Author: Carole Nervig
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1591434483
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 597
Book Description
• Shows how the archetypal symbols of the Pohnpaid petroglyphs have exact counterparts in other ancient cultures throughout the world • Provides evidence that Pohnpaid is closely related to--yet predates--neighboring Nan Madol • Includes hundreds of Pohnpaid petroglyphs and stone circle photos, many never before seen While residing on the small Pacific island of Pohnpei in the 1990s, Carole Nervig discovered that a recent brush fire had exposed hundreds of previously unknown petroglyphs carved on gigantic boulders. This portion of the megalithic site called Pohnpaid was unknown even to Pohnpei’s state historic preservation officer. The petroglyphs were unlike others from Oceania, so Nervig began investigating and comparing them with petroglyphs and symbols from around the world. In this fully illustrated exploration, Nervig documents her discoveries on Pohnpei, revealing how the archetypal symbols of the Pohnpaid petroglyphs have exact counterparts in other ancient cultures and universal motifs throughout the world, including the Australian Aborigines, the Inca in Peru, the Vedic civilization of India, early Norse runes, and Japanese symbols. She provides evidence that Pohnpaid is closely related to--yet predates--neighboring Nan Madol and shows how Pohnpaid was an outpost of the sunken Kahnihmueiso, a city of the now-vanished civilization of Mu, or Lemuria. Discussing the archaeoastronomical function of the Pohnpaid stones, the author examines how many of the glyphs symbolize celestial phenomena and clearly reveal how their creators were sky watchers with a sophisticated understanding of astronomy, geophysics, geomancy, and engineering. She shows how the scientific concepts depicted in the petroglyphs reveal how the citizens of Mu had a much deeper understanding of the living Earth than we do, which gave them the ability to manipulate natural forces both physically and energetically. Combining archaeological evidence with traditional oral accounts, Nervig reveals Pohnpaid not only as a part of a geodetic network of ancient sacred sites and portals but also as a remnant of the now submerged but once enlightened Motherland of Mu.
The Petroglyphs of Mu
Author: Carole Nervig
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1591434483
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 597
Book Description
• Shows how the archetypal symbols of the Pohnpaid petroglyphs have exact counterparts in other ancient cultures throughout the world • Provides evidence that Pohnpaid is closely related to--yet predates--neighboring Nan Madol • Includes hundreds of Pohnpaid petroglyphs and stone circle photos, many never before seen While residing on the small Pacific island of Pohnpei in the 1990s, Carole Nervig discovered that a recent brush fire had exposed hundreds of previously unknown petroglyphs carved on gigantic boulders. This portion of the megalithic site called Pohnpaid was unknown even to Pohnpei’s state historic preservation officer. The petroglyphs were unlike others from Oceania, so Nervig began investigating and comparing them with petroglyphs and symbols from around the world. In this fully illustrated exploration, Nervig documents her discoveries on Pohnpei, revealing how the archetypal symbols of the Pohnpaid petroglyphs have exact counterparts in other ancient cultures and universal motifs throughout the world, including the Australian Aborigines, the Inca in Peru, the Vedic civilization of India, early Norse runes, and Japanese symbols. She provides evidence that Pohnpaid is closely related to--yet predates--neighboring Nan Madol and shows how Pohnpaid was an outpost of the sunken Kahnihmueiso, a city of the now-vanished civilization of Mu, or Lemuria. Discussing the archaeoastronomical function of the Pohnpaid stones, the author examines how many of the glyphs symbolize celestial phenomena and clearly reveal how their creators were sky watchers with a sophisticated understanding of astronomy, geophysics, geomancy, and engineering. She shows how the scientific concepts depicted in the petroglyphs reveal how the citizens of Mu had a much deeper understanding of the living Earth than we do, which gave them the ability to manipulate natural forces both physically and energetically. Combining archaeological evidence with traditional oral accounts, Nervig reveals Pohnpaid not only as a part of a geodetic network of ancient sacred sites and portals but also as a remnant of the now submerged but once enlightened Motherland of Mu.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1591434483
