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08.2021

Gladiators THE REAL LIFE BEHIND THE SHIELD

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Driving discovery further than ever before.

National Geographic and Hyundai have teamed up to bring you Outside Academy–an immersive augmented reality (AR) adventure offering in-depth educational experiences from America’s national parks. Visit Yosemite National Park and activate AR hotspots throughout the park on Instagram, or bring the park to you with AR Anywhere.

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Reimagining how far your mind will take you, it’s your journey in the first-ever TUCSON Plug-in Hybrid.

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Unlock the secrets of Yosemite at Yosemite Falls.

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Learn about the park’s wonders from Tunnel View.

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Tap to place a bighorn sheep in any meadow.

Visit Yosemite National Park.

Find @NatGeo on Instagram.

Search for the effects.

FURTHER

AUGUST 2021

C O N T E N T S

On the Cover Ready for combat, a heavily armed Thraex gladiator holds up his shield and sica, a short sword with a curved blade, in the amphitheater at Pompeii.

FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA

P R O O F

15 E X P L O R E

THE BIG IDEA

The Dog (et al.) Days If we love holidays and we love animals, it’s no surprise that we’d love animalthemed holidays.

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A Summer Trip to the Shore In landlocked Hungary, an ersatz seashore vacation—to Lake Balaton, central Europe’s largest lake—is a tradition for many families.

P H OTO G R A P H S BY Z S Ó F I A PÁ LY I

BY O L I V E R W H A N G

INNOVATOR

The ‘Gardening’ Tapir This animal is key to reviving Brazil’s wetlands after wildfires, says conservation ecologist Patrícia Medici.

BY A N N I E ROT H

28 DECODER

Space Hurricane A vortex of plasma spins up to 31,000 miles above Earth.

BY ROBIN GEORGE ANDREWS AND JASON TREAT; ILLUSTRATION BY MARK GARLICK

TOOL KIT

Tidal Technique With simple tools, he sculpts elaborate towers on shifting sands.

BY CATHERINE ZUCKERMAN P H OTO G R A P H BY REBECCA HALE ALSO

ALSO

Parrot, Macaw Mummies Shark Species Decline

Japanese Washi Paper A Photographer’s Youth

F E AT U R E S

Ancient Rome’s Fight Club Real gladiators weren’t quite like those in the movies. They were more interested in putting on a good show than in killing each other, and surprisingly, most were fighters by profession.

Perfectly Clear

The Edge of Survival

New findings tell scientists more about the translucent amphibians known as glass frogs.

The delicate balance of life in the Kalahari is at risk from increases in heat and droughts.

BY ANGELA

BY L E O N I E J O U B E RT

P O S A DA- S WA F F O R D

P H OTO G RA P H S BY

P H OTO G RA P H S BY

T H O M A S P. P E S C H A K

JAIME CULEBRAS

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Hunger in America

P H OTO G RA P H S BY A RT BY F E R N A N D O G .

In 2020, 1 in 7 people in the U.S. didn’t get sufficient food.

B A P T I S TA

BY C A S S A N D R A S P R AT L I N G

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P. 40

Desert dwellers in the Kalahari collaborate to stay alive. Among meerkats (shown), some of lesser rank provide care for the pups of the high-ranking female, while others stand guard to warn of predators.

A B OV E :

B Y A N D R E W C U R RY RÉMI BÉNALI

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A U G U S T

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FROM THE EDITOR

MEET ONE OF OUR ARTISTS

Ideas That ‘Surprise People’

BY SUSAN GOLDBERG

models, tools, works in progress: This photo gives one glimpse into the studio of Senior Artist Fernando Baptista, at National Geographic’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. I’m writing about Fernando’s work now because there’s so much of it in this month’s issue: The cover art for “Gladiators: Ancient Rome’s Fight Club.”

Eight pages of infographics showing how these warriors fought and lived.

And, for our story on southern Africa’s Kalahari, an explainer about animals’ adaptations to heat.

A native of Spain, Fernando was the director of graphics at El Correo in Bilbao—a newspaper renowned for its visual journalism—when National Geographic called. “They offered me a job, and I thought, Why not?” says Fernando, who moved to the United States and joined us in 2007.

His art has won every kind of honor— more than 200 awards, medals, citations, you name it—from every major group that judges illustrations and graphics. He’s even been nominated for two Emmys, for his animation work.

How does Fernando create? Often, before he starts to draw, he fashions a three-dimensional polymer clay model.

“The models help me find the best perspective,” he says. “I can see how the light works. It makes it more realistic, and you can get the right point of view.”

Sometimes he’ll photograph a model and paint on the photo with acrylics or digitally. Other times he’ll use the models to create a pencil drawing, scan the drawing into the computer, paint it digitally, then merge it with a background he has painted. Occasionally he will make one of his models a figure in an animated film. In short: He’s amazing.

And then there’s the matter of vetting his creations with experts. For the

PHOTOGRAPHS BY REBECCA HALE

A RT S U P P L I E S ,

gladiators project, for example, Fernando worked with a researcher to draft historically accurate sketches. Those were shown to a half dozen experts who looked at the clothing, the backgrounds, the arenas, the appearance of the crowd, the fight moves—every manner of detail to make sure it was just right.

Those consulted don’t always agree.

But even battling experts don’t dull Fernando’s enthusiasm for telling a story.

“I always try new things,” he says, approaching each story with these questions: “What don’t people know? How can I get people interested? I want to surprise people with ideas.”

When people think of National Geographic visuals, most think first of photography. But illustrators and graphic artists such as Fernando and the rest of our talented team are just as vital to our goal of explaining and exploring the natural world and humankind’s journey in it.

Thank you for reading National Geographic. j

When he creates trueto-life images of sharks, saber-toothed cats, and other creatures that either are or were alive on Earth, National Geographic’s Fernando Gomez Baptista (below) consults with experts to make his depictions as accurate and complete as possible. But when he’s drawing for fun, he likes to invent space aliens and monsters like those that populate science fiction and comic books— and then, he jokes, “at least I don’t have to worry about the experts.”

ATEM Mini Pro model shown.

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ATEM Mini..........$295 ATEM Mini Pro..........$49 ATEM Mini Pro ISO.........

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P R O O F P H O T O G R A P H S B Y Z S Ó F I A PÁ LY I N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

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N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

LO O K I N G AT T H E E A RT H F RO M E V E RY P O S S I B L E A N G L E

A SUMMER TRIP TO THE SHORE In landlocked Hungary, an ersatz seashore vacation—to central Europe’s largest lake—is a tradition.

VO L . 2 4 0 N O. 2

A boy dives into the shallow waters of Hungary’s Lake Balaton.

The nearly 50-milelong lake is the largest in central Europe and for decades has been a popular destination for summer vacationers.

AUGUST 2021

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P R O O F

As people frolic, float, and wade in Lake Balaton, photographer Zsófia Pályi captures their portraits in its cyan waters—a result of its shallowness, chemical composition, and algae content.

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N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Hungary’s second most popular vacation destination, after Budapest, the lake is surrounded by vineyards, mountains, and thermal spa resorts. Its coastlike ambience lures landlocked Hungarians.

AUGUST 2021

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P R O O F

Paddleboaters explore the lake. UNESCO is considering designating part of Balaton’s north shore a World Heritage site; features include volcanic rock formations, Celtic stone sculptures, and historic castles.

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N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

A swimmer with compatibly colored hair comes up for air. On the lake’s bottom lie remnants from the past century: several World War II–era planes and other wartime rubble.

AUGUST 2021

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P R O O F

THE BACKSTORY A P H OTO G RA P H E R C A P T U R E S T H E E S S E N C E O F S U M M E R I N T H E T U RQ U O I S E S H A L LO W S O F H U N G A RY ’ S L A K E B A L ATO N .

Zsófia Pályi spent summers with her family at Lake Balaton in western Hungary. Many Hungarians then couldn’t afford travel to other countries, she says, so the lake was an exotic getaway. For others, it was a respite: From the 1960s to ’80s, German families separated by the Berlin Wall reunited on its shores for vacation.

People called it the Hungarian Sea. Today, Hungarians still vacation at the lake, and photographer Pályi returns to capture one particular aspect: its shallowness. Balaton is only a few feet deep at the lake’s south end. That makes it a good place for families and W H E N S H E WA S A K I D ,

kids, says Pályi, and also for the camera shy: The depth lets people decide how much of their bodies to show off and how much to hide underneath.

The lake’s long, skinny shape also invites some photographic tricks.

Pályi always points her camera north to the horizon, and with only water in the background, the shore looks like a Hungarian impossibility: a beach beside an ocean. She also shoots on film with a 1950s-era Hasselblad 500 camera, adding a vintage aesthetic— because sometimes the past is the nicest lens through which to view the present. — DA N I E L S TO N E

The Hungarian sky and a runaway inflatable raft are reflected in the lake’s surface.

IN THIS SECTION

Shark Species Declines

E X P L O R E

Space Hurricane Sandcastle Architect A Photographer’s Youth

I L L U M I N AT I N G T H E M Y S T E R I E S — A N D W O N D E R S — A L L A R O U N D U S E V E R Y D AY N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

VO L . 2 4 0 N O. 2

The Dog (et al.) Days I F W E L O V E D AY S T H AT C E L E B R AT E S O M E T H I N G , A N D W E L O V E A N I M A L S , N O W O N D E R W E L O V E D AY S T H AT C E L E B R AT E A N I M A L S .

BY OLIVER WHANG

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARMANDO VEVE

at the front desk of the Katmai National Park and Preserve’s visitors center in late September 2014, when he had the idea.

Katmai, in southern Alaska, is known for its salmon and brown bears. In summer, fish by the ton barrel up the rivers, desperate to spawn, and bears stake out spots where they can grab and gobble up prey in order to pack on fat for the cold months to come.

At certain prime fishing locations, cameras are set up to stream live video.

The “bear cams” attract a loyal online audience and generate a spirited comments section. On that late September day, Fitz was moderating the comments when he saw a diptych one viewer had posted.

On the left was a “before” photo of a brown bear, slack-coated and skinny after months of hibernation. On the right was a photo of that same bear in September—it was larger by half, huge, supersize.

That gave Fitz the idea: Why not post a bunch of R A N G E R M I K E F I T Z WA S

AUGUST 2021

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E X P L O R E

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THE BIG IDEA

bear pictures on Facebook, showing the animals in their lean and enlarged states—and make it a competition? It could help answer the perennial and irresistible question: Which bear is the fattest? And, if the competition drew attention, Fitz could use it to educate people about the bears, the salmon, and the importance of conservation. So began what is now Fat Bear Week: seven days in the fall when viewers vote online, narrowing a tournament bracket of bears down to a single, corpulent victor.

Fat Bear Week could have been just another flighty example of modern humans’ weakness for declaring holidays—that propensity to fill every square on the calendar with commemorations, observances, recognitions, or declarations of a National Day of Something. But since its debut, the competition has 16

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

become an internet sensation. Online participation has grown exponentially. In 2020, more than 600,000 votes were cast, and many major media publications ran articles about it.

Why has Fitz’s brainchild distinguished itself among thousands of holidays? For one thing, Fat Bear Week is funny. And once levity gets people’s attention, the holiday encourages them to show animals some real love. the dozens of holiday calendars that have sprung up online. Pick a random day, week, or month, and you’ll find an almost disturbing number of observances dedicated to a wide breadth of subjects. Days referencing animals specifically are plentiful, even crowded. In 2020, Fat Bear voting G O TO A N Y O F

opened a week after the observances of World Rhino Day and Elephant Appreciation Day (September 22). And the winning bear—747, an absolute monster whose belly nearly touched the ground—was crowned on October 6, also known as Badger Day. The observances’ intents are a mixture: altruistic, commercial, historical, fantastical, serious, funny.

Some involve physical events (like sunset “batwalks” to mark Bat Week, October 24-31). Others exist primarily as hashtags or posts on social media—but the line between a strictly online presence and a more “legitimate” existence is thin, often to the point of disappearance. According to a May 16 calendar entry, National Sea Monkey Day exists to celebrate “the tiny brine shrimp that swim around mail-order aquariums”—and from little more than that, the holiday

Can you spot the animal days?

Days dedicated to animals are sprinkled throughout the year. On the illustration of observances above, how many can you find?

January 20 Penguin Awareness Day, 21 Squirrel Appreciation Day. February 1 National Serpent Day, 2 National Hedgehog Day. March 3 What if Cats and Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs Day, 14 National Learn About Butterflies Day, 20 World Sparrow Day. April 4 World Rat Day, 8 Pygmy Hippo Day, 9 Unicorn Day, 12 World Hamster Day. May 2 World Tuna Day, 8 World Donkey Day, 16 National Sea Monkey Day, 23 World Turtle Day, 24 National Escargot Day. June 21 World Giraffe Day. Second Tuesday of July Cow Appreciation Day. July 29 International Tiger Day. August 12 World Elephant Day, 19 International Orangutan Day. First Saturday in September Vulture Awareness Day. September 8 National Iguana Awareness Day. September/October Fat Bear Week. October 29 National Cat Day (U.S.). November 3 Jellyfish Day. December 13 National Day of the Horse.

AUGUST 2021

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THE BIG IDEA

not only went viral; it was written up in Newsweek.

Getting attention is one point, if not the point, of animal holidays. Groups name days to advocate for conservation, shine a light on animal cruelty, and educate people about biodiversity. Think World Elephant Day (August 12), World Hippo Day (February 15), World Giraffe Day (June 21), International Orangutan Day (August 19), to name just a few. The United Nations designates more than 170 special weeks and days, including World Bee Day on May 20 (birthday of beekeeping pioneer Anton Janša) and World Tuna Day on May 2, to spotlight both tuna’s role in feeding the world and the importance of not overfishing it.

Other holidays seek to rehab the reputations of maligned creatures. World Rat Day (April 4) was started in 2002 by pet-rat enthusiasts. They endorse rats’ good qualities—clean, sociable, intelligent—and decry “unthinking prejudice” against the rodents (let’s move on from the bubonic plague). Also dedicated to image makeovers: Iguana Awareness Day (September 8) and International Vulture Awareness Day (first Saturday in September).

Two days urge ophidiophobics to master their fear of a certain slithering form: National Serpent Day on February 1 and World Snake Day on July 16 (though how the animals or holidays differ from each other isn’t entirely clear). Conversely, the American Tortoise Rescue organization sponsors World Turtle Day (May 23) and—even though turtles and tortoises are not the same—dedicates the day to both.

Of course the difference between International Land Snail Day (November 7) and National Escargot Day (May 24) needn’t be explained. Note that you have six months to repent for celebrating the latter before the former comes around.

On August 20, feel free to squash the honoree. It’s World Mosquito Day, to mark the 1897 discovery that female mosquitoes transmit malaria to humans. to the buzz that these holidays generate, as some businesses have noticed.

Consider Cow Appreciation Day, which sounds like an homage to those beloved bovines. In fact, it’s a promotion on the second Tuesday of July by fast-food restaurant Chick-fil-A, which gives free chicken to customers who dress up in cow-patterned clothes. Yet how an observance pays off isn’t always black and white. Sponsoring National Make A Dog’s Day (October 22) likely helps carmaker Subaru’s T H E R E ’ S C O M M E R C I A L VA L U E

Tributes for Days H O L I D AY S A R E D E S I G N AT E D by UN declarations, acts of Congress—even websites that list observances devised by companies, causes, groups, and individuals. The result is calendars with holiday pileups like June 1. That’s National Hazelnut Cake Day, so eat up … and National Olive Day, so enjoy, but mind the pits! Should you choke on one, though, never fear: It’s also National Heimlich Maneuver Day.* — O W

*ALSO ON JUNE 1: INTERNATIONAL TABLETOP GAME DAY 2021, WORLD MILK DAY, AND NATIONAL NAIL POLISH DAY

reputation—but in 2020, it also helped find homes for more than 20,000 shelter pets.

October is Adopt-a-Dog Month, March 2 is International Rescue Cat Day—and between them, canines and felines have inspired scores of observances.

National Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day (January 22) urges humans to try to see the world through cats’ eyes, the better to answer questions such as: Why won’t you let me on the kitchen counter? It might also make us more appreciative of Hairball Awareness Day, observed on the last Friday in April. And there are many more cat holidays, including Happy Mew Year Day for Cats (January 2), Hug Your Cat Day (June 4), Ginger Cat Appreciation Day (September 1)—and at least three days in tribute to black cats.

Not to be outdone, canines have Lost Dog Awareness Day (April 23), National Black Dog Day (October 1), National Sled Dog Day (February 2), Bulldogs Are Beautiful Day (April 21)—and on and on. For the cat and dog lovers: March 3 is What if Cats and Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs Day. Animal observances aren’t purely for advertisement or philanthropy, fun or seriousness. They reflect the complex ways we humans interact with nature and each other. Take Monkey Day, December 14, which two art students created in 2000 as a lark. As the observance spread through the pair’s art and comics, though, it started drawing attention to declining monkey populations. More than two decades out, the holiday has been recognized on Jane Goodall’s Facebook page and on nationalgeographic.com, and primate conservation has become a central message.

Which brings us back to Fat Bear Week. Mike Fitz, now a resident naturalist and author of a book on the bears, never expected the holiday to get this big. He uses it to bring attention to the salmon runs where the bears get so fat, and to how climate change threatens the ecosystem. During Fat Bear Week 2020, bearcam views on websites including fatbearweek .org topped 2.5 million—and, between donations and matches, a park conservancy fundraiser took in more than $200,000.

