Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2017 i National Geographic Magazine

The Cook Islands are a long way from the San Diego drug discovery lab where Jessica Cramp once worked. Eager to put her training to more tangible use, she traded her day job for a life helping protect sharks—animals she has said sparked her interest in ocean issues. A childhood fan of Jacques Cousteau, Cramp moved to Rarotonga Island in the South Pacific’s Cook Islands, where she successfully campaigned to ban the commercial shark trade throughout the Cook Islands and helped designate a 772,204-square-mile shark sanctuary. Since then Cramp has founded a research, outreach, and advocacy organization called Sharks Pacific. Via her computer, she uses satellites to track the movements of tagged migratory sharks and studies how to best design policies to protect the threatened creatures. “I’m interested in finding…

Tierney Thys has loved the ocean since she was a child growing up in California. Nowadays the marine biologist can often be found off the shores of the Galápagos, studying giant ocean sunfish as part of a larger effort to protect the region’s megafauna. Her underwater explorations have revealed a bay where she says the sunfish have established “year-round residency” and a “cleaning station” some 260 feet deep where smaller fish scour the giants of their parasites. Among multiple other projects, Thys is also training female Ecuadoran scientists in marine biotelemetry—the use of ultrasonic devices to detect and record movements of marine animals like whale sharks and turtles. Given the gender gap in the sciences, “training women scientists is of particular importance,” she says. “We need more female role models…

The office of Eugenio Alliata in Jerusalem looks like the home base of any archaeologist who’d rather be in the field dirtying his hands than indoors tidying things up. A tumble of dusty, defunct computer equipment sits in one corner, and excavation reports share crowded shelves with measuring reels and other tools of the trade. It feels like the office of every archaeologist I’ve met in the Middle East, except that Alliata is wearing the chocolate brown habit of a Franciscan friar and his headquarters are in the Monastery of the Flagellation. According to church tradition, the monastery marks the spot where Jesus Christ, condemned to death, was scourged by Roman soldiers and crowned with thorns. “Tradition” is a word you hear a lot in this corner of the world,…

Maestro Juan Flores’s apprentices brought my passport to the spirit world of jaguars in a small plastic chalice. It contained “la medicina,” a syrupy brown decoction of chacruna leaves and ayahuasca vines boiled down for two days and then decanted into old water bottles. At the start of the ceremony, the maestro consecrated the brew with exhalations of mapacho smoke, the wild Amazonian tobacco. And then he began filling the chalice, pouring doses of several ounces for each of the congregants. We waited on mats with blankets and plastic vomit buckets under the thatched roof of a large open-air pavilion called a maloca. There were 28 of us—from the United States, Canada, Spain, France, Argentina, and Peru. We had all come in search of something to this remote outpost in…

A downpour during the night had turned the greenish water of Río Quendeque angry and red with fresh mud, and the clouds looked ready to burst again any moment. Thankfully, we had the good boat, the one with the “roof”—an awning where giant Amazonian spiders and iridescent beetles were hanging out. I was on patrol with rangers from Madidi National Park in Bolivia, who were searching for clues about a growing problem in the rain forest. Madidi, a bit smaller than New Jersey, is a stunning natural trove, with more than 11 percent of the world’s bird species and 200 species of mammals. Even in the rainy season, when waist-deep mud can hobble you and insects seem hell-bent on eating you alive, it’s magical. Scarlet macaws swoop overhead, swarms of…

Delagha is a shy, skinny eight-year-old with weary eyes, a child who seems older than his years, aged by experiences that most adults never face. When I met him at the Adasevci refugee center near Serbia’s border with Croatia, he was walking around aimlessly, killing time. At an age when many children aren’t allowed to cross the street without an adult, Delagha had left his home, his parents, and his four younger siblings in Afghanistan’s war-ravaged Nangarhar Province more than a year ago. With a 10-year-old cousin and 15-year-old uncle, and aided by smugglers, he had crossed continents on a nearly 4,000-mile odyssey from his Taliban-and ISIS-infested hometown of Jalalabad, through Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey and into Bulgaria and Serbia. His dreamed-of final destination: the European Union, specifically, France. Delagha…

