Mongolia is Relevant: Mongolia and Your Mobile

I finally managed to find a copy of the English-Language newspaper in Mongolia, and immediately a few things struck me. One was how much was about economics—there was a “Money” section AND a “Market” section, plus the front page had an money/market focus. But a lot of the economic issues are related to the big thing in Mongolia these days: Mining.

Companies are rushing to develop infrastructure to tap the rich resources of the (till now) untouched Mongolian countryside. Though Mongolia’s not currently a huge player on the international market, that’s partially because it just doesn’t have the equipment and railroads (and regular roads) to uncover all its natural resources.

And valuable resources they are… though cashmere is my personal favorite, Mongolia also has mines upon mines of coal, copper, gold, and (my second favorite) uranium. One article I read was about the development of a new railway to Tavan Tolgol, “one of the largest coal deposits in the world.” But much of Mongolia’s earnings come from the Erdenet open-face copper mine, one of the ten largest copper mines in the world; it produces around 25 million tons of ore yearly, and because most of that goes to China, you’ve undoubtedly come into contact with some Erdenet copper (in your electronics) without even knowing it. On a more adventurous note, there are several Gold Rushes taking place in Mongolia right now, with people flocking to certain areas to illegally mine gold there. And unlike our Gold Rushes, there’s actually enough gold to provide most miners with substantial income. (They’re not getting rich, exactly, but they’re getting fed.) Though right now this mining is unregulated and dangerous, the government is working to extract the gold systematically and safely (though likely at the expense of the beautiful surroundings).

And onto the uranium! As I discovered in an article about Mongolia’s attempts to shift to nuclear power, Mongolia has 63,000 tons of proven uranium reserves, and it is estimated to have up to 100,000 tons. Just the proven reserves account for 2% of the entire world’s reserves, so it could potentially have 3 or 4%.

So though Mongolia may seem remote now, bear in mind that its resources are already relevant to your life, and probably the relevance of Mongolia’s mines will be impossible to ignore in a few decades. Oh, and also the cashmere—try ignoring that.

Mongolian Connections: Christian Connections

I came to Mongolia (in part) to discover similarities across totally different cultures. My theory was that when similar themes appeared in cultures separated by distance, language, religion, and lifestyle, would reveal something about the nature of humanity as a whole. This tactic can be applied to more than humanity as a whole; looking at similarities between Christianity in the Mediterranean/Europe and Nestorian Christianity in the far East of the Mongol Empire, similar trends appear in different eras that might reveal some features of Christianity that are not immediately obvious.

Though Mongol rulers accepted all religions in their realms (and more on that later), Christians in the Mongol realms were sometimes given special treatment. Kublai Khan funded a spiritual journey of two Nestorian Christian monks to the Holy Land around 1275, and he also asked Marco Polo to send 100 Nestorian monks back to his capital when his party returned to the West. Nestorians were given appointments in the courts of various khanates, and when the aforementioned two Nestorian monks traveled through the Mongol realm, many lesser officials tried to convince them to stay at their court, often offering them wealth and material comfort.

Why did Mongol rulers like to keep Nestorian Christians around? Because they were useful. Mongols were not a very literate population (something that didn’t change even until the twentieth century), and, even up to Kublai’s day, they had little experience actually ruling an Empire. Nestorian monks spent years studying, and though they focused on Scripture and theological matters, their literacy and intellectual skill were prized by khans, so rulers courted favor with the Nestorian community in order to recruit members of the clergy to work in their administration. Of course, in Europe, too, literacy and learning was mostly encouraged by the Church. Monks recorded and preserved not only theological treatises, but also works of pagan philosophy and mythology. The university system began as a way for clerics to study theology, and, as I recently discovered, even Celtic myths about a magical island filled with beautiful women for young heroes to live on forever have only come down to us because they were recorded, at one point, by Christian monks. (If you want to know more about the Church’s role in European intellectual development, I have about 8 essays for you to read. And maybe I’ll write a few more for you, too.)

So Christians in different sects of Christianity and completely different cultures had a tendency to educate their clergy; what does this reveal about anything? For one, it shows the importance of learning and literacy in the Christian tradition. This isn’t necessarily ideological at all—it’s just because engagement with the Scriptures is an important aspect of the religion. Unlike other religions that focused on ritual, meditation, or submission to an authority (not that Christianity cut those out), Christianity had a tradition of placing a great deal of significance on interpreting the Scripture they had. (And perhaps this is just because it can be so vague and/or confusing?) But this isn’t to say that other religions haven’t nurtured educational systems. Universities here are often linked to Buddhist monasteries, and considering my recent unsuccessful forays into understanding Buddhism, I’m going to assume a lot of study needs to go into attempting Enlightenment. As for other traditions: The “madrasa” is an important aspect of many mosques, and the rabbinic course of study is one of the most intellectual and study-intensive ones I know (think pre-Madonna Kabbalah). Buddhist monks seem to have been recruited by khans as well, but not quite as vigorously as Nestorians. (Though this could just be the nature of my reading material.) So why did Nestorian Christians get more special treatment than Buddhist monks in Kublai’s realm or Muslims and Jews in the Ilkhanate? I don’t know. I’m thinking because it designated people whose sole function was to study, unlike Islam and Judaism whose scholars were also encouraged/mandated to participate in the world. And Buddhist training tended to have less of a practical aspect than Nestorian studies. (i.e. Buddhist monks doesn’t study law or medicine as much as Christians—but I don’t know about this.)

But a love of literacy is not the only similarity between Nestorian Christianity in Asia and European/Mediterranean Christianity. Throughout the history of the Mongol Empire, one story repeats itself a lot: the influence of khans’ wives and mothers on their decisions. And threaded through these stories comes, specifically, the influence of Christian wives and mothers on their decisions. One reason Kublai was supposed to have favored Nestorians (in addition to the practical reasons) was because his mother was Nestorian. The Catholicus (the Nestorian equivalent of Patriarch/Pope/Prophet) was once almost executed by the Ilkhan Ahmad, but Ahmad’s pious Nestorian wife convinced him not to go through with the execution. The Ilkhan Abakha was the son of a Christian and married to a Byzantine princess. Although there were not many prominent Nestorian men, many wives (and thus often mothers, as well) of khans were Christians. Part of this may have been simply the ratio—there were more khans’ wives than there were khans, so it was more likely that a wife would be Nestorian. (Nestorian Christianity never actively forbade polygamy.) But part of the reason was simply that women were more likely to convert. Although some khans participated in Nestorian rituals—the Ilkhan Arghun, though a Buddhist himself, had his son baptized—they tended not to be as fervent supporters of Nestorianism as many women of the Mongol elite.

