Category The World Around us

DOES ANYONE STILL LIVE IN CAVES?

There are some parts of the world where people still live in caves. However, they are often far removed from the prehistoric dwellings of our ancestors. Indeed, many of them are in spectacular locations and have all the facilities of any other modern home.

Contrary to what many urbanites in Singapore may think, cavemen and cavewomen don’t just exist in films, books and educational documentaries. Though not exactly like the dwellers who lived in the Paleolithic Era, there are many people around the world who live in caves even in today’s day and age.

Gather five such places for those of you who are intrigued to find out more about these cave cities. You will see things and people in a different light – guaranteed.

China

First things first, there are about 30 million people living in caves in China. Now that we’ve gotten that straightened out, most of these Chinese cave dwellers live in Yan’an in the Shaanxi province and they have no intention of leaving. In fact, more and more people are looking to rent a cave there and live humbly.

Coober Pedy, Australia

Did you know that even in Australia, there are approximately 1500 people living in underground caves? Coober Pedy is a tiny Australian town where temperatures can hit about 40 degrees celsius in summer, and these underground caves protect its dwellers from intense heat. Why aren’t they looking to move? The answer boils down to the fact that there are plenty of pricey, valuable opals to be extracted in Coober Pedy, and many of the residents there toil away in the lucrative industry.

Camsur, Philippines

Some cave dwellers don’t live in caves because they want to, but rather, a cave is their only refuge following natural disasters that snatched their homes away from them. One such example is this cave in the Philippines that two young boys and their father call home after Typhoon Glenda destroyed their homes.

Can you imagine sharing a space with scary bats? That’s what these people have to put up with in the name of having a roof over their head. Now, this is reason enough for all of us to count our blessings.

Kandovan, Iran

Have the feels to escape Singapore’s concrete jungle to live in a giant termite-like cave? The enigmatic 13th century Kandovan village nestled in Iran’s east Azerbaijan province might just be the place you are looking for. This nugget of information might shock you – not only are these house-caves multi-storeyed, some have even crossed the 700-year-old mark! Apparently, these house-caves in Kandovan can keep its inhabitants snuggly and warm in winter while being cooling in summer months.

Gal Oya, Sri Lanka

Hidden away from people deep within the lush forests of Gal Oya in Sri Lanka lives the Vedda community. Although they seek to live traditionally the way they used to and continue hunting wild animals with bows and arrows, more and more younger Veddas live in mud houses just at the fringe of the forest these days. Some of the more senior Veddas still live in their cave homes, though.

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WHY DO BUILDINGS VARY BETWEEN COUNTRIES?

The construction and style of houses vary greatly from country to country. This is due mainly to a combination of the materials available locally and the type of weather that the region experiences.

The majority of the population in developing countries lives in buildings that can be considered as non-engineered, which unfortunately are often susceptible to many natural disasters, especially earthquake. As the construction techniques/practices and skill of masons/carpenters differs from country to country, strength of non-engineered constructions differ as well. A research was conducted jointly in seven selected developing countries, i.e. Egypt, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru, and Turkey, to collect data on their design and construction characteristics and information related to the local context. All of the countries have certain code or, at least, guidelines on building construction, which however do not seem to affect field practices. While construction practices are different from country to country, most of them have some similarities on certain parameters, such as design intervention, availability of materials and workers, supervision by the owner, construction tools, foundation types, wall thickness, type of plaster/mortar/concrete, workers’ training, etc.

The majority of the population in developing countries lives in buildings that can be considered as non-engineered buildings, i.e. buildings and houses built in a traditional way without or with minimum engineering intervention from an architect or structural engineer in the design and construction process. In general, masonry and wooden structures are commonly found in this category of structure (IAEE, 1986) (Kusumastuti et al., 2008). Unfortunately, this type of building is often susceptible to many natural disasters, especially earthquake. Past earthquakes revealed that the damage on non-engineered houses is responsible for the deaths of most of the total casualties in earthquakes (Narafu et al., 2010) (Macabuag, 2008) (Grundy, 2007). As construction techniques/practices and skill of masons differ from country to country, strength of non-engineered construction differ as well. However, there is little knowledge about the comparative strength in various developing countries.

