There is a river that flows in front of our new house.
During the early period of house hunting when I and Bibha came to explore this
Wye Dene area in Chiltren Hills, it was just a green field with a stream
flowing through the middle of it. The salesman showed the plan on a 3D
model. He was very poetic about the houses being built on the river bank.
We did not like the idea of the house on the water edge. Recently on the TV We
had seen a lot of floods happening in UK and all over the world.
We looked for houses in other places. Two years passed by. When
we liked an area, the house was not appealing. When we loved the house, the
area was not to our liking. Where we did like the both, the price was
astronomical. About 8 months ago we came to see a house in a different part of
this town again. We drove along Wye Dene. Just on a whim we went to the Sales
office and enquired. All houses were already sold but one buyer has failed to
get the mortgage and this house had become available just a few days ago.
The house was already built, ready to move in, they had
landscaped the river and surrounding area, it looked stunning and idyllic. From
the balcony of the house we can see the gleaming transparent water flowing
between the green sloping banks with a pair of swans and a bunch of ducks
paddling.
We were now hooked by the curvaceous, twinkling brook. The
earlier reasoned threat of a possibility of flooding was set aside by the
joyfulness we felt. Heart over head. We bought the house and moved in.
A winter and a spring have passed and now it is Summer.
The river has kept us fascinated all through this time with constantly changing
its width, depth and the pace of flow. The shrubs and the big trees on the
banks have now covered their winter nakedness with sparkling radiant green
leaves. Spring daffodils and bluebells have now given way to flowering shrubs
and aquatic lilies. The ducks and the swans are now proudly paddling with their
young ones.
Why the river does fascinate us humans so much? Why so many of
us choose to live near them in spite of obvious problems? All religions
describe great catastrophic floods in their scriptures, still they eulogize
about sacred rivers. You will always find a river flowing through in their
version of paradise.
Almost All ancient great civilizations developed along the river
banks (the Nile, Yangtze, Ganges, Tigris, Euphrates etc.) due to obvious benefits of
potable water to people and their cattle, and irrigation for their crops.
Earlier when humans were hunter gatherer, the thick woods and
congregation of animals around the river banks provided perfect conditions for
their sustenance.
Some think that our attraction to rivers may even be due to our
biological evolution if itself. The ancestors of humans probably originated on
the river banks. Our nearest evolutional ancestors might have been aquatic apes
rather than tree dwelling monkeys!
Marine biologist Alister Hardy believed that a subset of
apes moved to or were forced to live and survive on sea shores and river banks.
The wadding in the water to catch food encouraged them to stand upright.
Emergence of bi-pedality and loss of thick body hair do point towards an
aquatic origin of humans. Study on the area where Ardi
(Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4 million years old hominid found at Middle Awash,
Ethiopia) was discovered has revealed that it was once a river bed. Over
the last few decades the interest in Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (AAH) has been
gaining momentum in spite of criticism from many mainstream scientists.
AAH or AAT (Aquatic Ape Theory) does explain our
instinctive love of rivers, sea
and other water bodies. The sight and sound of
flowing water certainly arouses a feeling of innate joy and wellbeing. Our choice for the house by the Wye River is certainly not by
reasoning but is probably an inevitable bi-product of our evolution!
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