Innehållsförteckning för September 2023 från National Geographic Magazine

SHORTLY BEFORE I joined National Geographic last year, I traveled to one of my favorite places on the planet: Chile. During several visits over the years, I’ve fallen in love with its people and culture and with its landscapes, from the high desert of the north to the fjords and rugged mountains of the south. On this visit, my husband, Charles, and I returned to Patagonia, specifically to Patagonia National Park, created through the efforts of visionary American conservationists Kris and Doug Tompkins. (Their work in South America is the subject of a terrific National Geographic documentary, Wild Life, which you can watch on Disney+.) I’ve long considered this one of the great by-products of travel: While you’re having a good time, you’re also exposed to things that really make…

Bioengineers in China have created a tiny implantable battery that makes tumors easier to destroy by denying them oxygen and charges itself on salt water injected in nearby tissue. It hasn’t been tested yet on humans, but when inserted into the armpits of mice and used with an experimental drug, it shrank cells that model breast cancer by 90 percent. The device offers a novel strategy for boosting the power of new drugs that target oxygen-depleted cancer cells, visible as green in this tumor scan.…

WHEN I LANDED A feature assignment for National Geographic about urban wildlife in the United States, I was elated. There was just one problem: I had to figure out how to photograph wild animals on the move at night. I had dreamed of delving into a long-term photography project about these citified critters ever since my college days in San Francisco, when I was “mugged” by a raccoon. I used to roam the streets after dark, shooting the evocative, dimly lit landscapes, and one night I suddenly saw a raccoon stand up like a human before running toward me and persuading me to relinquish my bag of Cheetos. While I did manage to capture the tense moment right before the charge, almost every subsequent attempt to record raccoon behavior and…

Continuously settled since the Bronze Age, Jerusalem has been shaped by successive rulers and empires. According to the Bible, Israelite kings captured the city and built a temple on the site Muslims now call Haram al Sharif. circa 1000-930 B.C. The Israelites capture the small walled settlement from the Jebusites. circa 930-720 The capital city expands to include the high ground of Mount Moriah. 720-586 Jerusalem remains the capital of Judah as the northern kingdom of Israel falls. 19-4 B.C. King Herod the Great, appointed by Rome, renovates the Temple complex. A.D. 638-1099 Muslim leader Umar captures the city; the Dome of the Rock is built. 1099-1187 Christian Crusaders seize Jerusalem and repurpose sacred buildings. 1516-1917 Ottoman Turks gain control of the city. The Old City’s present walls date to…

When covid-19 began its global spread in early 2020, Italy was one of the first countries to feel the devastating effects. That March, Frazzetta captured hospital scenes in the hard-hit towns of Bergamo and Brescia. Three years later, officials invited him to witness the towns’ recovery as well as a yearlong initiative touting Italian culture. Near Brescia’s Piazza della Vittoria, he photographed this sculpture by local artist Stefano Bombardieri, symbolizing the pandemic-related sensation of being suspended in time. WHO An Italian photographer who focuses on the relationships between humans and the natural world WHERE Brescia, Italy WHAT Sony 7R4 camera with a 16-35mm lens National Geographic has more than 439 million Instagram followers. Join them here: @natgeo, @natgeotravel, @natgeointhefield, @natgeoadventure, @natgeoyourshot, @natgeotv, @natgeowild, @natgeodocs. Subscriptions For subscriptions or changes of…

Thomas Peschak Educated as a marine biologist, Peschak picked up a camera in an effort to increase his influence on wildlife conservation. His images of oceans, coasts, and islands have filled eight books and garnered 17 Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards. An Explorer since 2017, he’s participating in the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Amazon Expedition, for which he photographed the magazine’s July 2023 article on Amazonian rock art. While shooting this month’s feature in Mozambique, he documented the relationship between people and wildlife, from a honey hunter raiding a beehive up a baobab tree to pilgrims revering baboons at a sacred ceremonial site. Page 108 Haruka Sakaguchi Born in Osaka, Japan, and now living in New York, Sakaguchi became an Explorer in 2022. Her photography on cultural…

PAID CONTENT FOR ›› Starting in Marquette, a vibrant college town on Lake Superior, Michael found a warm community of artists and outdoor enthusiasts. He grabbed a bite at BODEGA, a restaurant inside a renovated 1884 schoolhouse building, where owner Libby Nelson is passionate about sourcing food from local farmers and bringing people together. Downtown Marquette offers a convenient access point to Presque Isle Park, a local favorite known for hiking through pine forests, watching the sunset, and swimming at Black Rocks, which is home to some of the planet's oldest volcanic rocks. ›› Fueled by Marquette’s energy, Michael headed north—as far north as a person can get on mainland Michigan—to Copper Harbor at the top of the Keweenaw Peninsula. Brockway Mountain is a sought-after destination for mountain bikers, where…

‘ANY VIEWER’S TONGUE WILL GROW SHORTER TRYING TO DESCRIBE IT,’ marveled the inveterate traveler Ibn Battuta while visiting Jerusalem in 1326. “This is one of the most fantastic of all buildings, of the most perfect in architecture and strangest in shape.” For more than 13 centuries, the Dome of the Rock has been the jewel in the crown of Jerusalem’s sacred acropolis, a sprawling area known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Haram al Sharif—the Noble Sanctuary. As Islam’s oldest building, the dome ranks with the neighboring Church of the Holy Sepulchre in spiritual importance and the Taj Mahal in grace. Simple geometry dressed in sumptuous materials gives this iconic structure a timeless appeal. One chilly winter morning, the shrine slowly fills with women…

