#National Geographic Image Collection

[xtruss]

Brain samples are taken from the Copper-Age Mummy Ötzi, who was encased in ice shortly after death. This Natural Mummification preserved the body for some 5,000 years before its discovery in 1991. Photograph By Robert Clark, National Geographic Image Collection

These Mummies Were Made … By Accident?

Freeze-dried, salted, or buried in a bog: Thousands of years before humans intentionally mummified their dead, nature took care of it for them.

— By Elise Cutts | August 7, 2023

A mummy isn’t exactly something one would expect to make by accident.

Left to nature, a human body would usually be reduced to bones within a few years. Mummy-making cultures like the ancient Egyptians were only able to stave off the inevitable thanks to complex funerary practices involving all manner of specialized tools, chemicals, and procedures.

But there are paths to mummified eternity that don’t involve canopic jars, natron salts, or brain-removing hooks. In fact, some of the oldest Egyptian mummies were likely accidents, says Frank Rühli, director of the University of Zurich’s Institute of Evolutionary Medicine and head of the Paleopathology and Mummy Studies Group.

Buried in shallow graves, bodies can be naturally preserved for thousands of years by the dry heat of the Sahara’s desert air and sand. Rühli says he believes this could have inspired ancient Egyptians to start mummifying their honored dead.

Hot deserts are just one of many environments in which corpses naturally mummify. Scientists explain how environments ranging from bogs to icy mountaintops can stave off decay and—with a bit of luck—mummify bodies.

Deserts

The Egyptians aren’t the only desert culture known for their mummies. The Chinchorro people of northern Chile started to intentionally mummify their dead about 2,000 years before the Egyptians—and thousands of years before that, the Atacama Desert was doing it for them.

“One of the things that's interesting about the Chinchorro mummies is that some of them were intentionally prepared, while other were naturally mummified,” says physical anthropologist Bernardo Arriaza of the University of Tarapacá in Chile, who spent his career studying the Chinchorro mummies.

A bone-dry corpse, perhaps ironically, will likely leave more than bones.

A Landscape of the Desert! The Atacama desert plateau is one of the driest places in the World. Mummies have been found here that predate ancient Egypt’s by 2,000 years. Photograph By Naftali Hilger, Laif/Redux

Decay is a biological process and without water, biology can’t work. This is why deserts preserve bodies so well and why Egyptian and Chinchorro mummification practices involved steps to dry out the body.

The oldest Chinchorro mummy, Acha Man, was naturally preserved by the desert for more than 9,000 years. Natural mummies have been found in deserts around the world. Among the most well-preserved are the Tarim mummies of Xinjiang, China, who were buried in boat-shaped coffins up to 4,000 years ago in the Taklamakan Desert.

Salt

For a handful unfortunate Iranian miners caught in cave-ins at the Chehrabad salt mine, salt did the job just as well as deserts.

"They were working in the salt mine and then it collapsed,” says Rühli, who studied the mummies. This actually happened multiple times—at least twice, says Rühli—over about 1000 years, entombing young men separated from one another by centuries in the salt they’d come to mine. Though the weight of the salt crushed the miners, flattening their corpses, the salty rock drew the water out of their bodies and mummified their squashed remains.

Salts in the dry soils of the Atacama Desert also helped preserve the Chinchorro mummies, says Arriaza. The soils are rich in nitrate compounds, nitrogen, potassium, sodium, calcium. “Mostly salts,” he says. “That's going to help dehydrate the body.”

Ice

Removing the water from a corpse isn’t the only way to stop decay. Low temperatures slow down most biological processes, and freezing a body completely can keep it from rotting for thousands of years.

Pathologist Andreas Nerlich of the Munich Klinik Bogenhausen studied Ötzi, a 5,300-year-old ice mummy who was found poking out of melting glacier ice in the Ötztal alps near the Austrian-Italian border. “They're preserved as long as the ice is there,” he says of mummies like Ötzi.

While “very rare,” adds Nerlich, ice mummies like Ötzi can be remarkably well-preserved compared to dehydrated mummies. That’s because dehydration shrivels and distorts tissues, but frozen organs mostly keep their shape.

Permafrost, earth that remains frozen year-round, can also mummify. One Siberian mummy, the 2,500 year-old Ice Maiden, was quite literally frozen in a block of ice after her burial chamber flooded and the water quickly froze. Because her burial chamber was constructed from permafrost earth, the ice that formed inside never melted.

Freeze-Drying

Combining cold and dry conditions can mummify bodies even when it’s not consistently chilly enough to keep a body frozen year-round. That’s what happened to a handful of Thule Inuit women and children in Greenland. They were naturally mummified in their graves after their deaths, likely caused by famine or disease, in the 15th and 16th centuries.

It’s a bit like natural freeze-drying, says paleopathologist Niels Lynnerup of the University of Copenhagen, who studied the mummies.

“Even though it's very cold in Greenland, it's not like it's in the high Arctic with permafrost,” he says. The bodies were buried under rocky covers or cairns, so “they still had wind blowing through.” The wind desiccated the bodies and, combined with the bacteria-slowing effect of cold temperatures, mummified them.

Many of the Inca mummies discovered high on Andean mountaintops were preserved by freeze-drying, too. The exceptionally well-preserved Maiden of Llullaillaco, the mummy of a teenage Inca girl left to succumb to cold on an Andean mountaintop as a sacrifice, is a unique case as she was frozen solid.

