4.5 billion years ago, early Earth was struck by an erratic object. Vapourised debris flew loose and coalesced to form the moon. Earth continued its journey around the Sun, a little wobblier than before — its hemispheres receiving different levels of solar radiation throughout the year. That wobble or tilt, geographers say, set the seasons into motion!

As the oceans seethed and swirled, continents were forged and broken apart, and Earth began to clothe itself in gases. The first stirrings of life enriched the atmosphere with oxygen, plunging the Earth into the first of several Ice Ages. Yet life clung on, evolved, and began to colonise land. Seasons that once marked changes in ocean currents and weather patterns, now served as heralds of a living, breathing planet.

Over millennia, organisms have evolved and adapted in response to the seasons, studied as part of phenology. In deep oceans, springtime nutrient upwelling leads to plankton and diatom blooms, which feed nurseries of worms, mussels, crabs and fish, and trigger marine migrations. Some terrestrial plants need warm spells for seeds to be pollinated or dispersed by insects, birds and mammals. Monsoons present amphibians with the aquatic conditions required to breed and metamorphose into adults. In temperate regions, mammals like deer and elk breed during winter and give birth in spring, when their offspring have a better chance at survival. Seasonal adaptations may also include changes in appearance, such as a change of coat for better camouflage or behaviour, when species need to migrate in search of food, or hibernate, during lean periods.

When humans learned to measure and divide time, we looked to these repeated refrains of nature. The earliest calendars marked astronomical events such as lunar and solar cycles. Yet, seasonal shifts were recorded as early as the Upper Palaeolithic — western and central European cave paintings feature animals with dots and lines next to them, and a ‘Y’ shaped mark interpreted as mating or birthing months.

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The ancient Chinese divided the year into 24 sekki, or small seasons; the Japanese adapted this system with reference to their own seasons. Some poetic examples:

• March 21 - Shunbun 春分 (vernal equinox): sparrows start to nest, cherry blossoms bloom.

• April 4 - Seimei 清明 (clear and bright): geese fly north, the first rainbows of the year appear.

• June 5 - Bōshu 芒種 (seeds and cereals): praying mantises hatch, fireflies come out, time to seed the soil.

The Hindu calendar, still used today, divides the year into six seasons: spring (vasant), summer (grishma), monsoon (varsha), autumn (sharad), pre-winter (hemant), and winter (shishir/shita).

The seasonal calendars of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples represent Indigenous ecological knowledge and showcase how southern hemisphere seasons differ vastly from those in the north. Of all the incredible details, I love ‘waring’ in the Indigenous Kulin Nation calendar, the season when wombats become more active and emerge from their burrows to bask in the sun.

Perhaps the better-known seasonal calendar is the Celtic Wheel of the Year, with eight festivals marking the annual transitions. Interestingly, the oldest, physical Celtic calendar lies in fragments and dates back to when the 12-month, 365-day Julian calendar was imposed.

As ecosystems and economies face the consequences of climate change, could seasonal calendars help us better understand phenological shifts and how to cope as a species?

• The deck of Seasons by Siddarth RG, Siddarth’s Newsletter

• A Season for Murder by Gowri N Kishore, About Murder, She Wrote.

• Phobjikha by Ayush, Ayush’s Substack

• A rain song that makes you wonder what season it is by Eshna Benegal, The Deep Cut

• Over and over by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think

• One Long Summer Afternoon by Mihir Chate, Mihir's Substack

• Seasons will come and go by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home for Homeless Thoughts

• Seasons of Change by Aarti Krishnakumar

• Festival Season by Rakhi Kurup, Rakhi’s Substack

• Bengaluru Weather: Our Greatest Love Affair by Vikram Chandrashekar, Vikram’s Substack

• #10 On Seasons By Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana

• In Glory of Monsoon and Love by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wanderings of a Wanderer

• How to steal a summer by Sailee Rane, Sunny climate stormy climate

• What I Remember by Avinash Shenoy, Off the walls

• Feels like Spring by Shaili, Lit Curry

Dear Reader,

On a platform like Substack, there have been so many opportunities to write or create content beyond Geosophy. I would like to keep my personal newsletter separate, and explore the opportunities to give shape to other thoughts and ideas. With my love for geosciences, I often view other writing prompts from the lens of landscapes or geography. Though sometimes, they stray into my other areas of interest: travel, wildlife, philosophy, etc.

