In this month’s blog, our Community Geologist, Dr Ian Kille, talks about the relationship between geology and language and reveals more about Mystery Rock 12 from February’s newsletter. If you’d like to receive our monthly newsletter and get involved with our Stone Sourcing activities, sign up as a volunteer here.
The brief guide to speaking Nepali lay open in front of me with a cup a coffee and cake in the Black and White Café in the main street of Pokhara. This was one of a number of eateries I patronised from many places which fed the appetites of the large tourist trade based on the town’s obvious charms. Located on the shore of Phewa Tal it looked out over the lake to wooded hillsides in which the Peace Temple nestled behind the village of Anadu. When we had first arrived the view away from the lake was obscured by clouds, but during the afternoon they cleared and by sundown the unimaginably vast line of the Himalayan peaks around Annapurna, centered on Macupachere, were picked out in the distant dusty pink of the last rays of the sun.
I had been waiting to see if I could secure a permit to make the trek around Manaslu, a journey of about 14 days which would take me up to the high pass at Larkye La at 5216m. A lodge had just been opened which allowed for the whole circuit to be walked without the need for tents giving me access to an area which remained relatively uninfluenced by tourism in comparison with the trek I had just completed up to Annapurna base camp.
Languages really aren’t one of my strong points. My ability to retain foreign words seems frustratingly poor – I can hold onto 
the obscure latin names of long dead creatures from the Cambrian to the Eocene but remembering the words and order and pronunciation to ask for a coffee took forever. It was not just the words and syntax it was the whole social thing. I reckon myself to be extrovert in that I enjoy performance and find ideas spark most vividly when I am talking with others. However, my heritage is shy and introverted. The waiter in the Black and White café had been watching me from behind the bar came across and asked if I wanted another coffee. In doing so he also observed that he had seen me reading and re-reading the Nepali phrase guide, and why didn’t I just give it a go! He was so very right, the point of language is to interact and learning by doing is so fundamental, particularly with a language, any language, where the feel of it in your body and the response to it is what it is about.
This language-anxiety which has been a skein of thought though many of my travels came back to me whilst trying to work out how to communicate the complex language which is associated with geology. I find that once I have established the meaning of words associated with concepts in my mind, that I tend to forget that this may not be the case for others I am talking to. This is something my partner Rachael is good at reminding me of. A while ago we were doing some cooking together, on this occasion making a large crème brulee. I asked Rachael if she could pass the flan dish, the chosen receptacle for the crème brulee. In asking the question I had the whimsical notion, which I unwisely voiced, that flandish sounded like some sort of obscure language. Now, whenever my descriptions of geology flirt with the obscure, I will hear Rachael’s voice calls out “Flandish!” whether she is actually there or not (much in the same way Len Goodman delivers a Strictly Come Dancing “Seven”).
Along with comprehending vast amounts of time and thinking in at least three dimensions, geology’s mountainous conglomeration of words provide a challenge. There’s a lot of Greek and Latin – from the terrible lizards (dinosaurs) to the period of ancient life (the Palaeozoic) – and geologists like their legends too. The Titans (sons and daughters of the original gods of sky and earth, Uranus and Gaia) feature strongly in ocean naming. Iapetus for the Palaeozoic ocean crushed by the Caledonian Orogeny and father of Atlas after whom the Atlantic Ocean is named. Rhea and Tethys also have their own ancient oceans, Rhea being the mother of the Olympian gods and Tethys taking over from Thalassa as the primeval spirit of the sea. Thalassa herself features in the name of the Panthalasic ocean which surrounds the singular continent of Pangea during the Mesozoic era.
Discoverers’ and patrons’ names also make an appearance in fossil names alongside a mass of Greek and Latin descriptors. Dinosaur hunters seem particularly prone to giving out curious names such as Gasosaurus and Irritator with a prize to Bambiraptor feinbergi which combines Disney with patronage (literally the Bambi thief of the Feinbergs – the Feinbergs being the folk who bought the original specimen and lent it to the Graves Museum of Natural History in Florida).
Place names feature most strongly though, which is no surprise as rocks are anchored to place, particularly when naming occurrences of rocks in stratigraphy. The major periods of geological time are derived from understanding the relationships of major rock units and so several of their names feature places, for example the Devonian and Permian. For others of these major time units place has been related to tribe, with the Celtic tribes of the Silures and Ordovices now enshrined in the time periods of the Silurian and Ordovician. Places also feature in mineral names such as Cummingtonite (named after Cummington in Massachusetts) and my favourite the mineral Mullite named after my research area, the Isle of Mull.
There is a wealth of fascinating information bound up with the words used to name things in geology and there is potential for endless interest in unravelling these layers to help light-up the meaning of the geology. It is however possible to get tied up in the words and unscrambling their meaning. Understanding the difference between a nonconformity, a disconformity, a misconformity, and an unconformity may have value as each has a very specific meaning (except for one which I made up*) – but they are only of value if they become part of the conversation and create real meaning, a deeper level of knowledge and understanding, self-expression, interest or some fun. For me, the most interesting thing is the way that the words and their meaning, and the conversation that flows from using them, helps to understand the geological processes that make our planet work. There are many other ways that the conversation can turn though, perhaps towards history or people, the language itself or simply getting to know each other.
To my shame I didn’t make much progress with Nepali, too many of the lovely Nepali people were good enough at speaking English and more than willing to do so. I had more success with the permit which came through after a few days and my host Nabraj found me an excellent guide, Roshan. As the trek progressed less English was spoken by the people we met, and the Nepali language was replaced by Tibetan as the primary language. The beautiful traditional greeting of “namaste” (I bow to you) was replaced by “tashi delek” (which translates approximately as “blessing upon you”). To find my way through not just the language but the culture and the practicalities of finding lodging Roshan was invaluable. He had a twinkle in his eye and with boyish good looks it seemed to be a feature of all the lodging houses I stayed in that they were invariably run by rather attractive young women.
It was through Roshan that conversations were started, and I learned more about this remarkable country: learned how hard the Nepali guides worked, many having worked abroad in places like Dubai as labourers in appalling conditions in the frequent times work was not available in Nepal; learned about the mule trains bringing in goods from China across the mountains and learned about the Buddhist stupas, mandalas and mani stones. It is the mani-stones which feature in this month’s mystery rock for the WallCAP project. Each stone has carved on it the Buddhist mantra Om Mane Padme Hum in Sanskrit. The creation of the stones, reciting or chanting the mantra or walking around the stones (to the left of the stones moving clockwise which Buddhist doctrine consider as the way the earth and the universe revolve) are all devotional activities. The mantra itself is symbolic of the pathway to enlightenment through perfecting each of the six practices of generosity, pure ethics, tolerance and patience, perseverance, concentration, and wisdom. Many good reasons to have this written in stone, and also many good reasons why, as the waiter at the Black and White café observed, that joining the conversation is such a good thing. It also seems to me that there are times when a good guide is exactly what you need.
*Misconformity is not a geological term