Terra Nova Magazine Issue Two

TWO | JUNE 2013

Richard III

RETURN OF THE KING ATATURK | MANCHESTER | SNAKES OF GUAM | ROME | WADI RUM | IVORY | TTT

TWO | JUNE 2013

Editor

DESIGN Editor

Adam Woods

woodscopy@gmail.com

Stuart Woods

stuartcwoods@gmail.com

Contributing editor

contributing Editor

Tomas Staroscinski

Clare Speak

CONTRIBUTor & sub-editor

Jessica Crisp

tomas.staroscinski@live.se

clare.speak@seznam.cz

jessica.crisp@hotmail.co.uk

ILLUSTRATION

ILLUSTRATion

Contributing PHOTOGRAPHER

Amir Kudaibergenov

kudaibergenoff@gmail.com

Alina Kotova

alinadkotova@gmail.com

Christopher Platt

chrisplatt@gmail.com

...and special thanks to Michael Turtle (a.k.a Time Travel Turtle).

Up and Running

I

t’s been a lot harder than we had imagined, but with the release of this second instalment of Terra Nova Magazine our project is now up and running. Its sails are unfurled, the course is set: all we need is a little wind to drive us forward.

Since our debut publication we’ve been working hard to find the talent that could propel us to the next level. Fortunately, it came to us. Clare Speak, who had arrived just in time to make a small contribution to Issue One, has joined us once again - this time to write one of our feature articles on the invasive brown tree snake species that plagues the island of Guam.

Also joining our ranks is Jessica Crisp, who writes about the ivory trade in China and South-East Asia, and Tomas Staroscinski, who takes a look at the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Atatürk. All of our contributors, remember, are involved for nothing more than the love of their discipline, whether it’s writing, design or photography.

Our cover story for this quarter focuses on the recent excavation of Richard III from beneath a car park in the city of Leicester, UK. We’ll be speaking to some experts about how the find might affect the historical reputation of this infamously wicked medieval king. True to our name (and its connotative implications), we’ll also be looking further afield to the likes of Jordan, Thailand, China and the islands of the South Pacific in an attempt to bring you new stories, new people and new places from around the world.

Until next time, Adam Woods

P.S If

you would like to be involved for Issue Three, please reach out – we’re always on the lookout for new contributors. And, most importantly, if you enjoy reading Terra Nova Magazine, please do us a big favour by sharing it with your friends and family.

CONTENTS

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Everything Except a Beach A guide to Manchester, past and present.

Must-Have Travel accessories to take with you on your next big trip.

The Trouble with White Gold Elephants on the brink.

Alternative Rome An offbeat guide to the “Eternal City”.

Car Park King The excavation and restoration of Richard III.

The red list Terra Nova’s Red List™ watch list.

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Heroes of History Ignaz Semmelweis.

The long-forgotten man of medicine.

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Perspectives The best of your photos.

Father of the Turks Atatürk and the rise of a secular state.

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Guam’s Snake Solution The U.S. Army brings death from the skies.

America’s Hidden History TTT visits Washington D.C.

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Bedouin Directions A spring visit to Wadi Rum.

“Day was still young as we rode between two great pikes of sandstone to the foot of a long, soft slope poured down from the domed hills in front of us. It was tamarisk-covered: the beginning of the Valley of Rumm, they said�

- T.E Lawrence.

pHOTO ESSAY

EVERYTHING

EXCEPT A

BEACH Chris Platt on Manchester’s Cultural Offerings From an early age Manchester has been ‘my’ city - the bright lights and loud noises just over the hill from the humdrum routine of my Lancastrian home town. From tentative early visits in groups of wideeyed teens to those first experiences of the city’s notorious nightlife, Manchester has always afforded plenty of pleasant (if often a little odd) surprises.

As one of the most important ‘mill-towns’ of the Industrial Revolution, it’s a city built upon strong economic foundations - but one that has had to undergo a succession of late 20th-century revivals to make it into the financial, cultural - even artistic – epicentre it is today. With its considered blend of old and new, characterised by a skyline strewn with red-brick chimneys and glass-fronted tower blocks, Manchester has become all things to all men.

To truly identify and examine what makes Manchester an example of a ‘Great’ British city would necessitate the production of one weighty tome, so instead I set out to share just a fraction of its wealth of culture, history and uniquely irreverent humour through the medium of photography.

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Chris Platt is an architectural technologist from Oldham.

His passions are pies, ales and anything that is northern (except Yorkshire).

CULTURAL MANCHESTER

Manchester has become one of the North’s top shopping destinations, with high-end designer stores and contemporary fashion boutiques rubbing shoulders alongside the usual high-street chains in the city malls and arcades. Most people flock to the Arndale or the much larger Trafford Centre, but some still head down to the old-fashioned independents like Withy Grove Stores, which is still going strong after 150 years of trading.

The exquisitely ornate gothic building pictured here in the background is the John Reynolds Library, built in memory of the late 19th-century textile merchant and public philanthropist by the wife he left behind, Enriqueta Augustina. In front of it is the cutting-edge Spinningfields development – the North’s answer to London’s Canary Wharf. It’s a shot that offers clear symmetry to Manchester’s development: the edifice to the first Mancunian multi-millionaire standing firm beside the offices owned by today’s multi-billionaires.

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Frank Sidebottom – a surreal papier-mâché-headed comedy music act from the nearby village of Timperley - became a cult figure during the ‘Madchester’ scene of the late 1980s and early ‘90s, appearing on various local radio stations and TV shows, as well as releasing a number of comedy records. Frank’s image has become synonymous with the NorthWest’s unique brand of humour, and though his creator Chris Sievey died in 2010, the memory of his spherical head and cheery demeanour live on through street art such as this.

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EVERYTHING EXCEPT A BEACH

The last few decades have seen Manchester cultivate a reputation as something of a musical hub. As legendary record label owner and ‘Madchester’ impresario Tony Wilson once claimed, “kids in Manchester have the best record collections”, and with artists like the Stone Roses, Joy Division, Oasis, Elbow and the Chemical Brothers rising to global fame from the banks of the river Irwell in the last twenty years, it’s easy to see why. Manchester’s connection with music is as strong today as it has ever been, and walls like these have become a common sight throughout the city.

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The imposing Beetham tower, captured in this shot from behind an old railway bridge, is probably the most notable of the recent additions to Manchester’s urban architecture. Since construction in 2006 it has polarised opinion, with many concerned it dominates the city skyline. But for me, the juxtaposition it creates as it rises out of the surrounding 19th century industrial brick buildings serves as a perfect metaphor for the ‘new’ Manchester – a city that looks to the future without disregarding its past.

Manchester’s Northern Quarter is the youth and sub-culture centre of Manchester, where young goths and hipsters can mill about without being judged or harassed. At the heart of ‘NQ’ is this sculpture, which marks the entrance to Affleck’s; a former department store turned labyrinthine market (and a Mecca to Manchester’s alternative scene). Whatever your cultural leanings, no Mancunian’s youth is complete without regular visits to this bazaar-like collection of army surplus stores, retro sweet shops and quirky boutiques.

CULTURAL MANCHESTER

Stone Roses front-man and Mancunian stalwart Ian Brown expressed his love for this city by claiming it had ‘everything except a beach’. With an irrepressible music scene, an endless supply of bars and restaurants and a unique alloy of imposing Industrial Revolution warehouses and immodest 21st Century glass towers, it’s hard to disagree with the man they call ‘King Monkey’. Indeed, Manchester has been eulogised in many different ways - this mosaic being one of them!

The late 18th Century and the Industrial Revolution saw Manchester grow from a small market town into ‘Cottonopolis’ – the beating heart of the world’s cotton industry. As a result the city was serviced by a number of impressive railway stations, of which Manchester Victoria is the most elegant survivor. The current façade dates largely from the 1900s, with an ornate canopy detailing the station’s original destinations. Despite recently being named as the UK’s worst train station, Victoria retains a lot of its charm from the heyday of rail travel, with beautiful timber ticket booths, large-scale mosaic rail maps and all manner of other railway curiosities visible to those who take a moment to look up from their iPhones and let their eyes wander.

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Story by Jessica Crisp

The Trouble With White Gold A surge in demand for ivory has given rise once again to elephant poaching in Africa. Now, with populations in rapid decline, entire species are being driven towards extinction.

A herd of elephants huddle instinctively in a tight group around their young as a helicopter circles overhead. Later, rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Garamba National Park find the carcasses of twenty-two elephants, old and young, gunned down indiscriminately from above by poachers. Garamba once had more than 20,000 elephants. In 2012, there were just 2,400.

Despite a global ban on the ivory trade in 1989, poaching has soared in recent years, with methods becoming increasingly militarised. An estimated 32,000 elephants have been killed for their ivory since the beginning of 2012 - the most devastating year in decades. In the same period more than 12 rangers were also killed while protecting animals in central Africa alone. With between 50 and 100 elephants being slaughtered each day in Africa, calls for action are becoming increasingly urgent.

At the beginning of March, the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) met in Bangkok, Thailand, to address the issues surrounding the ivory trade.

Delegates demanded a clear set of targets from the so-called ‘gang of eight’ – the countries most involved in the illegal ivory trade.

These include the sources of supply - Kenya,

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Tanzania and Uganda; the transit countries - Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines; and the two biggest consumers - Thailand and China. Any country making regular seizures of ivory must now send DNA samples away for analysis in order to establish its origin, while those with pre-1989 stockpiles are under obligation to provide up-to-date inventories to prevent illegal, post-ban ivory being diverted into legal domestic markets.

Carlos Drews, head of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) delegation at CITES, welcomed the conclusion, calling it a major milestone in the protection of the species: “After years of inaction, governments today put those countries failing to regulate the ivory trade on watch, a move that will help stem the unfettered slaughter of thousands of African elephants.”

At the conference, Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra promised to amend the country’s laws and put a stop to its involvement in the ivory trade, which she hopes “will help protect all forms of elephants, including Thailand’s wild and domestic elephants and those from Africa.”

Currently, it is legal to trade ivory in Thailand if it derives from Asian elephants that have died of natural causes – it’s a gaping loophole that allows smugglers to launder illegally-sourced ivory from Africa.

The pledge from Shinawatra at the Convention in Bangkok comes after a petition calling for a complete ban on the trade was signed by 1.5 million WWF supporters. But for some her statement does not go far enough. No timeframe was considered for the amendment of the current legislation and despite similar promises from Thai premiers in the past, little has actually been done.

The elephant is the symbol of Thailand and is highly revered in Buddhism. Ivory is often more highly prized than gold and is used to make precious amulets believed to ward off bad spirits, bring luck and protect the owner from harm. They dangle from bracelets, swing from the mirrors of taxis and protect border soldiers from the black magic of Cambodia.

The Asian elephants that roam the forests of Thailand are endangered, and as such, are completely off limits to international trade. However, Thai law allows mahouts (elephant keepers) to sell the tusks of elephants that have died of natural causes. This provides cover for the traders who deal in illegal African ivory; once the tusks have been fashioned into amulets, charms and trinkets, they can be simply passed off as domestic produce.

IVORY

A poacher exhibits the weapons of his trade in the Maasai Mara National Reserve. At his feet lay arrows coated in lethal poison.

The fact that countries may also trade African ivory that pre-dates the 1989 ban compounds the problem. With ivory lasting pretty much indefinitely, and no inventory of ivory stocks before 1989, the defence provided by the “preban explanation” is almost impossible to counter – at least not without scientific analysis.

