National Geographic Magazine - UK July 2023

SINCE ITS FOUNDING in 1888, National Geographic has been synonymous with exploration. We are committed to exploring both near and far, not just for the fun of it but because this work advances our collective knowledge and understanding of the world. It’s more than an academic exercise, though. We believe fostering understanding of the world is critical for inspiring a desire to care for it. So at a time when our environment’s fragility has never been more apparent, exploration is as vital and relevant as ever. On the occasion of the 135-year anniversary of the National Geographic Society and this magazine, our July issue celebrates exploration. We reflect on the great explorers who’ve been part of the National Geographic family and consider why people throughout history have been driven to…

Humans can survive longer without food than without water: significantly longer. It’s one of the harsh realities that makes the dry deserts of Saudi Arabia such a challenging place to live. Then there’s the searing heat in a landscape that offers little shade, and the often infertile sands in which plants struggle to grow. It seems an unlikely place for farms, cities, and civilizations to emerge, but that’s what happened in the AlUla valley between the foothills of Saudi Arabia’s Hijaz Mountains. Because even in the desert, there are places where water can be found to nurture life and allow plants, animals, and humans to thrive. The AlUla valley cradles an oasis, an island of habitable land amid Saudi Arabia’s vast seas of sand, a haven that can support communities…

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VOL. 244 NO. 1 LOOKING AT THE EARTH FROM EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE I would like to introduce you to the storytelling that I grew up with in Nigeria. It was from a television show called Tales by Moonlight, where an elder would sit under a tree and tell stories, an on-air version of the age-old oral tradition. In earlier days, the ideal light sources were the full moon and the stars, casting a silver-blue illumination on the faces of eager children and adults alike. There also might have been the sound of crickets not far off and a soft breeze rustling the leaves of the trees. I come from a family of storytellers. In our home during the evenings, my father would recount how as a young boy…

IN THIS SECTION Cockatoo Tool Set Skills Roman Bath Baubles Gettysburg Revisited Sea Snake Sex Woes ILLUMINATING THE MYS TERIES—AND WONDERS—ALL AROUND US EVERY DAY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VOL. 244 NO. 1 THE TASMANIAN TIGER is alive. Not literally alive—there hasn’t been a verified sighting of Australia’s iconic marsupial predator for close to a century—but alive in imagination, in memory, in cultural recognition, and in collective regret over its extinction. Alive, too, in the quest of a handful of scientists and entrepreneurs to “de-extinct” the species and bring it back to the wild. The first thing to say about the Tasmanian tiger is that it wasn’t a tiger and it didn’t live only in Tasmania. In its existence as in its demise, the animal also known as the thylacine was a victim…

STEPS TO RESTORATION Nearly a century after the last known thylacine’s death, some 800 specimens exist—but fewer than 20 were stored in a medium that best preserves data-rich nuclear DNA. The aim now is to shape the genome of one of the closest living relatives—the fat-tailed dunnart—into a thylacine.…

For anyone who’s lost a ring down the drain, there’s hope in history. Archaeologists in Carlisle, England, recently discovered a remarkable trove of ancient gems that likely belonged to wealthy patrons of a lavish bathhouse on the remote fringes of the Roman Empire. The researchers uncovered a stone-lined drainage system containing dozens of engraved agates, jaspers, and other gemstones that once graced fancy rings in the third and early fourth centuries A.D.—until the heat and humidity of the baths loosened their glued settings and sent them tumbling into the drains. The 36 intaglios present a unique snapshot into the beliefs of the period’s Roman elite, says Frank Giecco, lead archaeologist on the project. Some bear likenesses of the goddess Fortuna—luck—or Diana, who protected women during childbirth; others found at this…