National Geographic - August 2022

08.2022

STONEHENGE REVEALED

T R AV E L B E YO N D YO U R
WILDEST DREAMS

T R AV E L W I T H N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
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FURTHER AUGUST 2022

CONTENTS On the Cover

Sunset casts a fiery glow
over Stonehenge, where
researchers are still mak-
ing discoveries about the
millennia-old monument.

REUBEN WU; IMAGE MADE WITH
23 LAYERED EXPOSURES

PROOF EXPLORE

15
THE BIG IDEA
6 22
The Immortal
Lessons and Levity Marks of Stars BREAKTHROUGHS
Memorizing the Quran An artist creatively
in schools across Tur- preserves the work Nature’s Tastemaker
key, girls are focused of trailblazing Petunias may hold the
and disciplined. But women astronomers. key to formulating
sometimes they just all-natural versions of
want to have fun. BY LIZ KRUESI popular flavorings.

STORY AND DECODER BY HICKS WOGAN

PHOTOGRAPHS BY Superpower CLOSER LOOK
A grand experiment in
SABIHA ÇIMEN nuclear fusion, which Borscht Belt
supplies emission-free Revisited
energy, is gearing up A road trip through the
in southern France. Catskills reveals rem-
nants of summers past
BY MICHAEL GRESHKO and discoveries about
the area today.
AND JASON TREAT
BY NINA STROCHLIC

ALSO ALSO

Rarely Seen Shark Feeding A Seashell in Peril
Space Junk Hits the Moon Eco-Friendly Camping

A U G U S T | CONTENTS

F E AT U R E S Britain’s Stone Age Under the Big Top here the
Building Boom Horseshoe crabs are Myth Lives
Stonehenge and other survivors, but we’re Unorthodox behavior,
awe-inspiring mon- putting them at risk. wild landscapes: It’s
uments rose across the Texas of our imagi-
Britain during its late BY AMY MCKEEVER nation, realized in
Neolithic era. Now new Big Bend National Park.
technologies are help- PHOTOGRAPHS BY
ing archaeologists solve BY ROBERT DRAPER
some of these markers’ L A U R E N T B A L L E S TA . . P. 74
many mysteries. PHOTOGRAPHS BY
India’s Energy
BY ROFF SMITH Challenge BRYAN SCHUTMAAT
How will the nation
PHOTOGRAPHS BY responsibly meet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 112
growing demand?
REUBEN WU AND A B OV E : One of three main
BY YUDHIJIT gorges in Texas’s Big Bend
ALICE ZOO National Park, Boquillas
B H AT TAC H A R J E E Canyon features limestone
ART BY FERNANDO G. formations and side can-
PHOTOGRAPHS BY yons for exploration.
B A P T I S TA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 34
A R K O D AT T O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 84

FROM THE EDITOR | A U G U S T

Stonehenge As You’ve

A CENTURY

OF VIEWS Never Seen It

T H E P R E H I STO R I C C LU ST E R of standing Martin Edström. He and his team It’s been 100 years since
stones known as Stonehenge has flew a drone to make more than 7,000 the magazine published
intrigued and mystified observers images of the site from all angles and its first photo of Stone-
for centuries. The impressive monu- processed them into the digital replica henge (above). Now our
ment has drawn millions of visitors to you see at the top of the page. digital storytellers have
England’s Salisbury Plain. made a high-resolution 3D
We’ve been pushing the boundaries model (top) that’s become
Throughout our publishing history, of storytelling for 134 years, and I’m a mobile augmented reality
National Geographic has brought pleased to share our latest work with experience. Called Stone-
images and stories of Stonehenge to you. Go to @natgeo on Instagram to henge AR and available
readers in new and exciting ways. explore the immersive model of Stone- on Instagram, it lets users
The magazine’s very first picture henge, and visit ngm.com to see more interact with tabletop and
of the megaliths is the black-and-white images and video of the site. full-scale models of the site,
aerial photo to the right. Published in toggle through different
May 1922, it was made possible by the Thank you for reading National solstice times, and even
cutting-edge technology of that era: Geographic. take selfies as they “visit.”
the airplane.
David Brindley
For this issue’s cover story, we Interim Editor in Chief
deployed the latest tools to bring you
Stonehenge as you’ve never seen it. We
assigned two inventive photographers:
Alice Zoo documented people’s connec-
tions to Neolithic sites, and Reuben Wu
turned landscapes into otherworldly
realms steeped in mystery.

Then we decided to go further: to
create an immersive, high-resolution
3D model of the site using photogram-
metry. We enlisted National Geo-
graphic Explorer and photographer

IMAGES: MARTIN EDSTRÖM (TOP); CENTRAL AEROPHOTO CO. LTD, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION

PROOF

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
VOL. 242 NO. 2

LESSONS
AND LEVITY

At a Quran school in
Istanbul, Turkey, a student
named Zeynep and a class-
mate spend a study break
performing antics under an
orange tree. The photog-
rapher attended a similar
school when she was young.

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS LOOKING
BY SABIHA ÇIMEN AT THE
EARTH
Documenting the experiences FROM
of girls memorizing the Quran, E V E RY
a photographer celebrates their POSSIBLE
journey and revisits her youth. ANGLE

6 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

AUGUST 2022 7

PROOF

8 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

A student snaps a selfie
during a school outing to
Ada Park in Bayrampasa,
a district of Istanbul. Later
she gathered her many
photos from the day and
shared them through an
Instagram story.

AUGUST 2022 9

PROOF

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

FAR LEFT, TOP
As one of her chores, a
student sorts lemons in
the dining room of a
school in Kars, a city in
northeastern Turkey.

FAR LEFT, BOTTOM
At the same school, a girl
named Reyyan gathers
tomatoes for the cooks.
Students help with such
tasks during their men-
strual periods, when, in the
view of some Muslims, they
shouldn’t touch the Quran.

LEFT
In an Istanbul schoolyard
Aslıhan and a friend have
fun with a gorilla mask.
Later the two ran through
the hallways to prank
their schoolmates.

A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 11

PROOF

THE BACKSTORY

INSPIRED BY HER OWN YOUTH, A PHOTOGRAPHER REVEALS
THE MANY SIDES OF A GIRLHOOD FRAMED BY THE QURAN.

AT T H E AG E O F 1 2 , my twin sister and way girls retain the essential nature
I embarked on a special type of edu- of youngsters. I hoped to create a
cation. For three years we attended nuanced look at a rarely seen and often
a Quran school for girls in our home misunderstood segment of society.
city of Istanbul. The experience stayed
with me, and when I later became a Through vignettes of daily life—the
photographer, I knew I had to return to daydreams and the quiet rebellions,
it, with my Hasselblad camera in hand. the trivial moments and the melodra-
mas—an emotional narrative started to
For this project I visited my school emerge. It’s a story about these young
and others across Turkey, where women as well as the memories I carry.
girls ages eight to 19 spend up to four All of us discovered a hidden power to
years trying to memorize all 604 pages act out with small forms of resistance,
of the Muslim religious text. Some of to find our individuality.
these boarding schools provide secular
classes, but the main focus is on learn- The end result, a book titled Hafiz,
ing the Quran, a traditional practice is my nostalgia-tinged tribute to those
dating to the time of Muhammad. I girls and to my own youthful journey
wanted to document it—not only the with my sister. This project also has
discipline required to become a hafiz been a journey—and through it I feel
(one who remembers) but also the that my photographic subjects have
become my sisters too.