Only around 6,500 Asian elephants inhabit Thailand, of which 2,500 are wild and off-limits to the ivory trade.

Of the remaining domesticated population, an estimated 1,500 are male, which usually produce just one tusk a year.

With this in mind, TRAFFIC, an NGO monitoring wildlife trade, estimates that the elephant population and the natural death rate could only produce around 18.5 pounds of ivory per registered carver per year - a far smaller amount

With between 50 and 100 elephants being slaughtered each day in Africa, calls for action are becoming increasingly urgent.

than is actually sold. Clearly this is no self-sustaining market.

The biggest issue is that many buyers of ivory in Thailand are unassuming tourists, the majority of which are unaware that it is illegal to take ivory out of the country. Thai wildlife organisations have claimed those who own domestic elephants should be allowed to trade the ivory they produce; an all out ban as proposed by Ms. Shinawatra would penalise those who act within the law and who make an honest living from the tourist trade. But without testing the DNA of every piece of ivory that’s sold, there’s no way of knowing who’s working within the law and who’s not. Besides, they say, if a complete ban on the ivory trade were introduced, it would only go underground and become more difficult to regulate.

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THE TROUBLE WITH WHITE GOLD

Despite various conservation organisations questioning the sincerity of the Prime Minister’s promise, it is hoped that Thailand’s example will put pressure on the country most identified with the illegal ivory trade: China.

As in Thailand, ivory in China is still considered more precious than gold.

It’s used to consecrate religious icons, to produce ornamental jewellery and even to make chopsticks. Ownership of ivory objects in the People’s Republic is supposed to symbolise one’s wealth and status, but with an emerging and expanding middle class, never have so many people been able to afford it. Even more prized than white ivory is yellow ivory from the forest elephant that lives in central and western Africa - an area that in recent years has seen a significant rise in poaching. Experts believe as much as 70 percent of all illegal ivory ends up in China.

China’s growing middle class and its insatiable desire for objects of status has put the world back into the throes of a poaching crisis machinery.

Above: Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra declares the 16th meeting of CITES open. Opposite: Park rangers stand over the mutilated corpse of a forest elephant.

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However, China too has its own legal ivory supplies. In July 2008, in a transaction sanctioned by CITES, China bought 73 tons of ivory from Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, which had to use most of the $15.5 million raised to fund conservation projects. China paid just $67 per pound of ivory; it was hoped the low prices would flood the market and undercut the illegal traders. But China did the unexpected - it drove up prices and limited the amount released onto the market each year. One entrepreneur was charged $530 per pound of ivory, a 650% mark up on the price the government paid. Today, ivory can fetch upwards of $1,300 per pound.

In 2011, the Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA) claimed at a CITES meeting that by limiting supply and thus driving up prices, China had only made the situation in Africa worse. It had cultivated a demand for cheaper ivory - for illegal ivory. Consequently, poaching had actually increased.

After the 1989 ban, the price of ivory fell drastically, trade to the USA and Europe was almost eliminated, and poaching subsided in Africa so that elephant populations were able to recover. But China’s growing middle class and its insatiable desire for objects of status has put the world back into the throes of a poaching crisis, with the very existence of African elephants now becoming threatened.

And there’s little sign of it abating. Indeed, ivory carving in China has been hallowed as a tradition in need of protection. The government has given special dispensation to a number of institutions that depend on the ivory trade, including 35 carving factories and 130 ivory retail outlets. It is also now sponsoring ivory carving schools.

China is thus poising itself for growth – growth which can only be sustained by illegal ivory. In 2011, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) investigated 158 ivory retail shops and carving factories to find only 57 of them had licenses, and among those that did, almost 60 percent were laundering illegal ivory. The licenses themselves are also being abused: the IFAW found many of them were being reused or sold, with one factory owner admitting he paid $321,000 for a licence that is, officially at least, supposed to be free.

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IVORY

Elephants AT A GLANCE

Savannah elephant - lives in the grassy plains and woodlands of Sub-Saharan Africa. These elephants produce white ivory.

Forest elephant – significantly smaller than the savannah elephant, with rounder ears and straighter tusks that produce the highly prized yellow ivory. Found in the equatorial forests of central and western Africa.

Asian elephant – smaller and generally less aggressive than both of its African counterparts, the Asian elephant has become domesticated in many parts of India, Sri Lanka, South-East Asia and Sumatra. A large proportion of male Asian elephants do not carry tasks.

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Worryingly, the Chinese Government is now lobbying to ease the restrictions on the trade.

Mr Meng, the wildlife trade official, has claimed African herds could “endure a robust international ivory trade.” He states that Asian demand would require 220 tons of ivory each year, the equivalent of roughly 20,000 elephants. With the death of 25,000 elephants a year currently decimating 300,000 strong populations and the entire species heading towards extinction, it’s clear that they could not cope with such an onslaught.

Even more concerning is the fact many Chinese consumers still believe tusks simply “fall off” elephants. It seems ignorance is something else that needs to be overcome in order to stem the demand that fuels the illegal trade. Former NBA star and Chinese icon, Yao Ming, has recently launched a major public awareness campaign to help tackle this very issue, urging, “When the buying stops, the killing can too.”

But it’s not just demand that needs to be tackled – it’s supply. Behind the illegal ivory trade is an international criminal network that relies on corruption to keep the supply chain together. Customs officials in China are often paid to turn a blind eye. Seized ivory has gone missing from warehouses. One illegal dealer in Africa claims to have friends in airport security: “if you have money, it is easy.”

Corruption exists even at a grassroots level. Gamekeepers at the Selous Reserve in Tanzania have been accused of poaching in order to supplement their pay and feed their families. With a single large tusk fetching up to $6,000 on the black market, an amount which can support an unskilled worker for ten years, it is little wonder that some Africans are turning to the ivory trade as a means of income.

Many ways to address the multitude of issues surrounding the ivory trade have been proposed, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Mary Rice, Executive Director of the EIA, wants to see the “closing down of ivory markets, both legal and illegal, and tackling of policies that stimulate demand and the criminal networks involved.” However, battling deeply entrenched cultures of corruption, confronting well-established and organised criminal gangs and stemming demand for a material which is

Behind the illegal ivory trade is an international criminal network that relies on corruption to keep the supply chain together.

culturally and religiously significant could prove a lengthy and complex process.

But efforts are being made to get it underway. In a report entitled “Elephants in the Dust – The African Elephant Crisis”, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), CITES and TRAFFIC came together to set out what needs to be done to stop the illegal trade of ivory.

Among its recommendations were the training of enforcement officers in tracking, intelligence and the use of forensic analysis.

Dr Holly Dublin, Chair of the IUCN has also called for better international collaboration through the UN Office for Drugs and Crime, CITES, INTERPOL, the World Customs Organization, the World Bank and other international actors in order to enhance law enforcement from the field to the judiciary.

But resources are critical. Patrick Omondi, the spokesman for Kenya’s delegation at CITES highlights African countries’ biggest obstacle. “If you give me screens to screen tonnes of containers we’ll screen all containers passing through Mombasa airport. If you give me 50 more sniffer dogs, we’ll be sniffing every animal part that passes through.” Clearly the will is there, but significant support is needed.

And that support is slowly trickling in.

Just two months prior to the massacre in Garamba National Park, 100 poachers on horseback armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades raided Cameroon’s Bouba Ndjidah National Park and slaughtered more than 300 elephants – the worst concentrated killing since 1989. But the

THE TROUBLE WITH WHITE GOLD

government reacted and improved security in protected areas, including the deployment of 60 new guards in the National Park. It has also agreed a plan to recruit an additional 2,500 game rangers over the next five years, to establish a new national park authority, and to help secure its protected areas.

Support for these incentives often comes from NGOs. The most successful example is Big Life, which works across the Amboseli ecosystem to improve communication between Tanzania and Kenya and funds the resources needed to patrol and protect over two million acres of land. Since 2010, it has provided 14 anti-poaching vehicles, four tracker dogs, night-vision equipment, GPSs and established a network of informants.

But for conservationists, the crucial first step is simple – send out a clear message and impose a complete ban on all ivory trade.

Ivory charms and trinkets like these are sold throughout South-East Asia. They are thought to bring the wearer luck.

Ivory facts & FIGURES

China’s attitude

What is CITES?

Changing use of ivory

VITAL STATISTICS

A recent survey by WildAid found that around half of Chinese people questioned did not believe poaching was common. 33.8% thought that ivory came from elephants that had died naturally, and only 33% were aware of its connection with poaching.

Meanwhile, 45.3% did not know how to discern illegal ivory from legal ivory. However, a staggering 94% agreed that the Chinese government should impose a ban on the ivory trade to stop the poaching of elephants in Africa.

CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an intergovernmental agreement aimed at protecting species that have become threatened by international trade and trafficking. Established in 1973 and headquartered in Washington DC, it’s one of the longest-running conservation projects in existence.

Currently only 16 of the 193 United Nations member states are not party to the treaty.

Ivory has been used for millennia, particularly for the carving of religious icons, statues and ornaments. At the height of the British Empire it became a global commodity – the material of choice for piano keys, billiard balls and furniture decorations.

After the Second World War, Japan became the world’s largest consumer, taking around 40% to make name seals. With Western markets now closed, ivory has once again become a primarily Asian fascination, used for religious iconography, spiritual trinkets and even chopsticks.

The devastation caused by the trade of ivory can perhaps best be expressed in numbers. In 1979, there were an estimated 1.3 million elephants in Africa.

Despite the global ban on the ivory trade ten years later, the figure now stands at around 420,000. Asian elephants, meanwhile, number anywhere between 25,600 and 32,750 – less than half the amount thought to have existed at the start of the 20th century. Between 2004 and 2012, an estimated 11,000 forest elephants were killed in around the Minkébé National Park rainforest in Gabon.

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Ignaz Semmelweis The Long-Forgotten Man of Medicine

W

alk into any first-world hospital today and you’re likely to notice large tubs of anti-bacterial solution hanging from the walls at the entranceways. You’ll probably also spot the signs telling you to wash your hands and informing you of the consequences if you don’t.

Of course, scrubbing up before entering a ward has become common practice. But there was a time when even surgeons didn’t bother. It didn’t occur to them that dirty hands might be the cause of infection and death. But it did to Ignaz Semmelweis...

nearby mortuary in the morning before heading to the ward and delivering babies in the afternoon. He knew this to be the reason for the higher mortality rates on Ward 1, but he still couldn’t understand why.

The answer came in 1847, when Semmelweis’s good friend and hospital colleague Jakob Kolletschka died of septicaemia. He had been accidentally cut with a scalpel whilst performing an autopsy. Semmelweis, who carried out Kolletschka’s autopsy, noticed that the lesions on his body were almost identical to those found on the women who died on Ward 1.

Born in 1818 near the city of Budapest, Semmelweis was the first Believing that it may have been the scalpel that transferred the infection, Semmelweis ordered that all medical staff on Ward 1 person to discover a connection between clean surgery and the should wash their hands (and instruments) before attending to reduced incidence of contagion and mortality. In so doing, he laid the foundations upon which Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister and patients. The result seemed miraculous: the death rate on Ward others would base their germ theory, saving millions of lives over 1 plummeted. the course of the next century.