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 597
Book Description
• Shows how the archetypal symbols of the Pohnpaid petroglyphs have exact counterparts in other ancient cultures throughout the world • Provides evidence that Pohnpaid is closely related to--yet predates--neighboring Nan Madol • Includes hundreds of Pohnpaid petroglyphs and stone circle photos, many never before seen While residing on the small Pacific island of Pohnpei in the 1990s, Carole Nervig discovered that a recent brush fire had exposed hundreds of previously unknown petroglyphs carved on gigantic boulders. This portion of the megalithic site called Pohnpaid was unknown even to Pohnpei’s state historic preservation officer. The petroglyphs were unlike others from Oceania, so Nervig began investigating and comparing them with petroglyphs and symbols from around the world. In this fully illustrated exploration, Nervig documents her discoveries on Pohnpei, revealing how the archetypal symbols of the Pohnpaid petroglyphs have exact counterparts in other ancient cultures and universal motifs throughout the world, including the Australian Aborigines, the Inca in Peru, the Vedic civilization of India, early Norse runes, and Japanese symbols. She provides evidence that Pohnpaid is closely related to--yet predates--neighboring Nan Madol and shows how Pohnpaid was an outpost of the sunken Kahnihmueiso, a city of the now-vanished civilization of Mu, or Lemuria. Discussing the archaeoastronomical function of the Pohnpaid stones, the author examines how many of the glyphs symbolize celestial phenomena and clearly reveal how their creators were sky watchers with a sophisticated understanding of astronomy, geophysics, geomancy, and engineering. She shows how the scientific concepts depicted in the petroglyphs reveal how the citizens of Mu had a much deeper understanding of the living Earth than we do, which gave them the ability to manipulate natural forces both physically and energetically. Combining archaeological evidence with traditional oral accounts, Nervig reveals Pohnpaid not only as a part of a geodetic network of ancient sacred sites and portals but also as a remnant of the now submerged but once enlightened Motherland of Mu.
The Children of Mu
Author: James Churchward
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781948803243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
According to Churchward, the lost Pacific continent of Mu "extended from somewhere north of Hawaii to the south as far as the Fijis and Easter Island." He claimed Mu was the site of the Garden of Eden and the home of 64,000,000 inhabitants known as the Naacals. Its civilization, which flourished 50,000 years before Churchward's day, was technologically more advanced than his own, and the ancient civilizations of India, Babylon, Persia, Egypt and the Mayas were merely the decayed remnants of its colonies. In this, his second book, first published in 1931, Churchward tells the story of the colonial expansion of Mu and the influence of the highly developed Mu culture on the rest of the world. Her first colonies were in North America and the Orient, while other colonies had been started in India, Egypt and Yucatan. Churchward claimed to have gained his knowledge from fragments of text written by the Naacals in a dead language taught to him by an Indian priest. Chapters include: The Origin of Man; The Eastern Lines; Ancient North America; Stone tablets from the Valley of Mexico; South America; Atlantis; Western Europe; The Greeks; Egypt; The Western Lines; India; Southern India; The Great Uighur Empire; Babylonia; Intimate Hours with the Rishi; more. A fascinating book on the diffusion of mankind around the world--originating in a now lost continent in the Pacific! Tons of illustrations!
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781948803243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
According to Churchward, the lost Pacific continent of Mu "extended from somewhere north of Hawaii to the south as far as the Fijis and Easter Island." He claimed Mu was the site of the Garden of Eden and the home of 64,000,000 inhabitants known as the Naacals. Its civilization, which flourished 50,000 years before Churchward's day, was technologically more advanced than his own, and the ancient civilizations of India, Babylon, Persia, Egypt and the Mayas were merely the decayed remnants of its colonies. In this, his second book, first published in 1931, Churchward tells the story of the colonial expansion of Mu and the influence of the highly developed Mu culture on the rest of the world. Her first colonies were in North America and the Orient, while other colonies had been started in India, Egypt and Yucatan. Churchward claimed to have gained his knowledge from fragments of text written by the Naacals in a dead language taught to him by an Indian priest. Chapters include: The Origin of Man; The Eastern Lines; Ancient North America; Stone tablets from the Valley of Mexico; South America; Atlantis; Western Europe; The Greeks; Egypt; The Western Lines; India; Southern India; The Great Uighur Empire; Babylonia; Intimate Hours with the Rishi; more. A fascinating book on the diffusion of mankind around the world--originating in a now lost continent in the Pacific! Tons of illustrations!
Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes
Author: Selwyn Dewdney
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442638230
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
This book describes in word and illustration the results of an exciting quest on the part of its authors to discover and record Indian rock paintings of Northern Ontario and Minnesota. Numerous drawings were made from these pictographs at a hundred different sites; the originals range in age from four to five hundred years to a thousand, and were done with the simplest materials: fingers for brushes, fine clay impregnated with ferrous oxide giving the characteristic red paint. Where an overhanging rock protected a vertical face from dripping water or on dry, naked rock faces the Indians recorded the forest life with which they lived in intimate association—deer, caribou, rabbit, heron, trout, canoes, animal tracks—and also abstractions which puzzle and intrigue the modern viewer. Many of the paintings could only have been done from a canoe or a convenient rock ledge. Selwyn Dewdney travelled many thousands of miles by canoe to make the drawings of the pictographs which illustrate every page of this fascinating and attractive book. He provides also a general analysis of the materials used by the Indians, of their subject-matter and the artistic rendering given to it, and his artist's journal records in detail the sites he visited, the paintings he found at each, the comparisons among them that came to mind, the references to rock paintings in early literature of the Northwest. Kenneth E. Kidd contributes a valuable essay on the anthropological background of the area, linking the rock paintings with early cave art in, for example, France and Spain, describing the life of the Indians in the Shield country, and commenting on what the pictographs reveal of their makers' attitudes to their external world and of their thinking. This is a book which will appeal to a wide audience: to those interested in primitive art forms and in Canadian art in general, to all students of the early history of North America, to travellers who in increasing numbers follow the canoe trails of the Shield lakes and rivers.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442638230
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
This book describes in word and illustration the results of an exciting quest on the part of its authors to discover and record Indian rock paintings of Northern Ontario and Minnesota. Numerous drawings were made from these pictographs at a hundred different sites; the originals range in age from four to five hundred years to a thousand, and were done with the simplest materials: fingers for brushes, fine clay impregnated with ferrous oxide giving the characteristic red paint. Where an overhanging rock protected a vertical face from dripping water or on dry, naked rock faces the Indians recorded the forest life with which they lived in intimate association—deer, caribou, rabbit, heron, trout, canoes, animal tracks—and also abstractions which puzzle and intrigue the modern viewer. Many of the paintings could only have been done from a canoe or a convenient rock ledge. Selwyn Dewdney travelled many thousands of miles by canoe to make the drawings of the pictographs which illustrate every page of this fascinating and attractive book. He provides also a general analysis of the materials used by the Indians, of their subject-matter and the artistic rendering given to it, and his artist's journal records in detail the sites he visited, the paintings he found at each, the comparisons among them that came to mind, the references to rock paintings in early literature of the Northwest. Kenneth E. Kidd contributes a valuable essay on the anthropological background of the area, linking the rock paintings with early cave art in, for example, France and Spain, describing the life of the Indians in the Shield country, and commenting on what the pictographs reveal of their makers' attitudes to their external world and of their thinking. This is a book which will appeal to a wide audience: to those interested in primitive art forms and in Canadian art in general, to all students of the early history of North America, to travellers who in increasing numbers follow the canoe trails of the Shield lakes and rivers.