It’s a nifty shift from funny clickbait to serious conservation education, but Fitz feels comfortable straddling this line. Two hundred grand from fat bears is something to celebrate. j Oliver Whang is a freelance journalist working for National Geographic, the New Yorker, and the New York Times; he studies philosophy at Princeton University.

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BREAKTHROUGHS

Pharaohs’ new digs

D I S PAT C H E S FROM THE FRONT LINES OF SCIENCE A N D I N N OVAT I O N

No more contrived displays for the 22 royal mummies—including Queen Hatshepsut (right), one of the few female pharaohs—moved to Cairo's new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in a gala parade last spring. Instead, the human remains will lie in dim, tomblike halls with their burial goods. —T O M M U E L L E R

Mummified menagerie

MEDICAL RESEARCH

NANO-SPECIAL DELIVERY T E S T S T R AC K H OW PA RT I C L E S M I G H T C O N V E Y A C A N C E R D R U G D I R E C T LY T O A B R A I N T U M O R .

designed to fight glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain cancer, have failed in clinical trials, often because they’re stopped by specialized blood vessels known as the blood-brain barrier. So Joelle Straehla, a postdoctoral fellow in the Hammond Lab at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, is developing nanoparticles that could someday ferry drugs past the barrier and directly to tumors. To test the system, Straehla injects empty nanoparticles and a fluorescent dye into a mouse’s bloodstream as images of the brain are recorded. The dye illuminates the branchlike blood vessels (nine images above). The particles glow in a contrasting hue; if they reach the brain (shown as black), algorithms can detect each glow. In these photos, specks represent several particles clustered in test animals’ healthy cells— suggesting that if particles reach the brain but not a tumor, they might have other uses, like immunotherapy. —T H E R E S A M AC H E M E R HUNDREDS OF DRUGS

PHOTOS, FROM TOP: KENNETH GARRETT; JOELLE STRAEHLA, JEFFREY WYCKOFF, AND PAULA T. HAMMOND, KOCH INSTITUTE, MIT; CALOGERO SANTORO, UNIVERSIDAD DE TARAPACÁ AND JOSÉ CAPRILES, PENN STATE

Archaeologists excavating the remains of ancient societies in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile have unearthed a menagerie of mummified parrots and macaws. Scholars knew tropical feathers were present in the world’s driest desert and had speculated about their origins.

A new study found that the birds likely were captured in the Amazon— over 300 miles away—taken to the Atacama, and raised for their ornate feathers. Why they were mummified remains a mystery— but they were prized as symbols of wealth and status.

—A N N I E ROT H

%XVLQHVV RZQHU *UDQGPRWKHU 7UX H KXQWHU A life well planned allows you to

While you may not be transitioning your business and sharing a new passion with your granddaughter — your life is just as unique. Backed by sophisticated resources and a team of specialists in every field, a Raymond James financial advisor can help you plan for the dreams you have, the way you care for those you love and how you choose to give back. So you can live your life.

E X P L O R E

INNOVATOR

PATRÍCIA MEDICI

BY ANNIE ROTH

She champions a rare, imperiled species found only in South America.

As a child living on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil, Patrícia Medici spent her playtime “walking along trails in the forest and watching animals.” Her passion for wildlife blossomed into a career: Medici, a conservation biologist and National Geographic Explorer, is the world’s leading expert on the lowland tapir, a large, elusive South American herbivore.

Looking like a cross between a pig and an elephant, tapirs can be six feet long and as heavy as a pony. “They’re so big and powerful but still so gentle,” Medici says. “When they walk through the forest, you can barely hear them.”

When she started studying lowland tapirs in 1996, little was known about them other than that they were at risk of extinction because of poaching and habitat loss. Medici has spent decades tracking tapirs across wetlands and jungles, using GPS telemetry and camera traps. The findings have transformed our understanding of tapir ecology.

In 2020 wildfires devastated about a third of Brazil’s Pantanal region, the world’s largest tropical wetland and a crucial lowland tapir habitat. The fires killed and injured many tapirs, often called the “gardeners of the forest” because their seed-laden droppings promote growth. Medici is focused on saving the remaining tapirs, which she deems crucial to restoring the ecosystem. “We have to make sure that they survive so their habitat will be there for the next generation,” she says. j The National Geographic Society has funded Medici’s work. Learn more about its support of explorers protecting critical species at natgeo.com/impact.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK THIESSEN

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E X P L O R E

DATA S H E E T

DISAPPEARING SHARKS

BY MONICA SERRANO AND SEAN MCNAUGHTON

The Living Planet Index tracks abundance via population trends since 1970 or when data was first available.

The global abundance of ocean sharks and rays has declined by 71 percent since 1970, due to increased fishing and a lack of protections. Worldwide, sharks and rays are accidentally caught as bycatch, but in some places they’re targeted for their meat as well as their fins, gill plates, leather, and liver oil. An estimated 63 million to 273 million sharks were landed in the early 2000s, a peak of shark overfishing with lasting implications.

LARGE SHARKS & RAYS More than 16.4 feet

29% gain over 47 years

MEDIUM-SIZE SHARKS 8.2-16 feet Smooth hammerhead shark

Baseline population Smooth hammerheads are rebounding in areas with protections, such as the northwest Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

Great hammerhead shark 13% loss over 39 years

White shark 37% loss over 42 years

50% of baseline population

Common thresher shark 60% loss over 32 years

Giant manta ray

Reef manta ray

How fast are they disappearing?

Triangles show population change over time studied.

Count at start of studied period

75% loss over 24 years

Population change

86% loss over 15 years

Species

98% loss over 15 years

Years studied

Dusky shark

Oceanic whitetip shark

72% loss over 45 years

Oceanic whitetips are critically endangered; their populations have plummeted by 75 percent.

Extinction

1=Not expected to become extinct soon

0.98 0.86

Going, going, gone?

Corals and oceanic sharks have moved toward extinction quickly in recent decades. Birds and mammals, in comparison, have more steady population trends because of decades of conservation efforts.

0.81

Oceanic Sharks 0=All species extinct

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N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

0.56

Red List Index

1980

Coral

2018

1996

2008

under pressure

370,288

Global oceanic sharks and rays catch Metric tons per year

162,778 Unreported catch

275,047

112,533

157,313

135,908

207,510 Reported catch

0

1970

1980

1990

2000

2014*

Slow growth and low reproductive output make it hard for shark and ray populations to withstand rising demand. Ocean shark catch rates have tripled since 1970—and that’s only reported catches.

Average age at which adults have first offspring: Less than 15 years old

15–30 years old

SMALL RAYS Less than 8.2 feet

More than 30 years old

Porbeagle shark

Pelagic stingray 15% loss over 45 years

Blue shark 26% loss over 11 years

29% loss over 46 years

Shortfin mako shark

Blue sharks are the top species in the fin trade. They’re protected by only a few national catch limits.

38% loss over 48 years

Pelagic thresher shark

Silky shark

62% loss over 35 years

63% loss over 25 years

Illustrations are to scale

Silky sharks live in tropical waters. They’re one of the three most coveted species in the shark fin trade.

0.91

0.90

Devil rays are netted for their gill plates, which are in high demand for use in a Chinese tonic.

0.85

1988

Mammals

2016

1996

91% loss over 15 years

0.85 0.76

Birds

Shortfin devil ray

2008

0.74

Amphibians

1980

2004

National Geographic’s SharkFest celebrates the ocean’s apex predators in July. Watch Shark Beach With Chris Hemsworth and other shark programming on the network, and the feature documentary Playing With Sharks streaming on Disney+.

STUDY PERIODS VARY; SOME SPECIES WERE NOT MONITORED AS EARLY OR CONSISTENTLY AS OTHERS. *LATEST AVAILABLE DATA. SOURCES: NATHAN PACOUREAU AND OTHERS, “HALF A CENTURY OF GLOBAL DECLINE IN OCEANIC SHARKS AND RAYS,” NATURE; OCEANA; IUCN

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PLANET POSSIBLE

Suppose we clean up our messes and recycle what can be salvaged. Isn’t that how Mother Nature would want us to behave?

For more stories about how to help the planet, go to natgeo.com/planet

BY CHRISTINA NUNEZ

3

BUY RECYCLED

1

Patio Decor From Plastic Sprucing up the backyard? You’ll find many eco-friendly options for outdoor accessories, from hardy, brightly patterned mats that once were soda bottles to biodegradable doormats made from coconut husks.

VOLUNTEER

Pick Up Some Good, Clean Beach Vibes Coastlines catch all kinds of trash: food wrappers, bottles—and lately, face masks. For International Coastal Cleanup Month, in September, environmental groups and local authorities are organizing virtual and in-person activities.

In 2019 Ocean Conservancy volunteers worldwide collected more than 20 million pounds of beach trash.

Search online for a beach plus “cleanup” to find events—or start your own pick-up posse.

5

COOK OUT

TO GRILL WITHOUT S I N G E I N G T H E P L A N E T, AV O I D L I G H T E R F L U I D AND EA SY-LIGHT CHARCOAL, WHICH EMIT CHEMICALS. OR TRY A GRILL RUN ON PELLETS OF COMPRESSED W O O D S C R A P S , WA S T E THAT BURNS WITH LIT TLE P OLLUTION.

4

S TAY

SHADED

S U N B L O C K S T H AT S TAY O N

One way to ensure your sun protection is effective and reef safe is to wear UVblocking clothes, which reduce the need for lotions or sprays. Look for a UPF, or ultraviolet protection factor, rating.

ECO-EXERCISE

We have Sweden to thank for the green sport called plogging. From the Swedish term plocka upp (pick up), it combines jogging and picking up trash. The activity has been adopted around the world—and adapted: Consider going pliking or plalking where you live, to get fit as you pick up litter.

PHOTOS (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT): GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO; SHUTTERSTOCK/STOCKCREATIONS; ROMAN MILERT, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; SHUTTERSTOCK/EVGENIIAND; ZELJKO DANGUBIC, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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DECODER

the iridescent beauty of the northern and southern lights are more or less understood, yet they can still befuddle scientists.

Case in point: When the solar wind is weak, a fuzzy patch of auroral lights has sometimes appeared over the north magnetic pole like an ephemeral, glowing spaceship. Early this year researchers were finally able to explain this phenomenon by analyzing data recorded by U.S. Cold War–era satellites on August 20, 2014. They reported that the patch spun in a vortex-like manner; had a calm center with strong “winds” of electrically excited gas, or plasma, zipping around it; and was a gigantic THE PHYSIC S BEHIND

funnel up to 1,700 miles across and more than 31,000 miles high. The scientists dubbed it a “space hurricane” and adapted a 3D model of the movement of magnetic fluids to show how the hurricane formed. The weak solar wind, combined with the alignment of the north magnetic poles of the sun and Earth, constricted a normally expansive swath of northern lights into a tight, rotating spot above magnetic north. Above Earth is the only place these space hurricanes have been spotted—so far.

A QUIET STORM

On Earth, hurricanes are fed from below as moist air rises over a warm ocean. In space, hurricanes need quiet conditions, such as a flipped polarity and low solar wind speed and density.

FLIPPED POLARITY

An expansive aurora happens when the solar wind is strong and Earth’s magnetic field points north as the sun’s points south. If the solar wind is weak and the sun’s magnetic field points north, the aurora contracts into a tight spot above Earth’s north magnetic pole—good conditions for a space hurricane.

SPACE HURRICANE

Electron precipitation, auroral ovals, a glowing vortex 31,000 miles high and 1,700 miles across: That’s hurricane season at Earth’s north magnetic pole.

B Y RO B I N G E O RG E A N D R E W S A N D JA S O N T R E AT I L LU ST RAT I O N BY MARK GARLICK

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EVE CONANT AND HEIDI SCHULTZ, NGM STAFF SOURCE: QING-HE ZHANG, SHANDONG UNIVERSITY

ELECTRON PRECIPITATION

Electrons rain down from the solar wind onto the Earth’s magnetic field lines and ping off of gases such as oxygen and nitrogen in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

This releases multihued flashes of light known as an aurora.

SWIRLING OVAL

As the opening above the magnetic pole, or auroral oval, contracts, the swirling plasma speeds up and forms a vortex.

THE EYE

Like hurricanes in Earth’s lower atmosphere, space hurricanes have a calm eye. Up here, winds of plasma—not air—rush around it at breakneck speeds.

Strong solar wind when the sun’s magnetic field is opposite the Earth’s

Magnetic field

Wide auroral oval

Weak solar wind when the sun’s magnetic field is aligned with the Earth’s

Space hurricane funnel

Contracted auroral oval

How normal auroras form

How a space hurricane forms

Electrons that the sun emits rain down on Earth’s magnetic field, causing auroras as they collide with gases. When the sun’s magnetic field is opposite that of Earth, it creates a wide opening, or auroral oval, which spreads out and disperses the aurora.

In 2014 the sun’s magnetic field was aligned with the Earth’s, creating a weak interaction and shrinking the auroral oval. Electron rain fell on the constricted oval, making it brighter. As the aurora spun, it became very tight, stretching high above the Earth’s surface.

AUGUST 2021

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ARTIFACT

JAPAN’S CENTURIES-LONG PASSION FOR PAPER P H OTO G R A P H BY JAMES WHITLOW DELANO

The world of washi MINO’S UDATSU DISTRICT

This historic quarter is lined with former washi merchant houses—some preserved as museums, others transformed into cafés, shops, and galleries. In October the streets glow with washi lanterns during the Akari Art Festival.

MINO-WASHI MUSEUM

fantastical Mount Fuji scenes are printed on it, designer Yumi Katsura makes bridal gowns from it, and film director David Lynch creates lithographs with it. Called washi, Japanese handcrafted paper can be found in everything from umbrellas and jewelry to coronavirus-blocking face masks. But its history goes back at least 1,300 years.

Traditionally used for scrolls, books, and screens, washi received UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status in 2014, based on the papermaking customs of these three places: Hamada in Shimane Prefecture, Mino in Gifu Prefecture, and Ogawa/Higashi-chichibu in Saitama Prefecture. “The designation wasn’t about washi or the people who make it—it was given to the techniques,” says Takeshi Kano, one of eight artisans qualified to create Honminoshi, Mino’s highest grade of washi. This must be “made entirely by hand and use only three ingredients: paper mulberry, water, and neri, a plant mucilage that ensures the even dispersal of paper fibers,” he says.

The method employed by Kano—and centuries of artisans before him—involves a time-consuming process that begins with purifying the mulberry bark fibers and forming a pulp. He then dips a frame into the pulp and gently rocks it until the crisscrossing fibers form a sodden sheet of paper. After a period of drying, classic washi is ready to go out into the modern world. — R O B G O S S A RT I S T YAYO I KU S A M A’ S

Exhibits highlight the paper’s versatility and detail the washi-making process, while workshops offer short, hands-on lessons in the craft.

ECHIZEN KAMI FESTIVAL

Washi production isn’t limited to the UNESCOdesignated areas. In Fukui Prefecture’s rural Echizen region, there are more than 60 paper mills and a tribute to the legendary goddess of paper at Okamoto Otaki Shrine, which honors washi’s divine influence with this annual festival in early May. OZU WASHI

Opened in 1653, this wholesaler in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district stocks all sorts of washi and products made from it.

Visitors can attend washimaking workshops and tour a small museum.

Master calligrapher Tadashi Kawamata uses washi, a traditional type of paper that is still ubiquitous in Japan.

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TOOL KIT

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PHOTOGRAPH BY REBECCA HALE

spends a week at the beach building sandcastles—big ones. An artist and former architect, Gagnon picked up the seaside pastime more than 20 years ago as a way to entertain his young daughter. His creations have since advanced from simple structures to elaborately sculpted tableaux with spires reaching as high as five feet. Gagnon’s sandcastles are intentionally impressionistic and built near the tide line, where water and wind can reshape them. “There’s an eternal quality to the form,” he says, “but an ephemeral quality to the object.” — C AT H E R I N E Z U C K E R M A N E V E RY S U M M E R , LO U GAG N O N

1. Teapot A relic from his daughter’s childhood, this toy is Gagnon’s favorite tool.

He uses it for “wet carving,” gently splashing away sand in areas where he wants arched openings and doorways.

2. Big bucket This one is for transporting water from the ocean; Gagnon uses other, bottomless buckets as foundation molds.

3. Fine carving tools These allow Gagnon to add double windows and other symmetrical details. He designed the black trefoil tool to form three-column clusters.

4. PVC pipe Weighted with sand and water, it’s ideal for tamping down sand in molds.

5. Shapers Domes are formed by running the underside of the brim of these hatlike tools in a circular motion over edges.

6. Trowels These are great for making patterns and, literally, cutting corners.

7. Sand scapers Stamped into moist sand, these tools quickly shape forms such as stairs. Gagnon made the two sand scapers toward the right.

8. Small shovel Gagnon uses this to move and dig sand and test its quality. “The first thing I do every morning is poke the sand with the shovel,” he says. “If it sounds crunchy, it’s no good.”

AUGUST 2021

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THROUGH THE LENS

A 1980s family photo: Anastasia Taylor-Lind heads toward her mother, Eleonore Lind, who’s taking the photograph as her father, Bethlehem Taylor, looks on. Horses Star and Blue wait to pull the wagon that was Taylor-Lind’s home.

STORIES FROM THE ROAD M O M’S P O E T RY R E A D I N G S , DA D ’S T R AV E L YA R N S , DAU G H T E R’S K E E N E Y E , T H E P H O T O G R A P H S I N A B O O K . W H O ’S T O S AY W H AT S H A P E S A C A R E E R?

B Y A N A S TA S I A TAY L O R- L I N D

My dad was from inner-city London but had a dream of heading out to the countryside and living in a horse-drawn wagon.

