression after 1930. Species recruitment patterns and long-term fire history reported in this study offer important direct support for the hypothesis that periodic fire played an important role in the historical development and perpetuation of oak forests of the mid-Atlantic region before and after European settlement.

The Mid-Pliocene is the most recent interval in the Earth's history to have experienced warming of the magnitude predicted for the second half of the twenty-first century and is, therefore, a possible analogue for future climate conditions. With continents basically in their current positions and atmospheric CO 2 similar to early twenty-first century values, the cause of Mid-Pliocene warmth remains elusive. Understanding the behaviour of the North Atlantic Ocean during the Mid-Pliocene is integral to evaluating future climate scenarios owing to its role in deep water formation and its sensitivity to climate change. Under the framework of the Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping (PRISM) sea surface reconstruction, we synthesize Mid-Pliocene North Atlantic studies by PRISM members and others, describing each region of the North Atlantic in terms of palaeoceanography. We then relate Mid-Pliocene sea surface conditions to expectations of future warming. The results of the data and climate model comparisons suggest that the North Atlantic is more sensitive to climate change than is suggested by climate model simulations, raising the concern that estimates of future climate change are conservative.

Vilnius University This article discusses the contribution to the studies of the ‘Eastern’ and ‘Southern’ lands in the 18th century by naturalist, travel writer, and ethnologist George Forster, who had accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, on Captain James Cook’s expedition of 1772–5 to circumnavigate the globe and who was a professor of natural history at Vilnius University from 1784 to 1787. The paper presents the background of European long-distance navigation, examines Forster’s contribution to Cook’s second voyage, and reconsiders his work completed at the Vilnian Academy against the broader perspective of the European notions of travel literature and ethnography of the Pacific region, as well as the prospect of Oriental studies, gradually emerging as an academic field in Western Europe and, later on, in Vilnius.

Abstract The precipitation history over the last century in the Catskill Mountains region that supplies water to New York City is studied. A severe drought occurred in the early to mid-1960s followed by a wet period that continues. Interannual variability of precipitation in the region is related to patterns of atmospheric circulation variability in the midlatitude east Pacific–North America–west Atlantic sector with no link to the tropics. Associated SST variations in the Atlantic are consistent with being forced by the anomalous atmospheric flow rather than being causal. In winter and spring the 1960s drought was associated with a low pressure anomaly over the midlatitude North Atlantic Ocean and northerly subsiding flow over the greater Catskills region that would likely suppress precipitation. The cold SSTs offshore during the drought are consistent with atmospheric forcing of the ocean. The subsequent wet period was associated with high pressure anomalies over the Atlantic Ocean and ascending southerly flow over eastern North America favoring increased precipitation and a strengthening of the Northern Hemisphere storm track. Neither the drought nor the subsequent pluvial are simulated in sea surface temperature–forced atmosphere GCMs. The long-term wetting is also not simulated as a response to changes in radiative forcing by coupled models. It is concluded that past precipitation variability in the region, including the drought and pluvial, were most likely caused by internal atmospheric variability. Such events are unpredictable and a drought like the 1960s one could return while the long-term wetting trend need not continue—conclusions that have implications for management of New York City’s water resources.

Migratory movements between the two shores of the Atlantic have been of great relevance, both due to their quantity and their heterogeneity, from the moment these territories came into contact. The constant flow of people, as well as goods and ideas in this oceanic environment, caused that in the second half of the 18th century the English and American republican circles strengthened their ties, with some women as notable activists. The English writer Catharine Macaulay (1731-1791), in addition to writing about the crucial events of the moment, crossed the ocean with the desire to be close and experience them in the first person. On the other hand, due to common interests, she maintained an intense epistolary relationship for more than twenty years with the American writer Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814). Despite the limitations that they found in primarily male areas, such as history and politics, the contribution of these women was not limited to the expected support, but their concerns were reflected in some important writings for the Republican cause. Despite this and paradoxically, these revolutionary movements did not bring about significant changes in the situation and the rights of women.

Migratory movements between the two shores of the Atlantic have been of great relevance, both due to their quantity and their heterogeneity, from the moment these territories came into contact. The constant flow of people, as well as goods and ideas in this oceanic environment, caused that in the second half of the 18th century the English and American republican circles strengthened their ties, with some women as notable activists. The English writer Catharine Macaulay (1731-1791), in addition to writing about the crucial events of the moment, crossed the ocean with the desire to be close and experience them in the first person. On the other hand, due to common interests, she maintained an intense epistolary relationship for more than twenty years with the American writer Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814). Despite the limitations that they found in primarily male areas, such as history and politics, the contribution of these women was not limited to the expected support, but their concerns were reflected in some important writings for the Republican cause. Despite this and paradoxically, these revolutionary movements did not bring about significant changes in the situation and the rights of women.

Migratory movements between the two shores of the Atlantic have been of great relevance, both due to their quantity and their heterogeneity, from the moment these territories came into contact. The constant flow of people, as well as goods and ideas in this oceanic environment, caused that in the second half of the 18th century the English and American republican circles strengthened their ties, with some women as notable activists. The English writer Catharine Macaulay (1731-1791), in addition to writing about the crucial events of the moment, crossed the ocean with the desire to be close and experience them in the first person. On the other hand, due to common interests, she maintained an intense epistolary relationship for more than twenty years with the American writer Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814). Despite the limitations that they found in primarily male areas, such as history and politics, the contribution of these women was not limited to the expected support, but their concerns were reflected in some important writings for the Republican cause. Despite this and paradoxically, these revolutionary movements did not bring about significant changes in the situation and the rights of women.

The Republic of The Gambia, on the west coast of Africa, is a narrow enclave into Senegal (which surrounds the nation on three sides), with a coastline on the Atlantic Ocean, enclosing the mouth of the River Gambia. The smallest country on mainland Africa, The Gambia covers 11 295 km2 and has a population of 1705 000. There are five major ethnic groups: Mandinka, Fula, Wolof, Jola and Sarahuleh. Muslims represent 95% of the population. English is the official language but a miscellany of minor languages are also spoken (Serere, Aku, Mandjago, etc.). The Gambia has a history steeped in trade, with records of Arab traders dating back to the ninth century, its river serving as an artery into the continent, reaching as far as Mauritania. Indeed, as many as 3 million slaves were sold from the region during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Gambia gained independence from the UK in 1965 and joined the Commonwealth of Nations.

AbstractForced immigration from the Southwest Indian Ocean marked life at the Cape of Good Hope for over a century. Winds, currents, and shipping linked the two regions, as did a common international currency, and complementary seasons and crops. The Cape's role as a refreshment station for French, Portuguese, American, and Spanish slave ships proved particularly important in the development of a commerce linking East Africa, Madagascar, and the Mascarenes with the Americas. This slave trade resulted in the landing at the Cape of perhaps as many as 40,000 forced immigrants from tropical Africa and Madagascar. Brought to the Cape as slaves, or freed slaves subjected to strict periods of apprenticeship, these individuals were marked by the experience of a brutal transhipment that bears comparison with the trans-Atlantic Middle Passage. The history of the Middle Passage occupies a central place in the study of slavery in the Americas and plays a vital role in the way many people today situate themselves socially and politically. Yet, for various reasons, this emotive subject is absent from historical discussions of life at the Cape. This article brings it into the history of slavery in the region. By focusing on the long history of this forced immigration, the article also serves to underline the importance of the Cape to the political and economic life of the Southwest Indian Ocean.

The article analyzes the preparation and the course of the First expedition to the Strait of Magellan by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, one of the most prominent Spanish navigators, scientists and humanists of the 16th century. The interest of the Spanish discoverers in the Strait arouse immediately after Magellan's circumnavigation, but for more than half a century this area remained a frontier zone of Spanish possessions in the south of the American continent. The Drake's raid revived Spanish projects to explore and colonize the Strait. From a remote, undeveloped frontier area, the Strait turned into one of the main sea gates to the “Spanish Lake”, as the Spaniards themselves called the Pacific Ocean. The idea to prepare an expedition belonged to the Viceroy of Peru, Don Francisco de Toledo. He prepared the instructions and chose de Gamboa from among his subordinates as the general of the expedition. All the instructions of the expedition demonstrate the precise elaboration of all the details of the military and scientific research work necessary for the future colonization of the region. Despite the difficulties of the journey, the first expedition to the Strait can be considered de Gamboa's most successful venture. Following the main orders of the instructions, de Gamboa was able to complete the main tasks of the expedition. The paths to the strait were mapped, its Pacific and Atlantic estuaries were explored, its natural and geographical features were determined, contacts were established with the indigenous population, and the place of the future settlement was outlined. However, noticeable exaggerations in the descriptions of the region's natural resources, the mild climate and its dense population will contribute to the failure of the second larger expedition to the Strait.

