Manicouagan Crater

Manicouagan Crater is one of the oldest impact craters on earth, and is situated in the Cote-Nord region in Quebec, Canada. It is estimated to have been created over 215 million years ago, by a 5km (3.1mi) diameter asteroid. The crater is a 100km (60mi) diameter, multi ringed structure, with the most prominent feature being a circular lake, about 70km (43.4mi) in diameter. This crater also forms the largest in an array of craters believed to be a multiple impact event.

Dragon Blood Tree

The Socotra Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Somalia, is home to the Dragon Blood tree. The Dragon Blood tree is unusual for a number of reasons. Its trunk is bare and branches only at the top, ending in sharp spiky leaves. This unusual appearance is due to the Dragon Blood tree belonging to the monocotyledons, the same group of plants as grasses, rather than dicotyledons, which are more common amongst trees. As well as an unusual exterior, the trees also reveal an unusual interior; once pierced bright red sap oozes out. The crimson sap, called Dragon Blood, is dried and then used as a medicine or a dye. While the inhabitants of Socotra still use it as a panacea, the sap is mostly used in the West as a red varnish for violins.

Hyperion California

Hyperion is a Coast Redwood, and has the distinction of being the tallest living organism ever measured. It is 379.3 feet tall. That’s 38 stories, 100 feet taller than #5, 50 feet taller than the tallest habitable building in Washington, D. C. It grows in Redwood National Park and was not even discovered until 25 August, 2006, because all the trees around it are also redwoods, and are all gargantuan.

Like all redwoods and sequoias (very similar species), Hyperion is so enormous that it possesses its own ecosystem, with full-size pines and hemlocks growing on its branches. It is so high that if you could avoid the branches (and other trees) on the way down, BASE jumping would be no problem at all. There are no confirmed photos of it on the Internet, because scientists don’t want it disturbed or damaged by tourists. Like the Giant Sequoia, you can fit about 10 coast redwood seeds on the face of a dime.

Maelstroms

Maelstroms, hugely powerful whirlpools, have a long history in fiction as being terrible dangers to sailors. In real life there have never been any cases of large ships being sunk by maelstroms. The swirling masses of water in maelstroms, usually driven by unusually strong tides, are impressive. The Corryvreckan on the west coast of Scotland can be heard miles away as huge waves up to fifteen feet high crash back into the sea. Huge whirlpools have always attracted adventurous souls and the Corryvreckan was first swum by George Orwell’s one-legged brother-in-law. Maelstroms can be found world wide and chartering boats to them has become a popular tourist activity.

Aurora

In my opinion there is no greater natural spectacle than the Aurorae. I first saw them while standing on a frozen lake in the north of Finland. We had left our little fire hut on the shore because a very faint green glow could be seen over the treetops. As we watched, a wall of green swept silently across the sky, flecked with pink lines. When you see a picture of the aurorae you do not get the sense of motion or scale. The aurorae occur when particles, ejected on the solar wind, are channeled by the Earth’s electromagnetic field into the atmosphere. As the particles strike the atmosphere they ionize atoms which then release light. Some people report hearing a crackling sound when aurorae are particularly intense, but this has never been confirmed.

Mont Saint-Michel

Le Mont-Saint-Michel, perched on its tidal island, is a monastic fortress. Parts of the rampart on the south-west and south sides date from the 11th century, as do some western building walls and areas of the church; some buildings below the south ramparts have 12th-century work. Henry, youngest son of William the Conqueror, fled here after his father's death in 1087 to escape his brothers.

Perched on a rocky islet in the midst of vast sandbanks exposed to powerful tides between Normandy and Brittany stand the 'Wonder of the West', a Gothic-style Benedictine abbey dedicated to the archangel St Michael, and the village that grew up in the shadow of its great walls. Built between the 11th and 16th centuries, the abbey is a technical and artistic tour de force, having had to adapt to the problems posed by this unique natural site.

It was at the request of the Archangel Michel « chief of the celestial militia » that Aubert, Bishop of Avranches built and consecrated a small church on the 16th October 709. In 966 a community of Benedictines settled on the rock at the request of the Duke of Normandy and the pre-Romanesque church was built before the year one thousand.

In the 11th century, the Romanesque abbey church was founded over a set of crypts where the rock comes to an apex, and the first monastery buildings were built up against its north wall.

In the 12th century, the Romanesque monastery buildings were extended to the west and south.

In the 13th century, a donation by the king of France, Philip Augustus, in the wake of his conquest of Normandy, enabled a start to be made on the Gothic section of the "Merveille ": two three-storey buildings, crowned by the cloister and the refectory.

History of the Mont Saint-Michel : the abbey churchIn the 14th century, the Hundred Years War made it necessary to protect the abbey behind a set of military constructions, enabling it to hold out against a siege lasting 30 years.

In the 15th century, the Romanesque chancel of the abbey church, broken down in 1421 was replaced by the Gothic Flamboyant chancel.

With Rome and Saint Jacques de Compostelle, this great spiritual and intellectual centre, was one of the most important places of pilgrimage for the Medieval occident. For nearly one thousand years men, women and children went there by roads called « paths to paradise » hoping for the assurance of eternity, given by the Archangel of judgement « Peseur des ames ».

The Abbey was turned into a prison during the days of the French Revolution and Empire, and needed to be restored before the end of the 19th century.

With the celebration of the monastic's 1000th anniversary, in the year 1966 a religious community moved back to what used to be the abbatial dwellings, perpuating prayer and welcome the original vocation of this place. Friars and sisters from "Les Fraternités Monastiques de Jerusalem" have been ensuring a spiritual presence since the year 2001.

At the same time as the abbey was developing a village grew up from the Middle Age. It flourished on the south-east side of the rock surrounded by walls dated for the most part from the Hundred Years war. This village has always a commercial vocation.

UNESCO has classed the Mont Saint-Michel as a world heritage in 1979 and this mecca of tourism welcomes more than three million visitors a year.

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The rain forest is a natural phenomenon

In the late 1990s ranchers stripped the forest in the Brazilian state of Acre, across the border from the Beni—only to find earthworks from a previously unknown society. This aerial photo by the archaeologist Martti Pärssinen, which dates from 2003, was the first to be widely disseminated; a Brazilian researcher's gallery of images, which dates from the year before, can be found here.

In 2003, writer Charles C. Mann wrote an article in The Atlantic (later to be turned into a book) that posited a startling idea — that the Amazon rain forest, far from being a natural phenomenon, was a purposefully engineered tree farm planted by humans thousands of years ago. Rogue archaeologists Clark Erickson and William Balée believe the North and South American continents were populated by large and advanced civilizations that pulled off enormous feats of geoengineering, and the rain forest is a result of hundreds of years of fruit and nut tree cultivation by farmers. If we planted it once, that would mean we could plant it again.

Erickson and Balée belong to a cohort of scholars that in recent years has radically challenged conventional notions of what the Western Hemisphere was like before Columbus. When I went to high school, in the 1970s, I was taught that Indians came to the Americas across the Bering Strait about thirteen thousand years ago, that they lived for the most part in small, isolated groups, and that they had so little impact on their environment that even after millennia of habitation the continents remained mostly wilderness. Schools still impart the same ideas today. One way to summarize the views of people like Erickson and Balée would be to say that they regard this picture of Indian life as wrong in almost every aspect. Indians were here far longer than previously thought, these researchers believe, and in much greater numbers. And they were so successful at imposing their will on the landscape that in 1492 Columbus set foot in a hemisphere thoroughly marked by humankind.

Given the charged relations between white societies and native peoples, inquiry into Indian culture and history is inevitably contentious. But the recent scholarship is especially controversial. To begin with, some researchers—many but not all from an older generation—deride the newtheories as fantasies arising from an almost willful misinterpretation of data and a perverse kind of political correctness. “I have seen no evidence that large numbers of people ever lived in the Beni,” Betty J. Meggers, of the Smithsonian Institution, told me. “Claiming otherwise is just wishful thinking.” Indeed, two Smithsonian-backed archaeologists from Argentina have argued that many of the larger mounds are natural floodplain deposits; a “small initial population” could have built the remaining causeways and raised fields in as little as a decade. Similar criticisms apply to many of the new scholarly claims about Indians, according to Dean R. Snow, an anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University. The problem is that “you can make the meager evidence from the ethnohistorical record tell you anything you want,” he says. “It’s really easy to kid yourself.” And some have charged that the claims advance the political agenda of thosewho seek to discredit European culture, because the high numbers seem to inflate the scale of native loss.

Disputes also arise because the new theories have implications for today’s ecological battles. Much of the environmental movement is animated, consciously or not, by what geographer William Denevan calls “the pristine myth”—the belief that the Americas in 1491 were an almost untouched, even Edenic land, “untrammeled by man,” in the words of the Wilderness Act of 1964, a U.S. law that is one of the founding documents of the global environmental movement. To green activists, as the University of Wisconsin historian William Cronon has written, restoring this long-ago, putatively natural state is a task that society is morally bound to undertake. Yet if the new view is correct and the work of humankind was pervasive, where does that leave efforts to restore nature?