At a Quran school picnic in Istanbul, a plane soars over a group of students who, with head-
scarves billowing in the wind, look as though they are ready to fly.

EXPLORE IN THIS SECTION

Moon Trash Crash
Seashell in Peril
Fusion’s Superpower
Borscht Belt Revisited

ILLUMINATING THE MYSTERIES—AND ONDERS—ALL AROUND US EVERY DAY
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VOL. 242 NO.2

The Immortal
Marks of Stars

ON GLASS PLATES OF STARSCAPES, WOMEN ASTRONOMY PIONEERS INKED
INSIGHTS AND ANALYSES. MANY WERE ERASED. A FEW BECAME ART.

BY LIZ KRUESI

T T H E P R I N T that artist Erika Blumenfeld shows me
is an expanse of deep blue, a rich color that speaks
of romance and night. It’s stippled with gold marks,
some as lines, some as arrows, some as dots. Her art is
formed by ink on paper—but it’s rooted in century-old
artifacts, inspired by unsung astronomy pioneers,
and animated by a quest to understand light.

•••
At the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, three floors of metal cabinets house
more than 550,000 glass plates, most of them eight
by 10 inches, a photographic negative format dating
from the mid-19th century. These plates recorded
astronomical data from telescopes trained on celestial
regions and objects. One side bears the print of light
from distant stars; the other side had been marked
with equations, arrows, circles, letters, and other nota-
tions by women who were hired to interpret the data.
From 1885 until the 1950s, hundreds of so-called

A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 15

E X P L O R E || THE BIG IDEA

HARVARD HIRED HUNDREDS OF
‘WOMEN COMPUTERS’ TO STUDY

THE PLATES, TO COUNT AND
CATALOG GALAXIES. THE

WOMEN’S DISCOVERIES HELPED
LAY THE FOUNDATION FOR
MODERN ASTROPHYSICS.

women computers studied the plates. They discov- starlight art
ered how variations in brightness of specific stars
revealed their energy output, a relationship that To explain the motions of faint stars in the Small Magellanic
provided a way to measure great distances. They Cloud on the plate at left, “women computers” wrote copi-
examined a star’s light spectrum and determined ous, colorful notes on the plate’s reverse side, right.
that the intensities of the star’s colors indicated its
chemical composition. They counted and cataloged
galaxies. With such discoveries, these women laid
the foundation for modern astrophysics.

They left marks of many kinds: on some of the
plates, only a few arrows or characters; on others, notes
from conversations between women across decades,
each striving to better understand the universe.

T H E N T H E M A R K S W E R E R E M OV E D from roughly
470,000 plates.

So that the world’s researchers could access the
plates’ historic trove of astronomical data, the col-
lection needed to be digitized. In the early 2000s,
Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan Grindlay began a
project that’s now nearly complete: Digital Access to
a Sky Century @ Harvard, or DASCH, an archive of
digital scans from the bulk of the collection.

According to Grindlay, getting the clearest image of
a glass plate’s astronomical data requires eliminating
all marks on the other side of the plate before scan-
ning. This is the process: Each plate is placed on a
table with its nonastronomical-data side—that is, the
area where the women computers had written their
observations, measurements, and notes—facing up.
After an overhead camera photographs that side, the
plate is moved to an area where all marks are erased
by scrubbing with an ethanol-water mixture and, if
necessary, scraping with a razor blade.

By the time Blumenfeld heard about this process
in 2019, more than 400,000 plates had been scanned.
“When I learned that they were actually wiping the
plates clean of the marks, I was deeply saddened,”
she tells me. She set out to preserve the beauty and
meaning of the marks, if only on a handful of plates.
In honor of the women whose work inspired her
own, Blumenfeld calls her art “Tracing Luminaries.”

B L U M E N F E L D ’ S FAT H E R S AY S the first word she
spoke—standing in her crib, pointing at the fixture
overhead—was “light.” Her fascination with light “was
there somehow from the beginning,” she says.

That affinity led her to take up photography in high

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

When the pandemic kept artist Erika Blumenfeld from access- Blumenfeld chose materials
ing the glass plates to salvage the women’s original marks, she forged by stars. Gold—now
found another way, one that combined modern technology known to be a product of
with ancient printmaking methods. Collaborating with the stellar explosions—gilds
research-based studio Island Press at Washington University the women computers’
in St. Louis, she began with the digital photos captured during marks. The deep blue paper
the DASCH scanning process and removed all the pixels in bearing those marks is a
those images other than the women’s marks. Blumenfeld and cyanotype, its inky color
her collaborators uploaded that digital file to a machine that the product of two sep-
etched the marks onto acrylic plates. They applied transpar- arate chemical-emulsion
ent ink onto the etched plates, and then pressed each one applications each exposed
onto deep blue paper, which at the same time was pressed to sunlight for 20 minutes.
against thicker backing paper. The intaglio process embossed
the blue paper, with the plate’s marks lifting off the sheet. PHOTOS: JAKE ESHELMAN
The transparent ink acted as an adhesive for the final touch: (ARTWORK); HARVARD COLLEGE
24-karat gold leaf. — L K OBSERVATORY, PHOTOGRAPHIC GLASS
PLATE COLLECTION (PLATE IMAGES)

A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 17

E X P L O R E | THE BIG IDEA

school in the late 1980s and later earn a degree in it ARTIST ERIKA BLUMENFELD
from Parsons School of Design. In the years between, SEES THE MARKS INKED
Blumenfeld created art inspired by light and ways to ONTO THE GLASS PLATES AS
capture it. But she draws a distinction: Unlike some ‘EVIDENCE OF THE WOMEN’S
artists and photographers, she’s not interested in PASSION FOR AND DEVOTION
capturing the way light reflects off landscapes or TO THEIR RESEARCH.’
people. She aims to capture the light itself.
Without access to the physical plates, Blumenfeld
Starting in the late 1990s, Blumenfeld began resorted to working virtually. She spent weeks look-
building novel lensless cameras uniquely geared ing through thousands of plate photographs in the
to collecting celestial light, from the faint to the DASCH digital-image portal. Eventually, she chose
squintingly bright. As she made art from the beams images of six plates: observations made from 1892
of lunar phases, sun cycles, and solstices, Blumenfeld through 1923, including views of both the Small and
launched what would become continuing engage- Large Magellanic Clouds, the Taurus and Pegasus
ments with scientific researchers and data. constellations, and Jupiter with its eighth moon.

“I’m always looking for connections,” Blumenfeld Blumenfeld shared the digital images of the
says, like the shared traits that she believes connect plates with printmaking collaborators at the design
scientists and artists: an inquisitive nature, strong and visual arts school of Washington University in
powers of observation, a gift for thinking deeply St. Louis. The team mapped a creation process from
about the natural world. She sees those attributes this first step: “We basically did the inverse of what
clearly in the words and drawings on the glass plates. DASCH did,” Blumenfeld says. “They wiped the marks;
“The marks are the material evidence of the women’s I wiped the stars,” so the marks could stand alone.
passion for and devotion to their research,” she says,
and to “the stars themselves.” Based on those marks, each piece took shape
through a combination of historical art techniques,
A RT T H AT WO U L D P R E S E RV E the women computers’ new technology, and materials that struck Blumen-
contributions—that’s what Blumenfeld wanted to feld as the stuff of stars. (See “Starlight Art,” page 16.)
create. By 2019 she had devised a plan to transfer
the marks themselves—the ink laid by the women’s T H E R E S U LT: “ T R AC I N G LU M I N A R I E S ,” a portfolio of
hands—from the plates onto another material. Harvard six gold leaf prints. It tells the story of women who
gave Blumenfeld permission to try that approach studied light to understand the universe, who saw
with 50 select plates, starting in mid-March 2020. But the stars in a way others of their time did not; of a
before the artist could begin, the COVID-19 pandemic love language to those stars across generations; and
forced Harvard to close its facilities to visitors. an effort to honor that language and those women.

The DASCH project’s in-house work continued: From the beginning, Blumenfeld tells me, “my
photographing a plate’s hand-inscribed side, wiping whole idea was to return their marks to the stars
it clean, then scanning its astronomical-data side. As somehow.” She may have, in her way: by bringing
the pandemic stretched on, plates that Blumenfeld those who left the marks—and their discoveries and
had hoped to use in her art slipped out of reach. achievements—out from the shadows into the light. j

Some of the plates with distinctive markings or Liz Kruesi is a science journalist focused on cosmology and
historical value were permanently secured in a spe- astronomy. Her last essay for the magazine was about the Fermi
cial archive (named the Williamina Fleming Collec- Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
tion, after one of Harvard’s groundbreaking women
computers and astronomers). Other plates that Blu-
menfeld had hoped to protect were run through the
scanning process, all of their marks removed.

Trailblazers of DIGITIZATION PRESERVES to Harvard after the measure inherent bright-
astronomy digitization began, she ness and distance.
the astronomical data on helped ensure that a few • Annie Jump Cannon,
Henrietta Annie the Harvard Observatory hundred plates were kept who used temperature
Swan Leavitt Jump Cannon glass plates. But preserv- with the marks intact. She differences among
ing their cultural signifi- named that collection for stars to revolutionize a
1868-1921 1863-1941 cance and honoring the one of Harvard’s female classification system that
women who deciphered astronomy pioneers, astronomers still use.
them is a separate effort.
illiamina Fleming; its Even though most of
As an observatory plates record discoveries the women worked in
curator, Lindsay Smith by others, including: obscurity, “they were trail-
Zrull focused on impor- • Henrietta Swan Leavitt, blazers,” says Zrull, who
tant findings of Harvard’s who upon finding more has since left the observa-
“women computers.” How than 2,000 stars whose tory. “Astrophysics today
many women? Zrull iden- light pulsed, realized would not be what it is
tified some 200 by name, that how quickly those without the work that the
another 160 only by ini- changed was a way to women were doing.” —LK
tials. Though she came

PHOTOS: HARVARD UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

EVERYTHING HE TOUCHES
TURNS TO GOLDBLUM

New season
Now streaming

E X P L O R E | CAPTURED

GANGING
UP TO EAT

PHOTOGRAPH BY
TOM CANNON

Video taken at Aus-
tralia’s Ningaloo Reef
shows that whale
sharks can hunt bait-
fish in tandem with
other predators. Whale
sharks are known to
chase fish on their own,
but they’re relatively
slow swimmers. When
speedier animals, such
as tuna and diving
birds, force prey into
a defensive ball, the
largest mouth gets the
most fish. This behav-
ior, rarely documented,
may be a way for the
giant sharks to save
energy while foraging.

—SARAH KEARTES

It’s National Geographic
SharkFest’s 10th anniversary!
Check July and August listings to
find the apex predators on ABC,
ESPN, Nat Geo and NG WILD
channels, or streaming on Hulu,
Disney XD, TVE, and Disney+.

D I S PATC H E S BREAKTHROUGHS | E X P L O R E
FROM THE FRONT LINES
Nature’s tastemaker
OF SCIENCE
AND INNOVATION By studying petunias, biochemists
at Purdue University have unlocked
North Pole the process that forms benzal-
dehyde, the second most used
compound in the flavor industry.
The discovery could lead to
all-natural versions of popular
flavorings and aromas, including
almond and cherry. — H I C K S WO G A N

Mare Okina BIODIVERSITY
Moscoviense Japan, 2009
Shells suffer
Lunar Lunar Orbiter 1 Impact Lunar Orbiter 3 from liberal
Orbiter 2 U.S., 1966 search area U.S., 1967 harvesting
U.S., 1967
LADEE Horse conchs,
U.S., 2014 America’s largest
sea snails, are at
EQUATOR higher risk of
extinction after a
Lunar Orbiter 5 Hertzsprung century of unregu-
U.S., 1968 crater lated harvesting
of their shells, a
Ranger 4 Mare new study finds.
U.S., 1962 Orientale
Using chemical
Chang’e 4 isotopes from
China, 2019 conch shells to
gauge age and
South Pole FAR SIDE OF reproductive matu-
THE MOON rity, scientists found
that females spawn
Landing or late in life. Overhar-
crash site vesting could cost
many that chance.
300 mi
300 km Though the horse
conch is Florida’s
SPACE EXPLORATION state seashell, gath-
ering it there isn’t
LUNAR TRASH LANDING limited—a step that
could help save it,
A BUS-SIZE HUNK OF SPACE JUNK HIT OUR MOON. says study author
Gregory S. Herbert.
P I N P O I N T I N G T H E LO C AT I O N I S N O S M A L L F E AT.
—CYNTHIA BARNETT
POW! When a wayward chunk of space junk slammed into the
moon’s back side on March 4, it was blown to smithereens while
adding a fresh crater to an already considerable collection. We know
that much because space-watchers could track the errant rocket
booster with enough precision to predict its final resting place:
Hertzsprung crater. But precisely where the space trash crashed
in that 354-mile-wide pockmark wasn’t immediately clear. Of the
few spacecraft circling the moon, one well suited to search—NASA’s
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter—could take up to 12 months to find
a new gouge estimated to be between 16 and 98 feet wide. As lunar
exploration revs up, experts see a need for better tracking of objects
in deep space and regulations for disposing of used rocket parts. “At
some point in the future, an event like this isn’t just going to be a
curious thing to observe,” says space archaeologist Alice Gorman
of Australia’s Flinders University. “It’s going to be something which
people in lunar orbit or on the surface of the moon are going to be
really worried about.” — N A D I A D RA K E

CHRISTINE FELLENZ, NGM STAFF. SOURCES: USGS ASTROGEOLOGY SCIENCE CENTER; NASA/JPL; MIT LINCOLN LABS; BILL GRAY, PROJECT PLUTO
PHOTOS: APICHART VATHIN, EYEEM/GETTY IMAGES (PETUNIAS); JOEL SARTORE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK (HORSE CONCH)

E X P L O R E | DECODER

SUPERPOWER

Nuclear fusion could provide plentiful energy without inflaming climate
change. A giant experiment promises to test the idea as never before.