So, I’ve created a separate section on Substack called Miscellanea, where I can park other content. Sadly, Substack doesn’t allow me to create a separate mailing list for the new section. I have shared a few past posts to the Geosophy mailing list, but felt it wasn’t fair to keep bombarding you with content you didn’t sign up for.

Instead, here’s a little digest of what else I’ve been creating, with a few details if you’re interested in tuning in for more.

Devayani

Some recent articles, where I’ve explored writing prompts through the lens of geography:

You can find other non-Geosophy writings here:

Miscellanea

A few weeks ago, (Learning Stories & Education Coffee) reached out to ask if I’d like to talk about my journey as a geoscience writer. Here’s the result, an audio and video podcast (duration - 1:03:17). I’ve added the video and audio links below. You can also find the video on Spotify, and the audio on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, JioSaavn and Goodpods — look for Episode 81, Learning Stories by Abhishek Shetty.

[Video] Ep.81 with Devayani Khare

[Audio] Ep.81 with Devayani Khare

I’ve also done a few collaborations with other writers, which you may have missed:

Forgotten Footprints

Did Hunter-Gatherers Build Göbekli Tepe?

Göbekli Tepe is one of the most talked-about archaeological discoveries in the last decade. The site in Turkey’s Şanliurfa Province has become the subject of a heated discussion regarding the origins of organized religion and farming…

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2 years ago · 42 likes · 17 comments · Prateek Dasgupta and Devayani Khare

The Deep Cut

Item numbers and Inselbergs

“Basanti, in kutto ke saamne mat nachna!” is Veeru’s helpless plea to the love of his life Basanti. At present, Veeru, the gallant youth, has been tied up by dacoit Gabbar Singh. His lover Basanti, is being harassed by Gabbar’s cronies. With Veeru’s life at stake, Basanti makes a deal with the devil. If she doesn’t oblige, a gun pointed at the love of h…

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a year ago · 21 likes · 12 comments · Eshna Benegal and Devayani Khare

For now, Substack has no way for audiences to sign up for different sections, and I’m not sure these writings would well under a new publication. I am mindful that you’ve signed up for Geosophy, and will continue sending you those articles. If you’d also like to receive Miscellanea, please write to me — I can start a fresh mailing list for that.

If you’d rather not, that’s okay too. I’m glad you’re tuned in to Geosophy, and I have a few interesting ideas for the issues ahead.

As always, thank you for your support and readership,

Devayani

This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. This month, each of us examined the concept of ‘LANGUAGE’. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

The way we look at the world today is defined by political boundaries, both national and international. Sometimes, we’ve carved up countries and states based on language. Yet the evolutionary history of languages has been determined as much by geographical elements.

Language geography studies how languages are distributed around the globe, traces the linkages between one language and another, and tries to understand the human interactions — migratory, economic, social, or political — that may explain the presence of a language in a particular region.

Linguistic drift, similar to genetic drift, occurs when languages are passed on, imperfectly replicated, and gradually transformed across generations or geographies. There’s also a fine line between when a mutated language is considered a dialect and when it evolves into something completely new, partly or wholly incomprehensible to the traditional speakers.

Geographical distance may determine how well you can understand the language of your neighbours. Yet topographical features, such as mountains, seas, forests or deserts, dictate how connected or isolated a language is from its closest relatives. Wide, open valleys or plains, like in sub-Saharan Africa, or the Eurasian steppes, are areas with high linguistic diversity — where many languages evolve, yet there are overlaps between speaker groups, due to social interactions or trade relations. Whereas, the Basque language, born in the lee of the Basque mountains, is not as well connected to Spanish or French, its neighbouring languages. The language, it is said, evolved in near-isolation, created by the mountain barrier.

Even altitude influences the way languages evolve. A 2013 study of 567 languages, across linguistic families, identified ejective consonants — sounds produced with emphatic bursts of air — in 92 of them; a majority of which were spoken in high-altitude places. At high altitudes with decreased air pressure, ejective consonants need less effort and result in lesser water vapour loss through exhalation.

Weather conditions have also played a role in how languages develop. You may have heard that the Inuit have more than 50 words for snow; desert languages are also said to have a more expansive vocabulary for sand and water sources. English has also borrowed terms for weather phenomena from places where they are most prevalent, tsunami from Japanese, monsoon from Arabic, typhoon from Chinese, tornado from Spanish, and avalanche from French. The list goes on.

The most significant influence on language has been that of human movement, such as waves of colonisation, and economic, social or political migrations. Creole and pidgin are often the result of colonisation, slavery or forced migration, whereas dialects may represent migrations, geographical or political isolation. Cities, as economic centres, host a rich diversity of languages, which will eventually succumb to the pressure to conform to a single, universally understood language. In contrast, in places with heavy out-migration, languages are fading and dying.

In the Internet Age, English (and the English alphabet) dominates and continues its piratical conquest over other languages. The internet has spawned its own unique, digital language of emojis or emoticons, truncated, informal abbreviations (coz, LOL, ASAP, FYI etc), and visual, image-based messages (GIFs, memes etc).

To think that digital languages follow the footsteps of lyrical literature, only to resemble the cryptic ancient hieroglyphs and runes, represents an interesting, ironic journey of human linguistics.

Here are the links to the other essays:

• The Language of Murder by Gowri N Kishore | About Murder, She Wrote.

• I have no words by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think

• The Language Beneath Words by Mihir Chate, Mihir's Substack

• I love the Language of, by Shruthi Iyer

• Loss of a language By Rakhi Anil, Rakhi’s Substack

• Beyond Words and Dialects by Aarti Krishnakumar, Aarti’s Substack

• Jal-Elephants, Thread-Navels, and Other Sanskrit Beasts by Rajat Gururaj, I came, I saw, I Floundered

• In search of my lost mother tongue by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana

• The language question by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

• The Dance of Languages by Haridas Jayakumar, Harry

• Poetic Silence - From Anand Bhavan to 3039 and back by Amit Charles, @acnotes

• No Garam Aloo in Tamil Nadu by Ayush, Ayush's Substack

• Lost in translation by Vikram, Vikram’s Substack

• I’ve been thinking a lot about tongues, again. by Ameya, (Always) Ameya

• What does this mean? by Nidhishree Venugopal, General in her Labyrinth

• Of Language, Love and Longing: Politics, Mother Tongue and Loss by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

• The Bengaluru Blend by Avinash Shenoy, Off the walls

• An Ode to Languages, by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain

This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. Each of us examined the concept of ‘BANGALORE’ through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 500 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

“There’s a monkey at the window,” an anxious text pops up on our resident group chat. Over months, similar texts have popped up, some amusing, most accusatory — with monkeys being blamed for everything from plundered dustbins to missing shoes, from stealing fruit to ‘attacking’ children!

We’ve waged war on these wild wanderers, just as we have on pigeons and cockroaches. Ironically, we fail to see how our mixed signals of poor garbage disposal, unkempt kitchens, and eaved windows have encouraged these wild creatures to cohabit our spaces. I’m not saying we welcome these tenants, but I lament how these encounters tarnish the reputation of all the other wild creatures around us, and our interactions with them.

Perhaps, this story plays out in many other cities in India. Yet in Bangalore, with its grand epithets of ‘garden city’ or ‘city of lakes’, this seems particularly ironic. Punctuated by lakes that serve as wetland refuges, with dense, old-growth trees that create shaded canopies, fringed by farmlands, plantations and scrub, Bangalore plays host to rich biodiversity. Apart from the weather, I think Bangalore’s greatest delight lies in its wildlife.

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Of the city’s iconic, endemic denizens — geographically restricted species — is the elusive grey slender loris (Loris lydekkerianus), which needs a continuous canopy to thrive. These creatures are often found in tropical rainforests, scrublands, or semi-deciduous forests. Their presence in the heart of a city with rampant development, is testimony to the resilience of wildlife.

Another less-noticed, nocturnal species that bears the city’s name, is the Bangalore geckoella (Cyrtodactylus srilekhae). This beautiful reptile takes refuge under leaf litter in mixed deciduous forests, or skitters over the mottled stones characteristic of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu’s hillsides. Seeing this gecko around Bangalore underlines its role in connecting the biodiversity between the Western and Eastern Ghats of Peninsular India.