The Petroglyphs and Pictographs of Missouri
Author: Carol Diaz-Granados
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817309888
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
This comprehensive guide to the rock art of Missouri presents major design motifs and links those images to Native American beliefs.
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817309888
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
This comprehensive guide to the rock art of Missouri presents major design motifs and links those images to Native American beliefs.
The Place of Stone
Author: Douglas Hunter
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469634414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
Claimed by many to be the most frequently documented artifact in American archeology, Dighton Rock is a forty-ton boulder covered in petroglyphs in southern Massachusetts. First noted by New England colonists in 1680, the rock's markings have been debated endlessly by scholars and everyday people alike on both sides of the Atlantic. The glyphs have been erroneously assigned to an array of non-Indigenous cultures: Norsemen, Egyptians, Lost Tribes of Israel, vanished Portuguese explorers, and even a prince from Atlantis. In this fascinating story rich in personalities and memorable characters, Douglas Hunter uses Dighton Rock to reveal the long, complex history of colonization, American archaeology, and the conceptualization of Indigenous people. Hunter argues that misinterpretations of the rock's markings share common motivations and have erased Indigenous people not only from their own history but from the landscape. He shows how Dighton Rock for centuries drove ideas about the original peopling of the Americas, including Bering Strait migration scenarios and the identity of the "Mound Builders." He argues the debates over Dighton Rock have served to answer two questions: Who belongs in America, and to whom does America belong?
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469634414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
Claimed by many to be the most frequently documented artifact in American archeology, Dighton Rock is a forty-ton boulder covered in petroglyphs in southern Massachusetts. First noted by New England colonists in 1680, the rock's markings have been debated endlessly by scholars and everyday people alike on both sides of the Atlantic. The glyphs have been erroneously assigned to an array of non-Indigenous cultures: Norsemen, Egyptians, Lost Tribes of Israel, vanished Portuguese explorers, and even a prince from Atlantis. In this fascinating story rich in personalities and memorable characters, Douglas Hunter uses Dighton Rock to reveal the long, complex history of colonization, American archaeology, and the conceptualization of Indigenous people. Hunter argues that misinterpretations of the rock's markings share common motivations and have erased Indigenous people not only from their own history but from the landscape. He shows how Dighton Rock for centuries drove ideas about the original peopling of the Americas, including Bering Strait migration scenarios and the identity of the "Mound Builders." He argues the debates over Dighton Rock have served to answer two questions: Who belongs in America, and to whom does America belong?
The Lost Civilization of Lemuria
Author: Frank Joseph
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1591439493
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 325
Book Description
A compelling new portrait of the lost realm of Lemuria, the original motherland of humanity • Contains the most extensive and up-to-date archaeological research on Lemuria • Reveals a lost, ancient technology in some respects more advanced than modern science • Provides evidence that the perennial philosophies have their origin in Lemurian culture Before the Indonesian tsunami or Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans, there was the destruction of Lemuria. Oral tradition in Polynesia recounts the story of a splendid kingdom that was carried to the bottom of the sea by a mighty “warrior wave”--a tsunami. This lost realm has been cited in numerous other indigenous traditions, spanning the globe from Australia to Asia to the coasts of both South and North America. It was known as Lemuria or Mu, a vast realm of islands and archipelagoes that once sprawled across the Pacific Ocean. Relying on 10 years of research and extensive travel, Frank Joseph offers a compelling picture of this motherland of humanity, which he suggests was the original Garden of Eden. Using recent deep-sea archaeological finds, enigmatic glyphs and symbols, and ancient records shared by cultures divided by great distances that document the story of this sunken world, Joseph painstakingly re-creates a picture of this civilization in which people lived in rare harmony and possessed a sophisticated technology that allowed them to harness the weather, defy gravity, and conduct genetic investigations far beyond what is possible today. When disaster struck Lemuria, the survivors made their way to other parts of the world, incorporating their scientific and mystical skills into the existing cultures of Asia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Totem poles of the Pacific Northwest, architecture in China, the colossal stone statues on Easter Island, and even the perennial philosophies all reveal their kinship to this now-vanished civilization.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1591439493
