Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2013 i National Geographic Magazine

to an Aboriginal Australian, homeland is not just where you are born. it is where you will die and be buried. it is the center of gravity, heart and soul, beginning and end. to be in control of homeland is to be in control of one’s life. But european settlement took control away. Aboriginal history is a litany of dispossession. still, the relationship with the land endured. Aboriginals are spiritual survivors. so how does an outsider enter a world apart? For Amy toensing, who photographed “First Australians,” the answer often lay in sitting and waiting. she learned to value the moments between pictures. planning was useless in a world where clocks are irrelevant. What did matter was relationships —getting to know someone who had a cousin who had a friend…

China Like figures in a shadow theater, mannequin forms—illuminated by bare incandescent bulbs and veiled by a red tarpaulin—captivate shoppers in Guilin. The city’s popular night market sells clothing, trinkets, food, and more. Scotland Champion strong man Gregor Edmunds lets fly a 16-pound shafted hammer at the Cowal Highland Gathering. The annual three-day event in Dunoon—featuring traditional games, music, and dancing—is open to international competitors. Poland As shadows lengthen near sunset, spring fields near Nowe erupt in a color riot. The photographer paraglided over Pomerania to get this abstract expressionist shot: a brushstroke of red poppy weeds flowering amid green grain sprouts. Order prints of National Geographic photos online at PrintsNGS.com.…

Usually a honeybee’s legs are coated in powdery yellow pollen. Last fall in Ribeauvillé, France, bees returned to the hive in blue, green, and red syrup—a result of foraging at a factory that processed waste from making M&M’s. The French beekeepers couldn’t sell the candy-coating-colored honeycombs, taking a bite out of the region’s 1,100 tons of honey a year. By most countries’ laws, honey can have only one ingredient: nectar cured by bees. Color’s a giveaway of adulteration, says the American Beekeeping Federation’s Tim Tucker. True honey ranges from white to brown. Bees will always choose nectar over cane sugar because it’s easier to break down and turn into food. In drought situations or when blooms are scarce, though, all bets are off. “They’re looking every day. If the nectar…

GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES | In Ocean Park Hong Kong’s goldfish house, waters flash with vivid colors and fanciful fins, bulbous eyes and outlandish bodies. These are not the fish you win at a fair and bring home in a plastic bag. Yet they belong to the same species. First raised by Chinese Buddhists in the Tang dynasty, goldfish are all descended from the gibel carp (top). They’ve long been “symbols of peace, friendship, and good fortune,” says Charlie Young, an Ocean Park curator. By the 10th century they were prized as pets. By the 16th they were being bred for variety—color, shape, eyes, tails. The hobby soon swam to Japan, then on to Europe. It reached the United States as early as 1850. Today hundreds of organized breeding clubs dot the…

The man who led a landmark attempt to navigate the entire length of the Grand Canyon did not exactly look the part of a dashing gilded-age adventurer. John Wesley Powell stood only five feet six, had a shock of bristle-brush hair and an unruly tobacco-stained beard that splayed onto his chest. The right sleeve of his jacket hung empty, the result of a minié ball at the Battle of Shiloh. Yet after the war he went on to survey large swaths of the Rocky Mountains, live among hostile bands of Indians, raft the Green and Colorado Rivers, and probe the unmapped labyrinths of one of the world’s largest canyon systems. A stranger might reasonably have wondered what had steered this slight, one-armed university professor to embark on some of the…

A finger across the throat and a glance seaward. That’s the signal. The two men grip their spears, hand-carved from stringybark trees, and walk barefoot over the red soil to the water’s edge. Then into the aluminum dinghy, engine revved, and across a warm shallow bay of the Arafura Sea, at the wild edge of Australia’s Northern Territory. Terrence Gaypalwani stands at the bow, feet spread for balance, staring intently at the water and indicating with the tip of his spear which direction to travel. He’s 29 years old, mid-career as a hunter. Peter Yiliyarr, over 40, a senior citizen, works the motor. The shoreline’s a lattice of mangrove roots; the sun’s a heat lamp. No sign of another human. Gaypalwani stares, points. Thirty minutes. The men haven’t spoken, though…

The Lofoten Islands in the far north of Norway have always been a world apart, a peninsula-like chain of wild, craggy shards jutting into the Norwegian Sea above the Arctic Circle. In Norse folklore Lofoten’s long spine of mountains were said to be the haunts of trolls and Valkyries—maidens who conducted slain warriors to Valhalla—and its fjords provided dramatic backdrops to some of the grandest of the Viking sagas. On this bright summer morning, a small wooden boat putters across the glassy expanse of the Vestfjorden, its wake rippling the mirrorperfect reflections of the surrounding mountains. The boat’s skipper, 69-year-old Jan Bjørn Kristiansen, has been sailing these waters for more than 50 years, the past 40 of them in the same weather-beaten vessel, which by no coincidence is also called…