I was born on the road in 1981 and spent my first few years of life traveling in southern England with my parents and our horses. Eventually, my parents bought a field in Devon where we lived in caravans [trailers].

Until I was 13 years old, we had no running water or electricity—so, obviously, no TV. But my dad was a great storyteller; I grew up engrossed in tales about his hippie-trail travels throughout Europe, America, and Asia. And my mom read children’s novels and poetry aloud to me every night at bedtime. Early on, I G R E W U P T R AV E L I N G .

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I thought I might like to be a war poet when I grew up, like Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen.

In high school I took a photography class and came across a book with images that British photographer Don McCullin took in the Vietnam War. They were gritty black-and-white pictures of wounded young marines tending to each other. These photos were very dramatic—and romantic too. They felt familiar, reminding me of the World War I poetry that I knew.

Until then, it had never crossed my mind that I could be a photojournalist, and in some unconscious way, I must have also thought that photographing war would be easier than writing poems about it.

PHOTO: COURTESY ANASTASIA TAYLOR-LIND

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THROUGH THE LENS

So I told my parents I wanted to become a war photographer. My mom freaked out—she didn’t want me working in dangerous places—but my dad was very supportive from the beginning. He thought it would be a great way to live my life.

I studied documentary photography at university, and in 2003 I went to Iraqi Kurdistan to make a story about a women’s unit of the peshmerga that had been fighting alongside the British and American forces.

My dad had traveled through Kurdistan in the late 1970s and told amazing stories about the hospitality he’d received from strangers there. While everyone else in my family was worried about my going on my first overseas reporting trip, my dad told me I’d never be lonely or hungry or in need of a place to stay in Iraq. He was right.

He also persuaded my grandma to lend me money for the trip, a thousand pounds in cash. To keep it safe, I put the 20-pound notes in plastic bags under the insoles of my boots. With 500 pounds in each boot—then a huge amount of money to me—I crossed the border from Turkey. I was 22 and very unworldly; I didn’t know it’s customary to take your shoes off when you enter homes in the Middle East. I learned this as soon as I arrived in Dihok and had to leave my cash-filled boots on the front porch.

I stationed myself with a small unit of maybe two or three dozen peshmerga women on an army base outside Slemani. I lived there for a few weeks, photographing every aspect of their daily lives. I didn’t have a lot of experience in making photo stories, but I knew a good start would be to make pictures of everything, day to day—the women sleeping, brushing their teeth in the morning, training, guarding checkpoints, cooking dinner. I didn’t know it then, but this is how you tell a story of someone’s life—through small details. For years now, I’ve documented different people in different places doing much the same thing.

The picture you see here is of a soldier named Gashaw Jaffar, at the checkpoint where she was standing guard, armed with a Kalashnikov. I had never entered my work in any contests until I submitted this picture to a photography competition run by the Guardian, a U.K.-based independent newspaper.

To my disbelief, I was awarded first prize.

David Bailey, the English portrait photographer, was one of the contest judges. He likened my portrait to the famous picture of Che Guevara by Alberto Korda. I was given 5,000 pounds—more money than I’d ever had in my life—and a commission from the Guardian to go back to Kurdistan and photograph the women combatants of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a separatist group. That prize was my first big break as a photojournalist.

I revisited the same peshmerga base in 2014, a decade after my first trip. Gashaw had retired, but many of the younger women I’d met before were still there. This time they were fighting a new enemy: ISIS. On a tight schedule, I had only two days to make 36

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

I STATIONED MYSELF WITH A SMALL UNIT OF PESHMERGA WOMEN ON AN ARMY BASE. THIS IS HOW YOU TELL A STORY OF SOMEONE’S LIFE—THROUGH SMALL DETAILS.

Soldier Gashaw Jaffar guards a checkpoint at the Farmanday peshmerga base outside Slemani, Kurdistan, Iraq, in September 2003.

This portrait was TaylorLind’s first submission to any photography contest, and it won first prize.

Hear Taylor-Lind talk about her life and work in season three, episode seven of our podcast, Overheard at National Geographic. Learn more at natgeo.com/overheard.

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Taylor-Lind’s work. Learn more about the Society’s support at natgeo.com/impact.

portraits of the women and their unit commander, Col. Rangeen Yusuf. A month after I photographed her, Yusuf became the first peshmerga woman to be killed in combat against ISIS, on October 11, 2014.

From a young age, I had wanted to see with my own eyes what war looked like. In Kurdistan I learned that war didn’t look like a Don McCullin photograph—and that it wasn’t like a Wilfred Owen poem either.

I think my interest in war coverage stemmed from a naive belief that telling stories about violence might

be a solution to violence itself. As a kid, I assumed that wars happened because nobody knew about them, and if people took pictures, then they could help stop wars. Of course, I now know that’s not true.

My father always believed I would become a photojournalist. He supported my career, proudly showing copies of the magazines I was published in to his friends, until he died in 2017.

My mom eventually became a psychotherapist and a mediator whose work presents solutions to violence.

PHOTO: ANASTASIA TAYLOR-LIND

What my mother does has inspired me to refine how I make pictures of war. Now I am more intentional about including the perspectives of women. I avoid harmful tropes that reduce real people to characters in international war stories. And most of all, I focus on the daily experiences of individuals. Even in conflict zones, people keep on living. j Anastasia Taylor-Lind, a National Geographic photographer and storyteller based in London, has worked in conflict zones in Ukraine, Iraq, Gaza, Afghanistan, and Nagorno-Karabakh.

AUGUST 2021

37

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AUGUST 2021 Gladiator Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 40 Glass Frogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 72 Hunger in America . . . . . . P. 86 Kalahari Climate .......... P. 110

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‘ THE INTERNATIONAL UNION F O R C O N S E RVAT I O N O F N AT U R E LISTS 10 GLASS FROG SPECIES A S CRITICALLY ENDANGERED, 28 A S ENDANGERED, AND 21 A S V U L N E R A B L E T O E X T I N C T I O N.’

ANCIENT ROME’S

FIGHT CLUB R E A L G L A D I ATO R S W E R E N ’ T Q U I T E L I K E T H O S E I N

M OV I E S . T H E I R B AT T L E S W E R E M O R E A B O U T P U T T I N G ON A GOOD SHOW THAN KILLING ONE ANOTHER. B Y A N D R E W C U R RY

PHOTOGRAPHS BY RÉMI BÉNALI

A RT B Y F E R N A N D O G . B A P T I S TA

Reenactors clash in the dust of the 1,900-yearold Roman arena in Arles, France. Their gladiator contests have helped researchers get a better understanding of this ancient blood sport, which captivated Romans for centuries.

41

Built in A.D. 238, the amphitheater of El Jem in Tunisia was based on the Colosseum in Rome and once was the third largest venue in the Roman Empire. For the 35,000 fans who packed its seats, gladiators were the main draw.

Zakhar Nikmatulin has been fascinated by gladiators ever since he watched the 1960 movie Spartacus.

The scene on his back took tattoo artist Alexander Kosach 25 hours to draw and ink in his Moscow studio.

C H A PT E R

I A R L E S, F R A N C E

THE TUNNEL UNDER THE ROMAN AMPHITHEATER in Arles, France, is dark and cool. The shade is a welcome relief from the blazing Mediterranean sun beating down on the amphitheater’s sandstrewn arena and stone bleachers.

The gladiator helmet I’ve just put on, though, is stifling. A replica of the head protection worn by a Roman gladiator almost 2,000 years ago, the dented, scratched helmet weighs more than 13 pounds—three times as heavy as a football helmet, and far less comfortable. It has a tangy metallic smell, as though I’ve put my head inside a sweaty penny.

Through the bronze grate covering my eyes, I can make out a pair of men in loincloths warming up for a fight. Metal armguards jingle as one bounces on the balls of his feet, his stubby, hooked sword clutched in a leathergloved hand. As I shift uncomfortably, his partner lifts his sword and offers to hit me in the head, just to demonstrate how solid the helmet is.

I shrug. Anything for a story, right? Then their trainer, a deeply tanned, wiry Frenchman named Brice Lopez, intervenes. “He’s not trained for it,” Lopez says sharply. “He doesn’t have the muscles. You’d snap his neck.”

A former French police officer and combat trainer with a black belt in jujitsu, Lopez knows what a real fight looks like. Twenty-seven years ago he took a detour into ancient fighting styles. After commissioning working replicas of gladiator weapons and armor, he spent years thinking about how they’d be used in a fight to 46

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Experts debate whether the “thumbs-down” gesture urging the victor to finish off his opponent, as portrayed in an 1872 painting (right), is fact or fiction.

A fresco from Pompeii (above) reveals that wounded gladiators signaled surrender with a lifted finger. Each fighter represented a sizable investment, so sponsors favored sparing gladiators’ lives.

“POLLICE VERSO,” BY JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME, IAN DAGNALL COMPUTING/ALAMY STOCK (ABOVE); ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK OF POMPEII, ITALY (TOP)

North UNITED KINGDOM

(York) Eboracum Deva Lindum (Lincoln) (Chester) Coriniu m Do Calleva b Atrebatum (Cire unno nce rum (Silchester) ste Camulodunum r) (Colchester) (Caerleon) Isca

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Gladiatorial Venue Capacity

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Hadrian’s Wall

be

Vetera (Xanten)

Dubris More than 30,000 spectators Isca (Dover) Durnovaria Dumnoniorum 10,000–30,000 (Dorchester) (Exeter) Fewer than 10,000 Augusta Ambianorum Unknown (Lillebonne) Juliobona

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Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne) Portus Itius BELG. Bonna (Bonn) Samarobriva CZECHIA Durocortorum (Amiens) Ludus, Mogontiacum (Mainz) (Reims) gladiator school LUX. Augusta Treverorum (Trier) Vindobona Se Divodurum (Bayeux) Augustodurum (Vienna) ine Caralis Roman provincial capital e b (Metz) u Grannum Argentorate an (Paris) Lutetia D Major city Lutetia (Grand) (Strasbourg) Augusta Vindelicum (Paris) (Modern name) F R A N C E (Augsburg) Aventicum Scarabantia Caesarodunum Darioritum (Avenches) Iuvavum (Sopron) Roman main road ire (Tours) Vesontio o (Vannes) (Salzburg) A U S T R I A L Augustodunum (Besançon) MODERN POLITICAL BOUNDARIES Vindonissa (Autun) (Nantes) Portus Namnetum Virunum ARE SHOWN IN WHITE. Curia (Chur) SWITZ. Limonum 100 mi S P (Poitiers) SLOV. L Octodurum a Aquileia 100 km (Limoges) Augustoritum G A L L I A (Martigny) Siscia Axima (Sisak) (Saintes) Mediolanum (Aime) CROATIA Vesunna Lugdunum Segusio m Po Burdigala u n Petrucoriorum (Lyon) A T L A N T I C O CE A N a Bononia (Bologna) (Susa) (Bordeaux) diol (Périgueux) ) Me Ravenna (Milan I T (Agen) Aginnum Ariminum (Rimini) A Genua Cemenelum L num Nemausus (Genoa) u (Cimiez) d Y o g Lucus Augusti e Ancona Brigantium (Rodez) S Forum Julii (Nîmes) (Lugo) (A Coruña) Castrum Pompaelo (Toulouse) Tolosa (Fréjus) Florentia Novum (Pamplona) Legio Massilia Narbo (Florence) Asturica Augusta (León) (Marseille) (Narbonne) (Astorga) Bracara Augusta Ebr Cosa ANDORRA Arelate (Arles) o (Braga) Caesaraugusta (Aléria) Alalia I TA L Clunia IA Emporiae (Zaragoza) CORSICA (ROME) ROMA Salmantica Portus Cale (Ampurias) um (Salamanca) ant ia Barcino (Barcelona) PORTUGAL Dertosa H I S P A N I A Olbia AREA EN Conimbriga Tarraco LARGED (Tarragona) S P A I N Scallabis SARDINIA Tyrrhenian Segobriga (Santarém) Tagus Toletum Saguntum Sea Palma (Toledo) Valentia (Sagunto) S. Olisipo (Valencia) I Caralis A T S Emerita Augusta C GU (Lisbon) (Cagliari) RI Panormus (Mérida) AU EA L (Palermo) A B V Pax Julia S e a n e a n Corduba (Córdoba) a (Beja) Lilybaeum r e r SICILY Italica (Marsala) Hippo Regius d i t e (Annaba) Hispalis M esarea Utica Carthago Agrigentum Carthago Nova Malaca (Seville) (Carthage) (Agrigento) Ca rchell) l (Skikda) Rusicade (Cartagena) (Málaga) o I Che ( (Cádiz) Gades Cirta Uthina Cartennae (Constantine) Carteia Tingis Tigava Castra Hadrumetum (Sousse) Sitifis Theveste (Tangier) (Sétif) Thapsus (Bekalta) (Tébessa) Rusadir AFRICA Portus Magnus Lixus (Melilla) Lambaesis T (Bettioua) Acholla h am ugadi Thysdrus (Henchir Botria) A I N lis A i T b E R Gemellae lu (El Jem) U A Sala Vo M Pomaria A L G E R I A Leptis Magna (Tlemcen) Oea M O R O C C O TUNISIA (Tripoli) mid Empir -sec e’s Sabratha ond exte cen nt, tury A

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Gladiatorial venues were established in and around cities throughout the Roman Empire. Purpose-built amphitheaters dot the western provinces, while in the east older Greek theaters were converted to host bloody combat and animal displays. All played a prominent role in urban life.

AMPHITHEATER CONSTRUCTION All amphitheaters followed the same oval design but used a variety of building methods and materials. Some featured hypogea—subterranean galleries—beneath the arena floor.

Mostly dug into ground

Partially above ground

Histonium Alba Fucens Tibur (Vasto) (Tivoli) Marruvium (ROME) Larinum Frusino ) (Larino) Luceria (Frosinone) sinum ino Ostia (Lucera) s s Albana a Venafrum Colosseum (Venafro) Aquinum Antium esia (Aquino) entum Tel enevevento) (Anzio) B en NA (B L ATI Capua Ty Compsa Mt. Vesuvius rr N ola he nia Puteoli Nuceria n S Neapolis 25 mi (Nocera) ea p (Naples) 25 km Po m Paestum

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Many of the smaller amphitheaters in the region were built in settlements of legionary veterans, or coloniae.

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Carnuntum (Petronell) Aquincum

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Durostorum (Silistra)

Chersonesus (Sevastopol) Tomis (Constanţa)

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Trapezus (Trabzon) Sinope

S I L I TA RI B in g e l id u BOS. &

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Amisus (Samsun) Satala Byzantium Pompeiopolis Nova e (Svishto g r a n um (Constantinople, v) HER. d e) Amastris Istanbul) I L opolis Serdica BULGARIA olis egal (Amasra) SERBIA p (Zile) Zela M L o Heraclea (Sofia) p Y Pontica Y ilip div) Salonae R I Gangra (Çankırı) Hadrianopolis v E o l (Solin) MONT. C KOS. Ancyra is (Edirne) K Nicomedia Tigr Nicopolis U (Ankara) (İzmit) R T H R A C I A M Caesarea ad Nestum Perinthus (Kayseri) U N. MACED. Nicaea (İznik) Maroneia ALB. R Melitene Stobi T O Cyzicus Prusa (Malatya) Dorylaeum I N ATIA M (Bursa) Dyrrhachium VIA EGN Pergamum (Durrës) I A Anazarbus Thessalonica Iconium (Bergama) S Cyrrhus Apollonia (Pojan) (Thessaloníki) A (Konya) Euphrates Antiochia GREECE A S I A Tarsus Brundisium ar Antiochia Ambracia Smyrna Ta en (Brindisi) Sagalassos Tralleis Dura Europos ra n tum Seleucia Pieria (Antakya) (Árta) (İzmir) t o) SYRIA (Samandağ) Aphrodisias Side Ephesus Nicopolis Delphi Laodicea Raphaneae Croton (Crotone) Perge Miletus Palmyra e Athenae Ionian (Homs) Emesa a I Salamis Corinth (Athens) Sea CYPRUS Tripolis Cnidus ACHAEA Rhodus Myra IRAQ Rhegium Sparta Heliopolis A Rhodes (Reggio di Calabria) AT Damascus Paphos LEBANON T Catana (Catania) Tyrus VIA M

S

Oescus

b

Marcianopolis

(

P (P h

u Da n

A

(

eg

T

ea

n

S

R

DIO

C LE T

AN A

S

Syracuse

E

CRETE

M e d i t e r r a n e a n

P Ptolemais

Cyrene

S e a

I

I

Y

A

R

R

e ut

E

Memphis

SAUDI ARABIA

SINAI

A E G Y P T U S Oxyrhynchus

R

Hermopolis

E

G

Y

P

Ni le

T Ptolemais (Faiyum)

Built into natural slope of terrain

MA

JORDAN h e r op olis Petra

El

Pelusium

Alexandria

Consummate roadbuilders, Romans designed extensive thoroughfares primarily for troop movement and trade. Gladiators used them to travel from city to city to perform.

B

Dead Sea

VIA

Roman highways

L

(Bosra)

Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem) Gaza

(Shahhat)

Charax

Nova Trajana Bostra

Caesarea

IS

M

ISRAEL

Ierápetra

Gortyn

Freestanding

Coptos (Qift)

e

d S

Thebes (Luxor)

MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK AND TAYLOR MAGGIACOMO, NGM STAFF. MARTIN VON WYSS SOURCES: BARRINGTON ATLAS OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN WORLD; JOHN HANSON, UNIVERSITY OF READING; SCOTT ORTMAN, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER

e

a

FOR EVERY 10 GLADIATORS WHO ENTERED THE RING, NINE PROBABLY LIVED TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY. the death like the ones portrayed in countless movies and books about gladiators.

