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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.1
Dead medium: the pigeon post
Source: *Ancient Inventions* by Peter James and Nick
Thorpe
Ballantine Books 1994 $29.95
ISBN 0-345-36476-7
An extraordinarily interesting new book that deserves a
place of honor on the shelf of any dead tech enthusiast.
Some of its speculations (the ancient Peruvians may have
had hot-air balloons, the Parthians apparently had
chemical batteries) seem a tad far-fetched; but the book
is all the more interesting for that. This book is
remarkably erudite, well- documented, very wide-ranging,
over six hundred pages long, and its illustrations are
particularly apt.
The book's brief chapter on "Communications" in very close
in spirit to my idea of an eventual tome on Dead Media,
if I ever get around to writing one.
page 526
"Airmail Service
"The earliest mention of domesticated pigeons comes from
the civilization of Sumer, in southern Iraq, from around
2000 BC. Most likely it was the Sumerians who discovered
that a pigeon or dove will unerringly return to its nest,
however far and for however long it is separated from its
home. The first actual records of their use as carrier
birds comes from Egypt. By the twelfth century BC
pigeons were being used by the Egyptians to deliver
military communications. And it was in the Near East
that the art of pigeon rearing and training was developed
to a peak of perfection by the Arabs during the Middle
Ages.
"The caliphs who ruled the Moslem Empire after the
death of Muhammed in AD 632 developed the pigeon post into
a regular airmail system in the service of the state.
Postmasters in the Arab empire were also the eyes and ears
of the government, and with the local postal centers
stocked with well-trained pigeons there was little chance
of the caliphs failing to be warned of potential
troublemakers in the provinces.
"The state airmail was occasionally employed for more
lighthearted purposes. Aziz, the caliph of North Africa
between AD 975 and 976, one day had a craving for the
tasty cherries grown at Baalbek, in Lebanon. His vizier
arranged for six hundred pigeons to be dispatched from
Baalbek, each with a small silk bag containing a cherry
attached to its leg. The cherries were safely delivered
to Cairo, the first recorded example of parcel post by
airmail in history.
"The Arab pigeon-post system was adopted by the
Turkish conquerors of the Near East. Sultan Baybars,
ruler of Egypt and Syria (AD 1266-1277), established a
well-organized pigeon post throughout his domains. Royal
pigeons had a distinguishing mark, and nobody but the
Sultan was allowed to touch them. Training pigeons for
postal work became an industry in itself, and a pair of
well-trained birds could bring as much as a thousand gold
pieces. The royal pigeon post was also invaluable as an
advance warning system during the Mongol invasions of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. When Timur the
Mongol conquered Iraq in AD 1400, he tried to eradicate
the pigeon post along with the rest of the Islamic
communications network.
"The Chinese seem to have learned the art of pigeon
training from the Arabs. Strangely, for a civilization
with such a well-organized bureaucracy, the state never
established an intelligence network using carrier pigeons,
which were generally used only for commercial purposes.
The Arabs also reintroduced the skill to medieval Europe,
where it had lapsed after the fall of the Roman Empire in
the fifth century AD. After the collapse of the Roman
light telegraph system, the pigeon post was left as the
fastest means of communication in the world. And so it
remained until the perfection of the electric telegraph
(by Samuel Morse in 1844) and radio (by Guglielmo Marconi
in 1895).
"It was normal practice, even well into this century,
for navies, military installations and even businessmen to
have pigeons on the payroll. The range of tasks for which
pigeons have been employed has changed little since
ancient times."
Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |