VOLUME 245 JUNE 2024 NUMBER 06

The Science of Stress Lava Tubes Gulf of Maine Rescuing Histories

How stress affects What we’re learning Documenting a sea Inside the effort to
our bodies, and what from a volcanic change caused preserve records and
we can do about it eruption in Spain by warming waters stories amid conflict
P. 14 P. 5 6 P. 74 P. 1 0 4
 EX PLOR E
THE UNR I VA LED ™
Heading inland in the afternoon, we made our way to a beautiful temple.
It was a work of art. But as our tour ended, the setting sun stole the show.
Rays of light flickered across rice fields shelved into the sides of nearby hills
like something from a movie. It was simply magical. I’ll never forget it.

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 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

FROM the EDITOR

FOR ABOUT AS long as I can It’s increasingly clear chronic

remember, “I’m so stressed” has stress isn’t good for our physi-
been a common response to the cal and mental well-being. This
question “How are you?” Back month’s lead story looks at what
in my college days, we used to science has been learning about
joke that, for some students, this why it’s bad, and just how bad it is.
answer was a kind of boast, imply- Persistent stress can have devastat-
ing that they were overloaded with ing effects on development, health,
very important things to do, which and longevity—which makes tak-
in turn made them important. ing that deep breath even more
In more re cent ye ar s I’ve crucial than we thought.
watched that morph into “hustle Other great stories this month
culture”—the notion that work- include preserving the history of
ing as much and as hard as you places torn by conflict, advances
can is the way to get ahead. This in volcanology, and chronicling
approach, of course, is practically change in the Gulf of Maine.
synonymous with stress. And I I hope you enjoy the issue.
think that’s one reason the hustle
is now challenged as much as (or
more than) it is celebrated.
PHOTO: MARK THIESSEN

JUNE PAGE.2 2024

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VOLUME 245 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NUMBER 06

CONTENTS

6 IN FOCUS | 12 EXPLORER OF THE YEAR | 13 CONTRIBUTORS

FEAT URES

14 70 100
THE NEW SCIENCE BACK FROM THE BRINK NOT SO
OF STRESS This floppy-nosed E L E M E N TA RY
As chronic stress Asian antelope nearly We ingest them every
becomes an increasing went extinct. Thanks to day, in meals, snacks,
problem, researchers decades of international and supplements.
are studying how it measures to combat But vitamins were
affects people at every poaching, its numbers discovered and named
age—and trying to have soared. in surprisingly com-
find ways to prevent it plex ways that continue
from causing physical to inspire nutritional
72
and mental damage. breakthroughs.
GRIPES GALORE
Do you have complaints
48 104
about customer service?
CORAL KALEIDOSCOPE So did Nanni, a disgrun- RESCUING
A photographer has HISTORY
tled trader in ancient
transformed her under- Mesopotamia. And he In areas where people
water images into meticulously listed them are displaced by war
designs that provide a all on a clay tablet. and conflict—such as
new perspective on the Kurdistan, Somaliland,
radiance of reefs. and Kosovo—records
74
are often lost or
DEGREES OF CHANGE
destroyed. Efforts
56
Lobsters, mussels, are now under way to
INTO THE FIRE TUBES whales, forests of kelp. create repositories
Underground tunnels The Gulf of Maine, of culture in the
left after the 2021 vol- known for its abundance face of challenges.
canic eruption on the of marine life, is warming
Canary Islands host fast. Photographer
microorganisms that Brian Skerry documents
may offer insights into the signs of shifting
life on other planets. ecosystems and the
beauty that remains.

1 3 2 N E W F R O M N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

O N T H E C OV E R

S U B S C R I B E R E D I T I O N Alewives, shown migrating through

waters that empty into the Gulf of Maine, have made a comeback.
Photograph by BRIAN SKERRY

N E W S S T A N D E D I T I O N Long-term stress can trigger a host

of health problems, including brain aging and heart disease.
Art by VIOLET FRANCES

JUNE 2024
 IN FOCUS

JUST IN FROM OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS

ANIMALS

“When I photograph animals in the lab, I sometimes

have to sit for hours. They are CONSTANTLY
MOVING, hiding their little heads or stretching
over the edge of the bowl. But sometimes they twist
themselves into surprisingly beautiful knots.”
A L E X A N D E R S E M E N O V , Photographer and National Geographic Explorer

At a research station in a remote region of Russia, Semenov

documented this Alitta virens, a worm that lives under rocks or mud
on the ocean floor. The image is part of a project revealing the hidden
world of Arctic seas, supported by the National Geographic Society.

JUNE PAGE.6 2024

 ENVIRONMENT

“From this vantage point, you can see

small pools of water that have collected in
the sheep tracks above the tree, reflecting
the blue of the sky. The overall effect is one
of RENEWAL AND CONNECTION.”
J U L I E K E N N Y , Photographer

The aerial view of a fallen tree in the Aboriginal region of Minang

Boodja in Western Australia’s South West reminded Kenny of the tree
of life, a powerful symbol in many cultures around the world.

JUNE 2024
 IN FOCUS

ADVENTURE

“Darby’s ponytail
flying behind her
lends the image a
little extra vertigo.
Her descent was
one of THE BEST
out of the three
kayakers I worked
with that day.”
MICHAEL CLARK,
Photographer

Top whitewater kayaker Darby

McAdams braves the Lower Mesa
Falls on the Henry’s Fork of the
Snake River in Idaho. To show her
full trajectory, Clark created this
composite of nine images.

JUNE
2024
Return to the Wild:
Connecting with
Heritage in Canada
PAID CONTENT FOR DESTINATION CANADA
 EXPLORER OF THE YEAR: F E R N A N D O T RUJ I L LO

biolo-
C O LO M B I A N M A R I N E the name of a dolphin that
gist Fernando Trujillo has been Fernando Trujillo, can transform into a man.
named the 2024 Rolex National shown in the Amazon “For me, it’s a kind of magic to
River, has made
Geographic Explorer of the conservation of river find dolphins in the forest,” he
Year. This award is given by the dolphins—depicted says. But these freshwater mam-
National Geographic Society to on his kerchief—his mals are threatened by fisher-
life’s work.
an intrepid Explorer who high- ies, mining, and deforestation.
lights vital issues facing our Trujillo, who’s part of the
planet and inspires others to act. “His work National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual
in South America enhances protections for Planet Amazon Expedition—a two-year
endangered wildlife and supports sustain- scientific exploration of the river basin—
able practices for the betterment of local collaborates with residents to develop
communities,” says Jill Tiefenthaler, CEO dolphin-friendly practices that won’t inter-
of the Society. fere with subsistence fishing. He’s also
Trujillo has dedicated his life to sav- helped create policies such as the 2023
ing the Amazon’s river dolphins, and he Global Declaration for River Dolphins,
was given another name by the Tikuna which aims to preserve cetaceans in riv-
Indigenous people who live along the ers around the globe. — R AC H E L H A RT I G A N
Amazon River in Colombia: omacha.
Look for more information about our Ama-
At first he didn’t understand why. But zon expedition in coming months, includ-
after Trujillo figured out the reason, ing a special issue this fall. We’ll also launch
PHOTO: JORGE PANCHOAGA

he realized the moniker was so apt he an immersive digital experience at natgeo

.com in September, and a documentary
adopted it for his conservation organi- will premiere October 10 on National Geo-
zation. Omacha, in Tikuna culture, is graphic and stream on Disney+ and Hulu.

JUNE PAGE.12 2024

 H AV E YO U
R O L L E D OV E R?

P H OTO G R A P H BY M I C H A E L N I C H O L S

TOGETHER WE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

 CONTRIBUTORS

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
EXPLORER
This contributor has
received funding from the
National Geographic Society,
which is committed to
illuminating and protecting
the wonder of our world.

Brian Skerry, p . 74
An Explorer since 2014, Skerry first dived
in the Gulf of Maine more than 40 years
ago. In this issue, he shares how the area
has become a harbinger of climate change.
Skerry has contributed more than 30 fea-
tures to the magazine. His last story was
“Secrets of the Whales” in 2021, which
accompanied the Emmy Award–winning
documentary series that he produced.
It’s available to stream on Disney+.

Nina Strochlic, p . 1 0 4 Yudhijit

Bhattacharjee, p . 1 4
One of Strochlic’s most
recent features for He’s written more than
National Geographic a dozen National Geo-
took readers on a jour- graphic features, many
ney along the Appian of which delve into
Way. To research this the science of human
month’s story on experience, including
at-risk archives, she our cover story on
was awarded a grant from the Alicia Patter- stress. A contributing writer at the New York
son Foundation, which funds independent Times Magazine and author of The Spy Who
investigative reporting projects. Couldn’t Spell, he manages stress by singing.
PHOTOS (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP): STEVE DE NEEF; JENNIFER DIMASCIO;

Arturo Rodríguez, Diana Markosian,

DIANA MARKOSIAN; ARTURO RODRÍGUEZ; REBECCA HALE

p.56 p.104
“My hometown is With her camera, the
nestled within a vol- Moscow-born photog-
canic crater,” says this rapher has explored
La Palma native. He the worldwide fasci-
has spent his career nation with the Virgin
abroad, document- Mary, searched for
ing elections in Haiti, her estranged father
refugees in Africa, and war in Myanmar, but in post–Soviet Armenia, and, for this issue,
returned to capture the recent eruption. documented efforts to preserve history.

JUNE PAGE.13 2024

‘OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, THE PERCEIV
PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS HAS RISEN DR
ACROSS THE GLOBE DUE TO A C O M B I N AT I
I N C LU D I N G T H E L O N G -L A S T I N G COVID-19
CIVIL UNREST, ESCALATION OF POLITICAL

ACROSS THE GLOBE, AND C L I M AT E C H

TRIGGERED MAJOR ENVIR ONMENTAL
PERTURBATIONS. THE CONSEQ UENCES OF
SCALE INCREASE IN STRESS ARE ONLY
T O B E A P P R E C I AT E D , B U T EVIDENCE S
WE ARE FACING A SECOND PA N D E M I C
ANXIETY DISORDERS, INCLU DING MAJOR
ANXIETY, AND POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISO
— HUD
“The neurobiology of s
VED LEVEL OF TAKE THIS STRESS LEVEL QUIZ
The Perceived Stress Scale measures the degree to which situations in one’s life are

R A M AT I C A L LY
regarded as stressful. While two people could have the same experiences, their percep-
tions of how that stress affects them can vary greatly. Developed by psychologists in 1983,
the questionnaire remains one of the most widely used stress perception assessment
instruments in the world. Take our adapted quiz below to see how you measure up.

ON OF EVENTS 1.
FILL OUT THIS QUESTIONNAIRE
PANDEMIC, For each question, choose from the listed responses and circle your score.

0 1 2 3 4

I N S TA B I L I T Y
In the last month, Never Almost Sometimes Fairly Very
how often have you... Never Often Often

...been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly? .................. 0 1 2 3 4

...felt that you were unable to control the important things in your life? .......... 0 1 2 3 4

H A N G E T H AT H A S ...found that you could not cope with all the things you had to do? ................... 0 1 2 3 4
...been angered because of things that were outside of your control? .............. 0 1 2 3 4

ECONOMIC
...felt that difficulties were piling up so high you couldn’t overcome them? ..... 0 1 2 3 4

AND ...felt nervous and stressed? ........................................................................................ 0 1 2 3 4

4 3 2 1 0

THIS BROAD-
Never Almost Sometimes Fairly Very
Never Often Often

...felt confident about your ability to handle your personal problems? ............. 4 3 2 1 0

BEGINNING
...been able to control irritations in your life? .......................................................... 4 3 2 1 0
...felt that you were on top of things? ....................................................................... 4 3 2 1 0
GRAPHIC: ALBERTO LUCAS LÓPEZ, NGM STAFF; KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI. SOURCES: SHELDON COHEN AND OTHERS,

...felt that things were going your way? ................................................................... 4 3 2 1 0

JOURNAL OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, DECEMBER 1983; WENDY BERRY MENDES, YALE UNIVERSITY

UGGESTS THAT
2.
OF MOOD AND CALCULATE YOUR PERCEIVED STRESS LEVEL
Starting from the left, use your scores from the 10 questions to fill in the dots (example:
three filled dots for a score of 3). The total number of filled-in dots shows your stress level.

DEPRESSION, LOW STRESS MODERATE STRESS HIGH STRESS

ORDER.’ Your stress level is

considered to be in the
If you spend months in this
elevated state—the most
High stress is expected at
times, but continuously
low range and is gen- common level for adults— experiencing these levels

DA AKIL & ERIC J. NESTLER erally perceived to be

manageable.
you might benefit from
stress-reduction techniques.
without relief can lead to
adverse health consequences.
tress: Vulnerability, resilience, and major depression.” PNAS, November 2023

THE SCORES ON THE SELF-ASSESSMENT DO NOT REFLECT ANY PARTICULAR DIAGNOSIS OR COURSE OF TREATMENT.
THEY ARE MEANT AS A TOOL TO HELP ASSESS YOUR LEVEL OF STRESS.
THE M M O R E T H A N a half centur
ago, a long-term study—on
of the first sizable studie
of its kind—led to a surpri
ing discovery. In 1967, researchers in th
United Kingdom began tracking the healt
of some 17,500 British civil servants age
40 to 64 in the Whitehall area of London
WO R D S BY The researchers found that employees wh
Y U D H I J I T B H AT TAC H A R J E E ranked low in the hierarchy, such as offic
P H OT O G R A P H S B Y support staff, died earlier and at a highe
BRIAN FINKE rate than senior civil servants who occupie
the upper echelons of society. Inexplicably, th
lower-ranked employees suffered a greate
incidence of coronary heart disease.
In a follow-up study of 10,300 civil servan
ages 35 to 55, researchers identified a possib
explanation for this status-related disparit
The lower-ranked ones tended to have le
influence over decision-making at work. A
a result, many felt stressed, and that seeme
to take a toll on their health.

OF
Over the five decades since, scientists an
medical researchers have established beyon
doubt that persistent stress can poison ou
overall health. In addition to increasing th
risk of cardiovascular disease, stress has bee
shown to play a role in obesity and diabete
Scientists have also learned that stress has th
capacity to weaken the immune system, lea
ing us more vulnerable to infectious disease
We all experience stress differently and t
widely varying degrees. The basic concep
of stress as a demand for change imposed b

MEMORY LOSS
In an Amsterdam lab, a mouse searches for t
it to escape a maze. Researchers stressed n
limiting nesting material, to see the effects
grown, the mice were tested in the maze. In
with easier infancies, the mice reared by stre
poorly, taking longer to remember where th
The defense mechanism affects our health at every age—
and researchers are striving to understand precisely how.
ry
ne
es
is-
he
th
es
n.
ho
ce
er
ed
he
er

nts
ble
ty:
ss
As
ed

nd
nd
ur
he
en
es.
he
av-
es.
to
pt
by

the hole that allows

nursing females by
on their pups. Once
n contrast to mice
essed mothers did
he escape hole was.

19
20
 various challenges in our normal lives and
environment was first proposed by endocri-
nologist and stress-research pioneer Hans
Selye. Starting with his landmark 1936
study, Selye found that different kinds of very
unpleasant stimuli—loud noises, intense light,
or extreme temperatures—compelled labora-
tory animals to do everything possible to try
to adapt. In modern society, perceived stress-
ors may range from mundane, day-to-day
hassles such as being stuck in traffic to
extreme, life-changing events such as divorce
or the death of a loved one. The result is “feel-
ing like you don’t have the necessary resources
to meet that demand for change,” says Univer-
sity of Chicago psychologist and neurologist
Greg J. Norman, a leading researcher on stress.
When we feel stressed, our body releases
adrenaline, which makes our pulse race,
breath quicken, muscles contract, and blood
pressure spike. This reaction is accompanied
by a surge in cortisol, a hormone that contrib-
utes to the feeling of being in fight-or-flight
mode. The alarm one might feel when caught
unprepared for an impromptu presentation is
an example of acute stress, a defense response
that is dramatic psychologically and physio-
logically but that you can recover from swiftly
once the perceived threat has passed.
Chronic stress, on the other hand, is an
unrelenting circumstance that offers lit-
tle chance for a return to normalcy. That’s
what makes it more toxic. “You’re living in a
kind of permanent state of … this isn’t just
a challenge, this is dangerous,” Norman
says. Financial strain is one such chronic
stressor, having a bully for a boss is often

TAKING A TOLL
Detention center officers participate in an active shooter training
session at a former middle school in Texas. Law enforcement officials
have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease compared with the gen-
eral population. Even situations that officers know are drills have
been shown to increase physiological stress markers.

21
22
 another. Some forms of stress, though, may
be ones we don’t recognize until they’re
already harming us, like social isolation, prev-
alent in the elderly and experienced across all
ages during the COVID-19 pandemic. A 2023
national survey by the American Psychological
Association (APA) found that, since the start of
the pandemic, stress has taken a serious toll,
with the incidence of chronic illnesses and
mental health problems going up significantly,
especially among those ages 35 to 44.
Today chronic stress seems to be increasing
worldwide, as people grapple with rapid socio-
economic and environmental change. The Gal-
lup 2023 Global Emotions Report stated that
stress is near record levels in many countries,
especially Afghanistan under the Taliban and
Sierra Leone, where the rising cost of living
sparked deadly protests in 2022. Stress tends
to be higher and its impact more severe among
marginalized, lower-income communities that
have fewer resources to treat it. Yet even those
living in relative prosperity aren’t immune to
stress. A third of the 2023 APA survey respon-
dents said they “feel completely stressed out
no matter what they do to manage their stress.”
As stress ratchets up to what feels like
unbearable levels, researchers are striving
to learn more about the precise mechanisms
through which it affects our body and mind.
The hope is that by unlocking more about
how stress works physiologically, we can find
ways to prevent it from permanently harming
people. So far, one of the major realizations is
that stress doesn’t just have varying forms or
intensities. It harms all of us in different and
powerful ways—and at every age.

INVISIBLE IMPACTS
Raising triplets Hays, Presley, and Millie is challenging for Caitlin and
Chris Nichols of Lawrenceville, Georgia. Born prematurely, the children
have long-term health problems. Caregivers of chronically ill children
face health difficulties themselves: Telomeres—protective caps at the
ends of chromosomes—are shorter than expected, a possible sign
of stress-related aging.

23
24
 Early Childhood
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ORPHANS and aban-
doned children who grew up in Romania’s
understaffed and underequipped orphanages
from the late 1960s to the 1990s experienced
unimaginable neglect and abuse. When sci-
entists studied babies who were being raised
in these orphanages, they found they weren’t
developing normally. The electrical activity of
their brains was weaker compared with babies
raised in Romanian households. Many of the
children who had grown up in the orphanages
went on to develop psychiatric disorders, and
many were handicapped by severe cognitive
impairments. Today the tragic experience
of some of these orphans is viewed by child
development experts as a grim example of
how stress endured in early life can leave an
indelible mark on the brain.
These studies made a deep impression on
Aniko Korosi when she was working on her
Ph.D. on the neurobiology of stress. Now a
researcher at the University of Amsterdam,
Korosi has been conducting experiments on
mice to elucidate that link between early-life
stress and brain development, and she may
have found a surprising connection between
stress and the resulting nutrient composition
in the brain. Mice pups typically spend the
first three weeks of life in their mother’s care.
“The first of these three weeks, we put them
in a cage where they have less nesting and
bedding material,” Korosi explains. This is
stressful for the mother because she’s con-
stantly scrounging for nesting material that
isn’t there. “Because of that, her behavior
becomes erratic and she’s less good at car-
ing for her pups,” Korosi says. After this first,

CHANGES TO THE BRAIN

Early-life stress alters the way mouse brains operate. Examining
thin slices of brain tissue, researchers at the University of Amster-
dam observed abnormalities in microglia—cells whose job is to
regulate the immune reaction in the brain and to keep the brain
clean by removing dying neurons and other waste.

25
26
 unhappy week, the mouse and her pups
are moved to a comfortable cage. “Now the
maternal care returns to normal.”
Eventually the pups catch up in weight to
pups comfortably housed since birth. But
when tested on learning and memory tasks
four months later, mice reared in adversity for
the first week of life perform poorly compared
with normal mice. “Chronic stress in adult-
hood has an impact, but it can often be tem-
porary and can resolve by itself,” Korosi says.
“Chronic stress in early life has more serious
and lasting effects, because that’s when a lot of
connections are being laid down in the brain.”
One material change Korosi and her col-
leagues noticed in mouse pups that had been
exposed to stress was the nutrient composi-
tion of their brains. The levels of certain fatty
acids and amino acids during that first week
were lower compared with those of pups being
T.C. HEIN AND C.S. MONK, JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY, MARCH 2017

raised in a stress-free environment. “It was

A VULNERABLE AGE
High school junior Zainab Khorakiwala undergoes a functional MRI as
part of a study by Harvard’s Stress and Development Lab examining how
everyday stress affects teens’ brain development. A brain scan (right)
from a different study into individuals who were maltreated as children
shows that their brains react strongly to emotional stimuli.

27
THE CHRONIC STRESS EFFECT
Stress can be brief, situational, and galvanizing—a positive force that motivates and enhances
performance. It can also be deadly over extended periods of time. When stress becomes chronic,
it can kick off a cascade of negative impacts on health and well-being. See below how stress
alters a body’s systems—and what adverse effects can follow.

ALTERED SYSTEMS CONSEQUENCES

Long-term activation of Long-term stress can affect
the stress response system how people respond
can disrupt almost all of emotionally, physiologic-
the body’s systems and how ally, and behaviorally
they act upon each other. to their environs and
Four primary systems are increases susceptibility
outlined here. to disease.

AUTONOMIC NERVOUS BRAIN AGING

The balance between our Hypervigilance and other
sympathetic (fight-or- changes in the brain may
flight) and parasympa- contribute to accelerated
thetic (rest-and-digest) cognitive decline.
systems is disrupted.
INSOMNIA
HPA AXIS Falling asleep takes longer,
Activation of the hypo- and sleep is fragmented.
thalamic-pituitary-adrenal
axis leads to chronically HEART DISEASE
elevated levels of hormones Cholesterol and tri-
called glucocorticoids. glyceride levels rise;
plaque deposits build
CARDIOVASCULAR up in arteries.
Average systolic and
diastolic blood pressure GUT DISORDERS
rises. Adaptive blood Symptoms of Crohn’s
pressure responses to disease, irritable bowel
acute stress are blunted. syndrome, and other
issues worsen.
IMMUNE
Receptors on immune cells MORE BELLY FAT
become desensitized to Excess fat surrounds inter-
chronically elevated gluco- nal organs, raising the risk
corticoid levels, disrupting of stroke and a host of
regulation of inflammation. disorders, including those
of the heart and liver.

DIABETES
Hyperglycemia
(high blood sugar)
and insulin resistance
become more likely.
GRAPHIC: ALBERTO LUCAS LÓPEZ,
NGM STAFF; KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI SKIN CONDITIONS
ILLUSTRATION: VIOLET FRANCES
SOURCE: NAT. INST. ON AGING
Psoriasis and eczema
STRESS MEASUREMENT NETWORK flare-ups can be triggered.
STRESS BUSTERS really striking,” Korosi says. She wondered if
Explore these seven evidence-based it was possible to normalize a stressed pup’s
strategies to manage both day-to-day
and chronic stress. All have been shown development by feeding it a diet rich in spe-
to improve brain health and immune cific nutrients its brain would be lacking. The
function and to regulate stress hormones.
supplemented diet was first fed to the mothers
so it would pass through their milk and was
continued for two weeks in the now weaned
mice pups’ feed. The researchers waited a few
SUPPORTIVE RELATIONSHIPS months before testing the now adult mice in
Connect with family, friends,
and neighbors in person learning and memory. Unlike stressed mice
or virtually. Get involved in that never received an enriched diet, these
your community.
mice did not display cognitive impairments.
“I was surprised that changing the nutrition
could have such a powerful effect, because it’s
BALANCED NUTRITION
such an easy intervention,” Korosi says.
Eat regular meals that
include a variety of Of course, it’s one thing to draw conclu-
whole grains, fruits, sions from mice and another to apply those
and vegetables.
insights to humans. Korosi and her colleagues
are studying humans too. They’ve recently
been investigating whether nutritional
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Find joyful ways to move
deficiencies in the milk of stressed human
your body every day; mothers could be the mechanism by which
schedule time to get up
and stretch while at work.
the damaging effects of stress were being
passed on to the brains of their offspring. The
researchers have found evidence supporting
that hypothesis in a study that analyzed the
TIME IN NATURE
Get outside, breathe fresh composition of milk taken from moms of
air, and feel the sun on your newborns in Amsterdam. “We see that indeed
skin. Smell flowers, listen
to birds, try gardening. the milk of the mothers that underwent stress
have different fatty acid composition, differ-
ent amino acid composition,” says Korosi.
If further studies provide more evidence of
REGULAR SLEEP SCHEDULE
Create a calm, distraction- the nutritional pathway, she says, there will be
free, safe place for sleep. Try a strong basis for supplementing the diets of
to go to sleep and wake up
at the same time each day. infants born to mothers living in stressful con-
ditions with specific nutrients. “If you envision
that there is a metabolic deficit, then maybe
just healthy eating is not sufficient,” she says.
RELAXATION TECHNIQUES
Take deep breaths and turn “It might need to be very specific concentra-
your attention to how you tions of a certain nutrient for a certain period.”
are feeling. Meditation and
prayer can also be helpful.

Adolescence
MENTAL HEALTH CARE
LIKE MANY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS, Zainab
Seek resources and support Khorakiwala often feels overwhelmed trying to
if needed. Plan ahead for
what to do when stressed,
keep up with academics and still have a social
angry, or overwhelmed. life. She’s a junior at a competitive school in

29
Lexington, Massachusetts, where “getting
even a B plus or an A minus on something is
considered bad,” she says, adding that grades
were especially important as she’d soon be
applying to colleges. Khorakiwala describes
herself as a worrier. When I spoke to her last
December, she was feeling stressed because
she’d missed a couple of days of school the
week prior. “I had a lot of work to catch up on,
plus after-school activities,” she told me. “It
got too much. I felt like I didn’t have any time.”
Khorakiwala is one of 150 adolescents who
are subjects of a Harvard study led by Katie
McLaughlin, a psychologist now at the Uni-
versity of Oregon. The research aims to mea-
sure how common, everyday stressors that
teenagers experience affect their emotional,
cognitive, social, and brain development.
McLaughlin is interested in understanding
how mental health problems arise in ado-
lescents as they’re going through what is a
particularly vulnerable time in their lives,
transitioning from being kids to becoming
adults. “Research has shown that most men-
tal health problems begin in the relatively
quick aftermath of a stressful life event,
typically within a month or two,” McLaugh-
lin says. “So if you are a teenager, it could
be your boyfriend or girlfriend breaks up
with you, or you don’t make it onto the soc-
cer team after months of practicing, or your
best friend rejects you, or your friend group
starts excluding you.”
McLaughlin’s study tracks the lives of teen-
age subjects from a variety of socioeconomic
backgrounds, bringing them into the lab
every month for an in-depth stress interview.

PROTECTING THE NEXT GENERATION

Carline Raphael (at left), a public health worker in New York City, visits with new
mother Marisela Bravo Berrera and her two-month-old daughter, Angel, to give
advice on breastfeeding and good sleep habits for newborns. Research shows
chronic stress alters the nutritional components of breast milk, so stress manage-
ment for mothers of infants is key to the babies’ healthy development.

30
31
 DAMAGED DNA
Tufts University doctoral student Ursula Beattie holds a recently captured sparrow. For a study,
she subjected similar birds to stress, such as being in a cage rolled around the lab. Blood samples
reveal harm to their DNA, suggesting that repair mechanisms become overwhelmed.

Researchers ask them about their life over behaviors such as engagement on social
the previous month, their relationships, media and contact with friends. They also
happenings at their schools, in their neigh- conduct functional MRI scans of the subjects
borhoods, and in their families. The subjects to assess neural activity. “What we are curi-
wear devices allowing the researchers to ous about is when a person is experiencing
monitor their patterns of sleep and physical more stress than is typical for them, what are
activity. From the teenagers’ smartphones, the changes that we see in things like social
the researchers collect information about behavior, sleep, physical activity, and most

32
 A PERMANENT RECORD
In a separate study, Beattie measured sparrows’ feathers for corticosterone—the stress-related
hormone in birds. “We like to compare it to tree rings, which can give information about how
a tree grew retrospectively,” she explained. The feathers chronicle a stressful moment in time.

importantly, their brain,” McLaughlin says. that teen’s brain responded to emotionally
She and her colleagues are still collecting impactful information such as a picture of
data for the current study, but a smaller, a threatening face. The brain’s prefrontal
precursor study tracking 30 teenagers offers cortex, which helps regulate emotions,
clues about what the researchers might showed less activation when the subject had
learn. In that study, McLaughlin found that experienced higher levels of stress. “What
the extent of stress a subject experienced that might suggest is perhaps consistent
in the month before a lab visit changed how with what you experience in your own life:

33
 COMPROMISED IMMUNITY
Before her husband, Tommy, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, moved to an assisted-living
facility this year, caring for him took nearly all Ellen Ebe’s time and energy. She participated in an
Ohio State University study on how such caregiving affects the body’s ability to fight disease, as
well as the risk of depression and anxiety.

When you’re really stressed, you have a At first they looked at medical students.
harder time controlling your emotional reac- Through blood draws, the researchers found
tions,” McLaughlin says. “You might be more the students’ immune systems were less
likely to snap at a partner or somebody in robust when they were taking exams than
your family.” during non-exam times. The researchers went
McLaughlin is optimistic that data from the further, investigating whether stress altered
current study will help pinpoint changes in the body’s response to vaccines. They gave
behavior as well as brain activity that predict students what was back then a three-shot
the emergence of mental health problems like sequence of the hepatitis B vaccine, timing
anxiety and depression. This could enable the shots for when they were taking exams.
the development of targeted interventions “We looked at who developed antibodies
delivered to teenagers at just the right time, between the first and the second inoculation,
she says. If the identified marker of stress was which were a month apart,” Kiecolt-Glaser
a sudden decrease in sleep duration or a sharp says. “Students who were more stressed
decline in social interactions, for example, it and more anxious didn’t have measurable
would be possible to push the intervention antibodies.” The third shot in the sequence
out to the individual on their smartphone. helped them develop immunity.
“Like, here’s a reminder about good sleep They also turned their attention to older
hygiene, or this might be a good time to caregivers, a notably stressed segment of
check in with your counselor at school about society. Researchers applied the flu and pneu-
what’s been going on in your life,” McLaugh- monia vaccines to individuals responsible for
lin explains. a spouse with dementia. Unlike medical stu-
dents taking exams, who were likely stressed
only in the short term, these people were expe-
Adulthood riencing unrelenting stress. When tested at set
P SYCHOLOGIST JANICE KIECOLT- GLASER and her periods after inoculation, they had fewer anti-
virologist husband, Ronald Glaser, began bodies compared with a control group—they
exploring the impact of stress on physiology couldn’t maintain their protective response.
at Ohio State University (OSU) back in the “That gave us good evidence that the changes
early 1980s, when the field was still relatively brought on by stress were biologically mean-
young. “We wanted to see if more common- ingful,” Kiecolt-Glaser says.
place events made a difference in terms of With their colleagues, Glaser and
stress,” says Keicolt-Glaser, now an emeri- Kiecolt-Glaser dug deeper, doing punch
tus professor at OSU. But over the years, as biopsies—making small wounds—on the
they too grew older, their work evolved to arms of two groups of volunteers: those caring
encompass some key stressors of adulthood, for spouses with dementia, and similar-aged
especially how they may have an even more adults who didn’t have such caregiving
distinct effect on the immune system. duties. “Caregivers took 24 percent longer

34
time to heal the same standardized wound “People who suffered from chronic economic
than non-caregivers,” Kiecolt-Glaser notes. stress or chronic interpersonal stress were the
Not long after Glaser and Kiecolt-Glaser ones who were really at high risk,” Cohen says.
began their stress work in the 1980s, research- In later work investigating precisely how
ers led by Sheldon Cohen, now an emeritus stress was making individuals more vulnera-
professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon ble to illness, Cohen and his colleagues learned
University, delivered cold-causing viruses into that when exposed to viruses, chronically
the nostrils of about 400 adult volunteers in the stressed people tended to produce an excess of
U.K. after they’d answered questions as to cytokines—proteins that serve as messengers
how stressed they were. “The more stress they of the immune system, traveling to sites of
reported prior to our exposing them to a virus, infection and injury and activating inflamma-
the higher the risk was for them to develop a tion and other cellular processes to protect the
cold,” says Cohen. But our understanding of body. But a surplus of cytokines rushing to
how different variations of stress can hurt the infected site isn’t a good thing, as it causes
health continues to evolve. In a later study, excess inflammation, which is what produces
Cohen and his colleagues showed that the the congestion, runny nose, and other symp-
duration of the stress mattered: The longer it toms of a cold. “Stress alters the immune
went on, the greater the susceptibility to falling system’s ability to regulate pro-inflammatory
sick from exposure to viruses. Not all types of cytokines,” Cohen explains. Researchers still
stress were the same, the researchers found. don’t know enough about the mechanisms to

35
devise an intervention to reduce the inflam-
mation appropriately, but in one way, these
findings signal some hope: There are clear
targets for more work to be done.

The Future
about the
W H I L E S C I E N T I S T S H AV E L E A R N E D
effects of stress on every age group, the future
of understanding and combating stress may
lie in our DNA. Recently, researchers have
been working to glean new insights about the
profound toll this defense mechanism turned
chronic condition can exact on a cellular level.
This past year, Ursula Beattie, a doctoral
student at Tufts University, and her colleagues
found possible evidence that stress can over-
whelm DNA’s repair mechanisms. In the lab,
the team put sparrows through its own inter-
pretation of Selye’s original animal aggrava-
tions, or “chronic variable stress protocol”—a
term that Beattie translates as “annoying the
birds.” Researchers go into the bird room and
“tap on the cages with pens, roll the cages
around in the room, play the radio loudly,”
Beattie explains. The idea is to cause distress
but no physical harm. Blood and tissue sam-
ples from the sparrows after three weeks of
this unpleasant treatment reveal damage to
the DNA. “It’s like if you had two pieces of
string coiled up, just like DNA, and you took
a pair of scissors and cut them,” Beattie says.
While these kinds of double-strand breaks
in DNA occur all the time in sparrows and
other species, including humans, the dam-
age is typically reversed through self-repair

REWIRING THE BRAIN

Inside the Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment Lab-
oratory at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in
Bethesda, Maryland, Army veteran Wayne Christian walks toward
an emotionally triggering photo of himself. Studies indicate that
by helping patients confront traumatic memories and process
the negative feelings around them, this advanced treatment
reduces the symptoms of severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

36
37
 HIGH RISK, FAST STRIDES
More than 200 women meet at the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia on a fall day
to walk together. The Philly Girls Who Walk group gathers weekly for three-mile walks aimed
at promoting physical and mental fitness. Worldwide, women and young adults are at the
highest risk for work-related burnout, and exercise is one way to alleviate it.

mechanisms. In a chronic-stress setting, stress might be different for different tissues

“those repair mechanisms get overwhelmed, of the body.
which is how we see a buildup of DNA dam- Separately, Kiecolt-Glaser and psychol-
age,” Beattie explains. The damage in the birds ogist Lisa Christian at OSU are conducting
appears to be the most severe in cells of the a longitudinal study to determine whether
liver, she adds, suggesting that for humans, chronic stress makes sufferers age more
too, the extent and type of damage inflicted by quickly. Again, they’re focusing on caregiving

38
 THE NEED FOR CONNECTION
Older people often struggle with isolation, a source of chronic stress. Animal therapy offers an
antidote. At a senior living center in Vancouver, Washington, residents are paid a visit by Beni,
a therapy llama. They pet him and feed him carrots by hand or by holding them between their
lips for Beni to remove with a kiss.

spouses, analyzing blood samples for markers they also show signs of accelerated aging.
such as the length of telomeres, a repeating We’re still learning how deep chronic stress
sequence of DNA at the end of chromosomes goes into our bodies. But these exploratory
that gets shorter with age. If results support findings mean we’re getting closer to solving
a smaller, earlier study, it appears that not the puzzle that is stress, which promises a
only are chronically stressed caregivers future where we can better meet the ongoing
more likely to get sick and heal more slowly; demand for change. j

39
40
 AN ANTIDOTE TO
STRESS
Meditation, which has been
practiced for millennia, provides
many health benefits, including
managing stress and anxiety.

I would spend summer

G ROW I N G U P I N I N D I A ,
breaks visiting my grandparents in Kolkata. Each
afternoon, my grandmother settled down on a floor
mat, facing the family’s worship room, where stone
idols of Hindu deities sat on little wooden thrones.
For half an hour, she would sit still, her eyes closed,
fingers rolling her prayer beads, chanting Krishna’s
name in a barely audible whisper. As a little boy,
I found this an opportune moment to tiptoe around
her and help myself to the jar of delicious sweet-
ened tamarind paste she kept on a shelf behind
where she sat. But I never gave much thought to
what she might be getting out of this daily ritual.
It’s impossible to know, objectively, whether those
afternoon meditation sessions helped my grand-
mother achieve some sort of communion with
a higher power, but a growing body of scientific evi-
dence suggests she benefited from it in multiple ways.
The practice was likely an effective approach for her
to manage her stress. It may have also helped slow
down aging-related cognitive decline—a possible

ANCIENT PRACTICE
Devotees meditate at the BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham complex in
Robbinsville, New Jersey, the largest Hindu temple in the United States.
More people are embracing meditative methods whose roots can be
traced to Hinduism and Buddhism.
 FOCUSED ATTENTION
An electroencephalogram measures the electrical activity of this volunteer’s
brain at the Alembic, a mind-body center in Berkeley, California. Individuals
who meditate regularly show higher activation in their attention networks
(the yellow areas below) than non-meditators.

explanation for why she remained mentally LEFT

HEMISPHERE
sharp until the very end. It also probably
MEDITATORS
enhanced her ability to cope with pain.
Defined most broadly as the exercise
of focusing one’s attention on the current
moment, meditation in some form has been
practiced for millennia within religious tradi-
tions around the world. Many contemplative
practices are rooted in a quest for spiritual
enlightenment, yet meditators have long
believed their practice has health benefits. NON-MEDITATORS
Over the past three decades, research has
begun to confirm those health claims. One
recent study determined that a daily practice of
mindfulness meditation—which was defined
as attending keenly to one’s thoughts and
emotions for 45 minutes—relieved anxiety
and acted as an antidepressant. Another found
that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy—in
which individuals learn to break negative RIGHT
thought patterns using breathing exercises and HEMISPHERE
meditation—lessened the severity of treatment- MEDITATORS
resistant depression among adults, who were
still taking medication during the study.
In fact, as meditation’s popularity has grown
KATHRYN DEVANEY AND OTHERS, BRAIN SCIENCES, APRIL 2021

along with awareness about the importance of

mental health and stress relief, many are learn-
ing there are health benefits from doing breath-
ing exercises for just a few minutes a day. Many
U.S. schools now have programs that teach
meditation to students, with the percentage NON-MEDITATORS
of children ages four to 17 taking part in medi-
tative practices such as mindfulness increasing
ninefold from 2012 to 2017. Finding opportuni-
ties to learn and practice meditation has never
been easier: Dozens of meditation apps such as
Headspace and Calm offer people the option of
using their smartphones—otherwise a source

42
 A PLAYFUL PAUSE
Mila West-Rosenthal, nine, relies on a Breathe With Me Barbie to meditate in her playroom at
home in Fairfield, Connecticut. A collaboration between toymaker Mattel and the meditation
app Headspace, the doll is equipped with a button in its necklace that activates one of five
guided sessions with light and sound effects. Mila likes the doll so much that she has two.

of distraction—to immerse themselves in Kathryn Devaney, executive director of the

sessions guided by instructors, with calm- Berkeley, California, Alembic body-mind
ing music playing in the background, at their center. “They would ask, What is that? And
own convenience. then something changed around six years or
“Twenty years ago, when I used to tell peo- so ago. Now when I talk to people about med-
ple I meditated, they would think I was in itation, the response I get often is ‘Oh, I know I
a cult or something,” notes neuroscientist should be doing that.’ And that’s so different.”

44
 HIGH-TECH TOOL
For 10 minutes every day, entrepreneur Brian Mazza meditates at his home in Pelham Manor,
New York, wearing a device called Muse 2, a headband that produces sounds and provides
feedback based on measurements of electrical activity inside the brain. These sounds are
supposed to assist the user in focusing the mind.

Now research aims to understand why stress-reduction programs: one mindful-

meditating confers the benefits it does. ness based, in which 42 volunteers learned
Sara Lazar, a Massachusetts General Hos- awareness meditation and yoga practices for
pital neuroscientist, and her colleagues eight weeks, the other exercise based, where
have done studies illuminating how med- 25 volunteers did light aerobic exercises. Both
itation reduces anxiety, which has similar groups performed a fear-conditioning task
symptoms to stress. One compared two similar to exposure therapy, in which an

45
 A SENSE OF CALM
At the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington, Delaware, a group of incarcerated
men are taught a form of meditation using rhythmic breathing, known as Sudarshan Kriya Yoga,
which can improve people’s ability to control their emotions.

anxiety-inducing stimulus is repeatedly group was asked to meditate during the pain-
presented in a safer environment until it ful heat, while those in the control group were
no longer triggers anxiety. Volunteers were asked to rest with their eyes closed.
shown an image of a lamp that glowed blue, Volunteers who meditated reported feeling
green, or yellow, receiving a mild electric less pain. “We see a 33 percent drop in pain
shock with two of the colors. Later the same intensity and unpleasantness during medita-
image was presented to them without the tion, while the pain levels in the control group
shock, to extinguish the “fear memory” and actually go up,” Zeidan says.
create a new “safety memory” associated with Why does meditation provide relief? Zeidan
the lights. says analysis of the meditators’ scans showed
Lazar and her colleagues found those pain relief induced by meditation was asso-
who received the mindfulness-based stress- ciated with reduced activation in neural net-
reduction training were better able to shed works involved in self-awareness. The greatest
their fearful response to the shock-associated decrease in activation is seen in the medial
lamp colors. From brain scans, the researchers prefrontal cortex—a neural hub that plays a
concluded that the volunteers’ training had prominent role in self-reflection and valuing
changed how their brains processed the “safety oneself. “During the meditation, the self-value
memory” and increased their ability to recall is deactivating,” Zeidan says. “And the more
that the stimulus was no longer threatening. it goes down, the greater the analgesia, the
Meditation’s benefits may extend beyond greater the pain relief.” Pain signals are still
stress and anxiety reduction. Fadel Zeidan, being received by the brain, but “they are not
a neuroscientist at the University of Califor- going into the brain networks that are say-
nia, San Diego, studies how mindfulness can ing, This is my pain,” he explains. In essence,
help reduce pain. In a recent study, Zeidan mindfulness appears to help detach the self
and colleagues used functional MRI scans from the suffering.
of volunteers’ brains during meditation and Last November I traveled to a prison—a
pain to understand how meditation works to place presumably rife with stress. Yet I was at
alleviate discomfort. Volunteers were assigned the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution
to two groups—one went through mindful- in Wilmington, Delaware, to watch meditation
ness meditation training and a control group teachers from the International Association
listened to a pretty tame book (The Natural for Human Values lead a session for about 20
History and Antiquities of Selborne, a classic incarcerated men. IAHV was founded by spir-
of 18th-century nature writing). itual leader Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who
First the volunteers rated their pain after a has popularized Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY),
hot probe pressed to their calf produced 100 a technique using rhythmic breathing to focus
seconds of intermittent heat pain across five the mind. Like other forms of meditation, SKY
minutes (they could move their leg away at promises to give practitioners the ability to
any time). Then they went through the same stay calm and be less reactive in stressful situ-
process again, but this time the mindfulness ations. More than 800,000 imprisoned people

46
and correctional officers in 60 countries have losing. “I used to wonder, how come I’m so
gone through the IAHV program. mad and he’s always calm?” Jorge said. The
Some at the session I attended had already question had been partly answered, he said,
received training in the technique and were by what he had been learning in the prison
striving to apply it to their daily lives. (Prison meditation program. And he’d begun applying
authorities allowed me to interview them on that to his life. “When I feel like I’m getting
condition I not use last names.) I spoke to flustered or angry, I just breathe,” he told me.
Jorge, a short man in his late 20s with a wispy On a recent trip to my family home in Kol-
beard and bright eyes, who was sent to the kata, I stood quietly outside the worship room,
Wilmington prison for first-degree assault in right where my grandmother used to meditate.
2016. He told me he was born in Puerto Rico It had been 20 years since she died. There was
and moved to mainland America at age five. no jar of tamarind paste for me to steal from.
Because he wasn’t fluent in English, his peers At 51, I was far more weighed down by life’s
laughed at him in school. “I didn’t know how stresses than I had been as a boy sneaking past
to respond,” he told me. So he got into fights. my grandmother. Perhaps the time had come,
Jorge had heard about meditation years I felt, to make it a daily habit to meditate. j
earlier while in a wrestling club. Somebody
Photographer Brian Finke has covered the
he knew there would meditate before matches history of alcohol, the problem of food waste,
and didn’t seem to get agitated, even when and the science of taste for the magazine.

47
 PROOF

JUNE PAGE.48
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

CORAL
Kaleidoscope

Transforming her pictures

of reefs into intricate designs,
a photographer offers a new
view of the vital ecosystems.

Images by
GEORGETTE APOL DOUWMA

TEEMING WITH LIFE, coral reefs

occupy less than one percent of the
ocean floor but sustain 25 percent of
marine species. These hubs of biodi-
versity now face existential threats,
from ocean warming and acidification
to destructive fishing practices and
pollution. It’s their stunning beauty
that first caught the attention of pho-
tographer Georgette Apol Douwma
during a trip to the Great Barrier Reef
in the 1970s. Some 40 years, many
scuba dives, and thousands of pictures
later, Douwma began to reimagine her
catalog by duplicating and reversing
images to create symmetrical patterns
similar to a kaleidoscope’s. The results
emphasize the vibrancy and brilliance
of these vulnerable underwater
wonders. — H I C K S W O G A N
PHOTOS: NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY

Photographer Georgette Apol

Douwma’s technique involves altering
her earlier pictures, such as one
taken in 2015 of corals in the Red Sea,
to create new eye-catching displays.

PAGE.49 2024
 PROOF

BRIT TLE STAR

Douwma estimates
that she’s made a
thousand kaleidoscopic
images, including
this one photographed
in Indonesia’s North
Sulawesi Province
in 2018. “I got quite
carried away,” she says
of the process.

JUNE PAGE.50
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

PAGE.51 2024
 PROOF

JUNE PAGE.52
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Clockwise from top left

LY R E TA I L
ANTHIAS
A London resident and
former BBC freelancer,
Douwma focused on
reefs around the world
before hanging up her
scuba gear in 2020 at age
79. In 2012 she captured
a photo of these orange
fish in the Red Sea.

CRINOID
Douwma’s favorite
region to dive
was Southeast Asia,
including Thailand,
the Philippines, and
Indonesia—the
country where she
found this crinoid,
along with gorgonian
wrappers, in 2007.

YELLOWBACK
FUSILIERS
Swimming past
corals in Indonesia’s
West Papua Province,
the school of fish
appears to quadruple
in number after
Douwma edited a
2017 photograph.

GORGONIAN
SEA FAN
To reveal bright
colors that would
otherwise look
monochromatic
underwater, Douwma
used flashes with
her subjects—this
one also from
West Papua Province,
photographed
in 2009.

PAGE.53 2024
 PROOF

JUNE PAGE.54
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

BUBBLE-TIP
ANEMONE
In this image based
on a photograph
taken in Indonesia
in 2011, an anemone
shows signs of bleaching
after expelling the
organisms that provided
it with nutrients.
Healthy examples
support many species
of anemonefish.

PAGE.55 2024
 FIRE
TUBES

A volcano in the Canary Islands pushed

rivers of molten lava through the
earth, carving out tunnels that stretch
for miles. Now scientists and explorers trek
through the cooling underground,
looking for insights into life on
this planet—and perhaps on others.