The Beni is a case in point. In addition to building roads, causeways, canals, dikes, reservoirs, mounds, raised agricultural fields, and possibly ball courts, Erickson has argued, the Indians who lived there before Columbus trapped fish in the seasonally flooded grassland. The trapping was not a matter of a few isolated natives with nets, but a society-wide effort in which hundreds or thousands of people fashioned dense, zigzagging networks of earthen fish weirs (fish-corralling fences) among the causeways. Much of the savanna is natural, the result of seasonal flooding. But the Indians maintained and expanded the grasslands by regularly setting huge areas on fire. Over the centuries the burning created an intricate ecosystem of fire-adapted plant species dependent on indigenous pyrophilia. The Beni’s current inhabitants still burn, although now it is mostly to maintain the savanna for cattle. When we flew over the region, the dry season had just begun, but mile-long lines of flame were already on the march. Smoke rose into the sky in great, juddering pillars. In the charred areas behind the fires were the blackened spikes of trees, many of them of species that activists fight to save in other parts of Amazonia.

The future of the Beni is uncertain, especially its most thinly settled region, near the border with Brazil. Some outsiders want to develop the area for ranches, as has been done with many U.S. grasslands. Others want to keep this sparsely populated region as close to wilderness as possible. Local Indian groups regard this latter proposal with suspicion. If the Beni becomes a reserve for the “natural,” they ask, what international organization would let them continue setting the plains afire? Could any outside group endorse large-scale burning in Amazonia? Instead, Indians propose placing control of the land into their hands. Activists, in turn, regard that idea without enthusiasm—some indigenous groups in the U.S. Southwest have promoted the use of their reservations as repositories for nuclear waste. And, of course, there is all that burning.

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Lilypads

The planet is warming, glaciers are melting and sea levels are rising, which means that people living in low-lying areas will be displaced over the next century. That’s why architect Vincent Callebaut designed Lilypads, self-sufficient floating cities that would each accommodate up to 50,000 people. Inspired by the shape of Victoria water lilies, these eco-cities would each be made of polyester fibers and feature three mountains and marinas — dedicated to work, shopping and entertainment. Aquaculture farms and suspended gardens would be located below the water line, and the cities would run on renewable energy.

Callebaut plans for his Lilypad concept to become a reality in 2100, but this is sure to be an expensive piece of real estate so one may wonder how displaced climate change refugees will afford to live on these state-of-the-art floating cities.

From mythological approaches to independent geological expertise

In former times, things used to be very different, and for most of human history the observation of geological phenomena and the acquisition of geological expertise was intimately connected with religious ideas. Earthquakes and volcanoes, towering mountains and conspicuous rock formations, fossils and ore veins were regarded either as due to direct divine action and intervention or as manifestations of the divine itself (Mazadiego et al.; Barbaro). It was God (or Gods), who had created the Earth as ‘home’ for humans, providing the necessary resources (animals and plants, but also water, rocks and metals), or who might be suspected to exert punishment on sinners by means of natural disasters (Kölbl-Ebert 2005; Udias on earthquakes). Although accepting flint and pyrite in prehistoric time, or later copper and other ores, to be gifts of divine providence (Norris) is some sort of explanation for their existence, that assumption was clearly not sufficient to enable adequate strategies for the search for new deposits to be devised. Observational skills and arrangement of observations according to rules and guidelines (involving the formulation of theories) were required, and eventually such knowledge was accumulated and became part of the craft knowledge of miners. 

Also, from an intellectual point of view, invoking divine action as a general and all-fitting explanation of phenomena was unsatisfying for an intellectual, and even for the devout theist who would like to know how God ‘did it’. After all, curiosity is a decidedly human trait. For this more theoretical part of ‘geological expertise’, the late Medieval and Renaissance intellectual world turned to the remnants of much older knowledge, that of the antiquity, which apparently had been a golden, better and much more knowledgeable age, judging from the ruins that were still around. Why not trust the explanatory power and authority of ancient texts (including the Bible) that had been produced by these obviously advanced civilizations? 