Similarly, when Christianity was still a new religion, many of its converts were elite women. In fact, the growth of Christianity was in part attributable to these women; when one converted, she often convinced her husband to convert, and thus the entire household (the paterfamilias thing again). Just as women would be attracted to Nestorian Christianity later, in the first couple centuries of Christianity, many upper-class women in the Mediterranean world found something worth devoting themselves to (and in this case, dying for) in the Christian message.

What this reveals about Christianity is a little less clear. Some scholars speculate that Christianity initially attracted both women and the poor because of its emphasis on equality and its downplay of traditional markers of status. In a Christian service, women were just Christians like their husbands, which was appealing to them. This could apply to Mongol women, as well, and though (as noted), their husbands did not always convert with them. In a world where men held the power, women likely found something encouraging about finding a religion that didn’t isolate them as starkly as Islam and Buddhism may have. And, considering what I’ve found about women influencing just about everything from behind the scenes, the message of the last being first might have had a ring of truth to it.  

Mongolia is Awesome: Even Before There Were People

The Gobi desert in the south of Mongolia is a paleontologist’s paradise; for whatever reasons (the heat, its aridity, and the previous creature populations, I’m guessing), the Gobi is a treasure trove of fossils. Rare finds like a pair of fighting dinosaurs and a dino-mommy hunched over her eggs were unearthed in the Gobi, most likely the result of dune collapses or sudden sandstorms. In 2006, paleontologists found 67 dinosaur skeletons in one week (which sounds like a lot to me), and many new species of dinosaurs or other ancient creatures have been discovered in Mongolia, such as this “giant parrot” dinosaur. (Personal Note: I will be in the Gobi, probably seeing a fossil or two, in a couple weeks!)

All of that is awesome, but it’s not quite Mongolia-level Awesome yet. That’s because I’ve left the kickers for the end. The only example of the skull of the Andrewsarchus was discovered in Mongolia by Roy Chapman Andrews (he’s kind of a big deal) in 1923. (Well, that’s not quite true; it was discovered by Kan Cheun Pao, a member of Andrews’s team who does not even have his own Wikipedia page. Something about that scenario seems so typical.) The Andrewsarchus is pretty freaking Awesome, and even before I got to Mongolia, I was hoping to meet one of these bad boys. Note that the BBC describes it as “the largest carnivorous land mammal ever.” Apparently their show “Walking with Beasts” also called it the “Whale-Killer” and featured a clip of two of them hunting whales. Although the BBC has maybe taken a few liberties with the information that can actually be gleaned from a piece of skull, it can’t be denied that a giant roaming carnivore with jaws that can crush bone and a silhouette like a werewolf is Awesome. And the moral of this story is that I have to find fossils of the coolest dinosaur ever and name it the ALICEOSAURUS KHAAN.

Though this was meant to be a post just about the Andrewsarchus, in my research I came across something even more Awesome about Mongolia. Maybe you have heard of velociraptors, just about the scariest and most intense dinosaurs ever, according to XKCD (my paleontological authority). They are the primary villiains in Jurassic Park, and since then they have been immortalized in popular culture and a meme or two. And you know where this is going…

All velociraptor fossils ever discovered have been found in Mongolia (Inner and Outer), and the official name of the main velociraptor species is “Velociraptor Mongoliensis.” That’s right: Steven Spielberg owes Mongolia big time.

Mongolian Connections: Paterfamilias

One of the main banks here is named Golomt Bank, and their signs/branches are everywhere. I didn’t know what “Golomt” means, but it seemed like an interesting word, so I was there with a Mongolian member of the University Staff, I figured I’d asked her. She thought about it for a minute. Then she said, “I don’t know in English; it is like the father of a household, who is in charge of the family.” I followed up with, “So it’s like the ‘head’ or something?” She shook her head. “It’s more than that, but I cannot explain.”

I knew what she meant—though there isn’t an English word with the full connotations (“patriarch” doesn’t quite cut it), there is a Latin word “paterfamilias,” which is literally the father of the household, but has more to it than just that. The paterfamilias had both legal and social jurisdiction over his extended family; his wife, children, slaves, etc. were supposed to obey his will and respect his authority. He was the foundation of the family, the central core whose duty was to keep his family in perfect Roman order.

So I said to her, “I think I know what you mean. It is like the family is a tree, and ‘golomt’ is the trunk, with all the other branches growing out of it and dependent on it, and it is the central authority.” “Yes, yes, that is exactly it!” she said, sort of glad I got it.

I don’t know where exactly that description came from, because I don’t think that quite describes paterfamilias, but her reaction showed that it was pretty much what “golomt” meant. It’s interesting that both Roman and Mongolian society (very different worlds) have the same (or similar) concepts of golomt/paterfamilias. Apparently the patriarchy in these societies is well established and extends beyond mere property rights or even legal rights to the social order within an extended family. Yet it’s not as patriarchal as it might seem, since both Roman and Mongolian high society has a history of women exercising more influence over their powerful husbands/children than the law would like to admit. (And I’ll post more on that later.)

But I wonder why we don’t have this word in English like in Latin or Modern Mongolian. Is it because husbands/fathers don’t have the legal jurisdiction they used to? Or is it because they don’t have the social power? Or is it perhaps because women’s influence was not as common and/or threatening in our society as it was in the Roman/Mongol courts, so there was no backlash to establish the concept of “paterfamilias” or “golomt”? In any case, this connection between two of my favorite empires intrigues me.

Meditations: How We Speak

We all use language to communicate every day, hundreds or thousands of times a day. In a country that speaks the same language we do, we don’t necessarily think about our language. Sure, we might try to use our “I” statements when confronting someone, or carefully put something into the passive to avoid blame. With or without thinking about it, we might use a single word to make a judgment call or an expression to get someone on our side. But these are the cases where we alter normal language for a purpose. We don’t dedicate a lot of thought to modes of expressing ourselves that are considered normal, the commonly used constructions and phrases we utter daily and automatically.