Putting Academy Award winner James Cameron underwater on our cover this month called for a little Hollywood magic. “We have to show science is exciting,” he says. The National Geographic explorer-in-residence really was submerged—but inside a giant water tank at a soundstage he uses in Manhattan Beach, California (two 40-foot models of the Titanic, both seaworthy and wrecked versions, sat nearby). Sand, plants, and bubbles were added to the image to create the illusion of Cameron on the seafloor, a place well-known to the director of Titanic and The Abyss. Photographer Marco Grob (above, with camera) had just two hours to make the portrait before his subject had to leave to catch a flight for Australia. So Cameron, whose solo dive into the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the…

Muammar Qaddafi was a monster beyond description, and the world can rejoice at his passing. What he did to Libya is beyond comprehension. I had the opportunity to work in Libya when Qaddafi was in power, and it was without question a reign of terror. Hopefully, as your article suggests, the people of Libya can look forward to rebuilding their country now that this tyrant is dead. They have such a rich history, and your story about their vast wealth and resources doesn’t even scratch the surface. The rest of the world and I wish the Libyan people Godspeed for their future. JOHN M. MASSEY Dodge, Texas You’ve opened the world’s eyes to the rich culture and archaeological gems that have been hidden for the past 40 years. MARY ZIVANOV…

EDITORS’ CHOICE Lindsay Comer Stratford, Connecticut Comer noticed this group of dancing Russians in 2011 while living in St. Petersburg. One woman stood out from the crowd, joyfully moving to the Soviet-era music being played by a nearby brass band. “She had pink socks and gold teeth and just looked so vibrant.” READERS’ CHOICE Chandrabhal Singh Pune, India During a trip last year to photograph flamingos that spend the winter near India’s Ujjani Dam, Singh watched as this brown-headed gull scanned the glassy water. He pressed the shutter, luckily, at the very moment the bird dipped to catch a fish. Antoine van der Maesen Sellingen, Netherlands One day last summer van der Maesen brought his camera on an early morning walk with his wife and two dogs. As they approached…

Boardwalks are no match for extreme weather. Last year’s superstorm Sandy ravaged at least 20 of them on the coasts of New York and New Jersey, including Seaside Heights’s Casino Pier (above). The Federal Emer -gency Management Agency expects to spend more than $50 million to rebuild them with more-durable materials like concrete, steel, and hardwood. Local officials say boardwalks and piers are economically vital. Belmar, New Jersey, sees at least three million dollars each year in summer revenue, a boon for the population of 5,800. Yet is it wise to rebuild? “They are just going to be knocked down again,” says coastal geologist Orrin Pilkey. He also sees a downside of morepermanent construction: If sea levels rise as models suggest, deep-rooted development will make it harder to retreat inland.…

The Mississippi River has boundary issues. The river’s meander belt—the elevated parts of a floodplain—can be 50 miles wide in places. If left to its own devices, without the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to coax it, the river would keep moving back and forth. Even with controls, it sometimes shifts far enough east or west that it breaks from the very state borders it conceived. When that happens, landowners can find themselves separated from the rest of their home state. Why don’t engineers reunite them? On its relentless drive to the sea, the might of the lower Mississippi ranges from 93,000 cubic feet per second during low water to 2.3 million during a flood— too massive a flow to yield to human will. “The difficulty of the Mississippi is…

SYLVIA EARLE has spent nearly a year of her life diving beneath the ocean. In the 1960s the oceanographer had to fight to join expeditions. Women weren’t welcome. Today the legendary 77-year-old explorer fights for marine sanctuaries. Have you ever gotten in over your head, so to speak? I have come up at the end of a dive, and the boat was not where I left it. I had to take care of a buddy who did panic. But I was confident the boat would come back. Are you ever afraid? I do my utmost to satisfy myself that everything is checked. I trust the engineers who built the machine, and I know there are backups. If there’s a problem, there are protocols to follow. Then I park those worries…

An hour above high camp on the Southeast Ridge of Everest, Panuru Sherpa and I passed the first body. The dead climber was on his side, as if napping in the snow, his head half covered by the hood of his parka, goose down blowing from holes torn in his insulated pants. Ten minutes later we stepped around another body, her torso shrouded in a Cana dian flag, an abandoned oxygen bottle holding down the flapping fabric. Trudging nose to butt up the ropes that had been fixed to the steep slope, Panuru and I were wedged between strangers above us and below us. The day before, at Camp III, our team had been part of a small group. But when we woke up this morning, we were stunned to…

Whales barely survived the 20th century. In the early 1900s, with populations dropping in the Northern Hemisphere, whalers went south toward Antarctica, firing explosive harpoons from factory ships that stayed at sea for months. Hoping to save the industry by setting quotas, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) formed in 1946. Protests finally led to a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. But the hunt goes on. Today’s whale catch 2011 totals by country Cultures that eat whale meat account for all of today’s catch. Traditional Arctic hunters in Greenland, Russia, the U.S., and Canada take a small number. Caribbean islanders with a whaling history are also given a quota. By species Minke whales are the top catch because they’re still globally abundant. Their relatively small size once made them less…

