I have not. I've read his cultural history of the bear (The Bear: History of a Fallen King is the English title) and found it fascinated and actually made use of it in the introduction to my Pokémon series.
ooh Green is an interesting color family...always been pretty unpredictable in human hands: Scheele's green, radium, greenwashing (lol)...big gap from Green in the natural world, which is more or less the color of life on Earth.
In The Bear: History of a Fallen King, Michel Pastoureau traces the relationship between bears and humans back to an 80,000 year-old neanderthal grave, the last resting place of two individuals, one of each species. The bear has since played many roles in the imagination of Homo sapiens: mythic, totemic or even religious symbol painted on cave walls; sacred animal of the Greek goddess Artemis and of her Celtic counterparts, Artio and Andarta; symbol of might in late pagan and early Christian Europe; legendary ancestor of royal families; companion of hermit saints; the devil himself in animal form. The names Artemis, Arthur, Ursula, Orson, Arctic and Antarctic all derive from related Greek, Latin or even proto-Indo-European words for “bear,” words that survive today in the French ours, the Spanish oso, and the modern Greek arkouda.
Dethroned by the lion as king of beasts in medieval Europe, the bear lost much of its natural and cultural habitat over the next millennium, becoming a mere zoo animal, circus attraction, stuffed museum specimen or hunting trophy by the start of the 20th century. In 1902, however, President Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot a captured cub on a hunting trip, a much-publicized media event that gave the bear new popularity. Stuffed “Teddy’s bears” — later teddy bears — became first a fad, then an essential children’s toy, then a children’s hero in the form of Winnie the Pooh, Rupert and Paddington. For Pastoureau, the teddy bear represents a return to the prehistoric connection between humans and bears, to the bear’s former role as a totemic, anthropomorphic, mythic figure. “We find its oldest traces in Paleolithic caves,” he writes, “and its most recent manifestations in children’s beds.”
yaknow, I heard that Teddy Roosevelt story in school and they never said it was basically a tiny little bear in a cage...that is one wild Beanie Baby origin story.
Have you ever read the book Blue by Michel Pastoureau?
iI have not yet! should I take that as a recommendation?
I have not. I've read his cultural history of the bear (The Bear: History of a Fallen King is the English title) and found it fascinated and actually made use of it in the introduction to my Pokémon series.
seems I have a new author to check out, this sounds like my type of guy!
I also see that he's written a history of the color green.
ooh Green is an interesting color family...always been pretty unpredictable in human hands: Scheele's green, radium, greenwashing (lol)...big gap from Green in the natural world, which is more or less the color of life on Earth.
Here's what I used in the intro:
In The Bear: History of a Fallen King, Michel Pastoureau traces the relationship between bears and humans back to an 80,000 year-old neanderthal grave, the last resting place of two individuals, one of each species. The bear has since played many roles in the imagination of Homo sapiens: mythic, totemic or even religious symbol painted on cave walls; sacred animal of the Greek goddess Artemis and of her Celtic counterparts, Artio and Andarta; symbol of might in late pagan and early Christian Europe; legendary ancestor of royal families; companion of hermit saints; the devil himself in animal form. The names Artemis, Arthur, Ursula, Orson, Arctic and Antarctic all derive from related Greek, Latin or even proto-Indo-European words for “bear,” words that survive today in the French ours, the Spanish oso, and the modern Greek arkouda.
Dethroned by the lion as king of beasts in medieval Europe, the bear lost much of its natural and cultural habitat over the next millennium, becoming a mere zoo animal, circus attraction, stuffed museum specimen or hunting trophy by the start of the 20th century. In 1902, however, President Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot a captured cub on a hunting trip, a much-publicized media event that gave the bear new popularity. Stuffed “Teddy’s bears” — later teddy bears — became first a fad, then an essential children’s toy, then a children’s hero in the form of Winnie the Pooh, Rupert and Paddington. For Pastoureau, the teddy bear represents a return to the prehistoric connection between humans and bears, to the bear’s former role as a totemic, anthropomorphic, mythic figure. “We find its oldest traces in Paleolithic caves,” he writes, “and its most recent manifestations in children’s beds.”
yaknow, I heard that Teddy Roosevelt story in school and they never said it was basically a tiny little bear in a cage...that is one wild Beanie Baby origin story.
https://walrod.substack.com/p/necessary-monsters-part-1
Yeah.
A lot of 'normal' parts of our lives have strange stories behind them.
Honestly, the first thing that comes to my mind is Pokémon's Cerulean City.
note my intentional use of the word "misty" in this entry.
Did not on first read.
Will you cover fuchsia or cinnabar or celadon later on?
"cinnabar" did make it into Orange-Red, but that's way later in the game.