Over the course of the next few years, Semmelweis and his Having trained as an obstetrician, Semmelweis was appointed new disciples began to disseminate their ideas via a series of in 1846 as an assistant on the maternity ward at the Vienna Genpublished studies, virtually all of which were rejected by the eral Hospital. Not long after arriving, the young doctor noticed Austrian medical elite. Their theories on contagion were openly something strange about the mocked by the leading medirate of death on his ward. It cal figures of the day. appeared that the women on Dismissed from his posiMany women preferred to give birth on Maternity Ward 1 where he tion at the Vienna General the streets – and those that did were worked were much more likeHospital, Semmelweis moved ly to die after giving birth than back to Budapest and applied actually more likely to survive. those on Maternity Ward 2. his findings at the St. Rochus His more experienced colHospital instead. Here too did leagues were already aware of this, and so were the women of the mortality on the maternity ward fall considerably. Meanwhile in city. In fact, Ward 1 was known throughout Vienna as a place to Vienna, doctors reverted to their old ways, and the death rate avoid. Many women preferred to give birth on the streets – and rose to pre-1847 levels. those that did were actually more likely to survive.

Yet Semmelweis’s theories were never quite accepted, at least Semmelweis was perplexed. “To me,” he later wrote, “it apnot in his lifetime. Shunned by his peers, the doctor began to sufpeared logical that patients who experienced street births would fer from severe depression, and possibly even premature demenbecome ill at least as frequently as those who delivered in the clintia. Every conversation he would have would inevitably turn to ic”. But they didn’t, and the doctor from Buda was determined to the topic of childbed fever. establish the reason.

In 1865, Semmelweis was tricked into visiting a mental asylum Comparing the two together, he found that Wards 1 and 2

by Austrian physician Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra. Upon leaving had only one difference. The first, which had the higher morhe was overwhelmed by the asylum orderlies, who bound him up tality rates, was administered by doctors and medical students; in a straight jacket and gave him a severe beating. The injuries the second was under the instruction of midwives only. Both he sustained were such that he contracted an infection, and died were employing the same practices and using the same delivery two weeks later. techniques. So what was causing the death of so many women Though Semmelweis’s ideas gradually gained acceptance, his on Ward 1? contribution to medical science has been largely overshadowed It didn’t take Semmelweis long to work it out. The doctors on

by Pasteur, who twenty years later managed to provide a theoretWard 1, he realised, would often carry out post-mortems in a ical explanation to the Hungarian’s observations.

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The SpareOne was made for those moments when your iPhone decides it has had enough and shuts down just as you need to make that all-important call. Powered by a single AA battery, this slimline emergency phone can hold its charge for up to 15 years, outlasting your standard smartphone by approximately 14 years and 364 days. A dedicated emergency services dial button allows you to get help almost anywhere in the world (even without a SIM card), while an integrated LED torch comes in handy when you’re physically and figuratively in a dark place.

This genius invention deservedly won the prestigious Innovations Award at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Association Convention.

T

MUST

L ACCESS E OR AV R IE

SpareOne Emergency Phone (£47)

CrossKase Solar 15 backpack (£136) So, the SpareOne may come in handy for emergency calls, but it does nothing to cure the feeling of loss that accompanies having no access to texts, social media and the internet.

That’s where the CrossKase Solar backpack comes in handy: its front-facing, 3-Watt plane captures solar energy and uses it to charge a built-in battery, which can in turn be used to charge phones, tablets and laptops when you’ve no access to mains power. The backpack comes with eight charging adaptors, is water repellent, and has dedicated storage space for iPads and 15.6” laptops.

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Reef Stash Sandals (£30)

T

You’re at the beach. The sun is shining. You fancy a dip. But where are you going to stash your keys, cash and credit cards? It’s hardly relaxing when you have to keep glancing back to your towel to check that a genius pickpocket hasn’t figured out your secret hiding place under the towel. With Reef Stash Sandals you can set your mind at ease. These clever clogs’ flip-flops feature secret drawers where you can hide your goodies without anybody knowing.

Practical, comfortable and stylish, just hope no one runs off with them instead!

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AV

EL

ACCESSO R

HAVE

IE S Ostrich Pillow (£50) All you want to do when you settle down for a long-haul flight is catch a decent 40 winks. But just as you close your eyes, the kids in front start to scream and those pesky little reading lights start to bore through your eyelids. Now there’s a solution: the Ostrich Pillow - a rather bizarre looking padded balaclava that will guarantee a nap pretty much anywhere. With just a hole for breathing, the Ostrich Pillow provides a dark and quiet environment where you can retreat from the outside world and get some much-needed shuteye. It may look a little wacky, but it’s set to revolutionise the art of napping.

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Bedouin Directions A Cross-Roads in Time � Story by Adam Woods �

“Welcome to Jordan,” says Achmed, our taxi driver, “May you have good health and happiness here in our country.” In the space of just an hour and a half, I feel like I’ve got to know Achmed rather well. I’m told it’s common to feel that way about Jordanians. Such is their openness, their sincerity.

It’s the second time he’s welcomed us to Jordan, but more meaningful and prolonged now that we’ve discussed football, food, politics and the price of petrol on the road from Aqaba - I even know the names of his wife and children. Achmed’s handshake is as earnest as his words, and as he hands us over to the dutiful care of Mehedi al-Hewaitaat, it feels like saying goodbye to an old friend.

It’s ten o’clock in Rum Village, a gathering of ramshackle buildings at the entrance to the desert wadi (valley) beyond. The sun beats down fiercely on the tarmaced road, but a low wind takes away its edge, making life more comfortable not just for me, but for the camel on the opposite curb whose face betrays a certain sense of disillusionment. Perhaps life hasn’t worked out quite the way he wanted it to. But then, all camels appear angry and disappointed, no matter how ‘free-range’ they are.

Being handed over to Mehedi is like being introduced to Achmed’s ancestor. Both are of Bedouin stock, but while the latter wears Calvin Klein jeans and a Nike t-shirt, the former is elegantly adorned with thawb and keffiyeh. There’s something different in the way they talk, too. Achmed is confident, smiling and certain. Mehedi, meanwhile, is as gracious, eloquent and poised as a desert prince.

These are the signs that we’ve moved from one world into another. We’ve left behind the one of glossy hotel foyers and gleaming

Mercedes Benzes and entered that of dusty tents and dissident camels. It’s a transition reinforced by the dramatic change in landscape: with its inimitable sand-sculptures, empty valleys and indomitable cliffs-faces of orange, red and gold, Wadi Rum is like something from an Arthur C. Clarke science-fiction novel. All that’s missing is NASA’s Curiosity rover and a gang of inquisitive Martians.

But Rum is far from futuristic. In fact, life here appears quite rustic, despite all the changes that have taken place in Jordan since becoming a formally recognised ‘nation’ in 1921. Of course, there are a few mod-cons that reveal Rum’s connection with the outside world (cars, for instance), but the general sense one gets is that the area remains firmly traditional, even if the man whose hand I’m shaking does have a Twitter account.

Mehedi, a young, enterprising tour organiser, shows us into a roadside restaurant, and over a glass of sage tea draws out the route we shall be taking into the valley of Wadi Rum - on a map printed in Dutch.

“Where are you from?” he asks us, with an embarrassed look on his face. “England? My wife is from Reading”. Clearly there’s more to this man than meets the eye, but he doesn’t stop to explain how he met his wife. Instead, he points to a spot on the map called “Lawrence’s Spring”, and asks if we know who “Lawrence” is.

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A driver navigates precarious tracks in the sand on the journey back to Rum Village.

It’s almost 100 years since the fair-haired, Arabic-speaking colonel of the British Army passed through Wadi Rum on his way to blow up the Hejaz Railway. But here the legend of Lawrence lingers, if only for marketing purposes. Like the Jordanian Tourist Board, the Bedouin of Rum have, somewhat understandably, capitalised on foreign interest in this fabled character, and they’re keen to mention him whenever the opportunity presents itself.

“Lawrence’s Spring” is just one of the geological features named in his honour. There’s also “Lawrence’s House” and “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, an extraordinary rock formation that greets you as you enter the valley.

Being English and having just read Seven Pillars of Wisdom, I assure Mehedi (rather too proudly, it has to be said) that I do indeed know who Lawrence is. Then, getting cocky, I decide to tell him the story of how the hero of the Hejaz left the original manuscript for Seven Pillars at Reading train station, never to be found again. Lawrence had to write everything from scratch, and from memory alone. Something must have been lost in translation, for the anecdote seems to have no effect whatsoever on Mehedi, despite his wife being Berkshire-born.

Later he tells me that in fact the people of Rum know very little of Lawrence. “We know his name and something about him from tourists and from the film, but his personal story is not something

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that was talked about amongst the Bedouin after the fighting had stopped”. I suppose it makes sense that his story would be unremarkable to the Bedouin – as Mehedi himself explains, “the long camel journeys, the food, the hardships: that is all normal to us”.

Outside, we climb into a 4x4 and Mehedi drives us all of 30 metres to a nearby compound, where our transport for the day awaits. Two scraggy-looking dromedaries turn their heads as if to greet us as we enter, but would clearly rather be somewhere else.

The owner of our bad-tempered beasts is Salman, a man possibly in his 50s or even 60s, but as agile as a cat. He will be our guide for the day.

I swing into the saddle, and within moments I’m being flung forwards and then backwards as my steed’s hind and then front legs unfold. He lets out a groan as I give him a good pat and tell him not to give me any grief. Then I’m reminded of an old quip: a camel, they say, is a horse designed by committee. Well, now I’m sat on one, and the joke’s on me. Or perhaps more fittingly, I’m on the joke.

We bid farewell to Mehedi, who has a few more tours to arrange before heading up to camp in his 4x4. As we exit the compound and file along the road in the direction of the valley, a group of children begin skipping cheerfully alongside us; I feel like we’re at the vanguard of a liberating army.

It transpires that Salman has only a few words of English, two of which are “good” and “guide”. These he frequently puts together and adds a rising inflection, just to make sure we’re having fun.

Since there are only three of us (including Salman) in the caravan, there won’t be much conversation as we make our way up Wadi Rum. But I’m OK with that: it leaves plenty of time for looking and thinking.

Doing a bit of both, I soon realise that Wadi Rum is a lot like a camel’s mouth (an analogy that’s certainly not in the guidebooks).

To the sides are enormous cliffs the shape and colour of rotting teeth; in the middle is a long tongue of hot pink sand; and all the while a warm wind blows down from the dark, cavernous rocks in the distance, flapping at Salman’s keffiyeh and, strangely, causing him to imitate the motions of a bird.

“Good guide?”, he asks. “Yes, very good”, we retort, in a very British sort of way. He points to my camel: “Habibi!” And again, “Habibi!” Is there something wrong with him? Have I caused him too much grief? No, apparently it’s his name, and later I discover that Habibi literally means “my beloved”. That might explain why Salman allows my camel to feast on Rum’s springtime shrubs, but doesn’t allow the other beasts in our party such a privilege.

At this time of year Wadi Rum is exceptionally beautiful. A loose blanket of wildflowers covers the ground, tiny birds dart from rock to rock and gushing streams make their way down from the serene and powerful mountains that surround us. Lawrence was right when he called it the “loveliest of all wadis” – it’s the most fertile as well as the most attractive in Jordan, and therefore no surprise that it now receives over 100,000 visitors per year (according to the Jordanian Tourist Board).