Even the conditions in cool, dry crypts can sometimes preserve remains in a similar way so long as bodies are either well-ventilated or kept under airtight conditions after being dried out, says Nerlich. Several natural mummies in crypts weren’t entirely accidents. One Upper Austrian mummy known as the Luftg’selchter Pfarrer was intentionally stuffed with water-absorbing materials and treated with salts to delay decay temporarily before he naturally mummified in his crypt.

Bogs

Natural mummification almost always involves somehow getting rid of water, either by removing it entirely or turning it into ice. So may be a bit surprising that wet, swampy bogs can preserve human remains for millennia.

The oldest bog mummy is Cashel Man, who was probably killed in a sacrifice around 2,000 B.C. His body was naturally mummified because of the unusual chemical conditions in bogs.

“There are several factors which cause human remains to be mummified in bogs,” says archaeologist Isabella Mulhall of the National Museum of Ireland. “The lack of oxygen, the cool dark environment… the [acidity] levels of the bog also has a role to play.”

A type of moss often found in bogs also helps mummify bodies, Mulhall adds. Sphagnum moss releases an acidic sugary molecule called sphagnan, which takes up the nutrients that would otherwise nourish microbes that cause decay. This helps mummify corpses—though sphagnan also leaches the calcium out of bones, weakening them.

The acidic fluids in bogs chemically alter the body, not unlike leather tanning or pickling. That’s why most bog bodies, no matter how they looked in life, have dark, leathery skin and bright red hair.

Many bog bodies appear to have met rather violent ends—a fate shared with many other natural mummies. But because luck happened to preserve their bodies, the victims of these ancient tragedies can still tell scientists about themselves and their societies. The same processes that mummify human skin and organs can also sometimes preserve undigested food in the stomach, blood, traces of disease-causing microbes, and even clues about the ecosystems and climates that ancient people lived in.

“In a sense,” says Arriaza, “all these ancient remains are time capsules.”

[shirecorn]

Finding Beyond Nemo

I did a quick search around the internet and collected some blogs and websites to discover unusual fish species for mermay inspiration (and because fish are fun)

Doing a clownfish mermaid is great, but what about doing a fish you only discovered that day? Let's see what we can reel in with these sites.

Tumblr blogs!

@herpsandbirds offers amphibians, reptiles, birds, and a bunch of other unusual and awesome critters including fish!

herps and birds fish tag

for a truly random experience, browse @hellsitegenetics to see what aquatic wonders are hiding in our posts.

You could also browse the entire tag of #ichthyology, the study of fish

Creature Websites!

Now to sail off tumblr to some of the sites I've browsed in the past, designed to introduce you to new species across the planet. I've narrowed these links down to fish sorted entries, but please browse the rest of the sites for fun as well!

My favorite for many years, The Featured Creature! Make sure to open every article to see the fish in question, as the article previews don't always show that each post has many beautiful photos of beautiful fish

Another archive with dozens of pages of fish spotlights! Check out activewild and see what you can sea

A classic! Check out articles and species spotlights of National Geographic

There's also lots of smaller blogs with only a page or so of fish. Coffeeandcreatures, thewildlife.blog and many many many more!

Start a new bookmarks category, pinterest board, or image folder and just start throwing fish in there. Your ocean of ideas will never run dry.

Not an artist but desperately want to see an obscure mermaid? You can ask me to tackle it! Just make sure you've browsed my mermay tag to make sure I haven't done it in years prior.

Request a mermaid here!

If you're an artist and you used this list to discover a new species, let me know! I love seeing what other people find interesting.

Happy mermay!

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Orcas (pictured, a pod in Norway) are likely the most widespread vertebrate on the planet.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL NICKLEN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION

[mesetacadre]

hopefully not a weird question with everything that's going on, but do you have any recommendations about what geography toys/resources are best for kids? my little brother's really interested but I don't see him often enough to play globle with him or show him world maps (his favorite games rn) so I thought I'd give him something :} (just wondering if there's a good way to help him learn)

Online resources I'd recommend are sporcle and seterra for quizzes (the no borders blank map ones in sporcle are really fun), and for just looking at maps there's geamap, mapsland, gifex, library of congress, the rumsey historical map collection, the university of cape town, old maps online, the british library, and the national library of australia, there's many more but these are most of the ones in my bookmarks.

If you do want to encourage him to develop an interest in geography as a field of study, I would show him how some online geographical information systems (GIS) work, but I don't think I can link any useful ones because all I know are the GIS managed by the various Spanish institutions and ministries. I'd consider this important because geography is much, much more than memorizing features on a map, even if I've always enjoyed that (and if he's still in primary school/early secondary, it'll definitely be useful to memorize some countries). Those GIS allow you to pick and choose between many layers and a basic set of tools, so even if you're just curious and not in the mood for figuring some connections out, they have a lot more information than the set of printed maps, because not all that information has been actually mapped out and made available on those sites. For example, if you want to see the distribution of land plots where you live, it's simply easier, and probably the only option, to go look at the GIS an administration has made public, like the cadastre or the tax admin, than sleuth through all these sites and Google images for relevant already printed maps.

[aisling-saoirse]

Plant of the day: Black Cherry - Prunus serotina

Today I wanted to recognize a lovely early successional tree species, one of America's showiest "Cherry" species and a vigorous ecological powerhouse

Black cherry has quite the unusual range, commonly found All over the Eastern US but has multiple geographically distinctive subspecies throughout the West and Mexico. North from Minnesota to Nova Scotia south to mid Florida to east Texas, Additionally it can be found in Big Bend National Park, areas of Arizona and New Mexico. South of the border Black Cherry is found throughout the East, West, and South Sierra Madres mountains reaching as far south as Guatemala.