WORDS BY EMMA LIRA

P H OTO G R A P H S BY ARTURO RODRÍGUEZ

56
Military responders
Armando Salazar
and Álvaro Heredia
measure and sample
lava flows in Octo-
ber 2021. La Palma’s
85-day eruption,
after a 50-year
dormant stretch,
engulfed 2,800 build-
ings and displaced
7,000 residents.
Inside a lava tube
opening registering
about 140°F, cave
specialists David Sanz
Mangas, Eduardo
Díaz Martín, and Octa-
vio Fernández Lorenzo
collect samples for
testing lava com-
position. Since July
2022, the team has
been exploring lava
tubes produced by
the Tajogaite vol-
cano (background
and previous photo).
These openings are
telltale signs of tubes.
 W E C O U L D B E O N A N OT H E R P L A N E T.
A craggy, hostile surface stretches
as far as the eye can see, framed
by slopes of black ash. These are
the new lava flows on La Palma, in the
volcanic Canarian archipelago, off the coast
of Morocco. They appeared in the fall of 2021,
when, for three months, more than 50 bil-
lion gallons of molten rock erupted from the
island’s Tajogaite volcano.
Transit through most of the lava field is still Díaz operates a
reserved for scientists and environmental offi- drone—a crucial tool
cials. I’m accompanying Octavio Fernández in the precarious land-
scape—that helps
Lorenzo, vice president of the Canary Islands guide Fernández as
Speleology Federation. Alongside researchers he attempts to place
from the Geological and Mining Institute of a temperature probe
in a lava tube that’s
Spain (IGME), Fernández is responsible for
still cooling nearly two
exploring and surveying the tunnels that lava years after the erup-
left in its wake. Known in most scientific lit- tion. Fernández must
erature as pyroducts or lava tubes, they have keep a safe distance
from the unstable rim
a more poetic name here on La Palma: caños of the mouth.
de fuego, fire pipes.
Fernández hands me a helmet, checks our
water supply, and heads toward a white fence
where a sign warns us not to cross. The road
that brought us to this place cuts off abruptly
and disappears under the blanket of lava. It
feels as if we’re abandoning civilization.
Fire pipes can be found almost anywhere

60
on the planet where there is, or has been, solidify, forming a crust that will become the
volcanic activity. In contrast to typical caves, roof of the tube. The lava continues to stream,
formed over millions of years, these cavities unimpeded for miles, under that thermally
are made in a geological instant. But not all insulated cover. When the eruption dies down
volcanoes create lava tubes. The eruption and the channels drain, the result is a subter-
must be long enough to expel adequate lava. ranean labyrinth of hollow tunnels separated
That lava must be hot enough and composed from the surface only by the volcano’s skin.
of the right materials to remain fluid. And it Leaning on a long white stick, which
has to descend a slope, at the right speed. helps him move nimbly over hardened lava,
At around 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, pahoe- Fernández looks a bit like a wizard from The
hoe—“smooth” in Hawaiian—lava can flow. Lord of the Rings. He studies our strides,
“It’s the same word used to define a calm as if he were the guardian of this newborn
sea,” says Fernández. I can picture it quite space. “Step where I step,” he warns. “This
vividly. A sea of incandescent, syrupy lava whole environment is extremely fragile.” It
advances, spilling downhill. The outer layer seems paradoxical that this imposing land-
cools on contact with the air and begins to scape, once capable of swallowing houses and

61
banana plantations, could now be vulnerable. “Based on field data obtained in the Ha-
Our hike to the tube takes an hour along waiian archipelago, the place with the
a slope of sharp, living rock. This is aa lava, a largest volcanic cavities in the world, we
Hawaiian term for “rough and stony” that assumed exploration of the tubes could
many believe sounds like what someone begin about two years after the eruption,” he

MAP: CHRISTINE FELLENZ, NGM STAFF. SOURCES: OCTAVIO FERNÁNDEZ LORENZO, CANARY IS. SPELEOLOGY FED.; ISLAND COUNCIL OF LA PALMA; SPANISH MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE; GEOTENERIFE; NASA/JPL
walking barefoot on this jagged surface says. But here “we saw that, with difficulty,
might say. Phrases from Hawaii’s active it was accessible.”
and intensely studied hot spots have been Drones are crucial to fieldwork. “The first
adopted by volcanology. Other languages step was to begin a series of thermal flights
have their own words that evoke images. that would monitor the open holes in the lava
For example, in Spanish this barren terrain field,” he says. “And to start exploring them
is called malpaís, or bad land. little by little.”
We walk slowly. Fernández picks up a tiny, The so-called red tube is a product of the
immaculately white pyroclastic rock and lava rivers that, three years ago, flowed down
hands it to me. It’s what researchers call res- into the small town of Todoque. Today a pair
tingolite, after the eruption in the La Restinga of entrances about 200 feet apart allow air
region of the neighboring island of El Hierro to circulate. “Instead of hot air coming out,
in 2011, when hundreds of pieces of whitish the mouth sucks in fresh air from outside,”
rock were found floating on the ocean, giv- Fernández says. “This is the best laboratory
ing rise to a scientific debate that, unlike the we have right now to learn how the lava flows
eruption, has yet to die down. One hypothesis cool.” We turn our headlamps on, crawl in,
for their origin: They’re bits of the foundation and confront the surprising reddish color
on which La Palma grew, ancient ocean sedi- of the walls. On the ceiling we see dark
ments from that two million-year-old seabed. brown lava stalactites hanging like droplets
Looking at the small fragment brings about that solidified before they could fall and
an inexplicable feeling of vertigo. David Sanz are now suspended forever. They look like
Mangas, a geological engineer specializing in melted chocolate.
the study of extreme events and heritage at Inside the tube, the air is cooler than the
IGME, puts it this way: “It’s like looking out a walls—anywhere from 120 to 210 degrees,
window into our past.” according to a probe. We balance against
these walls with our gloved hands as we move
forward, step by step. The humidity and the
mix of temperatures give the cave the pleas-
BA R E LY A M O N T H I N TO T H E E RU P T I O N ant sensation of a Turkish bath.
on La Palma, scientists detected With a thermal drone, Fernández takes
lava tubes. They’re not obvious to the temperature readings. About a hundred yards
naked eye; drone imagery captured during the in from the mouth, he tells us to stop: The
eruption helped predict their possible routes. heat is increasing significantly. Not far ahead,
One tube was discovered in June 2022, six the tube narrows and exhales a temperature
months after the eruption ceased, as workers of more than 480 degrees. In the video feed,
were starting to build a new road over the hard- the air shudders like a mirage.
ened flow. When they came across a cavelike This mouth is just one of more than a hun-
space, they had to pause. And that was when dred identified so far, mostly by drone flights
Sanz, who had relocated from Madrid to the overhead—though some remain too camou-
Canary Islands to study the eruption’s after- flaged to spot from the air. Just a tiny number
math, joined the team and began exploring the have been explored. Openings are viable only
newborn fire pipes of La Palma. if the temperature allows. In lava flows up to

62
65 feet thick, cooling can go on for two and
a half years; at 150 or 200 feet thick, it might
be 20 years.
LAND OF LAVA
For nearly three months in 2021, lava flowed
It’s too soon to predict how far these from the volcanic Cumbre Vieja ridge, covering
tunnels reach. Scientists believe that this more than 3,000 acres of La Palma. Recently,
network may be composed of up to three microbial life-forms have been discovered
inside the still-cooling lava tubes that took
overlapping levels. Sanz thinks it could be the shape in the extended eruption’s wake.
most extensive tube system in Europe. That
title is currently held by the Viento-Sobrado
cave system beneath Mount Teide on the

R.
neighboring island of Tenerife. With more EU
SPAIN
than 11 miles of tunnels, it was considered the Canary
ICA
largest volcanic tube in the world for a brief Islands AFR
moment until, in 1995, a man named Harry
Lanzarote
Shick found a cave entrance in his yard on La
Palma
the island of Hawaii. It would turn out to be the CANARY ISLANDS
MAP (SPAIN)
access point to more than 40 miles of tubes, AREA
Tenerife Fuerteventura
branching out from the Kilauea volcano.
La Gomera
Gran
El Hierro Canaria

40 mi ATLANTIC OCEAN
T H E R E I S M U C H TO L E A R N F RO M T H E S E 40 km AFRICA
tunnels, and perhaps not just about
our world. Ana Zélia Miller, a geo-
microbiologist from Seville’s Institute of

Cum
Natural Resources and Agrobiology, is the

bre N
daughter of artists. The course of her life
changed when her parents gave her a micro-
scope at the age of nine. Since then, she has

ueva
focused her lens on those small life-forms that
Lava tube system
go unnoticed by the human eye. Her first dis- La Laguna
2021
coveries were made in La Palma’s fire pipes, lava field
Todoque
studying their peculiarly gelatinous speleo- El Paraíso
thems, or mineral deposit formations. The towns of Tajogaite
Miller’s research on extremophile species, Todoque and Site of 2021
eruption
A

El Paraíso remain
especially bacteria capable of obtaining the buried in lava;
J

energy to develop from inorganic matter, led residents are

E

prohibited from
the European Space Agency to recruit her
I

returning.
for its Pangaea-X project. The mission was to
V

train astronauts in the collection and analysis

E

of microbial samples on the nearby island of Historical lava flow from

R

Cumbre Vieja, which has

Lanzarote inside a lava tube whose conditions been volcanically active
B

appear comparable to lava tubes on the moon for hundreds of years

M

and Mars.
U

Since 2009, when a Japanese space probe Hiking trail

C

discovered the Marius Hills Skylight—a pos- 1 mi

sible entrance to one of the moon’s volcanic 1 km

63
tubes—the scientific community has been
studying the similarities between terrestrial
volcanic tubes and their planetary counter-
parts. For Miller, the question is no longer if
we will find life on other planets, but when.
“Martian and lunar caves differ greatly from
ours in terms of environmental conditions
and gravity, which affect their size and stabil-
ity. However, their formation and surround-
ings have more in common with terrestrial
ones than one might think,” says Francesco
Sauro, a European Space Agency scientist and
National Geographic Explorer. If there is, or
has been, life in these otherworldly lava tubes,
it could be microbial, as it is in the fire pipes
of La Palma. In a thermal image,
“The recent eruption on La Palma gives Fernández stands
us a unique opportunity to learn about the below a tube’s skylight.
Drawing in outside
pioneering microbiota in these newly formed air, these natural
lava tubes,” says Miller. The island’s volca- openings moderate
nic tubes are already inhabited. Miller’s team temperatures and
make exploration
has identified known bacteria as well as other possible. A few yards
life—belonging to the phyla Pseudomonadota farther in, the tube
and Bacteroidota—which could ultimately be glows white-hot,
becoming impassable.
identified as new species.
In cotton coveralls,
Fernández senses when
he’s getting too hot:
“It smells like ironing.”
L A P A L M A’ S V O L C A N O R O U T E , A N
old hiking trail that reveals the
island’s distinctive landscape, is open
again. From there, a path, still carpeted with bombs, says Fernández. He takes one
ashes, leads to another partially explored tube, in his hands to show me and then puts
known by scientists as hornito bonito—pretty it back in its place. They are part of this
little oven. We come across a group of tourists virgin landscape, at least until someone
who have hiked to see the main cone of the decides to start taking them as souvenirs.
volcano, recently named Tajogaite, “cracked “The ideal would be to create a network
mountain” in the island’s native language. The of marked and monitored trails so that
rest of the area requires accreditation, and even everyone could enjoy this new geological
a gas meter and masks, because conditions can richness, without damaging it and without
vary from one moment to the next. encountering any risk,” Fernández says.
The ash field is deserted, as unspoiled as He pays close attention to our steps and
the eruption left it, and covered with small turns at any suspicious creak. The layer of
craters. Each one houses a rounded stone, hardened lava is a thin biscuit, not even
like an oyster with a pearl. The stones are two inches thick. Underneath there may
viscous fragments spat out by the volcano, be a bubble, a crack where the temperature
smoothed by friction with the air. Volcanic can exceed 900 degrees.

64
 The hornito bonito rises up like an artisanal composition. They are ephemeral minerals,
oven or a sandcastle. “The hornitos are like doomed to transform and disappear with
mini-volcanoes,” explains Fernández. “This every drop of water. Maybe by the time we
one was formed in just three days.” It appeared know what they are, they won’t exist anymore.
right above the north face of the volcano’s The earth here gives you a sense of rever-
main cone, when a jet of lava shot a hundred ence toward places touched by disasters. I
feet into the air. As it lost strength, gases began turn my headlamp off to feel the darkness.
to bubble up, expelling spatters that piled up The silence and the solitude are breathtaking.
until they formed a truncated, conical tower. Eventually, we cross the lava field back to our
A nearby entrance is a huge hole that cars. It’s raining, and the puddling water kicks
descends into the tube, giving an idea of the up clouds of steam. Our clothes are soaked,
lava waterfall that must have circulated, but I don’t feel cold. Heat is still emanating
the edges solidifying around it. A light white from the living rock. j
powder seems to settle on everything, con-
Writer Emma Lira’s first novel was set in the
densing into tiny white stalactites, as thin as Canarian archipelago. She regularly retreats
needles—researchers are still studying their to the island of Tenerife.

65
 COMPOSITES OF 29 FOCUS-STACKED IMAGES (SULFUR) AND 20 FOCUS-STACKED IMAGES (SPIDER)

After escaping from a vent, sulfur vapor crystallizes over time. A native Oxyopes spider species
(right) is an early recolonizer. Scientists are probing not only how life thrives in lava but also whether
such extreme volcanic environments may be analogous to ones elsewhere in the solar system.

66
Scientists named
the red tube for
its hue, thought to
be surface oxida-
tion. Beyond the
point reached
by Fernández,
temperatures rise
above 200°F. He
has helped map
more than half
of La Palma’s 200
known caves.
 PHOTO ARK

BACK FROM THE

BRINK
For the saiga antelope, the future looks promising.

Photograph by
JOEL SARTORE

have
T H E A M E R I C A N G R E AT P L A I N S
their bison, and the Serengeti has its
wildebeests. But on the steppes of
Central Asia, saiga antelope make the
ground tremble. While this floppy-
nosed ungulate had appeared to be
on a collision course with extinction
because of disease and poaching,
recent population estimates offer
hope. In late 2023 the International
Union for Conservation of Nature
announced that saigas number about
1.9 million, prompting a change in
status from critically endangered to
near threatened. The saiga boom
is an indication that 20 years
of global efforts have man-
aged to decrease poaching
for the traditional-medicine
trade. While the species isn’t
completely out of danger yet,
signs point to a remarkable D I G E ST I O N
As ruminant grazers, saigas
conservation success story
convert plants that many
in the making. — J A S O N B I T T E L other animals can’t eat
into nutrients. They’re also
important seed dispersers,
bolstering biodiversity
in their ecosystems.

The National Geographic Society

funds Explorer Joel Sartore’s Photo
Ark project, which aims to document
every species living in the world’s zoos,
aquariums, and wildlife sanctuaries.

JUNE PAGE.70
 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

P E L AG E HORNS
Sand-colored fur allows saiga Only males have
antelope to blend in with their horns, which they
environment and hide from use to battle each
predators such as wolves, foxes, other for access to
and eagles. A thick winter coat females. Demand
also helps insulate them from for the horns in
wide swings in temperature. China, Singapore,
Vietnam, and
Malaysia has led
to poaching.

NOSE
The saiga’s schnoz
may look silly, but it
filters out dust and dirt
during the summer
months. In the winter,
complex nasal passages
warm up ice-cold air
before it reaches the
animal’s lungs.

RUSSIA SCIENTIFIC NAME

MONG.
KAZAKHSTAN Saiga tatarica
Range of saiga
(Saiga tatarica) TYPE
Caspian UZB. Mammal
CHINA
Sea
DIET
500 mi Herbivore
EU AS 500 km
R. I AVERAGE LIFE SPAN
A

KAZAKHSTAN 10 to 12 years
AF
RI

A SIZE
C

Average of 2.5 feet tall at the

NGM MAPS

shoulders and up to 90 pounds

PAGE.71 2024
 MYTHBUSTING

GRIPES
GALORE

The ‘world’s
oldest complaint
letter’ became
an internet
sensation. Here’s
the real story
behind the
ancient tablet.