This research was conducted jointly in seven selected developing countries, i.e. Egypt, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru and Turkey, involving survey of construction of non-engineered buildings in various sites in each country to collect data on their design and construction characteristics and information related to the local context.

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WHEN DID PEOPLE FIRST BUILD HOUSES?

In very early times, people probably lived in caves, moving from one cave to another as they roamed around, hunting for food. It is thought that some of the first people to settle down in one place did so in what is now Palestine, around 13,000 years ago. The Natufians, as they are known, built circular huts made from mud, reeds and wood. They lived in these and used them to store grain.

Ice age humans lived in caves some of the time but they also made tents from mammoth skins. Mammoth bones were used as supports. They wore boots, trousers, and anoraks made from animal skins. When the ice age ended a new way of life began. By 8,000 BC people in the Middle East had begun to farm. Food was cooked in clay ovens. The people of Jericho knew how to make sun-dried bricks and they used them to make houses.

About 7,000 BC a new people lived in Jericho and they had learned to make mortar. They used it to plaster walls and floors. Catal Huyuk was one of the world’s first towns. It was built in what is now Turkey about 6,500 BC not long after farming began. Catal Huyuk probably had a population of about 6,000. In Catal Huyuk the houses were made of mud brick. Houses were built touching against each other. They did not have doors and houses were entered through hatches in roofs. Presumably having entrances in the roofs was safer than having them in the walls. (Catal Huyuk was unusual among early towns as it was not surrounded by walls). Since houses were built touching each other the roofs must have acted as streets! People must have walked across them.

In Catal Huyuk there were no panes of glass in windows and houses did not have chimneys. Instead, there were only holes in the roofs to let out the smoke. Inside houses were plastered and often had painted murals of people and animals on the walls. People slept on platforms. In Catal Huyuk the dead were buried inside houses. (Although they may have been exposed outside to be eaten by vultures first).

By 4,000 BC farming had spread across Europe. When people began farming they stopped living in tents made from animal skins and they began to live in huts made from stone or wattle and daub with thatched roofs. Bronze Age people lived in round wooden huts with thatched roofs.

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WHAT ARE ANTIBIOTICS?

Special drugs called antibiotics are used to treat diseases caused by bacteria. Early antibiotics were made from moulds and fungi, but today they are produced artificially from chemicals. Antibiotics work by breaking down the cells of the bacteria. There is some concern that the continued use of antibiotics could create problems for the future because the bacteria are becoming resistant to the drugs.

Any substance that inhibits the growth and replication of a bacterium or kills it outright can be called an antibiotic. Antibiotics are a type of antimicrobial designed to target bacterial infections within (or on) the body. This makes antibiotics subtly different from the other main kinds of antimicrobials widely used today:

  • Antiseptics are used to sterilise surfaces of living tissue when the risk of infection is high, such as during surgery.
  • Disinfectants are non-selective antimicrobials, killing a wide range of micro-organisms including bacteria. They are used on non-living surfaces, for example in hospitals.

Of course, bacteria are not the only microbes that can be harmful to us. Fungi and viruses can also be a danger to humans, and they are targeted by antifungals and antivirals, respectively. Only substances that target bacteria are called antibiotics, while the name antimicrobial is an umbrella term for anything that inhibits or kills microbial cells including antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals and chemicals such as antiseptics.

Most antibiotics used today are produced in laboratories, but they are often based on compounds scientists have found in nature. Some microbes, for example, produce substances specifically to kill other nearby bacteria in order to gain an advantage when competing for food, water or other limited resources. However, some microbes only produce antibiotics in the laboratory.

Antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections. Some are highly specialized and are only effective against certain bacteria. Others, known as broad-spectrum antibiotics, attack a wide range of bacteria, including ones that are beneficial to us.

There are two main ways in which antibiotics target bacteria. They either prevent the reproduction of bacteria, or they kill the bacteria, for example by stopping the mechanism responsible for building their cell walls.

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WHICH PEOPLE ARE MOST AT RISK FROM DISEASE?