Black Cherry as I've encountered it grows mostly in old fields and disturbed grounds, but apparently in Mexico it occupies mountainous regions. The species is also able to live long enough to be part of some older forests as well. In terms of finding it, If you've ever driven down an Eastern-Midwest highway in May, you'll notice plenty with a stunning display of white flowers (see below). I saw them all the way out to Kansas on Route 70.

This cherry occupies weedy environments very well, usually ending up with twisted bent forms and has an incredibly high germination rate. This vigorous tree can dominate a seed bank for years (I've pulled probably thousands from my garden beds). In Europe-East Asia it is considered a problematic invasive...but here where it's native it can outcompete the worst competition.

Identifying black cherry is rather easy, it has a dark flakey semi-plated bark (below), while the stems are notably cherry like (horizontal fissures) at the stems and intact portions of bark. The heart wood is notably orangish in color and the leaves give off the cherry-like odor when crushed. Leaves are typically longish symmetrical semi-shiny, darkish green with one very visible vein and shallow serated edges. Flowers are white clusters reminiscent of horns present around late May to early June. The ripe fruit is blackish red and present around August, on a good year it's quite plentiful (and delicious).

Black cherry is a wild edible in a few forms. I personally like to snack on the sour ripe fruit and spit out the large seeds, in Mexico these fruits are referred to as cupelines! The most fruitful useage is probably making jelly from collected fruit (something I do not know how to do). Cough syrups were historically derived from the bark and are still present in popular tea flavors such as "throat coats" (awful name).

While marginally edible to us the black cherry is ecologically the most important native cherry species for wildlife. Not only is there plentiful fruit for birds and large mammals the tree is rated number three amoung supported lepidoptera species. Per Doug Tallamy and Kim Shropshire's research the Prunus genus supports [at least] 465 species of invertebrates.

In this vein a common species which inhabits these trees are eastern tent caterpillars (image from inaturalist). I bring them up only because people commonly confuse them for the spongy moth (formerly g*psy moth). But tent caterpillars live in groups and only really eat prunus species whereas spongy moths are devastating and solitary. Interestingly enough the leaves of black cherry contain enough cyanide to make these caterpillars toxic to most predators! Don't break up the tent, tent caterpillars won't kill your tree.

In terms of modern relationships with the tree, people mostly use it as a higher quality cabinetry wood. I believe this species is one of the more common cherry woods to recieve, it has a strong orange hue to its wood which lasts. People also refer this species as an aromatic wood...however having cut down multiple of these trees I hate the smell, fresh cuts are like a chemical cyanide scent...

Lastly I'll bring up causes for decline, lately I've seen a reduction in black cherry due to an introduced fungus called the black knot. This affects many cherry species and isn't always fatal but can kill a tree (hence why I cut down multiple). You can treat individuals if you spot them early by cutting infected branches and burning/burying them before they spore in spring.

Ultimately the Black Cherry is the less famous cousin to the showy Asian cherry cultivars, but still holds a punch of beauty and provides incredibly high ecological value compared to most other American trees. Happy hunting!

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this National Geographic story:

In 2006, a hunter in Canada’s Northwest Territories shot a bear that had white fur with brown patches, long claws, and a grizzly-like hump. The strange-looking bear turned out to be a hybrid: a cross between a polar bear and a grizzly bear.

Over the following years, scientists identified a total of eight polar-grizzly hybrids, and found all the animals  were descendants of the same female polar bear. Sometimes called “grolars” when the father is a grizzly bear or a “pizzlies” when the father is a polar bear, these bears made headlines, and some researchers warned that the Arctic could become prime territory for hybrids due to climate change.

“We're interested in assessing the hybridization rate because we know that as the climate is warming in the Arctic, grizzly bears and polar bears are coming more and more into contact with one another,” says Ruth Rivkin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Manitoba. Using genetic tools, Rivkin and her colleagues recently found that hybridization remains rare among polar bears—for now.

Bears aren’t the only Arctic species that have intermingled, and many of these hybrids are virtually indistinguishable by sight. That’s why genetic analyses have become incredibly important. Scientists are looking deep into animals’ DNA to identify and learn more about potential hybrids, often raising more questions than answers. 

Typically, animals don’t mate outside their species, due to a variety of barriers, including geography. But hybrids can arise when species or subspecies that would not normally overlap run into each other when searching for a mate. 

Beluga whales and narwhals split on the evolutionary tree around five million years ago, but sometimes the species cross paths in western Greenland’s Disko Bay. In the 1980s, a hunter collected an unusual skull that researchers later hypothesized belonged to a beluga-narwhal hybrid. 

“This was the early days of genetics, and getting DNA from a skull that had been sitting for three to five years outside just wasn’t really an option in the early part of the ‘90s,” says Mikkel Skovrind, a researcher at Lund University in Sweden who helped evaluate the skull with modern genetic techniques in 2019. The study confirmed the identity of the “narluga” hybrid and pegged its birth to the 1970s or earlier.

As temperatures warm, grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis, female shown with a cub) may move further north, bringing them closer to polar bear territory. PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN EASTCOTT AND YVA MOMATIUK, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION. Similarly, melting sea ice in the Arctic could drive polar bears (Ursus maritimus, female shown with cubs) further south in search of food. PHOTOGRAPH BY FLORIAN SCHULZ, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

[thepastisalreadywritten]

While they may not look alike, did you know that seals are thought to be most closely related to bears, weasels, and otters? 🦭

📸 1/4: Barking elephant seals, Mirounga angustirostris, bask in a huge pile on a beach.

