Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i National Geographic Magazine

RECENTLY I READ the 2018 book The Wizard and the Prophet, by Charles C. Mann. Through the lens of the lives of 20th-century scientists Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, it explores two contrasting visions of how humanity can meet the challenges we face as our population grows and our impact on the planet increases. On the one hand is Vogt’s embrace of limits: We should restrict ourselves to what Earth can handle. On the other is Borlaug’s belief in innovation’s promise: We can invent solutions. Many, including me, don’t see these two notions as binary but rather believe a combination is our way forward. Still, there’s no consensus on the best approach. This month National Geographic explores the ramifications of a milestone reached late last year, when the United Nations…

During three millennia in Egypt, tens of millions of people and animals are thought to have been mummified. Far rarer are mummy portraits—detailed paintings of the living, buried with their mummies when they died. Several mummy portraits discovered since 2019 at the burial site of the ancient Egyptian city of Philadelphia were the first to be found there in more than a century. Egyptians went to great expense—often a year’s wages—to arrange funeral ceremonies and goods, including portraits, says Lorelei Corcoran, director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology at the University of Memphis, in Tennessee. Painted with natural pigments mixed with beeswax or animal glue, the portraits are prized for their lifelike qualities, though some subjects may have been embellished—for example, wearing jewelry they didn’t own. Roughly 1,300…

FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA, EVE CONANT, NGM STAFF; LAWSON PARKER SOURCES: STEVEN AUSTAD, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM; JOÃO PEDRO DE MAGALHÃES, UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM…

JASON TREAT, NGM STAFF SOURCES: “UN WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS 2022”; GAPMINDER WE’VE REACHED A NEW MILESTONE in the human journey. Last November, according to the United Nations, the number of people on Earth hit eight billion. Our population has doubled in less than 50 years, just since 1974, the year the UN brought the world’s countries together for the first intergovernmental conference to address population growth. At the time, only three metro areas were home to 10 million people or more—New York, Tokyo, and Mexico City. Today there are more than 30. The reasons for this explosion are well known: Medicine, sanitation, and crop yields continue to improve dramatically. As a result, child mortality is plummeting and life expectancy is rising. Demographers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis,…

When women have an average of 2.1 children each, often called the replacement rate, populations remain stable. More than two-thirds of countries now have fertility rates below this benchmark. Total fertility rate by country Live births per woman The shape of change Population pyramids help illustrate the share of a country’s people—the oldest and youngest—that depends economically on those of working age. As a country’s mortality and fertility rates decline, pyramids can shift from a broad base (many young people, as in Nigeria) to more uniformly vertical (as in the U.S.). When there are more older people, the shape appears top-heavy. CHINA Fertility rate in 2023: 1.2 A decades-long decline in its fertility rate has left China with a slightly top-heavy pyramid, which will continue to widen by 2050. ITALY…

ANCHOR THE MARMOT WAS SURPRISINGLY CALM, CONSIDERING A STRANGER HAD JUST SWABBED HIS CHEEK. IT WAS A COOL, CRISP EVENING IN WEST-CENTRAL COLORADO, AND THE 11-MONTH-OLD MALE YELLOW-BELLIED MARMOT HAD WANDERED INTO A METAL CAGE TRAP. Now a couple of scientists sampled his DNA to measure how fast this fur ball was growing. Since 1962, scientists in this high mountain meadow have been mapping marmots’ social lives. But lately researchers have also turned their attention to tracking how a warming planet is shifting nature’s schedule and, perhaps, affecting marmot health. Each spring marmots rise from their winter slumber. They They mate, give birth, and spend summers chowing down before they hibernate again. “It’s get fat or die,” Conner Philson, a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA, told me as he held Anchor…

WHO A National Geographic Explorer who focuses on conservation photography WHERE Cousins Rock, Galápagos Islands, Ecuador WHAT Sony Alpha 1 with a 28-60mm lens in waterproof housing The waters around the Galápagos Islands, a well-known biodiversity hot spot, may soon grow richer. In 2021 Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica agreed to join their marine reserves to create a more than 200,000-square-mile protected zone along migratory routes for whales, sharks, and sea turtles. Mittermeier spent three months in the eastern Pacific photographing diverse species, including these cardinalfish darting past a Galápagos sea lion. “Diving here makes me believe in a better future,” she says. National Geographic is the most popular brand on Instagram, with more than 334 million followers. This page showcases images from our accounts: @natgeo, @natgeotravel, @natgeointhefield, @natgeoadventure,…

LOOKING AT THE EARTH FROM EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE…

The black heron (Egretta ardesiaca), which is found in sub-Saharan Africa, has a clever way to catch prey. When hunting for small fish in shallow water, this jet-black bird deploys its wings like a feathered umbrella, creating a patch of shade that attracts fish looking for cover. The cloak of darkness also seems to make the heron harder for fish to see and the fish easier for the heron to spot. Scan this code with your smartphone to watch the black heron’s shady way of hunting.…

WEARING THE FACE of Patih Manis (below), a character in Bali’s dance dramas, means more than simply putting on a tapel, or mask. “When you dance with a tapel and perform its character, you undergo a transformation,” says I Made Bandem, a scholar and teacher of Balinese arts—and a dancer for seven decades. “You must ‘marry’ that mask and make ritual offerings to create unity between yourself and the tapel. Many dancers will sleep with the mask beside them, so that they can learn its true character.” Hand-carved tapel are integral to Topeng Pajegan and Topeng Panca, dance dramas often held at temple festivals and family rituals across this Indonesian island. The masks, along with elaborate costumes, hypnotic music, and staccato movements—sometimes only of the fingers—have enchanted Balinese audiences since…

THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE ON EARTH THAN EVER, BUT THAT DISGUISES A NEW REALITY. THIS CENTURY, WE COULD HIT A PEAK AND BEGIN TO DECLINE. SOME COUNTRIES WILL CONTINUE TO GROW RAPIDLY, WHILE OTHERS WILL SEE THEIR NUMBERS DROP. P. 34 INTRODUCTION As its population grows, the world will face the challenges of feeding millions more and coping with increased migration. P. 46 IN NIGERIA Much of the population growth in the coming years will be in Africa, where fertility rates are higher than in most other places. P. 68 IN CHINA The one-child policy and developing economy have conspired to depress the fertility rate, causing the population to decline. CHINA Beginning the decline Fears of overpopulation led to the one-child policy in 1980; by 2009 the share of the…

SOMEWHERE LAST FALL, EARTH WELCOMED ITS EIGHT BILLIONTH HUMAN, MARKING THE LARGEST NUMBER OF OUR SPECIES TO LIVE ON THE PLANET AT ONCE. No one knows exactly the time or place this landmark was reached or who number 8,000,000,000 is. In November the United Nations bestowed the honor on an infant born in Manila, but baby eight billion could have been any one of the roughly 12 million infants born that month around the world. She could’ve arrived in a hospital in Tokyo, on a farm in Wyoming, or in a bomb shelter in Kyiv. He could’ve been delivered in a refugee camp in Rwanda, a village in the Amazon, or an isolated town in the Arctic. Number eight billion could even have been Eziaku Kendra Okonkwo, a sixpound girl…

IT WAS WHILE WATCHING the movie The Savages in 2009 that photographer Kendrick Brinson caught her first glimpse of Sun City, Arizona, a sprawling retirement community northwest of Phoenix. The film scene—with bright desert light, cacti, golf carts, and tidy rows of ranch-style homes—“had this really strange, very visually interesting look to it,” she says. Since then, Brinson, 40, has gone every year to photograph Sun City’s residents, some of whom have become her close friends. Observing the enthusiasm people have for the many activities there, the self-described perfectionist says she learned something about herself: “I realized that I don’t have to be great, or even good, at something. I can just like the way it feels.” She’s taken up hobbies such as watercolor painting. Opened in 1960, Sun City…

CHINA: He saw COVID policy appeal to ‘the greater good’ as family size limits once did. Boarding a flight to China from Europe, where I live, I usually feel excited. But heading out on an assignment last year, passing a phalanx of airport crews in PPE gear, I felt some dread. The jet cabin had become an air lock, separating a then largely COVID-free China from the rest of the world it deemed contagious. In 2022, as I set out to spend five weeks shooting this issue’s “Eight Billion” story, China’s strict “COVID zero” rules allowed the government to lock down cities and isolate anyone infected. As a result, my flight to Beijing was diverted to Xian, a far less strategic city 750 miles away, where I started my 10-day…

Populations will grow older By 2050 the average person will live to be almost 78. Increased longevity adds to populations. But as people live longer, they spend more years dependent on the labor force, a drag on economic growth. Fertility rates will fall further The global fertility rate was five births per woman in 1950; by 2021 it had dropped to 2.3. The rate is projected to decline to 2.1 births by the middle of the century. Countries will grow more slowly The worldwide population growth rate fell below one percent per year in 2020, the first time since 1950. If this decline continues, the Earth’s population will peak before 2100. JASON TREAT AND EVE CONANT, NGM STAFF; BRANDON SHYPKOWSKI SOURCES: “UN WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS, 2022”; SAMUEL CLARK, OHIO STATE…

IT’S EARLY AUTUMN IN CENTRAL CHINA, AND THE STREETS OF DING QINGZI’S VILLAGE ARE TURNING INTO GOLD. Thousands of husked corncobs lie in orderly rectangles in front of homes, their kernels drying in the sun. The harvest is one of the heartbeats of rural life in Anhui Province, a constant that Ding, 35, has known since childhood. Yet few other rhythms remain. Except for the corn, the streets are almost empty. Houses have been abandoned. The sounds of children have faded. And for years, Ding struggled to find a wife. Few young women still live in the village. Fewer still would marry a welder unable to buy a house or pay a bride-price. “My family is not rich,” Ding says. Standing in her yard shucking corn, Ding’s aunt bemoans the…

A TODDLER’S CURIOSITY can be infectious. Walking to a park in their London neighborhood a few years ago, Eduard Florin Niga and his young daughter met an ant on the pavement. The girl stopped to examine it. “Where are the ant’s eyes, Dad?” she asked. Her father, a teacher—and a former police officer in his native Romania, where he documented crime scenes—knew photography would provide the answer. Ants are one of Earth’s most abundant and successful animals. Fossils indicate they arose between 168 million and 140 million years ago. Today more than 15,000 species may exist. Some 12,000 of them have been described, and dozens have portraits in Niga’s debut book, Ants: Workers of the World. Niga’s mode of macrophotography is painstaking, whether he’s magnifying a thing to 10 times…