Words by
ERIN BLAKEMORE
 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

EUR A
TÜRKİYE . ASI
a disgruntled
A B O U T 3 ,7 7 0 Y E A R S AG O, (TURKEY)
IRAQ
trader named Nanni fired off a litany of Eup
AF
RICA

Tigr
woes about a transaction gone awry, giving

hr
at
SYR IA es

is
a piece of his mind to the allegedly unscru-
pulous merchant—a fellow Babylonian by I RA Q
the name of Ea-nasir. IRAN
S A UDI Ur
Though this took place in the ancient city AR AB IA

Pe Gu
rs lf
of Ur (in what is modern-day Iraq), the com- KUWAIT an

i
plaint, etched on a clay tablet, still resonates
with today’s consumers. It includes claims
of shady financial dealings, low- quality “I will not accept here any copper from you
product, and a serious lack of customer that is not fine quality,” he fumes. Nanni
service. The artifact has earned a Guinness concludes angrily: “Because you despised
World Record as the world’s oldest com- me, I shall inflict grief on you!”
plaint letter, while Nanni’s grievances from
four millennia ago have prompted a seem- A NOTORIOUS MERCHANT

ingly endless string of memes, comics, and

comparisons on the internet. As it turns out, Nanni wasn’t the only
one with a complaint against the mer-
‘I SHALL INFLICT GRIEF ON YOU!’ chant. The British Museum has even
more evidence of Ea-nasir’s seemingly
The infamous tablet, now in the collections crooked copper dealings. On another tab-
of the British Museum, was discovered in let, someone named Imgur-Sin exhorts
Ur about a century ago. An expedition Ea-nasir to “transfer good copper to Niga-
led by archaeologist Sir Leonard Wool- Nanna … Give him good copper, so that I
ley unearthed what may be the home of will not become upset! Do you not know
Ea-nasir, including a slew of business docu- that I am weary?” The copper baron’s rep-
ments recorded in cuneiform writing on utation for inferior product had obviously
small clay tablets. Among them was Nanni’s gotten around Ur. In yet another commu-
palm-size complaint, inscribed in Akkadian, niqué, a trader named Nar-am demands:
the language spoken in Mesopotamia at the “Give [Igmil-Sin, Nar-am’s messenger] very
time, and dating to 1750 B.C. good copper! Hopefully the copper in your
The letter, dictated by Nanni, slams care has not gone out.”
Ea-nasir for promising “fine-quality cop- Given the durability of Ea-nasir’s cus-
PHOTO: THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. NGM MAPS

per ingots,” then failing to follow through tomer service problem, perhaps it’s only
on the deal. Instead, Nanni complains, the fair to let him have the last word. Remark-
merchant has sent low-grade copper, treated ably, a note from the beleaguered Baby-
him and his messenger with contempt, and lonian survives—and unsurprisingly, it’s
taken his money. When Nanni’s messenger full of copper-caused drama. In the letter,
attempted to dispute the quality of the cop- Ea-nasir tells a man named Sumum-libsi
per with Ea-nasir, Nanni claims, the mes- and a coppersmith not to overreact when
senger was dismissed: “If you want to take two other men come to them in search
them, take them,” Ea-nasir reportedly said. of some missing metal. “Do not be criti-
“If you do not want to take them, go away!” cal,” advises Ea-nasir. “Do not worry …”
Nanni is livid, about both the copper and Solid advice from one of history’s most
the merchant’s treatment of his assistant. questionable salesmen. j

PAGE.73 2024
74
A large school of
alewives migrates
upstream through Mill
Brook, an inland stream
with waters that even-
tually flow into the Gulf
of Maine. These fish
live in the ocean but
return to fresh water to
spawn. Once depleted,
the species rebounded
after dam removals in
the area, and now feed
a variety of other fish,
birds, and mammals.
 WORDS AND
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

H OW S H I F T I N G C U R R E N T S
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
A R E WA R M I N G T H E G U L F
B R I A N S K E R RY
St
As told to Anna Peele
The Gulf of Maine resembles
a deep tub, its shallow banks
inundated by cold Arctic waters.
But melting freshwater glaciers
and other effects of climate change
are altering long-established
currents, according to the Gulf of
Maine Research Institute, causing
temperatures to warm three times
as fast as other ocean waters.

Weakening current

DEGREES OF CHANGE 06.2024

Strengthening current

National Geographic
photographer
Brian Skerry
has been diving in
the Gulf of Maine
for more than
40 years. After
learning that these
C

waters were warming

faster than almost
any other part of
the ocean, he set
out to document the A
rapid shift and its
astonishing SOREN WALLJASPER, NGM STAFF
SOURCES: ANDREW PERSHING AND ADAM KEMBERLING, GULF OF MAINE

ripple effects. RESEARCH INSTITUTE; OCEAN SURFACE CURRENT ANALYSES REAL-TIME;

GENERAL BATHYMETRIC CHART OF THE OCEANS
 Outgoing cold
Melting Arctic glaciers are
pushing much of the Labra-
dor Current’s frigid, dense
water deep into the Atlan-
tic. As a result, less of it
hugs the Maine coastline.

Incoming warmth
The Gulf Stream once passed
I N H OT WAT E R Sea surface temperature warming, 1982–2023
In percentiles Top 1% of warming
swiftly through here. Now, Parts of the northwest Atlantic,
possibly due to water from especially the Gulf of Maine Less or no warming More warming
the north that’s less saline and and the Labrador Sea, have
thus less dense, it’s spiraling been heating up faster than 0% 50% 75% 85 90 95 99%
warmth toward the coast. 99 percent of the world’s oceans. global average
THE BOUNTY OF THE GULF OF MAINE. The sea within a
sea, as it’s often called, is a body of water that extends
36,000 square miles along the eastern seaboard of
North America, from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to
New Brunswick, and encompasses the coastlines of
New Hampshire, Maine, and Nova Scotia. Indigenous
Americans who have lived in this region for more than
12,000 years learned the gulf’s natural rhythms and
sustainably harvested its rich waters. Europeans who
began to settle in the area in the 15th century recorded
tales of an endless abundance, with cod that measured
up to five feet long. Before the American Revolution
began, giant lobsters and thick schools of fish would
have had a front-row seat to the Boston Tea Party.
I think of the Gulf of Maine as having been created
from a perfect recipe that required a precise series of
ingredients and steps. There is a robust watershed
with many rivers flowing into the sea and a unique Marine ecologist
blend of currents that bring and mix nutrients, includ- Douglas Rasher collects
water samples from
ing upwelling from the continental shelf, the Gulf a kelp forest near
Stream, the Labrador, and counterclockwise coastal Winter Harbor. Along
currents. Because of the Gulf of Maine’s geographic the southernmost
coast of Maine, these
location in a temperate zone, a seasonal stratification
essential marine habi-
that separates water into warmer and cooler layers tats appeared healthy
also occurs here. The result has historically been the a few years ago but
proliferation of life. But things have changed. are now vanishing.
Over the centuries, the rise of sophisticated commer-
cial fishing fleets has led to a steep decline in marine

80
wildlife. Atlantic cod, its supply once I grew up in a working-class town in Massachusetts,
believed to be inexhaustible, is now about 40 miles from the ocean, but my parents would
at one percent of colonial levels. So take me to the beach in summertime. As early as I can
within just a couple hundred years, remember, I fell in love with the sea. My dream was
we have removed 99 percent of this to be an ocean explorer and photographer, sharing
species from the region. In the past all that I saw and learned. In my 26 years of capturing
four decades spent exploring these images for National Geographic, I’ve been fortunate
waters, I have witnessed how such to work on all seven continents and in nearly every
declines have made the ecosystem marine ecosystem from the Equator to the poles.
weaker and more vulnerable in ways I have always felt, however, that the ocean suffers
I never imagined. from a bit of a curse in that its exterior hides what

81
lies beneath—both the exquisite natural beauty and pup falling through thin ice to show
the ongoing devastation. how deadly our warming planet has
That’s why the most crucial part of my job doesn’t become for some species, my goal
really happen in the water. Before each expedition, is to help people understand what’s
I first dive as deeply as possible into the world of happening in our world.
researchers who dedicate their lives to understanding Years ago, I moved to the coast of
marine animals and their relationship to the environ- Maine to more frequently explore
ment. Only then can I bring the right visual context. these waters. In doing so, I saw signs
Whether they’re images of orcas using different feed- of a looming threat. People in marine
ing strategies in order to share the rich complexity of science and conservation communi-
whale culture or photos of a five-day-old harp seal ties had grown alarmed after reading

82
 It became common
kn ow l e d g e a m o n g
l o c a l s t h a t t h e G u l f of
Maiine was warmiingg
fastter than 99 percentt
off the worlld’s oceans.

a 2015 paper by ANDREW PERSHING (1), then chief

scientific officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Insti-
tute. Within a few years, it became common knowledge
among locals that the Gulf of Maine was warming faster
than 99 percent of the world’s oceans.
I now felt an urgency to share the wonder of my
native waters—to focus on the beautiful wildlife that
remains while highlighting the effects of climate
change. To get it right, to make sure my images were
representative of that change and its enormous impact
on the region, I contacted many scientists and experts
who have spent decades studying the gulf.
My original plan was to visit the most spectacular
locations I had dived in decades past—places like
Eastport, Maine, where the extreme tides of Passa-
maquoddy Bay exchange water and nutrients multiple
times a day. I remembered Eastport as a cold-water
kaleidoscope of fish species and invertebrates that
could be seen easily just by making a dive from the
beach. But when I got there, it was
like a ghost town. The abundance of
Jocelyne Coombs and life that I had seen before was gone. (1)Pershing’s
her father, Herman, Where exotic-looking creatures once report, “Slow
trap lobsters near
Orrs Island, Maine. carpeted the bottom, now there was Adaptation
in the Face of
She plans to carry on only mud. Water temperatures were Rapid Warm-
the family tradition, noticeably warmer. ing Leads to
but biological models Collapse of the
predict that lobsters Gulf of Maine
may become scarcer THE SINGULAR MIX OF ELEMENTS that Cod Fishery,”
sparked research
as these waters made the Gulf of Maine a fertile oasis that shows how
continue warming. is the reason it is now warming faster these waters
have continued
than almost anywhere else. These warming at an
waters are also a harbinger for what alarming rate.

83
Rare North Atlantic
right whales glide
through Cape Cod
Bay in Massachusetts.
These whales, some of
the most endangered
in the world, feed
primarily on tiny crea-
tures called copepods.
As water temperatures
rise, copepods have
become leaner,
imperiling the whales
and larval lobsters
that depend on them.
BRIAN SKERRY AND STEVE DE NEEF,
TAKEN UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF
NMFS MMPA/ESA PERMIT NO. 21371
the rest of the world might see. According to CHARLES
TILBURG (2), an oceanographer and the director of
marine and environmental programs at the Univer-
sity of New England, the gulf works “like a bathtub:
If you turn down the cold water and turn up the hot
water, the bathtub’s going to get warmer.” Tilburg has
spent about 15 years tracking how the frigid Labrador
Current is weakening, providing less cold water to the
gulf, while the hotter Gulf Stream is shifting slightly
north and adding warmer water to the region.
But despite the collective stresses of overfishing
and climate change, there are some species that have
benefited, if only temporarily.
So far, temperatures in the Gulf of Maine have stayed
suitable for lobster reproduction—the lobster-fishing
industry appears to be flourishing. But scientists have
identified some troubling changes. When temperatures
rise to more than 73 degrees Fahrenheit near the coast,
female lobsters stay farther offshore, where offspring
they release might not intersect with currents that can
carry them to the food sources and habitats that are
more conducive to survival. These so-called larval
lobsters eat zooplankton. Their preferred prey is
Calanus, a two-to-three-millimeter
(2) copepod that is made up of mostly
More than 60
fat to sustain them through the win-
rivers flow into
the Gulf of ter. DAVID FIELDS (3), a professor of
Maine, adding oceanography at Bigelow Labora-
water that is on
average warmer tory for Ocean Sciences, calls it “the
than the ocean, French butter of copepods,” good for
Tilburg explains.
Meanwhile, the bulking up little lobsters.
region’s rela- As the water warms, Calanus cope-
tively shallow
waters also pods no longer need as much fat
absorb atmo- and grow smaller. That means the
spheric heat.
baby lobsters lose out on nutrition. There’s more bad news for lobsters.
(3) Additionally, the warming water The same carbon emissions behind
Fields has found
has shifted the Calanus’s migration climate change affect not only the
that copepods
are 73 percent period, which is putting it out of sync ocean’s temperature but also its
lipids, providing with the release of larval lobsters. chemistry. The water is becoming
critical nutrition
for the animals So even though female lobsters are more acidic. Fields says anything with
that eat them. producing the same number of eggs a calcium exoskeleton or chitinous
These zooplank-
ton are crucial as before, fewer are surviving into shell, from coral reefs to copepods,
to the survival adulthood. In 2023, Maine saw the can get eroded by such acidifica-
of not just lob-
sters; they’re the lowest lobster haul in 15 years, mim- tion. It could potentially threaten a
primary food icking what’s been happening off the young lobster’s fragile exoskeleton
for endangered
North Atlantic
coasts of New York, Connecticut, and in 10 or 20 years.
right whales. Rhode Island. Other disturbing trends have

86
 Two lobsters fight
over a burrow near
the Isles of Shoals.
The species has
been booming,
and typical rocky
shelters—where
lobster predators
also lurk—are becom-
ing overcrowded.

surfaced. WIN WATSON (4), a marine On this ocean planet, what happens (4)
biologist and emeritus professor at underwater clearly has consequences Watson has pub-
lished dozens of
the University of New Hampshire, on land. For example, the changes
scientific papers
has studied the changing pH that may occurring with fish populations in about lobster
endanger lobsters’ ability to smell. the Gulf of Maine are having a direct biology. Over
the years, his
That could make it harder for them to impact on seabirds. Tern parents see research group
find food, detect predators, or sense silver fish reflecting sunlight in the used ultrasonic
tracking, under-
each other’s pheromones during ocean and bring them back to their water video, and
mating season, which has already chicks. When parents hunt their typ- acoustic moni-
toring to study
gotten more difficult because female ical prey, such as hake or herring, how lobsters
lobsters prefer colder temperatures, the hatchlings can swallow these move across the
ocean floor and
while males are fine in warmer water. slender, silver fish easily. But as the communicate
Mates are literally drifting apart. water warms, terns can choose their with one another.

87
Sea smoke rises
over the ocean near
Whaleback lighthouse
at the mouth of the
Piscataqua River in
Kittery, one entrance
to the Gulf of Maine.
This fog forms when
very cold air moves
over warmer water,
mixing with a shallow
layer of warmer air
above the ocean’s
surface. As the warmer
air cools, the excess
vapor condenses.
 Among the marvels that still exist within the Gulf of Maine are gray seals. One approached
photographer Brian Skerry with wide-eyed curiosity during a recent dive at the Isles of Shoals.
On other dives in the region, Skerry encountered wondrous creatures, including this bioluminescent
lion’s mane jellyfish (top) and a species of filamentous nudibranch, or sea slug (bottom).
prey from a larger range of silver fish such as the wider- the nest or are too weak to migrate.
bodied butterfish, which have shifted north from the It’s a poignant reinforcement of
mid-Atlantic. what we already know: Ocean eco-
Though some adult birds still find appropriate systems are in decline. I’m seeing
prey, to many, a silver fish may simply be a silver fish. dramatic ecological changes that
ELIZABETH CRAIG (5), director of seabird research at the should take millions of years, and
Shoals Marine Laboratory, which is largely funded yet they’re happening in my lifetime.
by the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, But there are success stories. Plenty
has found that the chicks are unable to swallow the of evidence shows that when we per-
butterfish. They’re not getting enough food, and manently protect places in the ocean,
many remain smaller and either die before they leave remove obstacles, and give marine

92
 O c ea n e c o syst e m s
a r e i n d e c l i n e.
I’m seeing dramatic
ecolloggicall chhangges
thatt shhoulld takke miillions
off years happpeniingg
i n m y l i fe t i m e .

life a chance, nature finds a way: It is resilient, and it

can heal. But nature needs a little help.

THE ALEWIFE IS ONE story of hope in the Gulf of Maine.