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 325
Book Description
A compelling new portrait of the lost realm of Lemuria, the original motherland of humanity • Contains the most extensive and up-to-date archaeological research on Lemuria • Reveals a lost, ancient technology in some respects more advanced than modern science • Provides evidence that the perennial philosophies have their origin in Lemurian culture Before the Indonesian tsunami or Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans, there was the destruction of Lemuria. Oral tradition in Polynesia recounts the story of a splendid kingdom that was carried to the bottom of the sea by a mighty “warrior wave”--a tsunami. This lost realm has been cited in numerous other indigenous traditions, spanning the globe from Australia to Asia to the coasts of both South and North America. It was known as Lemuria or Mu, a vast realm of islands and archipelagoes that once sprawled across the Pacific Ocean. Relying on 10 years of research and extensive travel, Frank Joseph offers a compelling picture of this motherland of humanity, which he suggests was the original Garden of Eden. Using recent deep-sea archaeological finds, enigmatic glyphs and symbols, and ancient records shared by cultures divided by great distances that document the story of this sunken world, Joseph painstakingly re-creates a picture of this civilization in which people lived in rare harmony and possessed a sophisticated technology that allowed them to harness the weather, defy gravity, and conduct genetic investigations far beyond what is possible today. When disaster struck Lemuria, the survivors made their way to other parts of the world, incorporating their scientific and mystical skills into the existing cultures of Asia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Totem poles of the Pacific Northwest, architecture in China, the colossal stone statues on Easter Island, and even the perennial philosophies all reveal their kinship to this now-vanished civilization.
The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art
Author: George Nash
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521524247
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 424
Book Description
A companion to The Archaeology of Rock-Art (Cambridge 1998), this new collection edited by Christopher Chippindale and George Nash addresses the most important component around the rock-art panel - its landscape. The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art draws together the work of many well-known scholars from key regions of the world for rock-art and for rock-art research. It provides a unique, broad and varied insight into the arrangement, location, and structure of rock-art and its place within the landscapes of ancient worlds as ancient people experienced them. Packed with illustrations, as befits a book about images, The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art offers a visual as well as a literary key to the understanding of this most lovely and alluring of archaeological traces.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521524247
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 424
Book Description
A companion to The Archaeology of Rock-Art (Cambridge 1998), this new collection edited by Christopher Chippindale and George Nash addresses the most important component around the rock-art panel - its landscape. The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art draws together the work of many well-known scholars from key regions of the world for rock-art and for rock-art research. It provides a unique, broad and varied insight into the arrangement, location, and structure of rock-art and its place within the landscapes of ancient worlds as ancient people experienced them. Packed with illustrations, as befits a book about images, The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art offers a visual as well as a literary key to the understanding of this most lovely and alluring of archaeological traces.
Petroglyphs and the Stars in Northumberland
Author: P. F. Tullet
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 152752258X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136
Book Description
Cup and ring petroglyphs are found widely in Northumberland, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Spain, Portugal and further afield across the globe. They are mysterious and beautiful objects of art in the landscape, but, as this book explains, they are much more than that. Nine petroglyph sites in Northumberland are examined here, and are shown to have depicted the night sky above them in the Neolithic era to a high degree of accuracy. This opens up a whole new field of study because, together, the Northumberland petroglyphs make up a star atlas. Decoding them is likely to yield valuable astronomical information about the sky 4,500 years ago. This book provides the relevant astronomical background and explains carefully how these petroglyph motifs can be deciphered. It will be of interest to astronomers, archaeologists, conservationists of ancient monuments, and particularly to amateurs who would like a field guide on how to interpret the messages on these rocks for themselves.