But the more he studied gladiator weaponry and armor, the less sense it made. Loaded down with shields, metal leg guards and armguards, and hefty, full-coverage bronze helmets, many gladiators carried almost as much protective gear into the arena as Roman soldiers wore into battle. Yet their swords were typically about a foot long, barely bigger than a chef’s knife. “Why,” Lopez asks, “would you bring 20 kilos [45 pounds] of protective gear to a knife fight?”

His conclusion: Gladiators weren’t trying to kill each other; they were trying to keep each other alive. They spent years training in order to stage showy fights, most of which did not end in death. “It’s a real competition, but not a real fight,” says Lopez, who now runs a gladiator research and reenactment troupe called ACTA. “There’s no choreography, but there is good intent—you’re not my adversary; you’re my partner. Together we have to make the best show possible.”

Over the past two decades, researchers have unearthed evidence that backs up some of Lopez’s take on gladiator combat and challenges the popular perception of these ancient spectacles. A few gladiators were criminals or prisoners of war condemned to punishment by combat, but most were professional fighters— the boxers, mixed martial arts fighters, or football players of their day. Some had families waiting for them outside the ring.

Being a gladiator could be lucrative, and was sometimes a career choice, literary sources suggest. Brave performances in the arena could transform gladiators into popular heroes, and even earn prisoners their freedom. Gladiators probably spent most of their time training or in exhibition contests.

Perhaps most surprising, the majority of 50

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

fights did not end in death. For every 10 gladiators who entered the ring, nine probably lived to fight another day.

C H A PT E R

II P O M P E I I , I TA LY Romans thrilled to gladiatorial fights. They were a favorite subject of Roman artists, re-created in mosaics, frescoes, marble reliefs, glassware, clay trinkets, and bronze ornaments found across the Roman world. Nearly every sizable city and town had an arena of its own, with about 300 documented from Britain to the deserts of Jordan.

These ancient contests also exert an irresistible pull on the modern imagination. Thanks to countless, often erroneous portrayals in film and literature, gladiators are one of the most familiar—and misunderstood—aspects of Roman culture.

That’s because Roman writers spent surprisingly little time discussing the details of gladiator games, probably because the games were so familiar. (How often do you write to your friends about what a hit is in baseball, or how many players there are on a football team?) To reconstruct the real story of the ring, archaeologists and historians have to find clues in art, at excavations, and by reading between the lines of ancient texts.

Like many things about ancient Rome, some of the best preserved evidence for gladiators comes from Pompeii, south of modern-day Naples, Italy.

Once a thriving city, Pompeii was buried suddenly by a volcanic eruption in A.D. 79.

Walking the city’s eerily well preserved streets today, visitors see reminders of gladiator games everywhere. There’s the 22,000-seat F O R N E A R LY 6 0 0 Y E A R S ,

amphitheater on the east side of town, the brooding bulk of Mount Vesuvius visible from the upper rows of seats. Faded advertisements in the city center plug upcoming fights. Mosaics and frescoes capture highlights of past matches.

Just outside the city’s theater, I stoop to check out stick-figure fighters scratched into faded red plaster at a child’s eye level.

In 1766 early excavators uncovered a trove of gladiator armor at a site on the edge of town that had been turned into a training facility and residence for fighters after an earthquake damaged the local gladiator school. It’s safe to assume that even their practice sessions drew crowds.

“They were like sexy rock stars,” says Katherine Welch, an art historian at New York University. Take Celadus the Thracian, a promising newcomer to Pompeii with three wins under his helmet who was “the sigh of the girls,” according to an admiring graffito—or his trident-wielding compatriot Crescens, “netter of young girls by night.”

Inscriptions found at Pompeii suggest gladiator troupes traveled from town to town, often followed by loyal fans, as part of a sword-wielding road show. One advertisement discovered just outside the city walls encouraged locals to head to Nola, a 20-mile hike due north, to catch 20 pairs of gladiators facing off over the course of three days.

Even after three centuries of excavations, archaeologists continue to uncover fresh evidence at Pompeii. In 2019 archaeologists working in a narrow alley on the north side of town came upon a fresco of two gladiators with what look like ostrich plumes adorning their bronze helmets painted on the wall of a small tavern. Alain Genot, an archaeologist at the museum of antiquity in Arles, says it includes unprecedented detail: One of the fighters is wearing pants under his leg protectors. And after my close escape in Arles, I’m pleased to learn that cords hanging below his chin may represent straps used to keep his heavy helmet firmly in place.

Bloody wounds on the bodies of both men show the fight has taken a toll. But there is a clear loser: One of the fighters, who is bleeding from a gash on his exposed chest and seems to be doubled over in pain, has dropped his shield and raised his forefinger. The gesture, repeated in many gladiator depictions, is the ancient equivalent of “tapping out” of a fight.

Other artwork from around the Roman world suggests that a colorful cast of helpers and

hangers-on waited in the wings, or even shared the arena floor. Musicians warmed up the crowd as the gladiators took their places, and perhaps added dramatic flourishes during the fights.

Helmets and weapons were carried into the ring during a prefight parade led by the editor, or sponsor of the games.

Key figures were the referees, who were responsible for enforcing a strict sense of fair play. In one depiction, captured on a small pot found in the Netherlands, a referee holds up his staff to halt a fight as an assistant runs in with a replacement sword.

“You don’t lose the fight because you lose your weapon,” Genot says. “When you imagine gladiator fights as a sporting event, you cannot imagine there are no rules.”

Most important, inscriptions promising “fights without reprieve”—in other words, to the death—and “fights with sharp weapons” suggest life-threatening clashes were unusual enough to be worthy of special mention.

And like any good sporting event, there were stats aplenty for fans to obsess over. Across the Roman world, gladiator wins, losses, and draws are scratched on walls and chiseled onto tombstones. The results of many matchups will never be known. But imagine the knot in the stomach of Valerius—who a scratched graffito at Pompeii reports survived 25 combats—as he faced off against Viriotas, a veteran of 150.

Gladiators were more than mere entertainment. Literary accounts make it clear that by fighting—and sometimes dying—bravely, gladiators reinforced Roman concepts of manliness and virtue. (Except, that is, for the net-wielding retiarius, whose tricky tactics and long-distance trident attacks made him the arena’s designated baddie.) “Gladiators, whether ruined men or barbarians, what wounds they endure!” the Roman orator Cicero wrote around 50 B.C. “When condemned men fight with swords, there could be no sturdier training for the eye against pain and death.” by many fans, gladiators ranked at the bottom of ancient Rome’s rigidly hierarchical society, along with prostitutes, pimps, and actors. By law, gladiators were considered property, not people. They could be killed at the whim of whoever was paying for their fight. “That’s fundamental to understanding how the Romans could sit in the stands and EVEN AS THEY WERE ADORED

ANCIENT ROME’S FIGHT CLUB

51

By A.D. 150, the cost of gladiator fights was spiraling out of control as political hopefuls sponsored ever more spectacular games to outdo their rivals. To rein in spending, Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius set price limits. His

decree is preserved on a bronze plaque (left) that may have hung outside an amphitheater near Seville, Spain.

A trove of gladiator armor and weapons uncovered at Pompeii in 1766 includes fullface helmets and short

swords (top), as well as elaborately decorated leg protectors and shields (above). Such protective gear helped prevent lethal wounds while guaranteeing the exciting, unpredictable bouts Roman spectators loved to see.

MUSEO ARQUEOLÓGICO NACIONAL, MADRID (LEFT); MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO NAZIONALE DI NAPOLI, ITALY (FOUR, ABOVE)

Losing your weapon didn’t mean losing the fight—or your life. On this pot found in the Netherlands, a heavily armored gladiator (center) shows a referee his broken sword as an assistant runs in with a new weapon (right).

MUSEUM HET VALKHOF, NIJMEGEN, NETHERLANDS

Some scholars believe this bronze figure (left) depicts a victorious female gladiator holding her curved dagger aloft.

Others disagree. “No gladiator is depicted with so little protective clothing,” says Harvard University’s Kathleen

Coleman. Gladiators were a favorite subject for Roman artists. A muscular statuette (top left) found in France is just under eight inches tall. Armor from Pompeii is decorated with mythological figures such as the goddess Minerva

(top right) and a griffin (above). Fanciful tintinnabulum chimes (above left), uncovered at Herculaneum and meant to keep away evil spirits, show a gladiator doing combat with his own phallus, which has transformed into a wild beast.

MUSEUM FÜR KUNST UND GEWERBE HAMBURG, GERMANY (LEFT); MUSÉE DÉPARTEMENTAL ARLES ANTIQUE, FRANCE (TOP LEFT); MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO NAZIONALE DI NAPOLI, ITALY (THREE)

A FEW GLADIATORS WERE CRIMINALS OR PRISONERS OF WAR CONDEMNED TO COMBAT, BUT MOST WERE PROFESSIONAL FIGHTERS. watch this happening,” says Harvard University classicist Kathleen Coleman.

In the early days of gladiator fights—likely staged as part of funeral rituals as long ago as 300 B.C.—the combatants probably were prisoners of war or condemned criminals. But as the games evolved into a central feature of life across the empire in the first century B.C., they became more organized, and audience expectations rose.

Dozens of gladiator schools popped up to meet the demand for well-trained volunteer fighters.

Because Roman citizens couldn’t be executed without a trial, some aspiring fighters signed away their citizenship and became enslaved as a highrisk way to pay off debts or escape poverty. Others were criminals sentenced to serve as gladiators—a lighter punishment than execution, because there was a chance of being set free someday.

Still, slavery meant something different in Rome than it did centuries later in the American South. For one, it had nothing to do with race, and some experts believe gladiators were rarely chained or shackled. And despite their lowly status in society, successful fighters could earn a lot of money. Some may even have moonlighted as bodyguards for rich patrons. “Do your time,” says French historian Méryl Ducros, “and when it’s over, you can take your money and your wife and your kids and go back to your life.”

Tombstones—often commissioned by fellow fighters or loved ones left behind—suggest that many gladiators were family men. “Pompeius the retiarius, winner of nine crowns, born in Vienna, 25 years of age,” reads one such monument excavated in France. “His wife put this up with her own money for her wonderful spouse.”

Such memorials also are evidence that gladiators were proud of their work. Grave markers often included their records in the ring and depictions of weapons and armor, the tools of their trade. “It’s just the same as being a baker or shoemaker—you say what you did, and you’re 58

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

proud of it,” Coleman says. “It doesn’t sound like they’re treated like criminals. Gladiators saw themselves as professionals.”

C H A PT E R

III CA R N U N T U M , AU ST R I A needed professional training. A discovery made a few years ago at an ancient Roman site in Austria known as Carnuntum shows where they got it.

On a blustery day in early spring, Eduard Pollhammer, the scientific director of Carnuntum, leads me into the middle of a freshly sown farm field on the banks of the Danube River, 25 miles east of Vienna. The heavy gray clouds begin to spit cold rain, reminding me just how far we are from the sun-soaked ruins of Pompeii and Arles.

In the winter, temperatures here plunge below freezing, and the wheat fields are covered with snow. But even here, on what was the edge of the empire, the Roman appetite for gladiator spectacles was such that Carnuntum boasted two amphitheaters: one for its thousands of activeduty soldiers, and another to entertain civilians from the bustling town next door.

Around A.D. 200, the rolling hills here were home to one of the Roman frontier’s biggest military bases, Pollhammer explains. More than 7,000 soldiers stationed here patrolled the empire’s northern reaches. Carnuntum is so big that more than 150 years of excavations have uncovered only 15 percent of its four-square-mile area.

Twenty years ago, concerned that intensive plowing would destroy undiscovered parts of the site, archaeologists turned to ground-penetrating radar to try to map the buried remains of buildings. Between the town walls and the municipal PROFE S SIONAL FIGHTERS

amphitheater’s earthen foundations found the outlines of a whole neighb to serve fans, including taverns, sou even a bakery where spectators coul before taking their seats.

In 2010 archaeologists reported special: a gladiator school, or lud walk from the crumbling ruins of C amphitheater. From Roman accoun mer says, we know there must have b like it across the empire. They were by emperors and local dignitarie run by trainers called lanistae, som were former gladiators. There were gladiator schools in the center of R a gladiator training complex in th the Colosseum. But the dirt under o the first complete example ever fou Without lifting a shovel, researche a large room with a raised floor th heated with warm air from below. been used as a training gym in the c winters. Along the edge of an ope L-shaped section of the building wi cells. Thick walls are a sign that part ity had two stories. There were even water pipes, basins, and hot and co the center of it all was a circular tra 62 feet across. “We think about 70 ators lived here,” Pollhammer says whole infrastructure for big specta

C H A PT E R

IV RO M E , I TA LY

to de resources to gladiators? What kept f back, year after year, for nearly six Recent excavations at the Colosseu offer clues. Under the floor of the ar a huge space extending about 20 ground level. Today visitors can tou labyrinth of columns, crumbled bric and shadowy chambers.

During a major restoration effor in 2000, German Archaeologica researcher Heinz Beste spent fou umenting the stonework under He revealed traces of an ingeni W H AT D R OV E T H E R O M A N S

s, researchers borhood built uvenir shops, ld grab a bite

d something dus, a short Carnuntum’s nts, Pollhambeen dozens e bankrolled es and often me of whom at least four Rome, part of e shadow of ur feet hides und. ers identified hat could be It may have old Austrian en yard is an ith rooms or s of the faciln baths, with old pools. At aining arena, 0 or 75 gladis. “There’s a cles.”

evote such fans coming x centuries? um in Rome rena, there’s 0 feet below ur part of the ck staircases,

t that began al Institute r years docr the arena. ous system

of platforms, elevators, winches, and ramps, manned by hundreds of stage technicians and animal handlers. Through dozens of trapdoors in the arena floor, handlers could release animals directly into the ring for staged hunts, called venationes, that typically served as the appetizer for gladiator fights. Elaborate, painted sets would lift straight out of the arena floor, and elevators might have popped gladiators directly into the ring. “Spectators didn’t know what would open when, or where,” Beste says.

The system, found on a simpler scale at dozens of provincial amphitheaters across the empire, epitomized the draw of the games. From animal hunts to gladiator fights, everything about the events was calculated to keep fans on the edge of their stone seats. Suspense, not brutality, was the lifeblood of the games.

To ensure exciting contests, fighting styles were carefully balanced. A nimble, near-naked fighter armed with only a net, trident, and small knife might face off against a lumbering warrior wearing 45 pounds of protective gear. The rare appearance of sword-wielding women, recorded in historical accounts and a stone relief, would have been a thrill for Romans, who thought women belonged at home.

Experienced gladiators were matched against other veterans, leaving new recruits to fight each other. The longer your career, the better your chances of survival, as each experienced gladiator represented years of investment. “There are hours and man-years going through all the fencing moves, building up the musculature, training for speed, strength, and endurance,” says Jon Coulston, an archaeologist at the University of St. Andrews. “Like modern football, it becomes a hugely capital-intensive enterprise.”

Renting gladiators was a “you break it, you buy it” type of arrangement. If a fighter was killed, whether intentionally or not, the sponsor of the fight paid full price to the gladiator’s owner. “These people were so valuable because they were so highly trained. You don’t want to squander that,” says NYU’s Welch. “Out of 10 pairs, there would be one death, possibly two.”

As amphitheaters proliferated across the empire and political hopefuls spent lavishly on spectacles, the costs of gladiatorial games spiraled out of control. By the second century A.D., the pressure to put on ever more impressive events made the games prohibitively expensive, threatening their existence. A massive (Continued on page 71) ANCIENT ROME’S FIGHT CLUB

59

BLOOD SPORT OF

The Roman elite staged gladiatorial games both to display the

WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT Roman soldiers and gladiators fought to win and survive, but the battles they fought had different purposes. Their equipment reflected that.

Gladiator

Roman legionary

15-45 lb

55 lb

Gladiators typically fought one-on-one in roughly 10- to 15-minute bouts.

Armor—or the lack of it—made the combat more thrilling and outcomes less predictable.

Many gladiators wore greaves to protect their legs.

The length varied, depending on the size of their shield.

Hoplomachus This type of gladiator carried a long spear and round shield similar to the classical Greek infantry’s.

GLADIATORIAL PROGRAM MORNING The most lavish spectacles were in the Colosseum.

Pompa

Venationes

A procession of participants as well as political and religious figures

Animals were hunted or pitted against other beasts or fighters.

CENTURIES OF SPECTACLE Top view

ROMAN FORUM, mid to late first century B.C. During the Republican era, most contests took place in wooden structures temporarily erected in the Roman Forum, the city’s civic center. Combatants often were outfitted to evoke the empire’s enemies.

100 yards

POMPEII, first century A.D. As the games’ popularity grew, stone amphitheaters like this one in Pompeii were built across the empire.

Gladiators became more specialized, their gear more elaborate, and their training more structured.

10,000

73 yd

American football field

Originally part of elite funerals, gladiatorial contests grew into extravagant events.

Arenas and amphitheaters became integral to social and political life, with gladiators at center stage, employing distinct fighting styles and weapons to maximize the spectacle.

spectators

73 yd

22,000 spectators

Point of view Shields were used in defense and as weapons.

During gladiatorial games, only one pair would fight at a time.

The velarium, or extendable awning, provided shade.

Basilica Julia

Temple of Castor and Pollux

The gladius, a Roman infantry sword, was used to thrust at opponents.

(Actual size shown below)

Musicians played during the opening procession, as well as during the games.

Fighters bearing weapons and armor of various weights met in the ring.

