Innholdsfortegnelse for Mar-15 i National Geographic Magazine

When archaeologist Jodi Magness began to excavate a fifth-century synagogue at the site of Huqoq in Israel in 2011, the last thing she expected to see was a mosaic. In similar buildings found in the area, floors are paved in flagstones. But there, in an agricultural village near the Sea of Galilee, Magness’s team has uncovered one stunning scene after another rendered in tiny colored stones. Two sections depict Samson, a biblical hero not commonly portrayed in synagogues of the time. Another scene includes an even more uncommon subject: a pair of elephants decked out for battle. “There’s no doubt that we have the very first nonbiblical story ever discovered decorating an ancient synagogue,” says Magness. “In the Hebrew Bible there are no stories involving elephants.” More surprises may lie…

Wild chimpanzees are not immune to the Ebola virus. With vaccination, they could be, researchers say. Infectious diseases, both naturally occurring and from human spillover, are a top threat to endangered chimps and gorillas. In past localized Ebola outbreaks, the virus killed more than 90 percent of gorillas and untold numbers of chimps. Recently, a vaccine was tested that mimics the Ebola virus’s outer covering but doesn’t carry live virus; injections gave captive chimps (such as those seen here) immunity without causing symptoms. Because administering shots to wild apes is impractical, researchers plan to develop an oral version to be delivered with bait. Future testing is uncertain, as the National Institutes of Health has changed how it funds research involving chimps. If primate biomedical facilities close, says quantitative ecologist Peter…

Hunted by generations of humans hungry to sell their fins, certain shark populations— including some hammerhead, mako, and tiger—have nearly collapsed over the past three decades. But according to a new report by the wildlife advocacy group WildAid, the tide may be turning for these top ocean predators as demand declines in China, the world’s leading shark fin consumer. Spurred by global outcry, many countries have banned “finning,” the practice of catching a shark, severing its fins, and tossing the animal back to die. Some nations have banned commercial shark fishing altogether. In southern China, ground zero for the fin trade, sales have dropped by 82 percent since 2012. Lead report author Samantha Whitcraft calls that a step in the right direction, away from cruelty and toward conservation.…

Assignment As the world changes, some parts stay the same. We asked to see images that transcend time. José Bezerra Mossoró, Brazil Bezerra played with his son in Tibau, a beach town on Brazil’s Atlantic coast. When a boat came on shore, he saw images of the past. “As a child, I also bathed in these waters,” he says. “It was as if I was seeing history being replayed.” EDITOR’S NOTE “ Everyday things start to feel timeless when they have an aura of mystery. A woman’s leg, a family on a beach—these scenes could be from any decade.” —Janna Dotschkal, associate photo editor Michael D. Young Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania On vacation in Madrid, Spain, Young was walking with his wife around midnight. “There was something you don’t normally see, a…

It’s 10 p.m., and I’m standing in the darkroom of the Western Flyer, a research vessel belonging to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The room is tiny, and several of us are crammed inside. The light is off, the air is warm and stuffy, and—as we’re at sea, 50 miles off the coast of California—the floor keeps rocking. I feel sick. But I don’t care. On a table, in a small dish, is a newly captured animal. It’s a sea creature known as a ctenophore (the c is silent). About two inches long, it looks like a gelatinous, transparent bell, with ridges down its sides. And when touched, it spews light. Watch. Steven Haddock, one of the world experts on life-forms that make light, is about to nudge the…

With Bill Bonner, National Geographic Archivist A barge “can carry many tons of cargo,” noted National Geographic’s May 1938 article on Singapore, a story for which this photo was likely taken. “Across the dark waters of the mother river, coveys of boats work their way into the very heart of the modern metropolis, just as they did before the age of steam.” This view of the Fullerton Building—now a luxury hotel—was taken from Singapore’s Clifford Pier. But a look through the loupe offers a glimpse of something else: a solitary seaman working his own way from the harbor into the city’s heart.…