It has been known for about a century that European eels have a unique life history that includes offshore spawning in the Sargasso Sea about 5000–7000 km away from their juvenile and adult habitats in Europe and northern Africa. Recently hatched eel larvae were historically collected during Danish, German and American surveys in specific areas in the southern Sargasso Sea. During a 31 day period of March and April 2014, Danish and German research ships sampled for European eel larvae along 15 alternating transects of stations across the Sargasso Sea. The collection of recently hatched eel larvae (≤12 mm) from 70° W and eastward to 50° W showed that the European eel had been spawning across a 2000 km wide region of the North Atlantic Ocean. Historical collections made from 1921 to 2007 showed that small larvae had also previously been collected in this wide longitudinal zone, showing that the spatial extent of spawning has not diminished in recent decades, irrespective of the dramatic decline in recruitment. The use of such a wide spawning area may be related to variations in the onset of the silver eel spawning migration, individual differences in their long-term swimming ability, or aspects of larval drift.

The present paper brings 111 British pre-colonial and colonial diplomatic agents who moderated the activities of Exploration, Expropriation and Exploitation (3Es) in the Gold Coast (GC) located in the Rich Zone of African Gulf of Guinea (RZAGG) in the West African Region between 1621 and 1957 when GC gained independence as Ghana been the first Black African Country under the President ship of an African legend Pan-Africanist known as Kwame Nkrumah. The history of Ghana is very important in views of its previous Ghana Empire and Kingship system which European imperialist and colonisers destroyed with over ambitions of 3Es in the Centuries that followed culminated with slavery and slave trade dealings of human beings shipped as lodge of woods across the Atlantic Ocean to American plantations. The teaching of African History in the 21st Century entails us to know those agents and goes deep into their archives to search and evaluate their Machiavelli did in the specific countries during their tenure in office. This is because they laid the groundwork and foundation of Western European imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism which later cropped up during the second decade of the 20th Century at independence. Our intension is not to bring out all what they did but rather, the identification of principal actors of the period which can be beneficial to the young generation of historians to open up new research avenues by going deeper to illustrate the activities carried out by each of those foreign diplomatic agents in their 3Es instructions and executions. The scrutiny of specialized and secondary sources facilitated us to use a historical analytical approach with visible statistical tables illustrating each of those monarchical actors of Kings and Queens and agents appointed to fulfil their foreign gains from natural and human resources of GC later Ghana at independence.

Abstract. Introduction. Active recreation tourism is more effective for physical, emotional, intellectual recreation than passive recreation tourism. Active forms of tourism give dosed in terms of volume and intensity of physical activity for participants, which is the main factor in their recreation and effective recovery. Active tourism is becoming an increasingly important segment of the tourism industry. Active tourism includes more and more types of recreational and tourist and tourist and sports activities. It performs several functions - health, prevention, rehabilitation, training, and education. World experience shows that recently the share of active, extreme, and adventure tourism is growing rapidly. Therefore, the study of current trends in the world and domestic experience of organization of active tourism is relevant. Purpose. The article aims to study current trends in the world and domestic experience in the organization and functioning of active tourism. In the long run, this will help improve the tourist image of the country, region, community and increase tourist flows. Results. International practice shows that, at the present stage of the development of economic systems, tourism is the most dynamically developing area. It is also worth noting that international tourism for some developing countries is the main export ofservices and one of theprincipalsources of foreign exchange in these countries; acts as a stabilizing lever for the formation of their budgets and credit and financial relations with other states. At the beginning of the XXI century, international tourism became one of the most important economic activities in the world, and its history begins long before the invention of the word tourist in the late 18th century. According to the Western tradition, organized trips can be found in ancient Greece and Rome, which claim origins as "heritage tourism" (historical monuments of recognized cultural significance) and beach resorts. Analysis of global trends in active tourism shows that there is a growing interest in more extreme travel "nomadic recreation"; familyextreme trips; immersion in the ocean; space travel; micro-trips or weekend tours; extreme-recovery. In response to the growing demand, travel agencies in the European Union offer a wide range of cycling tours, hiking, rafting, diving, sightseeing, and fauna. Analysis of the development of tourism in Ukraine shows that due to the fast pace of life, inactive, addiction to gadgets, more and more tourists today have begun to prefer active recreation. This holiday will be especially interesting for citizens who live in highrise buildings, among the asphalt and want to change their everyday life for a while for the beauty and splendor of nature. Each region of Ukraine has potential opportunities for the development of each type of tourism: hiking, biking, car, water, fishing, hunting, horseback riding, and mountaineering. In recent years, there has been an increasing number ofspecialized tour operators and guides offering relevant services. Also, the network ofspecialized shops, suppliers, points of hire, and service of modern tourist equipment, establishments, various tourist information, maps, guides are expanded. Conclusions. It is claimed, thatthe word demand is growing for active, extreme tourism because humanity is increasingly suffering from overwork and digital dependence. Given that most areas suffer from overtourism new concepts of recreation are becoming increasingly popular, where it is possible to restore inner peace, mental and spiritual condition. In addition, the identity of local culture and the identity of territory have a significant influence on interest among tourists. Ukraine has the potential for the development of active types of tourism. Also, the world experience will help diversify the range of ideas for the development of tourism.

AbstractThis proposed contribution to the special issue of ILWCH offers a theoretical re-consideration of the Liberian project. If, as is commonly supposed in its historiography and across contemporary discourse regarding its fortunes into the twenty-first century, Liberia is a notable, albeit contested, instance of the modern era's correctable violence in that it stands as an imperfect realization of the emancipated slave, the liberated colony, and the freedom to labor unalienated, then such representation continues to hide more than it reveals. This essay, instead, reads Liberia as an instructive leitmotif for the conversion of racial slavery's synecdochical plantation system in the Americas into the plantation of the world writ large: the global scene of antiblackness and the immutable qualification for enslavement accorded black positionality alone. Transitions between political economic systems—from slave trade to “re-colonization,” from Firestone occupation to dictatorial-democratic regimes—reemerge from this re-examination as crucial but inessential to understanding Liberia's position, and thus that of black laboring subjects, in the modern world. I argue that slavery is the simultaneous primitive accumulation of black land and bodies, but that this reality largely escapes current conceptualization of not only the history of labor but also that of enslavement. In other words, the African slave trade (driven first by Arabs in the Indian Ocean region, then Europeans in the Mediterranean, and, subsequently, Euro-Americans in the Atlantic) did not simply leave as its corollary effect, or byproduct, the underdevelopment of African societies. The trade in African flesh was at once the co-production of a geography of desire in which blackness is perpetually fungible at every scale, from the body to the nation-state to its soil—all treasures not simply for violation and exploitation, but more importantly, for accumulation and all manner of usage. The Liberian project elucidates this ongoing reality in distinctive ways—especially when we regard it through the lens of the millennium-plus paradigm of African enslavement. Conceptualizing slavery's “afterlife” entails exploring the ways that emancipation extended, not ameliorated, the chattel condition, and as such, impugns the efficacy of key analytic categories like “settler,” “native,” “labor,” and “freedom” when applied to black existence. Marronage, rather than colonization or emancipation, situates Liberia within the intergenerational struggle of, and over, black work against social death. Read as enslavement's conversion, this essay neither impugns nor heralds black action and leadership on the Liberian project at a particular historical moment, but rather agitates for centering black thought on the ongoing issue of black fungibility and social captivity that Liberia exemplifies. I argue that such a reading of Liberia presents a critique of both settler colonialism and of a certain conceptualization of the black radical tradition and its futures in heavily optimist, positivist, and political economic terms that are enjoying considerable favor in leading discourse on black struggle today.

In the first section of paper, author has tried to clarify the indispensable and indivisible history of foreign policy of India with Nepal. Although Nepal’s foreign policy was always measured with comparing with our neighbouring nation as like Sino-Nepal relations will have the four basic characteristics with ‘c’ – cooperation, competition, confrontation and conflict. The concept of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) must be recognized and furnished by the foreign policy of Nepal. India is our strategic partner since time immoral. Nepal’s foreign policy is always been guided by the foreign policy of India and we shall see some similarities between these two countries foreign policy. India is revising their regional policy nowadays. They are also reviewing their regional involvement since 1947. A recent report says that “Non Alignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the Twenty First Century’,a future policy of India must becentred on three “core objectives”: “To ensure that India did not define its national interest or approach to world politics in terms of ideologies and goals that had been set elsewhere; that India retained maximum strategic autonomy to pursue its development goals; and that India worked to build national power as the foundation for creating a just and equitable world order. The second section of paper will illustrate the West eyes on East and our non- parallel rate of economic growth and benefit of Nepal from India’s growth. In the U.S.A. strategic guidance released in January 2012 has said that USA has shifted its strategic interest and priorities from the Atlantic to the Pacific, including the East and South Asia where these two giants are being situated. “U.S economic and security interest are inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia, creating a mix of evolving challenges and opportunities. Accordingly, while the US military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia- Pacific region” India is reformulating her bilateral ties with US and also ties with China to walk in line with changing scenario of world politics. We are secured in the sense that US have never shown her interest in Nepalese soil directly but have been played with Indian card. Nepal also needs to reformulate its bilateral ties with US independently keeping our strong relation with India. The last section of paper will reconsider the possibility of Nepal’s further development and presence in some of Forums where India is taking lead. Such as, in SAARC, Indian diplomat J.N. Dixit has written that “time has come for the SAARC not shy away from becoming a forum for discussion on political issues which afflict then countries in the region” This forum shouldn’t limit to trade and co-operation in this regional level but most be favourable platform to discuss each country internal political conflicts.