Bangalore’s very seasons are marked by its wild creatures: the resident bird choir is loudest in the summer and spring months, the pre-monsoon showers are heralded by electric cicada song and firefly glow, the monsoons are marked by brain-fever birds and the peacocks, and winter migrants add their faint notes to the year-round symphony. [Also read: Forest Fugue: The Seasonal Sounds of Avalahalli, a tribute to my favourite wildlife refuge in Bangalore).

A species needn’t be rare, endemic, or musical to be appreciated. Bangalore’s insect diversity from colourful butterflies to dusky moths, fuzzy-bottomed bees to narrow-waisted wasps, winged termites to jewel-bright beetles, and other bewildering critters, offer the perfect distraction from our routines. They flutter into our houses in search of a place to build their nests, flit ahead of us on our walks, or are desperately drawn to our lights.

These wild denizens are reminders of our place within the intricate web of life, if only we could learn to appreciate it.

Here’s a list of other flash essays by fellow Bangalore Substack writers:

A Love Letter to Bangalore by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home for Homeless Thoughts

A Walk, A Pause by Mihir Chate, Mihir Chate

Between Cities by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think

Bangalore: A personal lore by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana

There and Back Again by Ayush, Ayush's Substack

Bangalore, once by Avinash Shenoy, Off the walls

Belonging by Shruthi Iyer, Shruthi Iyer

A Haven? Awake in Bangalore, by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain

My love story with Bengaluru by Rakhi Anil

Bookless in Bangalore by Vikram Chandrashekar Vikram’s Substack

Blossom Book House, Bangalore by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

My love affair with blue skies by Sailee Rane, Sunny climate stormy climate

The Street Teaches You by Karthik, Reading This World

A City That Builds Belonging by Sathish Seshadri, Strategy & Sustainability

Bangalore Down the Lane of History by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

Movie Dates, Bangalore and Them by Amit Charles, AC Notes

Nagar Life by Nidhishree Venugopal, General in her Labyrinth

Looking Down over Bengaluru by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt

This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. Each of us examined the concept of ‘TIME’ through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 400 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

The language of geoscience encompasses vast timescales: aeons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages. 13.8 billion years ago, a small, hot, dense singularity occurred, and millions of suns, planets and debris were hurtled into an ever-expanding, ever-cooling cosmos.

As these fragments converged into galaxies, puffs of cloud and dust coalesced into planetesimals, proto-planets, and then, planets. In one such swirling, milky galaxy, 4.6 billion years ago, a little planet was formed. It was pulled into an orbit along with other debris, around a furious ball of fire. For aeons, the planet gathered material when bombarded by dust particles, asteroids, and other celestial objects. One shattering, shuddering impact loosened a large chunk of rock, gas and dust, and began to orbit around the planet.

Then, 3.7 billion years ago, the planet's soup of gases, dust, and water, produced amino acids — the building blocks of proteins. And somewhere, somehow (theories abound on the how), photosynthetic, microscopic life evolved. As life evolved from microscopic to macroscopic, powered by photosynthesis or cellular respiration, the planet's biogeochemical cycles — essential processes that channel nutrients between organisms and their environment — changed.

As the planet's surface was shaped and sculpted by these nutrient cycles, it embedded clues within the warp and weft of its landscapes. Trapped with the strata of rock, soil, ice and sediment, are minerals, fossils, pollen, charcoal and cultural artefacts — each a timepiece into the planet's past.

Pottery shards and material goods whisper tales of human history; fossils and pollen hint at the evolution of biodiversity; and mineral deposits are clues to how landscapes formed. And over lifespans of hours, days, weeks, years and decades, we, tail-less apes, ponder deep-time signatures from when galaxies were born, stars imploded, planets formed and life, as we know it, evolved.

