̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Exploration

A shaggy dog story: ̽��ֱ��contagious cancer that conquered the world

cjb250 — Mon, 16 May 2016 23:01:16 +0000

‘Canine transmissible venereal tumour’ (CTVT) is a cancer that spreads between dogs through the transfer of living cancer cells, primarily during mating. ̽��ֱ��disease usually manifests as genital tumours in both male and female domestic dogs. ̽��ֱ��cancer first arose approximately 11,000 years ago from the cells of one individual dog; remarkably, it survived beyond the death of this original dog by spreading to new dogs. ̽��ֱ��cancer is now found in dog populations worldwide, and is the oldest and most prolific cancer lineage known in nature.

In a study published today in the journal eLife, an international team led by researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge studied the DNA of mitochondria – the ‘batteries’ that provide cells with their energy – in 449 CTVT tumours from dogs in 39 countries across six continents. Previous research has shown that at occasional points in history, mitochondrial DNA has transferred from infected dogs to their tumours – and hence to tumour cells in subsequently-infected dogs.

In the new study, the researchers show that this process of swapping mitochondrial DNA has occurred at least five times since the original cancer arose. This discovery has allowed them to create an evolutionary ‘family tree’, showing how the tumours are related to each other. In addition, the unusual juxtaposition of different types of mitochondrial DNA within the same cell unexpectedly revealed that cancer cells can shuffle or ‘recombine’ DNA from different mitochondria.

“At five distinct time-points in its history, the cancer has ‘stolen’ mitochondrial DNA from its host, perhaps to help the tumour survive,” explains Andrea Strakova, from the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, co-first author of the study. “This provides us with a set of unique genetic tags to trace how dogs have travelled the globe over the last few hundred years.”

In the evolutionary ‘family tree’, the five main branches are known as ‘clades’, each representing a point in history when mitochondria transferred between dog and tumour. By mapping tumours within these clades to the geographical location where they were found, the researchers were able to see how the cancers have spread across the globe. ̽��ֱ��distance and speed with which the clades have spread suggests that the dogs commonly travelled with human companions, often by sea.

One branch of the CTVT evolutionary tree appears to have spread from Russia or China around 1,000 years ago, but probably only came to the Americas within the last 500 years, suggesting that it was taken there by European colonialists. Conquistadors are known to have travelled with dogs – contemporary artworks have portrayed them both as attack dogs and as a source of food.

Image: 1598 fictional engraving by Theodor de Bry supposedly depicting a Spaniard feeding Indian children to his dogs. Wikipedia

̽��ֱ��disease probably arrived in Australia around the turn of the twentieth century, most likely imported inadvertently by dogs accompanying European settlers.

One of the most surprising findings from the study related to how mitochondrial DNA transfers – and mixes – between the tumour and the host. ̽��ֱ��researchers found that mitochondrial DNA molecules from host cells that have migrated into tumour cells occasionally fuse with the tumour’s own mitochondrial DNA, sharing host and tumour DNA in a process known as ‘recombination’. This is the first time this process has been observed in cancers.

Máire Ní Leathlobhair, the study’s co-first author, explains: “Mitochondrial DNA recombination could be happening on a much wider scale, including in human cancers, but it may usually be very difficult to detect. When recombination occurs in transmissible cancers, two potentially very different mitochondrial DNAs – one from the tumour, one from the host – are merging and so the result is more obvious. In human cancer, the tumour’s mitochondrial DNA is likely to be very similar to the mitochondrial DNA in the patient’s normal cells, so the result of recombination would be almost impossible to recognise.”

Although the significance of mitochondrial DNA recombination in cancer is not yet known, its discovery is now leading scientists to explore how this process may help cancer cells to survive – and if blocking it may stop cancer cells from growing.

Dr Elizabeth Murchison, senior author of the study, said: “ ̽��ֱ��genetic changes in CTVT have allowed us to reconstruct the global journeys taken by this cancer over two thousand years. It is remarkable that this unusual and long-lived cancer can teach us so much about the history of dogs, and also about the genetic and evolutionary processes that underlie cancer more generally.”

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Leverhulme Trust and the Royal Society.

Reference
Strakova, A et al. Mitochondrial genetic diversity, selection and recombination in a canine transmissible cancer. eLife; 17 May 2016; DOI: 10.7554/eLife.14552

A contagious form of cancer that can spread between dogs during mating has highlighted the extent to which dogs accompanied human travellers throughout our seafaring history. But the tumours also provide surprising insights into how cancers evolve by ‘stealing’ DNA from their host.