(National Geographic Image Collection / Bates Littlehales)

📸 2/4: Seals sleep in a tight group on the beach.

(National Geographic Image Collection / Joseph J. Scherschel)

📸 3/4: A colony of Steller's sea lions (Eumetopias jubata, also called northern sea lions) on a rocky islet in Hecate Strait.

(National Geographic Image Collection / Sam Abell)

📸 4/4: California sea lions, Zalophus californianus, lounge on a rock in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest.

(National Geographic Image Collection / Anne Farrar)

[honkifyourelonely]

bug like an angel collage zine. images from the bug like an angel music video, my pinterest board, 1970s national geographic magazines, and my sticker collection.

[usafphantom2]

IMAGES: B-2s land in Iceland for the first Bomber Task Force in months

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 08/14/2023 - 19:31 in Military

Three B-2 bombers from the 509ª Bomber Wing at Whiteman Air Base, Missouri, landed in Keflavik, Iceland, on August 13 to begin the first outward deployment of the stealth bomber since the B-2 fleet's six-month security pause ended in May.

More than 150 aviators along with the three B-2 Spirit aircraft arrived at Keflavik Air Base with the aim of participating in Bomber Task Force (BTF) missions, a vital component of the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) collaborative training efforts with U.S. Allies, partners and joint forces.

The B-2 is the only operational stealth bomber of the Air Force, with a global range, and the continuous rotations of the Bomber Task Force in Europe are seen as an element of NATO's high alert level since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. The planned duration of the recent deployment has not been disclosed, but BTFs usually last from 2 to 6 weeks.

Around the world, the U.S. Strategic Command routinely orchestrates BTF operations not only to show the United States' commitment to collective defense, but also to integrate seamlessly with the operations conducted by the Geographic Combat Commands of America. This BTF initiative is designed to strengthen USEUCOM's comprehensive security mandates across the European continent, while offering crews the opportunity to acclimatize to the complexities of joint and coalition operations in foreign locations.

"Each mission of the bomber task force highlights the feat of our armed forces in navigating today's intricate and unpredictable terrain of global security, focusing on promoting stability, security and freedom throughout Europe," said General James Hecker, commander of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe; U.S. Air Forces in Africa and NATO Allied Command. "In resolute unity, the U.S. maintains our nation's commitment to promoting peace and stability in Europe, collaborating unwaveringly with allies and partners to prevent challenges against the sovereignty of nations throughout the region."

Leading the crew of the expeditionary bomber in its deployment is Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Kousgaard, commander of the 393º Bombing Squadron. He emphasized the essence of the dynamic use of the force, describing it as a strategy that combines strategic unpredictability with operational adaptability. Lieutenant Colonel Kousgaard said: “The B-2 bomber is arguably the most strategically significant aircraft in the world, but that does not mean it is unftably; dynamically deploying bombers is a unique and important capability.”

The presence of the B-2 at Keflavik Air Base serves as a tangible link between U.S. Air Force personnel and their colleagues in the theater of operations. This connection facilitates collaborative training, increasing interoperability and highlighting the unwavering dedication of the United States to the region.

It has not been disclosed whether B-2s will operate from any advanced area in Europe, but BTFs usually include unannounced secondary deployments.

Elaborating on the importance of joint training exercises with the Allies, Lieutenant Colonel Kousgaard highlighted the role of his unit in improving collective military capabilities and increasing the likelihood of successfully achieving the shared goals. He emphasized: "There is simply no substitute for practical integration with our allies and partners that we can carry out during a BTF deployment like this."

In addition to strengthening combat readiness, the BTF initiative allows aviators to engage in a wide spectrum of military operations, covering everything from combat missions to humanitarian aid and disaster relief efforts.

The Bomber Task Force Europe offers U.S. and NATO leaders strategic options to secure, stop and defend against opposing aggression against the Alliance, throughout Europe and around the world. Regular and routine deployments of U.S. strategic bombers provide our critical touchpoints to train and operate alongside our allies and partners, reinforcing our collective response to any global conflict.

Tags: Military AviationB-2 SpiritBTFUSAF - United States Air Force / U.S. Air Force

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Daytona Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work around the world of aviation.

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Cavok Brazil - Digital Tchê Web Creation

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[mariacallous]

Among the many victims of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine are some of the most important ecosystems in Eastern Europe: Ukraine’s forests and protected areas.

The full extent of the damage, however, is unknown. That’s why we are launching a new tool that will help open source researchers track destruction from afar.

In September 2022, Ukrainian environmental researchers visited national parks — which are more resilient to climate change than artificial plantings and support crucial biodiversity—to assess damage to forests and wildlife. Initial findings revealed broken trees, damaged root systems due to trench digging and unexploded munitions scattered across protected lands.

“Forests have suffered a lot on the frontline… huge areas of forests are being mined”, Yehor Hrynyk, an environmental campaigner at the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, told Bellingcat. But large parts of Ukraine’s vast national parks, mountainous regions and woodlands are inaccessible for on-the-ground environmental monitoring.

That’s where open source techniques come in.

The OSINT Forest Area Tracker

We’ve launched the “OSINT Forest Area Tracker”, hosted on Google Earth Engine. Our tool compares data collected by Sentinel-2, a satellite which detects changes in infrared wavelengths and can be used to study the health of forests. 

The tool reveals the scale and intensity of anomalous changes on land. This narrows down search areas for researchers working on environmental damage in Ukraine. 

