History
In Indo-European religion, the behavior of birds has long been used for the purposes of divination by augurs. According to a suggestion by Walter Burkert, these customs may have their roots in the Paleolithic when, during the Ice Age, early humans looked for carrion by observing scavenging birds.
There are also examples of contemporary bird-human communication and symbiosis. In North America, ravens have been known to lead wolves (and native hunters) to prey they otherwise would be unable to consume. In Africa, the Greater Honeyguide is known to guide humans to beehives in the hope that the hive will be incapacitated and opened for them.
Dating to the Renaissance, birdsong was the inspiration for some magical engineered languages, in particular musical languages. Whistled languages based on spoken natural languages are also sometimes referred to as the language of the birds.
Read more about this topic: Language Of The Birds
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
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“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
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“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
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