{"id":4907,"date":"2010-07-29T15:50:49","date_gmt":"2010-07-29T15:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/?p=4907"},"modified":"2010-07-29T15:50:49","modified_gmt":"2010-07-29T15:50:49","slug":"attitudes-to-life-death-and-trees-in-western-culture-and-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/attitudes-to-life-death-and-trees-in-western-culture-and-civilization\/","title":{"rendered":"Attitudes to life, death and trees in western culture and &#039;civilization&#039;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4911\" style=\"width: 785px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/attitudes_trees_western_culture.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4911\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/attitudes_trees_western_culture.jpg\" alt=\"Attitudes to trees in Ancient West Asia and Early Christian Europe\" title=\"attitudes_trees_western_culture\" width=\"775\" height=\"302\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4911\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/attitudes_trees_western_culture.jpg 775w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/attitudes_trees_western_culture-300x117.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/attitudes_trees_western_culture-768x299.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/attitudes_trees_western_culture-624x243.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 775px) 100vw, 775px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4911\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Attitudes to trees in Ancient West Asia and Early Christian Europe<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The illustrations show a Tree of Life (above left) in ancient West Asia, the felling of a Sacred Tree by St Boniface (Thor&#8217;s Oak, above right) and a Hanging Tree during the 30 Years War (below). <div id=\"attachment_4912\" style=\"width: 785px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/hanging_treel.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4912\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/hanging_treel.jpg\" alt=\"Jacques Callot, The Hangman\u2019s Tree, 1633, \" title=\"hanging_treel\" width=\"775\" height=\"336\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4912\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/hanging_treel.jpg 775w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/hanging_treel-300x130.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/hanging_treel-768x333.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/hanging_treel-624x271.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 775px) 100vw, 775px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4912\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jacques Callot, The Hangman\u2019s Tree, 1633, <\/p><\/div><br \/>\nWhat do the illustrations tell us about changing attitudes to trees in western civilization? Here are some possibilities:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the ancients saw trees (and forests) as symbols of the natural forces which control the world <\/li>\n<li> the early Church regarded tree-worship as idolatrous, because there is only one true God <\/li>\n<li>both trees and people were destroyed in the religious wars of the seventeenth century <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In clearing and &#8216;managing&#8217; what is left of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mongabay.com\/deforestation_pcover.htm\">the world&#8217;s forest cover<\/a> we may be marching in the path of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/06\/the-sacred-lotus-nelumbo-nucifera-is-the-flower-sermon-and-the-holy-flower-of-west-south-and-east-asia\/\">Easter Islanders<\/a>. At present, the most densely wooded countries are Finland (86% of the total land area), Sweden (57%) and Austria (47% ). Australia, suprisingly, has 20.1% forest cover. The European countries with the least forest are Ireland, with 8% of the land as forested and the United Kingdom with 11%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The illustrations show a Tree of Life (above left) in ancient West Asia, the felling of a Sacred Tree by St Boniface (Thor&#8217;s Oak, above right) and a Hanging Tree during the 30 Years War (below). What do the illustrations tell us about changing attitudes to trees in western civilization? Here are some possibilities: the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,24,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4907"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}