Wayfinding across ocean and tundra: what traditional cultures teach us about navigation

Research on human navigation by psychologists and neuroscientists has come mainly from a limited range of environments and participants inhabiting western countries. By contrast, numerous anthropological accounts illustrate the diverse ways in which cultures adapt to their surrounding environment to navigate. Here, we provide an overview of these studies and relate them to cognitive science research. The diversity of cues in traditional navigation is much higher and multimodal compared with navigation experiments in the laboratory. It typically involves an integrated system of methods, drawing on a detailed understanding of the environmental cues, specific tools, and forms part of a broader cultural system. We highlight recent methodological developments for measuring navigation skill and modelling behaviour that will aid future research into how culture and environment shape human navigation.

Danube as a symbol of Europe. Perception of the river from varied geographical perspectives

The Danube is promoted as a pan-European river, what can be justified for instance by the vast range of its drainage basin, covering 19 countries on both sides of the historical border diving Eastern and Western Europe. Differentiation of imaginations of Danube course from the perspective of 7 European cities, based on research covering 1577 respondents, conducted between 2005–2007 and 2016–2018 has been presented in the paper. Maps presenting the generalized imagination of river course have been generated for each city. It has been proved that in spite of substantial political, economical and symbolical importance of this river for big part of Europe, the course of Danube remains unknown for inhabitants of its Western part, in parallel to more correct recognition of the river by students from Eastern Europe. It has been shown that the perception does not change despite the progressing integration processes.

Return of Nimat?—Wild Reindeer as an Indicator of Evenki Biocultural Systems

This paper reviews oral histories and established scientific materials regarding wild reindeer (Rangifer tarandus spp.) in the Southern Sakha-Yakutia, in the Neriungri district and surrounding highlands, river valleys and taiga forest ecosystems. Wild reindeer is seen as an ecological and cultural keystone species through which environmental and social changes can be understood and interpreted. Oral histories of Evenki regarding wild reindeer have been documented in the community of Iyengra between 2005 and 2020. During this 15-year-co-researchership the Southern Sakha-Yakutian area has undergone rapid industrial development affecting the forest and aquatic ecosystems. The wild reindeer lost habitats and dwindles in numbers. We demonstrate that the loss of the wild reindeer is not only a loss of biodiversity, but also of cultural and linguistic diversity as well as food security. Our interpretative and analytical frame is that of emplacement. Socio-ecological systems have the potential and capacity to reconnect and re-establish themselves in post-extractive landscapes, if three main conditions are met. These conditions for successful emplacement include (1) surviving natural core areas, (2) links to cultural landscape knowledge and (3) an agency to renew endemic links.