B Y MICHAEL GRESHKO A N D JASON TREAT

O N 4 4 5 AC R E S in southern France, 1 Creating the plasma Deuterium Tritium
construction is under way on a hugely Deuterium and tritium, heavy Proton
ambitious experiment: a doughnut- hydrogen isotopes, enter the Neutron
shaped vacuum chamber surrounded tokamak’s doughnut-shaped Electron
by 11,000 tons of magnets, built to sub- inner vessel as gas. The
millimeter precision by a multicountry central electromagnet then Electrical current
consortium trying to harness nuclear induces a current in the gas
fusion, the power source of the stars. that tears electrons loose, Plasma
forming a charged plasma.
On paper, nuclear fusion is an energy
dream: abundant, with no meltdowns, 2 Holding the plasma
planet-baking carbon emissions, or Eighteen superconducting
long-lived radioactive waste. The toroidal coils create magnetic
in-progress reactor is called ITER, fields that keep the plasma
Latin for “the way.” It’s designed to coax from touching the vessel’s
hydrogen nuclei to fuse into helium, walls. Each coil must be cooled
which will heat the reactor’s walls. In to -452.5 degrees Fahrenheit
future reactors, this heat could boil (4 kelvins).
water to drive electric steam turbines.
3 Heating the plasma Deuterium ion Tritium ion
Getting fusion to work, however, has Microwaves, radio waves, and
been an engineering nightmare. In a high-energy deuterium atoms FUSION
device called a tokamak (right), igniting bombard the plasma and heat Helium-4
fusion within a magnetically confined it to 270 million degrees Fahr-
plasma requires temperatures of 270 enheit. Pairs of deuterium and High-energy
million degrees Fahrenheit, 10 times tritium nuclei collide and fuse, neutron
hotter than our sun’s core. No tokamak releasing high-energy neutrons.
has hit “scientific breakeven,” in which
the reactor’s plasma releases as much 4 Harvesting nuclear energy
energy as was used to heat that plasma. Ejected neutrons slam into the
vessel’s walls, which are lined
When ITER reaches full strength, in with beryllium and tungsten to
the mid to late 2030s, it should exceed resist the resulting heat. ITER’s
scientific breakeven by at least a factor cooling towers will disperse this
of 10. The goal: to generate data that heat; future reactors will make
will help engineers design power plants steam to drive electric turbines.
fueled by the stars’ nuclear fire.

Engineering ITER estimate
breakeven
To breakeven—and beyond
Scientific Magnetic confinement fusion reactors
breakeven are close to “scientific breakeven,” where
a reactor’s power release matches what
Energy released in was used to heat the plasma. Harder still is
magnetically confined “engineering breakeven,” where a reactor’s
power into the grid matches what must be
tokamak reactors* recirculated to keep the reactor running.

1960 1980 2000 2020 2040 *Energy is measured as the product of three factors:
plasma temperature, plasma density, and confinement time.

24 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C ART: TOMÁŠ MÜLLER. RESEARCH: SCOTT ELDER. SOURCES: ITER; SAMUEL WURZEL AND
SCOTT HSU, ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY-ENERGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Paris P L AC E Saint-Paul-lès-Durance

FRANCE LO C AT I O N Provence, France

Saint-Paul- D I S T I N C T I O N ajor experimental
lès-Durance nuclear fusion reactor being built by
countries including the 27 member
states of the European Union, China,
India, Japan, Russia, South Korea,
and the United States

C RYO S TAT
Maintains
ultracool
vacuum

CENTRAL
ELECTROMAGNET

Microwave injector TOROIDAL MAGNETS Fuel injector
Electron cyclotron Electrical current Deuterium and
resonance heater tritium gas

Microwave injector Vacuum vessel PLASMA Neutral beam
Ion cyclotron injector

resonance heater POLOIDAL MAGNETS

Fuel injector
Deuterium and

tritium gas

Fuel injector
Deuterium atoms

Magnet feeders
Electrical power, coolant

Figure for scale only

Messages on
the Mountains

In and around the AlUla
Valley loom grand sandstone
cliffs. Many of them now
display depictions of human
figures or animals known as
petroglyphs, a term derived
from the Greek words petra,
meaning “rock”, and glypho,
meaning “to carve”.

Towering sandstone cliffs rise up from the AlUla valley.
Photograph by Matthieu Paley

PAID CONTENT FOR ROYAL COMMISSION FOR ALULA

For ancient peoples living in but the human urge to represent the
and around the AlUla Valley, the natural world in art, and to record the
sandstone mountains rising from great events of life, has shown itself
the desert were not just part of the in every culture and every society.
landscape, they were surfaces on
which words and images could In the north of the AlUla Valley rises
be engraved. Some are simple—a the mountain range known in Arabic
personal name, an animal—while as Jabal Ikmah.
others comprise long inscriptions
reflecting the activities and rituals of
society, from agriculture and worship
to religious ceremonies and prayers.
They are these people’s legacies,
carved in stone.

Many of the grand sandstone
cliffs that tower in and around the
AlUla Valley display depictions of
human figures or animals known
as petroglyphs, a term derived from
the Greek words petra, meaning
“rock”, and glypho, meaning “to
carve”. Ancient artists would use
stones or tools to scrape images
onto the surface of cliffs and
freestanding rocks—or, in some
instances, they would carve figures
or lines of text in relief, standing
proud of the rock surface.

The AlUla region is home to Some of its hundreds of inscriptions
thousands of these petroglyphs, may be as much as 2,500 years
taking different forms and spanning old. Most offer tantalizing insights
centuries of time. Ibexes, camels, into life and culture during the
horses, ostriches, and many other period when the Lihyanite kingdom
species cavort across the rock faces, flourished in this region of northwest
some pursued by stylized human Arabia, roughly from the fifth to the
hunters holding spears and other first centuries B.C.E.
weapons. Other images depict
large urns and include complex
decorative patterns. What were these
petroglyphs for? We cannot be sure,

This is paid content. This content does not necessarily reflect the views
of National Geographic or its editorial staff.

