Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i National Geographic Magazine

In archaeology, it’s not just what you find that is fascinating—it’s where you find it. And sometimes, it’s what is missing that is most revealing. So it was with DDN_B_40_ S1, an ancient statue unearthed from within a poorly built wall in Dadan, the ancient capital of AlUla in northwest Saudi Arabia. It immediately posed questions for the team from the Dadan Archaeological Project: Why had the statue been toppled onto its side and carelessly incorporated into the structure—and why were its head, hands, and feet missing? Piecing together the evidence, the story of DDN_B_40_S1 casts a new light on the period of political and religious turmoil that likely occurred during the first century BCE—a time when old gods and kings were violently overthrown, eradicated, and replaced. The story of…

SHAMPOOS, SODAS, Swiss Army knives: Many of us have discarded these items at the airport security checkpoint. But a four-pound male piglet? Airport employee He Ling came across just that in January 2017 in Chengdu, China—and made a decision few would dare. She took the animal home to live with her and her husband, Feng Li, in their 30th-floor apartment. They named him Piggy. For Feng, a retired government photographer, the animal’s domestic life has been a favorite subject ever since. He considers Piggy—today weighing more than 200 pounds—a member of the family, just like the couple’s other pets, a parrot and four cats. The pig is usually food for people, Feng says, but “at least in my family, I hope it can live happily.”…

In a particularly funny moment, a recent study showed that one of the most popular AI chatbots many people rely on has been sharing inaccurate coding and computer programming advice. That’s a big issue facing AI right now—these evolving algorithms can hallucinate, a term for what happens when a learning model produces a statement that sounds plausible but has been completely made up. This is because generative AI applications such as large language models work, functionally, as a prediction program. When you ask a question, the AI sifts through its knowledge base for relevant information. Then, using that information, it predicts a set of words that it perceives as the desired response to your question. That prediction is followed by another prediction—another set of words—that it has been trained to…

AI has a water problem—really, an energy problem. A significant amount of heat is generated by the energy required to power the AI tools that people are increasingly using in their daily personal and professional lives. This heat is released into data centers, which provide those AI systems the computational support and storage space they need to function. And, as Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC River - side, is quick to note, cooling down the data centers requires an enormous amount of water, similar to the amount used by tens of thousands of city dwellers. “When you use water for a shower, for example, it can be reused,” says Ren, whose research is focused on how to make AI more socially and environmentally…

FLORIN HORIA BAROS WAITS OUTSIDE HIS TWO-STORY, wood-shingle farmhouse in Sătic, a village in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, his face like thunder. Around midnight the farmer was startled by a commotion from the sheds holding his pigs. “The bear came along the street, over the fence, broke the door off the shed, and attacked the pigs. I chased him off with my dogs,” he says. Hours later, the brown bear circled back, targeting another shed. Now, two pigs lie dead in the yard. A third, though still alive, staggers stupefied around the pen, its back stripped by the bear’s teeth and claws. A fourth is missing. Baros, also a veterinarian, is considering putting the wounded pig out of its misery but has decided to wait for a local commission to arrive.…

The unoffcial motto of the Spanish capital is customarily spoken with pride and pleasure by abiding Madrileños: “De Madrid Al Cielo,” or “From Madrid To Heaven.” This curious expression has been ringing in the streets for centuries, dating back to the final line of a verse from Luis Quiñones de Benavente, a former clergyman turned popular lyricist during the Spanish Golden Age. The phrase is now broadly interpreted as meaning this metropolis offers something close to earthly paradise, where people can follow their dreams and the layout of the city itself allowing them to live much of their lives outside, beneath that celestial blue sky. Scholarship on the subject suggests “De Madrid Al Cielo” became truly popular in the reign of Charles III. The monarch is often credited as “the…

Fred Ritchin has been thinking about the future of the photograph for nearly half a century. He started to notice changes to the medium in 1982, working as picture editor at the New York Times Magazine; in 1984 he wrote an article for the magazine, “Photography’s New Bag of Tricks,” about the consequences of digital editing technology in contemporary photojournalism. In the decades since, he’s witnessed the shift from the early days of digital photo editing to AI imagery, in which amateur and professional users alike can use digital services to instantly generate realistic visuals. As AI images become increasingly common, Ritchin feels people need to find new ways to confirm that they can believe what they see. Of course, AI imagery hasn’t emerged out of thin air. Ritchin traces…

BENEATH CALIFORNIA lies a labyrinth of faults—places where large chunks of rock slide past, over, under, or into one another. They move at the rate a fingernail grows until, eventually, they violently jolt and the ground shudders. Inevitably, destructive earthquakes will rock the state. Nothing can be done to prevent them from striking. But understanding where they are likely to happen, and what sort of power they can unleash, means communities can prepare. In other words, the best way to mitigate these future disasters is to draw maps of the underworld, charting every fault and monitoring its behavior. To create those maps, researchers deploy seismometers on the surface—little machines that sense and chronicle all sorts of vibrations, including earthquakes. Seismic waves are a bit like music. Identify their notes and…

ON A BRIGHT SPRING DAY, a lone 28-foot cactus towered above the dusty scrub within Saguaro National Park in Arizona. Despite the cloudless sky and ovenlike heat, the spiky giant looked strong and healthy. Rain had recently fallen in the park, and the plant’s pleated sidewalls were extended, retaining hundreds of gallons of water inside. Such internal reservoirs help cacti thrive where other plants would instantly wilt. But the saguaro species (Carnegiea gigantea), native to the Sonoran Desert in the United States and Mexico, hides another evolutionary trick. To capture it in action, a park biologist named Don Swann had arrived with an extra-long, custom-made telescoping pole and camera mount system that he extended toward the giant’s crown. Then he snapped several digital photos, the latest in a set of…

Rewilding projects Natural grazing Herbivores maintain grasslands and forests, lowering fire risk and promo ting carbon storage. Water systems Restored peatlands, rivers, and wetlands, as well as flood mitigation and dam removal, bolster water sources. Reintroduction Bringing back critical species and their ecological functions helps habitats sustain themselves. Promoting coexistence Predators restore balance and maintain biodiversity, strengthening community ties with nature. Connecting the continent A network of pathways between habitats would facilitate movement of animals across the landscape and help prevent extinction of flora and fauna. Ecological integrity Intense human pressures, predominantly urban development and heavy agriculture, degrade and fragment habitats. More ecologically intact areas tend to be remote and mountainous.…

CULTURE “I am very interested in generating FANTASTIC images that I can belong to, establishing my own rituals and then photographing them.”RIVER CLAURE, Photographer and National Geographic Explorer As part of a National Geographic Society–supported project focused on former mining communities in Bolivia, Claure—whose grandfathers were miners—worked with local artisans to make this sculptural vision. A woman from the town of Uncía represents both the Virgin Mary, an allusion to Catholicism of the Spanish conquest, and Pachamama, Mother Earth in the Aymara culture. NATURE “I saw formations in the ground creating the shape of a tree. Life in the plants and rivers contrasts with the dead volcanic landscape made of ash, cinder, and black sand.”ISABELLA TABACCHI, Photographer Tabacchi stitched together three drone-captured aerial images of a region in the Icelandic…

Not that long ago, the world’s great rock climbers clawed their way up spectacular cliffs in relative obscurity. But two of the sport’s best have changed all that. Over the past decade, Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold have pulled off a string of pioneering feats, starred in highly successful documentaries, and pushed climbing into the mainstream, all of which has transformed both men into global celebrities. Caldwell’s breakout came in 2015, when he and a partner completed what was then considered the world’s most difficult climb, a 19-day ascent of Yosemite’s Dawn Wall. Two years later, Honnold put the term “free solo” into general usage when he summited the park’s iconic El Capi tan monolith without a rope, which was captured in an Academy Award–winning film. Though they remain passionately…

AN EARLY NEURAL NETWORK Artificial neural networks are the cutting edge of AI, but they are based on a decades-old idea. The SNARC (stochastic neural analog reinforcement calculator) was one of the earliest prototypes, created by computer scientist Marvin Minsky in 1951. This circuit—made up of vacuum tubes, resistors, and capacitors—simulated a neuron, which worked in a grand-piano-size network of 39 others. Each node made calculations that influenced the decision-making of the whole system. With this computational power, SNARC could solve a computerized maze. The latest neural networks have hundreds of billions of connections and can crack highly complex problems. THE MODERN SUPERCOMPUTER Recently installed at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the El Capitan computer can perform two quintillion—that’s a two followed by 18 zeros—calculations every second. For perspective, there…

When AI hoovers up all the data that humans have created, it becomes a mirror reflecting the stereotypes, racism, and inequities that continue to shape the world, says Nyalleng Moorosi, a senior researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute. These biases, she explains, are often due to a lack of diversity among the people hired to build AI systems and tools, who rely too much on datasets that prioritize Western ideas of what is and is not valuable information. The global majority today know what it’s like to have foreign systems foisted upon them, part of the fallout of colonization. Moorosi believes AI has the potential to replicate those systems—prioritizing perspectives and agendas of those in power while marginalizing Indigenous knowledge and cultural values. The teams hired by tech companies…

MODERN BRAS LIFT, separate, and contribute to a global lingerie market valued at more than $90 billion in annual sales. While today’s versions may contain high-tech fabrics and precisely engineered support, they stand on (hang from?) the shoulders of surprisingly ancient forebears. PRE-BRASSIERE ERAS It’s unclear when the first of the bra’s many precursors was invented, but historians have found references to breast-supporting cords or belts likely worn over garments in ancient Greek works such as Homer’s Iliad, which depicts the goddess Aphrodite removing a “curiously embroidered girdle” (according to an 1898 translation by Samuel Butler) from her bosom. And in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, a woman withholding sex from her husband teases him by saying she’s taking off her strophion, a twisted cord or belt worn outside clothing and below or…

TRIPS THE GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS are famed for their wildlife—including the world’s largest tortoises (below)—which inspired naturalist Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection nearly 200 years ago. Today these volcanic islands off Ecuador’s coast remain one of Earth’s most fascinating places and are a top destination for our travelers. National Geographic–Lindblad Expeditions is unveiling two new ships, the National Geographic Delfina and the National Geographic Gemini, doubling our Galápagos fleet and adding a hundred sailings each year. Take in 360-degree views from the observation deck of the 16-guest Delfina, or explore the islands’ remote areas on the 48-guest Gemini, equipped with kayaks, paddleboards, and several quick-to-deploy inflatable Zodiacs. Voyages help support National Geographic Society Explorers and researchers. Learn more at natgeo.com/expeditions. NEWSSTANDS Grown on every continent except Antarctica, Cannabis…