This species of fish is an important source of protein for
many animals as it migrates from the freshwater ponds
where it spawns to the ocean and then back again. In
the ocean and in estuaries, where rivers flow into the
sea, alewives are eaten by other fish and by birds such
as eagles, ospreys, and cormorants. As they migrate
into streams in the forest, they can become food for
animals such as raccoons and foxes. Finally arriving at
their spawning ponds, they must avoid predators like
freshwater bass. Survivors of this gauntlet go back to
the ocean, with their fry following a few months later.
Alewives had virtually disappeared from the gulf
because dams kept them from migrating. The removal
of dams in key rivers such as the Penobscot and Pre-
sumpscot, done largely in hopes of
restoring Atlantic salmon popula- (5)
tions, resulted in the revival of the Craig recently
A common tern tries alewife’s ancient migratory route; published a
paper showing
to feed its chick a runs of fish in the millions now occur how butter-
butterfish, but the
offering is too wide every spring. One beautiful experi- fish migration,
because of
to swallow. Butter- ence I’ve had in recent years was warming oceans,
fish now outnumber photographing alewives at the base appears to be
the slender silver having an impact
of a waterfall in Mill Brook Preserve, on tern chick
fish that terns favor,
such as herring and a tributary of the Presumpscot. The survival: Nearly
80 percent of
sand lance. fish gather there to rest before going the butterfish
up the falls. Lying with my camera delivered to
in only two feet of water, I was sur- chicks by their
parents don’t
rounded by thousands of alewives get eaten.

93
Seafood harvesters
with Bangs Islands
Mussels have been
raising blue mussels in
Maine’s Casco Bay for
more than a decade.
The mollusks are grown
on vertical lines that are
attached to a raft and
can be winched up for
cleaning and sorting.
Only those of a certain—
larger—size are kept for
sale, while the rest are
returned to the water.
swirling around me, the way I imagine the river would of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean
have been long ago. Sciences. He has spent nearly 10
Perhaps the most special place I have explored in years studying coastal kelp forests
this region is Cashes Ledge, a unique under water from the southern tip of Maine to its
mountain range in the middle of the Gulf of Maine. northern borders with Canada and
JON WITMAN (6), a marine ecologist at Brown Uni- documented their steady decline.
versity, calls it a time machine to when the gulf was Rasher’s research also shows just
packed with marine life. how fast things continue to change.
As Witman has documented, Cashes has one of He’s seen some study sites shift from
every kind of offshore or subtidal marine habitat that a forested to deforested state in the
exists off the coast of New England, with species rarely span of a five-year research grant.
seen elsewhere. Because of the ledge’s submerged
rocky ridges, waves and currents push large amounts O N E O F T H E WAYSfishers have sought
of plankton to the creatures that eat it; Witman says to mitigate potential economic dam-
it’s like a food elevator. age from native species decline is by
In order for climate stability to even be possible, transitioning into new and sustain-
researchers say, we need to protect a minimum of able ventures. Colleen Francke grew
30 percent of key habitats in the ocean. Today only up on Cape Cod inspired by women
about 8 percent are formally protected. For Witman, in the fishing business. After a back
who has been studying Cashes since the 1970s, desig- injury ended her 10-year lobstering
nating the area as a marine sanctuary feels more urgent career, she launched Summit Point
than ever. By protecting it, we would help ensure Seafood to grow kelp, which has a
healthy fishery stocks in the future. The fish biomass lower cost barrier than mussels or
in Cashes is 300 times that on the coast; animals oysters. Francke submerges long lines
that live there obviously don’t just stay in one place, seeded with kelp in the fall, then in
so they propagate and spill over. spring sells the harvest to companies
Cashes also contains the largest that make products like veggie burg-
kelp forest off the coast of the east- ers or that use the superfood to pro-
(6)
Witman is the ern United States. That’s important vide nutrients and a salt alternative to
lead scientist because kelp serves as both the base of traditionally kelp-free fare like bread.
on the effort
to achieve the food chain and a distinct ecosys- Another operation, Bangs Island
permanent tem. As a diver, I’ve marveled at the Mussels, a family business in Casco
conservation
protection for vastness of this amber- and crimson- Bay off the coast of Portland, farms
Cashes Ledge, in colored forest swaying so far beneath kelp in conjunction with grow-
partnership with
Conservation
the surface. For his part, Witman ing mussels. The company uses a
Law Foundation. compares the underwater journey to method known as integrated multi-
Cashes to a drive through the plains trophic aquaculture, which allows
(7)
Rasher has of Iowa for hundreds of miles and these two species to grow in har-
found that coming across a huge mountain mony with each other. It has a series
warming seawa-
ter temperatures with a forest. And like the woods on of large rafts offshore equipped with
result in an inva- land, kelp forests capture carbon. The vertical lines seeded with mussel
sive red “turf”
that replaces ocean is the greatest carbon sink on spat—the scientific term for tiny
habitats as our planet, and its phytoplankton give juveniles—that will mature and
kelp dwindles.
This kind of us every other breath that we draw. be harvested for sale to restaurant
underwater Exactly how big a role kelp plays wholesalers and distributors. Going
deforestation
destroys healthy
in that process is being studied by out on the water with the Bangs
ecosystems. scientists like DOUGLAS RASHER (7) Island harvesters was like watching

96
craftspeople create something beau-
tiful with their hands. The opera- I n o r d e r fo r c l i m a t e
tions produce a renewable resource
that may actually be beneficial to
s t a b i l i ty t o e v e n b e
the environment. p o s s i b l e, r e s e a r c h e r s
Co-owner and CEO Matt Moretti
is concerned that it will become
say, we needd to
harder for mussels to survive long prottectt a miiniimum
enough to grow their shells in the
wild because of ocean acidification.
off 30 percentt off keyy
Bangs Island Mussels is developing
nursery technology at its indoor
h a b i t at s i n t h e o c ea n .
facility for baby mussels, so that
they have the best chance of surviv-
ing their vulnerable pre-shell period.
Mussels can grow in captivity until
their exteriors are thick enough to creating another source of income for its partners who
handle a more acidic ocean. are willing to experiment. Working with researchers,
Meanwhile, some fishers are diver- Masi has started to figure out when the crabs molt, thus
sifying by looking to create new becoming soft-shell crabs that are edible. The goal is
markets for species that have not to mimic what’s being done in Venice, Italy, where a
traditionally been commercially har- similar type of crab is sold as a delicacy. Masi, a former
vested. A couple of my neighbors, marine biology teacher at the local high school, says
Sam Sewall and Mike Masi, have harvesting these crabs is probably always going to be
teamed up to build a green crab busi- a supplemental business for fishers. But clam prices
ness called Shell+Claw. Green crabs, are at their lowest when green crabs are molting in late
an invasive species, live mostly spring, so the venture can dovetail economically and
in estuaries. give clams a chance to recover their population.
Green crabs were introduced When the shedding begins, Masi and Sewall—a
into the Gulf of Maine in the 1800s, 27-year-old former student of Masi’s and fourth-
brought in by the ballast water of generation lobsterman—immediately take the soft-
ships. Until recently, their popula- shell green crabs to high-end seafood places in Boston
tion was kept in check because of the and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that are paying a
cold winters, but with climate change premium to fry them up as sliders or tempura.
yielding milder temperatures, their So perhaps there is hope for the Gulf of Maine. As
numbers have exploded. They dig I continue to explore these waters, I am troubled by
into the mud and cut off the roots much that I see; the warning signs mirror obvious
of eelgrass, which captures nitrogen trends in scientific data. I often think about what the
and carbon and acts as a nursery Native tribes—the Wampanoag, Abenaki, Passama-
for estuarine species, and smooth quoddy, and Mi’kmaq—must have seen long ago, and I
cordgrass, which critically stabilizes dream about traveling back in time, hundreds of years,
riverbanks and fights erosion. to dive in those waters teeming with life.
Green crabs also eat clams, his- Although we have lost so much over the centuries
torically the second or third most and are facing serious threats today, I still find magic
valuable fishery in Maine. Shell+ in the Gulf of Maine. My hope is that, armed with the
Claw’s business idea is to mitigate the knowledge of the past and the science of today, we
damage caused by green crabs while can save what remains. And allow it to rebound. j

97
A cunner hovers
amid several large
kelp fronds at Cashes
Ledge, a marine area
that researchers have
identified as a vital
sanctuary and hedge
against climate change.
Cashes’s kelp forest,
which supports marine
life while absorbing
carbon from the ocean,
is the largest off the
coast of the eastern
United States.

98
99
 HIDDEN HISTORY

NOT S O

ELEMENTARY
Vitamins are familiar, everyday essentials. But their discovery
and naming involved multiple scientists and a surprising backstory
that continues to inspire nutritional breakthroughs.

Words by E R I N B L A K E M O R E

JUNE PAGE.100
 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

For more than a century, many

scientists contributed to the discovery
of vitamins, including (from left)
Gerardus Johannis Mulder, Kanehiro
Takaki, and Christiaan Eijkman.

first discovered in 1772, and whether its

presence or absence in foods caused ani-
mals and humans to be healthy or sick.
Then in 1838, Dutch chemist Gerardus
Johannis Mulder proposed the existence
of a compound he called protein, which he
argued played a “principal role” in nour-
ishment. For decades, historian Kenneth
Carpenter writes, protein was considered
the “true nutrient” for human health,
despite emerging knowledge that fruits,
vegetables, and milk eased conditions
such as scurvy and rickets. While these
afflictions were common among those
with limited diets, researchers still blamed
other factors, including infection, tainted
food, and even sea air.
Meanwhile, sailors on lengthy voyages
had long been suffering from another ail-
ment: beriberi, which can cause heart fail-
ure and a loss of sensation in the legs and
feet. Japanese naval physician Kanehiro
Takaki had a pivotal theory. In the 1880s he
noticed that poor people were likelier than
their richer counterparts to develop the dis-
Carrots for
V I TA M I N C TO F I G H T A C O L D ? ease, and he suspected a lack of protein in
vision-boosting vitamin A? Fatty fish—and their diets might play a role.
sunlight—for bone-building vitamin D? We Dutch army doctor Christiaan Eijkman
all know that vitamins are critical for our conceived his own theory about beriberi
health, but how did they get their names, after experiments with chickens. The birds
and, more important, when were they that ate the white rice common on Japa-
found in the first place? nese naval vessels had similar symptoms,
Though humans have always under- while those fed brown rice stayed healthy.
stood there’s a connection between diet Eijkman pursued that line of research and
and health, it took thousands of years for discovered that prison populations fed white
modern nutrition research—bolstered rice were also afflicted with beriberi. Was the
by advances in chemistry, physics, and processed grain part of the problem?
biology—to emerge. Early experiments Polish chemist Casimir Funk zeroed in
focused largely on the element nitrogen, on the hull and bran removed to make

PAGE.101 2024
 HIDDEN HISTORY

out that the substance was actually eight

water-soluble vitamins that were each given
This discovery
an individual name, such as thiamine, and
revolutionized scientific numbered in order of discovery.
thought, suggesting The e in vitamine was dropped after
scientists recognized that not all the com-
that diseases might be
pounds were amines containing nitro-
caused by nutritional gen. But the custom of naming vitamins
deficiencies—and cured by
newly found compounds.

white rice and began his own experiments

with pigeons in the early 20th century.
Pigeons fed only white rice became ill, but
they improved when they ate rice bran and
yeast. The discovery confirmed Takaki’s
theory that diet and beriberi were linked.
But the culprit wasn’t a lack of protein. It
was the lack of another substance, Funk
theorized in 1912: a nitrogen-containing
compound he called vitamine, a com-
bination of the Latin word for “life” and
“amine,” the name for a compound that
contains nitrogen.
This discovery revolutionized scientific
thought, suggesting that diseases might be
caused by nutritional deficiencies—and
cured by adequate amounts of the newly
found compounds. “A monotonous diet
ought to be avoided,” Funk declared.
Researchers rushed to isolate other
micronutrients associated with afflictions
such as rickets, scurvy, goiters, and more.
Around the time Funk coined vitamine,
American nutrition scientist Elmer McCol-
lum conducted feed experiments with
different animals and discovered that an
“accessory” substance present in some fats
was essential to rat growth. That fat-soluble
substance became known as vitamin A.
McCollum and others did further exper-
iments with Funk’s rice bran–derived
nutrient, naming it vitamin B. It turned

JUNE PAGE.102
 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

alphabetically in order of discovery con- One vitamin jumped ahead in the alpha-
tinued. Today four fat-soluble vitamins—A, bet. Given its discovery date in 1929 by
D, E, and K—are considered essential to Danish researcher Carl Peter Henrik Dam,
human growth and health. So too are nine vitamin K likely would have been labeled
water-soluble vitamins: B1 (thiamine), B2 with an earlier letter. But Dam’s research
(riboflavin), B3 (niacin), B5 (pantothenic revealed that the substance was essen-
acid), B6 (pyridoxine), B7 (biotin), B9 tial for blood coagulation—a word that
(folate), B12 (cobalamin), and C. starts with k in Scandinavian languages
and German—and he proposed the new
name instead.
The last essential vitamin, B12, was dis-
covered in 1948. Since then, researchers
have focused on the health benefits of vita-
mins, learning more about the links between
deficiencies and disease and using the sub-
stances to treat conditions such as pellagra
and anemia. It appears unlikely that scien-
tists will ever discover a new essential vita-
min; all of our nutritional deficiencies seem
to be accounted for.
That doesn’t mean nutritional discovery
has halted. In fact, this type of research is
more advanced than ever, allowing scien-
tists to delve into the secrets of even tiny
traces of micronutrients that affect human
health. If the golden age of vitamin discov-
ery is considered to be an appetizer of sorts,
then scientists are hunkering down for the
main course—a rapidly evolving under-
standing of the many ways food shapes
our health and our lives, one microscopic
substance at a time. j

Clockwise from right: Casimir Funk

identified the first vitamin, later called
B. Carl Peter Henrik Dam found K,
and Elmer McCollum discovered A.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MAX-O-MATIC. SOURCE PHOTOS: SCIENCE PHOTO

LIBRARY (MCCOLLUM); BETTMANN ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES (FUNK);
SCIENCE HISTORY IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (DAM). BACKGROUND:
ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (TWO); SCIENCE HISTORY IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK
PHOTO; SCIENCE MUSEUM GROUP (TWO); UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES/
GETTY IMAGES

PREVIOUS PAGE SOURCE PHOTOS: UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

(MULDER); NATIONAL DIET LIBRARY, JAPAN (TAKAKI); NATIONAL LIBRARY
OF MEDICINE (EIJKMAN). BACKGROUND: ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; ALBUM/
BRITISH LIBRARY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; BLANK ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES;
ALLAN CASH, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO;
HEIN NOUWENS, SHUTTERSTOCK; SCIENCE MUSEUM GROUP (FOUR)

PAGE.103 2024
RESCUING
HISTORY
WHEN
A PEOPLE’S
STORIES ARE
AT RISK,
WHO STEPS
IN TO SAVE
THEM?