PAID CONTENT FOR ROYAL COMMISSION FOR ALULA

The Lihyanite capital, Dadan, close to Jabal lineage of Dmr performed the zll ceremony
Ikmah, was an important city and way station for Dhu Ghaybat and so may he favor him
on the routes of the camel caravans that and may he help him and his descendants.”
facilitated long-distance overland trade. The zll—mentioned many times in these
Luxury goods such as frankincense sourced inscriptions—seems to have been a ritual of
from south Arabia would arrive in Dadan homage to the deity.
for onward shipping to markets in Egypt,
around the shores of the Mediterranean, We can only guess who the named
and beyond. The inscriptions carry multiple individuals might have been. Another
complex meanings, but it is thought that inscription records: “Ssn priestess of Dhu
some of the merchants and traders in Dadan Ghaybat organized the zll ceremony for
who controlled these shipments may have the sake of her palm trees in Dmn.” And
recorded their offerings to the Lihyanite god again: “Mhrh son of Gdn of the lineage of
Wtmt performed the zll ceremony for Dhu
Ghaybat.” And: “Thbb daughter of Abddktb
performed the zll ceremony for Dhu Ghaybat
for what she has in Bdr and so favor her.”
And so on. Name after name of perhaps
earnest, nervous, or pompous worshippers
and beseechers, offering us tiny glimpses
of their lives as they seek good fortune for
themselves, their crops, and properties.

Some are dedications,
while others are what
we might recognize
today as simple graffiti.

Ancient petroglyphs are among the etchings at
Jabal Ikmah.

Dhu Ghaybat—sometimes alongside prayers Ikmah also hosts a few texts in other
for reward and favor. Many of these lines of languages—Thamudic, Minaic, Nabataean,
text, etched and carved into the mountain and even early Arabic—but the majority,
and on fallen boulders in a deep gorge, are carved in Dadanitic, come in different types.
still clear today, written in a local script Some are dedications, while others are what
called Dadanitic* that omits representation of we might recognize today as simple graffiti:
vowels within words. “Blns the horseman,” or just a personal name
scratched into a rock: “Nfn Nfn” “Whblh” “Sr
Using a simplified transcription system, one, daughter of Zd”.
for instance, reads: “Wshh son of Wdd of the

Others are more formal, perhaps the work of influence may have extended many hundreds
professional scribes, and sometimes mentioning of miles from Dadan itself.
the names of kings or rulers: “Hny priest of Dhu
Ghaybat performed the zll ceremony for Dhu The insights that the inscriptions of Jabal
Ghaybat in the year 20 of Tlmy.” Ikmah offer into the history of this part of
Arabia continue to enhance our understanding
of the economic, political, social, and religious
lives led by the people of the AlUla Valley more
than two thousand years ago.

The inscriptions have survived centuries of weather Some of the Dadanitic inscriptions are estimated to be
and are in remarkable condition. over 2,500 years old.

Who was King Tlmy? When did he rule, and *Dadanitic—the script in which most of the
over precisely what area? Scholars continue inscriptions at Jabal Ikmah were written—omits
to investigate these and many other questions representation of vowels within words. In addition,
surrounding the lives and history of the people it includes many sounds for which English has
of Dadan. no written equivalent. The transcription system
we have used in this article has been simplified to
One ongoing field of inquiry surrounds the facilitate understanding for non-specialist readers.
place names mentioned in the stone-carved
inscriptions. Some archaeologists have To learn more about AlUla visit
identified Bdr as lying to the south of modern- www.nationalgeographic.com/journey-to-alula
day AlUla, though others dispute that. Dmn To plan a trip to AlUla visit
may have been in the north, around what are www.experiencealula.com
now the borderlands between Saudi Arabia and
Jordan. Since both places feature prominently All photography by Matthieu Paley
in Ikmah’s open-air library, confirming their
locations would mean the Lihyanite kingdom’s

E X P L O R E | PLANET POSSIBLE

Planning to go camping? Green tips PLANET
and tools help you leave the outdoors
as great as you found it. If you want to help the Earth
but need inspiration, try our
BY HICKS OGAN
ideas, activities, and tips.

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I DIVE INTO THE BLUE

AVA I L A B L E W H E R E V E R B O O K S A R E S O L D

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E X P L O R E | CLOSER LOOK

The pool was a center of
family summers at Tony
Leone’s resort in New York’s
Catskills, circa 1960.

Borscht Belt
Revisited

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

BLISSFUL SUMMERS IN “ D O E S T H I S R E M I N D YO U of your childhood?” I ask
THE CATSKILLS OF NEW YORK my mom. I had already posed the question a half
BECAME THE STUFF OF LEGEND dozen times on our journey to find remnants of the
summers she spent in New York’s Catskill Mountains
IN MANY JEWISH FAMILIES. in the 1950s. So far, the answer had always been no.
IS A REVIVAL IN THE WORKS?
Now we are in Ellenville at Cohen’s Bakery, estab-
BY NINA STROCHLIC lished circa 1920, buying pumpernickel bread and
chocolate rugelach. She shrugs. “Maybe if there was
PHOTO: ERIC BARD, CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES a man speaking Yiddish behind the counter.”

The Catskills region sprawls across four coun-
ties north of New York City, dotted with lakes and
crowned with around a hundred mountain peaks.
Once it was the sparkling center of Jewish summers,
replete with glamorous hotels and thriving small
towns. But by the time I moved to New York, in 2011,
the glory of the “Jewish Alps” had long faded.

Then, a few years ago, my Instagram feed
started filling with pictures of bonfires and
Scandinavian-style lodges in the Catskills. Was
this the revival of those mythical 1950s summers? I
dragged my mom, Debi, with me to find out.

In the early 1900s, when Jews and other minorities
were banned from upscale hotels and beaches around
New York City, the Catskills offered refuge. Every sum-
mer, families fled their cramped apartments for the
mountains. After World War II, my grandparents—
refugees from Poland—moved to the Bronx, started
a family, and settled into this new tradition.

When school let out, they would pack a car with
bedding, kitchenware, and clothes and move to the
Catskills until Labor Day. Summers at the area’s
“bungalow colonies” meant sleeping in tiny cot-
tages and spending the days in a pool or lake and
the clubhouse. My grandfather, who ran a hosiery
store in the Bronx, would visit on the weekends. My
mom remembers tadpoles swimming in the creek,
costume parties, and women tanning by the pool
with metallic reflectors.

Meanwhile, at the Catskills’ large hotels, entertain-
ment was paramount. At night, comedians would do
their shtick for a well-dressed audience. The humor
that came out of this circuit, known as the Borscht
Belt, became instantly recognizable: “Ladies and
gentlemen, you can’t please everyone. Take my girl-
friend: I think she’s the most remarkable woman in
the world. That’s me, but to my wife…”

Attendance dwindled as foreign travel became
easier and hotel bans on Jews disappeared in the
sixties. In the era of hippies and rock-and-roll, kitschy
summers in the Catskills lost their allure.

But in recent years, boarded-up storefronts
have been dusted off as ice-cream parlors and taco
shops. Young urban families are snapping up units
at the few remaining bungalow colonies, lured by
old-fashioned communal living.