Unfortunately, I haven’t found it quite as lovely as Lawrence left it. Blown-out tyres, empty bottles and stray sandals are evidence of change in a region where time has often stood still. In place of camels, 4x4s have become the common mode of transport, for tourists and locals alike. The increasing presence of gas-guzzlers is a real cause for concern, particularly because of their capacity to destroy natural habitats when churning their way through the mud and sand.

UNESCO, which gave Wadi Rum World Heritage status in 2011, is currently working with the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority to implement a new desert conservation plan that will focus on limiting the impact that vehicles have on the fragile desert eco-system.

Some areas will become strictly off limits: only camels, horses and hikers will be admitted. It’s an initiative that will hopefully preserve some of Rum’s majesty.

With this in mind, I’m glad to have opted for Habibi, even if the unremitting lurch from back to front is beginning to cause some discomfort. I try to mimic Salman, who’s adopting the conventional camel-riding posture, which is legs to front rather than to side. It provides some relief, and as I press on against a dying wind I begin to feel a little more content.

T.E. Lawrence Born: 16 August 1888 (Tremadog, Wales) Died: 19 May 1935 (Dorset, England) Education: Jesus College, Oxford Rank: Colonel and Aircraftman “Lawrence of Arabia” made his name during the Arab Revolt of 1916-18, in which he served as an advisor to Emir Faisal al-Hussein on behalf of the British Army intelligence office in Cairo. In the years prior to the First World War, Lawrence had travelled across Syria on an 1,100 mile walking tour before joining a British Museum archaeological expedition in Mesopotamia. It was here that he learnt to speak colloquial Arabic and began to develop Arab sympathies.

In 1916 he accompanied a British diplomatic mission to Mecca, hoping to rejuvenate the failing revolt that had hitherto thrown off the Ottoman yoke on the western edge of the Arabian Peninsula.

After meeting with the Sherif of Mecca and all four of his sons, Lawrence identified Faisal (the third son) as the man most capable of keeping the fire burning.

Immersing himself in Bedouin culture and showing he could endure the long camel rides across the sun-scorched desert wadis, Lawrence quickly earned the Emir’s trust. He became a key figure of the revolt, leading small detachments of the Arab Northern Army in guerrilla warfare against the Ottoman-controlled Hejaz Railway, which ran from Damascus to Medina.

With the help of local sheiks such as Auda ibu Tayi of the Hewaitaat (who Lawrence dubbed "the greatest fighting man in northern Arabia”), he would go on to capture Aqaba, Tafileh, and play a leading part in the fall of Damascus.

After the war and the successful conclusion of the revolt in Syria, Lawrence accompanied Faisal to the Paris Peace Conference where he petitioned for an independent Arab state. However, his appeals were unsuccessful: the French as well as the British no longer had any need for Arab assistance in their campaigns against the Ottoman Empire.

In the following years Lawrence became a national icon, though it was a status from which he shrank.

Preferring anonymity, he changed his name in 1922 to Ross; when his true identity was discovered several years later, he changed it once again to Shaw.

In the spring of 1935 Lawrence was involved in a fatal motorcycle accident on a road near his home in Dorset. He died six days later.

Rum’s timeless majesty: Monolithic sandstone and granite jebels rise from the hot, pink desert floor, creating a maze of sloping valleys and plunging canyons.

It was this scene that greeted T.E Lawrence as he passed through Wadi Rum en route to the Hejaz Railway during the Arab Revolt of 191618. Over 40 years later, David Lean would shoot much of his wartime biopic Lawrence of Arabia here.

Salman, a local guide, tends to his camels Belhan (left) and Habibi (right). Nowadays, few visitors to Wadi Rum choose the more traditional, four-legged form of desert vehicle. Most are passing through en route to or from Petra, and have little time to explore the area.

With Wadi Rum becoming blissfully quiet with the death of the wind, I try to imagine myself amongst the raiding parties of Lawrence, on a march to the Hejaz Railway for a skirmish with the Ottomans. But the daydream is over when Salman’s phone rings, and he pulls from his thawb a battered old Nokia 8210. It’s a reminder of how the modern world is beginning to infiltrate traditional Bedouin life – in days gone by, Salman’s wife would have had to send someone on a camel to let him know his dinner was getting cold.

After eight hours in the saddle, the sun is beginning to set and we’re drawing close to camp. It’s my last chance to get a good shot of Salman before he returns to Rum Village, so I ask him if he could hold still in the saddle while I prepare my camera. As I fiddle with the settings he strikes up a warrior’s pose, and waits for me patiently.

I begin to suspect that he’s done this before. With the flick of a shutter, a wink of an eye and the click of a tongue we’re off again, into a canyon where supper is being prepared for us by the al-Hewaitaat clan.

We say goodbye to Salman, Habibi and the other, less-“beloved” camels. But not before he’s asked us one last time whether he’s been a “good guide”. We reassure him of his guiding skills, and follow our noses up a small ravine to where several long, black tents are casting shadows onto bulbous granite walls behind.

It’s not long before we’re invited to a fire-side soirée in the communal tent, where more sage tea awaits. A member of the Hewaitaat clan plucks at an Oud in the corner – a stringed lyrelike instrument played only on social occasions. With the fire casting an ambient light upon the Persian carpets hung from the walls, it’s all rather warm and cosy.

In flood the rest of the Hewaitaat, and the mood becomes an ebullient one. There are no Bedouin women here though, and when I ask why I’m told that it’s down to “tradition”. There are some things in Wadi Rum that remain the same, whatever goes on in the world around.

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Next we’re given an introduction to Hashemite history. Jordanians seem very fond of their royal family, and are more than happy to recount the line of succession for you. “This is Hussein. He was a very good king. This is Abdullah, our king today. And this is Hussein, our king tomorrow”. It’s a good job we have a framed picture of all three, because otherwise this would become quite complicated.

Our day in Wadi Rum ends much in the same way that it started – in the good care of gracious, welcoming, warm-hearted people.

We’ve been well looked after throughout. That, apparently, is the Bedouin way. They are nothing if not hospitable.

Before bed I head to the washroom, where there’s running water, mirrors and proper basins. An alarm sounds as I’m brushing my teeth: somewhere in camp a generator cuts out, leaving me to finish off my molars in total darkness. For a moment I’m frustrated, but then I smile and remember I’m in the desert. Wadi Rum might have cars, phones and Twitter, but it doesn’t yet have 24/7 electricity, and despite my half-finished teeth I’m glad for it.

Under the starriest sky I’ve ever seen I feel my way back to camp and into bed. Suddenly I notice the tent rocking backwards and forwards, as if pitching and rolling on a twenty foot swell.

Now I know why they call camels the ships of the desert.

In Wadi Rum, 4x4s have become the preferred mode of transport for tourists and locals alike. What was once an eight-hour camel ride is now a 25-minute drive. However, some fear that the increasing number of vehicles is having an adverse affect on plant and animal life in the area, with “free-for-all” tyre tracks thought to be doing considerable damage to desert habitats.

Desert Life An Interview with Mehedi Saleh al-Hewaitaat.

Why is Wadi Rum so special to you?

What are the downsides?

The thing I love most about Wadi Rum is my sense of place. My father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather were all from the desert - I feel I belong here. Our tribe was originally from Saudi Arabia, but we gradually moved north and have been here for many, many years. My heart relaxes here. I never feel bored in the desert.

When people visit they bring with them their own ideas about what is right, wrong, OK and not OK, and this begins to influence the young people who spend so much time with them.

Social problems that were not here before - things that are not a part of our culture or religion – are now prevalent.

For example, young people here start to try smoking, drinking; they go off partying with girls that come to the desert, and this begins to corrupt the society. As Bedouin are Muslims, we are very strict about not drinking and taking drugs. We always got married before having relationships in the past and this was a good thing. Our society was clean. We are sad to see the people starting to do many things that are harmful to themselves and the society.

What’s the best thing about your job?

The best thing about my job and working with tourists is that it takes me into the desert everyday and I get to share it with people from all over the world. Without tourism, I would have to look for work in the police or with the government, and this would take me away from Wadi Rum.

What did you do before tourism?

I have only ever worked with tourists.

When I left school I started to work with tourists. Firstly for other guides, but then I started my own business, Bedouin Directions. It has been 8 years now since I left school and started this work. I started Bedouin Directions at the end of 2008.

What opportunities has it brought you and the community?

There are many different ways to work with tourists, so it brings lots of opportunities. People who perhaps did not do very well in school still have a chance to work and earn money. We have the chance to learn about the world and how life is in different places all over the world. People come and tell us about their homes and lives, so we know more than the Bedouin in the past. Some Bedouin travel and visit Europe, America and beyond.

I think tourists coming is good for all of Jordan, as we Bedouin do not have too much chance for work otherwise.

Has tourism has a big impact on the Bedouin way of life?

It has had a big impact. In the past when my father was a boy and before this we lived in the desert. We didn't have money but we didn't have a need for it. We lived from our goats, camels - what we had from the desert. We didn't have a fancy life, but it was free, and a beautiful way to be.

Friends were really friends. Each night Bedouin would come together to drink coffee, eat together, and spend the evening talking around the fire. The life was focused on doing what we needed to do to survive. So the men would go hunting, we would raise our goats and camels. We would collect firewood, cook and prepare food while the women would make the tents. A very practical life, and a hard life but it was beautiful.

Now you have to care about money.

You have to have money to eat, to make a house, all the things you need in the modern world. It makes life easier in some ways, but it catches you so you have no choice but to make money to get what you need.

We don't like to feel caught by anything: the desert is free.

Also, Bedouin were stronger Muslims.

We all prayed. We didn't do lots of harmful things like drinking. We were honourable people. The desert was clean. It is sad for old people to see the changes and sad for us that we don't have that way of life anymore.

Do you worry about the world around you?

I am lucky because I am Muslim. I don't worry about these things because I know from the Holy Quran and Mohammed, peace be upon him, how life started, how life goes and how this life will end. Of course we don't know when the world will end, as only Allah has this knowledge. But Mohammed, peace be upon him, described signs that we can look out for. Some are major signs and some are minor signs. Many of these signs have already come to pass or are happening now.

From this we know that we are heading towards the last days. We understand why there is fighting, why there is suffering, why there are problems - even it is not strange to us that the oil is running out and that there is global warming. Many of these things have been described 1,400 years ago.

Do you have any worries at all?

Of course I have worries and concerns, but the thing that worries me the most in life is whether I am following a way of life that is pleasing to Allah. I hope to go to heaven, so this is something that concerns me.

I know I need to make my Salah, to take care of my mother and father, and many more things. If I do something I know displeases Allah, then this worries me more than anything. When you submit yourself to Allah and lead your life in a way that is pleasing to him it is good for you the individual, the society around you, and the whole world.

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ALTERNATIVE

ROME The Forum. The Colosseum. The Vatican. The Trevi Fountain.

The Spanish Steps. The Eternal City’s wealth of tourist attractions goes on, an embarrassment of cultural and historical riches. Few cities in the world can rival Italy’s grandiose capital for things to see and do, and fewer still could have so much left in reserve once the big guns have all been seen and done.

In every nook and cranny of this ancient city there’s a museum, gallery, ruin or church brimming with art and artefacts from every epoch of European history. But with the likes of the Colosseum, St. Peters and the Sistine Chapel stealing the limelight, many of them are often completely overlooked. So, if the Vatican queues are all too much, try heading down to one of these little-visited alternatives...