Words by
NINA STROCHLIC

Photographs by
E M I LY G A RT H WA I T E
in Kurdistan &
DIANA MARKOSIAN
in Somaliland and Kosovo

104
Mam Ali stands
atop Peris Mountain
in northern Iraq.
The mountains have
long been home
to Kurds who still fight
for a nation of their
own. A Kurdish archive
seeks to preserve
stories like his.
A snapshot of relatives serving as peshmerga soldiers on Mount Karox
was among the last things Faruk Sadri, a Kurdish midwife, grabbed as she
fled Saddam Hussein’s 1988 attack on her village.
Seddiq Salih had a favor to ask.
It was dusk, and we were standing
in his family’s small orchard on
the outskirts of Slemani, a city
known as the cultural capital of
Iraqi Kurdistan.
I’d been granted a meeting later that night with a secretive elder
sheikh rumored to possess one of the finest collections of Kurd-
ish manuscripts. Seddiq, a mild-mannered 65-year-old with
a permanent smile, now looked serious. “Ask him: ‘You have
collected so many manuscripts, why not give some to Zheen?’ ”
Zheen, which means “life” in Kurdish, is the name of an
archive that Seddiq and his brother Rafiq have spent more than
two decades building. An assemblage of books, manuscripts,
newspapers, letters, diaries, and other documents dating back
to the 19th century, it presents the twisting saga of the Kurds,
often described as one of the world’s largest ethnic groups
without a state. Collecting these artifacts is a calling that has
taken the brothers across the parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria, and
Iraq that compose greater Kurdistan—a mountainous region
where up to 35 million people of different religions and customs
identify themselves as Kurdish.
The Kurds’ story zigzags from life in the mountains overlook-
ing Mesopotamia, to medieval conquests led by the famous
warrior Saladin, to betrayal after World War I when the Allied
powers denied them a state of their own, to the bloody campaign
in 1988 by then president Saddam Hussein to wipe them out in
Iraq. It’s a history that has made them cautious and distrustful. It
has also infused the Salih brothers with a sense of mission. The
Kurds may be without a state, but if Seddiq and Rafiq persevere,
their people won’t be without a richly documented story.
As we lingered in the cold night air, I was surprised by
Seddiq’s request. He and Sheikh Mohammed Ali Qaradaghi

107
had known each other for more been lost. The story gains context and nuance with
than 20 years. He explained that the each infusion from its myriad communities: the cre-
sheikh never allowed anyone to see ation stories of the First Australians, the paintings of
his full collection. It was said to hold Frida Kahlo, the music of Aretha Franklin.
hundreds of documents spanning Most developed countries have sprawling, well-
400 years, and Seddiq was fixated funded repositories. Even small developing nations
on what it might contain. A diary such as Guinea-Bissau and Palau maintain modest
recording critical political events, a national archives. But what about groups like the
lost masterpiece of poetry, a secret Kurds who fall between the cracks of officially rec-
diplomatic letter? ognized nations, people living in places shattered by
In the business of archiving, every conflict, whose culture and history are excluded from
lead offers the tantalizing promise of the prevailing narrative?
a fresh piece of the collective story. Their history often ends up shoved into bags and
And the Kurds’ story, Seddiq said, boxes and tucked away in attics. My grandparents
had been suppressed for genera- fled Poland after the Holocaust, and growing up, I’d
tions. “This work we do is a war. A marveled at the line on their visa application where a
very peaceful war,” he told me. U.S. immigration official had marked their nationality
“Please ask him.” as “without.” The only documented evidence of their
Like a detective, an archivist col- lives as Jews in Poland, and our family’s centuries
lects evidence to create a full pic- in Europe, was a clutch of documents we kept in a
ture of events. Imagine trying to yellowing suitcase: a temporary Polish passport, iden-
tell the history of the United States tity cards from the concentration camps, a handful
from only the British point of view. of photographs.
And think how our understanding For years, I’ve searched for the ways “stateless” peo-
of history would change if Abra- ple seek to reclaim their stories after displacement and
ham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, destruction. In the young nation of South Sudan, I fol-
the writings of Che Guevara, or the lowed archivists who had gathered rotting documents
speeches of Nelson Mandela had from basements in an attempt to build a national iden-
tity. In refugee camps and on migrant trails, I asked
the displaced what they’d brought from home.
For many, these items are a means of maintain-
ing their identity when officially they may not have
one. And sometimes, everyday civilians, under
In the extraordinary conditions, risk their lives to save
business of them. In Kurdistan, Kosovo, and Somaliland—
regions still struggling for their nationhood—I found
ARCHIVING, these people.
every lead The stories they are holding close, or attempting
to piece back together, are not static, said Anne Gil-
offers the liland, a professor at UCLA who studies the role of
tantalizing archives and memory in war zones, frozen conflicts,
and unrecognized states. They’re alive. And in war
promise of they’re often targets. “Obliterating a record is a way
a fresh of obliterating people,” Gilliland told me.
That puts the people who save them on the
piece of the front lines of a quiet but crucial battle over history
collective story. and memory.

108
 EURO P E A S I A
IRAQ

AREA
ENLARGED
PA RT 1
KURDISTAN
AFRICA

white robe and

W E A R I N G A LO N G him. Shouldn’t this unique book be in a Kurdish
prayer cap, Sheikh Mohammed national archive?
Ali Qaradaghi ushered me into His son, Amjad, spoke up: “We want a national
his home in a well-to-do Slemani archive to be under government authority, not a
neighborhood. He fingered a party, not a person. Once that’s in place, he’d be
string of amber prayer beads as he happy to give his collection.”
described his more than 20 years Later, when I relayed the sheikh’s answer, Seddiq
as a consultant for the Iraqi House wasn’t surprised. Persuading scholars to part with
of Manuscripts in Baghdad. During their collections has been difficult, in part because
those years, he’d learned of histor- Seddiq isn’t a professional historian—he’s a retired
ical Kurdish documents held by geologist. He launched Zheen as a side project after
antique dealers and private estates. U.S.-led coalition forces halted Saddam’s crackdown
He began to buy them for himself, on the Kurds in 1991. As an autonomous Kurdish gov-
ensuring they wouldn’t be lost or ernment within Iraq took shape, Seddiq began to feel
taken out of the country. Later, that while the Kurds were no longer at risk of being
Saddam’s regime jailed him as a erased, their history was.
Kurdish activist, using his collection In the late 1990s, he and his brother started collect-
as evidence of his guilt. ing books written by Kurdish historians and literary
As Seddiq had predicted, the figures. They tracked down old issues of Kurdish
sheikh was reluctant to say how periodicals, including an edition of Zheen, an early
many manuscripts he had. He Kurdish-language magazine published from 1918 to
agreed to show me just one book. 1919 and the name they took for their project.
It had a handmade brown cover “Because Kurds weren’t independent, other people
and was filled with pages of hand- wrote their history for them,” Seddiq said, referring to
written Kurdish script and colorful Ottoman, British, and Iraqi chronicles. “The Kurdish
flourishes. “It’s a kashkul,” he said, voice is missing. That’s what we’re looking for.”
describing a scrapbook of favorite Eventually, the local government donated a four-
poems, scriptures, and vignettes story building in downtown Slemani. The regional
from Kurdish literature. This one government provides funding for 14 staff members’
had belonged to a Kurdish writer small salaries.
a century ago. In other kashkuls Among the treasures on Zheen’s shelves are 1,300
the sheikh had found unpublished original manuscripts and hundreds of rare books,
poems from Nali and Salim, beloved including a later copy of the first known book pub-
Kurdish poets. lished about Kurdish history, Sharafnama, written
I took this moment to pose Sed- in Persian in 1597.
diq’s question: Why not donate Over time Zheen has dedicated rooms to the pri-
some of his collection to Zheen? vate collections of various intellectuals and pol-
The sheikh was known to be gen- iticians and digitized documents from the British
erous with scholars, often lend- colonial period. To date, it has amassed an archive
NGM MAPS

ing manuscripts to be studied and containing more than 72,000 books, nearly 2,000
copied. But the originals lived with Kurdish magazines and newspapers, thousands of

109
 BULGARIA
B l a c k

photographs, and hours and hours Edirne s

GREECE
ru
of audio and video recordings. spo
Bo
And they’re continually searching Istanbul
Sea of
for more. They appeal to the families Marmara
of historical figures and scour mar- D Çanakkale
ar
kets and the internet. da
nel
A N A T O L I A
le s (A S I A M I N O R) Ankara
One September morning I accom-

A e g e
panied Seddiq to meet the daughter Lesbos
of Rafiq Hilmi, a Kurdish historian, T Ü R K İ Y E
poet, and political activist who (T U R K E Y)

a n
Chíos
served as a translator for British
colonial leaders during the early

S e
Büyük
20th century. Mende
res

a
At a well-appointed home, she

Ta
greeted us wearing all black, her u r Karaman
us
white hair pinned in an elegant M t s.
loop against the nape of her neck. Rhodes
Seddiq introduced us and told
me that her name, ironically, was NORTHERN
Zheen, the same as the archive. 100 mi CYPRUS
100 km Nicosia
“We named ourselves after you,”
CYPRUS
he teased her. Paphos
Shenah Abdullah, an anthropol-
ogist who works at the Kurdistan M e d i t e r r a n e a n
Institution in Slemani, accompa-
nied us. Four years ago, she and Sed- S e a
diq had come to discuss acquiring
Zheen’s father’s papers, and Shenah
noticed other boxes tucked into a
corner. Their contents sketched
the remarkable life of Zheen’s older
Nile Rive
sister Nahida, a trailblazing world Delta r
traveler and writer who had died a SUEZ
CANAL
few years earlier.

KURDISH
S oon Shenah was immersed Cairo EGYPT
in Nahida’s world. Handwritten
letters and diaries detailed her
love life, newspaper clippings
announced her arrival at Clark Uni- HOMELANDS Sinai

versity in Massachusetts in 1949, Some 35 million Kurds reside today

and postcards told of friendships in the mountains spanning Turkey,
from Oregon to Damascus. Though Syria, Iraq, and Iran. An ethnic minority,
they have long sought a country of
Nahida hadn’t studied anthropol-
their own. From the Ottoman Empire
ogy, she wrote prolifically about in the early 1500s to the countries that
the food, language, and customs of succeeded it, Kurdish-populated areas,
every place she visited. with the exception of northeastern
Never had Shenah read such a Iraq, lack autonomy.

*KURDISH POPULATION FIGURES ARE ESTIMATES.

MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF
SOURCES: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK; UN WORLD POPULATION
110 PROSPECTS; KURDISTAN REGIONAL GOVERNMENT;
YEREVAN SAEED, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
 R U S S I A

C
El′brus
S e a 18,510 ft
C A

a
U C
A S

s
U S

p
M
GEOR GI A O U

i
Sinop
N

a
Kura
Tbilisi T
P Samsun A

n
o Kurds within Armenia I
n Trabzon 1.1% (31,000)
N
t i S
c

S e
s
M o u n
n t a i Kars 2.8 million A Z E R B A I JA N
Kurds within Turkey ARMENIA Baku
19% (16.3 million)

a
Yerevan
Erzincan Ağrı Mt. Ararat
k 16,854 ft
ma hrates as
ılı r Eup t Ar
Kız 85.8 Tunceli Mur a
NAXÇIVAN
(AZERB.)
Kayseri million Bingöl
Lake Van
Elazığ K U R Kurds within Iran
ts D I Lake
.

Van 10% (8.9 million)

M S H Urmia
- I includes population
r us N Tabriz in eastern Iran
n

au Diyarbakır Batman Siirt H

ha

T y A
Ce Atatürk Res. Hakkari B Urmia
I lb

E
Adana Şanlıurfa Mardin T ur
Gaziantep Dihok E 89.2 z
Al Qamishli
(Dahuk) D million M
Peris ou
Afrin Heshtika Mt. A nta
Antakya Al Hasakah ins
M

Aleppo Mt. Karox Qazvin

Mosul

R
Ar Raqqah Hewler

E
Tig s

Idlib
E

(Erbil) Tehran

A
ri

S Y R I A Dayr az Kirkuk
S

Zawr Slemani (As Sulaymaniyah)

Hamah
O

Tartus Helebce (Halabjah)

Kurds within Syria
10% (2.3 million) KURDISTAN REGION
P

Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq,

LEBANON
O

established after the 1991 Gulf War, was

Euphrates Samarra made formal in Iraq’s 2005 constitution.
T

Beirut
23.2 million
Z I R A N
A

Damascus Kurds within Iraq Ilam a

Baghdad Ka g
M

ISRAEL S Y R I A N 15–20% (6.9–9.2 million) rk r

he o
*Kurdish h s
I

percentage A M
D E S E R T of country’s Karbala Al Kut o
Amman population u
46.2 n
J O R DA N million I R A Q t a
Dead Sea
Total population
i n
Jerusalem of country; size of Ahvaz s
SAUDI ARABIA graphs proportional
An Nasiriyah ha
S

tt
Basra al
A
ra
b

KUWAIT Kuwait City

SOVIET
UNION
Persian

T U R K E Y Gulf
1923: REDRAWING THE MAP
Turkey rose from the fallout of the
Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World
CYPRUS SYRIA War I. The Treaty of Lausanne, between
(U.K.) (FR.)
PERSIA the new country and the Allied powers,
PALESTINE IRAQ saw Turkey relinquish former dominions,
(U.K.) (U.K.) such as Iraq and Palestine, but didn’t
provide for a Kurdish state as previously
TRANSJORDAN promised by the Allies.
(U.K.)

NAJD KUWAIT
EGYPT H (U.K.) Former extent of
EJ
AZ the Ottoman Empire, 1914
250 mi
250 km
Boundaries of 1923 are shown;
dashed lines were undefined.
Cousins in Heshtika village in the Zagros Mountains dress up for Ramadan’s end.
The historical accomplishments of Kurdish women are starting to come into view in
preserved documents.

112
 detailed account from a Kurdish
woman’s perspective. This archive
told a story few people knew. Sed-
diq agreed, and Nahida’s collection
became the first woman’s library
added to the Zheen archive.
In the doorway to Zheen Hilmi’s
home, Shenah kissed the older
woman’s cheeks and squeezed her
hands. We were led into a living
room, and sat under a wall covered
with black-and-white family por-
traits. Zheen has no children, and
these visits were welcome company.
She ferried platters of flatbread,
truffles, and dainty walnut pastries
from the kitchen as Seddiq repeated
a question he’d asked Zheen many
times: Is there anything else she
might consider donating?
At first, Zheen claimed there was
nothing left. Seddiq politely pressed
the question. It was a familiar dance
between them.
Finally, much poking around
in boxes and bookshelves in the
upstairs bedrooms unearthed two
new treasures: a marbled notebook
filled with her father’s handwritten
account of the British Empire’s rule,
and a small black diary of Nahida’s.
As an anthropologist, Shenah
had grown convinced the heri-
tage they gathered was not just for
Kurdistan. It was to draw out the
similarities of a global citizenry. To
tie a connective string between an
Amazonian tribe who sang songs
on the hunt and a Kurdish farmer
who hummed melodies as he sowed
his fields. Or perhaps to show how
women’s contributions to history
had been hidden in diaries and let-
ters in Kurdistan, in Uganda, in the
Soviet Union.
“These records are not just ours,”
she said. “They’re the world’s.”

113
Photographer Emily Garthwaite found these images (above and right) in an antique shop in
Hewler, Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital. “They were in a box,” she said. “Their subjects’ identities
and stories are now lost.”