This paper is meant to study the apocalyptic scenario of the at the perspectives of the Great Acceleration. the apocalyptic scenario is not a pure imagination of the literature works. Instead, scientific evidences are in favour of dramatic change in the climatic conditions related to the climax of Man actions. the modelling of the future climate leads to horrible situations including intolerable temperatures, dryness, tornadoes, and noticeable sear level rise evading coastal regions. Going far from these scientific claims, Homo Sapiens Sapiens extended his imagination through the Climate-Fiction (cli-fi) to propose a dramatic end. Climate Fiction is developed into a recording machine containing every kind of fictions that depict environmental condition events and has consequently lost its true significance. Introduction The Great Acceleration may be considered as the Late Anthropocene in which Man actions reached their climax to lead to dramatic climatic changes paving the way for a possible apocalyptic scenario threatening the existence of the humanity. So, the apocalyptic scenario is not a pure imagination of the literature works. Instead, many scientific arguments especially related to climate change are in favour of the apocalypse1. As a matter of fact, the modelling of the future climate leads to horrible situations including intolerable temperatures (In 06/07/2021, Kuwait recorded the highest temperature of 53.2 °C), dryness, tornadoes, and noticeable sear level rise evading coastal regions. These conditions taking place during the Great Acceleration would have direct repercussions on the human species. Considering that the apocalyptic extinction had really caused the disappearance of many stronger species including dinosaurs, Homo Sapiens Sapiens extended his imagination though the Climate-Fiction (cli-fi) to propose a dramatic end due to severe climate conditions intolerable by the humankind. The mass extinction of animal species has occurred several times over the geological ages. Researchers have a poor understanding of the causes and processes of these major crises1. Nonetheless, whatever the cause of extinction, the apocalyptic scenario has always been present in the geological history. For example, dinosaurs extinction either by asteroids impact or climate changes could by no means denies the apocalyptic aspect2.At the same time as them, many animal and plant species became extinct, from marine or flying reptiles to marine plankton. This biological crisis of sixty-five million years ago is not the only one that the biosphere has suffered. It was preceded and followed by other crises which caused the extinction or the rarefaction of animal species. So, it is undeniable that many animal groups have disappeared. It is even on the changes of fauna that the geologists of the last century have based themselves to establish the scale of geological times, scale which is still used. But it is no less certain that the extinction processes, extremely complex, are far from being understood. We must first agree on the meaning of the word "extinction", namely on the apocalyptic aspect of the concept. It is quite understood that, without disappearances, the evolution of species could not have followed its course. Being aware that the apocalyptic extinction had massacred stronger species that had dominated the planet, Homo Sapiens Sapiens has been aware that the possibility of apocalyptic end at the perspective of the Anthropocene (i.e., Great Acceleration) could not be excluded. This conviction is motivated by the progressive defaunation in some regions3and the appearance of alien species in others related to change of mineralogy and geochemistry4 leading to a climate change during the Anthropocene. These scientific claims fed the vast imagination about climate change to set the so-called cli-fi. The concept of the Anthropocene is the new geological era which begins when the Man actions have reached a sufficient power to modify the geological processes and climatic cycles of the planet5. The Anthropocene by no means excludes the possibility of an apocalyptic horizon, namely in the perspectives of the Great Acceleration. On the contrary, two scenarios do indeed seem to dispute the future of the Anthropocene, with a dramatic cross-charge. The stories of the end of the world are as old as it is, as the world is the origin of these stories. However, these stories of the apocalypse have evolved over time and, since the beginning of the 19th century, they have been nourished particularly by science and its advances. These fictions have sometimes tried to pass themselves off as science. This is the current vogue, called collapsology6. This end is more than likely cli-fi driven7and it may cause the extinction of the many species including the Homo Sapiens Sapiens. In this vein, Anthropocene defaunation has become an ultimate reality8. More than one in eight birds, more than one in five mammals, more than one in four coniferous species, one in three amphibians are threatened. The hypothesis of a hierarchy within the living is induced by the error of believing that evolution goes from the simplest to the most sophisticated, from the inevitably stupid inferior to the superior endowed with an intelligence giving prerogative to all powers. Evolution goes in all directions and pursues no goal except the extension of life on Earth. Evolution certainly does not lead from bacteria to humans, preferably male and white. Our species is only a carrier of the DNA that precedes us and that will survive us. Until we show a deep respect for the biosphere particularly, and our planet in general, we will not become much, we will remain a predator among other predators, the fiercest of predators, the almighty craftsman of the Anthropocene. To be in the depths of our humanity, somehow giving back to the biosphere what we have taken from it seems obvious. To stop the sixth extinction of species, we must condemn our anthropocentrism and the anthropization of the territories that goes with it. The other forms of life also need to keep their ecological niches. According to the first, humanity seems at first to withdraw from the limits of the planet and ultimately succumb to them, with a loss of dramatic meaning. According to the second, from collapse to collapse, it is perhaps another humanity, having overcome its demons, that could come. Climate fiction is a literary sub-genre dealing with the theme of climate change, including global warming. The term appears to have been first used in 2008 by blogger and writer Dan Bloom. In October 2013, Angela Evancie, in a review of the novel Odds against Tomorrow, by Nathaniel Rich, wonders if climate change has created a new literary genre. Scientific basis of the apocalyptic scenario in the perspective of the Anthropocene Global warming All temperature indices are in favour of a global warming (Fig.1). According to the different scenarios of the IPCC9, the temperatures of the globe could increase by 2 °C to 5 °C by 2100. But some scientists warn about a possible runaway of the warming which can reach more than 3 °C. Thus, the average temperature on the surface of the globe has already increased by more than 1.1 °C since the pre-industrial era. The rise in average temperatures at the surface of the globe is the first expected and observed consequence of massive greenhouse gas emissions. However, meteorological surveys record positive temperature anomalies which are confirmed from year to year compared to the temperatures recorded since the middle of the 19th century. Climatologists point out that the past 30 years have seen the highest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere for over 1,400 years. Several climatic centres around the world record, synthesize and follow the evolution of temperatures on Earth. Since the beginning of the 20th century (1906-2005), the average temperature at the surface of the globe has increased by 0.74 °C, but this progression has not been continuous since 1976, the increase has clearly accelerated, reaching 0.19 °C per decade according to model predictions. Despite the decline in solar activity, the period 1997-2006 is marked by an average positive anomaly of 0.53 °C in the northern hemisphere and 0.27 °C in the southern hemisphere, still compared to the normal calculated for 1961-1990. The ten hottest years on record are all after 1997. Worse, 14 of the 15 hottest years are in the 21st century, which has barely started. Thus, 2016 is the hottest year, followed closely by 2015, 2014 and 2010. The temperature of tropical waters increased by 1.2 °C during the 20th century (compared to 0.5 °C on average for the oceans), causing coral reefs to bleach in 1997. In 1998, the period of Fort El Niño, the prolonged warming of the water has destroyed half of the coral reefs of the Indian Ocean. In addition, the temperature in the tropics of the five ocean basins, where cyclones form, increased by 0.5 °C from 1970 to 2004, and powerful cyclones appeared in the North Atlantic