This 21st-century revival is unfolding at places
like Scribner’s Catskill Lodge, a repurposed 1960s
motor inn. Since it opened in 2016, Scribner’s
has come to epitomize the Catskills of the Insta-
gram era, with its barrel sauna, color-coordinated

A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 29

E X P L O R E | CLOSER LOOK

bookshelves, and s’mores packets in each room. decayed. Scheinfeld spent her childhood accom-

What Scribner’s takes from the old is a sense of panying her grandfather to card games at the once

community: It has a weekend schedule packed glamorous Concord Resort Hotel, by then—the

with yoga, garden walks, tie-dye classes, and movie 1980s—already past its prime.

screenings. Guests these days want an adult summer Today her book, The Borscht Belt, is omnipresent

camp—the curated, not rustic, variety. on coffee tables at well-appointed hotels and rentals

As the Catskills revive, I’m determined to find across the Catskills. One of her favorite photographs

among the current offerings some vestiges of the in it shows a green fern pushing through the cracked

carefree summers my mom spent here. concrete of a long-abandoned pool. “Something new

is growing out of the old,” she says. “That’s the way I

MY MOM THINKS her old bungalow colony, Mishkin’s look at the renaissance of the Catskills.”

Cottages, was in a town called Bullville. It sat along

a railroad track near a general store where she and NOSTALGIA FOR THE OLD CATSKILLS is so strong that

her brothers would buy candy. We drive down rural multiple Facebook groups exist for former visitors

streets until, at a small intersection, we find a build- to reminisce. In the one I join, members often ask

ing my mom recognizes and a clerk who remembers where they can re-create their childhood memories.

that a train once ran nearby. But there’s nothing left Sometimes the answers are discouraging (“Don’t. You

of it, or of Mishkin’s. will be disappointed”), but one place is frequently

Twenty minutes farther is one-block Mountain mentioned as a holdout of the free-spirited summers

Dale, among the many tiny hamlets getting an unex- of the 1950s: Rosmarins Cottages.

pected rebirth. A bar, vintage shop, and general store Rosmarins sits at the foothills of the Catskills,

opened to serve a trickle of new visitors that grew just 50 miles north of Times Square. Many of the old

into an avalanche as COVID-19 forced New Yorkers bungalow colonies in this area have been turned into

to spend their summer holidays close by. summer camps, but Rosmarins still encapsulates the

Most of the last operational bungalow colonies old Catskills, from its wood-paneled cottages to its

rent for the entire summer, so we opt for the Sunday softball games.

next best thing: the Glen Wilde, a former CANADA At the property entrance, Scott Ros-

colony converted into Airbnb rentals U.S. marin, the third-generation proprietor,
by two Brooklyn designers. Our unit scoops me and my mom up in a golf
has Turkish kilim rugs and a slate-tiled NEW cart to cruise through the grassy lanes.
YORK

Catskill Mts.

bathroom. The grounds are lush, with PA. Scott’s grandfather bought Rosmarins
clusters of Adirondack chairs, a com- New York
munal firepit, and long picnic tables. in 1941; when other colonies closed, his
ATLANTIC
father absorbed their clientele. In recent
OCEAN

That night, as his son roasts pots of pop- years, guests were aging and business had

corn in the fire, Josh Farley, then co-owner, slowed—then the pandemic hit. Summer

describes touring the property in 2014. “It felt kind 2020 was like the old days, he says, completely

of like a zombie apocalypse,” he says. Most of the 18 booked, with shouts of “Marco!” “Polo!” echoing

units had been neglected for decades; eight are reno- from the lake.

vated now. Farley learned the history of the Catskills “It’s a very gratifying business,” Scott says, steering

from the neighbors as he peeled up vinyl flooring and the golf cart past a CEO working from his laptop on a

emptied antique dishware from cabinets. porch and two elderly women chatting in lawn chairs

Yet my mom’s childhood memories aren’t stirred outside their bungalows. There are 96 units spread

by the Glen Wilde’s updated—but true-to-tradition— over 120 acres, along with a pool and a game room,

vibe. It’s missing the chaos, the freedom, and the where his 90-year-old mother is playing canasta.

comfort of seeing the same families year after year. Finally, Scott opens the doors to the casino, where

Saturday nights have been celebrated for decades.

SUMMERS IN THE CATSKILLS came to a halt when my There’s been one major update, he points out: Ros-

grandmother, Sabina, was diagnosed with cancer. She marins doesn’t “do the singer and the comic any-

died when my mom was 11, and so did the tradition. more.” These days it’s food trucks and concerts.

There was no one who could stay with the kids while My mom gapes at the stage, with its hand-painted

my grandfather manned his shop on the weekdays. backdrop of a sunrise over the White Mountains.

Not long after, in the 1970s, the Borscht Belt Decommissioned stage props and stacks of chairs

itself began to decline. Legendary resorts soon sat crowd the entry. “Does this remind you of your child-

abandoned. At Grossinger’s—which had its own hood?” I ask her.

airstrip and is said to have inspired the movie Dirty “Totally,” she says. “This is exactly how it was.”

Dancing—the grand ballroom was littered with old “You can ask anyone that grew up going to a bun-

menus, and a glass-enclosed indoor pool was marked galow colony,” Scott says. “It was the best times ever.”

with graffiti. My mom nods. “Absolutely. It was freedom.” j

From 2011 to 2016, Marisa Scheinfeld photo- Staff writer Nina Strochlic last wrote about traveling Italy’s Appian
graphed beloved Catskills destinations as they Way for the July 2022 issue.

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

Top: The author’s mother, Deborah Strochlic, and her family escaped New York City for Mishkin’s Cottages during summers
in the 1950s. Above: Nature has taken its toll on the indoor pool at Grossinger’s, once one of the Catskills’ most lavish hotels.
“My whole life, people were talking about how the Catskills are going to come back,” says photographer Marisa Scheinfeld.
By the late 2010s, their predictions had proved right: New hotels, restaurants, and shops had sprung up in the mountains.

PHOTOS, TOP: COURTESY DEBORAH STROCHLIC (BOTH); ABOVE: MARISA SCHEINFELD A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 31

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC AUGUST 2022

F EAT U R E S Stonehenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 34
Horseshoe Crabs . . . . . . . . . P. 74
Energy in India . . . . . . . . . . . P. 84
Texas’s Big Bend .. . .. .. .. P. 112

74 SCUTTLING AROUND FOR SOME
450 MILLION YEARS, HORSESHOE
CRABS SURVIVED THE ASTEROID
THAT KILLED THE DINOSAURS,
BUT SURVIVING HUMANS MAY
PROVE MORE DIFFICULT.

PHOTO: LAURENT BALLESTA

IT’S NOT JUST
STONEHENGE: NE
DISCOVERIES REVEAL
AN ERA HEN
A E-INSPIRING
MONUMENTS ERE
ALL THE RAGE.

By Roff Smith
Photographs by Reuben Wu
and Alice Zoo
Art by Fernando G.
Baptista

B R I TA I N ’ S

STONE
AGE

BUILDING
BOOM

35

Stonehenge PREVIOUS PHOTO

The autumn equinox One of the world’s
brings a folk-festival iconic monuments,
vibe to Stonehenge Stonehenge has been
as hundreds of visitors studied for centuries.
gather below its Yet new technologies,
broad-shouldered says archaeologist
trilithons. Aligned on Vince Gaffney, are
the axis of the summer “transforming our
solstice sunrise and understanding of
the winter solstice ancient landscapes—
sunset, the prehistoric even Stonehenge,
stone circle has long a place we thought
been a place of sea- we knew well.”
sonal celebrations.
REUBEN WU; IMAGE MADE WITH
ALICE ZOO 11 LAYERED EXPOSURES



S OMETHING MOMENTOUS

was in the air in the south of Brit-
ain about 4,500 years ago during
the dying days of the Neolithic
era, the final chapter of the Stone

Age. Whatever it was—religious

zeal, bravura, a sense of impend-

ing change—it cast a spell over the

inhabitants and stirred them into

a frenzy of monument building.