It is remarkable that this unusual and long-lived cancer can teach us so much about the history of dogs, and also about the genetic and evolutionary processes that underlie cancer more generally

Elizabeth Murchison

Mitochondrial genetic diversity, selection and recombination in a canine transmissible cancer

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

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Endurance descendants to mark centenary by completing ancestor’s unfinished business

tdk25 — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 00:01:33 +0000

A century after Sir Ernest Shackleton’s plan to cross Antarctica was dashed on the ice, the relatives of his party’s chief scientific officer are planning to complete their ancestor’s unfinished journey.

Next week, members of the family of James Wordie, geologist and chief scientific officer on Shackleton’s ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917, will mark its centenary by setting out on an expedition to the frozen continent. ̽��ֱ��group of 12, led by noted explorer David Hempelman-Adams, plan to walk and ski the final leg of Shackleton’s intended route to the South Pole, arriving on December 15, almost 100 years after Shackleton hoped to do so himself.

As well as commemorating the anniversary of one of the most dramatic episodes from the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, the project - Endurance 100 - has been devised to encourage fundraising for the creation of a digital legacy that will benefit future generations. ̽��ֱ��intention is to raise enough money to digitise Wordie’s diaries, and relevant papers belonging both to him and other members of the Endurance expedition. These will be made available for public research with the help of St John’s College, Cambridge, where Wordie was a student, Fellow, and later Master; and the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge.

Enough has already been acquired to begin work on a pilot stage of the project, which involves digitising Wordie’s Weddell Sea diary, which he kept whilst aboard Shackleton’s ship, Endurance. Famously, the crew were forced to abandon ship after the Endurance became icebound. They then drifted on ice floes for several months before reaching Elephant Island, which was uninhabited. From there, Shackleton and five others made a daring, 800-mile sea crossing to South Georgia, from where a rescue was mounted. Wordie’s account concludes in November 1916, when all 28 of the crew returned home.

̽��ֱ��remarkably detailed volumes capture the spirit, courage and determination of men trapped in gruelling conditions in Antarctica for nearly two years. They also include Wordie’s scientific considerations and environmental observations, which it is believed will be of significant interest to historians and the scientific community today.

̽��ֱ��digitised records will be held by the Scott Polar Research Institute, while a printed copy will be kept at St John’s College. Both institutions have actively supported the project, in particular by hosting fundraising events for the initial digitisation.

̽��ֱ��South Pole expedition marks the next phase of the fundraising campaign. It was conceived by Tim Holmes, head of Cambridge property company Endurance Estates, and his wife, Alice, who is Wordie’s granddaughter. ̽��ֱ��campaign has also been supported by the novelist and former SAS Sergeant Andy McNab, who has helped to train the group and will be part of the expedition.

While in Antarctica, the team will carry out their own studies, including a psychological evaluation of stress and mood in extreme environments by Medical Officer, Dr Patrick Gillespie, who is another graduate of the College.

“In walking the last 100 miles to the South Pole, this completes some unfinished family business, but it is also a way to understand the hardships and to remember the heroism of those who set out 100 years ago,” Mr Holmes said.

“As a team we feel that one of the best legacies of our trip would be the creation of an archive covering Wordie and the other members of the Endurance expedition, so that their narrative can be available to anyone interested in polar science, its history, and climate change.”

Originally from Glasgow, Wordie was just 25 when Shackleton recruited him for the trans-Antarctic expedition, which he described as the final, “one great main object of Antarctic journeying.” Wordie was fit, young and an experienced Alpine climber, and hoped to be chosen as part of the shore party crossing coast to coast via the Pole.

Instead, the expedition became a famous tale of adventure and survival. Wordie, who was one of those waiting on Elephant Island for four months, is credited with having played a vital role in maintaining morale, and also continued to record scientific findings in his notebook throughout.

It was merely the first chapter in a distinguished career that included eight further polar expeditions, active service in the First World War, an intelligence role in the Second World War, roles at SPRI and the Falkland Island Dependency Survey, and numerous publications. ̽��ֱ��Wordie Ice Shelf, which broke away from the Antarctic continent due to global warming in 2009, was one of several polar landmarks named in his honour.

In later life, he became one of the more prominent figures in British polar exploration. Most expeditions sought his counsel before departure and he supported and inspired a younger generation of adventurers, including Gino Watkins, Launcelot Fleming, and Vivian Fuchs. Fuchs, a graduate of St John’s, in 1957-1958 led the expedition team that completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica, finally realising the ambitions of Wordie’s own party more than 40 years previously.

It is estimated that the full cost of creating a digital archive could be as much as £50,000, which the Endurance 100 team has set as its initial target. For more information, visit: http://endurance100.org/

̽��ֱ��family of the chief scientific officer from Ernest Shackleton’s famous Endurance expedition are to mark its centenary by completing part of his intended route to the South Pole and by digitising unpublished journals kept by their ancestor, James Wordie.