in 2005, while they were more numerous in other parts of the world. Recently, mountains of studies focused on the possible scenario of climate change and the potential worldwide repercussions including hell temperatures and apocalyptic extreme events10 , 11, 12. Melting of continental glaciers As a direct result of the global warming, melting of continental glaciers has been recently noticed13. There are approximately 198,000 mountain glaciers in the world; they cover an area of approximately 726,000 km2. If they all melted, the sea level would rise by about 40 cm. Since the late 1960s, global snow cover has declined by around 10 to 15%. Winter cold spells in much of the northern half of the northern hemisphere are two weeks shorter than 100 years ago. Glaciers of mountains have been declining all over the world by an average of 50 m per decade for 150 years. However, they are also subject to strong multi-temporal variations which make forecasts on this point difficult according to some specialists. In the Alps, glaciers have been losing 1 meter per year for 30 years. Polar glaciers like those of Spitsbergen (about a hundred km from the North Pole) have been retreating since 1880, releasing large quantities of water. The Arctic has lost about 10% of its permanent ice cover every ten years since 1980. In this region, average temperatures have increased at twice the rate of elsewhere in the world in recent decades. The melting of the Arctic Sea ice has resulted in a loss of 15% of its surface area and 40% of its thickness since 1979. The record for melting arctic sea ice was set in 2017. All models predict the disappearance of the Arctic Sea ice in summer within a few decades, which will not be without consequences for the climate in Europe. The summer melting of arctic sea ice accelerated far beyond climate model predictions. Added to its direct repercussions of coastal regions flooding, melting of continental ice leads to radical climatic modifications in favour of the apocalyptic scenario. Fig.1 Evolution of temperature anomaly from 1880 to 2020: the apocalyptic scenario Sea level rise As a direct result of the melting of continental glaciers, sea level rise has been worldwide recorded14 ,15. The average level of the oceans has risen by 22 cm since 1880 and 2 cm since the year 2000 because of the melting of the glaciers but also with the thermal expansion of the water. In the 20th century, the sea level rose by around 2 mm per year. From 1990 to 2017, it reached the relatively constant rate of just over 3mm per year. Several sources contributed to sea level increase including thermal expansion of water (42%), melting of continental glaciers (21%), melting Greenland glaciers (15%) and melting Antarctic glaciers (8%). Since 2003, there has always been a rapid rise (around 3.3 mm / year) in sea level, but the contribution of thermal expansion has decreased (0.4 mm / year) while the melting of the polar caps and continental glaciers accelerates. Since most of the world’s population is living on coastal regions, sea level rise represents a real threat for the humanity, not excluding the apocalyptic scenario. Multiplication of extreme phenomena and climatic anomalies On a human scale, an average of 200 million people is affected by natural disasters each year and approximately 70,000 perish from them. Indeed, as evidenced by the annual reviews of disasters and climatic anomalies, we are witnessing significant warning signs. It is worth noting that these observations are dependent on meteorological survey systems that exist only in a limited number of countries with statistics that rarely go back beyond a century or a century and a half. In addition, scientists are struggling to represent the climatic variations of the last two thousand years which could serve as a reference in the projections. Therefore, the exceptional nature of this information must be qualified a little. Indeed, it is still difficult to know the return periods of climatic disasters in each region. But over the last century, the climate system has gone wild. Indeed, everything suggests that the climate is racing. Indeed, extreme events and disasters have become more frequent. For instance, less than 50 significant events were recorded per year over the period 1970-1985, while there have been around 120 events recorded since 1995. Drought has long been one of the most worrying environmental issues. But while African countries have been the main affected so far, the whole world is now facing increasingly frequent and prolonged droughts. Chile, India, Australia, United States, France and even Russia are all regions of the world suffering from the acceleration of the global drought. Droughts are slowly evolving natural hazards that can last from a few months to several decades and affect larger or smaller areas, whether they are small watersheds or areas of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. In addition to their direct effects on water resources, agriculture and ecosystems, droughts can cause fires or heat waves. They also promote the proliferation of invasive species, creating environments with multiple risks, worsening the consequences on ecosystems and societies, and increasing their vulnerability. Although these are natural phenomena, there is a growing understanding of how humans have amplified the severity and impacts of droughts, both on the environment and on people. We influence meteorological droughts through our action on climate change, and we influence hydrological droughts through our management of water circulation and water processes at the local scale, for example by diverting rivers or modifying land use. During the Anthropocene (the present period when humans exert a dominant influence on climate and environment), droughts are closely linked to human activities, cultures, and responses. From this scientific overview, it may be concluded apocalyptic scenario is not only a literature genre inspired from the pure imagination. Instead, many scientific arguments are in favour of this dramatic destiny of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Fig.2. Sea level rise from 1880 to 2020: a possible apocalyptic scenario (www.globalchange.gov, 2021) Apocalyptic genre in recent writing As the original landmark of apocalyptic writing, we must place the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 587 BC and the Exile in Babylon. Occasion of a religious and cultural crossing with imprescriptible effects, the Exile brought about a true rebirth, characterized by the maintenance of the essential ethical, even cultural, of a national religion, that of Moses, kept as pure as possible on a foreign land and by the reinterpretation of this fundamental heritage by the archaic return of what was very old, both national traditions and neighbouring cultures. More precisely, it was the place and time for the rehabilitation of cultures and the melting pot for recasting ancient myths. This vast infatuation with Antiquity, remarkable even in the vocabulary used, was not limited to Israel: it even largely reflected a general trend. The long period that preceded throughout the 7th century BC and until 587, like that prior to the edict of Cyrus in 538 BC, was that of restorations and rebirths, of returns to distant sources and cultural crossings. In the biblical literature of this period, one is struck by the almost systematic link between, on the one hand, a very sustained mythical reinvestment even in form and, on the other, the frequent use of biblical archaisms. The example of Shadday, a word firmly rooted in the Semites of the Northwest and epithet of El in the oldest layers of the books of Genesis and Exodus, is most eloquent. This term reappears precisely at the time of the Exile as a designation of the divinity of the Patriarchs and of the God of Israel; Daily, ecological catastrophes now describe the normal state of societies exposed to "risks", in the sense that Ulrich Beck gives to this term: "the risk society is a society of catastrophe. The state of emergency threatens to become a normal state there1”. Now, the "threat" has become clearer, and catastrophic "exceptions" are proliferating as quickly as species are disappearing and climate change is accelerating. The relationship that we have with this worrying reality, to say the least, is twofold: on the one hand, we know very well what is happening to us; on the other hand, we fail to draw the appropriate theoretical and political consequences. This ecological duplicity is at the heart of what has come to be called the “Anthropocene”, a term coined at the dawn of the 21st century by Eugene Stoermer (an environmentalist) and Paul Crutzen (a specialist in the chemistry of the atmosphere) in order to describe an age when humanity would have become a "major geological force" capable of disrupting the climate and changing the terrestrial landscape from top to bottom. If the term “Anthropocene” takes note of human responsibility for climate change, this responsibility is