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Alternative Cities

Rome

Church of the Gesù Piazza Della Rotunda

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ot far from the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument is the relatively crowd-free Church of the Gesù, which takes its name from the order to which it belongs (the Jesuits). Designed by mannerist architects Vignola and Giacamo della Porta, it stands directly on the spot where St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, reputedly prayed to his saviour the Virgin Mary (who he believed saved him from death during his days as a soldier in Spain).

As the mother church of the Society of Jesus, Gesù influenced all other Jesuit buildings constructed during the Baroque period, especially in Latin America. Its rather modest façade can be seen replicated in Buenos Aires, Salvador, Santiago and Bogotá. But it’s what’s inside that really makes a visit to the Church of the Gesù worthwhile.

99 years after the Church’s completion, a 22-year-old, Bernini-influenced Baroque artist named Giovanni Battista “Il Baciccio” Gaulli unveiled its stunning centrepiece, The Triumph of the Name Jesus (and a real triumph of architectural illusionism).

Today visitors spend hours gazing up at the ceiling, admiring Il Baciccio’s capacity to seemingly give life to inanimate, 2-dimensional paintings. To the untrained eye, at least, The Triumph of the Name Jesus is every bit as impressive as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes.

Museum of the Risorgimento Capitol

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hen people think of Rome, they tend to think of history.

They think of emperors and gladiators, popes and princes, artists and engineers - Augustus and Spartacus, St. Peter and Cesare Borgia, Michelangelo and Bernini. Less likely are they to think of Giuseppe Mazzini, Camillo Benso or even Guiseppe Garibaldi. But the story of these men and others of the Risorgimento is every bit as important in the grand narrative of Italian history, if not more so.

It is told in the Museum of the Risorgimento, hidden within the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument and bypassed by thousands of tourists looking only to reach the Monument’s summit for panoramic views over the Forum. When Terra Nova visited last autumn, the museum was ours to enjoy alone.

The exhibition charts the revolution from its earliest days in 1820s Sicily right through to the capture of Rome in 1870, when the Italian peninsula was unified for the first time since the end of Western Roman Empire.

The collection includes a number of personal artefacts, letters and arms belonging to Garibaldi, Mazzini, Benso (Count Cavour) and other leading figures of the revolution, as well as many paintings, drawings and sculptures inspired by their achievements.

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Torre Argentina Cats Campo De’ Fiori

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t was once the haunt of Caesar, Mark Antony, Pompey and Cicero, but today the forum on Torre Argentina is the hunting ground of Sheeba, Tiddles, Ginger and Tom (or their Italian equivalents). Over 250 cats now live on the site where Brutus and Cassius infamously murdered Rome’s most renowned dictator on the Ides of March, and these feisty felines have become something of a tourist attraction in their own right.

It was in 1929 that the first moggie moved in. Archaeologists excavating the Senate and the Theatre of Pompey (where Caesar was assassinated) created a below street-level protected zone that proved too tempting a refuge for the “Gatti di Roma”. Fed by a succession of tourists and the “Gattare” (Cat Ladies) of the city (who included Italian film star Anna Magnani), the cats prospered and multiplied, but it wasn’t until 1994 that an official cat sanctuary opened on the site.

Today the sanctuary receives donations from all over the world, the money used to feed, spay and neuter the cats.

Despite this, the animals on Torre Argentina face an uncertain future - in late 2012, Rome’s archaeological office issued an eviction notice on the grounds that the sanctuary’s owners had built illegally upon a heritage site. The case is still under investigation.

Out of the guide book and into the alternative.

Villa Borghese Gardens

Via Antica (The Appian Way)

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or a breath of fresh air and some respite from all that history, head up to Villa Borghese, which lies just outside the old city walls in the north of the city. Though the villa itself receives more than its fair share of visitors (thanks to a museum and gallery that includes work from the likes of Titian and Bernini), the stunning English-style gardens that surround it are like an oasis of calm, far from the bustling streets and overcrowded galleries in the city below.

Even in the busy summer months, the park’s visitors seem swallowed by its 4-mile (6km) circumference.

Designed in 1605 for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, the gardens at Villa Borghese are the most well-established in Rome. In fact, they were the first of their kind, and were so splendid that the city’s rival families could not help themselves from imitating them at Villa Ludovisi and Villa Doria Pamphilj. Over the centuries the gardens flourished. It was only in 1901, however, that the park became property of the Italian state, and doors were opened to the public.

Within the garden walls you’ll find a zoo, an aviary, a riding school, a rowboat lake, an amphitheatre and plenty of neo-classical statues, fountains and follies to feast your eyes upon.

rom the north of the city to the south, where an ancient road begins its journey towards the port of Brindisi, some 350 miles away in the region of Apulia. Built in 312 BC during the Republican era, it’s one of the oldest paved roads in the world, travelled throughout the ages by soldiers, merchants, pilgrims and princes. It is, of course, the Appian Way, but while most of us have heard of it, few of us are in Rome long enough to walk it.

For mile upon mile this 2,300-year-old highway is lined with the grotto-esque tombs of Rome’s ancient families, as well as cavernous catacombs where the early Christians buried their dead and hid themselves in times of persecution. Many of these subterranean cemeteries are open to the public, making a jaunt along the Via Antica even more worthwhile – especially if you’re into ghost stories.

If you follow the Appian Way for long enough, you’ll pass through the Appian Mountains, across the former Pontine Marshes and along the coast beyond Terracina. Best to get your walking boots on.

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Story by Adam Woods Illustration by Stuart Woods

Last year, archaeologists from the University of Leicester unearthed a deformed skeleton from beneath a city-centre car park. Subsequent DNA analysis revealed the bones to be those of Richard III, King of England from 1483-85. It was the man they were looking for, but not the one that the project’s sponsors were hoping for.

The remains proved, once and for all, that there was something out of the ordinary in Richard’s appearance, as legend had it. For an organisation hoping to restore the Yorkist king’s reputation, it was something of a setback. If the early “propagandists” weren’t lying about Richard’s crooked back, what else were they not lying about? His ruthless ambition? His cruel character? His murderous conduct? Terra Nova Magazine investigates.

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f there’s one English king whose reputation precedes him, it’s Richard III. The last Plantagenet and ‘Son of York’ has arrived in our century with more bad press than a Borgia pope. We know him as the vile, cruel, hunchback king: a man who would stop at nothing, not even murdering his own nephews, to attain supreme power in the realm of England.

But there are those who would say that that man is a myth – a product of the most sustained campaign of propaganda in English history. Richard III, they insist, was actually no better or no worse than any other king. Only, fate dealt him a hard hand. History treated him unkindly. His Tudor successors saw need to justify their usurpation of the crown, and that meant pouring scorn on the previous regime.

And so over the centuries Richard became a figure of hate – and of fun. The spin-doctors of the Tudor dynasty, who included England’s most famous playwright, had him down for more than a child-murderer. They had him down for a freak of nature, an effeminate hunchback with a limp and withered arm – all outward extensions of the dark and twisted mind within.

TN: What’s changed in the way we look at Richard?

Lynda Pidgeon, Research Officer at the Richard III Society: Perceptions of Richard have not changed very much in the society. We now know that he had scoliosis but this doesn’t prove he had a hunchback. Once more analysis has been carried out on the bones and we find out the results from Leicester University, we may know a little more about his general physical condition, as well as his medical condition. Hopefully we will gradually learn a little more about how he lived not just about his horrific death.

In many ways, now that we have his skeleton, a reconstruction of his face and some understanding of his medical condition, we are finally seeing a human being and not just the Shakespearean monster!

Katherine Lewis, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Huddersfield and author of Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (Routledge, 2013):

Arguably not a great deal! The twisted spine indicates that there probably was some observable deformity in Richard’s stance, so this wasn’t simply invented by Academics have long suggested that later detractors as a means of emphasisto access the real Richard you need to ing his inherently evil nature - as has strip him of his historical associations, sometimes been assumed. remove him from the stage the ShakeInstead it looks as though it was a speare set him upon, and erase the feature of his appearance that was subslanderous graffiti that has stained his sequently appropriated and emphasised facade. But now, it seems, the Tudor to serve this end. Given Richard’s repslander may not have been so slanderutation for personal bravery and milA facial reconstruction based on a CT scan ous after all – indeed, there could well itary accomplishment, he evidently of Richard’s skull. be a great deal of truth in it. wasn’t much hampered by this, and the wounds he suffered before death demonstrate that he was cut In February of this year, researchers at the University of down in the midst of battle, defending his crown.

Leicester confirmed that the skeletal remains found beneath But beyond these sorts of issues of appearance, health, injua city car park in August 2012 were, beyond reasonable doubt, ry and manner of death, the bare bones can’t give us any new those of Richard, who died at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 insight into his character or help us to understand his actions, (the last English king to die in battle). Crucially, the remains and those are the main areas of debate and disagreement of proved that Richard suffered from scoliosis, a deformity of the course. spine that may have given him the appearance of a hunchback.

It was a setback for the Richard III Society, which had helped TN: Shakespeare and co. weren’t fibbing about his deformity fund the excavations and whose members were hoping to he really was the cruel king of legend, then? prove once and for all that the ‘poisonous, hunchbacked toad’ was nothing more than fiction.

KL: No! It is very easy to dismantle the version of Richard which Shakespeare rendered so enduring (and indeed comSo where does academic opinion lie now that we know the pelling, despite his conniving immorality). But just because truth about his physical appearance? Does it lend credibility so much of this derives from propagandist accounts which to the sources that also told of his shady character? Was he sought to justify Richard’s removal by painting him in such really the man we had him down for from the start? We ask the negative terms, doesn’t mean that the reverse is true and that experts what they think... he was an unimpeachably ‘good’ king. Taken to extremes the

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attempt to absolve Richard of any wrong-doing or questionaTN: So there’s evidence to say that he was a good king? ble decisions misrepresents him too. Instead the most recent academic studies of Richard take a balanced view and highLP: A number of quotes from contemporaries were positive in light that he had many admirable qualities, such as a committheir view of Richard. Following Richard’s royal progress after ment to the provision of justice. his coronation, Thomas Langton, Bishop of St David’s wrote: I find his deep piety and adherence to the established mor‘He contents the people wher he goys best that ever did al benchmarks of contemporary kingly masculinity particuprince; for many a poor man that hath suffred wrong many larly interesting, for in this he strongly resembled Henry V. days have be relevyd and helpyd by hym and his commands Certainly Richard ruled well in the north during the reign of in his progresse. And in many grete citeis and townis wer his brother Edward IV, and inspired great loyalty among the grete summis of mony gif hym which he hath refusyd. On my people there. But the same studies note that Richard was also trouth I lykyd never the condicions of ony prince so wel as his; rather impulsive and apparently not always able to perceive God hathe sent hym to us for the wele of us al …’ the likely outcomes of his actions. This comes across particuJohn Rous of Warwick recorded in the Rous Roll: larly strongly in the events of June 1483 which culminated ‘The moost myghty prynce Rychard … all avarice set asyde, in him being declared king; one very much gets the sense of rewled hys subiettys in hys realme ful commendabylly, ponhim reacting to circumstances and trying out different taceschynge offenders of hys lawes, specyally extorcioners and tics to justify taking the crown (e.g. oppressors of hys comyns, and cherefirst claiming that Edward IV was illeschynge tho that were vertues, by the In many ways, now gitimate, then that Edward’s sons were). whyche dyscrete guydynge he gat gret But whether he followed this course of thank of God and love of all his subietthat we have his action out of opportunistic ambition, tys ryche and pore and gret laud of the skeleton, a or because he genuinely believed that people of all othyr landys a bowt hym.’ reconstruction of he was king, or as an act of self-defence against the family of Elizabeth WoodTN: The Princes in the Tower: did he his face and some ville [his brother’s queen], can only ever or didn’t he? understanding of his be a matter of informed conjecture.