One of the best legacies of our trip would be the creation of an archive covering Wordie and the other members of the Endurance expedition, so that their narrative can be available to anyone interested in polar science, its history, and climate change

Tim Holmes

Frank Hurley via Wikimedia Commons / Tim Holmes

Left: James Wordie was chief scientific officer in Shackleton’s Weddell Sea party, which sought to walk across Antarctica via the South Pole in 1915. Right: Members of the Endurance South Pole 100 team training in the Cairngorms

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By Endurance We Conquer: Shackleton and his Men

sjr81 — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 15:01:42 +0000

By Endurance We Conquer: Shackleton and his Men draws on the world’s largest and pre-eminent collection of Shackleton and Endurance artefacts and archives, held in Cambridge, and is the major international exhibition of the centenary celebrations.

Running at Scott Polar Research Institute’s Polar Museum until June 2016, the unique exhibition puts on display many rarely seen objects such as Shackleton’s diaries, and for the first time, letters by Huberht Hudson, the ship’s navigator.

̽��ֱ��Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914-17 set out to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. However, in November 1915, Shackleton and his 28-man crew were confronted with one of the worst disasters in Antarctic history when Endurance was trapped, crushed and sunk by pack ice. ̽��ֱ��outside world was unaware of their predicament or location, food was scarce and the chance of survival was remote.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge exhibition draws together, for the first time in decades, the navigation equipment used by Shackleton and a five-man crew on their remarkable 800-mile open boat journey in the James Caird. ̽��ֱ��23ft lifeboat had to battle deadly storms in the Southern Ocean as it sailed to South Georgia to raise the alarm. A replica of the vessel sits outside the Polar Museum – serving as a poignant reminder of the challenges faced as Shackleton sought rescue for his trapped crew.

Alexandra Shackleton, granddaughter of Sir Ernest, said: “This exhibition captures the spirit of Shackleton and his men as they endured unspeakable hardship. Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to explore this extraordinary story of human courage. ”

As well as Shackleton’s technical logs, other archive material on display includes Shackleton’s engraved pannikin (drinking tankard), a memory map drawn by Frank Worsley -showing the route taken during the South Georgia crossing - and the hunting knife belonging to the geologist James Wordie, used to explore the contents of penguin stomachs for gizzard stones that revealed the geology underneath the sea ice.

While the majority of Endurance now sits more than 10,000ft below the sea ice of the Weddell Sea, a tiny handful of remnants of the doomed ship do remain. By far the largest single surviving piece of Endurance (9ft long) is going on display in Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��‘Endurance spar’ was part of Endurance’s mast and brought back from Antarctica by James Wordie where it had been used to build an observation tower to hunt for food. For many years, this last great piece of Shackleton’s ship hung in the Friends room of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge and is on public display for the first time.

SPRI Director Julian Dowdeswell said: “Shackleton's Endurance expedition and modern polar research share the essential characteristic that only as a team can you operate successfully in the harsh conditions of the Antarctic and Arctic.”

Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance diaries and boots – as well as the largest remaining piece of the doomed vessel – have gone on display in Cambridge, almost 100 years since the ship was crushed and sunk by pack ice in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea.

This exhibition captures the spirit of Shackleton and his men as they endured unspeakable hardship.

Alexandra Shackleton

Credit: Scott Polar Research Institute

Sir Ernest Shackleton, pictured during the Endurance expedition

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Last letter of Captain Scott finally revealed in full - 101 years on

sjr81 — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:01:01 +0000

Written by Scott from his final Antarctic camp at the very end of his life in March 1912, the letter to Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman speaks poignantly of Scott’s anxiety for his family and his hope that he and companions have set a good example. ̽��ֱ��acquisition of this letter is of considerable importance for the United Kingdom’s polar heritage.

It is being revealed to the public 101 years to the day since Captain Scott’s final diary entry (March 29, 1912).

Though previously quoted in part, its full contents have remained unknown to the wider public until today, having passed into private hands following delivery to Bridgeman

It will now take its place at SPRI alongside the other ‘last letters’ written to his widow Kathleen Scott, Mrs Oriana Wilson, Mrs Emily Bowers, Sir Reginald Smith and George Egerton. ̽��ֱ��only other last letter in private hands, written to Edgar Speyer, was sold last year at auction for £165,000.

Scott is known to have written to his friend, the author JM Barrie, but the whereabouts of this letter are completely unknown.