immediately attributed to overpowering: strong as we are, we have “involuntarily” changed the climate for at least two hundred and fifty years. Therefore, let us deliberately change the face of the Earth, if necessary, install a solar shield in space. Recognition and denial fuel the signifying machine of the Anthropocene. And it is precisely what structures eco-apocalyptic cinema that this article aims to study. By "eco-apocalyptic cinema", we first mean a cinematographic sub-genre: eco-apocalyptic and post-eco-apocalyptic films base the possibility (or reality) of the end of the world on environmental grounds and not, for example, on damage caused by the possible collision of planet Earth with a comet. Post-apocalyptic science fiction (sometimes abbreviated as "post-apo" or "post-nuke") is a sub-genre of science fiction that depicts life after a disaster that destroyed civilization: nuclear war, collision with a meteorite, epidemic, economic or energy crisis, pandemic, alien invasion. Conclusion Climate and politics have been linked together since Aristotle. With Montesquieu, Ibn Khaldûn or Watsuji, a certain climatic determinism is attributed to the character of a nation. The break with modernity made the climate an object of scientific knowledge which, in the twentieth century, made it possible to document, despite the controversies, the climatic changes linked to industrialization. Both endanger the survival of human beings and ecosystems. Climate ethics are therefore looking for a new relationship with the biosphere or Gaia. For some, with the absence of political agreements, it is the beginning of inevitable catastrophes. For others, the Anthropocene, which henceforth merges human history with natural history, opens onto technical action. The debate between climate determinism and human freedom is revived. The reference to the biblical Apocalypse was present in the thinking of thinkers like Günther Anders, Karl Jaspers or Hans Jonas: the era of the atomic bomb would mark an entry into the time of the end, a time marked by the unprecedented human possibility of 'total war and annihilation of mankind. The Apocalypse will be very relevant in describing the chaos to come if our societies continue their mad race described as extra-activist, productivist and consumerist. In dialogue with different theologians and philosophers (such as Jacques Ellul), it is possible to unveil some spiritual, ethical, and political resources that the Apocalypse offers for thinking about History and human engagement in the Anthropocene. What can a theology of collapse mean at a time when negative signs and dead ends in the human situation multiply? What then is the place of man and of the cosmos in the Apocalypse according to Saint John? Could the end of history be a collapse? How can we live in the time we have left before the disaster? Answers to such questions remain unknown and no scientist can predict the trajectory of this Great Acceleration taking place at the Late Anthropocene. When science cannot give answers, Man tries to infer his destiny for the legend, religion and the fiction. Climate Fiction is developed into a recording machine containing every kind of fictions that depict environmental condition events and has consequently lost its true significance. Aware of the prospect of ecological collapse additionally as our apparent inability to avert it, we tend to face geology changes of forceful proportions that severely challenge our ability to imagine the implications. Climate fiction ought to be considered an important supplement to climate science, as a result, climate fiction makes visible and conceivable future modes of existence inside worlds not solely deemed seemingly by science, however that area unit scientifically anticipated. Hence, this chapter, as part of the book itself, aims to contribute to studies of ecocriticism, the environmental humanities, and literary and culture studies. References David P.G. Bondand Stephen E. Grasby. "Late Ordovician mass extinction caused by volcanism, warming, and anoxia, not cooling and glaciation: REPLY." Geology 48, no. 8 (Geological Society of America2020): 510. Cyril Langlois.’Vestiges de l'apocalypse: ‘le site de Tanis, Dakota du Nord 2019’. Accessed June, 6, 2021, https://planet-terre.ens-lyon.fr/pdf/Tanis-extinction-K-Pg.pdf NajouaGharsalli,ElhoucineEssefi, Rana Baydoun, and ChokriYaich. ‘The Anthropocene and Great Acceleration as controversial epoch of human-induced activities: case study of the Halk El Menjel wetland, eastern Tunisia’. Applied Ecology and Environmental Research 18(3) (Corvinus University of Budapest 2020): 4137-4166 Elhoucine Essefi, ‘On the Geochemistry and Mineralogy of the Anthropocene’. International Journal of Water and Wastewater Treatment, 6(2). 1-14, (Sci Forschen2020): doi.org/10.16966/2381-5299.168 Elhoucine Essefi. ‘Record of the Anthropocene-Great Acceleration along a core from the coast of Sfax, southeastern Tunisia’. Turkish journal of earth science, (TÜBİTAK,2021). 1-16. Chiara Xausa. ‘Climate Fiction and the Crisis of Imagination: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria and The Swan Book’. Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal 8(2), (WARWICK 2021): 99-119. Akyol, Özlem. "Climate Change: An Apocalypse for Urban Space? An Ecocritical Reading of “Venice Drowned” and “The Tamarisk Hunter”." Folklor/Edebiyat 26, no. 101 (UluslararasıKıbrısÜniversitesi 2020): 115-126. Boswell, Suzanne F. "The Four Tourists of the Apocalypse: Figures of the Anthropocene in Caribbean Climate Fiction.". Paradoxa 31, (Academia 2020): 359-378. Ayt Ougougdal, Houssam, Mohamed YacoubiKhebiza, Mohammed Messouli, and Asia Lachir. "Assessment of future water demand and supply under IPCC climate change and socio-economic scenarios, using a combination of models in Ourika Watershed, High Atlas, Morocco." Water 12, no. 6 (MPDI 2020): 1751.DOI:10.3390/w12061751. Wu, Jia, Zhenyu Han, Ying Xu, Botao Zhou, and Xuejie Gao. "Changes in extreme climate events in China under 1.5 C–4 C global warming targets: Projections using an ensemble of regional climate model simulations." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 125, no. 2 (Wiley2020): e2019JD031057.https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD031057 Khan, Md Jamal Uddin, A. K. M. Islam, Sujit Kumar Bala, and G. M. Islam. "Changes in climateextremes over Bangladesh at 1.5° C, 2° C, and 4° C of global warmingwith high-resolutionregionalclimate modeling." Theoretical&AppliedClimatology 140 (EBSCO2020). Gudoshava, Masilin, Herbert O. Misiani, Zewdu T. Segele, Suman Jain, Jully O. Ouma, George Otieno, Richard Anyah et al. "Projected effects of 1.5 C and 2 C global warming levels on the intra-seasonal rainfall characteristics over the Greater Horn of Africa." Environmental Research Letters 15, no. 3 (IOPscience2020): 34-37. Wang, Lawrence K., Mu-Hao Sung Wang, Nai-Yi Wang, and Josephine O. Wong. "Effect of Global Warming and Climate Change on Glaciers and Salmons." In Integrated Natural Resources Management, ed.Lawrence K. Wang, Mu-Hao Sung Wang, Yung-Tse Hung, Nazih K. Shammas(Springer 2021), 1-36. Merschroth, Simon, Alessio Miatto, Steffi Weyand, Hiroki Tanikawa, and Liselotte Schebek. "Lost Material Stock in Buildings due to Sea Level Rise from Global Warming: The Case of Fiji Islands." Sustainability 12, no. 3 (MDPI 2020): 834.doi:10.3390/su12030834 Hofer, Stefan, Charlotte Lang, Charles Amory, Christoph Kittel, Alison Delhasse, Andrew Tedstone, and Xavier Fettweis. "Greater Greenland Ice Sheet contribution to global sea level rise in CMIP6." 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Dry spells ranging from years to decades have happened many times throughout history. North America, West Africa, and East Asia, for example, have seen significant changes in the past century. Asia. Droughts were most likely caused by unusual tropical sea surface temperatures. Temperatures (SSTs), with La Nina-like SST anomalies causing dryness in parts of the country. Drought in East China is being caused by El Nino-like SSTs in North America. Across Africa, warming in the Atlantic and a southern shift of the hottest SSTs Droughts in the Sahel have been blamed on the Indian Ocean. Local feedbacks may be useful. Intensify and extend the drought Since the 1970s, global aridity has risen dramatically. Due to recent dryness in Africa, southern Europe, and East and South Asia in the 1970s, as well as eastern Australia. Despite the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), tropical cyclones continue to exist. Atlantic SSTs and Asian monsoons have aided the current dryness. The demand for moisture in the atmosphere has risen because of recent warming, and this has likely changed the landscape. Both of these factors contribute to the drying of the atmosphere. Models of climate change. In the twenty-first century, much of Africa and southern Europe saw increasing aridity and the Middle East, as well as the majority of North and South America, Australia, and Southeast Asia Region.