Wild Things Since the early 1980s ichthyologists J. R. Shute and Pat Rakes have splashed through southeastern U.S. creeks and rivers hunting for tiny survivors. Because of chemical pollution, silt, and habitat loss, many species of small, native fish— some found in only a single creek—have nearly vanished from river systems. Today the nonprofit the men founded, Conservation Fisheries, Inc., works in ten states to preserve and propagate about 65 rare species, some shown here. From a few fish and eggs, CFI raises hatchlings of threatened species, then places them in the species’ streams of origin or other hospitable waters. For example: To stem the loss of spotfin chub (18, right) in the Tennessee River system, CFI spent years introducing hatchlings, which are now reproducing in the wild. CFI is…

At Huacas de Moche, a pre-Inca ceremonial center in the Peruvian desert, an intriguing grave from about 1,300 years ago has come to light. Near the skeleton of a man in his 30s lay a copper scepter, a symbol of power in the Moche culture. Also found: gilded feline claws of copper, probably from an animal costume used in ritual combat, with paws like the reconstructions at right. Archaeologists now plan to analyze the chemistry of this dignitary’s bones. Clues about his diet may identify the city where he wielded his power.…

Greeting a friend doesn’t have to mean meeting all her germs too. David Whitworth and Sara Mela from the U.K.’s Aberystwyth University studied the bacteria transferred in handshakes, high fives, and fist bumps—and found that handshakes transfer 10 to 20 times more bacteria than fist bumps. Although in health terms there’s “a definite benefit to not shaking hands,” Whitworth says, it could be hard to persuade the public to bump instead of clasp. History favors the handshake, a greeting seen in Greek art from the fifth century B.C.…

Vegans and vegetarians have a new reason to feel virtuous. A recent U.K.-based study suggests diets low in meat—particularly beef and lamb—take less of a toll on the environment. In fact, if a typical carnivore switched to eating like a typical vegan, his or her dietary carbon footprint would be halved, says epidemiologist Peter Scarborough. Even consuming 50 percent less meat, he says, can trim annual emissions “by an amount equivalent to a jetliner flight from London to New York.”…

There’s a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s comic masterpiece Dr. Strangelove in which Jack D. Ripper, an American general who’s gone rogue and ordered a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, unspools his paranoid worldview—and the explanation for why he drinks “only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure grain alcohol”—to Lionel Mandrake, a dizzy-with-anxiety group captain in the Royal Air Force. RIPPER: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water? MANDRAKE: Ah, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes, yes. RIPPER: Well, do you know what it is? MANDRAKE: No. No, I don’t know what it is. No. RIPPER: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face? THE MOVIE CAME OUT in 1964,…

ATHENS The city of Pericles and Plato, the cradle of philosophy and democracy, has struggled to find its place within the discipline of the European Union. THE UNRAVELING CITY In crisis-struck Athens the foundations of civilized life have been shaken. For some, foraging for edible garbage (top left) is a necessity, and every day the Greek Orthodox Church feeds 10,000 people. In many central Athens basements, immigrants such as these Bengalis (bottom left) experience Dickensian conditions, six or seven to a room. Economic and social strains have also brought violence in their wake. Fans of the hip-hop star MC Yinka, born in Greece of Nigerian parents, enjoy a concert of his (above) not long after his friend, the antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, was murdered by a member of the far…

Syrian Refugees Botol lives in Şanlıurfa, a dusty town in southern Turkey that is the reputed birthplace of Abraham. Urfa, as it is known, had been famed for drawing thousands of religious pilgrims to the cave where the prophet was supposedly born. Now the town is filled with 150,000 people who, like Botol, are seeking salvation of a different sort. Botol is from Syria. Her husband fought against the Bashar al Assad regime in that country’s ongoing civil war. More than a year ago he disappeared. Maybe the government arrested him, she says. Maybe it was the Islamic State (IS) militants. She believes he is dead. She fears for her children back home, especially her eldest son, 19. “They are cutting heads in the streets,” she said recently, through a…