114
Garthwaite decorated
the images with herbs
and flowers from
the region. Kurds are
known as mountain
people, she noted.
“This seemed like
a way to honor them
and at least restore
a bit of their story.”
 OPE
EUR
ASIA
AFRICA
SOMALIA

AREA
ENLARGED
PA RT 2
SOMALILAND

AFTER THE SUNSET prayer on an end, little evidence of that heritage remained.
evening in May, when everyone else But now it was quiet. Hafsa liked to work late so she
had gone, Hafsa Omer placed three could listen to the cassette tapes cluttering her desk
cassette tapes on her desk. Her office without bothering her colleagues. Her job was to study
occupied one side of a small build- the handwritten labels, decipher lyrics distorted by
ing on the grounds of the Hargeysa crackles and clicks, and determine which old songs,
Cultural Center, in the capital of poems, or plays they held.
Somaliland, which has existed as a She started interning at the center after high school,
self-declared republic since break- and now worked full-time archiving the thousands
ing away from Somalia in 1991. Once, of tapes lining the walls. They offered a soundscape of
the region was called the land of the a nation she never knew—when plays premiered
bards, and its capital was known as at the National Theater, music shops blasted their
the home of literature. With the war’s offerings on every corner, and poets recited verse that

MAPS: MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF. SOURCES: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK; UNITED NATIONS

116
criticized the government. former colonies merged, creating the Somali Republic,
Every time she popped one of the but a secession movement brewed in what had been
cassettes into the player, a surprise British Somaliland. In the 1980s, war erupted, and Pres-
awaited. Tonight she hit PLAY, and ident Mohamed Siad Barre’s government in the south
out poured a flood of salutations, launched a genocidal campaign against the Isaaq clan,
announced in the old style. Somaliland’s majority ethnic group.
“I’m sending you a greeting wider Somalis often say that their history was rarely writ-
than the ocean and sweeter than ten down. As far back as anyone can trace, Somalis
honey,” it began. “A greeting that have practiced an oral culture, and the traditions
comes from the bottom of my heart. of live storytelling, singing, and reciting drama and
A greeting of siblings. The most poetry have remained a bedrock of their identity. The
graceful greeting that someone can rise of cheap tape recorders made the cassette a ubiq-
send to someone else. I’m greeting uitous part of Somali culture, and the 1970s and ’80s
you with flowers and wet leaves.” became a golden era for Somali music.
Before it ended, Hafsa began to cry. By chance, I heard about an album containing songs
Somaliland’s current borders are from that era, Sweet as Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes
based on an 1800s colonial division, from the Horn of Africa. The producer told me that as
which separated a British protectorate civil war ravaged towns and cities, Somalis saved their
from Italian Somaliland. In 1960 the precious recordings by hiding them, burying them, or

117
Dancers from the
Halkar Academy
pose outside Har-
geisa, the capital of
Somaliland. Since
2013, the academy
has taught young
Somalis traditional
dance, music, and
poetry to keep the
culture alive.
smuggling them out of the country. He hoped these tapes could build a bridge to the
This led me to the Hargeysa Cul- past—revealing a vibrant Somali culture that younger
tural Center, founded by Jama Musse generations would learn from and take pride in.
Jama, a mathematician who’d been Hafsa, born in 2002, had no memory of a culturally
living in Italy since the war. When flourishing Somaliland. After the war, an imported,
Jama returned home, he marveled stricter form of Islam took hold. Even her mother
at the capital’s new buildings. But he scolded her for listening to music instead of the Quran.
also noted that not one was reserved But at the cultural center, Hafsa entered a different
for the arts. “We built beautiful struc- world as she logged freshly digitized tapes, research-
tures, but we didn’t heal our young ing their contents and indexing the hundreds of
people from the trauma we passed singers, poets, composers, and religious scholars.
on,” he told me. “We didn’t give them She noted the songs’ themes: love, lament, debate,
something they feel proud of.” patriotism, and dagaalgelin—tunes that encouraged
So in 2014 he founded the center people to fight against oppression. The music of her
for young Somalis to learn about generation lusted after girls and new cars. But in
their heritage. And the way to the old songs she heard stories of love that bloomed
reach their souls, Jama reasoned, during wartime.
was through their ears. Occasionally, she’d insert a cassette and a message
He purchased a trove of 3,568 would play. These “letter tapes” had come from across
cassettes from a defunct music stu- the world: Djibouti, Kenya, Italy, and Dubai, every-
dio. In London, a scholar provided where the Somali diaspora had fled.
70 recordings of poetry recited by One night, Hafsa’s father went to the cupboard
members of Somaliland’s nomadic where he kept the family’s passports and retrieved
desert tribes. Jama also received three cassettes to add to the archive. Two contained
other collections that had been love songs. The third, recorded on January 25, 1985,
abandoned by their owners or was the one that made her cry.
tucked into bags as families fled the The raspy voice belonged to her beloved aunt Khad-
fighting. Soon 10,000 more cassettes ija. It sent news to a brother in Dubai: One brother’s
filled a storage room in his home. farms were doing well, another’s business went bank-
rupt, another had welcomed a new son, two sisters had
gotten divorced. In the background, a baby cried. The
tape continued: War seemed imminent. Government
soldiers had arrived in their village and forced them
to move, even taking their food. “What can we do?”
Occasionally, Khadija said. “We don’t know why we have this curse.”
In turn, her sisters and nieces offered their wishes
she’d insert and news, often chastising the brother for not sending
a cassette updates. “Why didn’t you send us any cassette tapes?”
one niece pleaded. They’d give the tape to a neighbor, a
and a message policeman who’d make sure it reached Dubai, another
would play. sister said. Then Khadija returned. “You can listen to
our voices, and we can be your company,” she said.
These ‘LETTER Khadija died suddenly in 2019, but hearing the
TAPES’ had familiar voice made Hafsa feel as though her aunt
was still with her. She set the tape aside to add to the
come from across archive. It belonged with the other voices that told
the world. the history of their new nation.

120
Hafsa Omer (at left) enjoys playing basketball with her sister, Asma, when not working at the
Hargeysa Cultural Center. There she catalogs cassettes containing music, poems, and letters that
tell stories of Somaliland, a breakaway republic not recognized by UN member states.

121
 E
EURO P

I A
KOSOVO
A S
PA RT 3
AREA
ENLARGED

in 1999 when
I T W A S A H OT J U N E DAY them ethnic Albanians. Now the fighting had stopped,
Nehat Krasniqi returned to Koso- and people like Krasniqi were picking up the shattered
vo’s National Library in Pristina. pieces. Over the past decade, the National Library’s
The first things he noticed were the distinctive downtown building—famous for its 99
dirty clothes, beer bottles, and mili- domes—had at various times been inhabited by ref-
tary maps that littered the reading ugees and soldiers. As Krasniqi toured the rooms, he
rooms. In one of the last chapters of had only one question: Did the papers he’d once dedi-
Yugoslavia’s civil war, the Serbian cated his life to saving survive Kosovo’s war?
military, backing Kosovo’s ethnic Like all students in Kosovo, Krasniqi had learned
Serbs, attacked ethnic Albanians about the Roman and Ottoman conquests of the
attempting to create an independent region, followed by the socialist rule of Josip Broz
nation. Roughly 13,500 people were Tito’s Yugoslavia. But during his doctoral research,
dead or missing, the vast majority of Krasniqi was surprised to stumble upon numerous

R USS I A N
A U S T R I A - H U N G A R Y E MPI RE

MAPS: MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF. SOURCES: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK; KOSOVO AGENCY OF STATISTICS
Po
Boundaries after First
and Second Balkan Belgrade
Wars, 1912–13 ROMANIA
A

Black
d

SERBIA Danu b e
r

S ea
i

B A L K A N
a

i
t

I TA LY c MONTENEGRO Pristina
S (Prishtinë) B U L G A R I A
Corsica e
a
P E N I N S U L A
Constantinople
Sardinia OT T O M A N T E R R I T O R I A L
ALBANIA LO S S E S
Independent, 1912
1913 O T TO M A N
A e

FALTERING EMPIRE Ionian

g

The dominant power in the Balkans Sea GR E ECE EMPIRE

e

for 500 years—the Ottoman Empire—

a

Athens
was weakening by the early 1900s.
n

Ethnic Albanians along the Adriatic

S

e
coast declared their independence 100 mi a
in 1912; Albanians in the neighboring 100 km
Sea of Crete Rhodes
region of Kosovo fell under Serbia
after the Ottoman defeat in the Me d i t e r ran ea n Crete
1912-13 First Balkan War. Se a
Claimed by Ottoman Empire,
administered by Greece

122
manuscripts describing the history young woman opened a yogurt container to reveal a
from the perspective of Albanian 17th-century copy of Cuneus Prophetarum, a Catholic
Kosovars—not their conquerors. catechism that was among the first books written and
These finds, he felt, were proof of printed in the Albanian language.
a thriving intellectual past and the With hundreds of newly found manuscripts, he
deep roots of Albanian language established a special collection at the National Library
and culture. It was a story that didn’t and set about translating and cataloging them. But
appear in Tito’s authorized history. in 1989, when Serbian president Slobodan Milošević
As a specialist for the National invoked martial law, ethnic Albanians were dismissed
Library, Krasniqi began traveling the from state jobs. Police arrived at the National Library
country, gathering manuscripts that and ordered Krasniqi to train his Serbian replacement.
reflected this Kosovar identity. In Ten years later, after a NATO intervention ended the
towns that had been Ottoman trading war, Krasniqi finally returned to the garbage-strewn
posts, he found documents stuffed library. He discovered that nearly all its Albanian-
into attics and basements, coated language books had been sent to pulping mills. But
with mouse droppings and cobwebs. in his former office, he found his manuscripts in card-
He unearthed poetry and prose board boxes. They’d been damaged by sun and water,
written by local authors in Ottoman but they’d survived.
Turkish, Arabic, and Persian. Once a “Milošević wanted to erase huge chunks of our

AUSTRIA
MOLD.
HUNGARY UKRAINE
SLOV. After WWI, the country of
Po Yugoslavia (1919–1992) was
CROATIA
created out of Serbia and
dominions of Austria-Hungary.
BOSNIA Belgrade ROMANIA
AND Bl ack
A

HERZEGOVINA SERBIA Danu b e

d

Sea
ri

KOSOVO
a

I TA LY
ti

c MONT.
Pristina (Prishtinë)
S BULGARIA
e
Corsica a

Ethnic Albanian N. MACED. Istanbul

Sardinia majority population
ALBANIA

PRESENT DAY
A e

KOSOVO EMERGES
GREECE
TÜRKİYE
Ionian (TURKEY)
g

Following the violent breakup of Sea

e

Yugoslavia during the 1990s, Kosovo’s

a

ethnic Albanians fought for inde-

n

pendence from Serbia, which backed

S

e
the minority ethnic Serb population. 100 mi a
Kosovo declared independence 100 km
Sea of Crete Rhodes
in 2008, and more than 100 UN
members have recognized it. Serbia Me di t er ra ne a n
continues to claim it as a province. Sea

123
Dervishes unfurl
a rare scroll at a Sufi
tekke, or shrine,
in Gjakova, Kosovo.
For centuries, tekkes
collected writings on
a number of subjects—
history, science,
religion. Many were
destroyed during
the Kosovo War.
A dervish at the
tekke of Sheikh Emin
in Gjakova displays
one of its oldest
manuscripts. Gjakova,
an Ottoman trading
hub, attracted mystics
and scholars from
across the empire.
They brought manu-
scripts written in an
array of languages
and translated them
into Albanian. Now
these works may shed
light on a thriving
intellectual past
and the roots of the
Albanian language.
Bedrije Mekolli, head of special collections at Kosovo’s National Library, holds a German translation of
a biography of Gjergj Kastrioti, who led a 15th-century Albanian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire.
During the Kosovo War, Serb forces destroyed many of the library’s Albanian-language books.

127
history,” Krasniqi told me, “because During the war, the tekke was burned, its library
that’s how you can make a nation sub- reduced to ash. It was, Krasniqi believes, one of Koso-
missive, and keep it enslaved. Know- vo’s greatest cultural losses. He had been too devas-
ing your history is a fuel for freedom.” tated to return, but now he offered to take me there to
Determined to find what pieces help me understand the destruction.
of Kosovo’s past survived, Krasniqi A week later, we stood in the arched entryway of a
drove through the charred landscape. stucco building. A tall man with a flowing gray beard
Homes and mosques lay in ruins, and led us inside the rebuilt Bektashi tekke. Rauf Radonici
the stench of corpses emanated from was a longtime Sufi dervish who served the order. He
wells. Old documents were a low pri- pointed out photos that showed the tekke’s skeletal
ority as people mourned the dead and postwar remains. He learned it had burned, he said,
tried to rebuild, but at each house when he was living in a refugee camp in Albania in
Krasniqi made the same plea: If you 1999. He’d wept so violently that people assumed his
have any old books or manuscripts, family had been killed.
let the National Library buy them. Krasniqi brought up the precious manuscripts—
When I visited him in Pristina, had they all been destroyed?
Krasniqi, now 65, had retired from the “Yes,” Radonici said, his hand over his heart. “That
library. Over espresso in a downtown knowledge is lost forever.”
café, he described his years ferreting He led us to a small office, and Krasniqi sighed as he
out manuscripts after the war. scanned the modest collection of modern books. Then
There was one place he couldn’t something caught his eye. Near the floor, a small stack
bear to return to: The city of Gjakova of paper leaned against a bundle of leather-bound vol-
had a renowned tekke, or Sufi temple, umes. He gently lifted a page and inspected it closely.
which was believed to be a birthplace “This is very interesting, actually,” he said. It was a
of Albanian nationalism. Shaped by handwritten copy of the first prayer in the Quran. Its
three brothers who revolutionized curled lettering was a rare example of one of Kosovo’s
Albanian education, literature, and most beautiful styles of religious calligraphy.
ideology in the 19th century, the Bek- These were donations, the dervish explained. Af-
tashi tekke had served as a center of ter the war, he’d pleaded with the community to rebuild
political activism and religious study. the tekke’s library with whatever they could find.
When Krasniqi visited before the With reading glasses perched on his nose, Krasniqi
war, he’d been awestruck by the crouched to examine a tiny handwritten prayer book
ornately illustrated manuscripts, col- from 1816. This might be valuable, he said, passing it to
lections of poetry, and hundreds of the stunned dervish. He made a pile: fraying Ottoman
codices on topics such as astronomy tax records, religious scripture, personal letters.
and medicine handwritten by revered Sweat beaded on Krasniqi’s brow as he scanned the
scholars. One of the library’s prized shelves. This was how he’d spent much of his career:
possessions was a copy of poems looking for lost treasure. He pulled out two small books
written by Shams i Tabrizi, the spir- with elaborate designs. If they’d been better preserved,
itual guide of the 13th-century poet they could’ve been of huge artistic value, he said.
Rumi, translated into Albanian. These Still, they were important enough to be kept aside.
were some of the rarest documents We went downstairs for coffee, and Krasniqi seemed
Krasniqi had ever seen. Because the revived by the joys of discovering something new. For
dervishes were so secretive, few of the decades he had fought against the ravages of time and
holdings had been studied. “There conflict, politics, ignorance, and even the indifference
were manuscripts you couldn’t even of his own country. But there were still jewels of history
measure in gold,” he recalled. to be found, and people who would cherish them.

128
It is, as Seddiq Salih in Kurdistan
told me, a peaceful war. He first
drew that comparison over tea
at an Italian-style café in a newly
built development in Slemani.
A sign for the towering gray and abroad at the same time. Their work—persuading a
white apartment buildings boasted nation, one person at a time, to trust them with its
of a “better life style.” Around us, history—is exhausting. Who will dedicate their life to
young people smoked hookahs this cause for little money or glory after they’re gone?
and scrolled through Instagram. I thought back to how weary Seddiq had looked as
In comparison, Seddiq, a man his we left the home of Zheen Hilmi, with two small books
colleagues nicknamed “the ency- to show for nearly four hours of negotiation.
clopedia,” might seem like a relic, A few days later, at the Zheen library, I’d opened the
someone unearthing a bitter past diary of Nahida’s that her sister had donated. It began
while his nation tries to move on. on New Year’s Eve, 1960, in Baghdad. Nahida, 32 at the
Seddiq’s peaceful war was at time, was fretting about her father’s strict rules and
times against an oppressor, at times pining for an ex-boyfriend in Europe. She wrote that
against the apathy of his own people. she’d confessed to him that she hoped to publish her
Like Krasniqi in Kosovo and Jama in memoirs—but only after she died. “Everybody will
Somaliland, when he looked over the be whispering around me if I do it now,” she told him.
dotted-line borders of his nation, he The world hadn’t been ready for her story then. It
saw the Kurds, and his life’s goal of was as if Nahida had envisioned her notebook landing
preserving their history, set against on a shelf at the Zheen archive one day, and her voice
greater geopolitical interests. And he allowing future generations to glimpse a Kurdistan
knew that at any moment his work they’d never learned about in history books.
could grind to a halt again. She might be pleased to know it has already done
Seddiq used to worry primarily so: As she read Nahida’s writing, the anthropologist
about the archive’s physical safety, Shenah Abdullah found traces of her own story—
but now many of the important college in America, a pursuit of anthropology, the
manuscripts, books, and magazines feeling of being torn between home and a new life.
have been digitized, and his fears She was overwhelmed by how history echoes today,
have turned existential. He and more than 60 years later. “It’s almost like they’re knit-
his brother are getting older. They ted together,” she said. “No one ever tells the past
don’t drive in the same car or travel without telling the present.” j

129
Ferdonije Qerkezi has
preserved her home
in Gjakova as a living
record of her hus-
band and sons, who
were taken by Serbs
during the war. She
invites visitors to see
her boys’ rooms, left
undisturbed as a way
of testifying to what
happened and of
keeping her family’s
memory alive.
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nated the first in 1872—to urban in the Pacific National Historical loadable from the
oases such as Central Park in New Park in Guam, or colonialism Apple App Store,
York City. There are also lesser at the San Juan National His- Google Play, and
on the web at
known treasures to discover: toric Site in Puerto Rico. Great whatsapp.com.
Nevada’s Avi Kwa Ame National American Parks is available now.

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 MERMAIDS ARE REAL

| S Y LV I A E A R L E |

With over 7,000 hours spent underwater as part of a lifetime of research, exploration, and
conservation efforts, Sylvia Earle isn’t just oceanic royalty. She’s the closest thing we’ve got
to a real-life mermaid. Explore the world alongside National Geographic Experts like Sylvia
when you make your next trip an expedition.

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 ®

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