Cultural Genome of Cultural Landscapes
Erjavec Iztok, Duško Aleksovski
I will present new integrated, data-driven approache supported by new methods, and knowledge sources based on material and non-material cultural heritage for insight into new realms of integrated landscape ecology research. Archaeology, ethnology and biology are interconnected in European landscapes and cultural landscapes are systems of interaction between human and nature, systems of interactions between natural and cultural heritage. We don’t have only endangered habitats but also endangered cultures in European landscapes and together with nature we are also losing cultures of these landscapes. In Slovenia a new term has been defined by Pleterski (2014), “cultural genome”. Just as the biological genome determines our biological appearance, the cultural genome determines our cultural appearance. It is a set of knowledge about how the world works and the rules derived from it that govern individual and community life. This knowledge and these rules change according to changes in the environment, the economy, and social relations. Knowledge and rules can be considered as the fixed core of the elements of any cultural area. In the initial forms of the cultural genome, we can also see the primordial science from which modern science has emerged (Pleterski 2023). It was a spiritual state of our ancestors, connected to nature, which originated from antiquity and was passed down from generation to generation, despite the fact that they were all “Christianized” (Čok, 2015). What is the definition of the cultural genome from a landscape ecology perspective? In front of us is research of continuity of human presence in European landscapes, their alteration of landscapes, spirituality, traces of their activitites and relations with today’s landscape and biodiversity. New resarch approach is nededd for new combine heritage protection – natural and cultural. Čok B. 2015 in Hrobat Viroglet K., Kavrečič P. ISBN 978-961-6963-41-1 Pleterski A. 2023. ISBN 978-961-07-1696-9