Importantly, the map does not attribute the cause of these changes, meaning that it is crucial to find corroborating evidence from other sources before concluding that they were the result of military activity. 

The tool uses the Normalised Burn Ratio (NBR) index to estimate burn severity.

Researchers can also use the tool to select custom date ranges for geographic locations of interest. 

As Ukraine’s official database of protected areas includes over 7,500 sites, we chose not to study them all — among their number are botanical gardens, city parks and archaeological sites. That list also includes many areas in the far west of the country which have not seen intense conflict. 

Therefore, we selected 16 areas which featured the highest number of detected fires over the first year of the war, based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. MODIS is a sensor which allows satellites to detect thermal anomalies, including fires in active war zones (Along with VIIRS, MODIS data can be accessed on the FIRMS system; you can read more about its use to open source researchers here). We also added Svyati Hory National Park because of its proximity to fighting. The tool includes a drop down list preset areas from across the country, including those near military activity. These preset areas are referred to by their acronyms, for example SHNP for Svyati Hory National Park. A full list of these acronyms can be found on the tool’s GitHub page. If researchers are interested in areas of the country not included in the dropdown menu, the coordinates can be entered manually.

While the new tool focuses on Ukraine by default, the methods it employs could be used to analyse areas elsewhere in the world.

...

Future Development

In the case of Svyati Hory, the tool identified damage to a protected area which deserved further investigation. In the case of the Kinburn Spit, it allowed us to further verify existing open source claims about an attack which had caused damage to a forest – also enriching our knowledge about the extent of the damage, which was less easily visible on real colour satellite imagery. However, both cases demonstrate the importance of corroborating the tool’s findings with other sources before drawing any conclusions about the causes of such damage. The author will continue refining and improving this tool in order to better understand the scale of damage to Ukraine’s many protected areas. Feedback or suggestions for improvements are welcomed. For further technical details on this tool and updates following the publication of this article, please read the description on the author’s GitHub page.

[xtruss]

Flipper? A Dusky Dolphin (Lagenorhynchus Obscurus) leaps out of the water off New Zealand. Photograph By Flip Nicklin, National Geographic Image Collection

Bounding Buddies! Two Eastern Gray Kangaroos (Macropus Giganteus) jump through Australia’s Murramarang National Park. Photograph By Frans Lanting, National Geographic Image Collection

Nine Weather Up Here! A Manta Ray (Manta) Soars Over the Ocean’s Surface. Photograph By Brian J. Skerry, National Geographic Image Collection

Got Ya! An Arctic Fox (Vulpes Lagopus) Pounces on Potential Dinner Under the Snow in Alaska’s North Slope. Photograph By Design Pics Inc., National Geographic Image Collection

Leaping Through The Fields! A Springbok (Antidorcas Marsupialis) springs into the air while running in Africa. Photograph By Ralph Lee Hopkins, National Geographic Image Collection

Out of Our Way! Blue Wildebeest (Connochaetes Taurinus) bound into the Mara River as they migrate through Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve. Photograph By Suzie Eszterhas, National Geographic Image Collection

There It Is! A Red Fox (Vulpes Vulpes) pounces on prey burrowed under the snow. Photograph By Robbie George, National Geographic Image Collection

Ice, Ice, Baby! An Adélie Penguin (Pygoscelis Adeliae) jumps on an iceberg in Antarctica. Photograph By Ralph Lee Hopkins, National Geographic image collection

Snowy Goat! A Mountain Goat (Oreamnos Americanus) leaps through snow at Glacier National Park in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. Photograph By Sumio Harada, National Geographic Image Collection

[nature-godsgardenofeden]

An African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) peruses his territory from a perch atop a large termite mound. (Credit: National Geographic Image Collection/Chris Johns) - Nat Geo Wild

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Sea Otter

PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM LAMAN / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION

[jeannereames]

Hi Dr Reames!

Would you say that Macedon shared the same "political culture" with its Thracian and Illyrian neighbours, like how most Greeks shared the polis structure and the concept of citizenship?

I don't really know anything about Macedonian history before Philip II's time, but you've often brought up how the Macedonians shared some elements of elite culture (e.g. mound burials) with their Thracian neighbours, as well religious beliefs and practices.

I've only ever heard these people generically described as "a collection of tribes (that confederated into a kingdom)", which also seems to be the common description for nearby "Greek" polities like Thessaly and Epiros. So did these societies have a lot in common, structurally speaking, with Macedon? Or were they just completely different types of polities altogether?

First, in the interest of some good bibliography on the Thracians:

Z. H. Archibald, The Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace. Orpheus Unmasked. Oxford UP, 1998. (Too expensive outside libraries, but highly recommended if you can get it by interlibrary loan. Part of the exorbitant cost [almost $400, but used for less] owes to images, as it’s archaeology heavy. Archibald is also an expert on trade and economy in north Greece and the Black Sea region, and has edited several collections on the topic.

Alexander Fol, Valeria Fol. Thracians. Coronet Books, 2005. Also expensive, if not as bad, and meant for the general public. Fol’s 1977 Thrace and the Thracians, with Ivan Marazov, was a classic. Fol and Marazov are fathers of modern Thracian studies.

R. F. Hodinott, The Thracians. Thames and Hudson, 1981. Somewhat dated now but has pictures and can be found used for a decent price if you search around. But, yeah…dated.

For Illyria, John Wilkes’ The Illyrians, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, is a good place to start, but there’s even less about them in book form (or articles).

—————

Now, to the question.