Image 1: View from Geodha Sgoilt towards the sea stacks, Uig, Isle of Lewis. Image credit: George Jaramillo.IntroductionOver the cliffs of Mangerstadh on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, is a small plot of land called Geodha Sgoilt that overlooks the North Atlantic Ocean (Image 1). On the site is a small dirt gravel road and the remnants of a World War II listening station. Below, sea stacks rise from the waters, orange and green cliff sides stand in defiance to the crashing waves. An older gentleman began to tell me of what he believed could be located here on the site. A place where visitors could learn of the wonders of St Kilda that contained all types of new storytelling technologies to inspire them. He pointed above the ruined buildings, mentioning that a new road for the visitors’ vehicles and coaches would be built. With his explanations, you could almost imagine such a place on these cliffs. Yet, before that new idea could even be built, this gentleman and his group of locals and incomers had to convince themselves and others that this new heritage centre was something desired, necessary and inevitable in the development of the Western Isles.This article explores the developing relationships that come about through design innovation with community organisations. This was done through a partnership between an academic institution and a non-profit heritage community group as part of growing study in how higher education design research can play an active partner in community group development. It argues for the use of design thinking and innovation in improving strategy and organisational processes within non-profit organisations. In this case, it looks at what role it can play in building and enabling organisational confidence in its mission, as well as, building “beyond the museum”. The new approach to this unique relationship casts new light towards working with complexities and strategies rather than trying to resolve issues from the outset of a project. These enabling relationships are divided into three sections of this paper: First it explores the context of the island community group and “building” heritage, followed by a brief history of St Kilda and its current status, and designation as a World Heritage site. Second, it seeks the value of developing strategy and the introduction of the Institute of Design Innovation (INDI). This is followed by a discussion of the six-month relationship and work that was done that elucidates various methods used and ending with its outcomes. The third section reflects upon the impacts at the relationship building between the two groups with some final thoughts on the partnership, where it can lead, and how this can represent new ways of working together within community groups. Building HeritageCurrent community research in Scotland has shown struggles in understanding issues within community capability and development (Barker 11; Cave 20; Jacuniak-Suda, and Mose 23) though most focus on the land tenure and energy (McMorran 21) and not heritage groups. The need to maintain “resilient” (Steiner 17) communities has shown that economic resilience is of primary importance for these rural communities. Heritage as economic regenerator has had a long history in the United Kingdom. Some of these like the regeneration of Wirksworth in the Peak District (Gordon 20) have had great economic results with populations growing, as well as, development in the arts and design. These changes, though positive, have also adversely impacted the local community by estranging and forcing lower income townspeople to move away due to higher property values and lack of work. Furthermore, current trends in heritage tourism have managed to turn many rural regions into places of historic consumption (Ronström 7) termed “heritagisation” (Edensor 35). There is thus a need for critical reflection within a variety of heritage organisations with the increase in heritage tourism.In particular, existing island heritage organisations face a variety of issues that they focus too much on the artefactual or are too focused to strive for anything beyond the remit of their particular heritage (Jacuniak-Suda, and Mose 33; Ronström 4). Though many factors including funding, space, volunteerism and community capability affect the way these groups function they have commonalities that include organisational methods, volunteer fatigue, and limited interest from community groups. It is within this context that the communities of the Outer Hebrides. Currently, projects within the Highlands and islands focus on particular “grassroots” development (Cave 26; Robertson 994) searching for innovative ways to attract, maintain, and sustain healthy levels of heritage and development—one such group is Ionad Hiort. Ionad Hiort Ionad Hiort is a community non-profit organisation founded in 2010 to assist in the development of a new type of heritage centre in the community of Uig on the Isle of Lewis (“Proposal-Ionad Hiort”). As stated in their website, the group strives to develop a centre on the history and contemporary views of St Kilda, as well as, encouraging a much-needed year-round economic impetus for the region. The development of the group and the idea of a heritage centre came about through the creation of the St Kilda Opera, a £1.5 million, five-country project held in 2007, led by Scotland’s Gaelic Arts agency, Proiseact nan Ealan (Mckenzie). This opera, inspired by the cliffs, people, and history of St Kilda used creative techniques to unite five countries in a live performance with cliff aerobatics and Gaelic singing to present the island narrative. From this initial interest, a commission from the Western Isles council (2010), developed by suggestions and commentary from earlier reports (Jura Report 2009; Rebanks 2009) encouraged a fiercely contentious competition, which saw Ionad Hiort receive the right to develop a remote-access heritage centre about the St Kilda archipelago (Maclean). In 2013, the group received a plot of land from the local laird for the establishment of the centre (Urquhart) thereby bringing it closer to its goal of a heritage centre, but before moving onto this notion of remote-heritage, a brief history is needed on the archipelago. Image 2: Location map of Mangerstadh on the Isle of Lewis and St Kilda to the west, with inset of Scotland. Image credit: © Crown Copyright and Database Right (2017). Ordnance Survey (Digimap Licence).St KildaSt Kilda is an archipelago about 80 kilometres off the coast of the Outer Hebrides in the North Atlantic (Image 2). Over 2000 years of habitation show an entanglement between humans and nature including harsh weather, limited resources, but a tenacity and growth to develop a way of living upon a small section of land in the middle of the Atlantic. St Kilda has maintained a tenuous relationship between the sea, the cliffs and the people who have lived within its territory (Geddes, and Gannon 18). Over a period of three centuries beginning in the eighteenth century an outside influence on the island begin to play a major role, with the loss of a large portion of its small (180) population. This population would later decrease to 100 and finally to 34 in 1930, when it was decided to evacuate the final members of the village in what could best be called a forced eviction.Since the evacuation, the island has maintained an important military presence as a listening station during the Second World War and in its modern form a radar station as part of the Hebridean Artillery (Rocket) Range (Geddes 14). The islands in the last thirty years have seen an increase in tourism with the ownership of the island by the National Trust of Scotland. The UNESCO World Heritage Organisation (UNESCO), who designated St Kilda in 1986 and 2004 as having outstanding universal value, has seen its role evolve from not just protecting (or conserving) world heritage sites, but to strategically understand sustainable tourism of its sites (“St Kilda”). In 2012, UNESCO selected St Kilda as a case study for remote access heritage conservation and interpretation (Hebrides News Today; UNESCO 15). This was partly due to the efforts of 3D laser scanning of the islands by a collaboration between The Glasgow School of Art and Historic Environment Scotland called the Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation (CDDV) in 2009.The idea of a remote access heritage is an important aspect as to what Ionad Hiort could do with creating a centre at their site away from St Kilda. Remote access heritage is useful in allowing for sites and monuments to be conserved and monitored “from afar”. It allows for 3D visualisations of sites and provides new creative engagements with a variety of different places (Remondino, and Rizzi 86), however, Ionad Hiort was not yet at a point to even imagine how to use the remote access technology. They first needed a strategy and direction, as after many years of moving towards recognition of proposing the centre at their site in Uig, they had lost a bit of that initial drive. This is where INDI was asked to assist by the Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the regional development organisation for most of rural Scotland. Building ConfidenceINDI is a research institute at The Glasgow School of Art. It is a distributed, creative collective of researchers, lecturers and students specialising in design innovation, where design innovation means enabling creative capabilities within communities, groups and individuals. Together, they address complex issues through new design practices and bespoke community engagement to co-produce “preferable futures” (Henchley 25). Preferable futures are a type of future casting that seeks to strive not just for the probable or possible future of a place or idea, but for the most preferred and collectively reached option for a society (McAra-McWilliam 9). INDI researches the design processes that are needed to co-create contexts in which people can flourish: at work, in organisations and businesses, as well as, in public services and government. The task of innovation as an interactive process is an example of the design process. Innovation is defined as “a co-creation process within social and technological networks in which actors integrate their resources to create mutual value” (Russo‐Spena, and Mele 528). Therefore, innovation works outside of standard consultancy practices; rather it engenders a sense of mutual co-created practices that strive to resolve particular problems. Examples include the work that has looked at creating cultures of innovation within small and medium-sized enterprises (Lockwood 4) where the design process was used to alter organisational support (Image 3). These enterprises tend to emulate larger firms and corporations and though useful in places where economies of scale are present, smaller business need adaptable, resilient and integrated networks of innovation within their organisational models. In this way, innovation functioned as a catalyst for altering the existing organisational methods. These innovations are thus a useful alternative to existing means of approaching problems and building resilience within any organisation. Therefore, these ideas of innovation could be transferred and play a role in enabling new ways of approaching non-profit organisational structures, particularly those within heritage. Image 3: Design Council Double Diamond model of the design process. Image credit: Lockwood.Developing the WorkIonad Hiort with INDI’s assistance has worked together to develop a heritage centre