In an astonishingly brief span Opponents of a
controversial plan to
of time—perhaps as little as a build a highway tunnel
under the Stonehenge
century—people who lacked metal World Heritage site
protest in London
tools, horsepower, and the wheel erected many outside Britain’s Royal
Courts of Justice in
of Britain’s huge stone circles, colossal wooden June 2021. “We need to
hold authority account-
palisades, and grand avenues of standing stones. able,” said senior Druid
and pagan priest King
In the process they robbed forests of their biggest Arthur Pendragon.
The court halted the
trees and moved millions of tons of earth. plan, but the project
is still under review.
“It was like a mania sweeping the countryside,
ALICE ZOO
an obsession that drove them to build bigger and

bigger, more and more, better and more com-

plex,” says Susan Greaney, an archaeologist with

the nonprofit English Heritage.

The most famous relic of that long-ago build-

ing boom is Stonehenge, the huddle of standing

stones that draws millions of visitors to England’s

Salisbury Plain. For centuries, the ancient

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

megalith has intrigued and mystified all who’ve monuments, some of which appear to have
seen it, including the medieval historian Henry eclipsed Stonehenge in scale and grandeur.
of Huntingdon. Writing around 1130—the first
known reference to Stonehenge in print—he One of the most stunning structures, known
declared it to be one of the wonders of England, today as the Mount Pleasant mega-henge, was
adding that no one knew how it was built or why. built on a grassy upland overlooking the Rivers
Frome and Winterborne. An army of workers
In the 900 years since, the solar-aligned stone used antler picks and cow-bone shovels to dig
ring has been attributed to Romans, Druids, an enormous ring-shaped ditch and embank-
Vikings, Saxons, even King Arthur’s court magi- ment, or henge, three-quarters of a mile in
cian, Merlin. Yet the truth is the most inscrutable circumference—more than three times larger
of all, for it was built by a vanished people who than Stonehenge’s ditch and bank. Inside the
left no written language, no tales or legends, great earthwork the builders reared a circle of
only a scatter of bones, potsherds, stone and towering timber posts from oak trees, some six
antler tools—and an array of equally mysterious feet thick and weighing more than 17 tons.

B R I TA I N ’ S S T O N E A G E B U I L D I N G B O O M 39



Preseli Hills

Stonehenge’s saga Photographer Reuben
begins in the craggy Wu uses a powerful
hills of Wales, where light attached to a
geologists have pin- drone to illuminate the
pointed Carn Goedog landscape, capturing
and nearby outcrops multiple exposures of
as the source of most a scene and layering
of the monument’s them together to
bluestones. Why the create the final image.
builders hauled two-ton Learn more about Wu’s
stones 175 miles to Salis- process by scanning
bury Plain has inspired the QR code with your
many theories but few mobile phone.
rock-solid answers.

REUBEN WU; IMAGE MADE WITH
15 LAYERED EXPOSURES



Waun Mawn

Testing a theory that older. Archaeologists
Stonehenge was first uncovered pits where
built in Wales and later upright stones once
moved, volunteers dig stood, but few of the
for clues at Waun Mawn, original stones remain.
a dismantled stone circle Where did they go? It’s
in the Preseli Hills that still unclear whether any
was strikingly similar to ended up at Stonehenge.
Stonehenge but centuries
ALICE ZOO

“We’re all familiar with Stonehenge,” Greaney allowing archaeologists to piece together the
says. “After all, it’s built of stone, and it survived. world of the great Stone Age monuments of
But what were these huge timber structures like? southern Britain and the people who built them
These things were absolutely massive and would with a vividness that would have been incon-
have dominated the landscape for centuries.” ceivable a few decades ago.

Antiquarians and archaeologists have been “It’s almost like starting over from scratch,”
picking over England’s ancient henges, mounds, says Jim Leary, a lecturer in field archaeology
and stone circles since the 17th century. Yet it at the University of York. “A lot of the things we
wasn’t until recent years that anyone realized were taught as undergraduates in the 1990s we
many of these mega-monuments had been built know now simply aren’t true.”
at roughly the same time, and in a mad rush. “It
was always assumed these huge monuments had One of the most startling shake-ups has been
evolved separately and over many centuries,” the discovery, through DNA evidence, of a mass
Greaney says. migration from the European continent that took
place around 4000 B.C. The wave of newcom-
Now a burst of cutting-edge technologies ers, whose ancestry stretched back thousands
has thrown open new windows into the past, of years to Anatolia (modern Turkey), replaced

IT WASN’T UNTIL
RECENT YEARS
THAT ANYONE
REALIZED MANY
OF THE MEGA-
MONUMENTS HAD
BEEN BUILT AT
ROUGHLY THE
SAME TIME, AND
IN A MAD RUSH.

West Kennet
Palisades

One of the grandest Petra Jones (above), a
monuments that arose field archaeologist with
during the building Cambridge University,
boom was a series of measures the massive
huge wooden enclo- footprint of the van-
sures known today as ished post. To obtain
the West Kennet Pali- the huge timbers,
sades, about 20 miles woodcutters walked
from Stonehenge on miles to reach deep
the River Kennet. A forests. Then the real
posthole (left) that work began: A recent
held one of 4,000 experiment showed
massive oak timbers that felling a single
contains a dark stripe large pine required
in the earth where a more than 11,000 blows
wood pillar rotted away with a flint axe.
thousands of years ago.
ALICE ZOO (BOTH)

B R I TA I N ’ S S T O N E A G E B U I L D I N G B O O M 45



West Kennet
Palisades

A team of archaeolo-
gists and volunteers
searches for clues into
life at the West Kennet
Palisades. Artifacts
from as far as 200 miles
away and a profusion
of charred pig bones
suggest it may have
been a place of fes-
tive gatherings that
attracted people from
many parts of Britain.