This intimate link between early geo-theory and Christian philosophy proved to be very fruitful for some time, because the Christian tradition of visualizing the history of humans on Earth from the creation, via global revolutions such as the biblical Flood up to historical times (Rudwick 1992; Magruder) and the Judaeo-Christian sense of a finite Earth history (Rudwick; see also Rudwick 2005) prepared the ground for accepting the Earth’s different strata as testimony to the development of our globe through time. It was this religious, theological framework from which the early geology started to evolve, and that provided the tools used in popularization of the new science of the seventeenth century. It is understandable why, for example, geological phenomena such as erratic blocks and other debris covering much of Europe were initially seen as a consequence of events mentioned in the Bible and other ancient texts. However, with increasing observations there was a growing mismatch between what was expected according to ancient authorities (Godard; Luzzini) and the actual data. This was not necessarily a problem, since influential theologians, such as Augustine of Hippo (AD 354– 430) or the medieval theological scholar Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), knew that biblical texts needed to be interpreted and that adopting a naive literal reading might do more harm than good to the Christian faith:

In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. The first is, to hold to the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false,2 lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing (Aquinas 1273, 1st part, question 68).

Subsequently, attempts to reconcile the growing timescale of geology with biblical chronology became widespread in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The most popular, apart from more metaphorical interpretations of the biblical creation stories, were possibly the ‘gap theory’ (or ‘chaos/ restitution theory’3), claiming an indefinitely long time span between Genesis 1: 1–2 or 2–3 and the ‘day–age theory’ (or concordance theory), which interpreted the days of biblical creation as seven long eras, which might be equated with different geological formations (see Roberts, on Sedgwick).

Genetic Evidence of Geographical Groups among Neanderthals

The Neanderthals are a well-distinguished Middle Pleistocene population which inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East. Since the 1950s paleoanthropological studies have suggested variability in this group. Different sub-groups have been identified in western Europe, in southern Europe and in the Middle East. On the other hand, since 1997, research has been published in paleogenetics, carried out on 15 mtDNA sequences from 12 Neanderthals. In this paper we used a new methodology derived from different bioinformatic models based on data from genetics, demography and paleoanthropology. The adequacy of each model was measured by comparisons between simulated results (obtained by BayesianSSC software) and those estimated from nucleotide sequences (obtained by DNAsp4 software). The conclusions of this study are consistent with existing paleoanthropological research and show that Neanderthals can be divided into at least three groups: one in western Europe, a second in the Southern area and a third in western Asia. Moreover, it seems from our results that the size of the Neanderthal population was not constant and that some migration occurred among the demes.

The Mayans built ball courts so they could play games

The Mesoamerican ballgame was a sport with ritual associations played for over 3000 years by the pre-Columbian peoples of Mesoamerica. The sport had different versions in different places during the millennia, and a modern version of the game, ulama, is still played in a few places by the local indigenous population. Ballcourts were public spaces used for a variety of elite cultural events and ritual activities like musical performances and festivals, and of course, the ballgame. Enclosed on two sides by stepped ramps that led to ceremonial platforms or small temples, the ball court itself was of a capital “I” shape and could be found in all but the smallest of Maya cities. In Classic Maya, the ballgame was called pitz, and the action of play was ti pitziil. The game was played with a ball roughly the size of a volleyball but made from rubber and heavier. Decapitation is particularly associated with the ballgame – severed heads are featured in much Late Classic ballgame art. There has even been speculation that the heads and skulls were used as balls.

The Mayans had many excellent medical practices

Health and medicine among the ancient Maya was a complex blend of mind, body, religion, ritual, and science. Important to all, medicine was practiced only by a select few who were given an excellent education. These men, called shamans, act as a medium between the physical world and spirit world. They practice sorcery for the purpose of healing, foresight, and control over natural events. Since medicine was so closely related to religion and sorcery, it was essential that Maya shamans had vast medical knowledge and skill. It is known that the Maya sutured wounds with human hair, reduced fractures, and were even skilled dental surgeons, making prostheses from jade and turquoise and filling teeth with iron pyrite.

The Mayan peoples regularly used hallucinogenic drugs (taken from the natural world) in their religious rituals, but they also used them in day to day life as painkillers. Flora such as peyote, the morning glory, certain mushrooms, tobacco, and plants used to make alcoholic substances, were commonly used. In addition, as depicted in Maya pottery and carvings, ritual enemas were used for a more rapid absorption and effect of the substance.

Golubac

Golubac Fortress is a medieval fortified town that is located 4 kilometers downstream of the modern-day village of Golubac, Serbia. The compound was built in the 14th century to protect an important stretch of the Danube River. It sits at the head of the Iron Gate gorge and was used to control river traffic. In medieval times, a strong chain was placed across the river that connected to a large rock named Babakaj. If a ship wanted to pass, they needed to pay a tax.

