From Venice’s drowned past to China’s ‘red beaches’: how climate shapes culture

When the sea rewrites history: Venice’s lost landscapes

Venice’s lagoon, a labyrinth of water and stone, was not always a floating city. Ten thousand years ago, the land that now cradles its palaces and piazzas lay miles inland, a rolling expanse of hills and swamps roamed by hunter-gatherers. A study published this week in Quaternary Science Reviews reconstructs this vanished world, revealing how rising seas transformed the northern Adriatic coastline into the Venice we know today.

Researchers from the University of Southampton combined seismic data with sediment cores from Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia to model the region’s shifting shorelines. Their findings show that as glaciers melted at the end of the last Ice Age, sea levels rose by more than 100 metres, swallowing vast tracts of land. By 6,000 years ago, the coastline had retreated to within a few kilometres of its current position, leaving behind only the highest ridges—now the islands of Venice, Murano, and Burano—as remnants of a once-continuous landscape.

The implications stretch beyond geology. The study’s lead author, Samuele Ongaro, notes that these submerged landscapes were not just empty spaces but lived environments. "Our ancestors would have recognised the hills that now form Venice’s foundations," he says. "What we see today is a city built on the ghosts of a lost world." The research underscores how climate-driven transformations have long shaped human settlement—and how modern Venice, already grappling with acqua alta and mass tourism, remains at the mercy of forces far older than its canals.

China’s ‘red beaches’: where nature becomes art

Along the coast of China’s Shandong province, a seasonal spectacle has turned wetlands into a canvas. Each autumn, the native seepweed Suaeda glauca transforms from green to a vivid crimson, creating what locals call the "red beach." The phenomenon, captured in a series of striking photographs by Han Jiajun, offers a rare fusion of ecology and aesthetics, where climate, soil salinity, and plant biology converge to produce a landscape that feels almost surreal.

The red beaches of Qinqdao are not just a tourist attraction but a ecological barometer. The seepweed thrives in saline marshes, its colour intensifying as it absorbs water and nutrients in the lead-up to winter. The process is as much about survival as spectacle: the plant’s deep red pigments, betalains, help protect it from the harsh coastal environment. Yet the phenomenon is fragile. Rising sea levels, coastal development, and pollution threaten these wetlands, which also serve as critical stopovers for migratory birds.

The images of the red beaches have sparked conversations about the intersection of nature and culture. In China, where landscape painting has long been a revered art form, the red marshes evoke classical scrolls—except here, the brushstrokes are made by tides and time. The photographs have also drawn comparisons to Western environmental art, such as Andy Goldsworthy’s ephemeral installations, though their scale and spontaneity set them apart. For now, the red beaches endure as a reminder of nature’s capacity to inspire—and a warning of what might be lost if the delicate balance of these ecosystems is disrupted.

Queer maximalism and the fight for cultural scale

In a year when LGBTQ+ narratives have often been confined to niche audiences, La Bola Negra (The Black Ball) is a deliberate provocation. The Spanish film, directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (collectively known as "Los Javis"), is a maximalist war epic starring Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close, blending queer romance, anti-fascist resistance, and Hollywood-scale spectacle. At Cannes this year, it won the Best Director prize, shared with Paweł Pawlikowski, and has since been tipped as Spain’s submission for the Oscars.

The film’s ambition is political as much as artistic. Ambrossi, speaking to The Guardian, framed it as a rejection of the "small, sad LGBTQ+ movie" trope. "I wanted to make the biggest, gayest war film ever," he said. "Not a story about suffering, but about joy, resistance, and scale." That scale is evident in every frame: lavish costumes, sweeping battle scenes, and a narrative that refuses to apologise for its queerness. Close, who learned Spanish for the role, plays a Republican fighter, while Cruz portrays a flamenco dancer entangled in a love story that spans decades.

La Bola Negra arrives at a moment when queer representation in mainstream cinema remains uneven. While films like Bros and Fire Island have pushed for broader visibility, they have often struggled to break out of the indie circuit. The Javis’ film, by contrast, demands to be seen on the biggest screens—and in doing so, challenges the industry’s assumptions about what queer stories can achieve. Its success at Cannes suggests that audiences are hungry for narratives that are unapologetically bold, both in their politics and their aesthetics.

What to watch: the human cost of silence

This evening, BBC Two airs a documentary that revisits one of Northern Ireland’s most haunting unsolved crimes. In 2005, Robert McCartney was beaten and stabbed to death outside a Belfast pub in a gang attack witnessed by around 70 people. Despite the scale of the violence, no one came forward, and evidence was destroyed. The case became a symbol of the culture of silence that persisted long after the Troubles officially ended.

The documentary follows McCartney’s five sisters and his fiancée as they continue their fight for justice. Their campaign has taken them from Belfast to the White House, where they met then-Senator Joe Biden, but the case remains unresolved. The film does not offer easy answers. Instead, it asks why communities that have endured decades of conflict often struggle to break the habit of silence, even when the stakes are personal.

The timing of the broadcast is notable. Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government has been suspended for much of the past year, and tensions over legacy issues—how to address the crimes of the Troubles—remain raw. The McCartney case is a reminder that justice is not just a legal process but a cultural one, shaped by history, fear, and the slow work of trust.

The takeaway: when environment and culture collide

These stories, though disparate, share a common thread: the ways in which environment and culture shape—and are shaped by—one another. Venice’s submerged past is a cautionary tale about the impermanence of human settlement in the face of climate change. China’s red beaches, meanwhile, show how natural phenomena can inspire art, even as they highlight the fragility of ecosystems. And La Bola Negra demonstrates how culture can challenge norms, not just reflect them.

What connects them is the idea of adaptation. Venice adapted to its lagoon, just as the seepweed of Shandong has adapted to its saline environment. Culture, too, adapts—sometimes by resisting, sometimes by embracing change. The question is whether these adaptations will be enough to meet the challenges of a world where the lines between land and sea, past and present, are constantly shifting.