A New Silk Road China is leading the Belt and Road Initiative to revitalize and expand trade routes, pledging one trillion dollars in what it calls “the plan of the century.” The Old Silk Road From silk and spices to livestock and religions, the trade of goods and ideas ebbed and flowed between the second century B.C. and the 14th century A.D.…

In 1985 Dian Fossey hired veterinarian James Foster to join her research station in Rwanda as the first “gorilla doctor.” A few weeks later Fossey was murdered, but Foster still came to open his clinic. Today 15 vets working for the Gorilla Doctors organization care for the world’s last 880 mountain gorillas, which live on the border between Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Gorilla Doctors Eddy Kambale and Martin Kabuyaya trek every month into the jungles of Virunga National Park in the restive eastern part of the DRC. They check each gorilla’s health and treat any injuries, even performing surgery if necessary. But Virunga is also home to the other kind of guerrilla, and sometimes the veterinarians encounter armed rebels blocking the way to their…

Alexander Graham Bell, the second president of the National Geographic Society, defined geography as “the world and all that is in it.” In fact, National Geographic’s original mission was to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge. For many, the word “geography” elicits school-age memories of studying the names of rivers, oceans, or capitals. So it’s fair to ask: Is geography relevant today? In the roughly two years since the National Geographic Society refined our focus as a nonprofit organization, we’ve had an opportunity to rethink our relevance in the 21st century. The world now faces far different challenges than it did at our founding in 1888. Today we inhabit a planet with a burgeoning population that could approach 10 billion people by mid-century. That’s nearly three times as many people as…

How does the same story come to be known as “Beauty and the Beast” in the U.S. and “The Fairy Serpent” in China? As Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm collected Germanic folktales in the 19th century, they realized that many were similar to stories told in distant parts of the world. The brothers Grimm wondered whether plot similarities indicated a shared ancestry thousands of years old. Folktales are passed down orally, obscuring their age and origin. “There’s no fossil record [of them] before the invention of writing,” says Jamie Tehrani, an anthropologist at Durham University. To test the Grimms’ theory, Tehrani and literary scholar Sara Graça da Silva traced 76 basic plots back to their oldest linguistic ancestor using an international folktale database. If a similar tale was told in German…

Somewhere in the world, a meal, ritual, or offering is being prepared in religious observance—most likely by the busy adherents of Roman Catholicism or Hinduism. If Catholics celebrated every saint’s day or Hindus commemorated each deity’s birthday, nearly the entire year would be accounted for. The Jewish calendar has dozens of holidays—but the Torah only mandates strict observance of the holiest five. Muslims, too, are holiday minimalists. In Islam the biggest celebrations are saved for the last days of its two major holidays: Id al-Fitr for Ramadan, and Id al-Adha to end the hajj pilgrimage. Compiling a schedule of the holidays most widely observed by the world’s nine largest religions—as seen above—is no simple task. Different countries and regions, as well as denominations, celebrate their own versions of the holidays,…

‘The Pole at last!’ That note in Robert Peary’s diary proclaimed his team’s discovery of the North Pole, on a 1909 expedition sponsored by the National Geographic Society. On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to summit Mount Everest, as part of an expedition team sponsored and equipped by Rolex. Together National Geographic and Rolex have more than 200 years of experience supporting expeditions and explorers. Now they’re building on that legacy with a unique partnership. As both did in the 20th century, Rolex and National Geographic will continue to support the pioneers who explore uncharted realms. But now the partnership will also undertake a broader mission. Along with exploring Earth’s wonders, it will seek to deepen people’s scientific understanding of those wonders—and their…

The whale shark is one of the ocean’s most mysterious animals, but Australian marine biologist Brad Norman has been slowly unraveling its secrets for nearly a quarter century. The constellation-like patterns on each whale shark are as unique as a human fingerprint. With that in mind, Norman helped specialists rejigger an astronomical algorithm into a search tool that scans photos to identify individual sharks—vital knowledge for large-scale tracking and conservation. He’s also mustered an army of citizen scientists, including kids. Inspiring others “to help save the biggest fish in the sea, and the natural environment it relies on, is a joy and a privilege,” he says. Norman, a Rolex Awards for Enterprise laureate, worked to get whale sharks listed as endangered and says he’s now trying to solve some of…