Provocator 31-33 lb equipment weight

Light

Unlike other types of gladiators, provocatores— or “challengers”—wore metal breastplates and usually fought members of their own category.

Medium Heavy

COMBAT IN THE ARENA

264 B.C. First recorded in Rome Number of gladiators 6

Selection of recorded contests

300 B.C.

Referees, sometimes working in pairs, used rods to enforce rules, which remain unknown.

216 B.C. 200 B.C. First known in the Roman Forum

44

50 200

183 B.C.

120

174 B.C.

Murmillo 35-40 lb

Thraex 35-40 lb

This type of gladiator, perhaps named for a fish that decorated his helmet, fought gladiators such as the Thraex (right) and the hoplomachus.

Armed with a short shield and a curved sword called a sica, the gladiators modeled on Thracian warriors were known to be especially swift.

70 B.C. 65 B.C. Amphitheater Julius Caesar’s built at Pompeii games

74

640 100

27 B.C. to A.D. 14 Reign of Augustus

10,000 (several games) A.D. 1

Women, slaves, and foreigners

COLOSSEUM, second century A.D. The contests reached their peak—in cost, size, and scope—after the construction of the Colosseum, a monumental architectural feat that set the standard for future Roman amphitheaters.

87 yd

Roman citizens

50,000+ spectators

A galerus, or shoulder guard, gave partial protection to the head and neck.

Stones

Roman citizens

Sometimes one retiarius would take on two secutores. A platform with stones to hurl evened the odds.

Records of gladiatrices are limited; only one image of their combat survives.

A gladiator indicated surrender by extending an index finger.

Other elites

Nets more than six feet tall protected spectators from the action in the arena.

Senators and vestal priestesses

Secutor 35-40 lb

Retiarius 15-18 lb

Gladiatrix 35-40 lb

Eques 22-26 lb

The secutor donned a smooth helmet with small eyeholes to protect against the retiarius’s trident and avoid being ensnared in his net.

Quick and nimble, the retiarius fought with a trident, weighted net, and dagger. His only defense was an arm and shoulder guard.

Though the vast majority of gladiators were men, particularly lavish games might have featured a rare bout with female combatants.

These horsemen began their bouts on horseback with a spear, then dismounted to finish the fight on foot with a sword.

A.D. 80 Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum) dedicated

A.D. 98 to 117 Reign of Trajan, the peak of gladiatorial spectacles 20,000 (several games)

100

200

A.D. 248

A.D. 281

2,000

600

A.D. 325 Constantine bans sentencing criminals to gladiatorial schools.

300

A.D. 404 Honorius bans gladiatorial combat.

400

THE ANCIENTS

empire’s dominance and to vie for power and influence.

ASSEMBLY HALL This large room may have served as a multipurpose gathering space with long tables and chairs.

BATH COMPLEX Four interconnected rooms made up the bath complex, which helped gladiators recover from Apodyterium their rigorous training. (changing room)

Storage room

Face guard

Roman legionary

Murmillo

4.5 lb

.04 in

9 lb

Thickness

Soldiers and gladiators wore richly decorated helmets, but the gladiators’ provided more protection for the face, making them heavier and limiting vision and hearing.

Armguards made of textiles often were covered with metal plates or scales for added protection.

.08 in

TRAINING ARENA Viewing stands enclosed an arena where instruction and practice could be seen by a fighter’s owner and potential investors.

LIVING QUARTERS Two wings of the school held rooms of varying size and ornamentation that housed up to 75 gladiators and trainers.

FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA, TAYLOR MAGGIACOMO, AND RACHEL HARTIGAN, NGM STAFF; AMANDA HOBBS; ROCÍO ESPÍN PIÑAR SOURCES: JON COULSTON, UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS; HAZEL DODGE, TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN; ALISON FUTRELL, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA; ALAIN GENOT, MUSÉE DÉPARTEMENTAL ARLES ANTIQUE; KATHERINE E. WELCH, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY. CARNUNTUM: KLAUS LÖCKER, LUDWIG BOLTZMANN INSTITUTE; EDUARD POLLHAMMER, ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK CARNUNTUM

Thraex

A GLADIATOR’S CAREER AFTERNOON Meridiani

Munera

The midday executions of criminals in the arena

Combat between gladiators selected to heighten drama

ASSIGNMENT AND TRAINING

CARE A

A new arrival, or novicus, was assigned a specialty and trained with double-weight wooden swords and shields against wooden posts.

Gladiato regular high in b were ma

Frigidarium (cold bath)

Tepidarium (warm room)

TRAINING ROOM A hypocaust—the Roman system for under-floor heating—would have allowed training to continue in the winter months.

Caldarium (hot bath)

ADMINISTRATION The owner, or lanista, lived and worked in the buildings at the school’s entrance. He had the power of life and death over the gladiators, who had no rights under Roman law.

Fire Hot air

Furnace to heat water and rooms

Subfloor

Additional training arena

The main gate controlled access into the school.

FIGHT SCHOOL

Across the empire, schools known as ludi trained prisoners of war, criminals, volunteers, and enslaved people to be professional gladiators.

A recently discovered ludus at Carnuntum, a Roman city and military base in eastern Austria, reveals how gladiators lived and trained.

ND COMFORT

COMBAT

ors were kept healthy with medical care and a diet barley and beans. Some arried and had families.

Protecting their investments, owners limited gladiators to a few fights each year. Fighting style and skill level determined arena pairings.

INJURY AND DEATH Pompeii graffiti

Injuries were common, but most weren’t lethal. Even so, many gladiators died young. Only skilled or especially lucky fighters had long careers.

Mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor is extremely fit, highly trained, and idolized by enthusiastic fans— much like the gladiators that Chris Vernel (facing page) and his fellow reenactors in France seek to portray.

MIKE ROACH, ZUFFA LLC VIA GETTY IMAGES (MCGREGOR)

70

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Gladiators surrounded by horn players and cheering fans clash below a staff-wielding referee. Carved in the first century on a gemstone the size of a thumbnail, the scene captures the spectacle of the ancient games.

ANTIKENSAMMLUNG, STAATLICHE MUSEEN ZU BERLIN

bronze tablet discovered more than a century ago in the ruins of Italica, a Roman town on the outskirts of modern-day Seville, Spain, reveals how Romans tried to get things back under control.

Known as the Tabula Gladiatoria, it’s inscribed with a decree issued in A.D. 177 that limited what sponsors could spend on games. It even includes a detailed table of fees. A gladiator “of the highest and best-looking grade” could earn up to 15,000 sesterces, more than enough to pay the annual wages of a typical Roman soldier. Up to a quarter of that sum went to the gladiator—and was payable in advance. but it was still an ever present risk, either in the ring or as a result of infections afterward. Audiences appreciated and rewarded the extra expense a dead gladiator represented. One Roman writer describes a particularly expensive show thrown by a young noble who recently had inherited a fortune. A staggering 400,000 sesterces bought him “the best steel, no running away, with the butchery done in the middle so the whole amphitheater can see.”

It’s easy to dismiss such sentiments as a thing of the distant past, and the Romans as fundamentally different from us. This was, after all, a civilization that built one of the largest empires the world had ever known using relentless military force to subdue all its neighbors.

But that would be letting ourselves off the hook too easily. When it comes to a taste for violent spectacle, we’re closer to the Romans than we like to imagine. The most popular sport in the United States is football, which regularly leaves players too seriously injured to walk off the field.

Meanwhile, athletes who engage in violent sports—from football to boxing to mixed martial arts—are idolized as exemplars of discipline, toughness, and grit. Their bouts attract millions of spectators, even as the long-lasting damage to athletes has become widely known.

“Life isn’t Candy Land and puppies. Life is hard.

We need to yell, to cry, to scream about something,” Ducros says. “We need to see a little bit of violence to externalize the violence we feel inside.

We can’t judge the Romans for organizing that.” j D E AT H WA S U N C O M M O N ,

AC T UA L S I Z E

Berlin-based Andrew Curry wrote about the first Europeans for the August 2019 issue. Rémi Bénali lives near Arles, France, where he photographed a Roman boat for the April 2014 magazine. National Geographic senior artist Fernando G. Baptista specializes in reconstructing the past.

ANCIENT ROME’S FIGHT CLUB

71

The eggs of a female sun glass frog (Hyalinobatrachium aureoguttatum) are visible through her stomach. This image was taken in a mobile studio.

Glass frogs, the tiny, translucent amphibians of Central and South America, are full of surprises.

Perfectly

BY ANGELA P O SA DA- S WA F FO R D P H OTO G RA P H S BY JAIME CULEBRAS

Clear

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A male reticulated glass frog (Hyalinobatrachium valerioi) hangs upside down on a leaf next to its eggs in Costa Rica’s Caribbean rainforest.

One theory suggests that the spotted pattern on the frog’s back mimics the eggs, confusing predators.

On a moonless summer night in Ecuador’s Andean foothills, a tiny bachelor glass frog sits on a leaf overhanging a stream. the best real estate to try to impress a female, advertising his presence with a high-pitched call.

The problem is that location alone isn’t going to cut it. The yellowish green amphibian has been watching what mated male frogs do, so when he spots an abandoned clutch of eggs, he stays next to it for hours, pretending to guard it. Then a remarkable thing happens: He begins to attract female voyeurs, who apparently are tricked into thinking he’s an experienced father.

“It is the first time we report such behavior for frogs and toads,” says Anyelet Valencia-Aguilar, a behavioral ecologist at Switzerland’s University of Bern. She has recorded what appears to be male deception in one glass frog species in Brazil HE HAS CHOSEN

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N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

This newly discovered glass frog in the Hyalinobatrachium genus measures less than an inch long.

The amphibian is unique because of its high-pitched whistle and the black dots covering its body, which could act as camouflage in its rainforest environment.

and believes that the same may be happening in at least two species in Ecuador.

Valencia-Aguilar’s research is one of several new findings about the biology of these alluring amphibians, named for their translucent skin.

There are 156 known species of glass frogs living throughout the neotropics, mainly in the northern Andes and Central America. Recent advancements in optics, genetics, and molecular biology are giving researchers a revealing look into the lives of these tiny tree dwellers, some of which are smaller than a paper clip.

Juan Manuel Guayasamin, an evolutionary biologist at Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, has described 56 species of amphibians in recent years, including 14 glass frogs. “It’s an

important, a never-ending, job,” he says. “These tiny wonders keep surprising us.” for example, that male glass frogs in some species are stellar parents—a rare trait among vertebrates. Males of at least 24 species not only protect their eggs from predators but also actively care for them—sometimes for weeks.

After the female deposits her clutch of 20 to more than 100 eggs, depending on the species, the male fertilizes them with his sperm. While the embryos develop, males of some species, such as the sun glass frog (Hyalinobatrachium aureoguttatum) and the northern glass frog (Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni), sit atop S C I E N T I S T S H AV E D I S C OV E R E D,

P E R F E C T LY C L E A R

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Embryos of the Wiley’s glass frog (Nymphargus wileyi), endemic to Ecuador’s western Andes, hang from the tip of a fern leaf. When the eggs hatch into tadpoles, they’ll fall into the stream below to continue their development.

An arachnid eats eggs of the emerald glass frog (Espadarana prosoblepon) in northwestern Ecuador’s Río Manduriacu Reserve.

Parents of this species do not care for their young, leaving the eggs vulnerable to predation.

The Manduriacu glass frog (Nymphargus manduriacu) was scientifically described just a few years ago. The rare yellow-spotted frog is an opportunistic hunter, waiting until its prey—a small insect or spider—walks by, and then pouncing.

their egg clutch “like a chicken,” keeping the eggs hydrated until they hatch into tadpoles, says Jesse Delia, a biologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

“The father searches for dew on leaves, sucks it up into his urinary bladder through a highly vascularized region of the belly, and then transports it to the babies,” he says. “We don’t know if they transfer water via pee or through their belly skin.”

Some 25 million to 35 million years ago, when the first glass frogs evolved, mothers likely did all the work, Delia says. Then, about eight million to 25 million years ago, some males took over parenting, though why is a mystery.

“Every time it switched to fathers, care got longer and behaviorally more diverse compared to females, who abandon eggs well before they are ready to hatch,” he says—perhaps because females were focused on making more eggs for their next clutch. is shedding light on how the glass frog’s fabled see-through belly forms. Carlos Taboada, a biologist at Duke University in North Carolina who works with Delia, suspects that young glass frogs physically rearrange the insides of their cells and tissues to become transparent adults.

“It’s not just skin and its lack of pigments.

You need transparent muscles and internal structures that scatter light in as few angles as possible,” Taboada says. Fluid between the tissue cells also may contain a substance that allows light to travel in a straight trajectory, reducing opacity, he says.

Taboada is studying another mechanism that may allow glass frogs to blend into the green leaves on which they doze during the day.

He calls it “a biological mirror: a kind of shield or covering of crystals in many of their tissues which reflects up to 50 percent of the light that normally reaches them. Those crystals amplify the [light] signal, and the frog’s green looks brighter.”

The glass frog’s transparency has another benefit: It disguises its familiar shape to would-be predators, such as birds, spiders, and snakes.

“We call this type of camouflage edge diffusion,” says Justin Yeager, an evolutionary biologist at Universidad de las Américas in Quito. “We made accurate replicas of these frogs out of gelatin, some of them really opaque and MEANWHILE , NEW RE SEARCH

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A female Magdalena giant glass frog (Ikakogi tayrona) covers her eggs in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of northeastern Colombia. This oneinch-long species is unusual in that mothers care for their embryos.

some of them really translucent. And it turns out the opaque ones get eaten more.” glass frogs are motivated by the fact that some of their subjects are disappearing—and fast.

Agriculture, cattle grazing, and mining projects in the Andes are taking over the frogs’ already fractured forest homes. The ranges of some species, such as the Manduriacu glass frog (Nymphargus manduriacu), are down to a single river basin.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists 10 glass frog species as critically endangered, 28 as endangered, and 21 as vulnerable to extinction.

M A N Y S C I E N T I S T S S T U DY I N G

“As soon as they are discovered, many species are declared endangered,” Guayasamin says.

Yet there could be an advantage in conserving such isolated populations, he says. He hopes that governments, private companies, and nonprofits could be inspired to work together to set aside these frog-rich patches of land as reserves, ensuring that these delicate creatures have a solid chance at survival.

“Ranas de cristal is how they are called in Spanish,” Guayasamin says, “which is great, because it conjures fragility and beauty in one.” j Angela Posada-Swafford is a Colombian American journalist based in Miami Beach, Florida. Jaime Culebras is based in Ecuador; his photography highlights at-risk reptile and amphibian species.

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America’s Hunger Crisis T H E PA N D E M I C L E F T R E C O R D N U M B E R S O F P E O P L E W I T H O U T E N O U G H F O O D . F O R M A N Y, C H A R I T I E S A N D N E I G H B O R S H AV E B E C O M E L I F E L I N E S .

B Y C A S S A N D R A S P R AT L I N G

Houston, Tex.

Meals for the ‘forgotten’ Kimberline Rivas (at right) and Lawrence Walker, members of the Lucille’s 1913 kitchen staff, prepare meals to be distributed for free across Houston. Lucille’s 1913 is a nonprofit run by Chris Williams, owner of the popular restaurant Lucille’s. Williams targets “forgotten people” in retirement facilities and other places. Lucille’s 1913 now serves up to 800 meals a day for those in need. Neighborhoods receiving meals include one where Williams’s extended family resides.

GRAHAM DICKIE

PREVIOUS PHOTO Queens, N.Y.

María Quinteres, 84, wearing an American flag face mask, waits with hundreds of others at Latinos Unidos, a group that hands out free food boxes each Friday.

Food insecurity may have affected about 45 million Americans in 2020, according to Feeding America, the country’s largest hungerrelief organization.

NATALIE KEYSSAR

A M E R I C A’ S H U N G E R C R I S I S

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Maysel, W. Va.

School and friends help ease the burden Autumn (at left) and Sydney King unpack food sent home with them from Clay Elementary School as their mother, Jennifer, reviews their homework. Jennifer attended the school and had the same speech therapist as her daughters. The therapist, Kathi Linkinogger, often drops off food for the Kings, and Jennifer considers her “practically like family.” The Kings do not have a car and rely on others for rides to a grocery store. With a twomillion-dollar federal grant, the school district is developing innovative ways to encourage self-resilience and confidence, to equip students to handle life’s challenges. It has designed a curriculum that teaches skills such as cooking basic meals, growing vegetables, and household budgeting.

MADDIE MCGARVEY

A M E R I C A’ S H U N G E R C R I S I S

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It’s early for most people.

5:30 a.m. But not for Bessie Brooks, who’s heading out her door to help get food to people who need it in Lowndes County, Alabama.

To hear her tell it, though, that’s not early at all. “When I was working, I’d be at my patient’s house by 5 a.m.,” Mrs. Brooks says.

Journalistic standards suggest I call her by her last name, Brooks. My manners suggest otherwise. I respect her by adding Mrs., as I was raised to do by my mother, who spent part of her growing-up years in Lowndes County. Mrs. Brooks is 87, after all. She worked 30 years as a home health worker for the county. The job required her to give personal care: Get them up, bathed, brush their teeth, give them their meds. But Bessie Brooks went beyond that and did whatever needed doing.

“I don’t see no sense in a person getting up and bathed, and they hungry,” she says.

So she’d cook for her patients and clean house.

If they didn’t have running water, she’d fetch some from a neighboring home. Running water wasn’t a given in every house in Lowndes County, which Feeding America, the nation’s leading organization of food banks, identified as the 16th 92

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dunlow, w. va.