that tries to towards a new definition of heritage and identity through this island centre. Much of this work has been done through local community investigations revolving around workshops and one-on-one talks where narratives and ideas are held in “negative capability” (McAra-McWilliam 2) to seek many alternatives that would be able to work for the community. The initial aims of the partnership were to assist the Uig community realise the potential of the St Kilda Centre. Primarily, it would assist in enabling the capabilities of two themes. The first would be, strategy, for Ionad Hiort’s existing multi-page mission brief. The second would be storytelling the narrative of St Kilda as a complex and entangled, however, its common views are limited to the ‘fall from grace’ or ‘noble savage’ story (Macdonald 168). Over the course of six months, the relationship involved two workshops and three site visits of varying degrees of interaction. An initial gathering had InDI staff meet members of Ionad Hiort to introduce members to each other. Afterwards, INDI ran two workshops over two months in Uig to understand, reflect and challenge Ionad Hiort’s focus on what the group desired. The first workshop focused on the group’s strategy statement. In a relaxed and facilitated space in the Uig Community Hall, the groups used pens, markers, and self-adhesive notes to engage in an open dialogue about the group’s desires. This session included reflecting on what their heritage centre could look like, as well as what their strategy needed to get there. These resulted in a series of drawings of their ‘preferred’ centre, with some ideas showing a centre sitting over the edge of the cliffs or one that had the centre be an integral component of the community. In discussing that session, one of members of the group recalled:I remember his [one of INDI’s staff] interrogation of the project was actually pretty – initially – fairly brutal, right? The first formal session we had talking about strategy and so on. To the extent that I think it would be fair to say he pissed everybody off, right? So much so that he actually prompted us to come back with some fairly hard hitting ripostes, which, after a moment’s silence he then said, ‘That’s it, you’ve convinced me’, and at that point we kind of realised that that’s what he’d been trying to do; he’d been trying to really push us to go further in our articulation of what we were doing and … why we were doing it in this particular way than we had done before. (Participant A, 2016).The group through this session found out that their strategy could be refined into a short mission statement giving a clear focus as to what they wanted and how they wanted to go about doing it. In the end, drawings, charts, stories (Image 4) were drawn to reflect on what the community had discussed. These artefacts became a key role-player in the following months of the development of the group. Image 4: View of group working through their strategy workshop session. Image credit: Fergus Fullarton-Pegg (2014). The second set of workshops and visits involved informal discussion with individual members of the group and community. This included a visit to St Kilda with members from INDI, Ionad Hiort and the Digital Design Studio, which allowed for everyone to understand the immensity of the project and its significance to World Heritage values. The initial aims thus evolved into understanding the context of self-governance for distributed communities and how to develop the infrastructure of development. As discussed earlier, existing development processes are useful, though limited to only particular types of projects, and as exemplified in the Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Western Isles Council commission, it tends to put communities against each other for limited pots of money. This existing system can be innovated upon by becoming creative liaisons, sharing and co-creating from existing studies to help develop more effective processes for the future of Ionad Hiort and their ‘preferable future’. Building RelationshipsWhat the relationship with GSA has done, as a dialogue with the team of people that have been involved, has been to consolidate and clarify our own thinking and to get us to question our own thinking across several different aspects of the whole project. (Participant A, 2016)As the quote states, the main notion of using design thinking has allowed Ionad Hiort to question their thinking and challenge preconceptions of what a “heritage centre” is, by being a critical sounding board that is different from what is provided by consultants and other stakeholders. Prior to meeting INDI, Ionad Hiort may have been able to reach their goal of a strategy, however, it would have taken a few more years. The work, which involved structured and unstructured workshops, meetings, planning events, and gatherings, gave them a structured focus to move ahead with their prospectus planning and bidding. INDI enabled the compression and focus of their strategy making and mission strategy statement over the course of six months into a one-page statement that gave direction to the group and provided the impetus for the development of the prospectus briefs. Furthermore, INDI contributed a sense of contemporary content to the historic story, as well as, enable the community to see that this centre would not just become another gallery with café. The most important outcome has been an effective measure in building relationships in the Outer Hebrides, which shows the changing roles between academic and third sector partnerships. Two key points can be deemed from these developing relationships: The first has been to build a research infrastructure in and across the region that engages with local communities about working with the GSA, including groups in North Uist, Barra and South Uist. Of note is a comment made by one of the participants saying: “It’s exciting now, there’s a buzz about it and getting you [INDI] involved, adding a dimension—we’ve got people who have got an artistic bent here but I think your enthusiasm, your skills, very much complement what we’ve got here.” (Participant B, 2016). Second, the academic/non-profit partnership has encouraged younger people to work and study in the area through a developing programme of student research activity. This includes placing taught masters students with local community members on the South Uist, as well as, PhD research being done on Stornoway. These two outcomes then have given rise to interest in not only how heritage is re-developed in a community, but also, encourages future interest, by staff and students to continue the debate and fashion further developments in the region (GSAmediacentre). Today, the cliffs of Mangerstadh continue to receive the pounding of waves, the blowing wind and the ever-present rain on its rocky granite surface. The iterative stages of work that the two groups have done showcase the way that simple actions can carve, change and evolve into innovative outcomes. The research outcomes show that through this new approach to working with communities we move beyond the consultant and towards an ability of generating a preferable future for the community. In this way, the work that has been created together showcases a case study for further island community development. We do not know what the future holds for the group, but with continued support and maintaining an open mind to creative opportunities we will see that the community will develop a space that moves “beyond the museum”. AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank Ionad Hiort and all the residents of Uig on the Isle of Lewis for their assistance and participation in this partnership. For more information on their work please visit http://www.ionadhiort.org/. The author also thanks the Highlands and Islands Enterprise for financial support in the research and development of the project. Finally, the author thanks the two reviewers who provided critical commentary and critiques to improve this paper. ReferencesBarker, Adam. “Capacity Building for Sustainability: Towards Community Development in Coastal Scotland.” Journal of Environmental Management 75.1 (2005): 11-19. 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Jacuniak-Suda, Marta, and Ingo Mose. “Social Enterprises in the Western Isles (Scotland) – Drivers of Sustainable Rural Development ?” Europa Regional 19.2011.2 (2014): 23-40. Lockwood, Joseph, Madeline Smith, and Irene McAra-McWilliam. “Work-Well: Creating a Culture of Innovation through Design.” International Design Management Research Conference, Boston, 2012. 1-11. McAra-McWilliam, Irene. “Impossible Things? Negative Capability and the Creative Imagination.” Creativity or Conformity Conference, Cardiff, 2007. 1-8. <https://www.academia.edu/1246770/Impossible_things_Negative_Capability>.McKenzie, Steven. "Opera Celebrates St Kilda History." BBC News 23 Jun. 2007. 6 Apr. 2017 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6763371.stm>.McMorran, Rob, and Alister Scott. “Community Landownership: Rediscovering the Road to Sustainability.” Lairds: Scottish Perspectives on Upland Management (2013): 20-31. Maclean, Diane. “Bitter Strife over St Kilda Visitor Centre.” The Caledonian Mercury 29 Jan. 2010. 6 Apr. 2017 <http://www.caledonianmercury.com/2010/01/29/bitter-strife-over-st-kilda-visitor-centre/001383>.News Editor. “Double Boost for St Kilda Project.” Hebrides News Today 20 Nov. 2013. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.hebridestoday.com/2013/11/double-boost-for-st-kilda-project/>.Portschy, Szabolcs. “Design Partnerships between Community-Engaged Architecture and Academic Education Programs.” Pollack Periodica 10.1 (2015): 173-180.“Proposal – Ionad Hiort.” Ionad Hiort. 6 Apr. 2017 <http://www.ionadhiort.org/the-proposal>. Rebanks, James. “World Heritage Status: Is There Opportunity for Economic Gain? Research and Analysis of the Socio-Economic Impact Potential of UNESCO World Heritage Site Status.” 2009. <http://icomos.fa.utl.pt/documentos/2009/WHSTheEconomicGainFinalReport.pdf>.Robertson, Iain James McPherson. “Hardscrabble Heritage: The Ruined Blackhouse and Crofting Landscape as Heritage from Below.” Landscape Research 40.8 (2015): 993–1009. Ronström, Owe. “Heritage Production in the Island of Gotland.” The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 2.2 (2008): 1-18. Russo‐Spena, Tiziana, and Cristina Mele. “‘Five Co‐s’ in Innovating: A Practice‐Based View.” Ed. Evert Gummesson. Journal of Service Management 23.4 (2012): 527-53. “St Kilda.” World Heritage Centre. UNESCO. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.whc.unesco.org/en/list/387/>.Steiner, Artur, and Marianna Markantoni. “Unpacking Community Resilience through Capacity for Change.” Community Development Journal 49.3 (2014): 407-25.Shortall, S. “Rural Development in Practice: Issues Arising in Scotland and Northern Ireland.” Community Development Journal 36.2 (2001): 122-33. UNESCO. Using Remote Access Technologies: Lessons Learnt from the Remote Access to World Heritage Sites – St Kilda to Uluru Conference. London, 2012. Urquhart, Frank. “St Kilda Visitor Centre in Hebrides Step Closer.” People Places, The Scotsman 20 Nov. 2013. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/st-kilda-visitor-centre-in-hebrides-step-closer-1-3195287>. Watson, Amy. “Plans for St Kilda Centre at Remote World Heritage Site.” People Places, The Scotsman 16 Aug. 2016. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/plans-for-st-kilda-centre-at-remote-world-heritage-site-1-4204606>.