Flags, birds, a boat, and an arch made from bales of codfish greeted Crown Prince Gustav during his 1887 visit to the Norwegian port of Hammerfest, one of the northernmost towns in the world. “The entire town is built of timber,” claim notes that came with this photo. All that wood would prove to be a problem. In 1890 the town was destroyed by fire. Then the rebuilt Hammerfest was burned down again in 1945—this time on Hitler’s orders—as occupying Nazi forces fled a Soviet advance. Thousands were left homeless. Many rode out the winter in local caves. Yet Hammerfest rose from the ashes once more. Today some 10,000 people call it home, and maritime pursuits are still the overarching industry. Flashback Archive Find all the photos at ngm.com.…

Weather is a paleontologist’s biggest enemy in the Arctic. Even in summer it’s only about 40°F, and we have to camp up in the mountains to avoid polar bears. The winds are very strong at those high elevations. My team digs for giant sea-reptile fossils in holes as big as a bus. We dig by hand; some years we move as much as 80 tons of sediment. Team members are often so exhausted they nap in the dig hole. In the good summers we can dig five or six feet before we hit permafrost, in bad years just one or two. During the midnight sun there is no difference between night and day, so we can work whenever we feel like it. We dig a lot in what would be…

THE PHOTOGRAPHER More of Aaron Ansarov’s work can be seen at ansarov.com and legionphoto.com. A few years ago I was medically retired from the U.S. Navy, where I’d been a combat photographer. As therapy, I wandered my Virginia backyard and bonded with my young son, teaching him about the animals we encountered. He suggested we escort a few inside and photograph them in detail. When we did, their colors and textures looked larger than life. Since then we’ve moved, first to Georgia, then to Florida. We’ve also spent time in Poland, where my wife was born. But everywhere we’ve gone, the same thing has happened: New “neighbors”—like a blue jay (above), which chased a dragonfly right into our house, or a curled-up pill bug (left), which we found beneath a…

This piece of parchment—from the Vatican Secret Archives— helped sow the seeds of the rift between the Church of Rome and the English monarch Henry VIII. Signed by 83 English nobles and clergy members in 1530, the document urged Pope Clement VII to annul the marriage between Henry VIII and Cath er ine of Aragon, who had failed to produce a male heir. When the pope refused, the king took matters into his own hands. He divorced Catherine and married Anne Boleyn. Clement’s subsequent efforts to excommunicate Henry paved the way for the establishment of the Anglican Church. “The fascination of this document lies in the stories of each of the signers ,” says Vatican archivist Marco Maiorino, who studied the petition for three years. “Some supported the king, then…

Move over, Hubble. When the James Webb Space Telescope—a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency—launches, it will sail past the older telescope to a location a million miles from Earth. There a huge sun shield will block heat from the sun and Earth, cooling the craft to below -370°F so its infrared equipment will work. Notes ESA space science research head Mark McCaughrean: “What we really hope to see are the very first stars ever born in the universe.” LAUNCH An Ariane 5 rocket carrying the telescope should lift off in 2018.…

Dive even deeper into the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE expedition in our digital editions. 05:15, MARCH 26, 2012 11° 22' N, 142° 35' E (WSW OF GUAM, WESTERN PACIFIC) Predawn in a pitch-black sea. My sub DEEPSEA CHALLENGER heaves and lurches as huge Pacific swells roll above me. We’ve all been up since midnight, starting our predive checks after a couple of restless hours of sleep, and the whole team is running on adrenaline. These are the roughest conditions I’ve dived in so far on the expedition. Through my external cameras I can see the two divers just outside my tiny cockpit getting whipped around like tetherballs as they struggle to rig the sub for descent. The pilot’s chamber is a 43-inch-diameter steel ball, and I’m packed into it like a walnut…

In the summer monsoon season of late November to mid-March, the rain clouds ride the trade winds of the Indian Ocean west into Mozambique. Crossing the coast, they refresh the miombo woodlands of the Cheringoma Plateau, then the savanna and floodplain grasslands of the Great Rift Valley. Finally they run aground on the slopes of Mount Gorongosa, where they release great torrents of rain, like a benediction. The Gorongosa massif, which reaches a height of 6,112 feet, captures more than six feet of rainfall a year. That is enough to support a lush rain forest on the summit—and to the east, in the Rift Valley, a park that was once one of the richest wildlife refuges in the world. Before Mozambique’s civil war ravaged it, Gorongosa National Park was roamed…

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON TV Life Below Zero These are not your standard living conditions. When it’s winter in remote parts of Alaska, survival is the name of the game. For some, that means total self-sufficiency despite below-freezing temperatures and pure isolation. This month on the National Geographic Chan nel, see what it takes—building sleds, hunting caribou, brewing beer at home—to make it through this harsh land’s coldest days. APP NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON THE IPHONE Reimagined for a new platform, National Geographic magazine is now available on the iPhone. The mobile edition features easy navigation, daily updates, and audio recordings of stories. Look for it in the App Store. TRIP GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS Home to giant tortoises, iguanas, and countless birds, the Galápagos are a haven for nature lovers and adventurers. Go…