In Mongolia, I am sometimes a little taken aback by the directness of people’s language. There is not a lot of room for politeness; though I repeat “bayarlaa, bayarlaa” (“Thank you, thank you”), Mongolians don’t use the expression nearly as often as in the States. And according to my phrasebook, there’s really no way to say please. So when I order lunch, I always feel like I’m missing that element of respect, and I have to remind myself that they don’t notice the absence. One instance of directness that I found particularly jarring was hearing people on the phone loudly ask the caller, “Khen be?” translated as, “Who is it?” This isn’t too out of the ordinary, but how do Americans ask the same question? With “May I ask who’s calling?” It means the same thing; it would be weird for someone to respond with, “No, you may not” or “Yes, you may,” because the proper response is the same as for “Who is it?” But the fact is, when we say, “May I ask who’s calling?” we are not saying what we mean. This isn’t a big deal, because we are all part of a culture that uses this; we all know what the question really is.

But I’ve taken notice here of how many phrases we use like this, phrases that make perfect sense in America, because everyone knows the code, but that say something different from what they are supposed to mean. This is true even in English-speaking countries; an English friend of mine who went to the States for college was surprised by how many people would ask, “What’s up?” or  “How are you doing?” as they passed. She’d stop and tell them what was going on in her life while they stood there, confused that she didn’t just give the customary response, “Nothing” or “Fine, thanks.” On the other side, a couple times in England people asked me, “Are you all right?” and I got confused, thinking, “Did they hear something about me? Am I supposedly sick or injured or upset? Of course I’m all right.” In both cases, these phrases, though they literally mean the same things, are codified differently in the different countries.

Naturally, though, these differences are compounded in countries where there already is a language barrier. I noticed it first in my homestay, when Prof C would translate that someone was asking if I’d like more tea or yogurt or something. My response was always, “I’m fine, thank you.” Of course, “I’m fine, thank you,” really just means “No.” And probably, Prof C just translated it back into Mongolian as “No.” But for someone who’s just learning the language, “I’m fine, thank you” must be a pretty confusing phrase. Because, though it means “no,” that’s just not what it says--and what it says isn't really "yes" or "no." Ordering things or requesting menus and napkins (in English) here, I face a similar problem. I usually preface my request with, “Could I please get—.” For people whose English isn’t fluent, this could be confusing; what are those extra syllables tacked on to the beginning of the sentence? (It wouldn’t be a big deal if I didn’t say it so unnecessarily fast, as if it were a single word.) And the other day after receiving coffee, I asked, “Would it be possible for me to get some milk?” The woman at the café, understandably, thought I was requesting password and milk. (The wi-fi password.) These are just a few examples; our language is full of indirect demands, requests that aren’t really requests, and implicit statements that just aren’t clear in the literal language. This is one of many, many reasons I think English must be the worst language in the world to have to learn.

Why does English do this? Why is our language so riddled with expressions and conventions that get us around saying what we actually mean? Is this a bad thing? Of course, being me, I actually love these conventions. Saying “I’m fine, thank you” as a way to say “No” actually does say more than that; it expresses gratitude and qualifies the “No.” (That is, it says, “I’m happy how I am, which is why I will refuse.”) This polite phrase is a way for me to say “No” without sounding ungrateful. And “May I ask who’s calling?” or “Could I please get—“ are courteous way to get information or goods; they express respect and deference, but still get the point across. So I’m a fan. But I do worry a bit about a language that teaches us not to say what we mean, and there is always an issue when what I think is an implicit request doesn’t get across, when other people don’t get the rules I think are widely known. (And I’m sure I, too, miss plenty of implications.) So whose way is best? The no-frills Mongolian where you pretty much say what you mean, or the labyrinthine code of English, where almost everything you say also means something else? Does it even make sense to ask which way is “best”? Are they just different traditions, dependent on their own cultures? Is there a “best” middle ground? And do these expressions make a difference in how we think and feel? Does being linguistically courteous actually make an impact on how we feel about other human beings? Or is it all just talk?

Mongolia is Awesome: Names Edition

Bold is common enough to make it into my Mongolian book as the first boy’s name featured, and my guidebook even classifies it as a generic Mongolian name. “But wait,” you might be thinking, “That name is an English word, so you can’t count it as an Awesome purely Mongolian name.” It IS an English word (and a good one), and if that were the only Awesome feature of the name Bold, that would still be pretty Awesome.

But “bold” is also the Mongolian word for “steel,” and is a popular name for boys because of the strength and enduring power of steel. Thus, not only is there a Mongolian Max Steel, but the country is positively CRAWLING with them. Awesome.

Mongolian Connections: Coffee Empire

I’m sure there is some deep sociological significance behind a “Coffee Republic” knockoff in Mongolia called “Coffee Empire,” but it’s just too deep for me to dissect. I’m hoping it has to do more with historical than with political ideology, but who knows?

Meditations: Rubbish and Resources

My guidebook has a “responsible camping” section, which consists of instructions to limit one’s impact on the environment and ecology of the areas through which one treks. In a country like Mongolia, whose appeal (partially) relies on its seemingly untouched landscapes, and which is home to some of the few completely intact ecosystems in the world, low-impact camping is pretty important. I can appreciate that, no matter how inconvenient carrying trash around for weeks is.

So I was a bit surprised when, while making dinner on the steppe, my Mongolian guide just disposed of trash by dropping it on the ground. Wet wipes and newspaper I could clench my teeth and deal with, but when he left the tinned-meat can and plastic wrappers just sitting there, I furtively picked them up and packed them into a plastic bag to dispose of at a later date. When we finally got to Darkhad, the trash was given to the mother of the family we stayed with to get rid of more responsibly. But what does getting rid of trash “more responsibly” mean? One day, I noticed by the cabins a little mini-landfill next to the family’s toilet. (I think the landfill may have been in a past toilet, actually.) There was the trash, still taking up space, still looking ugly and disrupting the natural landscape. So taking the trash here wasn’t any better than littering, I thought.

But then I realized: Wait, what is the difference between this mini-landfill and our own landfills? I’m (shamefully) not sure exactly how trash disposal works in the US, and though I know there is a concept of “incineration,” there are also landfills, so I don’t know exactly how much trash becomes ash and how much is carted away to out-of-sight garbage dumps. In any case, Staten Island is proof that there are landfills to which at least some of our trash goes to rot away over centuries or millennia or more. But, unlike with the family landfills of the nomads, we don’t see these dumps (and in the case of Staten Island, we actively avoid them). When I think about it, that actually strikes me as a worse method than the Mongolian way. Just like we can go to a supermarket and pick up processed packages of “pork” or “beef,” without having to confront the fact that what we are eating is in fact killed animal, muscle and fat and nerves, we can place our Doritos wrappers and plastic forks into clean plastic bags and have them disappear from the tops of our driveways. This, actually, seems pretty irresponsible. We should have to deal with the waste we produce; we should have to understand the ecological price of all that Styrofoam. I’m not saying we ought to coat the streets with our filth or allow it all to pile up in our living rooms (like Sarah Stout) and out the doors until we have to move our whole town (like Springfield), but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have to drive by landfills on a daily basis. Or take our trash to the town dump where we can see it all pile higher and higher. If we see the results of our lifestyle, maybe that would make it harder to ignore, and perhaps even be an impetus for change?