There is no source surviving that can medical condition, we LP: There are a number of possibilities tell us directly how Richard himself regarding the fate of the princes [Edare finally seeing a perceived these events or what exactly ward V of England and Richard, Duke human being and not motivated him. of York].

One: both survived and were taken just the TN: Lynda, the Tudor sources are still abroad and became the “Pretenders”.

Shakespearean not to be trusted?

Two: Edward died of natural causes whilst Richard was taken abroad and monster!

LP: There are some in the society who became the Pretender Perkin Warbeck. would probably say that the Tudor Three: Both boys were killed and the sources were never to be trusted! However, as with any evipotential murderers are Richard III, Henry the Duke of Buckdence, it needs to be weighed and tested. ingham, Henry VII or Margaret Beaufort.

Although Richard did not have an actual hunchback, he Richard did not need to kill either boy following the ruldoes appear to have had a shoulder that was higher than the ing by parliament [which had made them bastards]; however other, and this is something that Tudor sources tell us – althe declaration of their illegitimacy needed to be repealed by though they could not agree on which one. What is interesting Henry Tudor to legitimise his wife Elizabeth of York, their is that the sources for this occur after Richard’s death, which sister. The moment Henry did this he was presented with two means it’s likely that it was only after his body was displayed male claimants with a better claim to the throne that his own. at Bosworth that this difference in his shoulders became apSome of his supporters were Yorkists who wanted an heir of parent.

Edward IV on the throne; if either boy were alive they would Before August 1485, it may only have been something those have supported him against Tudor. close to him knew about. His clothes and armour would have I think it unlikely that Richard killed the princes; the date been tailor-made to fit him and hide the disparity in his shoulof their death is and will probably remain a mystery. The fact ders. The fact that he was a capable soldier and was noted for Henry Tudor had so many problems with pretenders and was his ability demonstrates that scoliosis was not an impediment. unable to categorically prove them to be dead speaks volumes.

It is perhaps worth quoting the Crowland Chronicler who The actions of Elizabeth Woodville are also interesting; in 1484, was writing after August 1485: ‘As for King Richard he reshe released her daughters into Richard’s care and also asked ceived many mortal wounds and, like a spirited and most couThomas, marquis of Dorset (her son from a previous marriage) rageous prince, fell in battle on the field and not in flight’. to return from France and abandon the cause of Henry Tudor.

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KL: This is such a tricky question and one which arouses great passion in Richard’s modern supporters. Certainly many people at the time believed that he had ordered the murder, and not all of these were Tudor propagandists (it was widely reported on the Continent that Richard was responsible for example).

But it has to be said that the evidence is circumstantial and different elements of it can be used to argue completely opposing points of view.

For instance, it is often stated by those who seek to absolve Richard that because he had his nephews declared illegitimate in parliament there was no need for him to have them killed. But the counter-argument to this is that just because Richard stated that his nephews were disqualified from the throne and he was rightful king does not mean that everyone automatically believed or accepted it; indeed, many obviously did not.

The ‘Richard didn’t need to kill them’ approach also ignores the precedent of earlier depositions in fourteenth and fifteenth century England; those of Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI. A deposed king formed an extremely dangerous potential focus for any opposition to his supplanter’s rule, as Edward IV discovered to his cost, when he himself was deposed and replaced by Henry VI in 1470. Once Edward had retaken the crown in 1471, Henry VI was murdered in the Tower almost straight away – presumably Edward was not going to make the same mistake twice by leaving Henry alive! So, on these grounds others argue that disinheriting the princes essentially doomed them.

The argument that Elizabeth Woodville’s rapprochement with Richard in 1484 indicates that she did not believe he had murdered her sons is also problematic, because as with Richard himself we simply have no way of knowing what her thoughts and opinions actually were.

Extrapolating motive from actions alone is inherently speculative and there are other ways of interpreting her actions.

After all, she was in a very vulnerable position at this time, with few options open to her. The key to understanding

her actions is therefore perhaps as likely to be found in her need to protect the welfare of her remaining children (her daughters) than in her belief as to who had (or had not) murdered her sons.

Again, this has to be a matter of opinion in the end because the truth of the matter cannot currently be demonstrably proven one way or the other.

many people at the time believed that he had ordered the murder, and not all of these were Tudor propagandists.

The majority of academic experts on the politics of late medieval England hold the most likely explanation to be that Richard did order the murder, or that it was given by someone acting on his behalf. For me the unresolvable question of whether or not Richard actually was responsible is less important than the political impact of contemporary belief that he was, and the rumour, dissent and ultimately rebellion which this belief helped to inspire, leading to his death at Bosworth.

TN: What’s next for Richard? Are there any more hidden secrets?

KL: There is always the possibility of new discoveries. It is often assumed that we know everything we will ever know about the Middle Ages, but there could be all manner of records and narratives tucked away in the corners of libraries or private collections that have not yet been properly identified as shedding new light on the events of Richard’s reign. For example Dominic Mancini’s account of the early part of his reign, which provides a rare contemporary account, was only found and published in the late 1960s.

Given the publicity surrounding Richard’s skeleton it has been suggested that the bones at Westminster Abbey,

Richard III, King of England (1483-1485) Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England, grew up during a period of civil strife that would later be dubbed “The Wars of the Roses”. His father, the Duke of York, was the heir to a royal line that had been broken with the abdication of Richard II in 1399 – the line that had been ‘usurped’ by the House of Lancaster, starting with Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV).

By the time Richard was born in 1452, Bolingbroke’s mentally-ill grandson Henry VI was on the throne, but clearly failing in his kingly duties. Support for the Duke of York’s claim to the throne grew, and civil war beckoned. After a series of tussles, Richard III’s father was defeated. However, within a few weeks of the Duke of York’s death, Henry VI had been deposed and Richard’s elder brother Edward IV had been proclaimed king in his stead.

Edward would rule England with only one momentary interruption until his death in 1483. But his line would not continue. Richard, who claimed his brother’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville to be void, had his nephews disinherited and made himself king. The princes were never seen in public again, and rumours circulated - particularly later on - that the new king had had them murdered in order secure his own position.

Richard’s reign would last only two years. Henry Tudor, a descendent of Edward III with a rather dubious claim to the throne, defeated the king’s armies at Bosworth Field in 1485 and established a Tudor monarchy that would endure for more than a century.

Opposite: A late-16th Century portrait of King Richard III, Unknown Artist.

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which are purportedly those of the princes, should be subjected to similar rigorous testing, especially as they haven’t been examined since the 1930s. Then it could be established whether the bones date from the right period and are of boys the right age, and whether they share DNA with Richard’s skeleton. If so, that would end speculation that one or other of the boys had survived, and it might tell us how they died. But that still wouldn’t tell us who had killed them!

LP: I am looking forward to hearing the results from further tests being undertaken by the University of Leicester. One thing I hope they might be able to tell us is where Richard grew up. He was born at Fotheringhay and possibly spent his early years there, but we know very little about his childhood.

Regarding the mystery of the princes: a re-examination of the bones in Westminster Abbey has been mentioned in the letters columns of many newspapers.

What needs to be asked is what exactly this would achieve? It might identify the bones as being those of the princes, assuming any usable DNA could be obtained, but it wouldn’t answer the most important question about who killed them. Even if it could be shown they died in 1483 it would still not answer the question sufficiently to dispel any doubt about who their murderer was.

TN: Katherine, you have an opinion on where you think Richard should be interred?

KL: There is some evidence that Richard may have wanted to be buried in York Minster, but as with so much else relating to him it is equivocal: he founded a chantry chapel there, from which we can infer that he intended it to be his burial place. Given that he spent so much of his life in the north and enjoyed such support there, York would be a logical choice, but we have no explicit statement from him on the matter. If he had not died at Bosworth but established himself incontrovertibly as king another possibility is that he would have been buried at Westminster,

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It is often assumed that we know everything we will ever know about the Middle Ages, but there could be all manner of records and narratives tucked away in the corners of libraries or private collections that have not yet been properly identified. the traditional mausoleum of English rulers before and after him.

The practice of leaving archaeologically exhumed remains in the place where they were found is a modern approach to the issue (which is also influenced by Church law). But in the Middle Ages it was very common to move the remains of deposed kings, who had originally been buried close to where they were killed, to new locations, sometimes this practice honoured the known wishes of the king in question as to his final resting place (as in the case of Henry V’s reburial of Richard II). I rather doubt that Richard would have wanted his body to remain in Leicester, the place where his enemies left it and feel that York Minster would be a more suitable choice as well as the ‘medieval’ thing to do. But I have to confess a special interest here in that I live in York, so perhaps I’m not being entirely objective on the matter!

Right: King Edward V and the Duke of York in the Tower of London, by Paul Delaroche (1831). The fate of the princes has been the subject of many artistic interpretations down the centuries.

The Mystery of the Princes The fate of Edward V and his younger brother Richard is one of the most enduring mysteries of English history.

In the spring of 1483, shortly after their uncle Richard had made himself king, the boys, aged 12 and 9, were sighted playing together in the grounds of the Tower of London. But by the end of that summer they had vanished, never to be seen again. To this day no one truly knows what became of Edward and Richard, though most suspect that King Richard had them “removed” in order to secure his position. The fact that he did not produce the boys when rumours began to circulate has been interpreted as a sign of his guilt.

The reign of Richard III’s successor Henry VII was plagued by “Pretenders” who claimed to be the younger of the two lost princes. That the Tudor monarch went to such great lengths to have them captured has led some historians to suggest that even he may have believed they were the real deal, and that he was never actually sure what Richard had done with the boys. Evidently Henry could find no evidence in the form of remains to prove Richard’s guilt, for otherwise he would surely have used it to discredit the Pretenders’ claims.

The skeletons of two young boys were found in the Tower grounds in 1674. Thought to be those of the missing Princes, they were reinterred in Westminster Abbey. Tests carried out in the early 1930s showed them to be belonging to boys aged between 11-13 and 7-11.

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PERSPECTIVES

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We asked our Facebook and Twitter followers to send in their favourite travel shots. Here’s what they came back with...

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East side gallery Berlin

Alina Kotova, Almaty “Of the many artworks that now cover the remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall I found this to be one of the most interesting. Despite efforts to remove prohibited graffitti, this image shows the orginal artwork along with the casual doodles of others�.

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Yosemite Valley California

Pete Regla, California “There was a short break in the winter storm. In the glove compartment was an old Olympus Digital Camera with dead AA batteries. I had a couple of walkie-talkies in the trunk of the car that had fresh batteries and just happened to be AAs. I swapped the batteries and shot the photo just before the snow started again.�

Pete Regla is the owner of the Pine Arbor Retreat, Yosemite West.