The Dome of the Rock—built during the Muslim Umayyad dynasty and gracing Jerusalem’s skyline—has been renovated and restored over 13 centuries. Its core elements, however, have been preserved throughout the ages. New details of its many architectural changes are coming to light as experts delve into historical records, archival photographs, and remnants of its original facade. Well of Souls A small prayer room inside a natural cave lies just below the rock. Pieces of the past Many interior mosaics have survived. Seventh-century exterior mosaic fragments were discovered in the 1960s, offering clues to previous designs. Views over time Early windows were marble lattice. During the ’60s renovations, experts used Ottoman-era techniques to restore stained-glass windows. Recycled elements Spolia, or objects reused from other buildings, can be found in the multihued…

‘I AM THE GUARDIAN OF THE GLACIER,’ says Andrea Carretta. He does not mean this as a boast but rather a simple acknowledgment of service. The 46-year-old park ranger slowly lowers himself until he is on one knee. In quiet tones he asks the glacier for permission to lead us onto the secluded ice. We’re at the approach to the Exploradores Glacier, situated in southern Chile’s Laguna San Rafael National Park. It’s early September, a season of less rain and fewer tourists. Swollen gray clouds loom over us as the dense forest recedes. We strap crampons onto our hiking boots and crunch our way through a terrain of slick morainal sediment that suddenly cascades into a swirling panorama of pale blue ice massifs and minty glacial waterways. The primordial might…

Near the end of her 12- to 13-month gestation, a pregnant reef manta ray sports an impressive bulge: The fetus folded up in her womb has a wingspan of almost five feet at full term. But in a reef manta (Mobula alfredi), pregnancy doesn’t become outwardly visible until around halfway through gestation—so a group of scientists in the Maldives used contactless underwater sonograms (inset) to study the rays’ pregnancy and maturity states. Their findings, recently published in the Journal of Fish Biology, were “alarming,” says lead author Niv Froman (the diver pictured above) of the Manta Trust. After ultrasounds definitively showed which of the female reef mantas were reproductively mature versus immature, it seemed clear that scientists had underestimated the number that were mature—and likely capable of bearing pups. The…

Jerusalem’s Old City is layered with history, beliefs, and divisions. It’s the site of two now vanished temples that for centuries were the central place of Jewish worship. It’s where Jesus of Nazareth is believed to have been resurrected after his Crucifixion. Here too is the stone Muslims revere as the spot where the Prophet Muhammad began his nighttime journey to heaven. These events consecrated the city to three great religions, leading to eras of both peace and bloodshed. Territories in dispute Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 Six Day War. Despite condemnation from the international community, Israel continues to build West Bank settlements where some 450,000 Israelis live among more than 2.5 million Palestinians. Controversial capital Israel named Jerusalem its capital…

ON A BRISK DECEMBER DAY, David Stahle stands atop a ladder leaning against a bald cypress tree as wide as he is tall. Like a woodsy Doctor Who dropped into this southern swamp with a sonic screwdriver, Stahle begins slowly boring through time. The first inch takes him back to before the First World War, the second to the birth of the United States. Within five inches, Stahle, a dendrochronologist at the University of Arkansas, has reached Columbus’s voyage to the New World. By the time he’s finished extracting the pencil-thin core, Stahle has enough rings to estimate that the gnarled cypress sprang from its sodden bed as the first Crusaders were marching toward Jerusalem about a thousand years ago. But it’s the half-inch sliver close to the bark, from…

The Northern Patagonian Ice Field—the third largest ice mass in the Southern Hemisphere—totals 1,600 square miles and is almost a mile deep in parts. This dramatic landscape is not only shrinking in area: It’s also losing more than 1.4 cubic miles in volume a year, enough to cover Rhode Island in nearly five feet of ice. This melting can lead to dangerous floods; glacial lakes have burst from their banks, inundating nearby communities. WORLDWIDE LOSSES Rapid melting isn’t unique to the Northern Ice Field. It’s happening at an equally alarming pace all over the southern Andes, where the rate of melting has surpassed the global average for decades. ICY PAST, WATERY FUTURE Scientists are using historical photographs to measure the retreat of the San Rafael Glacier (its “tongue” is shown…

JOANA LICONDE STANDS on a sandbar at the Chemambo sacred pools, her emerald dress drenched and raining water droplets at her feet. She faces the altar, a young baobab tree whose hallowed girth is swaddled in white fabric, and leads fellow pilgrims in prayer. When the worshippers splashed in the spring waters moments earlier, they effervesced like children. Now they’re quietly reverential. The drumbeat of their dancing feet has fallen still as they stand in devotion. The musical rattles are respectfully quiet as the retiring sun delivers the group into an evening of more dancing, singing, and prayer. The worshippers are taking part in a chonde-chonde ceremony in Niassa, a protected area in northern Mozambique, where they lay offerings of food and money at the base of the baobab and…