Golubac Fortress was the last military outpost located on the Danube River and the final line of defense between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. For this reason, the fort witnessed dozens of large scale military conflicts, both cold steel and firearm based. The fortification was a key advantage in the world of conquest and warfare. It regularly shifted hands between the Turks, Hungarians, Serbs, and Austrians until 1867, when it was turned over to the Serbian Knez, Mihailo Obrenović III.
Golubac Fortress is split into three compounds and shows signs of heavy reinforcements over the centuries. It has ten towers, two portcullises, and a collection of military outposts. Each tower had a specific purpose, including a citadel, chapel, dungeon, and weapon storage facilities. The fortress used a large moat, which trapped water from the Danube and made it difficult to reach the land. From 1964-72, a dam was built inside the Iron Gate gorge which elevated the river’s water and flooded sections of the fort. Today, Golubac Fortress has become a popular tourist destination. It is one of the most important sightseeing points on Danube boat tours.

Golubac consists of three main compounds guarded by 10 towers and 2 portcullises, all connected by fortress walls 2–3 meters thick. In front of the fortress, the forward wall (I) doubled as the outer wall of the moat, which connected to the Danube and was likely filled with water. A settlement for common people was situated in front of the wall.

As is the case with many fortresses, Golubac's structure was modified over time. For years, there were only five towers. Later, four more were added. The towers were all built as squares, a sign of the fortress' age, showing that battles were still fought with cold steel. Once firearms came into use, the Turks fortified the western towers with cannon ports and polygonal or cylindrical reinforcements up to two meters thick. After the Hungarian raid in 1481, they added the final tower, complete with cannon embrasures and galleries.

Topographical sketch of Golubac Fortress prior to 1972 (symbols referenced in the text)
Upper compound
The upper compound (A) is the oldest part of the fortress. It includes the citadel (tower 1) and the Serbian Orthodox chapel (tower 4). Although it remains uncertain, the chapel has led many to believe that this section was built by a Serbian noble.

Later, during either Serbian or Hungarian rule, the fortress was expanded to include the rear and forward compounds.

Rear compound
The rear compound (D) is separated from the upper compound by both a wall connecting towers 2 and 4, and a steep rock 3–4 meters high. Next to tower 5 is a building (VII) which was probably used as a military barracks and for ammunition storage.

Forward compound
The forward compound was split into lower (C) and upper (B) parts by a wall linking towers 4 and 7. The entrance (II) is in the lower part, guarded by towers 8 and 9. Tower 8 has, in turn, been fortified with a cannon port. Opposing the entrance was a second portcullis that led to the rear compound. Along the path was a ditch 0.5 meters wide and 0.75 meters deep which then became a steep decline. At the outer end of the lower part, and connected to the 9th tower with a low wall, is tower 10, which the Turks added to act as a lower artillery tower. It controlled passage along the Danube and guarded the entrance to the harbor, which was probably situated between towers 5 and 10. There are remains connected to tower 8 which probably formed a larger whole with it, but the lower part did not otherwise contain buildings.

In the wall that separated the upper and lower parts was a gate that led to the upper part. The upper part did not have buildings, but there remains a pathway to the stairs up to gate IV, which is 2 meters off the ground, right next to tower 3.

Towers
The first nine towers are 20–25 meters high. In all ten towers, the floors and stairs inside were made of wood, while external stairs were made of stone. Half of the towers (1, 2, 4, 5, 10) have all four sides and are completely made of stone, while the other half (3, 6, 7, 8, 9) lack the side facing the interior of the fort.

Tower 1, nicknamed "Hat Tower" (Šešir-kula), is one of the oldest towers, and doubles as citadel and dungeon tower. It has an eight-sided base with a circular spire rising from it and a square interior. The next tower to the west, tower 2, is completely circular in shape. The third tower has a square base, with the open side facing the dungeon tower to the north. On the top floor is a terrace that overlooks the Danube and the entrance to the Iron Gate gorge. Down the slope from tower 3 is tower 4, which also has a square base. The ground floor has a Serbian Orthodox chapel that was built into the tower, rather than being added later. The last tower along this wall, tower 5, is the only tower to remain completely square.

The top tower along the front wall of the forward compound, tower 6, has a square base which was reinforced with a six-sided foundation. Working west, the square base of tower 7 was reinforced with a circular foundation. Tower 8, on the upper side of the front portcullis, has an irregular, but generally square, base. It is also the shortest of the first nine towers. Guarding the other side is tower 9, which has a square base reinforced by an eight-sided foundation.

The last tower is the cannon tower. It has only one floor and is the shortest of all ten towers. It was built with an eight-sided base and cannon ports to help control traffic on the Danube. Tower 10 is almost identical to the three artillery towers added to Smederevo fortress.