BOTH the Thracians and Illyrians were made up of politically independent tribes bound by language and religion who, sometimes, also united behind a strong ruler (the Odrysians in Thrace for several generations, and Bardylis briefly in Illyria). One can probably make parallels to Germanic tribes, but it’s easier for me to point to American indigenous nations. The Odrysians might be compared to the Iroquois federation. The Illyrians to the Great Lakes people, united for a while behind Tecumseh, but not entirely, and disunified again after. These aren’t perfect, but you get the idea. For that matter, the Greeks themselves weren’t a nation, but a group of poleis bonded by language, culture, and religion. They fought as often as they cooperated. The Persian invasion forced cooperation, which then dissolved into the Peloponnesian War.

Beyond linguistic and religious parallels, sometimes we also have GEOGRAPHIC ones. So, let me divide the north into lowlands and highlands. It’s much more visible on the ground than from a map, but Epiros, Upper Macedonia, and Illyria are all more alike, landscape-wise, than Lower Macedonia and the Thracian valleys. South of all that, and different yet again, lay Thessaly, like a bridge between Southern Greece and these northern regions.

If language (and religion) are markers of shared culture, culture can also be shaped by ethnically distinct neighbors. Thracians and Macedonians weren’t ethnically related, yet certainly shared cultural features. Without falling into colonialist geographical/environmental determinism, geography does affect how early cultures develop because of what resources are available, difficulties of travel, weather, lay of the land itself, etc.

For instance, the Pindus Range, while not especially high, is rocky and made a formidable barrier to easy east-west travel. Until recently, sailing was always more efficient in Greece than travel by land (especially over mountain ranges).* Ergo, city-states/towns on the western coast tended to be western-facing for trade, and city-states/towns on the eastern side were, predictably, eastern-facing. This is why both Epiros and Ainai (Elimeia) did more trade with Corinth than Athens, and one reason Alexandros of Epiros went west to Italy while Alexander of Macedon looked east to Persia. It’s also why Corinth, Sparta, etc., in the Peloponnese colonized Sicily and S. Italy, while Athens, Euboia, etc., colonized the Asia Minor and Black Sea coasts. (It’s not an absolute, but one certainly sees trends.)

So, looking at their land, we can see why Macedonians and Thracians were both horse people with their wide valleys. They also practiced agriculture, had rich forests for logging, and significant metal (and mineral) deposits—including silver and gold—that made mining a source of wealth. They shared some burial customs but maintained acute differences. Both had lower status for women compared to Illyria/Epiros/Paionia. Yet that’s true only of some Thracian tribes, such as the Odrysians. Others had stronger roles for women. Thracians and Macedonians shared a few deities (The Rider/Zis, Dionysos/Zagreus, Bendis/Artemis/Earth Mother), although Macedonian religion maintained a Greek cast. We also shouldn’t underestimate the impact of Greek colonies along the Black Sea coast on inland Thrace, especially the Odrysians. Many an Athenian or Milesian (et al.) explorer/merchant/colonist married into the local Thracian elite.

Let’s look at burial customs, how they’re alike and different, for a concrete example of this shared regional culture.

First, while both Thracians and Macedonians had shrines, neither had temples on the Greek model until late, and then largely in Macedonia. Their money went into the ground with burials.

Temples represent a shit-ton of city/community money plowed into a building for public use/display. In southern Greece, they rise (pun intended) at the end of the Archaic Age as city-state sumptuary laws sought to eliminate personal display at funerals, weddings, etc. That never happened in Macedonia/much of the northern areas. So, temples were slow to creep up there until the Hellenistic period. Even then, gargantuan funerals and the Macedonian Tomb remained de rigueur for Macedonian elite. (The date of the arrival of the true Macedonian Tomb is debated, but I side with those who count it as a post-Alexander development.)

A “Macedonian Tomb” (above: Tomb of Judgement, photo mine) is a faux-shrine embedded in the ground. Elite families committed wealth to it in a huge potlatch to honor the dead. Earlier cyst tombs show the same proclivities, but without the accompanying shrine-like architecture. As early as 650 BCE at Archontiko (= ancient Pella), we find absurd amounts of wealth in burials (below: Archontiko burial goods, Pella Museum, photos mine). Same thing at Sindos, and Aigai, in roughly the same period. Also in a few places in Upper Macedonia, in the Archaic Age: Aiani, Achlada, Trebenište, etc.. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If Greece had more money for digs, I think we’d find additional sites.

Vivi Saripanidi has some great articles (conveniently in English) about these finds: “Constructing Necropoleis in the Archaic Period,” “Vases, Funerary Practices, and Political Power in the Macedonian Kingdom During the Classical Period Before the Rise of Philip II,” and “Constructing Continuities with a Heroic Past.” They’re long, but thorough. I recommend them.

What we observe here are “Princely Burials” across lingo-ethnic boundaries that reflect a larger, shared regional culture. But one big difference between elite tombs in Macedonia and Thrace is the presence of a BODY, and whether the tomb was new or repurposed.

In Thrace, at least royal tombs are repurposed shrines (above: diagram and model of repurposed shrine-tombs). Macedonian Tombs were new construction meant to look like a shrine (faux-fronts, etc.). Also, Thracian kings’ bodies weren’t buried in their "tombs." Following the Dionysic/ Orphaic cult, the bodies were cut up into seven pieces and buried in unmarked spots. Ergo, their tombs are cenotaphs (below: Kosmatka Tomb/Tomb of Seuthes III, photos mine).