But okay, how would we change our lifestyle? How much unnecessary trash do we really produce? We recycle our plastics and magazines and take our canvas bags to the store—so that’s pretty good, right? Sure, but I think there’s still a lot more trash than we think about. After coming from the countryside back to UB, I watched a single lemon I bought get wrapped up in saran wrap for my purchasing ease, and I bought the packaged set of apples and of peppers. A lot of the food we eat is packaged, and we can avoid that waste just by making our own bread, for example, or cookies or lasagna. (Which also means fresh, homemade food!) And in my case, at least, there’s more than that—all those wet wipes for cleaning while camping instead of cloth. And keeping my to-do lists on notebook paper instead of my computer is easier, but isn’t that environmentally irresponsible?

Okay, now I’m being nitpicky. Which brings me to my next point: a partial disavowal of most of what I’ve said. There is more to environmentalism than waste disposal. Resource use is also a big factor. And surprisingly, some “environmental” behaviors are also majorly resource-heavy. (Though none are quite as bad as flying hundreds of people into Copenhagen or using valuable money to buy fake carbon credits.) I’ve heard (but cannot confirm) that recycling paper actually requires more energy and even creates more waste than just cutting trees and creating new paper. Making a ceramic mug supposedly requires the material and energy of 1,000 paper cups, meaning my mug that I bought and left in Oxford is actually ecologically unsound. (This, at least, makes me feel better about spending an entire summer using red Solo cups instead of buying a glass.) Of course, if throwing out paper and disposable plates, etc. uses up valuable space for litter, there are still environmental repercussions. However, a (somewhat dubious) study was recently released calculating that in 1,000 years, all the trash in the US would take up landfill space equaling about 35 square miles. To put it in perspective, that’s less than 8% of the area of Phoenix. (And as far as I’m concerned, putting the landfill right on top of the city would be more than environmentally responsible enough to make up for the landfill itself.) If that study is true, and the facts about the resources used to recycle or make non-disposable silverware are true, actually, creating trash might be the lesser evil. So, all in all, what does this mean for our lifestyle? Should we decrease our use of disposable items? Increase it? Use up our valuable time and energy to make our own food or stick to Doritos? Or does it all add up to not making a damn bit of difference? I’m inclined to think we should move from any and all trash/recycling arguments and focus on bigger environmental travesties like corn subsidies or golf courses. Or Phoenix.

Steppe Trash (At least it's all biodegradable... Wait, is goat horn biodegradable?)

Mongolia is Relevant: Xanadu

Like Timbuktu and Arcadia, Xanadu is familiar as a semi-mythical place name used symbolically. Just as Timbuktu is synonymous with remoteness, Xanadu conjures images of exotic opulence, excess, and transient pleasure. Made famous by a Coleridge poem, the idea of “Xanadu” took on a life of its own; it is the name of Kane’s castle in Citizen Kane and the title of a fantasy film from the eighties featuring Olivia Newton-John. So what exactly is Xanadu? Is it a real place? And how did it come to be associated with party estates and nightclubs?

Like so many things in life, it all comes back to the Mongols. I encountered the world “Xanadu” here much more than I have in US; there’s a Xanadu bookshop (that, mysteriously, is also a wine shop), a gallery, and I think a café/restaurant or two. So what does Mongolia have to do with Xanadu? Xanadu is the European term for Shangdu, the summer capital of Kublai Khan. When he wasn’t busy ruling most of China and trying to juggle defeating his enemies with making (and conquering) new ones, Kublai needed to unwind, and according to Marco Polo, Shangdu was the place to do it. Polo described the acres of gardens, filled with streams, pastures, and animals for hunting, as well as a gilded palace that was completely moveable (like a giant golden ger). Samuel Taylor Coleridge took the image to new heights with his poem “Kubla Khan,” an elaborate fictionalized description of Xanadu that Coleridge wrote after he dreamt of the Khan in his gardens. (Opium was involved.) So although our image of Xanadu of a paradise of pleasure might not be completely true to life, the excess of the Mongols has been enshrined by Europeans in the implications of the single word “Xanadu,” and this term has evolved to describe the excess of the West as well.

But if Kublai’s cool summer capital was Shangdu, where did he spend his winters? In his carefully planned “grand capital” Tai-Tu. He moved his administrative capital from Karakorum down to what is now part of China; no one knows why exactly the capital was moved, though scholars speculate that it may have been to keep better tabs on the Chinese part of his empire. And what now stands on the ruins of Tai-tu? Beijing, the current capital of China.

So a Mongol is responsible for the a fictionalized image of paradise (Xanadu), and for what is not only still a real city, but also still a pretty significant city.

Mongolia is Awesome: DESTROY!

That’s just how the Mongols cut and blowdry. The best part is that it’s two doors down from “Victory Fashion Shop.”

Meditations: Nomadism and Us

I don’t know why I have always been fascinated by nomads. As someone who shudders at the thought of packing for anything, and who looks forward to finally never having to move again, nomads shouldn’t necessarily be on my radar. But for whatever reasons, the concept intrigues me, and nomads were what first sparked my interest in Mongolia.

In Ulaanbaatar, I hadn’t gotten to experience nomad culture, and I was still really pretty fuzzy about how the whole thing worked. Even driving up to Darkhad, stopping by gers and checking out the setup, I was confused about the social intricacies of the community, (is there a community?), as well as the practical aspects of moving, staying, etc. But after living with nomads for a few days, I’ve gotten a much better idea of the lifestyle, and I can’t help but compare (or contrast) it to the increasingly mobile lifestyle of the modern American.

