These shape-shifting, meandering rivers are naturally dynamic, "working their way across their valley floors, recycling floodplain sediment, and building both river and floodplain habitats as a result," said José Constantine of Cardiff University.īut what causes rivers to meander, and why do some meander more than others? These questions have been the subject of research for more than a century, and several hypotheses and studies have focused on the role of sediments. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Meander.Over periods of years and decades, the courses of some rivers can be all over the map-literally. Published by ISAMA, The International Society for the Arts, Mathematics, and Architecture.
The painter Yang Liu, for example, has incorporated smooth versions of the traditional Greek Key (also called Sona drawing, Sand drawing, and Kolam) in many of her paintings. Meanders and their generalizations are used with increasing frequency in various domains of contemporary art. Meanders are also prevalent on the pavement mosaics found in Roman villas throughout the Roman empire.
The shield of Philip II of Macedon, conserved in the museum of Vergina, is decorated with multiple symbols of the meander. Greek vases, especially during their Geometric Period, were probably the main reason for the widespread use of meanders alternatively, very ocean-like patterns of waves also appeared in the same format as meanders, which can also be thought of as the guilloche pattern. They were among the most important symbols in ancient Greece and perhaps symbolized infinity and unity many ancient Greek temples incorporated the sign of the meander. The meander itself has a pre-Greek history, drawing on space filling curves in the Ancient Near East, for example the guilloche on the depiction of the Investiture of Zimri-Lim at Mari. There is speculation that meanders of Greek origin may have come to China during the time of the Han Dynasty by way of trade with the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, but space-filling curves have a long history in the region, extending back to Zhukaigou Culture and Xiajiadian Culture motifs over 2,000 years earlier. The meander is a fundamental design motif in regions far from a Hellenic orbit: labyrinthine meanders ("thunder" pattern ) appear in bands and as infill on Shang bronzes, and many traditional buildings in and around China still bear geometric designs almost identical to meanders. The design is common to the present-day in classicizing architecture. In ancient Greece they appear in many architectural friezes, and in bands on the pottery of ancient Greece from the Geometric Period onwards.
Meanders are common decorative elements in Greek and Roman art. Usually the term is used for motifs with straight lines and right angles the many versions with rounded shapes are called running scrolls. Among some Italians, these patterns are known as Greek Lines. On the one hand, the name "meander" recalls the twisting and turning path of the Maeander River in Turkey ( Asia Minor), and on the other hand, as Karl Kerenyi pointed out, "the meander is the figure of a labyrinth in linear form". Such a design is also called the Greek fret or Greek key design, although these are modern designations.
Meander pavement in the streets of Rhodes (Greece), made from beach stonesĪ meander or meandros ( Greek: Μαίανδρος) is a decorative border constructed from a continuous line, shaped into a repeated motif.
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