Innholdsfortegnelse for JUNE 2016 i National Geographic Magazine

Spain Hundreds of brightly clad teammates form the base of a human tower during the biennial Concurs de Castells competition in Tarragona. The Catalonian cultural tradition dates to the 18th century. UNESCO officially recognized it in 2010. Canada In a home aquarium in Kenora, tiny bubbles stipple the stems and skins of cherries submerged in soda water. Effervescence like this occurs when carbon dioxide saturates a liquid and clusters on smooth surfaces before rising and escaping. Vietnam As two women sew fishnets in the village of Vinh Hy, waves of green fabric swell like a restive sea. Fish is a key source of protein in Vietnam. The country also has extensive shrimp and catfish farms, making it one of the world’s top seafood exporters. Order prints of select National Geographic…

When pieces of an ancient two-handled cup were found in Greece in 1990, archaeologists could identify the animals painted around its circumference but were unable to work out their meaning. The odd menagerie, including mammals, a reptile, and an arachnid, wasn’t a typical decoration, such as a hunting scene. Some two decades later, when University of Missouri Ph.D. student John Barnes saw the reconstructed cup (left) in a museum, inspiration struck. A stargazer since childhood, he thought the animals might be symbols of constellations. “A hundred people can look at an artifact and each bring something different to it,” he says. “In this case, I brought astronomy.” What he sees (above, left to right): The tail end of a bull is Taurus, a snake is Hydra, a hare is Lepus,…

Rooftop farms have sprung up so quickly in American cities over the past decade that even the USDA doesn’t know how many exist. Several can be found in New York City, providing local communities access to fresh produce. In some cases (like Brooklyn’s Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, pictured here), the farms also offer educational and volunteer opportunities for people itching to flex their green thumbs. The question of how to grow more food efficiently in metropolitan areas has gained urgency as urban populations rise: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that by 2025, 3.5 billion people will live in cities. But to increase yields in cities (as elsewhere), farmers must contend with climate change’s effects on growing conditions. One potential solution: more innovative designs. For ecologist Dickson Despommier that…

Elias Machipango Shuverireni picks up his long, palm-wood bow and his arrows tipped with sharpened bamboo. We’re going monkey hunting in Peru’s Manu National Park—a huge swath of protected rain forest and one of the most biodiverse parks in the world. The hunt is legal. Elias belongs to an indigenous group called the Matsigenka, of whom fewerthan a thousand live in the park, mostly along the banks of the Manu River and its tributaries. All the park’s indigenous inhabitants— so-called uncontacted tribes as well as the Matsigenka—have the right to harvest plants and animals for their own use, but they can’t sell park resources without special permission, and they can’t hunt with guns. Elias and his wife— people in Manu go by first names—grow yucca, cotton, and other crops in…

National Geographic explorers, photographers, and writers report from around the world ARTHUR HUANG Architect and engineer Arthur Huang’s dreams are made of garbage. His latest? “A piece of trash that’s going to fly,” he says. Huang’s dreams tend to become reality. This one is parked in his company’s top-floor office in Taiwan, and it’s called the EcoFighter—a two-seated aircraft with wings made of the material from recycled plastic bottles. As a young architecture student, Huang grew disillusioned that despite all the talk of “going green,” it seemed no one was producing 100 percent sustainable materials. He decided to invent them himself. It wasn’t easy. He had to build his own manufacturing machinery, because the recycled materials broke existing equipment. But now his firm, Miniwiz, which he founded in 2005, transforms…

The damage done by looters at many ancient sites is so great it’s visible from space. A debate is raging over how to save the masterpieces of the past. Should we buy them from looters? The lady in the striped wig with the staring eyes lies on a brightly lit table as the professor hovers a palm’s breadth from her face. “Still in remarkable condition … extremely well preserved,” the professor murmurs. As her gaze glides down the victim’s body, painted on the lid of her coffin, she points out a fresh cut across the upper thighs, and symbols of the god Amun, an ibis, and magic spells from the Book of the Dead. “And here is her name and title: Shesep-amun-tayesher, Mistress of the House. By reading it aloud,…

As night falls over San Antonio, a shantytown turned neighborhood with concrete-block houses, rugged streets, and few trees, children head excitedly to a warehouse stacked with tires. There the din of Ciudad Juarez recedes, replaced by grunts, slaps, and thuds—bam!—of supple young bodies slamming onto canvas. The makeshift wrestling ring, fashioned from iron and cable scavenged from junkyards, belongs to Ines Montenegro, who opened it two years ago after one of his sons suggested the neighborhood’s children needed somewhere to play. In Mexico lucha libre, a style of pro wrestling with masked fighters performing scripted acrobatic moves, is a national obsession. Montenegro’s funky arena was an instant hit. Tonight four boys ages 11 to 15—Omar, Alfonso, Eric, and Antonio—hurtle against the ropes, which slingshot them into the center of the…

A desalination project built around a unique area of undersea topography could produce potable water for drought-ravaged California. The public-private partnership, called the Monterey Bay Regional Water Project, would take seawater that originates in a two-mile-deep submarine trench off Monterey Bay and pipe it to a computer data center. There the water would be used to cool the center before undergoing desalination; the plant would produce enough water daily for 55,000 homes and save enough energy to power almost 65,000 homes annually. Calcium from the plant’s waste stream would be recycled to make limestone building materials. And project leaders expect that pumping water from colder depths will reduce the impact on aquatic life. Heather Cooley, director of the water program for the nonprofit Pacific Institute, cautions that there is “no…

A genteel disquisition on love and lust in the animal kingdom In a fairy tale by the brothers Grimm, a pied piper’s music lures rats to their doom. What leads the mouselike creature pictured here to its death? Its own libido. Life is short and sex-centered for the genus Antechinus. Six months after they’re born, the small, carnivorous marsupials reach adulthood. For five more months, they gain weight that they’ll burn off having sex, says mammalogist Andrew Baker of Australia’s Queensland University of Technology. Then the animals enter “a one- to three-week period where they spend all their time mating.” Males fight over females, promiscuous mating ensues, and a single coupling can last 14 hours. Small wonder, as Baker observes, that “both sexes become really stressed.” As a human does…

With Bill Bonner, National Geographic Archivist Fifty years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, survivors gather in Montana. The men—including 82-year-old Brig. Gen. Edward S. Godfrey (wearing glasses) and Cheyenne and other veterans—assembled in June 1926 to shake hands, honor their lost, and ritually bury the tomahawk of the aging Sioux chief White Bull. Edwin L. Wisherd’s photographs of the region would run a year later in National Geographic with dramatic captions about how the “braves swirled and charged, sweeping [Lt. Col. George A.] Custer and his outnumbered command with a rain of fire.” Godfrey described the aftermath in his field journal on June 28, 1876: “We found the bodies strewn from a few hundred yards of the ford up to a ridge. We buried as nearly as I…