In case you’re as clueless as I was, here’s a rundown of how Mongolian nomadism works (as I’ve seen it): The nomads live mostly in gers, huge, warm tents made of a sort of lattice (for the walls), and stakes (holding up the roof), then covered in thick felt or tarp. The gers have a stove and basic furniture, like beds, stools, and trunks (the trunks in beautiful bright colors with painted patterns). The entire ger, including most of the furniture, can be easily disassembled and loaded onto oxcarts or jeeps. In areas with taiga (thick pine forest), there are also quite a few log cabins, though the furniture is still ger-style furniture. Ger or cabin, the homes generally only have one room (or sometimes an additional kitchen/food storage room), and people sleep on the beds that double as couches or on the ground. Families live all together in the single room, sometimes including grandparents, which means as many as six or seven people may live in one space. The gers/cabins seemed to come mostly in groups of two to four, in a large extended family unit. The family I lived with had two cabins and three gers, along with a storage shed.  I think most of the family was descended from the patriarch, a medicine man who shared his cabin with his daughter and her children (and for the week, with me and Prof C). Nomads move one to four times a year; they pack up their entire ger and carry it all to a different location. I can’t say “new location,” because they sometimes have established spots for each season, from a mile to ten miles away. A winter home by the mountains (as protection from the wind), a summer home on the steppe (fewer flies), etc. This way the herds get fresh grass, and people live as comfortably as they can in the extreme conditions. Though people live in extended family units, they are also part of a much larger community, including all the families in the area. To find someone’s ger, you can stop by another ger in the area and ask; they know where it is and can point you in the right direction. People often ride (or perhaps drive) to other gers in the area to have tea with their friends or help with big projects (building a new cabin would be an example). They enjoy stopping by and spending time with their friends as much as we do, and in the evenings a whole family may play volleyball or frisbee, often with friends from other families. I’m not sure if the whole community moves to the same new area for each season, or if one’s winter friends tend to differ from one’s summer friends. In any case, it seems like if you know most people in your area, and you’re only moving a few miles away, you’ll know most people in that area, too. So that is Mongolian nomadism in a nutshell.

I did not expect the nomadic lifestyle to feel so settled. Their gers are very homelike, very lived in, and are decorated not only with orange furniture, but also with photos of themselves and family members; many nomads also have shrines of some sort, with heirlooms (snuff boxes and precious bowls), religious pictures, offerings, and other religious paraphernalia, like scarves or fake flowers. Most gers have solar panels (or occasionally miniature windmills) that provide electricity, as well a satellite dish and a TV inside. They are warm when it’s cold outside, and there is almost always someone inside, usually stirring up something delicious. Nomads don’t have a lot of stuff, but this means they use all their stuff. No boxes of clothes they never wore or shoes they forgot they had or books they will eventually someday maybe read.

So I’m already starting to compare it to the American life. As Americans, we value the acquisition of stuff, and acquisition is part of what makes a house a home. At weddings and housewarmings and baby showers, people receive bundles of gifts from Ikea or Pottery Barn, as if these things might all add up to feeling settled and complete. Having vases and martini glasses and blenders is supposed to make one feel at home. But how does stuff that one doesn’t use and is generally unfamiliar with make a home? How do two sets of china and a big screen TV increase the utility and familiarity of a house? It seems these things just take up space, and although champagne flutes might be useful, honestly, what should matter is with whom you’re drinking the fizz and how you feel about them, not that you might have to use plastic cups. Part of this, I’m sure, is the commercial, material culture we live in, in which somehow we are convinced we need all this stuff that we simply do not need. Period. Or worse, we’re convinced we need stuff that we don’t even really want. And I think I’ll probably return to that concept in another post.

But here’s something else I find interesting. I have my own perspective on this, influenced by the school-a-year plan I seem to have fallen into. As Americans, and especially as young Americans, we move a lot. I might be an excessive case, but even so, kids move to go to college, then move for their summer jobs, move into a different space (if not community) each year, then move when they graduate, and then probably move a couple more times before they’re thirty (especially with the new trend of travel and post-college gap years in the form of Teach for America, WorldTeach, etc.) Yet because we live in nice sturdy apartment blocks or houses with yards, somehow this doesn’t qualify us as nomadic. I’m going to point something out: We are sort of nomads. Moving is often seen as a sign of success; people who choose to stay in their hometowns are often looked down upon by those who leave. (A friend of mine who left her Midwestern city to go to Vandy lamented that most people from her high school stayed home after graduation and went to state schools. She insisted that they just weren’t trying to make something of themselves, and though I pointed out that maybe they preferred familiarity and family to society’s definition of “success,” she didn’t buy it.) It’s not just individuals, it’s the whole community who moves, but unlike Mongolian nomads who still remain as a single community, we split up into separate sections and establish “homes” with entirely new communities, practically every couple of years.

Apart from just the physical packing and storing and unpacking and repacking that accompanies moving every year into new housing, young adults in America also have to pack and unpack something much more significant: a community. This might not happen every year (unless you’re crazy and switch schools all the time………) but it still happens sort of frequently. Kids go to a college and find a new social network. Then they graduate and find another social network, based on a few existing friendships, but also on new co-workers, new neighborhoods, new haunts, etc. A few times a year, they might go home to visit their families and old friends, but generally, they stick with their newly established networks. Then they get married, maybe have children, move a couple new times, and though they retain some old friends, the scene of their social interactions completely changes. And this is still seen as part of a non-nomadic, “stationary” sort of lifestyle. Hm.

So here’s the thing: Mongolian nomads have communities, they stick with their families, and over the course of their lifetime, though life changes in natural ways (growing up, getting married and getting their own ger, having children, having grandchildren, etc), they get to stay with mostly the same people, utilize mostly the same skills, and live on the same areas of land. They understand their community and land in a way that many Americans don’t get to. (Hey, where does your water come from? Which direction is north from your house? Which plants are naturally endemic to your area? Which nations settled your land, and in what order?) It seems to me that nomadic lifestyles, in which people move locations frequently but retain the same (few) possessions and the same (many) relationships, are actually a lot more settled than the socially mobile modern America. Nomads move their location, but they keep the things that are really supposed to add value to life: People, a job, a lifestyle, and a home.

Am I way off-base here? Am I overestimating American mobility? (Probably based on my own experiences.) Am I glorifying a traditional culture that has its own hardships and ought to progress in our direction? Is the American method of finding new locations and, consequently, social circles really that bad, or is it a great way to experience different environments, encounter new worldviews, and adjust one’s network to one’s (ever changing) personality? Is the American system actually an advancement over either nomadic cultures or completely sedentary cultures in which people never traveled farther than one’s village? Or have we lost something precious in our quest for better-more-faster-greener?