ALICE ZOO

Britain’s Indigenous hunter-gatherers with a In recent years Richard Bevins, a geologist
genetically distinct people who cultivated cereal with the National Museum of Wales, and fel-
crops and raised livestock. low geologist Rob Ixer, from University College
London’s Institute of Archaeology, have been
“Nobody believed it could have happened revisiting Thomas’s work using 21st-century
that way,” Leary says. “The idea of the agricul- technologies with flashy names such as x-ray
tural revolution arriving in Britain because of fluorescence spectrometry and ICP-MS laser
a wholesale migration of people seemed too ablation. The pair have identified four outcrops
simplistic. Everyone was looking for a more in the Preseli Hills that contributed bluestone
nuanced narrative—a diffusion of ideas, not just monoliths to Stonehenge. (Turns out, Thomas
masses of people getting on boats. But it turns was off the mark by only a mile or two.) For
out it really was that simple.” archaeologists hunting clues to the Stonehenge
story, it’s a fresh start—one made all the more
Some of the migrants made the short hop tantalizing by a breakthrough in biochemistry.
at the narrowest part of the English Channel,
crossing what is now the Strait of Dover. Others, A Belgian researcher named Christophe
from Brittany in western France, made longer, Snoeck pioneered a technique to retrieve iso-
more dangerous open water crossings to west- topes from cremated remains that reveal where
ern Britain and Ireland. Some of these earliest an individual lived during the last decade of
Breton pioneers settled along the rugged coast of life. He analyzed the bones of 25 people whose
Pembrokeshire in Wales. It may have been their cremated remains had been buried at Stone-
descendants, some 40 generations later, who henge in the early days, when the bluestones
built the first edition of Stonehenge. were erected, and found that nearly half of them
had lived miles from Stonehenge. When paired
A RCHAEOLOGISTS KNOW to look with archaeological evidence, north Devon and
to Wales for the start of the story pri- southwestern Wales are likely possibilities.
marily because of a sharp-eyed geol-
ogist named Herbert Thomas. Think Incredibly, he was even able to pick up carbon
of Stonehenge and you’ll almost certainly envi- and oxygen isotope signatures from the smoke of
sion its huge sarsen trilithons. But another, much the funeral pyres that had consumed the bodies.
smaller, type of monolith huddles within the These opened yet another window into the past,
horseshoe of trilithons—the bluestones. Unlike indicating that in some of the cremations the
the sarsens, which are made of local silica-rich trees that had supplied the wood for the fire may
stone, the bluestones are entirely alien to the have grown in dense, canopied forests, not the
landscape. There are no rock types like them lightly wooded landscape around Stonehenge.
anywhere near Stonehenge.
The bluestone monoliths weigh an average of “We can’t say for certain that the people buried
two tons each. Where they came from, and how at Stonehenge came from southwestern Wales,”
they came to be arranged in a ring in the middle says Oxford University archaeology professor
of Salisbury Plain, was already a centuries-old Rick Schulting. “But archaeology is like building
mystery when Thomas was shown a sampling a court case—you look at the preponderance of
of them in 1923. Among the pieces was a type evidence. The fact that we know the bluestones
of bluestone called spotted dolerite, and he definitely came from the Preseli Hills in Wales
recalled seeing outcrops of that same rock many means that’s a good place to start looking.”
years earlier while hiking in the Preseli Hills, a
wild moorland in Pembrokeshire some 175 miles I T’S A CHILLY DAWN in mid-September,
from Stonehenge. After further examination, and a dense mist has closed in around
Thomas narrowed down the source of the blue- Waun Mawn, the site of four remain-
stone to rocky outcrops called Carn Meini. ing ancient stones in the Preseli Hills.
The dramatic coastline here is many miles

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

and a world away from the windswept plain Stonehenge archaeologists—could possibly be
where Stonehenge stands today. The mist has traced directly to Waun Mawn. The claim, which
turned archaeologist and National Geographic aired on a British TV special, created a stir in
Explorer Mike Parker Pearson and his team the press and divided archaeologists. Some were
into ghostly silhouettes with picks and shovels skeptical that Waun Mawn was a stone circle at
and wheelbarrows. all, but merely a few isolated stones. And so
Parker Pearson returned to Waun Mawn to firm
Parker Pearson, an expert in British prehis- up his theory.
tory at University College London’s Institute of
Archaeology, has come to this desolate spot to The evidence is certainly tantalizing. Stone
investigate the possibility, first suggested in a 62 is one of only three bluestones at Stone-
12th-century legend, that the standing stones henge made of non-spotted dolerite, the type
at Stonehenge may have come from an earlier of stone used to build Waun Mawn. Moreover,
stone circle in a faraway land. The medieval stone 62 has a peculiar pentagonal cross section
chronicler and cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth that appears to match the imprint left by one of
wrote a rollicking tale of how Stonehenge’s the stones that were removed from the ancient
monoliths were taken from a stone circle in Ire- Welsh circle. In addition, a stone chip found in
land after a great battle and transported by magic the former socket hole suggested that the miss-
and by boat to where they stand today. ing stone was also a non-spotted dolerite.

“While the story is fanciful, there’s a chance During their follow-up excavation, Parker
it may have been based on an old oral tradition Pearson and his team were able to build on
that had a kernel of truth to it,” says Parker Pear- evidence that Waun Mawn was indeed a stone
son. “For one thing, the stones at Stonehenge circle, and one of strikingly similar dimensions
actually were transported. Of the hundreds of to the early ditch that ringed Stonehenge. And
stone circles in Britain, Stonehenge is the only like Stonehenge, Waun Mawn appears to have
one whose stones were brought from a great dis- been aligned with the solstice. But they were
tance. Every other one is made of local stone. It’s unable to establish a definitive geochemical
something that could not have been known in
Geoffrey’s day.” ‘OF THE HUNDREDS
OF STONE CIRCLES
What’s more, he points out, this region of
Wales was considered Irish territory at the time IN BRITAIN,
Geoffrey was writing. Indeed, from this hilltop, STONEHENGE IS THE
on a clear day you can glimpse the Irish coast
in the distance. And then there’s Waun Mawn ONLY ONE WHOSE
itself, the remains of one of the earliest stone STONES WERE
circles in Britain, dating to around 3300 B.C. and
located within a few miles of the outcrops where BROUGHT FROM A
the Stonehenge bluestones are now known to GREAT DISTANCE.’
have originated.
MIKE PARKER PEARSON,
“For some reason they started building it ARCHAEOLOGIST
and abandoned it after they got about a third
of the way through,” Parker Pearson says of match between anything at Waun Mawn and
Waun Mawn. “We can see where they actually the bluestones at Stonehenge, which might have
dug holes for additional stones but never placed proved their case.
them.” Of the 15 or so stones that were installed,
only one remains standing. Three more are lying But finding an exact match with any one stone
in the grass. The rest are missing. was always going to be a long shot, Parker Pear-
son says, noting that of the 80-some bluestones
Last year Parker Pearson and his colleagues archaeologists believe once stood at Stonehenge,
published a theory that the Stonehenge we only 43 are present today.
know today was built in whole or in part from
stones from earlier monuments in Wales that
were dismantled and carried east by a migrat-
ing community around 3000 B.C. One stone in
particular—number 62 in the nomenclature of

B R I TA I N ’ S S T O N E A G E B U I L D I N G B O O M 49

Woodhenge

Discovered in 1925 from
aerial photographs of
a wheat field, Wood-
henge included six
concentric rings of
towering timbers, their
locations now marked
by concrete pillars.
Like nearby Stone-
henge, the structure
was built to align with
the rising sun on the
summer solstice.

REUBEN WU; IMAGE MADE WITH
FIVE LAYERED EXPOSURES