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 152752258X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136
Book Description
Cup and ring petroglyphs are found widely in Northumberland, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Spain, Portugal and further afield across the globe. They are mysterious and beautiful objects of art in the landscape, but, as this book explains, they are much more than that. Nine petroglyph sites in Northumberland are examined here, and are shown to have depicted the night sky above them in the Neolithic era to a high degree of accuracy. This opens up a whole new field of study because, together, the Northumberland petroglyphs make up a star atlas. Decoding them is likely to yield valuable astronomical information about the sky 4,500 years ago. This book provides the relevant astronomical background and explains carefully how these petroglyph motifs can be deciphered. It will be of interest to astronomers, archaeologists, conservationists of ancient monuments, and particularly to amateurs who would like a field guide on how to interpret the messages on these rocks for themselves.
The Whale Culture in the Pacific -The Truth of the Lost Continent of Mu
Author: Vito de la Vera
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 8743056040
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 60
Book Description
My search for the origins of the whale culture has now taken me from the first findings on the East coast of Greenland across the Arctic Ocean and down the Bering Sea to the Aleutian Islands. Here I have found evidence that they originated in the Pacific, which brings us to Japan and the Yonaguni monument. Here it becomes evident that the Whale culture originated from hunter-gatherers, on the Eurasian Mammoth step, who have begun to hunt seals and whales in the Sea of Japan and have then crossed over to Japan from where their culture has adapted to the rich hunting waters of the Pacific during the ice age. The abundance of hunting game has led them to be very successful in the Pacific and to have the resources to develop their unique culture, where they lived on and hunted from the ice cover on the Ocean. On the journey from Japan across the Pacific we find evidence on Hawaii that causes us to take a detour to Kiritimati. There we find evidence that very specific ocean currents during the ice age created a continent of ice in the pacific during the ice age with very rich waters both to the north and south of this ice continent on which the whale culture established a civilization that must have been the real lost continent of Mu. From this continent the whale culture of Mu could cover the entire pacific in their airships based on whale skin and bone. In our continued search we come to Tahiti and New Caledonia to find the source of the specific conditions in the ocean currents that led to the formation of the ice continent of Mu and how these conditions started to collapse and led to the decline of the Whale culture in the Pacific. We thus end up following the whale culture to New Zealand, where it tries to adapt to the missing sea ice and follows the ice south towards the Antarctic before disappearing.
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 8743056040
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 60
Book Description
My search for the origins of the whale culture has now taken me from the first findings on the East coast of Greenland across the Arctic Ocean and down the Bering Sea to the Aleutian Islands. Here I have found evidence that they originated in the Pacific, which brings us to Japan and the Yonaguni monument. Here it becomes evident that the Whale culture originated from hunter-gatherers, on the Eurasian Mammoth step, who have begun to hunt seals and whales in the Sea of Japan and have then crossed over to Japan from where their culture has adapted to the rich hunting waters of the Pacific during the ice age. The abundance of hunting game has led them to be very successful in the Pacific and to have the resources to develop their unique culture, where they lived on and hunted from the ice cover on the Ocean. On the journey from Japan across the Pacific we find evidence on Hawaii that causes us to take a detour to Kiritimati. There we find evidence that very specific ocean currents during the ice age created a continent of ice in the pacific during the ice age with very rich waters both to the north and south of this ice continent on which the whale culture established a civilization that must have been the real lost continent of Mu. From this continent the whale culture of Mu could cover the entire pacific in their airships based on whale skin and bone. In our continued search we come to Tahiti and New Caledonia to find the source of the specific conditions in the ocean currents that led to the formation of the ice continent of Mu and how these conditions started to collapse and led to the decline of the Whale culture in the Pacific. We thus end up following the whale culture to New Zealand, where it tries to adapt to the missing sea ice and follows the ice south towards the Antarctic before disappearing.
Petroglyphs of Ohio
Author: James L. Swauger
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Book Description