App Profile: UVU Roots Of Knowledge

This app is meant to accompany the Utah Valley University (UVU) Roots of Knowledge (ROK) stained glass panorama of history and human drama. The intricate details incorporated into every window represent years of painstaking research on the events and people that shaped humankind from the days of wooly mammoths and cavemen to the smart phone.

The story begins with a life-size depiction of one of the oldest living trees – the bristlecone pine Methuselah – in spring, with its roots and branches traveling chronologically, interlacing like the strands of a DNA chain across all 80 panels. Methuselah intersects with A Tree of Life representing various interpretations of the beginning of the world. The windows are rich with colorful and historical detail. A single window shows important representations of the 13th and 14th centuries, including Kublai Khan of the Mongol Empire; the Mosque of Isfahan in Iran; Dante Alighieri, “the Father of the Italian Language”; and the University of Krakow, the oldest university in Poland, whose most famous student was Copernicus. Another, from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, includes a quote by Cuban revolutionary Jose Julian Marti; portraits of Marie Curie and Henrik Ibsen; a kiosk in Paris; and the great Indian hornbill, the symbol of the Bombay Natural History Society.