Regarding just American mobility, do new inventions like Skype and email, as well as the ease of air travel, facilitate people moving while not feeling like they are losing their old communities? Or are Skype and email and air travel increasingly important because we are moving more often? Is either the mobile lifestyle (looking for financial/career success and new experiences, and trying to change or improve the world) or the sedentary lifestyle (like the Midwesterners who never left) superior? Or are they just different lifestyles for different people? If so, does our culture really view them as such? Should we be making more of an effort to preserve our communities and social networks, rather than go where the best career prospects are? Or does success take precedence over relationships? Does moving even really interfere with relationships at all, now that we have all the modern conveniences of instant communication across distances? I could go on and on… And I might return to this later, having thought about these questions and probably a bunch of others I haven’t even gotten to.

Mongolian Connections: Arizona

Sometimes there are no words.

Why there is a building in downtown Ulaanbaatar called “The Arizona Center” is beyond me. Why it has a steampunk Battlefield Earth style robot in front of it must completely defy explanation. Important note: The dreadlocks are made of bike chains.

I predict someone will suppose it’s because Arizona, like Mongolia, is just that Awesome.

Mongolia is Awesome: Mare's Milk and Meat, Meat, Meat

When traveling to exotic locales, the food is often part of the appeal. People want to eat at authentic restaurants and savor the spices of India or the cheeses of France or the genuine, cilantro-free molé of Mexico. As for Mongolia… Well, I get a lot of sympathy from people over the food. People want to know, how awful is it? Have you eaten rancid yak butter? Fermented mare’s milk? Wouldn’t you kill for a burger? And I myself was concerned about having to eat sheep shoulder and brain or whatever. In UB, the food is generally average—There’s mediocre foreign food (i.e. cheeseburgers, pastas, sandwiches) and mediocre Mongolian food (tasteless dumplings or mutton soup). But after spending a week in the countryside, eating real actual Mongolian food, I am categorizing my Food post under “Mongolia is Awesome.” So let me explain why. 

Firstly, I want to say that with the exception of the first day of my trek from UB, I was never hungry on my trip. While actually in Darkhad, I had not a single hunger pang, nor even a feeling, “I’d like to eat now.” The reason for this is threefold: Mongolian hospitality, milk tea, and the nature of Mongolian food. Mongolians are known (at least by those who know about Mongolia) for their hospitality; they have a sort of “open door” policy on visitors, meaning that in the countryside, you can just stop by a ger and be welcomed as a guest. They’ll provide tea, food at meal times, and you can pitch your tent outside their ger. So pretty much any time maybe I might have been hungry soon, I was being offered a bowl of soup and a cup of tea. And when I say, “They’ll provide tea,” I really mean it. The first thing that any Mongolian does when you arrive in her home is pull up a stool for you (or gesture to the bed/couch) and pour you a cup of tea. It’s as necessary a rule as asking if a guest wants a drink in the States, except here it’s performed with absolute consistency.  So, visiting 3-5 gers a day, I drank a lot of tea. The other thing about Mongolian hospitality is that you’re required to accept. It’s rude not to take any of what’s offered, though you can take just a small amount, if you like. When someone offers you vodka, you at least take a sip; when someone offers you snuff, you sniff the top of the bottle if you don’t want any. So when a nomad offered me tea, I had to accept. Although theoretically I probably only had to take a sip, the American in me still found taking only a sip and not finishing to be ruder than not accepting at all, I guess. So I drank every single cup of milk tea. Even if I hadn’t been eating a lot, I imagine the constant supply of milk tea would have kept me from getting too hungry. And the final reason for my lack of hunger is that the food is always filling. Apart from being offered a lot of it, it is all dairy, meat, and flour based, which I assure you kept me very satisfied. A cup of milk tea and a khuushuur (meat wrapped in a flour shell and then fried in oil) is pretty filling. And three cups of tea (from three gers) and three khuushuurs (because they are so damn good) is beyond filling.

So what exactly did I eat in Darkhad? To be honest, I’m not 100% sure. The meat and dairy products they served me were generally pretty ambiguous. Prof C told me on the first day in Darkhad that I was eating beef, but at some point in the week, they pulled out an animal’s leg that was definitely not cow—goat, I think, or sheep. And for our journey back, we ate some neck meat that came from a bone that did not look bovine sized. (Note: I do not recommend neck meat.) And though I ate a lot of cream, the family milked both cows and yaks, so I’m not sure which it came from. (Actually, I didn’t notice them keeping the milks separate, and they always referred to both cows and yaks as “ukhur,” so I probably had a mixture of both.) So I can’t give many details as to the type of meat/milk I was eating, but I will say this: It was delicious. A diet based in meat and dairy and bread is my kind of diet. ( I do confess, though, that the lack of fruits and vegetables—or should I say, the absence of fruits and vegetables in Darkhad—really got to me. It may not be an exaggeration to say that no one has ever been as excited about pickled carrots, peppers, and cucumbers as when I was offered vegetable preserves in Ulaan Uul.) At our family’s home, we ate a lot of noodle soup with bits of meat, and one night I had just noodles mixed up with meat. Though everyone else added milk tea to theirs to make it more soupy, I loved it just as it was, and I ate two bowls of it. I had fried fish (with just the right amount of pepper ) out of a paper sleeve (from my notebook) and both meat and fish khuushuurs. While still on the drive up, we stopped by a ger for wild strawberries and cream on bread, and in Ulaan Uul, I had beef ripped straight from the bone. The most glorious food of all, though, was breakfast. Every morning I got homemade bread (with such a delicious crust) topped with some substance that was half-cream, half-butter (it reminded me of clotted cream, actually), and loads of sugar. It was amazing. Although at times I felt like maybe bread, sugar, and cream wasn’t the healthiest start to the day, I figured it’s not much worse than American breakfast cereals, and at least mine was real sugar and not corn syrup, and fresh full cream instead of the ultra-pasteurized half-water skimmed milk parents sometimes make their kids have.