The ocean is never as silent as it seems. Natural noises from creatures, storms, and earthquakes, plus sound from thousands of ships as well as underwater drilling and dredging, can make quite a racket. For animals like whales and dolphins that use sound to navigate, the cacophony blunts that ability and can cause long-term physiological effects. A bioacoustician and a Rolex laureate, Michel André studies the sound of the oceans along shipping lanes, in popular ports, and in remote parts of the planet. “For several decades,” he says, “we’ve known that the effects of artificial noise produced by human activities are affecting the whole food chain.” André’s goal isn’t to eliminate the noise but to find ways to reduce its damage. His team developed a system called LIDO—Listening to the…

“We’re trying to empower citizen scientists to take a larger role in protecting their oceans,” says National Geographic Emerging Explorer David Lang. To do that, he’s offering people a powerful tool: robots. Lang is the co-founder of OpenROV, which promotes deep-sea discovery using remotely operated vehicles. Over the course of the next year, the company will support citizen scientists, conservation organizations, and classrooms and supply drones for certain projects. Each drone will be assigned a specific mission, from monitoring changes in marine species off the coast of California to scanning the Mediterranean Sea for shipwrecks and other signs of ancient life. Once deployed, the underwater robots will allow people to explore the seas from dry land—and gain a deeper understanding of what needs to be protected, and why.…

Grace Young once lived under the sea, spending 15 days in a 66-foot-deep research habitat off the Florida Keys. Eagle rays swam by her window. Groupers made eye contact. Being an aquanaut, she says, was a bit like being an astronaut, living in an alien world. Young, a National Geographic emerging explorer, has focused her research on coral reefs: where they are, how they grow, and what’s happening to them. Looking at a healthy coral reef is like looking at a small city. There are apartments for fish, food grows nearby, and organisms as small as a millimeter or as long as a meter live in cramped spaces together. Understanding how they work is crucial to knowing how to protect them. Young dives in the ecosystems she studies, but truly…

Habitat corridors Mapping jaguar populations helps identify crucial areas where they live and move in proximity to people. Conservationists are working with governments, businesses, and private parties to protect these regions. Range reduction Jaguars once ranged from the United States’ arid Southwest to Argentina’s grassy pampas. Since the mid-1800s, they’ve lost more than half of their former territory and have been pushed deeper into less suitable jungle tracts. In the crosshairs As cities expand and land is developed, clashes between humans and jaguars increase. When their usual prey is gone, the big cats often attack livestock—and are killed in return. A market for their teeth and bones, prized for trinkets and folk remedies, increases their vulnerability.…

THE DESIRE TO TEACH their children about computers drew these Samburu women to a classroom in a settlement north of Nairobi. They are learning about tablets—designed to withstand tough use—that connect to the Internet through a satellite and come preloaded with educational programs. Technology now has arrived in isolated regions of Africa primarily in the form of relatively inexpensive cell phones. ENTREPRENEURS COLLABORATE at a popular technology-innovation center in Nairobi called iHub, where they share ideas, take classes, and participate in hackathons, competing to solve challenging software problems. Young, tech-savvy Africans have flocked to Kenya’s nascent version of Silicon Valley, nicknamed Silicon Savannah, seeking the money and expertise to create groundbreaking technology solutions. AN UBER-LIKE COMPANY aims to help riders find safe motorcycle drivers. Peter Kariuki, who taught himself to…

Hawaiian legend holds that taro is the sacred ancestor of all Hawaiian people. The staple root crop is so valued that it’s “known affectionately as the staff of life,” says University of Hawaii agroecologist Noa Kekuewa Lincoln. Known locally as kalo, the plant has been fundamental to the Hawaiian diet and culture for centuries—but its future is uncertain. Once one of the world’s most cultivated root crops, taro has been succumbing to taro leaf blight, a disease caused by water mold. Many of Hawaii’s traditional varieties are particularly susceptible, says agronomist Susan Miyasaka. Over the past 50 years, yields have dropped by more than half. Hoping to change that, Miyasaka and her team are testing blight-resistant taro at the University of Hawaii. Irrigation has also been an issue. Abundant water…