A long wait at the local food pantry

Willard Marcum, a veteran firefighter, drives the 725th and final vehicle through the Dunlow Community Center food pantry in Dunlow, West Virginia, nearly 12 hours after the first volunteers arrived that morning.

Laid off from his coal mining job in 2019, Marcum now works up to 90 hours a week to support his wife and seven

grandchildren. He picks up food for them and for elderly neighbors who don’t have cars.

Bill Likens, who opened the food pantry in 2003, has seen the local need increase since several pantries in neighboring towns closed, leading many people to travel to Dunlow and even spend the night in line in their cars. The

number of families served by the food pantry grew from 300 in 2019 to 900 in November 2020, its busiest month because of pandemic-related job losses and heightened food insecurity around the holidays.

Volunteers provide each family with about 130 pounds of food and other necessities.

MADDIE MCGARVEY

Clay County, W. Va.

Relying on nature to get by LEFT

Alex McBee (at left), Jen Lively, and Chris Lively hold their dogs outside their home in Clay County. They live miles from the nearest grocery store and have been receiving deliveries of food from Amanda Shelton, a teacher at Clay County High School, since the beginning of the pandemic. “If it wasn’t for them,” Chris says, “we’d probably starve.”

TOP RIGHT

Chris searches for roots on a hillside near his home. He met his wife, Jen, when they were in junior high in Ohio.

They’ve lived in West Virginia since 2016; selling roots that they find is their only source of income.

BOTTOM RIGHT

Brian Lively, 18, helps his parents dig for wild roots such as black cohosh, bloodroot, and ginseng during warm seasons when he’s not in school. The roots, when dried, are sold for use in homeopathic medicines. It’s grueling work, and Brian takes pride in it. “It’s hard to take help from someone else when you could do it yourself,” he says.

MADDIE MCGARVEY

A M E R I C A’ S H U N G E R C R I S I S

95

most food insecure county in the United States in 2020. Almost a third—29.5 percent—of the people in Lowndes County do not have sufficient food.

Record numbers of Americans needed more food in 2020, reversing what had been a downward trend. One in seven people in the U.S. may have been food insecure, meaning a lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food. The numbers are only slightly better this year, according to projections released in March. Feeding America expects 42 million people—one in eight Americans—to experience food insecurity in 2021. That includes 13 million children, or one in six, who may be short of food this year. The sorrowful images of rows of cars lined up for food across the U.S. during the pandemic illuminated a long-standing problem, one that the coronavirus didn’t create but made worse, says Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, Feeding America’s chief executive officer.

“I think there’s a heightened awareness that hunger was here to begin with,” she says. “For so long, people in America didn’t think that America has a hunger problem.”

Babineaux-Fontenot hopes renewed attention to food insecurity puts to rest the fallacy that those who line up for food giveaways are either lazy or unwilling to work. “It’s never been true,” she says. “So many people who turn to us for help are working-class people who have jobs.

Some of them have more than one. They’re working really, really hard. They work as hard as anyone else works, if not harder than most people do. And they still can’t make ends meet.”

Food insecurity is especially high in rural America, according to reports from Feeding America and the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit dedicated to ending poverty-related hunger and undernutrition.

Some 16.5 percent of rural households with children faced food insecurity in 2018, compared with 13.5 percent of households in metropolitan areas, according to a FRAC report. The differences are attributed to higher rates of poverty related to fewer and lower-paying jobs, longer distances to travel to get to large grocery stores with reasonably priced and plentiful foods, lack of transportation, cost of gas, weather, and often greater challenges accessing federal nutrition programs.

“Less employment, lower income, transportation issues, lack of access to healthy, affordable food without having to go a long distance, that pushes more people into food insecurity,” says Geri Henchy, FRAC’s director of nutrition policy 96

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

and early childhood programs.

The paradox is that rural residents often live in areas where the very food they need is growing. “So if you’re in a land of plenty, why would you, if you’re driving past fields of food, why would you have food insecurity?” Henchy asks.

“It seems counterintuitive,” she says, “but the thing is that because of the ways that the supply chain works for food, the people who live in areas that produce food, generally speaking, are not having access to that food.”

Lowndes County, AL: Aiding those in need of Alabama once known as the black belt because of the rich soil that delivered an abundance of cotton and other crops, tended by enslaved labor. Now Lowndes County is part of a region people think of as the black belt because of the number of Black people who live there.

Snow Hill Christian Church is one of the main places people here turn to for help to put food on the table when cupboards run low. It was that way long before COVID-19 coursed through America’s veins, shuttering businesses, closing schools, and landing people in food lines.

“There were already a lot of people who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from, so the pandemic didn’t do us any favors,” says the Reverend Dale Braxton, Sr., pastor of the place known as “the little friendly church on the hill.”

Mrs. Brooks retired in 1998, but she didn’t retire from helping others. She is one of the key people Braxton counts on to help distribute food to those who need it. While she used to go it alone— organizing and packaging food for people in need—she now depends on one of her five children to drive her to the church, where volunteers pack her car with food, and her daughter drives her to homes of those she knows need food.

“She’s short in stature but a giant when it comes to giving,” says Braxton, who leads the food distribution efforts in the county of 9,726 people, more than a quarter of them (26.6 percent) living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A May 2020 report said Lowndes had the state’s highest unemployment rate and its highest COVID-19 infection rate. As of this May, the county led the state in COVID-19 vaccinations; more than half of eligible people had received at least one dose.

Braxton, who has managed food distribution IT’S IN A STRETCH

through the Montgomery Area Food Bank for at least 30 years, didn’t think twice when he was asked to distribute weekly food boxes delivered from June through December, a part of the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Farmers to Families program. “It is our mission to feed the hungry, clothe the naked,” Braxton says. “I don’t want anybody to be hungry. I’ve always had a passion to seeing that people, especially children, are well fed as well as well educated.”

Neither is easy in Lowndes County, where people have to drive up to 30 miles to a city such as Selma or Montgomery to shop at a major grocery store.

“We’re a very poor county,” Braxton says.

For Ritha Luckie, 61, a single parent who cares for two adult children with special needs, the food boxes have been a great help. In March 2020, the pandemic closed the adult day-care center her sons attended five days a week while she worked as a lab assistant in a health clinic. A van used to pick her sons up before she went to work. Once the center closed, she had to pay someone to come to her home before she could go to work.

That’s when she started getting the food boxes.

Both sons receive disability payments, but those aren’t enough to keep two grown men fed. “It’s been a blessing for me, and I know it’s been a blessing for a whole lot of people around here,” Luckie says. Usually the boxes contain milk, juice, and fresh fruits and vegetables, including a big bag of white potatoes. “I can do a lot with a bag of potatoes,” she says. “I can make hash browns, mashed potatoes, and boiled potatoes. I know how to make it stretch.”

Across the U.S., free grocery stores and community refrigerators are filling a void. Doctors and nurse practitioners are writing prescriptions for healthy food, and prominent chefs are prioritizing serving the community over profit. Volunteers and entrepreneurs are feeding the hungry.

The jump in Americans who didn’t have access to enough food in 2020 reversed what had been a downward trend.

Hunger rises again U.S. food insecurity declined consistently in the decade after the Great Recession of 2007-09. By 2019, it had reached its lowest point in more than a decade. But then the pandemic upset this progress.

People in the U.S. living in food-insecure households 50 million

Los Angeles, CA: Help for immigrants

20 20

20 1

0

PROJECTED

25

20 00

who came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1998, worked two full-time jobs to help support his wife, Elizabeth, and their three sons, ages 17, 15, and eight. He’d work 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., five days a week, at one restaurant. Then he’d go directly to the other, working 4:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., six days a week. Most weekdays it was well past midnight before he’d get home.

At the restaurants he’d do whatever needed to JUAN MARTÍNEZ, 5 0 ,

SOURCES: USDA (2000-2019); FEEDING AMERICA (2020-2021)

97

Where hunger spiked in the U.S.

WA S HI NG TON

M O N TA N A

When COVID-19 hit, many in the United States already on the verge of food insecurity were plunged into even deeper crisis.

According to the hunger-relief organization Feeding America, an estimated 45 million people may have lacked sufficient access to food in 2020. The pandemic—erasing years of gains in the battle against hunger— appears to have caused food insecurity to rise in nearly every U.S. county.

OREGON IDAHO

WYOMING

N E VA DA

U TA H

CALIFORNIA COLORADO Clark Co., NV (Las Vegas) 18.3% +6.5%

Food insecurity is defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a lack of consistent access to enough food for a healthy life.

Food-insecurity rate projected for 2020*

Change in foodinsecurity rate, 2019 to 2020*

ARIZONA

29.6% (max.)

25% 20% 15%

+8% +4% +2%

Percentage point increase

10%

+1%

4.2% (min.)

No significant change

NEW MEXICO

Los Angeles County, CA 1.6 million food-insecure people (Highest number for U.S. county) 16.2%

food insecurity rate (2020*)

+5.5%

change in rate (2019 to 2020*)

Presidio County, TX Second highest rate +5.2% 29.4%

Maui County, HI Highest increase in rate 19.1% +8.8%

ALASKA AND HAWAII NOT TO SCALE

ALASKA

Troubled tourism sector Projected food insecurity spiked in places that rely heavily on service and tourism industries, such as Hawaii; Las Vegas, NV; and Atlantic City, NJ.

HAWAII

Unequal access Communities of color were at a disproportionately higher risk of food insecurity well before COVID-19, and the pandemic has exacerbated long-standing inequities linked to factors including discrimination and systemic racism. Of the 25 counties with the highest projected foodinsecurity rates for 2020, 68 percent had majority Black, Latino, or Native American populations—even though only 12 percent of U.S. counties have a majority nonwhite population. * THE FOOD-INSECURITY RATE FOR 2020 IS PROJECTED BASED ON AN ANNUAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE OF 9.2 PERCENT AND A POVERTY RATE OF 11.1 PERCENT.

People in food-insecure households, 2019 Food insecure

Native American Black (Non-Hispanic)

Latino/Hispanic

1 in 4 people 1 in 5

FOOD-INSECURITY RATES BY RACE OR ETHNICITY ARE NOT YET AVAILABLE FOR 2020.

1 in 6

White

1 in 12

(Non-Hispanic)

All people

1 in 9

Oglala Lakota Co., SD Third highest rate +1.6% 29.3%

Steele County, ND Lowest rate 4.2% +1.3%

South Dakota disparities Nine of its counties, including Oglala Lakota, have majority Native American populations and projected food-insecurity rates above 20 percent.

NORTH D A K O TA

MAINE

VT. N.H. MI N NE S O TA MASSACHUSETTS W IS CO N SIN

SOUTH D A K O TA

NE W YOR K RHODE ISLAND

MI C H I GA N

CONNECTICUT NEW JERSEY

P EN N SYLVANI A I OWA OHIO

NEBRASKA

DEL.

INDIANA

I LLI N OI S

MD. D.C.

Atlantic County, NJ (Atlantic City) 18.0% +7.4%

W. VA. KANSAS

MISSOURI

VIRGINIA KENTUCKY NORTH CAROLINA TENNESSEE

OKLAHOMA

SOUTH CAROLINA

AR KAN S A S ALABAMA

Harlan County, KY Fourth highest rate 29.1% +2.5%

G EORG I A

Appalachian hardship Seven of the 15 most foodinsecure counties have a majority white, non-Hispanic population. All seven of the counties are in Kentucky.

TEXAS LO U I SIA N A Holmes County, MS Highest rate 29.6% +3.4%

FLORIDA PROJECTED FOOD-INSECURITY RATES ARE UNAVAILABLE FOR PUERTO RICO AND OTHER U.S. TERRITORIES. FEEDING AMERICA ESTIMATES THAT FOOD-INSECURITY RATES IN 2020 WERE LIKELY HIGHER IN PUERTO RICO THAN ELSEWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES.

Severe southern rates Southern states historically have had high levels of hunger. Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, and Louisiana had the highest rates of food insecurity in 2019 and 2020.

Poverty

Food Insecurity

U.S. average annual rates (percent)

13.9 12.9

12.0 10.5

11.1

10.9

9.2

21

0

RILEY D. CHAMPINE AND IRENE BERMAN-VAPORIS, NGM STAFF. SOURCES: MONICA HAKE, EMILY ENGELHARD, AND ZUANI VILLARREAL, FEEDING AMERICA; “HOUSEHOLD FOOD SECURITY IN THE UNITED STATES IN 2019,” USDA

20

20 2

19 20

PROJECTED

3.7

PROJECTED

6.7 PROJECTED

Unemployment and poverty have a substantial effect on the risk of household hunger. One job loss or one health-care bill can drive a family with low income into poverty and make groceries unaffordable. At the start of the pandemic, four in 10 people visiting food banks were there for the first time. Food insecurity is expected to decline in 2021—and rates could drop even further than expected if economic conditions continue to improve—but a slow recovery is likely.

Unemployment

20 19 20 20 20 21

Drivers of insecurity

20 19 20 20 20 21

M I SS.

99

100

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DETROIT, Mich.

Community kitchen solutions LEFT

Chef Ederique Goudia stands in the kitchen at the Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Goudia uses rescued food donated to the Make Food Not Waste organization to create healthy meals each week for local community members.

RIGHT

The Detroit Community Fridge on the city’s east side was founded by two Wayne State University students in August 2020 and gives people access to free fresh and frozen foods and other necessary supplies such as diapers, feminine products, and clothes.

Additional fridges are planned across Detroit this year.

SYLVIA JARRUS

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Queens, N.Y.

Many helping hands On Tuesday mornings, CENTI Queens, a church and community organization, passes out free groceries to those in need.

Volunteers create an assembly line for food distribution as the trucks arrive. Many people who pick up groceries say they lost jobs because of COVID-19 and are struggling to feed their families. People start lining up at about 9 a.m., and the food is distributed around noon.

NATALIE KEYSSAR

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funded Natalie Keyssar’s storytelling about faith in the American South in 2020-21.

ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY

be done: wash dishes, take food to tables, do janitorial work.

When the pandemic hit and closed both restaurants, he went from working up to 70 hours a week to none. The pandemic has been especially devastating to undocumented workers such as Martínez because although they pay taxes, they were ineligible for stimulus checks, food stamps, and unemployment compensation. Martínez doesn’t know how he’d have fed his family without No Us Without You LA. The initiative was launched in March 2020, when the nation’s economy came to a screeching halt, closing restaurants nationwide and leaving millions without work.

“No Us Without You LA was born out of frustration and anger,” co-founder Othón Nolasco says. When the pandemic hit, he and his business partner, Damián Diaz, watched as people reached out to help chefs, waitstaff, and other visible faces of the restaurant industry. They saw nothing being done for dishwashers, cleaning crews, and others often described as the backbone of the restaurant business. Many of those workers in Los Angeles are undocumented, they say, and therefore not eligible for federal aid.

Nolasco and Diaz know the importance of the less visible workers because they started their careers as dishwashers themselves, learning the business from the back to the front of the house, and eventually starting a restaurant- and barconsulting business, Va’La Hospitality.

“Both Damián and I began our illustrious careers as dishwashers,” Nolasco says. “We ran food, bused tables, and expedited orders as young college-age kids. This is where our deep respect for back-of-house staff comes from.”

After 14- to 16-hour days running a bar, the only time they got to sit down for a decent meal was at the end of the day after closing, when the crew prepared a plate for them to share a “family meal.”

“Very simple dishes often made with the lesser cuts or scraps of what’s left over from the day’s prep, the meals were definitely made with lots of love,” Nolasco says.

Initially the pair used their own money to feed 10 families they know. They soon were buying more food and feeding more families, aided by donations as word spread of their efforts. Now No Us Without You LA is a nonprofit organization that feeds over 1,600 families a week.

Each family gets a 100-pound box of food weekly. Generally it contains a gallon of milk,

30 eggs, six pounds of beans, six pounds of rice, a variety of fruits and vegetables, and tortillas made from organic, non-genetically modified corn from a local company called Kernel of Truth Organics.

“It’s a huge, huge help. It feeds me and my family,” says Martínez. “I can’t imagine what life would be like without this program.”

Not everyone celebrates No Us Without You LA. Nolasco says the nonprofit group occasionally gets hate emails or calls from people opposed to undocumented workers getting assistance.

Such backlash pains the group and those it helps.

Merced Sánchez, a 59-year-old licensed street vendor who came to the U.S. from Mexico in 2001, calls the volunteers “professional servants for the community.” She and her husband, José, both worked two jobs before the pandemic.

“We work hard. The majority pay taxes and don’t commit crimes. Still, we are all labeled as criminals and dirty people. We are not bad people,” Sánchez says.

Houston, TX: ‘Meals with dignity’ shut down restaurants in Texas, chef Chris Williams pivoted from serving customers at his popular Houston restaurant to serving the community in a city that led the state in COVID-19 infections and deaths.

Initially he and the team at Lucille’s, well known for its southern cuisine spiced with international flavor, served frontline workers, focusing on sometimes overlooked night shift workers. Lucille’s served 3,000 meals in the first 20 days of the pandemic. Then Williams thought of another group he feared was being overlooked: senior citizens living in nursing homes in impoverished, mostly Black communities.

“They’ve been uniquely affected; cut off from their families. Their families can’t come check on them,” Williams says. And he suspected the meals they were receiving weren’t prepared with the care and consideration he knew he could provide. His goal, he says, was to offer “nutritious, delicious meals that they will be excited about. You know, meals with dignity.”

W i t h a s s i s t a n c e f r o m Wo r l d C e n t r a l Kitchen—chef José Andrés’s NGO dedicated to providing meals in the wake of natural disasters— Williams’s efforts grew into a nonprofit he named Lucille’s 1913. It honors Williams’s greatgrandmother Lucille B. Smith, a pioneering entrepreneur in Fort Worth. In 1913 she started WHEN THE PANDEMIC

Meals distributed by Feeding America 6 billion

4

0

2

20 2

of Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church you see both Indian Village, an upscale community of stately mansions directly behind the historic structure, and—one block over—a poorer community of vacant lots and modest homes that have seen better days.

People line up for food, but not just boxes of canned goods and produce as is typical at many food giveaways. They get free meals, enough to feed a family of four to six, prepared in the church kitchen that is called the Upcycling Kitchen because the chefs turn food that otherwise would be garbage into gourmet cuisine.

The meals are an initiative of the nonprofit Make Food Not Waste, an organization dedicated to improving the climate and the city’s food security by reducing food waste. By showing FROM THE BACK LOT

Responding to the pandemic The amount of food distributed last year by Feeding America could provide every U.S. resident with three meals a day for more than six days. Its food banks served 44 percent more meals in 2020 than in 2019.

20 15

Detroit, MI: Feed people, reduce waste

It’s not just about handing out food boxes: Attacking food insecurity also means reducing waste and promoting nutritious foods.

20 10

a catering company that served the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., and boxing champion Joe Louis. She used some profits from her business to push for better living conditions for African Americans in Texas.

Williams says Smith’s spirit guides him. “The roots of her business are the exact same for this,” he says. “She saw a definitive need in our community … and she knew that she was uniquely positioned to make a difference in the community through the medium of food.”

Lucille’s 1913 now serves daily meals to up to 800 seniors, plus 150 students and 28 teachers and administrators at a school adjoining the nonprofit’s kitchen. But the mission of Lucille’s 1913 extends far beyond giving out meals.

Williams says he grew up with plenty but had friends who had very little on their kitchen tables. He sees lots of check-cashing stores and fast-food restaurants, but few markets with a variety of fresh produce.

So he’s tackling the issue of food security from the ground up. Besides preparing meals, Lucille’s 1913 will take stewardship of 74 acres in two Houston-area counties, Harris and Fort Bend. The land will be used for growing fresh produce and providing employment opportunities through the culinary arts. Williams also plans to open two markets in those areas to sell produce and locally made products. People hired from those neighborhoods will learn farming or entrepreneurial skills while helping to feed people in their communities.

SOURCE: FEEDING AMERICA

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st. paul, Minn.

Aid for those in homeless camps Michelle Vue carries bags of food, delivered by volunteers from the nonprofit organization Involve MN, back to the forest encampment where she, her partner, and others live in St. Paul. Vue moved to Minnesota from Mississippi in February 2020 and stayed with a friend in Minneapolis until he was evicted from his home in July.

Vue and others in the camp are ethnic Hmong and have endured racist abuse from people who fear they’ll spread COVID-19.

DAVID GUTTENFELDER

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Explorer David Guttenfelder’s storytelling about the human condition since 2014.

ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY

A M E R I C A’ S H U N G E R C R I S I S

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st. paul, Minn.

Surviving in tent city

A volunteer with Involve MN distributes Thanksgiving meals at a homeless encampment in St. Paul. The group was started in 2019 by Grant Snyder, a Minneapolis police officer, and his wife, Melanie, to serve the homeless and vulnerable. Minnesota, which boasts 16 Fortune 500 companies, has dozens of homeless

encampments scattered throughout the Twin Cities area. The pandemic added more than 100,000 foodinsecure people in the state in 2020.

The Minnesota Central Kitchen, an initiative of the Second Harvest Heartland hunger-relief network, provides free meals at more than 50 sites in the Twin Cities metro

region. Through partnerships with MCK, furloughed chefs are paid to make meals for the hungry. The organization has served 1.5 million meals since March 2020. Eleven kitchens and catering companies participate in the program, which has saved 200 jobs and rescued 1.6 million pounds of surplus food.

DAVID GUTTENFELDER

people what can be done with the rescued food it receives, the group began an effort that it believes can save people money and help save the planet.

Attacking food insecurity means more than giving away boxes; it requires systemic changes, says chef Phil Jones, a force behind Make Food Not Waste. “There’s so much more good that can be done for people and the planet,” says Jones, who also started a company called Farmacy Food. It offers freshly prepared, appealing, and nutritious dishes at low cost. Its goal is to show people, especially those living in low-income neighborhoods, that you can get fast food that’s good for your budget and your belly.

Make Food Not Waste gets surplus food from grocers, vendors, and other local businesses.

Meals are prepared weekly for about a thousand area residents. The group also hopes to teach them more about improving health one forkful at a time. “We’re encouraging people to try new flavors and eat more fruits and vegetables,” says Danielle Todd, founder and executive director of Make Food Not Waste. “You can get cheap food, something just to fill the body up, but it doesn’t fuel the body with the right things.”

The Upcycling Kitchen aligns with her upbringing in New Orleans, Louisiana, chef Ederique Goudia says. “We were raised to treat everyone like family. This is a way I can use my skills, and do it in a way that’s dignified. Driving up for a meal is like picking up catering from your favorite chef or restaurant.”

The arrangement also challenges the chefs to be creative, because they never know what ingredients they’ll have to make culinary magic.

“It’s fun to see what I get, then think about what can I create,” Goudia says. “The other day I got a huge amount of broccoli and created broccoli pesto over spaghetti, so people got to see broccoli prepared in a way that if you tasted it, you wouldn’t even know it was broccoli.”

Marvin Dixon, 52, a single father with two teenagers, says the food has been a blessing. He lives off Social Security because of an injury, but gets enough aid only for himself since he doesn’t have legal custody of his children, though they live with him. “The food from the church helps tremendously,” he says. “I don’t have to buy extra food with the little money I do have. And, you know, these teenagers, they can eat.” j Cassandra Spratling, a Detroit Free Press veteran, has written for National Geographic about family issues and the toll COVID-19 has taken on Detroit.

A M E R I C A’ S H U N G E R C R I S I S

109

ON THE KALAHARI’S PARCHED LANDSCAPE,

rising heat A N D crippling droughts C O U L D T H R E A T E N A D E L I C A T E balance of life.

The Edge of Sur

BY LEONIE JOUBERT P H O T O G R A P H S B Y T H O M A S P. P E S C H A K

vival 111

Massive bird nests made by sociable weavers in camel thorn trees may be decades old, sheltering generations through the Kalahari’s extremes. Hungry Cape cobras and boomslange often enter the chambered nests looking for chicks to eat.

PREVIOUS PHOTO

For meerkats—a kind of mongoose—survival is a group effort.

Sentries scan for danger, and lower-ranked adults, mostly females, feed and mind the senior female’s pups.

It’s not clear how climate change will affect meerkats here, but hotter, drier summers may reduce their numbers.

In Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, South Africa’s largest private reserve, lions in one section keep giraffes and grazing animals such as antelope moving.

This eases strain on grasses, which in times of more heat and less rain could give way to inhospitable thorny thickets.

Researchers Wendy Panaino (at left) and Valery Phakoago search a hole dug by an aardvark to analyze the nutritional value of the insects these shy, nocturnal animals eat. Understanding the Kalahari’s food chain helps Tswalu’s managers find the sweet spot for the number of animals the reserve can support.

Twin silhouettes are motionless in the night. Above, a silver-veiled moon hints of a sky.

Below, Earth is a darkened disk.

Common barking geckos rattle like castanets in receding waves into the shadows. The two women have been seated on a shallow dune for hours in hushed anticipation. One unfolds her legs, stretches, crosses them at the ankles. The other rocks, as if uttering a prayer mantra, limbering her muscles. Their radio-tracking gear drew them at sunset to this spot in the southern part of the Kalahari, which has long been called a desert but has characteristics of a dry savanna ecosystem.

Somewhere below them in a warren of burrows is a ground pangolin they’ve been monitoring for two months. She’s late to rouse—it’s 10 p.m.—which might have something to do SOUND GIVES THE NIGHT DEPTH:

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N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Explorer Thomas P. Peschak’s storytelling around biodiversity since 2017.

ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY

with the day’s withering heat.

For the purpose of recordkeeping, she’s called Hopewell 3, after the place where local trackers first found her and doctoral researchers Wendy Panaino, 28, and Valery Phakoago, 30, tracked her by following her spoor in the sand. Now they follow her by reading the bleep-bleepbleep of radio waves sent by a device fixed to a scale on her rump.

Tonight the researchers are on a quest for pangolin dung—“Kalahari gold,” they call it— the source of a trove of information about how this shy, ant- and termite-eating animal’s life is interwoven with grasses and the tiny insects that reap their seeds and eat them. It’s another important thread in scientists’ understanding

of the interconnectedness of living things in the dry African savanna, all of which starts with the summer rains, usually from November to March.

Their research, through the University of the Witwatersrand’s Wildlife Conservation Physiology lab in Johannesburg, is part of a bigger study called the Kalahari Endangered Ecosystem Project (KEEP) that aims to understand how climate disruptions will tug on the delicate fabric of life here.

This part of the Kalahari is already red-flagged as a climate hot spot. Modeling by climate scientists at the University of Cape Town suggests that within a decade, when the global temperature could exceed the rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) that the UN’s Paris T H E E D G E O F S U R V I VA L

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A F R I C A

NAMIBIA

KALAHARI DESERT

BOTSWANA

SOUTH AFRICA

Agreement seeks to avoid, average temperatures in Botswana—just north of Hopewell 3’s foraging grounds—will already have warmed by nearly four degrees F. Beyond 5.4 degrees F in average warming globally, which would mean 7.6 degrees F here, the science points to system collapse for the Kalahari.

A recent study of the pangolin’s termiteeating dune neighbor, the aardvark, during a drought in the summer of 2012-13, gives distressing clues as to what climate change could mean for life here: If the rains fail, a cascade of disasters may unfold, starting with the withering of the grasses, a crash in numbers of ants and termites that feed on them, and hunger— or starvation—for anything that depends on those insects for nourishment. If the failure of the annual greening means disaster for these two insect-eaters during a drought spell, what would a longer-term system collapse driven by searing temperatures and crippling droughts mean for the many different threads of life that are entangled in a food chain that draws vitality from the grasses?

The Kalahari is the world’s largest expanse of unbroken sand, a rolling ocean of windblown dunes across Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and beyond that are topped with savanna, a mostly grassy landscape dotted with occasional trees. Here on the region’s southern edge, air currents have swept up a series of north-south– running dunes lapping against the flanks of bare, quartzite hills that rise like whalebacks from the deep.

Decades of farming have thrown the region into disarray, and now it seems that the freighttrain effects of planetary heating are bearing down too. What Panaino and Phakoago learn 118

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about the secretive lives of creatures out here on the dunes will give conservation managers emergency signals to help them better protect this vestige of the Kalahari.

is the third pangolin found for the study on what was formerly Hopewell Farm, one of 50 reclaimed cattle ranches that have been absorbed into Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, established nearly 30 years ago. At 294,000 acres, Tswalu is South Africa’s largest private game reserve, a remnant of the once wild Kalahari that has been carved up by farms, roads, and iron ore and manganese mines.

Aside from its luxury private lodgings for game-watchers, the reserve hosts the KEEP research hub, managed by the Tswalu Foundation, which connects the work of scientists interested in semiarid ecologies. Their efforts focus on a central question: How will this hot, dry place respond to rising (Continued on page 130)

H

OPEWELL 3

NGM MAPS

LEFT

Homebuilders enable collective survival in the harsh Kalahari.

Sociable weavers share their nests with African pygmy falcons, skinks, and foraging snakes.

Aardvarks are prolific burrowers that excavate underground chambers also used by jackals, porcupines, wild cats, warthogs, ground squirrels, and swallows, among others.

BELOW

How to revive a snake: After a surgical procedure to implant a tracking device in this Cape cobra, veterinarian Jessica Briner delivers a puff of carbon dioxide to flush its lungs of anesthetic and restore normal breathing.

T H E E D G E O F S U R V I VA L

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In spring 2020 a clan of spotted hyenas arrives at Tswalu. Reintroducing predators is key to keeping this managed wilderness in balance.

Established in the 1990s, the reserve is a remnant island of the natural Kalahari, which has been carved up by farms, roads, and iron ore and manganese mines.

A years-long drought broke in late 2020, turning Tswalu’s otherwise ruddy dunes (seen here) green and lush (opposite). The Kalahari is already warming at a much faster rate than the global average, and many climate models also project drier conditions, especially in summer.

PROTECTIVE SPACE

SURVIVING THE STRESSORS

Camel thorn trees provide relief from the sun. Underground tunnels teem with mammals, reptiles, and insects evading the heat of the day and chill of the night.

Some animals seek refuge to insulate themselves against temperature swings. Others endure through physical adaptations such as improved fluid retention.

Weaver colonies, with as many as 250 nesting chambers, can last 100 years.

Woven grass

91°

1

STAYING STABLE Large volumes of air cool blood vessels between the mouth and lungs, through evaporation. The skin also releases heat.

Muscles pump air into the mouth

Sociable weaver Philetairus socius

Ostrich Struthio camelus

Older or breeding birds commandeer the most interior, insulated chambers of these temperature-controlling nests.

Ostriches can maintain a stable internal body temperature of 102°F for hours, even when the ambient temperature rises over 120°F.

2

Heat exchange with blood vessels

Air sac near skin

Skin Lung Continuous one-way airflow through the air sacs and lungs

Chamber

94°

Heat 4

3

Membrane

99°F Exterior temperature

For digging, meerkats have membranes that protect their eyes, ears that close tight, and fourfingered claws.

Nest entrance

Wildebeest

African pygmy falcon Polihierax semitorquatus

Air sac

They stand with their bellies facing the sun to absorb morning heat.

Strong back muscles and a tail make a tripod for standing sentry and vertical sunbathing.

These birds occupy the weaver nests’ shallower, outer chambers, where they also prey on weaver chicks and lizards.

Chicks find cooling shade under adults.

Cooler under the tail

Exterior

113°

Kalahari lion

102° Without much standing water to drink, animals in the region mainly rely on food to prevent dehydration.

Vegetation Need to drink water:

Fruit

Insects

Every few months

Shelter aboveground

Animals Whenever available Belowground

77° Temperature

Adapting to extremes The sandy soils of the southern Kalahari hold only trace amounts of water and nutrients that can support life.

Animals living in this harsh environment—which sees extreme daily temperature swings—have adapted to the demands on their bodies in resourceful ways.

WET 99° SEASON 89° Future 76° Present 67° ANNUAL AVG. HIGHS AND LOWS

83° 73° 55° 47°

DRY SEASON

Meerkat Suricata suricatta

Extra molars Bat-eared fox Otocyon megalotis

Cape ground squirrel Xerus inauris

Borrowing ground squirrel burrows to beat the heat, meerkats emerge to get food in the morning and late afternoon.

This insectivore has specialized muscles for efficient chewing and ears that can pinpoint underground prey such as termites.

A large, fluffy tail works as a parasol, allowing squirrels more time to find cucumbers, seeds, and other sustenance.

TOO HOT FOR A HABITAT? The Kalahari is expected to get hotter, and possibly drier, by 2100. More frequent extreme heat could make it too hot for many animals and plants.

DATA ARE RCP 8.5 WORST-CASESCENARIO ASSUMPTIONS. KÖPPEN-GEIGER CLIMATE REGIONS SHOWN AT RIGHT.

A Present

(1980–2016)

F

R

A I C KALAHARI DESERT

Climate regions Arid Desert Steppe Temperate No dry season Dry winter Dry summer Tropical Savanna

A

F

R

A I C KALAHARI DESERT Future

(2071–2100)

Cu ito

Cubango

ANGOLA

ZAMBIA Zambezi

Ok a

10 in

Etosha Pan

F

Gemsbok can regulate their brain temperature to reduce evaporative water loss and can reabsorb liquid waste in their kidneys and colon.

A M

I B

15 in

Maun

Ghanzi

B

L A

Makgadikgadi Pans

O

T

S

W A

N A

The Kalahari includes Earth’s largest continuous body of sandy soils, arenosols, which barely sustain life.

10

Gobabis

in

H

Windhoek

A

5 in

TROPIC OF CAPRICORN

Serowe

o op mp Li

R

i

S t a m p r i e t

I M

e

r

R T S E D E

o

s

Tshabong

Other than what’s belowground, the only natural water sources in the Kalahari are seasonally flooded pans, also known as ephemeral lakes.

TSWALU KALAHARI NATURE RESERVE

Molepolole n Gaboro

15 in

al Va

Upington

10 i

O r a nge

Kimberley Bloemfontein

in

rainy season average rainfall

3

A F R I C A

n

5

Nasal mucosa

15 in

sandy soil

S O U T H

Augrabies Falls

e

15 in olo po

t

2

b

Scarce water

e

Cavernous sinus

Brain

ssob No

Au

D

Valves in blood vessels leading to the brain can switch off the cooling process.

XERIC SAVANNA ECOREGION Extremely dry natural grassland

A q u i f e r

Mariental

5 in

b

3

ZIMBABWE

in

Sweeping sands

m

The blood continues to the cavernous sinus, where it cools a web of blood vessels going from the brain to the heart.

I A

intermittent river

a

2

15

15 in

N

1

When temperatures peak, nasal mucus cools a gemsbok’s blood as it inhales air.

wetland

15 in

A

N

A

Okavango Delta

K

KEEPING A COOL HEAD Verreaux’s eagle owl

C

ACACIA WOODLANDS ECOREGION Dry open woodland

n

Gemsbok Oryx gazella

These scavengers with bonecrushing jaws chew on moist tsama melons—up to 18 a night— to get enough water to survive.