And that might be the secret to Mongolian country food: It’s fresh. I got to see the family milking the cows (and even helped a tiny bit myself!), and then I got to eat that delicious milk the next morning. We bought tiny (non-GMO!) wild strawberries from kids who’d just picked them on the mountain, and we ate them by the handful. One special treat was sitting by Tsaagan Nuur (White Lake, named for the whitefish in abundance there), watching some boys pull fish out of their nets, standing by while they scaled and gutted them on the banks, and getting to eat those fish for lunch. There is nothing quite like fresh fish, and from lake to plate in less than an hour is about as fresh as it gets. (Lake-to-plate is just an analogy, though—there were no plates.) Most people in the countryside didn’t have a refrigerator, so food had to be consumed that day. If there was extra, it had to be eaten before any new food was made. And most of it was made from scratch. Though the herder families don’t grind the grain themselves, they do raise the animals whose milk and meat they eat, and they make all their bread, dumplings, noodles, etc. themselves. In the afternoons, the girls would be kneading bread dough or rolling out flour dough and cutting it into noodles, and in the mornings, the mother of the family pulled bread out of the pan and cut it into slices for us. Simple food made by hand from a farm’s own resources can be a million times better than refrigerated, cleansed, chemistried, packaged products sent from miles away. And back-to-the-basics is just so delicious. I don’t care what the gastrochefs say: Wild strawberries with fresh cream on newly baked bread… to me, that’s gourmet.


That all being said, I did have a few culinary adventures, not all of them good. The milk tea (often with salt, thus described as “salty milk tea”) took getting used to. The first few times I drank it, I literally had to hide my gagging, but now I can drink two cups at a time, though I don’t see why I would. (A note: It is often served scaldingly hot, so I used to have to wait a while before I could start on it, and even so my tongue was permanently burnt. Prof C, however, explained that you’re supposed to slurp at hot tea. The very idea of slurping was repulsive to me at first, but I have to say, it works. That may have been the hardest thing for me to get used to --even harder than sleeping on the floor, wearing clothes for 5 days straight, and Mongolian toilets-- getting over years of stringent manners education and learning how to slurp up my tea.) For a final adventure, though I had managed not to encounter all the really nasty bits of animals in Darkhad, on the way back I ended up having to try some. We stopped in Moron to sleep and for Prof C to meet up with some friends, and we stayed in his friend’s guesthouse. For lunch, a woman brought in a huge bowl filled with something that smelled kind of inedible. I looked into the bowl, and there was some sort of a head. It was sheep-sized, but it had a weird brown skin stretched over it, so it didn’t have eyes or ears or anything. The only thing that identified it as a head (besides its general shape) was a twisted black and red tongue sticking out of a gaping maw near the bottom of the shape. I was thinking, “Oh my God, I cannot eat that,” and my face probably expressed as much. Everyone else dove into it, while I sat and hid in my guidebook. At one point, though, Prof C pointed to the bowl of meat he’d just been tearing from the jawbone and said, “Alice, please, take.” And there’s that damned Mongolian rule of unrefusal. So I reached out and took a piece that looked more like meat and less like gums than the rest; it was fine, and I nodded and retreated back to my book, my duties done. Or so I thought. A minute later, Prof C picked up some gel-like snowy white bit. “Alice, eat this. It is sheep’s tail; it is very good. It is not like fat—it is like cream.” I had to assent, and he cut off a piece and handed it to me. I bit at a tiny bit. It was mostly like fat. Or, it was like eating a slimy gummy bear that tasted like sheep. As I gnawed away, Prof C explained that in Mongolia, they give babies sheep tail to suck on instead of pacifiers. So I was basically eating a nomad binky. I ate it all off the bit of hairy skin still attached, put the skin down, and thankfully I was not offered more. In fact, Prof C seemed to take pity on me and told a girl to give me some khuushuurs she was preparing.

And, in case anyone was wondering, I did get to try airag, Mongolian fermented mare’s milk! Airag is a Central Asian quirk that is just repulsive enough to get a lot of attention, as in this article. Wikitravel describes the taste as ranging "from bile-like to a mixture of lemonade and sour cream.” So although I was apprehensive, it’s actually really good for you, and it’s very Mongolian, so I wanted to try some. Luckily, I got my chance pretty soon into the countryside. On our first day trekking, we stopped to lend a wrench to a stranded family. When they’d finished with it, they offered us some mare’s milk. As he poured it into a bowl for us, Prof C told us that we should only drink a little because it was our first time. (Fermented milk products tend to cause stomach upset upon first consumption.)  Nervous about the gastrointestinal repercussions, I only had a small sip. And I have surprising news… It was fine! Maybe that says something about my taste, but I actually could have drunk a whole cup, and maybe later this trip, I will. It tasted somewhat familiar; Prof C suggested like yogurt, which is possible, though I despise yogurt. Later I realized that it might remind me of the aftertaste of Old Rosie cider, my favorite cider at the Turf Tavern at Oxford. Most people dislike or sort of hate Old Rosie (one man described it as just “quaffable”), and though I didn’t like the aftertaste, I didn’t mind it because I like the cider as a whole better than Strongbow’s. So I guess that got me used to the aftertaste, and now I can drink airag like a pro (or at least, not like an American). But I have to say, I do worry if the cider I was drinking for 6 months had an aftertaste like fermented mare’s milk…

Mongolia is Awesome: Names Edition

On the plane ride here, examining my guidebook map, I noticed in the very north of Mongolia, surrounded (in my mind) by cliffs and pine trees and also maybe desert somehow, a region called “Darkhad Depression.” I immediately wanted to go and see this terrifying and melancholic region for myself. I looked up how to get there, and it just didn’t seem practical given my time and resources, which was almost as depressing as Darkhad itself.

Later I found out that it’s not Dark-Had Depression, which is awesome, but rather “Dar-Khad,” with the Kh being the same as the sound in “Khan,” that is, generally just pronounced as a heavy “H-” sound. (Think chutzpah.) It’s even spelled Darhad in some transliterations. So that’s not quite as Awesome…

But nonetheless, it is still listed in my book as “Darkhad Depression,” and circumstances have come together to take me there. This morning, I’ll be leaving UB (and internet access for a couple weeks) to discover if Darkhad Depression is as Awesome as its ominous name suggests. Till then, bayartai!

Mongolian Connections: For the Birds (Deer?)

Above the doors to many Buddhist temples, Buddhist centers, even stores selling religious items, golden sculptures of two deer sit looking at a wheel. Usually one deer is a female, and the other has a horn (or two?). When we first saw this, Prof. O pointed out that the reason was because Buddha, when he first began to teach, preached to two deer. Thus, when one enters a temple, one passes below the deer, Buddha’s first disciples.