Some people may be more at risk from disease than others. in many developing countries, people may be short of food or may not have access to clean water. In such circumstances, they are at risk from nutritional diseases such as scurvy and rickets, as well as those that thrive in areas with poor sanitation, such as cholera and hepatitis. In industrialized nations, the population may have an increased risk of cancer and heart disease, brought about by high-fat diets and unhealthy lifestyles.

Some groups of people appear to be at higher risk of more complicated or severe illness, including:

  • Pregnant women;
  • Infants and young children particularly under age 2;
  • people of any age with certain chronic health conditions (including asthma or lung disease, heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease or some neurological conditions);
  • People with severely compromised immune systems.

Currently, people age 65 or older are the least likely to be infected with the pandemic influenza, but those who do get sick are also at high risk of developing serious complications, just as they are from seasonal flu.

Who recommends that pregnant women, or others at higher risk of severe illness and their caregivers, be vaccinated against pandemic influenza and take all the necessary precautions, including hygiene measures, to prevent the spread of illness.

Vaccination against the pandemic influenza is prudent for everyone to reduce chances of infection.

Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is spread primarily by contact with blood and blood products. Blood transfusions and the sharing of used needles and syringes have been the main causes of the spread of HCV in the United States. With the introduction in 1991 of routine blood screening for HCV antibody and improvements in the test in mid-1992, transfusion-related hepatitis C has virtually disappeared. At present, injection drug use is the most common risk factor for contracting the disease. However, there are patients who get hepatitis C without any known exposure to blood or to drug use.

Those individuals most at risk for hepatitis C infection are:

  • People who had blood transfusions, blood products, or organ donations before June, 1992, when sensitive tests for HCV were introduced for blood screening.
  • Health care workers who suffer needle-stick accidents.
  • Injection drug users, including those who may have used drugs once many years ago.
  • Infants born to HCV-infected mothers.
  • Other groups who appear to be at slightly increased risk for hepatitis C are:
  • People with high-risk sexual behavior, multiple partners, and sexually transmitted diseases.
  • People who snort cocaine using shared equipment.
  • People who have shared toothbrushes, razors and other personal items with a family member that is HCV-infected.

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WHAT IS IMMUNIZATION?

People can he protected from certain diseases by being given a weakened version of the germ that causes a disease. This is called immunization. A successful immunization programme has completely eliminated the disease of smallpox. Immunization programmers are especially important for developing countries.

When you get sick, your body makes antibodies to fight the disease to help you get better. These antibodies stay in your body even after the disease is gone, and protect you from getting the same illness again. This is called immunity. However, you don’t have to get sick to develop immunity. You can gain immunity against disease through immunization.

Immunization (or vaccination) protects people from disease by introducing a vaccine into the body that triggers an immune response, just as though you had been exposed to a disease naturally. The vaccine contains the same antigens or parts of antigens that cause the disease, but the antigens in vaccines are either killed or greatly weakened. Vaccines work because they trick your body into thinking it is being attacked by the actual disease.

Immunity through immunization happens without the consequence of being ill and without the risk of potential life-threatening complications from the disease. Once a person is immunized, specific immune cells called memory cells prevent re-infection when they encounter that disease again in the future. However, not all vaccines provide lifelong immunity. Vaccines such as the tetanus vaccine require booster doses every ten years for adults to maintain immunity.

At any age, vaccination provides the longest-lasting, most effective protection against disease. Vaccine-preventable diseases can be serious, and in some cases can cause life-threatening complications that can lead to hospitalization. This is especially a concern for infants and young children, who are particularly more vulnerable. Having children vaccinated on time is important and helps ensure that they receive the protection they need as early as possible to fight off diseases before they are exposed to them.

Immunization is important not only in childhood, but in adulthood as well, to help promote healthy aging. This is because childhood immunization does not provide lifelong immunity against some diseases such as tetanus (lockjaw) and diphtheria. Adults require helper, or booster, shots to maintain immunity. Adult vaccinations may also be recommended to protect against disease common in adulthood such as shingles.

Adults who were not adequately immunized as children may be at risk of infection from other vaccine-preventable diseases. They can also infect others. For example, adults who become ill with measles, mumps or pertussis (whooping cough) can infect infants who may not yet be fully immunized.

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