More info at Pinearbor.com

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THE DOCKS Pula

Evgeny Smirnov, Moscow “We climbed the highest hill in the city, covered in Venetian fortifications that have housed the Historical Museum of Istria since 1961. The sun setting behind the docks made for a beautiful view. I am very proud of this photo, particularly because it made the featured photos list on Picasa, where the number of views is now reaching three million.�

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Boats on the water Mumbai

Jade Hanam, West Yorkshire “I was on a business trip in Mumbai when I took this shot, and it was about the only time I had between visiting the Maharashtrian city’s clothing factories. It also happened to be International Women’s Day, and if you look closely you’ll see some of the balloons that were released from the nearby Gateway of India in celebration of the occasion”.

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THE STORM

České Švýcarsko

Roman Biričkai, Slovakia “If you don’t have luck you need patience... I was just about to pack and leave - because the storm was coming, the wind was extremely strong and the first drops of rain hit my lens - when all of a sudden an unexpected hole in the clouds lit the land. There was no time for thinking - just pushing the button. The scene lasted only 10 seconds.

Story by Clare Speak Illustration by Amir Kudaibergenov

Guam’s Snake Solution Thousands of poisoned mice are to be dropped from the sky in the latest U.S plot to rid the island of invasive brown tree snakes.

Visitors to the island of Guam often note the eerie quietness of its forests. No birds have sung in these trees for over 20 years. In fact, few living creatures are found in these forests today, other than an enormous population of spiders spinning unusually large webs among the silent, thinning canopy of trees.

What happened to this once lush, green island? The answer can be found slithering across the forest floor.

Sixty years ago, a destructive species of snake was inadvertently introduced to Guam by the U.S. Army. Boiga irregularis, commonly known as the brown tree snake, had hitched a ride on supply ships making their way to and from other military bases in the South Pacific shortly after the Second World War. Today, there are thought to be as many as two million snakes on the island, wreaking havoc on Guam’s ecosystem and hindering the growth of the island’s tourist trade.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the devastation of the island’s flora and fauna can be almost wholly attributed to the unwitting invader. With the absence of any natural predator but an abundance of prey, the brown tree snake has been allowed to thrive – mainly at the expense of Guam’s many bird species.

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With native bird numbers dwindling, plant-hungry insects and arachnids are flourishing. It’s a cycle that has had disastrous effects on the island’s flora. Indeed, Guam has become a prime example of how the introduction of a single alien species can have repercussions down an entire food chain.

Deadly mice Bearing responsibility for the ecological and economical damage caused by the brown tree snake, the U.S. Army has over the last half-century made numerous attempts to control its proliferation on the island - but with limited success.

The latest scheme, which involves air-dropping thousands of dead mice laced with poison over the island’s forests, has been dismissed by animal rights groups as “absurd” and “cruel”.

U.S. government scientists believe the solution to the problem lies in exploiting the fact the brown tree snake isn’t particularly

fussy about whether its prey is alive or not when eaten - that and its vulnerability to a common painkiller, acetaminophen.

Harmless to humans and sold as Tylenol in the U.S., the painkiller causes deadly liver failure in a variety of snake species, including the problematic Boiga irregularis.

The plan is to inject up to 2,000 dead mice with a lethal dose of acetaminophen and drop them by hand from helicopters over the island. Each one of those mice will be attached to a paper ‘parachute’ in the hope that they will become caught in the trees where the snakes are most likely to find them.

According to reports in the Pacific Daily News, the programme will cost around $1 million and is to be funded by the U.S. Department of Defence. The drop was expected to go ahead in May this year, but at the time of writing no exact date had been announced.

The operation’s lead research wildlife biologist, Brian Dorr, stated: “The project will follow U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines and include thousands of mice dropped from aircraft over designated sites on Guam. Mice for the project will come from a commercial supplier that provides the animals as food for pets, zoos and other facilities.”

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GUAM’S SNAKE SOLUTION

Meanwhile, animal rights groups have protested that the scheme is unnecessarily cruel, arguing it will cause the snakes a slow and painful death. Nicole Dao of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) insists alternative actions should be taken: “Instead of initiating this clumsy, dangerous massacre, officials should focus on preventing all wildlife from ending up in the transportation system by stepping up deterrent, exclusion, and detection measures at ports”.

In the organisation’s official statement she writes: “If lethal initiatives are insisted upon, then the snakes should be trapped by trained wildlife professionals and dispatched quickly and humanely.”

There are also concerns that other animal species could be harmed by the plan, but representatives of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services (DAWS) say the drug poses no threat to any other creature on the island.

Residents of Guam agree that something has to be done about the snakes, which are known locally as the kulepbla. “The brown snakes have become a nuisance. I simply hope that this method is the lesser of the evils”, says Desiree Cataluna, who was born and raised on the island. “People should stop saying ‘Let it be. Leave them alone.’”

Threat to Hawaii The latest attempt to control the snake population comes amid growing concerns the species might be taken to other islands in the same way they were brought to Guam.

DAWS representatives told Australian media that “almost the entire tropical west Pacific is potentially at risk from brown tree snakes”. They have “turned up on virtually every island in Micronesia associated with some sort of transportation from Guam.”

With this in mind, officials are becoming increasingly concerned for the fate of Hawaii, which, despite being some 3,000 miles away is connected to Guam by regular sea and air transport. A 2010 study

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Guam has become a prime example of how the introduction of a single alien species can have repercussions down an entire food chain.

by the National Wildlife Research Center estimated that brown tree snakes would cause up to $2.14 billion in economic damage to Hawaii each year if they were to become established on the islands.

While Hawaiians are beginning to panic, scientists on Guam are still studying the effects the invasive snakes are having on the island’s native species. Last autumn, a joint team of researchers from the University of Guam and Rice University, Texas, published one of the first studies to detail the impact the loss of birds has had on the island’s ecosystem.

“The brown tree snake has often been used as a textbook example for the negative impacts of invasive species, but after the loss of birds no one has looked at the snake’s indirect effects,” said Haldre Rogers, the project’s principle investigator.

The study focused on how the absence of birds has caused a dramatic rise in the spider population, which is 40 times greater on Guam than on three nearby islands.

The study also showed that the webs of these spider species are significantly larger on Guam than on the other neighbouring islands. Researchers believe the spiders spin larger webs in the absence of predators.

Now the researchers are turning their attention to the issue of Guam’s thinning forests, also believed to be a consequence of declining bird numbers.

“There’s a concern that Guam’s forests may become filled with open areas and start to look more like Swiss cheese than a closed canopy forest,” said Rogers. “That’s because small birds eat a lot of the small seeds, and quite a few of the pioneer

An officer handles a brown tree snake outside Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam.

Photo AP

PACIFIC PESTS

trees - the ones that grow best in open gaps with full sunlight - are small-seeded. Without birds to move their seeds to these sunny spots in the forest, these quick-growing trees may be less likely to germinate or grow to their full size.”

Silent forests Before the brown tree snake’s arrival on Guam, the island’s birds had few natural predators – the only snake species native to the island was a tiny creature the size of an earthworm. Evolution had not, therefore, provided them with any natural defence against the deadly invader, nor had it instilled in them an instinctive fear of it.

Accustomed to being at the top of the food chain and ignorant to the new danger, they became easy prey indeed.

The most notable of the bird species lost to the brown tree snake is the Guam Rail, known locally as the Ko’ko. The flightless forest-dweller had been a significant part of Guam’s culture throughout its history and was even depicted in cave drawings.

But within just a few decades of the snake’s arrival, it had become extinct in the wild.

The Ko’ko has, however, been successfully bred in captivity and in 2010 a small number of birds were introduced to the tiny island of Cocos, just off the coast of Guam. It was chosen by conservationists as it has no rats, cats or snakes.

Cheryl Caloustro is a campaigner who helped bring the birds to their new sanctuary on Cocos Island. “I chose the Guam Rail to be the mascot of my campaign because it is the territorial bird of Guam,” Calaustro said in an interview with Rare Conservation. “It’s the bird that people think of when you say Guam.”

Before the introduction of the brown tree snake, Guam had 12 species of forest bird. Today, 10 of those species are extinct and the other two species number fewer than 200.

“If you listen very carefully, you’ll hear what the forests sound like now,” said Calaustro. “Only silence.”

Brown Tree Snakes (Boiga irregularis) Has been known to grow up to 8 feet in length Feeds on birds, lizards and small mammals.

Lives mostly in trees but frequently seen on the forest floor.

Mildly venomous, but not a threat to most adults.

Native to the South Pacific, including the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Northern Australia.

Where is Guam?

Guam is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the western Pacific Ocean. It’s the largest and most southernmost island of the Mariana Archipelago, covering 209 square miles.

Guam has over 178,000 human inhabitants. Its official languages are English and Chamorro and the official currency is the U.S. Dollar.

Tourism is the island’s most significant industry.

The island was made an independent U.S territory in 1944 following the Battle of Guam. Before independence, the island was ruled by Japan.

Guam’s unexpected tourism boom Despite widely-reported fears that Guam’s tourism industry is being affected by problems caused by the brown tree snake, new figures from the island’s Governor’s Office show that in fact, the exact opposite is happening.

Visitor numbers in March 2013 were higher than at any time in the last 50 years, according to the report, with the majority of visitors in the past year arriving from Japan, China and South Korea. There was also a 159% increase in visitors from Russia in the same year.

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Endangered Species

More at iucn.com/redlist

THE

RED LIST Terra Nova looks at three species added to the IUCN Red List ™ and examines their chances of survival.

IUCN Status: Vulnerable (D2 ver 3.1) Where: San Pedro Nolasco, Mexico Habitat: Tropical dry shrubland and rocky coastal areas.

Threats: The problem for the Nolasco spiny-tailed iguana is its tiny geographic range. It lives only on San Pedro Nolasco, a 3km² island off the coast of Mexico, so if one population goes, the entire species goes with it. Threats include severe weather conditions and sudden climate change, which are known to cause droughts, extreme temperatures and hurricanes. A greater than usual change could cause populations to decline, at which point the spiny-tailed iguana would be classified as Critically Endangered.

Chances of survival: It’s thought that there are fewer than 2,500 spinytailed iguanas in existence, primarily due to their restriction on San Pedro Nolasco. However, this does mean quite a high (and healthy) population density. The island’s protected status also means that the iguanas are unlikely to come into contact with humans, giving them a much greater chance of survival.

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Nolasco Spiny-tailed Iguana Ctenosaura nolascensis

The Red List

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Regent Honeyeater Xanthomyza phrygia

IUCN Status: Critically Endangered (A2bce ver 3.1) Where: South-East Australia Habitat: Fertile lowlands and coastal forests Threats: Regent Honeyeater populations have declined rapidly in recent years, mostly because of agricultural and residential development. It’s thought that 75% of the bird’s original habitat has been destroyed – this has coincided with a 12-year period of reduced rainfall throughout south-eastern Australia, which has caused a general decline in tree health and fragmented much of the forested areas in which the Regent once dwelt.

Chances of Survival: The Regent’s chances of survival haven’t been helped by the territorial competition it faces from more aggressive Honeyeater species, including the Noisy Miner and the Noisy Friarbird. If the Regent is to survive, it will need all the help it can get. Several conservation efforts are currently underway.

IUCN Status: Near Threatened (ver 3.1) Where: Arctic Ocean

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Beluga Whale Delphinapterus leucas

Habitat: River estuaries, continental shelf and slope waters, deep ocean basins Threats: Global beluga populations have remained fairly stable over the last 15 years or so, however certain subpopulations are believed to be on the decline, primarily due to hunting. Sadly, belugas tend to return to the same estuaries year after year, which makes them vulnerable to overexploitation. Hunting is not the only human activity known to cause problems for the beluga: oil and gas development, expansion of fisheries, hydroelectric development and industrial and urban pollution are all causes for concern.

