National Geographic UK 08.2022_downmagaz.net

08.2022 STONEHENGE REVEALED

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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 AND JASON TREAT the area today. ALSO BY NINA STROCHLIC Rarely Seen Shark Feeding ALSO Space Junk Hits the Moon A Seashell in Peril 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 Where 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 WONDERS—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. Williamina Fleming; its plates record discoveries Even though most of As an observatory by others, including: the women worked in curator, Lindsay Smith • Henrietta Swan Leavitt, obscurity, “they were trail- Zrull focused on impor- who upon finding more blazers,” says Zrull, who tant findings of Harvard’s than 2,000 stars whose has since left the observa- “women computers.” How light pulsed, realized tory. “Astrophysics today many women? Zrull iden- that how quickly those would not be what it is tified some 200 by name, changed was a way to without the work that the another 160 only by ini- 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 Though the horse 300 km conch is Florida’s state seashell, gath- SPACE EXPLORATION ering it there isn’t limited—a step that LUNAR TRASH LANDING could help save it, says study author A BUS-SIZE HUNK OF SPACE JUNK HIT OUR MOON. 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 Major 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

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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 OCEAN father absorbed their clientele. In recent 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: NEW DISCOVERIES REVEAL AN ERA WHEN AWE-INSPIRING MONUMENTS WERE 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- Incredibly, he was even able to pick up carbon ogist named Herbert Thomas. Think and oxygen isotope signatures from the smoke of the funeral pyres that had consumed the bodies. of Stonehenge and you’ll almost certainly envi- These opened yet another window into the past, indicating that in some of the cremations the sion its huge sarsen trilithons. But another, much trees that had supplied the wood for the fire may have grown in dense, canopied forests, not the smaller, type of monolith huddles within the lightly wooded landscape around Stonehenge. horseshoe of trilithons—the bluestones. Unlike “We can’t say for certain that the people buried at Stonehenge came from southwestern Wales,” the sarsens, which are made of local silica-rich says Oxford University archaeology professor Rick Schulting. “But archaeology is like building stone, the bluestones are entirely alien to the a court case—you look at the preponderance of evidence. The fact that we know the bluestones landscape. There are no rock types like them definitely came from the Preseli Hills in Wales means that’s a good place to start looking.” anywhere near Stonehenge. I T’S A CHILLY DAWN in mid-September, The bluestone monoliths weigh an average of and a dense mist has closed in around Waun Mawn, the site of four remain- two tons each. Where they came from, and how ing ancient stones in the Preseli Hills. The dramatic coastline here is many miles they came to be arranged in a ring in the middle of Salisbury Plain, was already a centuries-old mystery when Thomas was shown a sampling of them in 1923. Among the pieces was a type of bluestone called spotted dolerite, and he recalled seeing outcrops of that same rock many years earlier while hiking in the Preseli Hills, a wild moorland in Pembrokeshire some 175 miles from Stonehenge. After further examination, Thomas narrowed down the source of the blue- stone to rocky outcrops called Carn Meini. 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