Of course, this story reminded me of the story of St. Francis preaching to the birds. I don’t know much about the Buddhist background, but in Francis’s case, his preaching demonstrated not only his humility, because he desired at that moment to preach to lowly animals, but also his power, because the animals fell silent for him and cocked their heads as if they understood.

It certainly seems plausible that the Buddhist story has a similar lesson. So I wonder, why does this story strike chords across cultures? What is it exactly that makes a learned man preaching to those who presumably can’t understand him (until they do) so appealing as a leader? Is it the humility? Is it the power? Is it, paradoxically (or not), both? And is there a fundamental difference between this story set in the context of a religion that forbids the killing of animals (Buddhism) and this story set in the context of a religion that does not believe animals have souls, or at least, not souls as worthy as men's?

EDIT: Oops. Mistranslation. Having now done more research on Buddhism, I've discovered that Buddha was preaching to human disciples in a deer park--not quite the same thing as Francis's situation. So I guess that's not a connection, after all, but I'm keeping it as a Meditation, because, why not?

Meditations: Syncretism

All over Mongolia, at the tops of almost every hill or mountain, you might be able to discern an irregularity in the silhouette. If you’re close enough, you can make out clearly a big pile of rocks, sometimes with something sticking out of the top of the pile. These are ovoos, sacred cairns. Usually they are covered in blue scarves, with maybe some yellow ones as well. If you’re enterprising enough to walk up to one, you’ll find more thrown onto the pile. Single cigarettes, cakes, apples, small bills, and once I even saw a steering wheel cover (although I’m not sure that was an offering, exactly.) They are not always at the tops of mountains; often they are just sitting by the side of the road. They range from huge and imposing to piles so small that I’m not even sure they are meant to be ovoos, and not just where someone dumped out some gravel for whatever reason.

At the shaman ritual a couple weeks ago, I noticed a bunch of scarves tied to some rocks, and though I’d read that ovoos existed, I wanted to get more insight, so I asked Prof. C about it. “Oh, that is a place sacred to the shamans.” The blue of the scarves represents the blue of the sky, because the sky gods are the most important gods in Mongolian shamanism. While we were there, a few women did go up to this boulder-ovoo and pray. 

While we were driving back after the ceremony, I noticed an ovoo on the way and tried to take a picture of it. Prof. C stopped the car, and we got out to see it. He collected three stones from the road, instructed me to do the same, and we walked up to the ovoo. “Go always in this direction, like the sun,” he explained, motioning with his finger. (Oh, I realized, that’s why the clock goes in that direction… I guess?) As we walked around, we threw each of our three stones onto the cairn. “You walk around three times,” he explained. We walked around three (more) times, and then headed back to the car. “They are near passes on the road, so you get good luck. Sometimes, if I do not want to stop the car, I just honk three times. One, two three!” He laughed, and I did, too. Once we were back on the road, I asked him what was the significance of three. “It is for the Buddha. One is for the Buddha, one is for his teachings, and one is for his monks.” …Wait. I thought it was a space sacred to shamans? I asked, “So it is shamanistic, but also Buddhist?” Prof. C didn’t seem too concerned by the question. “Yes. It is for both."

The next day, when I went to the Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum with R and Prof. O, we saw a lot of Mongolian Buddhist art, much of it by Zanabazar, the founder of an important style of Monoglian Buddhist art, and the leader of the Mongolian Renaissance. Zanabazar had studied in Tibet, so his sculptures were very heavily influenced by Tibetan art. The paintings of the Zanabazar schools, likewise, strongly resembled Tibetan/Indian art. While looking at all the sculptures, I noticed one of Ganesha, and one of another Hindu god. I stopped and asked Prof. O about it: “Aren’t those Hindu gods?” Her nonchalance was similar to Prof. C’s when I asked about Buddhism and shamanism. “Yes, they are from Hinduism.” So what were they doing being sculpted by Buddhists? “Oh, Buddhism uses many things from Hinduism; some of the art, some of the gods, lots of things.” Apparently, as R continued to explain, there was no way, really, to separate Buddhist philosophy from Hindu philosophy, or to separate their cultures or even philosophies. “It is all syncretism,” she said.

Ah, syncretism. In Christianity, syncretism is most obvious with pagan-Christian syncretism. The combination of Easter (a goddess) and pagan fertility rituals with the springtime resurrection of Christ, or images of Christ as Apollo, or the merging of the Christ-figure with Dionysus. But in these cases, there are clear lines to be drawn. Easter, the bunnies and the eggs = pagan, Apollo = pagan, Dionsus = pagan. Christ = Christian. Even in Christianity, however, things aren’t always so simple. Irish mythology is especially complex, because it was all recorded by Christian scribes, and set in a Christian framework. Thus, though it features gods with strange powers who seem to live forever, they may live in a world that is untouched by the Fall of Man, a Paradise near Ireland. Their powers are witchcraft, but it’s not evil witchcraft, exactly. There’s no way to explain the case clearly, because it’s just not clear. Somewhere along the way gods became remnants of an Unfallen world became fairies became something that wasn’t exactly Christian, but wasn’t exactly pagan either.

This is what it looks like in Mongolian Buddhism and shamanism, as well. There is no way to separate one from the other, because each intrudes on the other so that they become one entity, waters flowing from tributaries into a single river. You might be able to trace from where the water came originally, but there is no way to separate the two streams now that they’ve joined. Blue scarves, sacred to the sky gods, are tied around the doors to Buddhist monasteries and the lions guarding their stairs. Yet Buddhist ideas of reincarnation (and Hindu ideas of reincarnation?) are also, in some ways, shamanist ideas of reincarnation. To be honest, I’m not sure which came from where first, and that’s sort of the point.

I wonder, why did the two fuse so completely here? Only 5% of the population identifies as shamanist, but many shamanist traditions live on. There are no longer any true pagans, (neopagans, sure, but that’s as different from paganism as “neo-shamanism” is from the old kind), but do any other pagan rituals live on in Western religions today? Do any significant pagan rituals live on, or any significant pagan philosophies? (Bunnies and sweets don’t quite make the cut.) Buddhism and shamanism did come into conflict in the past, but now there doesn’t seem to be much tension between them, perhaps because they share so much in common. So if things had gone differently in Europe and the Middle East, would it have been possible for religions that sprung out of each other (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) to syncretize in a significant way? Have they? Are Islam and Christianity reconcilable in the way that shamanism and Buddhism are? Why or why not? And if they had become one flowing river, how might that have looked, not only for the religions, but for the world?