Here’s a list of other ‘TIME’less pieces by other Bangalore Substack Group writers:

• The endless ebb and flow of Time by Siddarth RG, Siddarth’s Newsletter

• Locating Myself In The Map of Time by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home For Homeless Thoughts

• “So… When will shit actually hit the fan?” by Sailee, sunny climate stormy climate

• Time: I Just Want to See It, Watch It Move by Abhishek Singh, The Comic Dreamer

• The vicious cycle of sixteen - A dancer’s take on keeping time by Eshna Benegal, The Deep Cut

• How mystery writers play with the clock by Gowri N Kishore, About Murder, She Wrote

• How long is twenty years? by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think

• What keeps the fool in me delighted by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

• Keeping Time by Reshma Apte, Fanciful Senorita

• The Thing We Pretend To Understand by Avinash Shenoy, OfftheWalls

• The lost intimacy with time by Siddharth Batra, Siddharth’s substack

• TIME INFLATED, JUSTICE DEFLATED. by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain

• “Tata Mummy Tata” by Rakhi Anil, Rakhi’s Substack

• Lessons Time Taught Me by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

• A Time for Worship by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt

• Time, please! by Shaili Desai - Litcurry

Ever watched the sunset and noticed how the sun seems to touch different points along the horizon throughout the year? The Summer (June 21) and Winter (21st Dec) Solstices are key to understanding the sun's path across the sky, the changing lengths of day and night, and what it heralds for the seasons.

The word ‘solstice’ comes from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), as it marks when the sun reaches its northernmost position, which is the Tropic of Cancer, appears to hesitate for a while, before reversing towards the south, or the Tropic of Capricorn. These two latitudes, Cancer and Capricorn, represent the apparent journey of the sun as seen when the Earth wobbles on its faulty axis.

World over, cultures celebrate the two solstices and the two equinoxes. Some have even built monuments to mark the journey of the sun: Stonehenge (England), Machu Picchu (Peru), Chichen Itza (Mexico), Chaco Canyon (New Mexico, USA), The Great Sphinx and Pyramid of Khafre (Egypt), Newgrange (Ireland), Ring of Brodgar (Scotland), Chankillo (Peru), among others. For ancient civilizations, these sites bore great significance, not just as markers of time and seasons — serving as clocks, compasses, and calendars — but also as cultural symbols. [Read more about the solstices at some of these ancient sites.]

Today, we no longer need to mark the journey of the sun to determine when the seasons will change; we’ve found so many ways to measure them. We also know the solstices are caused by the tilt of the Earth's axis. The best time to understand how we learned of the Earth’s tilted axis is by watching sunrises or sunsets throughout the year. After all, sunrises and sunsets are not just one of Nature’s finest daily spectacles, but they also mark the sun's apparent movement along the horizon.

The positions of the summer and winter solstices, and the spring and autumn equinoxes, as recorded at the Galto Corvino village in Sicily, Italy. If you have a view of the horizon and can see the sun rise or set, you can also chart the sun’s journey.

On the summer solstice, June 21, if you’re in the northern hemisphere facing east, the sun sets to the far right of the horizon. On the winter solstice, December 21, the sun sets to the far left of the horizon. If you have a view of the horizon, you could mark the points where the sun sets on these two days to chart the journey of the sun through the year. The equinoxes (March 21 and September 22) mark the midpoint of the sun’s conduit.

Moreover, the summer solstice marks the longest day and the shortest night in the northern hemisphere. Whereas, the winter solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night, before the days begin to lengthen again.

As you can imagine, these cycles and patterns are reversed in the southern hemisphere.

Such records of the apparent movement of the sun, and our knowledge that the Earth was a sphere, helped the ancient empirically deduce that the Earth’s axis is atilt! As we know, if the Earth's axis were perpendicular to its orbit, we'd have no seasonal variations — the Sun would shine with the same intensity all year round. It is the slight tilt that causes us to enjoy three or four seasons throughout the year.

While most of us learned this in school, I don’t think we actually appreciate what this means till we watch the changing position of the sun when it touches the eastern or western horizon. School geography also missed one little detail: the dates we memorized for the solstices and equinoxes change every 11,000 years. Thankfully, as none of us will live that long, we don’t need to recalibrate just yet.

So, if you’ve missed the sunrise today, it isn’t too late to catch the sunset. Where I am, it is overcast today, and there’s a slim chance of seeing the sunset. But if it’s bright and sunny where you are, take some time to watch the sunset. One doesn’t need to be at sacred places like Stonehenge or Chankillo, to mark the change of seasons — a clear view of the horizon and a glorious sunset are all we need to understand why the ancients worshipped the fiery Sun. And if you wait a little longer, you can also watch the full moon rise!