Former astronaut Scott Kelly has spent every American holiday in space, except St. Patrick’s Day. His last mission aboard the International Space Station kept him in orbit from late March 2015 to early March 2016 as part of a study on the biological effects on the human body of long durations in space, in anticipation of a mission to Mars. But he returned to Earth just shy of a full year. The mission was one of four stretches Kelly spent in orbit between 1999 and 2016. Time passes at a strange rate in space. A “day” is hard to define when you’re circling the entire world every 90 minutes. Most 24-hour periods look alike. “The days are pretty routine,” says Kelly, a flight engineer and mission commander whose new book,…

“I try to see the ocean through the eyes of sea creatures,” says marine biologist David Gruber. That inquisitive attitude is what drove the National Geographic emerging explorer to build an underwater camera that simulates the vantage point of a turtle. Gruber and his team began working on the camera in 2015, after his groundbreaking discovery of a biofluorescent hawksbill sea turtle in the Solomon Islands. Gruber also helped create something he calls a “squishy robot hand.” Made mostly of silicone rubber with “fingers” that can grab and curl, the tool allows him to collect and study samples of delicate sea coral without damaging them. He expects to develop other soft robots to further his research on jellyfish. Over the next few months, visitors to the National Geographic Ocean Odyssey…

Chile’s Patagonia—with its mountains, islands, and fjords—is one of the world’s wildest places. But the rugged region is undergoing a frightening transformation, according to biologist Vreni Häussermann, who began studying its marine life in 1997. In Chile’s fjords, coral banks are dying, the waters are muddied by boats and trash, and fish have been farmed en masse. The pollution is so bad that it’s causing mass die-offs: In 2015 Häussermann and colleagues discovered 337 dead whales. Häussermann hopes that documenting the underwater life of the fjords will help save them. Previously, the Rolex laureate’s research took her only 100 feet underwater, but now she’s preparing to explore 1,600 feet below the fjords’ surface with the help of a remote-operated submarine. The project will upload photos and videos to Google Earth…

EVOLUTION OF THE EDICULE When an imperial delegation identified the site believed to be the burial place of Christ, Emperor Constantine had an ornate shrine built around the tomb. Known as the Edicule, the small structure, like the vast church, has undergone many changes. JESUS’ JERUSALEM Today’s Old City bears little resemblance to the place where Jesus walked and taught. Razed by the Romans in A.D. 70, it was rebuilt in 135 as the new city of Aelia Capitolina. Periods of Christian and Muslim construction followed…

Water. Clean, fresh, drinkable water. For more than three years I have struggled to find it. I am crossing the world on foot. I am retracing the vanished trails of the first human beings who explored the planet in the Stone Age. At my journey’s starting line in Ethiopia, I walked from camel watering hole to muddy salt seep. I have plodded from oasis to oasis in the Hejaz desert of Arabia. In the winter peaks of the Caucasus, I have grown thirsty surrounded by tons of water—the vital liquid frozen to rock-hard ice. But never before have I encountered this: Someone has dug up and looted my resupply cache. A shallow pit that once held 15 precious gallons of water. My water. I cannot tear my eyes from the…

Normal, simple houses designed to be at ground level take on a whole different look up in the air. After Superstorm Sandy slammed into the New Jersey shore in 2012, people whose houses were still standing began having them raised—lifted on temporary pilings so that permanent foundations could be put in. Some did it to meet new construction codes or to reduce their flood insurance rates. But for others, I think, it was just a heartfelt bid to stay where they had sunk their roots, no matter the surroundings. For 25 years I’ve vacationed with my family at the Jersey Shore, where beach communities are strung along 127 miles of coastline. In 2013 I began taking photos to capture the groundswell of house raisings and the strangeness of what it…