In 1999, the TV movie Shark Attack depicted an attack by mutant great white sharks on the population of Cape Town. By the time the third entry in the series, Shark Attack 3, aired in 2002, mutant great whites had lost their lustre and were replaced as antagonists with the megalodon: a giant shark originating not in any laboratory, but history, having lived from approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago. The megalodon was resurrected again in May 2021 through a trifecta of events. A video of a basking shark encounter in the Atlantic went viral on the social media platform TikTok, due to users misidentifying it as a megalodon caught on tape. At the same time a boy received publicity for finding a megalodon tooth on a beach in South Carolina on his fifth birthday (Scott). And finally, the video game Stranded Deep, in which a megalodon is featured as a major enemy, was released as one of the monthly free games on the PlayStation Plus gaming service. These examples form part of a larger trend of alleged megalodon sightings in recent years, emerging as a component of the modern resurgence of cryptozoology. In the words of Bernard Heuvelmans, the Belgian zoologist who both popularised the term and was a leading figure of the field, cryptozoology is the “science of hidden animals”, which he further explained were more generally referred to as ‘unknowns’, even though they are typically known to local populations—at least sufficiently so that we often indirectly know of their existence, and certain aspects of their appearance and behaviour. It would be better to call them animals ‘undescribed by science,’ at least according to prescribed zoological rules. (1-2) In other words, a large aspect of cryptozoology as a field is taking the legendary creatures of non-Western mythology and finding materialist explanations for them compatible with Western biology. In many ways, this is a relic of the era of European imperialism, when many creatures of Africa and the Americas were “hidden animals” to European eyes (Dendle 200-01; Flores 557; Guimont). A major example of this is Bigfoot beliefs, a large subset of which took Native American legends about hairy wild men and attempted to prove that they were actually sightings of relict Gigantopithecus. These “hidden animals”—Bigfoot, Nessie, the chupacabra, the glawackus—are referred to as ‘cryptids’ by cryptozoologists (Regal 22, 81-104). Almost unique in cryptozoology, the megalodon is a cryptid based entirely on Western scientific development, and even the notion that it survives comes from standard scientific analysis (albeit analysis which was later superseded). Much like living mammoths and Bigfoot, what might be called the ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ serves to reinforce a fairy tale of its own. It reflects the desire to believe that there are still areas of the Earth untouched enough by human destruction to sustain massive animal life (Dendle 199-200). Indeed, megalodon’s continued existence would help absolve humanity for the oceanic aspect of the Sixth Extinction, by its role as an alternative apex predator; cryptozoologist Michael Goss even proposed that whales and giant squids are rare not from human causes, but precisely because megalodons are feeding on them (40). Horror scholar Michael Fuchs has pointed out that shark media, particularly the 1975 film Jaws and its 2006 video game adaptation Jaws Unleashed, are imbued with eco-politics (Fuchs 172-83). These connections, as well as the modern megalodon’s surge in popularity, make it notable that none of Syfy’s climate change-focused Sharknado films featured a megalodon. Despite the lack of a Megalodonado, the popular appeal of the megalodon serves as an important case study. Given its scientific origin and dynamic relationship with popular culture, I argue that the ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ illustrates how the boundaries between ‘hard’ science and mythology, fiction and reality, as well as ‘monster’ and ‘animal’, are not as firm as advocates of the Western science tradition might believe. As this essay highlights, science can be a mythology of its own, and monsters can serve as its gods of the gaps—or, in the case of megalodon, the god of the depths. Megalodon Fossils: A Short History Ancient peoples of various cultures likely viewed fossilised teeth of megalodons in the area of modern-day Syria (Mayor, First Fossil Hunters 257). Over the past 2500 years, Native American cultures in North America used megalodon teeth both as curios and cutting tools, due to their large size and serrated edges. A substantial trade in megalodon teeth fossils existed between the cultures inhabiting the areas of the Chesapeake Bay and Ohio River Valley (Lowery et al. 93-108). A 1961 study found megalodon teeth present as offerings in pre-Columbian temples across Central America, including in the Mayan city of Palenque in Mexico and Sitio Conte in Panama (de Borhegyi 273-96). But these cases led to no mythologies incorporating megalodons, in contrast to examples such as the Unktehi, a Sioux water monster of myth likely inspired by a combination of mammoth and mosasaur fossils (Mayor, First Americans 221-38). In early modern Europe, megalodon teeth were initially referred to as ‘tongue stones’, due to their similarity in size and shape to human tongues—just one of many ways modern cryptozoology comes from European religious and mystical thought (Dendle 190-216). In 1605, English scholar Richard Verstegan published his book A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities, which included an engraving of a tongue stone, making megalodon teeth potentially the subject of the first known illustration of any fossil (Davidson 333). In Malta, from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, megalodon teeth, known as ‘St. Paul’s tongue’, were used as charms to ward off the evil eye, dipped into drinks suspected of being poisoned, and even ground into powder and consumed as medicine (Zammit-Maempel, “Evil Eye” plate III; Zammit-Maempel, “Handbills” 220; Freller 31-32). While megalodon teeth were valued in and of themselves, they were not incorporated into myths, or led to a belief in megalodons still being extant. Indeed, save for their size, megalodon teeth were hard to distinguish from those of living sharks, like great whites. Instead, both the identification of megalodons as a species, and the idea that they might still be alive, were notions which originated from extrapolations of the results of nineteenth and twentieth century European scientific studies. In particular, the major culprit was the famous British 1872-76 HMS Challenger expedition, which led to the establishment of oceanography as a branch of science. In 1873, Challenger recovered fossilised megalodon teeth from the South Pacific, the first recovered in the open ocean (Shuker 48; Goss 35; Roesch). In 1959, the zoologist Wladimir Tschernezky of Queen Mary College analysed the teeth recovered by the Challenger and argued (erroneously, as later seen) that the accumulation of manganese dioxide on its surface indicated that one had to have been deposited within the last 11,000 years, while another was given an age of 24,000 years (1331-32). However, these views have more recently been debunked, with megalodon extinction occurring over two million years ago at the absolute latest (Pimiento and Clements 1-5; Coleman and Huyghe 138; Roesch). Tschernezky’s 1959 claim that megalodons still existed as of 9000 BCE was followed by the 1963 book Sharks and Rays of Australian Seas, a posthumous publication by ichthyologist David George Stead. Stead recounted a story told to him in 1918 by fishermen in Port Stephens, New South Wales, of an encounter with a fully white shark in the 115-300 foot range, which Stead argued was a living megalodon. That this account came from Stead was notable as he held a PhD in biology, had founded the Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia, and had debunked an earlier supposed sea monster sighting in Sydney Harbor in 1907 (45-46). The Stead account formed the backbone of cryptozoological claims for the continued existence of the megalodon, and after the book’s publication, multiple reports of giant shark sightings in the Pacific from the 1920s and 1930s were retroactively associated with relict megalodons (Shuker 43, 49; Coleman and Huyghe 139-40; Goss 40-41; Roesch). A Monster of Science and Culture As I have outlined above, the ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ had as its origin story not in Native American or African myth, but Western science: the Challenger Expedition, a London zoologist, and an Australian ichthyologist. Nor was the idea of a living megalodon necessarily outlandish; in the decades after the Challenger Expedition, a number of supposedly extinct fish species had been discovered to be anything but. In the late 1800s, the goblin shark and frilled shark, both considered ‘living fossils’, had been found in the Pacific (Goss 34-35). In 1938, the coelacanth, also believed by Western naturalists to have been extinct for millions of years, was rediscovered (at least by Europeans) in South Africa, samples having occasionally been caught by local fishermen for centuries. The coelacanth in particular helped give scientific legitimacy to the idea, prevalent for decades by that point, that living dinosaurs—associated with a legendary creature called the mokele-mbembe—might still exist in the heart of Central Africa (Guimont). In 1976, a US Navy ship off Hawaii recovered a megamouth shark, a deep-water species completely unknown prior. All of these oceanic discoveries gave credence to the idea that the megalodon might also still survive (Coleman and Clark 66-68, 156-57; Shuker 41; Goss 35; Roesch). Indeed, Goss has noted that prior to 1938, respectable ichthyologists were more likely to believe in the continued existence of the megalodon than the coelacanth (39-40). Of course, the major reason why speculation over megalodon survival had such public resonance was completely unscientific: the already-entrenched fascination with the fact that it had been a locomotive-sized killer. This had most clearly been driven home by a 1909 display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. There, Bashford Dean, an ichthyologist at the museum, reconstructed an immense megalodon jaw, complete with actual fossil teeth. However, due to the fact that Dean assumed that all megalodon teeth were approximately the same size as the largest examples medially in the jaws, Dean’s jaw was at least one third larger than the likely upper limit of megalodon size. Nevertheless, the public perception of the megalodon remained at the 80-foot length that Dean extrapolated, rather than the more realistic 55-foot length that was the likely approximate upper size (Randall 170; Shuker 47; Goss 36-39). In particular, this inaccurate size estimate became entrenched in public thought due to a famous photograph of Dean and other museum officials posing inside his reconstructed jaw—a photograph which appeared in perhaps the most famous piece of shark fiction of all time, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws. As it would turn out, the megalodon connection was itself a relic from the movie’s evolutionary ancestor, Peter Benchley’s novel, Jaws, from the year before. In the novel, the Woods Hole ichthyologist Matt Hooper (played by Richard Dreyfuss in the film) proposes that megalodons not only still exist, but they are the same species as great white sharks, with the smaller size of traditional great whites being due to the fact that they are simply on the small end of the megalodon size range (257-59). Benchley was reflecting on what was then the contemporary idea that megalodons likely resembled scaled-up great white sharks; something which is no longer as accepted. This was particularly notable as a number of claimed sightings stated that the alleged megalodons were larger great whites (Shuker 48-49), perhaps circuitously due to the Jaws influence. However, Goss was apparently unaware of Benchley’s linkage when he noted in 1987 (incidentally the year of the fourth and final Jaws movie) that to a megalodon, “the great white shark of Jaws would have been a stripling and perhaps a between-meals snack” (36). The publication of the Jaws novel led to an increased interest in the megalodon amongst cryptozoologists (Coleman and Clark 154; Mullis, “Cryptofiction” 246). But even so, it attracted rather less attention than other cryptids. From 1982-98, Heuvelmans served as president of the International Society of Cryptozoology, whose official journal was simply titled Cryptozoology. The notion of megalodon survival was addressed only once in its pages, and that as a brief mention in a letter to the editor (Raynal 112). This was in stark contrast to the oft-discussed potential for dinosaurs, mammoths, and Neanderthals to remain alive in the present day. In 1991, prominent British cryptozoologist Karl Shuker published an article endorsing the idea of extant megalodons (46-49). But this was followed by a 1998 article by Ben S. Roesch in The Cryptozoology Review severely criticising the methodology of Shuker and others who believed in the megalodon’s existence (Roesch). Writing in 1999, Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark, arguably the most prominent post-Heuvelmans cryptozoologists, were agnostic on the megalodon’s survival (155). The British palaeozoologist Darren Naish, a critic of cryptozoology, has pointed out that even if Shuker and others are correct and the megalodon continues to live in deep sea crevasses, it would be distinct enough from the historical surface-dwelling megalodon to be a separate species, to which he gave the hypothetical classification Carcharocles modernicus (Naish). And even the public fascination with the megalodon has its limits: at a 24 June 2004 auction in New York City, a set of megalodon jaws went on sale for $400,000, but were left unpurchased (Couzin 174). New Mythologies The ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ is effectively a fairy tale born of the blending of science, mythology, and most importantly, fiction. Beyond Jaws or Shark Attack 3—and potentially having inspired the latter (Weinberg)—perhaps the key patient zero of megalodon fiction is Steve Alten’s 1997 novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, which went through a tortuous development adaptation process to become the 2018 film The Meg (Mullis, “Journey” 291-95). In the novel, the USS Nautilus, the US Navy’s first nuclear submarine and now a museum ship in Connecticut, is relaunched in order to hunt down the megalodon, only to be chomped in half by the shark. This is a clear allusion to Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1870), where his Nautilus (namesake of the real submarine) is less successfully attacked by a giant cuttlefish (Alten, Meg 198; Verne 309-17). Meanwhile, in Alten’s 1999 sequel The Trench, an industrialist’s attempts to study the megalodon are revealed as an excuse to mine helium-3 from the seafloor to build fusion reactors, a plot financed by none other than a pre-9/11 Osama bin Laden in order to allow the Saudis to take over the global economy, in the process linking the megalodon with a monster of an entirely different type (Alten, Trench 261-62). In most adaptations of Verne’s novel, the cuttlefish that attacks the Nautilus is replaced by a giant squid, traditionally seen as the basis for the kraken of Norse myth (Thone 191). The kraken/giant squid dichotomy is present in the video game Stranded Deep. 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