SPRI Archivist, Naomi Boneham said: “It seems very fitting that we should be able to announce this major acquisition exactly one hundred and one years after Scott’s final diary entry. We intend to put the letter on public display in the Polar Museum as soon as it has been conserved.”

Admiral Sir Francis Charles Bridgeman Bridgeman GCB, GCVO (7 December 1848 – 17 February 1929) was a Royal Navy officer. As a Captain he commanded a battleship and then an armoured cruiser and then, after serving as second-in-command of three different fleets, he twice undertook tours as Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet with a stint as Second Sea Lord in between those tours. He became First Sea Lord in November 1911. He had been Scott's Commanding Officer.

Thanks to donations from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the John R Murray Trust, the Friends of the National Libraries and Dr Richard Dehmel, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has been able to make the purchase for the sum of £78,816. ̽��ֱ��letter was sold by Lord and Lady Graham, descendants of Sir Francis Bridgeman.

̽��ֱ��Institute was delighted to be offered the opportunity to acquire Scott’s letter to Bridgeman, along with associated correspondence, as the majority of the surviving letters are already held in the collections of the Scott Polar Research Institute and are publicly accessible via its Polar Museum. They are among the museum’s greatest treasures.

SPRI’s Librarian & Keeper of Collections, Heather Lane, said: “Without the generous support of these organisations and individuals we would not have been able to secure this important manuscript. It is extraordinary to think that the letter will now be reunited with the others written by Scott in the Antarctic over 100 years ago.”

̽��ֱ��final letters written in March 1912 from the Antarctic to family and friends by Captain Scott and his companions, Dr Edward Wilson, Captain Lawrence Oates and Lt. Henry Robertson Bowers, are of major significance to the national heritage. No letters are known to survive from P.O. Edgar Evans, the fifth member of the Polar Party. In the case of Scott, this letter clearly expresses his feelings as he lay dying and is a testament to the qualities of endurance which propelled Scott to the status of a national hero.

We know much about the expedition from Scott’s personal journal, which was bequeathed to the nation and is held by the British Library, which kindly lent the final volume for a temporary exhibition at the Polar Museum in 2012 to mark the centenary of Scott’s achievement of the South Pole. As the extract below illustrates, the Bridgeman letter is an important addition to the story as it conveys Scott’s feelings at the very end of his life. It has never been reproduced in full in any of the editions of Scott’s writings.

Its purchase enables this letter to be reunited with the others written from the tent on the Great Ice Barrier, already in the Institute’s care, and with the photographs, sledging journals and personal diaries of Scott and his team, which form the most comprehensive record of the expedition held anywhere.

SPRI is the oldest international centre for polar research and is world-renowned for research and reference in a variety of fields relating to the environment, history, science and social science of the polar regions. ̽��ֱ��Institute was founded in Cambridge, as a memorial Scott and his four companions, who died returning from the South Pole in 1912. As well as research programmes, the Institute provides access to its library, archives and museum for the general public and has a strong educational outreach programme on the Arctic and Antarctic, ice and environmental change. It houses the largest public collection of historic archives, photographs and artefacts from polar expeditions in the United Kingdom.

Text of the letter:

To Sir Francis Bridgeman

My Dear Sir Francis
I fear we have shipped up – a close shave. I am writing a few letters which I hope will be delivered some day. I want to thank you for the friendship you gave me of late years, and to tell you how extraordinarily pleasant I found it to serve under you. I want to tell you that I was not too old for this job. It was the younger men that went under first. Finally I want you to secure a competence for my widow and boy. I leave them very ill provided for, but feel that the country ought not to neglect them. After all we are setting a good example to our countrymen, if not by getting into a tight place, by facing it like men when we were there. We could have come through had we neglected the sick.

Good-bye and good-bye to dear Lady Bridgeman

Yours ever

R. Scott

Excuse writing – it is -40, and has been for nigh a month

A letter written by the dying Captain Scott - one of only two remaining in private hands - can be revealed in full for the first time after being acquired by the Scott Polar Research Institute at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

I want to tell you that I was not too old for this job. It was the younger men that went under first.

Captain Scott

Scott Polar Research Institute

Captain Scott writing in his Antarctic hut, before the expedition that cost him his life

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Lessons from history: how Europe did (and didn’t) grow rich

amb206 — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 08:00:00 +0000

In the modern world, we take for granted the fact that our economies become richer and more sophisticated decade-on-decade – and that our grandchildren will live a better life than our own, just as we live a better life than our grandparents. However, for the greatest part of human history, the standard of living was low and subject to little improvement.

One of the most important questions that economists seek to answer is how we made the shift from stagnation to continued growth, a shift commonly thought to have occurred with the Industrial Revolution in late 18th-century Britain. ̽��ֱ��stakes are clearly high: being able to answer this significant question would give us the potential to unlock millions of people from poverty across the world today.

̽��ֱ��most popular answer to the question of who or what created lasting growth can be found on the reverse side of the British £20 note, which bears the face of Adam Smith, champion of the free market. Following Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, liberalisation and free trade have become familiar to us all, and the state and the market are commonly seen in opposition, with the release of the market requiring reining in the state through privatisation and deregulation.

In the tradition of Smith, modern day economists argue that the reason why economies were poor in the past was that absolutist monarchs undermined property rights (reneging on debt and forcibly extracting wealth from minority groups), and that the state too heavily regulated the economy, including granting monopoly privileges to guilds and international trading companies, all of which limited the incentives and ability of people to buy and sell goods freely. ̽��ֱ��result was that people lacked the incentive to produce, invest and invent – economic growth was thereby hampered.

Only with the onset of the Glorious Revolution in Britain in 1688, which transferred power from the monarch to an elected parliament, were markets supposedly set free, culminating in the Industrial Revolution a century later. In the century which followed, the collapse of the Communist regime in Russia and the success of market liberalisation in China, seemed to add credence to this free-market led view of growth. By 2003, following decades of market liberalisation across the globe, the President of the American Economic Association stood up and publicly announced that the future was bright for the global economy. Instead, what happened was the very opposite: we now stand in the middle of the greatest global economic crisis since the Great Depression.

So, with the economic crisis in mind, what evidence is there to support the claim that markets really do deliver in the long term? As my recent book Markets and Growth in Early Modern Europe has uncovered, very little historical evidence exists to support this claim, despite its power and influence on policy-making over the last two centuries.

Looking at evidence from as far back as ancient Babylonia and through to medieval, early-modern and modern Europe, my research has built a picture of the evolution of markets across the long span of human history using one particularly abundant historical data source – the prices of goods. ̽��ֱ��prices originate from sources as wide as the clay tablets of ancient Babylonia to the account books of Oxbridge Colleges, and include those for a number of commonly consumed goods (such as candles, soap and linen), with the most abundant being for cereals (which provided around 80 per cent of calorie intake in pre-modern Europe).

Where markets became more developed, one should find that in response to trade flows, prices became less volatile and, for the same good, converged across different locations. By applying statistical techniques to measure price behaviour, I have been able to measure market development in a consistent and comparable way across different parts of Europe and across many hundreds of years.

If the free-market view were correct, the picture revealed should have been very simple: poorly-developed markets throughout history until the 17th and 18th centuries, at which point new previously unseen levels of market development were achieved (particularly in Britain), culminating in the Industrial Revolution and the birth of modern economic growth. Instead, the picture I found was very different indeed: markets were certainly not a ‘modern invention’.

Indeed, the presence of markets in Europe as far back as Roman times would not surprise any visitor to museums, many of which have on display a great abundance of coins indicative of market-exchange, together with artifacts such as vases which had been traded across hundreds of miles to the point at which they were unearthed in an archaeological dig. Such markets were supported by the vast state infrastructure for which the Romans are famous – a stable coinage system, a taxation system that funded transport and utilities, and a common legal system to uphold contracts.

Once the Roman state began to crumble, so did the markets it supported, leaving Europe in what was once called the ‘Dark Ages’, falling behind Byzantium and the Orient. Indeed, it was only with the development of institutions in medieval Europe which substituted for the state (such as the Church, guilds and city-states) that markets began to recover – a process which took many centuries.

My research shows that, by the end of the medieval period, markets were around two or three times as developed as in the early ancient period and were highly active throughout Europe. At this time, Venice was the leading long-distance trader on the continent, sourcing exotic silks and spices that had travelled along the ‘silk road’ from the Orient and Middle East all the way to Constantinople. In an effort to sell their goods to European customers, the Italians carved out and linked themselves into trade routes across Europe, exchanging the exotic goods from the East together with the produce of the Mediterranean (oil, soap and wine) for the woolen cloth of north-western Europe (where 45 per cent of the residents of Bruges worked manufacturing cloth in the early 14th century), and the grain, metals, amber and furs of central and eastern Europe.

̽��ֱ��customs records of Southampton reveal a constant battle between the English authorities and the Italians, with one official refusing in 1423 to disembark an Italian ship on which customs duties were owed, only for the captain stubbornly to set sail, with the official eventually having to give in and disembark on the Isle of Wight.

Not only were markets for goods advancing in the medieval period, but so were those for finance, as along with the medieval trading boom came a demand for credit. It was in medieval Italy that Europe’s financial markets first began to develop, benefiting from the mathematical techniques which flowed from the East alongside the spices and silks. For this reason, many modern day banking terms have their origins in the Italian language, including the old symbols for the British currency (L, s and d), and, more generally, why the ‘intellectual fizz’ that was the Renaissance originated in the part of Europe most closely tied with the East.

Looking in envy at the wealth created by the Italian cities through trade with the East, other parts of Europe soon started to take advantage of developments in trading technology (such as sturdier ships, navigation and maps) to search for their own route to the Middle East and Orient. In the late 15th century, Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic to find a ‘back door’, stumbling on the Americas along the way (some say that he took some convincing that he was not on Chinese soil). ̽��ֱ��result was the birth of the Atlantic economy, and the first major globalisation of the world economy: as calculated by O’Rourke and Williamson, world trade in the first half of the 16th century grew at a rate of 2.4 per cent a year, a figure not far off that in the twentieth century.

̽��ֱ��level of market development achieved by the end of the medieval period was already so advanced that, as my book argues, it was barely surpassed by the time of the Industrial Revolution three centuries later, only after which did markets witness a second phase of significant improvement. This is evident in the reduction in the disparity of wheat prices across Europe in the course of the 19th century, when the average price-gap fell from 45 per cent to only 4 per cent, indicating significantly more connected markets. This second major phase of improvement was an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution itself, based on the application of the steam engine to ships and rail, which drastically cut transport costs, making the world ‘smaller and flatter’.

With these greater flows of goods came significant flows of people – around 30 million people emigrated from Europe to the USA in the century after 1820. This was a process of globalisation that worked on all levels: goods, people and money, and it was not surpassed until towards the end of the 20th century. As with that most recent round of globalisation, it was economic growth itself (or the technologies it brings) that enables markets to reach a new level of development.

In sum, what my research has shown is that the two most significant phases of market development occurred either side of the period traditionally emphasised - and that they took place well before the Industrial Revolution, and then subsequent to it, as opposed to during the 17th and 18th centuries. ̽��ֱ��idea that markets are at the root of the modern age of sustained economic growth is therefore seriously in doubt when we look at the historical evidence. Instead, it makes much more sense to argue that markets, while necessary, are both insufficient for growth and are as much a consequence as a cause.

If we want to understand why the Industrial Revolution occurred and so how Europe and the West grew rich, we need to continue to pursue this long-span historical approach; looking back at economies throughout the past to work out in which ways they were similar and, more importantly, in which ways they truly were different to those of the modern age.

For economists immersing themselves in theory and models, economic history provides a wealth of evidence that is yet to be fully exploited – and which has the potential for revolutionising economic policy and, with it, the lives of many people in the present and future. Until the lessons of history are learned and we realise that more than markets were required to light the fire of continued growth, we may find it difficult to escape the current economic crisis and return to the sustained growth we had begun to take for granted.

Dr Victoria Bateman is Fellow and College Lecturer in Economics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She is author of Markets and Growth in Early Modern Europe (Pickering and Chatto, 2012) and contributor to RJ Van der Spek, Jan Luiten van Zanden and ES van Leeuwen (eds), A History of Market Performance: From Ancient Babylonia to the Modern World (Routledge, forthcoming).

̽��ֱ��Industrial Revolution is seen as the spark that lit Europe’s economic prosperity. In her analysis of markets over many hundreds of years, economist Dr Victoria Bateman presents a compelling argument for a broader global perspective.

My research has built a picture of the evolution of markets across the long span of history using one particularly abundant data source – the prices of goods.

Dr Victoria Bateman

Bernardo Bellotto (Canaletto) A View at the Entrance of the Grand Canal, Venice, c.1741 Oil on canvas, 59.3 cm x 94.9 cm (detail)

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̽��ֱ��man who discovered a ‘lost’ wonder of the world

bjb42 — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 11:15:36 +0000

Among Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s 200 miles of shelving and eight million books are three soft leather folders and a scrap book volume sitting alongside countless other items in the manuscripts and archives of its Near Eastern collection.

Unremarkable to the casual observer, the contents of the folders include personal letters, sketches, bills of sale, letters of introduction and other papers.

Contained within, however, are first-hand documents relating to the travels leading up to the rediscovery of one of the lost wonders of the world – Petra, in Jordan – which took place exactly 200 years ago today.

̽��ֱ��archive was the property of one John Lewis Burckhardt. Born into a wealthy Swiss family in 1784, he became a scholar and explorer, shunning a life of professional responsibility to satisfy an insatiable urge to travel.

Until Burckhardt discovered Petra on August 22, 1812, it had remained hidden from western eyes for centuries; the last Europeans to visit the city being Crusaders many hundreds of years prior. In the interim, it had faded from memory and native inhabitants jealously kept the whole of Wadi Musa - where Petra is situated - guarded from intruders.

But discovering the ancient city was not without its dangers. Nor was it the intended purpose of Burckhardt’s trip. His goal, set by Sir Joseph Banks, President of the African Association, was a daring commission to traverse the African continent from Cairo and across the Sahara to the Niger with the aim of discovering the river’s source.

Among its archives, the ̽��ֱ�� Library has the original manuscript copy of the Minutes of the African Association which details all Burckhardt's exploits as they were reported back to the Committee until his untimely death. It also owns a first edition copies of Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, the published diary of his trip, as well as the rest of his published works. ̽��ֱ��original diary now resides in the London archives of the Royal Geographical Society, although the ̽��ֱ��’s archive is one of the largest and most significant Burckhardt collections anywhere in the world.

Burckhardt’s Petra entry for August 22, 1812, is 12 pages in length and paints a vivid and detailed account, describing exactly where he went, what he saw, the dimensions of the buildings, the carvings on them and their state of preservation. He also describes the lengths he took to avoid arousing suspicion which could have jeopardised the success of his mission. He was aware that as a foreign traveller, even though disguised in Arab dress, he might provoke distrust and be thought to be a treasure hunter. One of his biggest fears was being stripped of his journal, his most treasured possession.

He wrote: “I was particularly desirous of visiting Wadi Mousa, of the antiquities of which I had heard the country people speak in terms of great admiration. I therefore pretended to have made a vow to slaughter a goat in honour of Haroun whose tomb is situated in the extremity of the valley and by this stratagem I thought I should have the means of seeing the valley on my way to the tomb.

“I was without protection in the midst of a desert where no traveller has ever before been seen; and a close examination ... would have exited suspicions that I was a magician in search of treasures … and in all probability would have been stripped of my journal book.”

Though his descriptions lack the modern names for Petra’s antiquities, his journal clearly describes the now well-known rock-cut tombs, the ‘Treasury’ and the theatre. He seems to have penetrated the site as far as the Qasr al-Bint al-Faroun (Palace of the Pharaoh’s daughter) but at this point, and before he had completed his explorations, the local guides became suspicious of his motives and he thought it prudent to cut short his exploration, but not before making the intended sacrifice of the goat in sight of the tomb of Haroun and departing after the sun had set.

Catherine Ansorge, Head of the Near Eastern Department at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library said: “Leafing through Burckhardt's notes and letters - all that remains of the papers relating to his travels up to his visit to Petra – one is thrown back to an earlier time when exploration was more hazardous. Here is a man determined to carry out his mission, but also a man of vision with a deep interest in his subject matter. These letters are unresearched and unpublished since they came to the Library in 1817. Some have a list at the beginning hand written by George Renouard, Burckhardt’s friend and mentor, who was the Professor of Arabic at the time and who must have taught Burckhardt the Arabic necessary for his travels”.

Before Petra, however, Burckhardt visited London, where he met Sir Joseph Banks and agreed on the trip to Africa. In preparation for the visit he was sent to Cambridge in 1807-8 to learn Arabic and spend time learning a variety of useful practical skills. ̽��ֱ��archive at the Library contains his Arabic homework notes and writing practice.

He began his expedition in February 1809, having set sail to Malta and then travelled on to Aleppo where he stayed for nearly three years. From 1809 to 1812, he travelled in Syria, Palestine and Arabia and went by the name Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn ‘Abd Allah. He also dressed in in Arab style to disguise his European identity. Burckhardt carried out expeditions to Damascus, Palmyra and Ba’albek and kept more or less daily details of his activities in journals. He recounted many stories of his difficulties with the climate, terrain and local inhabitants but also his constant fascination with his everyday experiences.

Following on from his discovery of Petra, the Minutes of the African Association from 1815-17 record Burckhardt waiting in Cairo for a favourable caravan to travel across Africa. Suffering further delays, he grasped the opportunity to travel along the Nile visiting ancient Egyptian sites and then across the red Sea to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. In fact, he never carried out his original plan to cross the desert from the Nile to the Niger, tragically falling ill with food poisoning and dying in October 1817. He was buried in Cairo.

During his travels Burckhardt purchased Arabic manuscripts and he bequeathed his collection of more than 300 Arabic manuscripts to Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library in recognition of the days he enjoyed here as a student and of his friendship with Edward Daniel Clarke, himself a traveller and collector of antiquities.

On his deathbed in Cairo he dictated the details of his will to Henry Salt, the Egyptologist and personal friend, “Let my whole library…go to the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge … to the care of Dr Clarke…”.

During the time Burckhardt was in the Middle East, Clarke had been appointed to the post of the ̽��ֱ�� Librarian (1817-1822) and so was instrumental in the manuscripts collection reaching the library.

̽��ֱ��manuscripts, which arrived in 1819, contain many important historical texts, including the Library’s oldest Arabic manuscript written on paper (dating from 1037) and a copy of the complete ‘1001 Nights’ stories.

̽��ֱ��Library also possesses letters and papers relating to the early part of Burckhardt’s travels up until 1812. These are personal letters, extracts from manuscripts, letters of introduction which served the purpose of ‘passports’ giving him permission to travel though particular regions and tribal territories.

Added Ansorge: “ ̽��ֱ��200^th anniversary of this visit of discovery to Petra provides a convenient opportunity to commemorate Burckhardt’s extraordinary achievements as a scholar, traveller, collector, writer and perhaps the first European anthropologist of Middle Eastern societies. He was a brave man and fearless traveller undergoing many difficulties and privations on his often dangerous journeys.”

Among the numerous treasures at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library are the private documents of the explorer, John Lewis Burckhardt, who rediscovered Petra 200 years ago today.

I was without protection in the midst of a desert where no traveller has ever before been seen. A close examination would have excited suspicions that I was a magician in search of treasures.

John Lewis Burckhardt

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

A portrait of John Lewis Burckhardt from his ‘Travels in Syria and the Holy Land’.

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Final newspaper of Captain Scott’s doomed expedition reproduced

sjr81 — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:01:34 +0000

̽��ֱ��journal was written and produced during Scott's 1910-13 Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica, during the winter of 1912, when those remaining at the base camp at Cape Evans knew that Scott and his Pole party must have perished somewhere south.

̽��ֱ��contributors to the original volume would have been aware that Scott and his companions stood no chance of survival. Although there are attempts at humour and the text is enlivened with quirky illustrations, the loss of Scott and the other four members of the Polar Party overshadows this issue, put together to maintain morale during the long Polar night.

In 1959, former Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Frank Debenham, who had been the expedition’s geologist, said: “It is noticeable that there is no reference whatever to the fate or the personnel of the Pole Party or even of the Northern Party though the preparations for the search next sledging season was the main pre-occupation of all hands.”

̽��ֱ��volume is filled with humorous tales, verses on food and man-hauling, records of the weather and an article entitled Universitas Antarctica on the men’s scientific interests.

This new volume includes a full colour facsimile of the illustrated typescript of South Polar Times, volume IV, dated Midwinter Day 1912. It was originally edited by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, famous as the author of ̽��ֱ��Worst Journey in the World.

̽��ֱ��exceptionally bad weather, which was to prove Scott’s eventual downfall, was noted even at the base camp. Cherry-Garrard wrote in his editorial: “ ̽��ֱ��winds recorded here last year were considered high, but those of this year have put them to shame, and in many parts the ice has not become strong enough to withstand the Blizzards. ̽��ֱ��last blizzard, which lasted into its eighth day was a record for Cape Evans which we do not wish to see broken.”

South Polar Times IV, held in the Archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, is published here for the first time, with an authoritative introduction by polar historian, Ann Shirley Savours, covering both of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Antarctic expeditions.

Extensive explanatory notes on the contents of this and the three earlier volumes of the South Polar Times are accompanied by biographical details on the members of the expeditions who contributed to the original productions and notes on the expedition vessels Discovery, Morning, and Terra Nova.

Proceeds of the sale of this volume will support the work of the Scott Polar Research Institute, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, a centre of excellence in the study of the Arctic and Antarctic.

̽��ֱ��Institute houses the world’s premier polar library and archives, together with extensive art and photographic collections. Its museum contains displays on both the history and contemporary significance of the polar regions.

̽��ֱ��last volume of the expedition newspaper, South Polar Times, written by the men waiting for news of Captain Scott’s return from the South Pole in the Antarctic winter of 1912, has just been published in a limited edition by the Scott Polar Research Institute.

̽��ֱ��winds recorded here last year were considered high, but those of this year have put them to shame, and in many parts the ice has not become strong enough to withstand the Blizzards. ̽��ֱ��last blizzard, which lasted into its eighth day was a record for Cape Evans which we do not wish to see broken.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard

SPRI

One of the pages from the South Polar Times, written by members of the Terra Nova team, 1912

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Lunar Meanderings (audio slideshow)

bjb42 — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 10:51:43 +0000

Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal and Master of Trinity College, talks to us about the Apollo 11 moon landings in an interview that reflects on the legacy of the lunar expedition and considers the future of space exploration.

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