America’s earthquake epicenter was once California. Now it’s Oklahoma. In 2014 there were nearly 300 times as many magnitude 3.0 and greater earthquakes as there were in 2008—and more quakes of that magnitude than in the prior 30 years combined. The cause? Scientists can’t say definitively, but new research funded by the U.S. Geological Survey notes that as quakes increased in number, so did the use of injection wells that bury wastewater from fracking and other oil and gas operations. Driving that water deep underground is intended to keep it from creeping into shallow aquifers. But the process can be likened to forcing water into a lidded cup, says hydrogeology researcher Matthew Weingarten: “You can only push so much water through a straw before pressure builds.” Increased subsurface water deposits…

Since the 1950s farmers have fed antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs) to livestock. Overusing these substances can create superbugs, pathogens that are resistant to multiple drugs and could be passed along to humans. Mindful of that, companies such as Perdue Farms have stopped using the drugs to make chickens gain weight faster. Since Denmark banned AGPs in the 1990s, the major pork exporter says it’s producing more pigs—and the animals get fewer diseases. Says Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist Tom Chiller, “Antibiotics are miracle drugs that should only be used to treat diseases.”…

A genteel disquisition on love and lust in the animal kingdom The mandarin drake “possesses an amazing and bizarre plumage which makes him one of the most beautiful and striking ducks— indeed one of the most beautiful birds—in the world.” So says Christopher Lever, an eminent British conservationist and one of the world’s leading authorities on mandarin ducks (Aix galericulata). His statement begs a footnote. A mandarin drake hoping to mate is definitely a looker—but after he’s achieved that goal? Not so much. In Europe drakes sport what Lever calls “full breeding finery” in fall: green-and-copper head, purple breast, rust-colored ruff, orange-gold wings. Through the winter the courting male will preen, shake, and flash those feathers to entice the duller-hued female to mate. By April or May the connubial deed…

OUT OF EDEN WALK . PART FOUR What happens when you become a war refugee? You walk. True, in order to save your life—for example, as militants assault your village—you might first speed away by whatever conveyance possible. In the family car. Or in your neighbor’s fruit truck. Aboard a stolen bus. Inside a cart pulled behind a tractor. But eventually: a border. And it is here that you must walk. Why? Because men in uniforms will demand to see your papers. What, no papers? (Did you leave them behind? Did you grab your child’s hand instead, in that last frantic moment of flight? Or perhaps you packed a bag with food, with money?) It doesn’t matter. Get out of your vehicle. Stand over there. Wait. Now, papers or no…

What does nothing look like? I traveled all the way to Greenland to find out. In the space of three years, I made six trips there from my home in Australia. I was drawn to the polished white emptiness of the place—a landscape devoid of features, perfectly flat, with ice extending to the horizon in every direction. Shooting in this remote location was cold, hard work. I lived for months at a time in a tent on the Greenland ice sheet, where windchills plunged below -60°F and ground blizzards blew for days. At the worst times I imagined my family, my children, and I thought, I can’t do this. It’s not worth the risk. But I stuck it out, and as the weather improved, so did my mood—and my pictures.…

nationalgeographic.com/3Q When Gilbert M. Grosvenor retired from the board of trustees of the National Geographic Society on June 21, 2014—60 years to the day after he started working here—he left an organization built by five generations of his family. (His daughter, obstetrician Alexandra Grosvenor Eller, continues the tradition: She was elected to the National Geographic board in 2009.) As the editor in chief of the magazine, president of the Society, and then chairman of the board, Grosvenor has helped broaden National Geographic’s reach through children’s publications, local-language editions of the magazines and books, television, and geography education. You studied premed at Yale. What made you change course and come to work at the National Geographic Society? Between my junior and senior years I went to the Netherlands on a summer…