What they shared was putting absurd amounts of wealth into the ground in the way of grave goods, including some common/shared items such as armor, golden crowns, jewelry for women, etc. All this in place of community-reflective temples, as seen in the South. (Below: grave goods from Seuthes’ Tomb; grave goods from Royal Tomb II at Vergina, for comparison).

So, if some things are shared, others (connected to beliefs about the afterlife) are distinct, such as the repurposed shrine vs. new construction built like a shine, and the presence or absence of a body (below: tomb ceiling décor depicting Thracian deity Zalmoxis).

Aside from graves, we also find differences between highlands and lowlands in the roles of at least elite women. The highlands were tough areas to live, where herding (and raiding) dominated, and what agriculture there was required “all hands on deck” for survival. While that isn’t necessary for women to enjoy higher status (just look at Minoan Crete, Etruria, and even Egypt), it may have contributed to it in these circumstances.

Illyrian women fought. And not just with bows on horseback as Scythian women did. If we can believe Polyaenus, Philip’s daughter Kyanne (daughter of his Illyrian wife Audata) opposed an Illyrian queen on foot with spears—and won. Philip’s mother Eurydike involved herself in politics to keep her sons alive, but perhaps also as a result of cultural assumption: her mother was royal Lynkestian but her father was (perhaps) Illyrian. Epirote Olympias came to Pella expecting a certain amount of political influence that she, apparently, wasn’t given until Philip died. Alexander later observed that his mother had wisely traded places with Kleopatra, his sister, to rule in Epiros, because the Macedonians would never accept rule by a woman (implying the Epirotes would).

I’ve noted before that the political structure in northern Greece was more of a continuum: Thessaly had an oligarchic tetrarchy of four main clans, expunged by Jason in favor of tyranny, then restored by Philip. Epiros was ruled by a council who chose the “king” from the Aiakid clan until Alexandros I, Olympias’s brother, established a real monarchy. Last, we have Macedon, a true monarchy (apparently) from the beginning, but also centered on a clan (Argeads), with agreement/support from the elite Hetairoi class of kingmakers. Upper Macedonian cantons (formerly kingdoms) had similar clan rule, especially Lynkestis, Elimeia, and Orestis. Alas, we don’t know enough to say how absolute their monarchies were before Philip II absorbed them as new Macedonian districts, demoting their basileis (kings/princes) to mere governors.

I think continued highland resistance to that absorption is too often overlooked/minimized in modern histories of Philip’s reign, excepting a few like Ed Anson’s. In Dancing with the Lion: Rise, I touch on the possibility of highland rebellion bubbling up late in Philip’s reign but can’t say more without spoilers for the novel.

In antiquity, Thessaly was always considered Greek, as was (mostly) Epiros. But Macedonia’s Greek bona-fides were not universally accepted, resulting in the tale of Alexandros I’s entry into the Olympics—almost surely a fiction with no historical basis, fed to Herodotos after the Persian Wars. The tale’s goal, however, was to establish the Greekness of the ruling family, not of the Macedonian people, who were still considered barbaroi into the late Classical period. Recent linguistic studies suggest they did, indeed, speak a form of northern Greek, but the fact they were regarded as barbaroi in the ancient world is, I think instructive, even if not necessarily accurate.

It tells us they were different enough to be counted “not Greek” by some southern Greek poleis and politicians such as Demosthenes. Much of that was certainly opportunistic. But not all. The bias suggests Macedonian culture had enough overflow from their northern neighbors to appear sufficiently alien. Few Greek writers suggested the Thessalians or Epirotes weren’t Greek, but nobody argued the Thracians, Paiones, or Illyrians were. Macedonia occupied a liminal status.

We need to stop seeing these areas with hard borders and, instead, recognize permeable boundaries with the expected cultural overflow: out and in. Contra a lot of messaging in the late 1800s and early/mid-1900s, lifted from ancient narratives (and still visible today in ultra-national Greek narratives), the ancient Greeks did not go out to “civilize” their Eastern “Oriental” (and northern barbaroi) neighbors, exporting True Culture and Philosophy. (For more on these views, see my earlier post on “Alexander suffering from Conqueror’s Disease.”)

In fact, Greeks of the Late Iron Age (LIA)/Archaic Age absorbed a great deal of culture and ideas from those very “Oriental barbarians,” such as Lydia and Assyria. In art history, the LIA/Early Archaic Era is referred to as the “Orientalizing Period,” but it’s not just art. Take Greek medicine. It’s essentially Mesopotamian medicine with their religion buffed off. Greek philosophy developed on the islands along the Asia Minor coast, where Greeks regularly interacted with Lydians, Phoenicians, and eventually Persians; and also in Sicily and Southern Italy, where they were talking to Carthaginians and native Italic peoples, including Etruscans. Egypt also had an influence.

Philosophy and other cultural advances didn’t develop in the Greek heartland. The Greek COLONIES were the happenin’ places in the LIA/Archaic Era. Here we find the all-important ebb and flow of ideas with non-Greek peoples.

Artistic styles, foodstuffs, technology, even ideas and myths…all were shared (intentionally or not) via TRADE—especially at important emporia. Among the most significant of these LIA emporia was Methone, a Greek foundation on the Macedonian coast off the Thermaic Gulf (see map below). It provided contact between Phoenician/Euboian-Greek traders and the inland peoples, including what would have been the early Macedonian kingdom. Perhaps it was those very trade contacts that helped the Argeads expand their rule in the lowlands at the expense of Bottiaians, Almopes, Paionians, et al., who they ran out in order to subsume their lands.