I

rainy season average rainfall

5i

Brown hyena Hyaena brunnea

R

go

A

The heat stress and water loss animals experience during the day from evaporation are lessened after dark. But nights are cold—and filled with predators—as they forage.

v

NIGHT ACTIVITY

Maseru

1

LESOTHO

Facial vein Snouted harvester termite

Shutoff valve

PARCHED EXPANSE

10,500 feet

The unforgiving landscape of the semiarid Kalahari plateau is a unique and varied combination of dry eco-regions, sandy soils, and rainfall patterns.

Carotid artery

Feces

5,250

Dry

Aardwolf Proteles cristata Licking up termites on the sand, the aardwolf swallows without chewing.

Stomach acid breaks down toxins in the termites; sand is passed in feces.

75 mi 75 km

75%

Cape Town 50%

Cape of Good Hope

Human Gemsbok

a

s

Wide flat tongue

1,600

Humid

Sea level

Percent water Small teeth

3,200 meters

A Cape

As they produce waste, gemsbok can reabsorb 25 percent more water than humans can.

gul h

Average inches per month

Data shown on the map 3 in

November FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA, MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, CHRISTINA SHINTANI, IRENE BERMAN-VAPORIS, AND EVE CONANT, NGM STAFF; PATRICIA HEALY; SHIZUKA AOKI; MICHAEL STANFEL SOURCES: ANTHONY LOWNEY, U. OF CAPE TOWN; W. MAARTIN STRAUSS, U. OF SOUTH AFRICA; ANDREA FULLER, U. OF THE WITWATERSRAND; JAN KAMLER, U. OF OXFORD; J.N. MAINA, U. OF JOHANNESBURG; HALEY O’BRIEN, OKLAHOMA STATE U.; MARTA MANSER, U. OF ZURICH; RITA COVAS, U. OF PORTO; ANDREW MCKECHNIE, U. OF PRETORIA; COLLEEN SEYMOUR, SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL BIODIVERSITY INSTITUTE (SANBI); CALLUM MUNDAY, DAVID THOMAS, AND GILES WIGGS, U. OF OXFORD; ABI STONE, MANCHESTER U.; FRANK ECKHART, U. OF CAPE TOWN; HYLKE BECK, PRINCETON CLIMATE ANALYTICS, INC; TIM MCVICAR, CSIRO LAND AND WATER; ECOREGION SNAPSHOTS, RESOLVE; ESDAC; CHIRPS; ORASECOM; KNMI CLIMATE EXPLORER; NASA

The wet season brings a scattering of short-lived storms, with an average yearly rainfall of 13.7 inches.

The water seeps quickly through the sand to deep aquifers.

D

J

F M A M J

WET SEASON

RELIABLE GROUNDWATER Water

Sand, gravel, and calcrete

Aquifer

J

A

S

October

DRY SEASON

Groundwater stored in aquifers is a vital resource. Dampened soils above bring water within reach of tree taproots that lift the water back up.

200 ft

Emerging from their burrows after dark, ground pangolins will each eat about 15,000 ants and termites in a night—5.5 million in a year. Insect abundance depends on healthy grasses, the thread that binds life on these nutrient-poor sands.

Without summer rains, the greening will fail.

temperatures and more frequent and intense droughts if, as predicted, atmospheric carbon dioxide pollution keeps heating the planet?

Answering that question will be key to how the reserve’s managers balance the abundance of the grasses with the appetites of the creatures that depend on them, from grazing insects and their pangolin predators to the roaming antelope herds and the carnivores that chase them down.

When Hopewell 3 surfaces, she’ll announce herself with sound. Eventually, they hear it— even over the clicking of geckos—the scritchscratch of bony grass rasping against the pangolin’s scales. Panaino and Phakoago glide to their feet, their headlamps casting a stage light into which Hopewell 3 sways, floating over the dune like a hunched clockwork toy in a suit of armor. Her shield of articulated plates starts with a widow’s peak over the bridge of her nose and flares out across her shoulders. It flows down her domed back and tapers across a broad plank of tail. The hem has a jagged edge.

If startled, she’ll snap into a ball so tight that even a lion would struggle to pry her open.

But Hopewell 3 is unfazed. She totters across the dune on stout hind legs, her feet pressing blunt marks in the sand. Her forelegs are tucked demurely into her chest, like a mantis in prayer, touching the ground only when she tips off kilter.

A button eye glints above a conical snout that nods this way and that, reading the ground.

Olfactory wizardry leads her to tonight’s first course: cocktail ants, as they’re commonly called. She claws at the bole of a runty gray camel thorn, pulling the cap from a nest hidden in the bark, releasing a rivulet of ants flowing up the trunk.

She plunges headfirst into the stream, face hidden as her sticky ribbon-tongue laps up dinner. It’s impossible to know how many ants she eats with each mouthful, but after five years of sifting through the digested remains of meals like this, Panaino knows that less than a third of what the pangolin takes in tonight will be insects. The rest will be dune sand. Panaino also knows that Hopewell 3’s preferred foods are cocktail ants, pugnacious ants, and snouted harvester termites.

Panaino has calculated that on average the pangolin will eat about 15,000 of the rice-grainsize insects each night, supplying most of the 130

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

nutrition and water she needs to survive in this parched dunescape.

Satisfied with her first feeding, Hopewell 3 toddles off in search of her next course. The humans follow behind, hoping for gold.

is anguished and liminal, poised for rains to break the fast. The dry winter of 2020 has drawn to a close, and the grasses that anchor the dunes are as brittle as fine fossils. Winter has taken its usual toll. The dunes are also threadbare after intermittent droughts and decades of gleaning by cattle and, more recently, game such as antelope, zebras, wildebeests, and buffalo.

Forecasts hint that this summer’s rains may be good. A La Niña has been brewing half a planet away in the Pacific Ocean. This cyclical oceanatmosphere dance usually conjures rain for parts

O

CTOBER IN THE SOUTHERN KALAHARI

LEFT

When summer thunderstorms roll in across the Kalahari, their soaking rains bring an explosion of life, including insects such as armored katydids.

Grass and insects are vital links in the food chain that nourishes Tswalu’s animals and stabilizes the dunes against the push-pull of the wind.

BELOW

After this meerkat shakes off the katydid, the insect may end up as its snack. Meerkat pups don’t gain weight as quickly in hotter weather, possibly, researchers say, because the insects they eat contain less water. Meerkat pups may lose water and energy as they battle to regulate their body temperature.

T H E E D G E O F S U R V I VA L

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A long exposure shows flight trails across a night sky flashing with lightning. Scientists have counted 221 species of moths in Tswalu.

Some take flight after rains soften the soil, releasing adults from buried cocoons. The reserve also has 77 species of butterflies, about 10 of which fly through the reserve every year, a journey dubbed the Kgalagadi butterfly migration.

Grass, fed by rain, makes life possible in this nutrient-scant ocean of sand. But climate change is likely to shorten the rainy season. of southern Africa. It’s the yin to the El Niño’s parching yang, and Tswalu is gasping for it.

On an artist’s swatch, the color of the sand might show as pumpkin or carrot, tinting into apricot when the sun’s low on the horizon. But life here doesn’t have the effortless fecundity of an orchard. Rust doesn’t describe its particular hue either, even though it’s mixed from a palette of ground-down quartzites stained by oxidized iron.

Grass is the golden thread that makes life possible in this nutrient-scant ocean of sand.

It tethers the dunes against the winds’ pull. It soaks fickle moisture from the soil and dams it in its cells, to quench the thirst of ants and termites; their subterranean homes are larders for pangolins and aardvarks but also insect-eating bat-eared foxes and aardwolves.

Grass is the wattle and daub for the Kalahari’s aerial architects—the sociable weaverbirds, whose decades-old nesting chambers are stitched from grass blades. These high-rise tenements give shelter to generations of weavers and also draw in African pygmy falcons as tenants. Their avian residents entice hungry Cape cobras and boomslange whose lithe forms loop among the chambers like strings in a chandelier. Grass is fodder for the grazing ungulates that themselves are food for lions, cheetahs, leopards, wild dogs, and other predators of the African savanna.

Rebirth in Tswalu starts with the rain-fed flush of grass. Thundershowers deliver an average of about 13 inches a year, and they’re notoriously capricious. In some years, rain gauges might register fewer than seven inches; in others, nearly double the average. In times past, game animals responded to the boom-and-bust greening by traveling across great distances, often tracking the rain clouds, knowing that they would lead them to grazing bonanzas. But decades of cattle ranching slung fence lines across migratory 134

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paths, corralling the remaining wild herds into reserves like this one.

Conditions are changing further still. During the past half century, temperatures in parts of southern Africa have risen at twice the rate of the global average.

According to the South African Weather Service, 2015, 2016, and 2019 were the hottest years on record since at least 1950. In January 2016, thermometers at Augrabies Falls, about 150 miles southwest of Tswalu, registered more than 119°F. That’s “amongst the highest temperatures ever recorded so high above sea level in the Southern Hemisphere,” says Stefaan Conradie, a doctoral researcher with the Climate System Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town, and “the second highest reliably measured temperature in southern Africa.” Without climate change, the 2015-16 heat wave would have been about a 1-in-10,000-year event, he says, citing recent analysis.

How temperature increases will disrupt rainfall is difficult to predict, but in this part of the continent, the summer rainy season is likely to start later and be shorter. When rainstorms occur, they may be more intense, dropping greater volumes of water over shorter periods, which could result in surface flooding. There could be longer dry spells between storms.

What could this mean for the tenuous web of animals and plants in the southern Kalahari?

What would happen if the summer rains failed repeatedly, if drought conditions were more frequent, if the summertime greening didn’t come on time? What would it mean for the ants and termites that fill up their underground larders with seeds and grasses each summer?

And if the numbers of those insects fell drastically, what would happen to the pangolins, already threatened with poaching in many parts of southern Africa, and the other anteating mammals?

looks as if it has trotted right out of a nonsense verse: the snout of a pig, the ears of an ass, an improbably long face in between. It has the skin of a balding man and whiskers like the eyelashes of a drag artist, but only on the lower lids.

Aardvark means “earth pig” in Afrikaans, and they’re earthmoving machines. Shovel-shaped claws on taloned feet allow an aardvark to jackhammer through baked soil crust, opening up the ground for burrow-building or to break into rooms stuffed with bugs.

A host of other animals—jackals, Cape cobras, puff adders, pythons, ground squirrels, mice, wild cats, warthogs, swallows, chats—use the underground dwellings that aardvarks hollow out in a sort of time-share arrangement to endure the Kalahari’s extremes.

Nora Weyer, also with the Witwatersrand physiology lab at the time, tracked aardvarks in Tswalu from the winter of 2012 to the spring of 2015 for her doctoral work. She used small traps sunk into the ground to collect ants and looked for telltale conical soil heaps left by termites in the area to measure their abundance.

She collected their scat to find out what insects they ate, and how many, and found that harvester termites account for about 90 percent of an aardvark’s water and energy needs. She also monitored temperature-logging implants in the aardvarks to determine if the animals were getting enough energy to keep warm through the chilly Kalahari nights, when daily minimum temperatures can dip to about 65°F in summer and even nudge below freezing in winter.

In typical years, when the summer rains arrive with their usual sound-and-light show, the dunes burst to life, with ants and termites thriving and aardvarks feasting on them. But in the first summer of Weyer’s study, 2012 into 2013, no rain fell during the hottest months.

The overall season was well below average, and

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Tswalu limped into the next winter with poorly stocked pantries.

While following her study aardvarks and decrypting their scat, Weyer noted a dramatic reduction in grasses, which she knew would lead to a decline in harvester termites. By summer’s end, the aardvarks were wasting away, their spines and hip bones straining against drumtight hides. These normally nocturnal animals started leaving their burrows during the day, sometimes even before noon, in search of food to make up for their hungry nights.

The implants indicated that the animals’ body temperature swung wildly in 24-hour periods, compared with more stable body temperatures when their food supply was reliable and their energy levels good. This suggested that they weren’t getting enough energy to stay warm at night, and they seemed to compensate by using the daylight hours to bask and warm up.

But this immediate emergency adaptation didn’t see many of Weyer’s aardvarks through to the next rainy season. Of the six animals equipped with trackers in the study in 2012, five died in 2013. Weyer saw the bodies of many other dead aardvarks in the veld, and survivors looked listless, dazed, and gaunt. The message from this drought year was clear: If the rains fail, even for a single summer, the fabric that keeps grasses, ants, termites, and insect-eating animals woven together for survival may start to unravel.

has supped on her first helping of cocktail ants, she follows a meandering loop to her regular haunts, moving with an endearing swank and swagger. Panaino’s sneakered feet tread lightly behind her, while Phakoago slips away to scan for signs of buried dung.

About an hour later, the pangolin pauses, and

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FTER HOPEWELL 3

What researchers learn about the secretive lives of creatures on the dunes could help conservation managers protect the Kalahari.

135

scoops a slim hollow into the sand. Panaino shimmers with excitement, flashing her light to alert Phakoago.

Poised over the depression, Hopewell 3 delivers a mound of glistening black scat. Panaino usually avoids interfering with study animals, but if the pangolin drags her tail as she waddles off, this Kalahari gold will melt into the sand. Using one finger, Panaino raises the pangolin’s tail a fraction as she moves, keeping the treasure intact.

For the scientists, it’s hard enough to find an animal as secretive as this, let alone the dung that might otherwise be lost in the sand. The two women are on their knees, scooping it up with bare fingers and dropping it into a sample bag.

Once they’ve recovered every last fragment, they erupt into a synchronized jig, stage-whispering 136

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an improvised ditty about “pango poo.”

A few days later, Phakoago is back at the research site, with little more than a bucket, jug, tea strainer, and a take-out food container as her lab equipment.

She weighs dried scat collected two months earlier. Then she drops it into the bucket, sloshes a cup or two of water onto the sample to separate the good stuff from the sand, and swirls the container like a frontier woman panning for gold.

The dung dissolves into a coffee-colored brew with a foam of body parts—mostly ant and termite heads and a million pinprick legs—collecting on the surface. She sieves the liquid, gathering a heap of what looks like coffee grounds. Later she’ll put a small sample of this under a microscope and count every insect

comparison between the two animals’ feeding patterns.

Based on Panaino’s findings—that a pangolin eats an average of 15,000 ants and termites a night—she calculates that it eats 5.5 million a year. Add to that the number of ants and termites eaten by one aardvark and one aardwolf in a year, and Panaino estimates the total for all three is about 100 million insects. The number would be far higher if it included the many other animals that also feed on ants and termites, even in part. Sociable weavers, for example, eat mostly plants, but about a tenth of their diet is termites, and the ant-eating chat is as its name suggests.

Aardvarks—elusive night creatures, like pangolins—excavate burrows and crack open heat-baked soil to tap earthen mother lodes of termites, which provide most of their food and water needs. A recent drought showed that when grasses die and termite numbers crash, aardvarks languish.

head, identifying and tabulating each species.

The researchers use this laborious technique to understand the nuances of pangolins’ and aardvarks’ diets. This knowledge ultimately will yield a better appreciation for the complexity of relationships that weave back to the veld and how it should be managed.

The drought that gripped Tswalu during Weyer’s aardvark study gave her baseline data for comparing aardvarks’ diet in good and bad foraging years and noting their resulting behavior changes.

Panaino’s study shows what pangolins eat, and how much. Phakoago’s contribution is to examine the dung of both pangolins and aardvarks, collected in the same seasons and under the same conditions, and give an apples-to-apples

while Panaino and Phakoago scan the radio waves for signs of Hopewell 3 and other nearby study animals, the change comes.

It starts with iridescent orbs exploding voicelessly on the western horizon. But in less than an hour, strobes of lightning play closer on the surrounding dunes, followed by the sound of a drum mallet drawn across a corrugated tin roof.

The sky begins to shatter. Luminous cracks tear through the clouds, skewering nearby hills with retina-searing blasts. The percussion is a clatter of cymbals and a roll of shuddering bass drums.

A timpani of droplets smacks the ground, ephemeral islands of moisture in an ocean of desiccated sand, filling the air with ironscented mist. The researchers decide to retire for the night—it’s too dangerous to be out on the exposed dunes, and with the elements this voluble, the pangolins are very likely staying inside.

The crescendo is brief. The space between the veins of light and their accompanying drumbeats soon draws further apart and farther away as the storm hurries off to the east. It is over for now, but this is how the rains should come. This is how the greening should begin. The grasses will send up lush spears, seeds will swell like dewdrops on their tips, and the life that depends on their abundance will feast once more.

The geckos once again take up their chorus, clicking into the night. j

L

AT E O N E E V E N I N G,

South African science writer Leonie Joubert’s books include Scorched, Boiling Point, and The Hungry Season. Frequent contributor Thomas P. Peschak photographed the October 2019 story about sea turtles.

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JULIA WIMMERLIN

FROM OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO

A Ukrainian-born, Swissbased photographer who specializes in animals, portraits, and architecture WHERE

Kowloon Peak, a popular hiking area in Hong Kong WHAT

A Canon 5D Mark 3 with a 70-200mm lens

To capture a silhouette against Hong Kong’s skyline at night, Wimmerlin took a friend to Kowloon Peak, a subtropical mountain forest that overlooks the city— but they couldn’t find a suitable vantage point. The next day Wimmerlin went back alone and found a steep drop-off that provided a luminous backdrop for a model—which she became. For more than two hours she shuttled between the camera and the slope, posing perfectly still for each long exposure. She later returned looking for the exact spot but never found it.

This page showcases images from National Geographic’s Instagram accounts—the most popular brand on Instagram. Join more than 235 million followers: @natgeo, @natgeotravel, @natgeointhefield, @natgeoadventure, @natgeoyourshot.

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