Is the EU a new Babel?
QUESTION Is it true the European Parliament Building in Strasbourg was designed to replicate the Tower of Babel, as in the painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, to show defiance of God?
Since 1999, the european Parliament has assembled at Strasbourg in the Louise Weiss building, named after the 1920s French politician, feminist and european activist. The innovative French ensemble Architecture Studio won an international competition to design the building in 1991.
The eastern face of the tower was designed to appear as though the building isn’t quite finished, the idea being that europe will never be a finished product but is constantly evolving. it wasn’t consciously designed as a Tower of Babel.
The idea was to incorporate many facets of ancient and modern design. Architecture Studio said: ‘The edifice expresses the foundations of the Western civilisation: classicism and Baroque, from Galileo’s to Kepler’s ellipse, the transition from a central geometrical structure (Galileo) to the anamorphosis (Borromini) and the ellipse (Kepler, Gongora), showing the constant motion expressing the evolution of the institutions, evolving from central power to a democratic organisation.’
Elaine Coyne, London SE4. AccordinG to Biblical accounts, Babel was a city that united humanity, all speaking a single language. it was also the home city of nimrod, who decided that his city should have a tower so immense that ‘its top should be in the heavens’.
The tower wasn’t intended for the worship and praise of God but was dedicated to the glory of man with a motive of making a name for the builders.
Seeing the blasphemous nature of the tower, God gave each person a different language to confuse them. Unable to continue the work, the people scattered throughout the world.
Bruegel’s famous 1563 depiction of the architecture of the tower, with its numerous arches and other examples of roman engineering, is deliberately reminiscent of rome’s colosseum — a metaphor for the decay of the roman empire.
As the parliament building incorporates many classical designs including the idea of an amphitheatre, it is not surprising that there are similarities. The unfinished aspect only exacerbates this, though the Strasbourg building is clearly not reaching for the heavens as in Bruegel’s design
A. M. Pettifer, Bath, Somerset.
QUESTION About a million or so years ago, the land that we know as England was about 800 miles south of where it is today. As it travelled north, it collided with Scotland. Every year we have about 140 tremors. Does this mean that England is still moving north? Where can we expect to be in another million years?
The collision between england and Wales and Scotland happened far more than a million years ago — no time at all on the geological timescale. in fact, the ‘union’ is thought to have taken place during the Silurian epoch some 416 to 443 million years ago (mya).
during the ordovician period(440 to 488 mya), Scotland could be found near the equator, part of a large continental mass called Laurentia, which also contained modern north America and Greenland. england and Wales lay to the south, separated by the iapetus ocean, part of an arcshaped microcontinent called Avalonia that had broken away from a giant continental plate called Gondwanaland.
during the late ordovician, Avalonia collided with Baltica (which formed Scandinavia and parts of europe). A process of subduction (where one plate moves under another) dragged Avalonia and Baltica northwards, so that by the Silurian the two continental blocks collided.
This brought england and Wales and Scotland together and produced the caledonian orogeny (mountain-building era). The highlands are remnants of this chain.
The two ancient continents, originally on opposite sides of the vast ocean, were now joined along a line known as the iapetus Suture, which runs almost parallel to hadrian’s Wall. The two countries were firmly geologically linked.
They were subsequently subsumed into the mega continent Pangea. The rifting of Pangea began in the north during the early to Middle Jurassic (175mya) with the formation of the north Atlantic ocean.
Today, england, Scotland, Wales and ireland are safely housed on the western side of the eurasian tectonic plate, one of the world’s most stable regions. While around 140 seismic events are recorded each year, only 20-30 are strong enough to be felt. Most of these occur in central/western england and in north/western Scotland. Seismic activity is practically non-existent in eastern Britain and along the iapetus Suture.
The driving forces for earthquake activity in the UK are unclear; however, they include regional compression caused by motion of the earth’s tectonic plates, and uplift resulting from the melting of the ice sheets that covered many parts of Britain thousands of years ago.
James Brown, Durham.
QUESTION What is the shortest word with the most syllables and the longest with the least?
ScrAUnched and the archaic word strengthed, each ten letters long, are the longest english words that are only one syllable long. nine-letter monosyllabic words are scratched, screeched, scrounged, squelched, straights and strengths.
io may be the shortest two-syllable word in the english language. other candidates are aa, ai and eo, but there’s some dispute over the pronunciation and legitimacy of these words.
iouea, five letters long, is the shortest four-syllable english word. oceania, oogonia and oxyopia, each seven letters long, are the shortest five-syllable english words.
Are is a one-syllable word that can be made into a three-syllable word by adding just one letter to make area. Similarly, came can become cameo, gape can become agape, and lien can become alien. Adding a letter to the middle of smile becomes the three-syllable word simile.
Jason hurt, Bristol.
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