Chances of Survival: Intensive hunting, particularly in Canada and Greenland, represents an ongoing threat to the survival of several beluga subpopulations. In certain areas this is compounded by less direct threats such as habitat modification, climate change and Arctic fishing. The fate of the beluga depends on the effectiveness of local and global conservation efforts.

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Story by Tomas Staroscinski Illustration by Alina Kotova

Father of the Turks How the founder of modern Turkey transformed a crumbling empire into a modern Western nation, not always in the most Western of ways.

Turkey of today is a vibrant, secular nation that is well on its way to EU membership. It is a regional power and an important Western ally, worlds apart from the other states that arose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, which fell at the beginning of the 20th century.

Who does Turkey have to thank for this prominent position? Kemal Atatürk, the man who was determined to model Turkey after the West – a figure often regarded as one of the greatest leaders in world history.

After leading the Turkish War of Independence that resulted in the creation of Turkey as a republic in 1923, Atatürk set in motion a century of reform that would

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make Turkey the secular nation it is today.

However, despite aiming to model Turkey after the temporal and more liberal West, Atatürk’s rule was deeply authoritarian in nature. Indeed, he regarded authority as necessary to push through his frequently unpopular changes. He banned rival parties from opposition, used failed assassination attempts as an excuse to bring down political adversaries, and insisted upon a single-party state right up until his death. Yet Atatürk’s reputation stands firm: even today there is a strong personal cult around him.

The historian Lord Kinross maintained that Atatürk was “a democrat by conviction, but an autocrat by temperament”. He

promoted open discussions – not to rule more democratically, but to legitimise his decisions, claiming to act with consent after having worn down his opponents. For a period he was the Commander-in-Chief at the same time as being the President of the Grand National Assembly; powers he coerced the Assembly itself into granting him.

Though introduced in this authoritarian style, his reforms gave Turkey the platform upon which the modern nation we know today could be built.

After having secured his position as the Turkish head of state, Atatürk set about wresting power from the grip of Islam. He did this by abolishing the Ottoman Sultanate, the Caliphate and all other religious institutions involved in the administration of the former empire. A new penal code based on the Italian model was also introduced; for the first time, Islamic law and secular law become separate entities. Atatürk declared it necessary for progress: “We must liberate our concepts of justice, our laws and our legal institutions from the bonds which, even though they are incompatible with the needs of our century, still hold a tight grip on us”. Needless to say, such statements were met with considerable scepticism and resistance from religious leaders at the time.

MODERN TURKEY

His banning of traditional headgear, the fez and the turban, also caused controversy. In some areas of eastern Turkey there were riots. But the “Father of Turkey” was undeterred. To make his country a Western nation, he felt it important to make his people dress in the Western fashion. Suits and fedoras became the norm. Meanwhile women’s head veils, though not officially banned, were frowned upon by the authorities; they were seen as a symbol of defiance against Atatürk’s liberal, secular policies of equality.

Indeed, the emancipation of women progressed steadily under Atatürk’s leadership, he being a man who once asked: “Is it possible that, while one half of a community stays chained to the ground, the other half can rise to the skies?”

In 1935, women were given the vote for the first time, and in the same year 17 female MPs were elected into the Grand National Assembly with the support of Atatürk. This happened at a time when women’s suffrage was yet to be introduced in France and Switzerland - two of the countries that Atatürk most admired. He also abolished polygamy and granted men and women equal rights in inheritance and divorce when he introduced a Turkish Civil Code, based on the Swiss one, to replace Sharia law.

Despite his ambitions for the women of Turkey, Atatürk himself never took to any one woman in particular. He was known to his closest confidants as a womaniser, and had had several relationships before marrying his only wife Latife Uşakizâde in 1923. A woman educated in the West and one who shared her husband’s egalitarian outlook, Latife was initially presented to the public as the female idyll. But as her popularity and power increased, Atatürk’s love for her quickly evaporated. “For all his advanced theories”, surmised Kinross, “the conception of the equality of the sexes was in practice against his nature.” The marriage was over within two years.

Atatürk was also a heavy drinker and a keen poker player, making it all the easier for conservative forces to undermine him.

Many of his policies were discussed and established over copious amounts of Raki the Turkish national spirit - in sessions lasting into the small hours. But he made no secret of his drinking habits. When a French

journalist wrote that Turkey was “governed by one drunkard, one deaf man and three hundred deaf-mutes” (referring to Atatürk, his hearing-deficient right-hand man İsmet İnönü and the deputies of the Assembly), Atatürk responded confidently. “This man is mistaken”, he said, “Turkey is governed by one drunkard.”

Atatürk’s openly un-Islamic activities typified his un-Islamic policies. As well as the abandonment of Sharia law, the abolishment of eastern dress and the admittance of women to power, he also introduced a Western calendar, a Latin alphabet and established friendly relations with Christian nations.

In Turkey today, few areas evidence Atatürk’s revolution like the cosmopolitan Galata district of central Istanbul.

Shops, bars and nightclubs are abundant; veiled women and traditionally dressed men are scarce. Outside the city centre are clusters of tall office buildings, each symbolic of the growing service industry.

Full EU membership for the country is expected to be realised by 2023, more than 70 years since Turkey initially filed its application for membership in the EEC. The slow progress of the accession has seen a deterioration in Turkish sentiment towards the EU. A poll conducted on behalf of the Centre for Economy and Foreign Policy Research (EDAM) in the beginning of 2013 showed that almost two-thirds of Turks think their country should drop its membership bid.

While Atatürk aimed to make Turkey a modern Western power, it seems it is the way in which he tried to achieve this end which has ultimately delayed its formal recognition as one. Turkey still has issues with democracy and human rights, both of which are legacies of Atatürk’s authoritarian rule.

On freedom of expression in Turkey, the Human Rights Watch wrote in their World Report of 2013 that “while there is open debate in Turkey, government policies, laws and the administration of justice continue to lag behind international standards. Prosecutors frequently prosecute individuals for non-violent speech and writing, and politicians sue their critics for criminal defamation.”

Meanwhile, offences such as “Denigration of the Turkish Nation” and “Insulting Religious Values” can lead to prison sentences, as can “alienating the public from military service”.

Perhaps most pertinently, in the country Atatürk modelled after Western democracies, it appears that freedom of expression does not apply to his memory. Those insulting or offending it may be imprisoned for up to five years – or seven and a half if the crime is committed in the media.

For all Atatürk’s efforts, Turkey still has some way to go.

The Hat Law Law no. 671 on the Wearing of Hats was introduced in 1925 and is still in effect today. It obliges all men to wear a brimmed hat and prohibits the use of the traditional fez and the religious turban. In addition to the abolishment of the fez being a break with Ottoman tradition, the required brim obstructs Muslims from touching the floor with their foreheads during prayer, as is the custom.

In the first 10 weeks after the law came into effect, 808 people were arrested for breaking it and 57 were executed for refusing to comply. While the law is still in effect today, it is not enforced in practice, and the fez can be seen on the heads of tour guides and ice cream vendors in Istanbul’s more touristic quarters.

Press Freedom in Turkey Reporters without Borders, an NGO promoting press freedom, ranks Turkey 154th out of 179 countries in terms of freedom of the press – meaning it comes in behind Russia and Zimbabwe. The NGO points out that “with a total of 72 media personnel currently detained, of whom at least 42 journalists and four media assistants are being held in connection with their media work, Turkey is now the world’s biggest prison for journalists.”

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America’s Hidden History The second instalment in our series from the Time Travel Turtle sees Michael visit the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC.

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Issue TWO

It’s not large like Mount Rushmore, iconic like the Statue of Liberty, or symbolic like The White House. It’s small and virtually hidden from view. Most locals don’t know it still exists and most tourists wouldn’t know where to find it… even if they knew to look for it. Yet it was right at the centre of one of America’s most famous events.

I stumbled on it by accident – which is, I assume, how most people must find it. I had gone to a museum in Silver Springs, Maryland, near Washington DC, not for any particular reason except that the title offered the potential of some interesting

discoveries. The National Museum of Health and Medicine. With a name like that it could have been full of boring scientific exhibits but thankfully there was much more to it than that… including America’s hidden history.

I was the only person at the museum that afternoon. To be fair, it was a sunny summer weekday so those who weren’t at work probably had better things to be doing than visiting a medical museum. But even with the warm rays streaming in through the windows, it was eerie to be alone.

Behind the glass cabinets were specimens of the human body. Slices of brain, skulls with vertebrae still attached, diseased organs. The museum has evolved over the years but its origin was in military medical cases, so many of the specimens showed the trauma of war. Bullets to the head, amputations from a time before anaesthesia, and (from more recently) the concrete slab from a Baghdad airbase that was the first stop for wounded soldiers.

HEALTH & MEDICINE

I wandered into one room that housed items from research once done into human deformities. Conjoined twins floated in a jar next to an enlarged intestine and a leg swollen with elephantiasis. It could have been a carnival freak show if it hadn’t been surrounded by such scientific descriptions and explanations. Uneasy, I moved into the final room in the museum.

Opposite: Tiny skeletons in series demonstrate the phases of human development within the womb.

Left: Hair and bone fragments from Abraham Lincoln’s skull.

It was in here that I discovered the highlight of the visit. Oddly, it was tucked away in a corner with no overt signals previewing what I was about to see. There were no windows nearby and this part of the room was quite dark. I walked towards the exhibit and as I got closer became intrigued by the title about the glass cabinet.

I looked in, saw it, and had to read the description twice to make sure I had understood it correctly. It was the bullet that had killed Abraham Lincoln.

After the president was shot dead that April day in 1865, his autopsy was performed by Army medical staff in the White House.

Here, in this innocuous glass cabinet, were the mementos of that day.

There were hair and bone fragments from Abraham Lincoln’s skull, part of the surgeon’s shirt stained with the President’s blood, and medical documents relating to his treatment and death.

And, of course, that bullet. The tiny bit of metal, encased in glass and mounted in wood, might not look like much today but it rattled a nation and, in some respects, the world. John Wilkes Booth had once held it in his hand, placed it into a gun, carried it to the theatre, and, for the first time in history, assassinated an American President with it.

It felt strange that such an important part of the country’s history seemed to be hidden away. True, to look at, it’s not much. But what it represents is a crucial time in the evolution of the United States. The museum seemed to have several items of importance that it just casually placed on display without much fanfare – a part of President James A Garfield’s spine (the 12th thoracic, 1st and 2nd lumbar vertebrae, to be exact), and the skeleton of Able, the monkey who survived a trip into space in 1959.

Below: Conjoined twins on display next to a baby born with anencephaly, a cephalic disorder that inhibits the growth of the brain and skull.

Maybe the point is not to make a big deal about it all, to just present these items for those who are in the know and would like to study them. Perhaps it would be distasteful to put more effort into the promotion and marketing of body parts and instruments of death? Or perhaps it’s all about the surprise – those visitors who make the effort to stop at the museum are supposed to be rewarded for their commitment? If the latter is the case (and it’s probably giving someone too much credit to assume it’s intentional), then it worked on me.

www.timetravelturtle.com timetravelturtle @michaelturtle

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