My main point is that the northern Greek mainland/southern Balkans were neither isolated nor culturally stunted. Not when you look at all that gold and other fine craftwork coming out of the ground in Archaic burials in the region. We’ve simply got to rethink prior notions of “primitive” peoples and cultures up there—notions based on southern Greek narratives that were both political and culturally hidebound, but that have, for too long, been taken as gospel truth.

Ancient Macedon did not “rise” with Philip II and Alexander the Great. If anything, the 40 years between the murder of Archelaos (399) and the start of Philip’s reign (359/8) represents a 2-3 generation eclipse. Alexandros I, Perdikkas II, and Archelaos were extremely capable kings. Philip represented a return to that savvy rule.

(If you can read German, let me highly recommend Sabine Müller’s, Perdikkas II and Die Argeaden; she also has one on Alexander, but those two talk about earlier periods, and especially her take on Perdikkas shows how clever he was. For those who can’t read German, the Lexicon of Argead Macedonia’s entry on Perdikkas is a boiled-down summary, by Sabine, of the main points in her book.)

Anyway…I got away a bit from Thracian-Macedonian cultural parallels, but I needed to mount my soapbox about the cultural vitality of pre-Philip Macedonia, some of which came from Greek cultural imports, but also from Thrace, Illyria, etc.

Ancient Macedonia was a crossroads. It would continue to be so into Roman imperial, Byzantine, and later periods with the arrival of subsequent populations (Gauls, Romans, Slavs, etc.) into the region.

That fruit salad with Cool Whip, or Jello and marshmallows, or chopped up veggies and mayo, that populate many a family reunion or church potluck spread? One name for it is a “Macedonian Salad”—but not because it’s from Macedonia. It’s called that because it’s made up of many [very different] things. Also, because French macedoine means cut-up vegetables, but the reference to Macedonia as a cultural mishmash is embedded in that.

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* I’ve seen this personally between my first trip to Greece in 1997, and the new modern highway. Instead of winding around mountains, the A2 just blasts through them with tunnels. The A1 (from Thessaloniki to Athens) was there in ’97, and parts of the A2 east, but the new highway west through the Pindus makes a huge difference. It takes less than half the time now to drive from the area around Thessaloniki/Pella out to Ioannina (near ancient Dodona) in Epiros. Having seen the landscape, I can imagine the difficulties of such a trip in antiquity with unpaved roads (albeit perhaps at least graded). Taking carts over those hills would be daunting. See images below.

[nerteragranadensis]

I was born in the vacant / Wasteland of the faithful / You say prayers when you're scared / To be careless and found ungrateful / I was born a defender / Of a hell made for sinners / And never did ever forget / That it's still well equipped for quitters

— Mutemath, "Achilles Heel"

An amateur orchid grower works in the window of his greenhouse in Silver Spring, Maryland. April 1971. Photograph by Gordon Gahan, National Geographic.

If anyone remembers my name / If I'm ever known for anything / Let it be I ran into the night / Running with a firelight, firelight

— Matt Maher, "Firelight"

A bonfire on the bank of a river in British Columbia, with snowy mountains in the background. August 2018. Photograph by Courtnie Tosana.

Look! The LORD is coming from his dwelling place; he comes down and treads on the heights of the earth. The mountains melt beneath him and the valleys split apart, like wax before the fire, like water rushing down a slope.

— Micah 1:3-4, New International Version

The old cooling towers from the decomissioned Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Station, on the other side of a lake. February 2007. Photograph by Tom Spaulding.

Ain't nothing come easy / No, nothing comes quick / It's gonna hurt like hell to become well / But if we set the bone straight / It'll mend / It'll fix / And we'll be well

— The Oh Hellos, "Theseus"

Trash clogs a waterway in Zunil, Guatemala. November 2020. Photograph by Alexander Schimmeck.

No, I am not afraid to die / It's every breath that comes before

— The Oh Hellos, "This Will End"

Alexey Akindinov, "Dance of Death." 105.5x130 cm, oil on canvas, 2009. p. Collection of the Museum of World Funeral Culture, Novosibirsk. "This is the retinue of death, which plays along with her, playing the violin. The image of death is impartial and friendly. It is illuminated by warm reflections from the burning flame of the fire, which symbolizes the energy of life. People dancing around the fire personify human action in earthly life. How to keep warm by the fire of life and not get burned? This question is asked by everyone who comes into this world."

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this National Geographic story:

Moo Deng, the baby pygmy hippo that has become famous online, exhibits all the classic traits associated with cuteness—a round face, cherubic body, and playful movements. PHOTOGRAPH BY ATHIT PERAWONGMETHA/REUTERS/REDUX

Greenland husky puppies play in Qaanaaq, Greenland. Much like human babies, puppies have features that stimulate our innate caregiving instincts. PHOTOGRAPH BY KILIII YUYAN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

A baby panda sleeps at a zoo while visitors clammer for a glimpse. We're more likely to invest in conserving species we find cute, like pandas—which almost went extinct. PHOTOGRAPH BY AMI VITALE, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

A mother seal and pup relax after nursing. The large, round eyes and round heads found in seals make them cute into adulthood. PHOTOGRAPH BY JENNIFER HAYE, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

An elephant calf plays with shrubs. It's not just physical features that makes something cute, say experts. Curious, playful movements also make animals appear cute. PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID CHANCELLOR, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Five burrowing owl chicks sit in a bush. Scientists say the emotional response to seeing cute animals is surprisingly complex, evoking a range of positive emotions. PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL FORSBERG, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION