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National Geographic
National Geographic
2022
NOTRE DAME
REBUILDING AN ICON
T R AV E L B E YO N D YO U R
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N ATG E O E X P E D I T I O N S .C O M / W I L D L I F E | 1 - 8 8 8 -3 51 -3 274
FURTHER F E B R UA RY 2 0 2 2
C O N T E N T S On the Cover
During preparation for
a faithful restoration of
Notre Dame Cathedral in
Paris, white canopies pro-
tect gaping wounds left by
the devastating 2019 fire.
TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE
17
P R O O F E X P L O R E
On the Trail
of Julius Caesar
We might imagine
meeting the Roman
emperor face-to-face—
but how do we know
what he actually
24
8
looked like?
BY M A RY B E A R D
ADVENTURE
BREAKTHROUGHS
Water Garden
Scat Scan Discovery The Mekong River is
Scientists could iden- home to rafts of water
tify beetle fossils as a lilies—and, increasingly,
new species because plastic pollution. The
they were preserved National Geographic
so well in 230-million- Society is helping fund
year-old … feces. research on the issue.
BY H I C K S WO GA N
BY R AC H E L N G ; P H OTO -
G R A P H BY K H Á N H P H A N
A Family’s Valor
THROUGH THE LENS
With the timeless
look of tintypes to The Conflict Zone
bind the past and Ugandan villagers’
present, a photogra- clashes with chimps
pher pays tribute to raise tricky questions
the armed forces about conservation
ALSO
members in his family. and coexistence.
P H OTO G R A P H S BY A Shrew’s Brain STO RY A N D P H OTO G R A P H S
R A S H O D TAY LO R Mulch From Coffee? BY RO N A N D O N OVA N
F E B R U A R Y | CONTENTS
HISTORIC
MONUMENTS
Deciding What
to Preserve—and How
BY SUSAN GOLDBERG
C U LT U R A L H E R I TA G Esite s are a
nonrenewable resource. When they
disappear, they’re gone forever, a loss
akin to the extinction of species.
Today architectural and archaeologi-
cal heritage sites are being destroyed or
imperiled at an alarming rate. They’re
threatened by rising seas (Venice),
pollution (the Taj Mahal), overtourism
(Angkor Wat), encroaching develop-
ment (the Pyramids at Giza), conflict
(Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra) …
And by accidents.
In this issue, we explore the hercu-
lean efforts to rebuild the roof and spire
of Notre Dame Cathedral, part of the city to rubble. As Dresden, then in East Since its principal con-
Banks of the Seine UNESCO World Heri- Germany, slowly rebuilt after the war, struction from 1163 to 1350,
Notre Dame Cathedral
tage site in Paris. Before it was wracked the Frauenkirche remained in ruins. repeatedly has been dam-
by fire in spring 2019, the landmark But after German reunification, the aged and repaired, includ-
drew some 12 million visitors a year. church was reconstructed using many ing desecration during
the French Revolution and
We’ll take you behind the scenes of the of its original stones, as a statement of major restoration in the
rebuilding, through the work of pho- peace and harmony. mid-1800s. On April 15, 2019,
tographer Tomas van Houtryve, writer Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial the landmark’s roof caught
fire (above). After 15 hours
Robert Kunzig, and artist Fernando Church, better known as the Gedächt-
ablaze, the cathedral’s spire
Baptista. You’ll see debris cleared, chap- niskirche, also fell to bombing but met had collapsed, most of its
els restored, statuary saved. a different fate. Its spire has been left a roof was destroyed, and its
You’ll also confront thorny ques- ruin on purpose, to be what Germans upper walls were severely
damaged. Work on the
tions about cultural heritage sites. As call a mahnmal—a “warning monu- site began quickly; even
Kunzig writes, “What part of the past ment” against war and destruction. the COVID-19 pandemic
is worth preserving and transmitting Like the Frauenkirche, Notre Dame caused only a two-month
delay. Architects have said
to posterity? What duty do we owe is being rebuilt as close as possible to the project is on track to be
the creations of our ancestors, what how it was before, including using the completed in 2024.
strength and stability do we draw original, toxic metal—lead—for the
from their presence—and when, on roof. That choice was controversial,
the contrary, do they become a lead as future choices are bound to be in
weight, preventing us from projecting the debate about how to restore and
ourselves into the future?” maintain historic buildings.
Humankind has answered that We at National Geographic don’t
query differently in different places. claim to have the “right” answers on
In Dresden, Germany, the Frauen- preservation; there may not even be
kirche was an 18th-century baroque right answers. What we will do is con-
church whose bell-shaped dome was tinue to monitor the care of cultural
a landmark. In February 1945, one of heritage sites, as a matter of significance
the most destructive Allied bombing to humanity’s past, present, and future.
attacks of World War II killed an esti- Thank you for reading National
mated 25,000 people and reduced the Geographic. j
weight
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C O P Y R I G H T 2 0 2 2 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C S O C I E T Y / M I C H A E L N I C H O L S / N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C C R E AT I V E
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Photographer Rashod
Taylor’s cousin Valerie
Lewis—at right, with
her parents, Ernest and
Modester—is one of
Taylor’s relatives who’ve
served in the U.S. military
dating to World War II.
8 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
P R O O F
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
VO L . 2 41 N O. 2
A FAMILY’S
VALOR
LO O K I N G PHOTOGRAPHS BY
AT T H E R A S H O D TAY L O R
E A RT H
F RO M Evocative tintype images create
E V E RY a visual link between present and
POSSIBLE past in a tribute to one family’s
ANGLE history in the U.S. armed forces.
F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 2 9
P R O O F
Ernest Lewis (top left) saw two daughters deploy with the Army: Valerie (bottom left) to Afghanistan and Iraq, Vanessa Lewis
Williams (top right) to Iraq and Qatar. Here his daughter Melissa’s children, Ania and Eric Jr. (bottom right), wear military
caps belonging to their father, Eric Kelsey, a Navy combat veteran.
10 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
Vanessa is now maintenance supervisor in the 848th Engineer Company (Sapper), a Georgia Army National Guard unit
located in Douglasville. She says it’s “true about being a female in the military facing discrimination and favoritism for your
sex and color,” but she’s proud to be a servicewoman.
F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 2 11
P R O O F
Taylor’s great-uncle
Lecky Taylor served in
the Army during World
War II and is buried at
the Marietta National
Cemetery in Georgia.
12 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 2 13
P R O O F
THE BACKSTORY
A P H O T O G R A P H E R T R A I N S H I S L E N S O N F A M I LY T O I L L U S T R AT E
T H E C O M P L E X H I S TO RY O F B L AC K M I L I TA RY S E RV I C E .
My America project
A S PA R T O F H I S the 1770s, many of them dealt—and
highlighting Black people’s experiences, still deal—with unequal treatment.
photographer Rashod Taylor focused Taylor’s relatives have benefited from
on a subject that had influenced his life: opportunities that the military offers.
Black military service. Though Taylor At the same time, they’ve faced hostil-
himself never joined the armed forces, ity and discrimination while on active
members of his family did. And he lis- duty and as citizens.
tened intently to their stories. Taylor chose tintype photography,
“I really found this new apprecia- using metal plates in a process that
tion for what kind of sacrifices they’ve was popular from the mid-1800s to
made,” Taylor says. “Not only in the the early 1900s, as a way to bridge the
military in general but just being Black gap between former and current ser-
in the military and still having to go vice members. Despite being decades
through those extra layers of life liv- apart, their similar experiences unite
ing as a person of color in the United them. The images reflect a compli-
States.” Although Black Americans cated legacy, one of disparity, pride,
have fought for their country since and endurance. —T U C K E R C . TO O L E
Valerie (top) feels a special bond with her great-uncle Lecky. Both were Army medics.
IN THIS SECTION
I L L U M I N AT I N G T H E M Y S T E R I E S — A N D W O N D E R S — A L L A R O U N D U S E V E R Y D AY
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C VO L . 2 41 N O. 2
On the Trail of
Julius Caesar
W E ’ D L OV E T O M E E T T H I S M O ST FAM O U S ROM A N FAC E - T O -FAC E ,
B U T H O W D O W E K N O W W H AT H E A C T U A L LY L O O K E D L I K E ?
I
B Y M A RY B E A R D
F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 2 17
E X P L O R E | THE BIG IDEA
18 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
WOVEN PORTRAIT: DAVID SAMUEL STERN. PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK 19
E X P L O R E | THE BIG IDEA
But two pieces in particular have been the stars dictator, firmly identified it as a portrait of Julius
of the Caesar show, and through much of the 19th Caesar, taken from life. So accurate was it, he claimed,
and 20th centuries they held sway as the real face of that the strange shape of the head, which you might
Julius Caesar. The first,4 bought in 1818 from a British easily put down to an incompetent sculptor, was in
collector who had picked it up in Italy, is in the British fact the reflection of congenital deformations of
Museum. It entered as an unknown Roman, but by Caesar’s skull (clinocephaly and plagiocephaly, to
the 1840s it was confidently identified as Julius Cae- use the technical terms). Never mind that there was
sar himself and given pride of place in the museum something circular here (there is no evidence for
display—thanks to its wrinkly neck, Adam’s apple, Caesar’s skull conditions apart from this sculpture);
and hollowed cheeks that seemed a close match for the Bonaparte portrait has not only prompted the
the silver coins. same kind of purple prose as the British Museum
For decades this face decorated the cover of almost head, it has given us the illusion that we are doing
every book on Caesar, and it was lauded in rapturous more than looking the man in the eye—we are taking
prose by Caesar’s modern fans. “This bust represents,” his medical notes.
wrote one, “the strongest personality that has ever But this head too is falling. That is not so much
lived ... In the profile it is impossible to detect a flaw.” because it is thought to be a fake, or not to be Caesar
John Buchan—scholar, diplomat, and author of The at all, but because beyond all the hype it is in fact a
Thirty-Nine Steps—judged it “the noblest presentment rather rough-and-ready piece. Our best guess now is
of the human countenance known to me.” that it might be a later Roman copy of some contem-
This bust was an early modern celebrity, but its porary head of Caesar, but certainly not a product of
authenticity was eventually toppled. After decades of careful observation (and the odd shape of the skull
increasing doubts, in the early 1960s it was officially is probably just that, an odd shape).
declared a fake; there were traces of abrasion and Enter, just in time, the head from the Rhône. The
artificial staining designed to make it look centuries city of Arles had political connections with Caesar (he
older than it really was. It certainly was meant to be settled some of his veteran troops there). The neck
Julius Caesar, copying the head on those coins (no of the sculpture has the required wrinkles, and the
unknown Roman here), but it was made in the late Adam’s apple is prominent enough (though it hardly
18th century. It has been relegated to a traveling has the gaunt aspect of the coins). It will be the face
exhibit on ancient Rome and occasionally emerges of Caesar for a few decades and will decorate any
in exhibitions of notorious fakes. number of glossy book jackets. Indeed, it may be
There was, however, another head of Caesar wait- him. But my guess is that sooner or later, doubts will
ing in the wings to take its place in the limelight. It grow, and a quite different head will be rediscovered
had been excavated near Rome by Lucien Bonaparte, to take its place.
Napoleon’s younger brother, who was a keen archae- The true image of Julius Caesar is always just out-
ologist. But when he hit hard times, it was sold and side our grasp. Each generation finds a new Caesar
taken to its new owner’s estate outside Turin, where for themselves. j
it remained anonymously (“unknown old man”) for a Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge.
hundred years. In the 1930s an Italian archaeologist, She is the author of many books about ancient Rome, including
perhaps playing to Mussolini’s enthusiasm for the the best-selling SPQR. Her most recent book is Twelve Caesars.
FACE OF AN EMPEROR?
Rhône Caesar Silver Coin Caesar 'Green Caesar' British Museum Caesar
Rescued from the Rhône Before Caesar’s death in Some archaeologists spec- Once given pride of place
River, this celebrated bust 44 B.C., a series of silver ulated that this green stone at the museum, this likeness
(it’s appeared on a French coins was minted, the only head, originally from Egypt, was declared a fake in the
postage stamp) resides at firm surviving evidence of was commissioned by 1960s and is now relegated
an Arles museum. what he looked like. Cleopatra, Caesar’s lover. to a traveling exhibit.
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E X P L O R E | BREAKTHROUGHS
REFORESTATION
New forests
benefit from
coffee’s jolt
Just like us, forests
move a bit faster
when there’s cof-
fee on hand. An
experiment in a
Costa Rican rain-
forest covered
deforested land
with pulp that’s a
by-product of the
coffeemaking pro-
cess, to see how
it affected forest
regrowth. After
two years, the
pulp-covered
PALEONTOLOGY
forest plots were
doing much better
SCAT SCAN DISCOVERY than untreated
ones—giving coffee
FOUND IN TRIASSIC FECES: A NEW BEETLE SPECIES producers a new,
come in exquisite containers—gilded
S O M E V E RY O L D O B J E C T S sustainable alter-
sarcophagi, carved chests—and others, in less appealing packages. native to dumping
The newfound beetle Triamyxa coprolithica is among the latter. A their waste.
team of scientists reported discovering the species in a coprolite, —SARAH GIBBENS
aka fossilized feces. The team used synchrotron microtomography,
a powerful x-ray technique, to scan an ancient dropping that the
scientists had unearthed in Poland. Inside the 230-million-year-old
scat, nickel size in diameter, were partial and whole specimens of
the tiny beetle (above). Study lead author Martin Qvarnström says
that to see 3D scans of the bugs, “it’s like they’re becoming alive in
front of you.” With even some of the delicate legs and antennae
intact, the remains were preserved well enough to identify the bee-
tles as a previously unknown, now extinct species—the first time an
insect species has been described from a coprolite. The researchers
theorized that the dung came from Silesaurus opolensis—a dino-
saur relative up to eight feet long—and hope their discovery will
encourage more stool sampling by paleontologists. — H W
PHOTOS: MARTIN QVARNSTRÖM (BEETLES); JOEL SARTORE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK (SHREW);
EDWIN REMSBERG, VW PICS/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES (TREES)
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E X P L O R E | ADVENTURE
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E X P L O R E | PLANET POSSIBLE
INNOVATOR
ISAIAH NENGO
BY HICKS WOGAN PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK THIESSEN
The
Conflict
Zone
WHEN HUMANS AND CHIMPS
CLASH IN A UGANDAN
VILLAGE, A PHOTOGRAPHER
S E E S F E A R , G R I E F —A N D
U LT I M AT E LY A C C E P TA N C E .
30 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
Wild chimpanzees
whose natural
habitat has shrunk
approach a home
in Kyamajaka.
habituated chimp, the chimp will often throw one basis. These chimps are in competition with their
back. Unless you are larger or outnumber them, human neighbors. The native forests that supported
chimps that have been chased may chase you. And the chimps have been cleared for farming, so they
provided the opportunity, chimps will hunt for meat. now feed primarily on human-grown crops. They go
on evening food raids near homes before returning
in western Uganda as
S I X Y E A R S A F T E R I ’ D WO R K E D to the sliver of forest where perhaps 20 mature trees
a field biologist, I returned as a wildlife and conser- are their refuge from the human world.
vation photographer. My assignment for National The forays don’t stop there. The house where I took
Geographic, with writer David Quammen, was to tell this picture belonged to the Semata family—farmer
the story of human-chimpanzee conflict. Omuhereza, his wife, Ntegeka, and their four young
Though the village of Kyamajaka isn’t far from the children. To live there was to feel constantly at risk
Kibale research project, the chimps around Kyama- of attack by chimps, Ntegeka told me. She described
jaka are habituated to humans in a different way. how the animals would show up in their front yard
They are wary of the people they encounter on a daily and peer into their windows, scaring the family.
The unthinkable occurred on July 20, 2014. As
The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminat- Ntegeka worked in the garden, she kept the chil-
ing and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded
dren with her. But in an instant when her back was
Explorer Ronan Donovan’s work since 2014. A Montana-based
wildlife photographer, Donovan is also a filmmaker, an artist, turned, a large chimp grabbed her toddler son,
and a mountaineer. Mujuni, and ran. Villagers who gave chase found
F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 2 31
E X P L O R E | THROUGH THE LENS
the two-year-old’s eviscerated body stashed under a on two legs grabbed a fistful of vegetation and shook
nearby bush. He died en route to a regional hospital. it while striding toward the house. As he picked
Months became years, and the chimp raids contin- up speed, he reached the house at a run, dropped
ued. Finally, the Sematas broke. Though the house the branches, leaped into the air, and pounded the
was their prized possession, in August 2017 they side of the house with his heels in quick succession.
abandoned it. I visited shortly after they moved into Bah-boom! The entire house shook.
temporary lodgings—cramped, no garden, but also The group’s biggest male, the one I presumed to
no aggressive wild apes. be the alpha, stood and swung his arms, warming up
The Sematas’ losses embodied the worst of the for his show of prowess. He broke into a run, picked
human-chimp conflict that National Geographic up a softball-size rock along the way, and hurled it.
sent Quammen and me to document. My images Skipping once off the ground, the rock slammed
would help tell that story. But I also hoped they might thunderously into the house. My heart raced as I
honor the human tragedies and spur change, such as photographed this behavior. I knew the chimps
moving the chimps, to end this conflict. were only shadowboxing their reflections,
Omuhereza and Ntegeka gave me their but it did feel like an attack. Eventually, as
empty home’s key and permission to take UGANDA the daylight faded, the chimps returned
photos there. To get in, I had to push my Kyamajaka to their tiny forest and I was able to leave
shoulder against the door, which hadn’t Kampala the house.
been opened in months. Several win- Lake I was eager to share the images with my
dowpanes were broken—by the chimps, Victoria National Geographic colleagues, and those
Ntegeka had said. As I stood in the dark officials who preach peaceful coexistence,
and dusty room, I thought of Mujuni’s but I worried about showing the images to
grisly fate and wondered whether his parents had the Sematas, for fear of stirring up their grief and pain.
relived it every time they’d seen chimp faces at On my last visit with them, in November 2017,
the windows. Ntegeka asked if I had photos of the chimps. Reluc-
Officials of local governments and international tantly I presented the image below, on my phone. She
NGOs have urged the farmers here to learn to live began to laugh—and laugh—finally pausing to say,
alongside chimpanzees—but do they know what “My God, they look like humans.” I pulled up more
that’s like? I wanted to capture some sense of how the photos. “I know all of them, aside from the babies.
Sematas felt inside their home during chimp visits. Look at that baby; it’s light-skinned,” she said, chuck-
ling. Then the family proudly showed me their new
I WA L K E D F RO M O N E window to the next, waiting for plot of land and the large pile of bricks that would
chimps to arrive. I saw a single chimp sitting quietly become their new home. They were rebuilding. And
at the edge of the yard. Soon more came, also quietly. with Ntegeka’s laughter, I felt they had moved on in
Then the mood changed. A teenage male standing more ways than one. j
Gathering outside the family’s abandoned house, the chimpanzees see their reflections in the windows as a challenge.
NGM MAPS
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C F E B R UA RY 2 0 2 2
F EAT U R E S
BY ROBERT KUNZIG
PHOTOGRAPHS BY TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE
GRAPHICS BY FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA
37
First came
the rescue.
Now, the
restoration.
It took more than two
years after the fire just
to remove the burnt
timbers and other
debris and to shore
up the vaults and
buttresses against a
catastrophic collapse.
Now scaffolding fills
the cathedral, and the
restoration is finally
beginning. The first
step: cleaning all
surfaces of dust and
toxic residue from
the lead roof, which
melted in the fire.
Inside, most
of what’s holy
or beautiful
is unscathed.
Burning roof timbers,
large blocks of lime-
stone, and 800-plus
tons of oak and lead
from the spire all
crashed into Notre
Dame. And yet no art
of historical signifi-
cance was damaged
and very little of the
stained glass. “It was a
miracle,” says conser-
vator Marie-Hélène
Didier. Side chapels
like this one—Our Lady
of Seven Sorrows—will
get a cleaning and res-
toration, which most
needed before the fire.
From outside, wire surrounds the
site. But the church has
the sorrows recovered from trauma
before. In 1831, from
of Our Lady this vantage point
across the Seine,
are glaring. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
watched a mob attack
Scaffolding and a giant it. Later he directed
crane now mock the the first restoration of
cathedral’s aspiration Notre Dame, preserv-
to loftiness; a metal ing the landmark the
wall topped with razor world knows today.
The fire in 1831
spared the
Cathedral of Notre
Dame itself. The
rioters scrambled
up the roof and
toppled a giant
iron cross; they shattered stained glass, took axes to a statue
Charles Barbero of
Carpenters Without
Borders puts a finishing
touch on a replica of
one of Notre Dame’s
of Jesus, smashed one of the Virgin Mary. But roof trusses. The
they were really after the archbishop of Paris, volunteer group built
the truss in a week
who wasn’t there—and so they sacked his pal- using only medieval
ace, which stood south of the church, facing the tools, hewing each
Seine River. Then they set fire to it. The palace beam from a single oak
log. The oak frame-
is gone now. A 250-foot-tall construction crane work destroyed in the
stands on that spot. fire is to be restored as
There’s a drawing of the scene that night, it was—with an assist
from sawmills.
February 14, 1831, viewed from the Quai de
Montebello, across the Seine. It was made by
Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc—the man
who, 13 years later, would undertake a 20-year
restoration of the cathedral. Viollet-le-Duc was
only 17 when he witnessed the mob attack. In his
hasty pencil sketch, agitated stick figures swarm
44 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
the palace, hurling furniture and other valuables is about to begin. In more ways than one, Ville-
out the windows and into the river. Behind all neuve owes his current mission, the fight of his
that stands Notre Dame, then six centuries old. professional life, to his ingenious predecessor,
In 1980, also at age 17, Philippe Villeneuve Viollet-le-Duc.
saw an exhibit about Viollet-le-Duc at the Grand “He invented the restoration of historic mon-
Palais. He knew he wanted to be an architect— uments,” Villeneuve said. “That didn’t happen
he was already building an elaborate model of before. Before, people repaired them, and they
Notre Dame—but he didn’t know you could spe- repaired them in the style of their day.” Or they
cialize in historic buildings. Today he’s one of didn’t repair them, and tore them down.
35 “chief architects of historic monuments” in In 19th-century France, a government first
France, a profession most famously embodied established institutions to grapple systemati-
by Viollet-le-Duc. Villeneuve has directed resto- cally with a question that concerns us all: What
ration work at Notre Dame since 2013, and with part of the past is worth preserving and trans-
terrible urgency since the spring of 2019, when mitting to posterity? What duty do we owe the
a fire ripped the top off the cathedral. The build- creations of our ancestors, what strength and
ing has been stabilized at last; reconstruction stability do we draw from their presence—and
N OT R E DA M E A F T E R T H E F I R E 45
Some damage stones in the vaults
along the central hole
done by the left by the spire. The
fire, which got as hot
fire was as 1400°F, ate into the
tops of some vaults
insidious. and into the two-foot-
thick limestone walls
Wearing respirators to above them, peeling
shield themselves from off inches of stone and
lead dust, rope techni- creating internal fis-
cians prepare to use sures. Some stones will
plaster to secure loose need to be replaced.
the light to flood in. Jealous Italians named it
“Gothic,” by which they meant “barbarian,” but
the French style conquered Europe. In the tall
light, people felt the presence of God.
By the early 19th century, though, Notre Dame
was in trouble. Decades of attack and neglect,
beginning even before the Revolution of 1789,
had left it dangerously dilapidated. Victor Hugo
was so incensed, he set an entire novel around
the cathedral, folding a polemic on abuse of his-
tory into a potboiler about a repressed priest, a
hunchbacked bell ringer, and the girl they both
desired. Notre-Dame de Paris was published in
1831, the month after the archbishop’s palace was
burned down. All over France, ancient church
buildings seized during the revolution were
being plundered for the stones. Hugo helped
start a movement that said, Enough. Viollet-le-
Duc was swept up in it.
He saved Notre Dame. He rebuilt buttresses
Notre Dame always had and stained glass, replaced statues demolished
gargoyle rainspouts,
but its purely decora- by revolutionaries, and added more: The cathe-
tive grotesques sprang dral’s beloved grotesques are his. And when he
from the 19th-century built a new wooden spire, 50 feet taller than the
imagination of Viollet-
le-Duc. He added 54 medieval original, he added larger-than-life cop-
to the upper gallery per statues of the Twelve Apostles in steps up
encircling the towers its base. Eleven looked outward, watching over
on the west facade.
the city; the 12th was St. Thomas, the Apostle
who doubted. Viollet-le-Duc gave Thomas his
own face and had him gaze up at the spire, his
masterwork. He was a nonbeliever who saved
the queen of French cathedrals.
when, on the contrary, do they become a lead Now that church, a house of worship for more
weight, preventing us from projecting our- than 800 years, is being saved again. It’s being
selves into the future, from creating a world of saved after a half century in which the practice
our own? The question is one each of us faces of Catholicism in France has collapsed, while the
in microcosm, in our work and in our life. Each number of tourists has exploded. In Villeneuve’s
of us has a service des monuments historiques in office behind the cathedral, in the second story
our head, struggling to decide what to hold on of a stack of modular containers, the desk faces a
to and what to toss, which change to resist and print of Viollet-le-Duc’s 1843 drawing of the west
which to embrace. It’s just we’re often not very front of Notre Dame. A trickle of congealed lead
conscious of it. And we’re often not conscious from the roof, melted by the 2019 fire, is wedged
of our stake in the preservation decisions made into a corner of the frame. Since the night of
by governments—of how old buildings touch us. the fire, it has been Villeneuve’s intention to
Until they are threatened. rebuild the church exactly as Viollet-le-Duc left
In its day, Notre Dame was revolutionary. It it, including the lead roof and the “forest” of
was built in the late 12th and 13th centuries, as massive oak timbers that supported it.
France was becoming a nation, and Paris, its “We are restoring the restorer,” he said.
capital, the largest city in Europe. Notre Dame A little before seven on the evening of April 15,
was the first grand masterpiece of a new French 2019, as Villeneuve was racing from his home on
architecture—one in which pointed arches and the Atlantic coast to catch the last high-speed
flying buttresses allowed the walls to be soar- train for Paris, I was in a taxi crossing the Seine.
ing and thin, the windows to be enormous, and The traffic was crawling. My wife looked out the
48 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
City extent 12th-century Paris
OISE AISNE today City extent
Limestone
Paris Seine
R.
Paris quarry
Bercé
Forest Île de la Cité 2 mi
2 km
e
in
FRANCE
Se
Sourcing the stones and wood
Île de la Cité was an important center of city life when construc-
tion began on Notre Dame in the 12th century. Back then, stone
came from quarries that now lie beneath modern Paris. For
today’s renovation, limestone of similar geologic composition
is being quarried in Oise and Aisne, while centuries-old trees
are being felled in the Bercé Forest and elsewhere in France.
window. “Is Notre Dame burning?” she asked. Dame, got through the firefighters’ perimeter,
The patch of flickering orange on the roof made most of the precious artifacts had already been
no sense. I’m sure they’ll put it out soon, I mut- extracted and placed in the yard. “It looked like
tered. Moments later we saw the flames shoot a big flea market,” she said. Late that night, she
up the wooden spire and engulf it. escorted some of the treasures in a city van to
a vault at the Hôtel de Ville. The linen tunic of
St. Louis, the 13th-century king and crusader,
V E RYO N E I N F R A N C E R E M E M B E R S was on Didier’s lap. Next to her, her boss held
CHOIR
AISLE
TRANSEPT
NAVE
AISLE
Chapels between
the 16-foot-deep
buttresses were
added after 1225.
A Divine Ambition
Notre Dame Cathedral has endured for more than eight centuries. Built
1840s to ’60s, MAJOR RESTORATION
In 1831, The Hunchback of Notre Dame revive
interest in the site. Renovations (in green) by
to reflect the church’s spiritual reach, its audacious, towering walls and architects Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc
and his early partner, Jean-Baptiste Lassus,
buttresses remain as much a marvel today as they were in the Middle Ages. reflect their interpretations of medieval style
GOTHIC GRANDEUR,
12TH CENTURY
Seine
Master masons design
Royal Sainte-Chapelle
Palace Île Saint- the cathedral, drawing on
Île de la Cité Louis their expertise with stone
and wood. It’s built on
Notre Dame
of the what’s considered to be
Point of view de Paris
burned shown below sacred land of former
were sanctuaries.
build-
1,000 ft
N 250 m
Variations in con-
struction methods
FLYING suggest that the
BUTTRESS
north and south walls
are made by different
teams of builders.
FLIER
TEMPORARY
WALL
The foundation
contains stones
repurposed from
fourth-to-12th-
century churches
on the site.
FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA, TAYLOR MAGGIACOMO, ROSEMARY WARDLEY, EVE CONANT, AND PATRICIA HEALY, NGM STAFF; MATTHEW TWOMBLY
1 Sequence of the Roof Medieval
reconstruction origin 19th century
Temporary
roof 1
4
A Faithful 2
2
Restoration 3
TRADITIONAL ROOFING
PREPARING THE BEAMS
Lead will be used once
Medieval timbers in the nave and
again to cover the roof,
choir will be replaced with beams cut
spire, and sculpted
from individual, green oak logs and
ornamentation. It’s
finished with hand axes. Beams for the
long-lasting and
19th-century transept and spire will be
easily molded.
cut at sawmills from dried logs.
1/8 in
SECONDARY
APOSTLES TRUSSES
PRIMARY
Restored color
TRUSSES
Green patina due
to weathering
EVANGELISTS
CLUES IN STONE
Heat damaged 30 percent
of the top area of the
walls (orange lines). When
limestone is heated, it
changes color, revealing
different levels of damage.
Core
Level of sample
thermal stress
Undamaged stone
Crack Holes
Cracks
Thin, light
stones were
used as web-
482° Fire bing between
Grout
932° the arches.
1292°F
Cameras
FRAGILE ART
Lead residue will be
dusted off of Notre
Dame’s 130 stained-
glass windows, barely
damaged during the
2 Models, 3D printed, test fire. The uppermost
the probable position of 25 windows were
each stone in an arch.
removed to prevent
accidental breakage.
I
Custom-crafted
wooden braces
support stone University art historian named Ste- The bits of w
buttresses and phen Murray took me into the attic chunks of s
prevent them
from pushing at Notre Dame. It was gloomy even in been saved
walls inward. bright daytime. As we walked through It was gruel
the lattice of roughly hewn oak beams, the exhilaratin
curved tops of the church’s soaring limestone expect to ex
vaults spread like gray elephant backs beneath While th
our feet. Dust pooled in the hollows. From below, cleared, th
Workers remotely
inside the church, I’d never imagined this back- against cav
control robots to stage world—the world of the cathedral builders. found that
collect charred
fragments from
At the crossing of the transept and nave, I looked weighing o
the ground. up into the intricate wood skeleton of the spire. walls were
SAFETY
NET
Last summer I stood once again at the same mere 56-m
location. But this time I was on scaffolding, them. From
DAMAGED looking down into the giant hole the spire made carpenters
MATERIAL
All surfaces are when it crashed through the stone vaults. The of the vau
ROBOT vacuumed. A latex top of it punched a second hole in the nave; a wood brace
mask is applied and
delicately peeled third formed at the north end of the transept. technicians
off, removing lead. As the fire raged through the forest, triangular a time, the o
trusses of oak, 32 feet high, toppled like dom- about to ren
inoes onto the vaults, and debris fell through A sagging, t
the holes. At the crossing, charred wood and further dam
FIVE-YEAR RESTORATION
stone were piled around four feet high on the COVID s
2019-2020 2021-2024 2024 cathedral floor. in spring 2
Scaffolding is Timber fram- Major work, Within days of the fire, even as Macron was already shu
taken down by ing for roof including roof
hand to prevent and spire is and vaults, is to promising that Notre Dame would reopen in workplace
collapse. installed. be complete. time for the Paris Summer Olympics in 2024, precaution
60 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
rieux and her colleagues had decided of showers in the container that serves as a locker
bris couldn’t simply be carted away. room has divided the site into dirty and clean
lly protected heritage material that domains. Workers repeatedly negotiate that
e to be sorted by professionals. Soon border every day, stripping naked and chang-
them descended on the church. The ing into protective clothing to go to work, then
Laboratory for Historical Monuments doing the reverse—and showering and washing
ulk of its 34-member staff, deputy their hair—each time they leave, even for lunch.
hierry Zimmer told me. Visitors follow the same procedure. Disposable
the damaged vaults were still in dan- underwear and jumpsuits are provided.
apsing, the scientists used remote- Even Emmanuel Macron has submitted to
robots to collect the debris. Wearing this. I have that on good authority—that of the
to keep out the lead dust, they sorted five-star general whom the president called out
e material in a side aisle, picking out of retirement the day after the fire, asking him to
hat might inform the reconstruction manage the cathedral’s reconstruction.
torical interest. Tree rings in the larger
wood, for example, offer clues to the
onstruction sequence of the church. EAN-LOUIS GEORGELIN had come
stuff we’d never gotten our hands on
mmer said. “Now, unfortunately, it
hands.” A small silver lining will be
knowledge of the cathedral and the
which it was built.
J up through the infantry. He’d been
chief military adviser to one pres-
ident and chairman of the joint
chiefs to another. Macron entrusted
him with Notre Dame for two reasons, Georgelin
Photographer Tomas
van Houtryve cap-
tured the 19th-century
grotesques, or chime-
wo years to get all the debris sorted said: The general is a devout Catholic, one who ras, with 19th-century
ved to a warehouse near Charles de knows his psalms in Latin—he recited one for equipment: under a
rport. The stuff sprawls there over me—and he has the political savvy and author- dark cloak, on glass
plates, with a wooden
uare feet, on 20-foot-high shelving. ity to get the cathedral reopened by 2024. That camera he picked up in
wood too small to be studied, the tiny will require navigating French bureaucracy. a Paris antique shop.
tone, the dust and ash—even that has Georgelin presides over an établissement public,
, for now, in hundreds of storage bags. a public entity set up specifically to restore Notre
ling work, Chaoui-Derieux said—but Dame, using 840 million euros in donations,
ng, a “human adventure” she doesn’t including 30 million from donors in the U.S.
xperience again. Restoration projects normally are managed
he floor of Notre Dame was being by the culture ministry. Some people from to check for soot. “Nothing was destroyed!”
e walls and vaults had to be secured that milieu consider the general’s involvement she exclaimed, meaning none of the treasures
ving in. An engineering study had peculiar and the 2024 deadline unrealistic. Is or valuable artworks. The modern altar at the
t without the lead roof and timbers it? I asked Georgelin. He cheerfully batted away crossing was crushed, but the iconic Virgin of
on them and tying them together, the the question. Paris, a 14th-century stone statue, still stood a
frighteningly vulnerable to wind; a “I see, monsieur, you have been contaminated few feet away, dusty but unharmed, with rub-
ile-an-hour gust could have toppled by those who believe the president of the repub- ble at her feet. At the monuments lab, Claudine
m 2019 through the summer of 2021, lic should not be interfering in the reconstruction Loisel, the stained-glass specialist, told me that
shored up flying buttresses and some of Notre Dame,” he boomed. “You have been con- just a few pieces of glass on three small panels
lts, nestling custom-fit, multi-ton taminated by the party of slowness.” Georgelin had been knocked out by the tip of the spire.
es under each one. Meanwhile, rope is a good-humored alpha type, a man who, as The rest were fine.
s were dismantling, one steel tube at he talks over you in a parade-ground voice and In all, the church lost its spire, its roof and
old scaffolding—Villeneuve had been hazes you with satirical formalities, does it all rafters, and a few of its stone vaults. That’s
novate the spire when the fire struck. with a self-aware grin. plenty—but not too much to be fixed by 2024,
tangled mess, it threatened to fall and The damage to the church, Georgelin said, Georgelin said.
mage the church. is severe but contained. I’d been struck by that Unlike most people I spoke to, he sometimes
shut the site down for two months myself—by how untouched much of it seemed, attended Mass at Notre Dame before the fire.
2020. The pervasive lead dust had when you looked past the scaffolding that now On that dreadful evening, the general was at
ut it down for six weeks in 2019, after fills most of it. Marie-Hélène Didier was sur- home in Paris, watching on TV and crying, “like
inspectors decided that initial safety prised too when she walked through on the day everyone.” He heard people saying they wouldn’t
ns were inadequate. Since then, a line after the fire, running her finger over the walls live to see Notre Dame restored. That’s why the
N OT R E DA M E A F T E R T H E F I R E 61
The Twelve
Apostles got
out of Paris
just in time.
Four days before the
fire, statues of the
Apostles fortunately
were removed from
the spire and shipped
to Socra, a restoration
company in Périgueux.
The copper cladding
was as thin as cigarette
paper in some spots,
says metal specialist
Olivier Baumgartner
(working here on St.
Matthew). He and his
colleagues avoided
making the cladding
too smooth: “It must
exude authenticity.”
No other
construction
site is quite
like this one.
People working on the
restoration will tell
you: It’s the project
of a lifetime. The
pandemic slowed
things down, and
lead-safety procedures
are aggravating. But
sometimes “there were
just five or six of us in
the cathedral,” says
archaeologist Doro-
thée Chaoui-Derieux.
“That will never
happen to us again.”
For the next three
years Notre Dame will
be buzzing with
workers, and then
worshippers and
tourists will return.
president’s promise to the nation was necessary, something architecturally new at Notre Dame—
Georgelin said—and as for the five-year dead- a “contemporary gesture,” he called it. “We should
line, if Macron hadn’t set it, architects and other have confidence in the builders of today,” he said,
arty types would have stretched the work to 15. “and we should have confidence in ourselves.”
The general turned his eyes to the ceiling and Builders responded gleefully: Suggestions for
emitted a tuneless whistle, to illustrate what glass roofs and crystal spires and spires of light
head-in-the-clouds time-wasting looks like. poured in from all over the world. One architec-
tural studio proposed a greenhouse on the roof.
Another suggested replacing the roof with an
S FOR THE CHIEF ARCHITECT of open-air swimming pool.
66 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
Viollet-le-Duc meant a total mess,” Moulin said.
At Notre Dame, Viollet-le-Duc painted decora-
tive murals in all 24 side chapels; in the 1970s,
the 12 chapels of the nave were scraped back to
bare stone. But by then, the rehabilitation of the
great man’s reputation was just about to begin—
and the exhibition that 17-year-old Villeneuve
saw in 1980 was a turning point. “All at once we
went from a diabolical Viollet-le-Duc to a Viollet-
le-Duc who is practically a saint,” Moulin said.
Today most French restorers wouldn’t think
of undoing anything Viollet-le-Duc did. Moulin
thinks that’s a shame. He believes in preserving
history too—but trying to fix a building once and
for all in its “last known state,” he said, amounts
to declaring that history has ended for that
building: “It’s the definition of death.” And it
may not be what’s best for preservation. If the
roof of your cathedral has just burned off, Mou-
lin argued, it doesn’t make sense to rebuild the Like Viollet-le-Duc’s
rafters out of wood. spire, taller and more
That argument was heard—and dismissed—at ornate than the
medieval original, his
Notre Dame. The forest and the spire will indeed addition of the chimeras
be built of wood, though with more fireproofing reflected his ambition:
and with fire-suppressing misters. The details not just to restore Notre
Dame as it had been
are still being worked out. but to create the ideal
Gothic cathedral.
through
N 2 0 19, T H E F I R E R AG I N G
N OT R E DA M E A F T E R T H E F I R E 67
A monument
from another
time is braced
for a new day.
In the aftermath of
the fire, some wanted
Notre Dame to be
reborn with a new
look, a contemporary
one that would put the
stamp of our age—and
of the fire itself—on
the cathedral. Others,
those closest to the
monument, just
wanted it made whole
again. The fire “was an
accident,” conservator
Marie-Hélène Didier
says. “You forget. You
try to forget.”
spire and the sculpted ornamentation of Notre
Dame’s roof. Lead already covers the Panthéon,
the Invalides, and other monuments, Villeneuve
said; why should the cathedral be the only vic-
tim of “the madness of these lead fundamental-
ists”? Rainwater running off the new roof will be
captured and filtered.
Villeneuve also plans to rebuild the timber
framework exactly as it was. It had two distinct
parts. When Viollet-le-Duc rebuilt the spire, he
replaced the framework of the transept, and not
in a medieval way—the beams were cut at indus-
trial sawmills. Villeneuve will do the same. Last
winter, Gourmain coordinated the donation of
1,200 oaks from all around France. The largest,
oldest ones had been planted just before the
French Revolution by royal foresters who were
safeguarding the navy’s supply of ship masts.
Those trees will serve as the base of the spire.
In the 19th century, The attic timbers of the nave and choir were
these neo-Gothic different: They were mostly original, from the
beasts watched over 13th century. In September 2020, a group called
a city in upheaval,
as wide boulevards Carpenters Without Borders reconstructed one
were being punched of the triangular trusses in front of the cathedral,
through medieval to demonstrate the feasibility of rebuilding the
neighborhoods. Beasts
and boulevards now framework the medieval way. François Calame,
are symbols of Paris. an ethnologist and carpenter who founded the
group, took me to see that truss where it’s now on
display, outside a medieval fortress in Normandy
called Château de Crèvecoeur. It consists of a
dozen beams—each hand-hewn from a single
revealed that the children routinely were oak, no more than a foot across.
exposed to other sources of lead. Many Paris Medieval carpenters worked their wood green,
balconies, for example, have lead floors. and so did Carpenters Without Borders. They
Still, no amount of lead in the blood is con- followed the grain, keeping the heart at the cen-
sidered safe, and lead roofs pollute the environ- ter. That gave some of the beams a gentle curve,
ment whenever they’re worked or rained on. In but it made them stronger. The trusses at Notre
February 2021, a science advisory board to the Dame stood for more than 800 years before their
health ministry, of which Langrand was a mem- luck ran out.
ber, recommended that France ban lead in new Calame pulled from the trunk of his car the
roofs and that alternatives to its use in historical tool of choice: a doloire, a broadax with a head
restoration be found. The Paris city council by flared like a trumpet. He took a few skillful
then had voted to demand that Notre Dame not whacks at a log, then let me have a go. The ax,
be reroofed in lead. he warned, was sharp enough to inflict serious
None of this has diminished Villeneuve’s injury if aimed poorly, which seemed a distinct
determination. To be endangered by a lead roof possibility. My first blows glanced off the log
on Notre Dame, both he and Georgelin insisted, with an alarming clang, but then I landed a few.
children would have to climb onto it and lick it. Thin wedges of fresh wood flew into the air.
“Lead is an absolutely essential element in In Calame’s view, historical restoration should
the construction,” Villeneuve argued. Sure, the be about restoring lost skills as well as damaged
Cathedral of Chartres has a copper roof—but buildings—and not just for the benefit of carpen-
copper turns green, and Paris roofs are gray. ters. The reason Notre Dame’s “forest” left such
Most are zinc, but only lead could reproduce the an impression on people who saw it, he thinks, is
70 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
that a message was passing across the centuries “Notre Dame is not a museum,” Patrick Chau-
from the master artisans who made it. vet, the cathedral’s rector, insisted. Before the
“The framework was 800 years old. It’s gone. fire, some 3,000 people came to Mass on Sun-
But I think that if we rework it the way it was days—but 10 to 12 million tourists visited each
worked, in the same manner and with the same year. Many had scant knowledge of Christianity.
materials, the message can be transmitted,” “How can they be touched by the grace of this
Calame said. “You’ll be able to feel it.” place?” Chauvet asked. “How can the beauty of
Villeneuve was impressed by the demonstra- this place perhaps at least interrogate them on
tion by Carpenters Without Borders. To save the meaning of their lives?”
time, he said, sawmills will trim the logs for the The plan, he said, is to re-curate the visit.
nave and choir, but the beams will be finished by When the church reopens, visitors will be ush-
hand with doloires. Construction of the spire will ered in a new loop past redesigned side chapels.
come first, however. Viollet-le-Duc had to break Proceeding from north to south—from darkness
a hole in the vaults so he could build his spire to light—they’ll encounter first the Old Testa-
from the inside. Villeneuve has a head start: The ment, then the New, so as to “enter progressively
hole is already there. into the mystery of God,” Chauvet said.
Will that succeed? Thanks to the huge res-
toration budget, the cathedral should at least
the bishop
A U R I C E D E S U L LY, be looking sharp. Work that ordinarily would
N OT R E DA M E A F T E R T H E F I R E 71
BY
NATA S H A
D A LY
PHOTOGRAPHS
BY
ANGEL
FITOR
The unique
diversity
of cichlids
in Africa’s
THE
oldest lake
could help
unlock the
secrets of
evolution.
72
ADAPTERS
Emperor cichlids,
believed to mate only
once, watch over their
thousands of offspring,
called fry. Adults can
grow to almost three
feet, making them
the largest of the
nearly 250 cichlid
species endemic to
Lake Tanganyika.
PREVIOUS PHOTO
Baby Haplotaxodon
microlepis scramble
for safety in their
mother’s mouth. Like
many cichlid species,
they’re mouth brood-
ers: Both parents carry
babies orally and let
them out to feed,
recalling them at the
first hint of danger,
until the young strike
out on their own or
become too big to fit.
N
finger. Some spend their lives searching for and defending
is ordi-
N OT H I N G A B O U T C I C H L I D S
nary. In Lake Tanganyika alone,
at the divide between Central and
East Africa, roughly 250 species
evolved from a single ancestor
over 9.7 million years.
Some are the size of a preschool-
er; others, no longer than a pinkie
A F R I C A
Lake
Tanganyika
NGM MAPS
Shell wars
A female Neolampro- from other males then
logus brevis emerges becomes a full-time
from her home—a job. Below, males fight
deserted snail shell— over a shell via mouth-
while her mate stands to-mouth combat.
guard. “What rules Fighting cichlids will
their behavior is terri- lock jaws until one tires
torialism,” says Angel and gives up. Cichlids
Fitor, who has been are constantly on alert;
photographing cichlids photographing them
in Lake Tanganyika means spending hours
for 20 years. To immobile in the water.
attract a mate, male “I’ve spent entire
cichlids first must have weeks just waiting in
an empty shell—a front of a shell for a fish
limited commodity— to show up,” Fitor says.
for the couple to live “It borders on insanity,
in. Defending the shell I know!”
THE ADAPTERS 77
For featherfin cichlids
(Cyathopharynx foae),
all the world’s a stage.
This male has carried
55 pounds of sand,
mouthful by mouthful,
to construct a 26-inch-
wide, circular bower.
By morning, when he’ll
shimmer in the sun,
he’ll dance vigorously
across his stage,
hoping to attract a
mate. Dozens more
will do the same for
passing females that
judge the dances and
the bowers—where
couples will mate.
Rising more than two
miles from the base of
its glacier to its sum-
mit, Pakistan’s K2 is
known as the Savage
Mountain. For every
four climbers who
make it to the top and
back, another dies
trying. No one had
summited it in winter.
Says Nirmal “Nims”
Purja, “We were try-
ing to show the world
that the impossible
was possible.”
SANDRO GROMEN-HAYES
D R I V E N BY N AT I O N A L P R I D E ,
A N A L L - N E PA L I T E A M D I D W H AT M A N Y T H O U G H T
WA S I M P O S S I B L E : S U M M I T T H E WO R L D ’S
S E C O N D H I G H E S T M O U N TA I N I N W I N T E R .
BY FREDDIE WILKINSON
A
CLIMB
FOR
HISTORY
81
82 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
With a historic winter
summit of K2 in his
sights, Nims wills his
oxygen-starved body
upward. He and nine
fellow Nepalis endured
unpredictable winds,
subzero temperatures,
and numerous deadly
hazards to climb the
infamous peak at a
time when conditions
were at their harshest.
It was a feat many
had thought couldn’t
be achieved. Nims
increased the difficulty
by climbing without
bottled oxygen.
MINGMA DAVID SHERPA
A C L I M B F O R H I STO RY 83
SWALLOWED
BY
THE
EMPTY
BLACK
NIGHT, Porters assemble K2
Base Camp on the
Godwin Austen Glacier,
in the heart of the
Mingma Gyalje Sherpa tried to focus the shaky Karakoram Range.
orb of his headlamp on his next few steps, but The site serves as a
the cold overwhelmed his thoughts. Clad in logistical hub and rest
station between forays
a bulky down suit, with another down jacket up the mountain, but
underneath, plus two layers of long underwear brutal conditions often
and breathing bottled oxygen, he should have make life there miserable.
SANDRO GROMEN-HAYES
been OK. But in all the peaks he’d summited,
all the blizzards and frigid gales he’d weathered,
he’d never felt temperatures quite like this—a
piercing, otherworldly cold.
He could sense his body shutting down. His
left side bore the brunt of a stout wind, with
each gust sending icy tendrils slicing through
everything he wore. But his right foot was espe-
cially worrisome. It had tingled, then burned,
and finally ebbed into numbness, a precursor to
84 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
serious frostbite. That, he knew, was a sign his hand, or just too deep in their own suffering, to
body was prioritizing blood flow to warm vital answer, he thought.
organs, sacrificing the extremities to preserve Even in the milder summer months, K2, the
the core. And this was all happening before he’d second highest peak on Earth at 28,251 feet, is
even crossed into the so-called Death Zone—the among the world’s deadliest mountains. Though
region above 8,000 meters (26,247 feet)—where it’s more than two football fields shorter than
the lack of oxygen can cause climbers to hallu- Mount Everest, getting to its summit requires a
cinate, retain fluid in their lungs, and lose their much higher degree of climbing skill and almost
instinct for self-preservation. no margin for mistakes. American climber George
Mingma G.—as he’s known—keyed his radio, Bell, after failing to summit in 1953, declared, “It’s
his mind momentarily made up to turn around. a savage mountain that tries to kill you.” The nick-
“Dawa Tenjin? Dawa Tenjin?” he called, but only name has stuck, in part because for roughly every
the whining wind answered. He could make out four climbers who make it to the top and back
the dim lights of several teammates trudging in down, another one dies in the attempt.
a broken line up the low-angle snow above him. But now, almost four weeks after the winter
Everyone must be too focused on the tasks at solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere tilts
A C L I M B F O R H I STO RY 85
B
farthest away from the life-giving warmth of the of groundbreak-
Y 2 0 2 0 T H E N OT I O N
sun, the conditions on the mountain are some of ing mountaineering achievement
the harshest on the planet. The windchill tem- seemed like an anachronism. Mid-
perature on its upper reaches can drop to minus way through the past century, all
80 degrees Fahrenheit—roughly the same as the of the world’s highest summits—
average temperature on Mars. the 14 mountains that top 8,000
And yet, this was a moment Mingma G. had meters—had been climbed. First
been dreaming about. Even as he laboriously came Nepal’s Annapurna I in 1950, then Ever-
kicked his numb right foot into a patch of ice est and Pakistan’s Nanga Parbat in 1953; the rest
in a desperate attempt to stave off frostbite, he fell in succession until Tibet’s Xixabangma was
knew some of his teammates were fixing sec- claimed in 1964.
tions of rope to the mountain using an array of It was a fevered run of nationalistic efforts,
ice screws, pitons, and snow pickets, building a and though all the mountains were in Asia,
secure trail to follow toward the summit. European teams claimed the majority of these
For most experienced mountaineers, the prizes. And while virtually every expedition of
thought of climbing K2 in winter was lunacy. Six this era relied on local ethnic groups, including
serious expeditions had attempted the feat, but the Sherpas, Tibetans, and Baltis who trans-
none had come close to the top. There seemed ported gear to the Base Camps and carried loads
to be too many challenges to overcome: unpre- up the mountain, the true contributions of these
dictable hurricane-force gusts that could blow indispensable partners rarely were acknowl-
a string of roped climbers off in an instant; fall- edged in the history books.
ing rock and ice that roared down like artillery; With these landmark first ascents accom-
lung-starving, mind-muddling thin air; and the plished, Polish mountaineer Andrzej Zawada
deep, unforgiving cold. Even the most resolute came up with a new challenge. All the eight-
and experienced teams had withered under the thousanders had been climbed in summer,
brutal conditions, the pressures and dangers during the most favorable conditions. More
often causing them to implode with personal difficult, he reasoned, would be to climb them
conflicts and leadership issues. in winter, their harshest season. Zawada led an
In the final months of 2020, some 60 climbers expedition that put two climbers on the summit
arrived at the foot of K2 on the remote Godwin of Everest in the winter of 1980 and set Poland on
Austen Glacier in Pakistan’s part of the Kara- a historic string of winter firsts. One by one, the
koram Range, all seeking the last remaining eight-thousanders fell, but Pakistan’s peaks stub-
prize in high-altitude mountaineering—and argu- bornly resisted winter mountaineers well into
ably the toughest of them all. But for Mingma G. the 21st century. Located eight degrees of latitude
and his nine teammates, all Nepalis, the expe- north of the Nepali peaks, the Karakoram Range
dition offered more than just personal glory. It is notably colder and windier in winter. It took 31
was a chance for them to prove that Nepal—a attempts before Nanga Parbat finally was climbed
nation defined by some of the world’s biggest in 2016, leaving only K2.
mountains—could achieve what many thought Although overshadowed by Everest in the
was impossible. popular media, K2 is considered a far greater
Now, as Mingma G. surveyed his situation, the challenge by serious mountaineers, partly
path to K2’s elusive summit seemed tantalizingly because of its extreme remoteness. When the
within reach. But at what cost? He knew firsthand British survey team recorded the first elevations
how a severe injury could forever alter his life. His in the Karakoram in 1856, they replaced their
father, also a mountain guide, had lost all but two survey designations with local names. K1, for
of his fingers to frostbite when he’d removed his example, was known by the local name Masher-
gloves to tie a foreign client’s bootlaces on Ever- brum. But since K2 isn’t visible from the closest
est. What if one of his teammates lost a limb or village, Askole, a week’s trek from the peak’s
was killed? Would the summit be worth it? For base, it hadn’t been named.
Mingma G. and the members of the expedition, After four days’ hiking over rough terrain, K2
even with a clear understanding of the risks and comes into view from the south, its iconic pyra-
the deadly cold seeping into their bones, the midal form rising like an arrowhead pointed at
answer was unanimous. the heavens. Climbers quickly note its steepness,
86 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
M
MANY NEPALI five feet nine
I N G M A G . S TA N D S
inches, tall for a Sherpa. He’s 33,
broad-shouldered, and often wears
FIRST ASCENT disaster made famous by the book Into Thin Air
and then tragically died four months later.
In 2006, when Mingma G. was 19, his uncle
A C L I M B F O R H I STO RY 87
A SUMMIT IN THE
DEADLIEST SEASON
Savage
K2’s sum
stream
tempe
Skilbrum 80°F an
24,147 ft a hund
7,360 m
Summa Ri typical
Pakistan’s 28,251-foot behemoth, K2, is the world’s second 23,957 ft at the t
7,302 m
highest mountain, behind only Mount Everest. But K2 requires
far more technical skill to climb. Of the world’s 14 peaks higher
than 8,000 meters (26,247 feet), it was the only one never to
have been summited in winter. In December 2020, some 60
climbers from around the world gathered at Base Camp on
the Godwin Austen Glacier to try it. Two Nepali teams, led by
Nirmal “Nims” Purja and Mingma Gyalje “Mingma G.” Sherpa,
joined forces for the push up K2’s southeast face and Abruzzi Angel
Spur—rendered here from satellite imagery by the German 22,497 ft
6,857 m
Aerospace Center. On January 16, 2021, the 10 Nepali climbers
claimed K2’s first winter summit, the first all-Nepali record on
one of the top 14 peaks.
Nera
20,978 ft
6,394 m
Negrotto
Pass
2018
Cesen
because
Base Camp
Reached by Nepali
team Dec. 18, 2020
16,274 ft u te
4,960 m ro
en
es
C
The summit of K2
sits 11,191 ft (3,411 m)
above Advanced
Base Camp.
Empire State
Building
K2
28,251 ft
8,611 m Nepali team reaches summit
Jan. 16, 2021
Succeeding as a team
Previous winter attempts, includ-
ing Denis Urubko’s 2018 solo
e peak summit push, failed. Having 10
Bottleneck climbers to haul supplies and take
mmit juts into the jet Traverse
. In winter, windchill turns leading the way allowed the
ratures can reach minus Nepali team to summit as a group.
e
nd winds can gust up to
l
E
Ridge route, 2003
S
7,300 m T H
S
U Camp III E A
A
7,200 m
S 23,622 ft
H
7,200 m R
T
I D
U
O G
S Nims’s second Camp II E
- Jan. 13, 2021
H 23,130 ft
T 7,050 m
U
O
S
Mingma G.’s second Camp II
Dec. 29, 2020
22,638 ft
6,900 m
Camp I
First reached
Dec. 21
20,013 ft
6,100 m
Abruzzi Spur
route
Advanced Base Camp, Dec. 21 SOURCES: MINGMA GYALJE SHERPA, AMERICAN ALPINE JOURNAL, 2021;
17,060 ft KRZYSZTOF WIELICKI; BERNADETTE MCDONALD; JAN KIELKOWSKI,
5,200 m K2 AND NORTHERN BALTORO MUSTAGH; STEVEN SWENSON
THE CHALLENGE OF WINTER
After climbers summited all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks, they turned
across the Himalaya. Within weeks of return-
ing from K2, Mingma G.’s entire year of guided
expedition
one of the
to the next challenge: ascending them in winter, when winds and tempera- climbs evaporated, leaving him with no income season. Th
9,000 m
tures are at their worst and favorable weather windows are less predictable. and a small business to support. He tried to talk disastrous
Beginning in the 1980s, Polish climbers pioneered this pursuit, claiming 10
a few friends into another attempt on K2, but mits poste
8,000-meter winter firsts. Before 2021, six expeditions had attempted K2 in
winter. The most successful barely got within half a mile of the top. nobody wanted to spend the $10,000 for a permit any clients
just to reach Base Camp, plus tens of thousands expedition
Mt. Everest more to mount a no-frills effort. climbers fr
1953 1980
29,000 ft
Mingma G. considered dropping the idea, but and the Un
O
Mt. Everest was first Mt. Everest was first 8,800 m
something gnawed at him. Tenzing Norgay, a
Summit
Poland
K2 1988 with Edmund Hillary of New Zealand. Nepali
1954
8,600 m climbers had been part of other groundbreaking
1955 1986 Failed winter attempts on K2
Kanchenjunga
Nepal, 2021 climbs, but none had ever claimed a truly historic
28,000 ft Nepali team completes first ascent all on his or her own. first major
Lhotse 1988 last winter summit
1956
“When I went through Wikipedia, there was full day of
Makalu
1955 2009
no Nepalese flag on the winter 8,000-meter list,” to reach Ca
Mingma G. says. “I realized if we lose K2, we’re attempt on
Reign of the Poles
In 1980 Krzysztof Wielicki and a team of Poles First winter ascent 8,400 m
going to lose all the 8,000-meter peaks.” a shortage
27,500 ft summited the first “eight-thousander” in winter— claimed by Polish team He knew he’d have to spend the money, even Mingma
Everest. Wielicki later described his approach: “One
does not combat a mountain; one struggles against
First winter ascent claimed if it meant mortgaging the piece of land he’d matizing a
by non-Polish team
adversities ... snow, hurricane winds, and exhaustion.” bought in Kathmandu, which represented most another Ne
of his savings. He was able to recruit two broth- special for
In 2016, after 31 attempts, ers, Kilu Pemba and Dawa Tenjin Sherpa, both Nirmal “Ni
27,000 ft Nanga Parbat became the 13th
Dhaulagiri I of the eight-thousanders to
older than he, with wives, teenage children, and met before
Cho Oyu 8,200 m
1954 1985 be summited in winter. decades of high-altitude experience. introductio
1960
1956
Manaslu
1985 But their families had reservations. “It was hands once
1984
Nanga Parbat
1953 2016 very difficult for me to convince the wives of Kilu not necessa
1950 Annapurna I Pemba and Dawa Tenjin,” recalls Mingma G., That was
26,500 ft 1987 Gasherbrum I
1958 2012
Broad Peak who is unmarried. “They said, ‘If our husbands of a record
1957 2013
1956 2011 die, then we’re going to come stay in your home climb all 14
1964 Xixabangma 2005 Death Zone
8,000 m and you need to feed us.’ That made me a little The media
Gasherbrum II Year of ascent
crazy … and very worried.” from relativ
There was another problem. After years of In truth,
back-to-back expeditions and the demands of bit of rivalr
Northern exposure running his own business, Mingma G. faced a ers in their
K2 Broad Peak
26,414 ft Situated in the Karakoram Range, K2 startling realization for a Sherpa: He was out of in one of th
28,251 ft 8,051 m
8,611 m is the northernmost eight-thousander
Gasherbrum II and bears the brunt of storms sweeping shape. As he waited in Kathmandu for the pan- But they h
26,358 ft
8,034 m down from Siberia. Its higher latitude demic to subside, a family member began coaxing was reserve
Askole Gasherbrum I means less barometric pressure and
Nanga Parbat
26,509 ft
8,080 m less oxygen, making a climb more him out for hikes and bike rides. “I lost many kilos and funny
26,657 ft difficult and dangerous. and started feeling strong again,” he says. his social m
8,125 m
Mingma G. wasn’t the only Sherpa with K2 in first on K2
H
A C L I M B F O R H I STO RY 93
94 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
At dawn, members of
the Nepali team leave
Base Camp for the final
three-day ascent. Dan-
gerous weather kept
the climbers hunkered
down at Base Camp
for weeks, but a fore-
cast of milder weather
gave them hope for
making history.
SANDRO GROMEN-HAYES
A C L I M B F O R H I STO RY 95
Hurricane-force winds
blew away tents and
supplies that climb-
ers had painstakingly
hauled up to Camp II,
a crucial rest stop en
route to the summit.
The climbers were
safe, but losing the
camp was a blow. “I
am devastated,” Nims
posted on Instagram
from Base Camp. “Now
I have to reassess and
replan everything.”
ELIA SAIKALY
serves as Nims’s chief deputy. The old man of displaying a Buddhist sense of detachment
the new team was Pem Chhiri Sherpa, a 42-year- toward life’s trials, but the profession takes a
old Rolwaling Sherpa with 20 years of Everest heavy toll. In addition to the physical pain—
experience. Nims also recruited Dawa Temba faces burned by frostnip, arthritic joints, and
Sherpa and Mingma Tenzi Sherpa, both highly chronic back problems—they’d all lost friends
experienced mountaineers. The last team mem- and relatives to mountaineering. The past seven
ber was the youngest: Gelje Sherpa, a 28-year- years had been particularly cruel. An avalanche
old guide with an infectious sense of humor. in 2014 killed 16 of the most experienced Sherpas
As Gelje told jokes and deejayed the New on Everest and brought the climbing season to a
Year’s Eve party, an idea started to percolate halt, and in 2015 an earthquake killed 19 people
between the two teams: Why not join forces? As at Everest Base Camp and about 9,000 across
Pem recalls, the benefits were obvious: “It sped the entire country. Now the pandemic had cost
up the work, and we started working together. It them another year’s work. They also knew the
became easier because we all were Nepalese.” bitterness that comes with a thankless job. “Few
Sherpas who work in mountaineering have foreign clients acknowledge our help, describing
a reputation for generally being easygoing, us merely as nameless high-altitude porters or
96 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
history,” Nims would explain later. “It was a
no-brainer to team up.”
Mingma G. woke up on New Year’s Day with
a foggy hangover. Despite the subzero tempera-
tures, he had fallen asleep in his tent without
crawling into his sleeping bag. Soon he heard
Nims’s voice on the radio, inviting him back to
his camp for tea. They had more plans to discuss.
S
that a moun-
H E R P A S L I K E T O S AY
tain must allow a team of climbers
to reach its summit and return
unharmed. It’s the reason every
Himalayan expedition performs a
Puja ceremony: to ask the mountain
deities for permission to climb and
for safe passage. But during the first two weeks
of 2021, it was abundantly clear that K2 was not
ready to welcome any humans near its apex.
Hundred-mile-an-hour winds scoured the
mountain for days and plunged temperatures
well below zero at Base Camp, forcing everyone
to hunker down in their tents.
When the winds let up slightly, Nims’s team
made a quick foray up to Camp II to check on
their gear. “It was a wreckage sight,” Nims wrote
on Instagram. Gear they’d left for the summit
push—sleeping bags, battery-heated insoles for
their boots, spare mittens, and goggles—had
all blown away.
But weather reports predicted the winds
would calm beginning on January 14. Back at
Base Camp, more gear was quickly rounded up,
and another Nepali, Sona Sherpa from Seven
Summits Treks, joined the group to help bring
it up. Meanwhile, Nims and Mingma G. reass-
essed their schedule for reaching the summit.
pretending that we don’t exist,” Mingma G. says. Rather than spend a frigid night at Camp IV, the
“It’s like they think we don’t read their articles.” traditional high camp pitched at roughly 25,000
And then there were the growing tensions, as feet for a summit bid, the Nepalis planned to
Nepali outfitters wanted more of the lucrative reach the top in a single day from Camp III. If
guiding business that for years was dominated everything went well—a huge if—they could
by foreign companies. “We are the local people, summit on the 15th.
and we know more than the foreign guide ser- Later, some climbers at Base Camp would
vices do,” Mingma G. says. He acknowledges accuse the Nepalis of hiding their plans to main-
that there is fierce competition among Nepali tain an all-Nepali summit team, an accusation
outfitters, but “90 percent of foreign climbers, Mingma G. doesn’t shy away from. “When there
they only trust foreign companies.” is a football World Cup, do you ever want your
Claiming the first K2 winter summit would country to lose?” he explained in an interview
serve notice that Nepalis were taking their with ExplorersWeb. “No, never. And the team
rightful place not just as participants but and the coach always keep the strategy secret to
also as leaders in the mountaineering world. make those wishes possible. We were the same
“We wanted to have one for ourselves, for on K2 this time.”
A C L I M B F O R H I STO RY 97
98 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
Finally clear of the
Bottleneck, the
last major obstacle,
members of the team
begin heading up
the summit ridge for
their final push. Just
below the top, the
10 Nepalis would link
arms and hike up the
crowning slope to com-
plete the landmark
climb together.
MINGMA DAVID SHERPA
A C L I M B F O R H I STO RY 99
By the evening of the 13th, as the Nepalis
reached around 23,000 feet, the secret was
out and several parties started up the moun-
tain after them. The next morning, while those
teams rested at Camp II in a biting wind, the
Nepalis pushed upward to just below Camp III.
“The weather played a big game,” Mingma G.
says. “Below Camp III, there was big wind, and
above Camp III, there was no wind at all.”
On the 15th, Mingma G. and three others set
out to fix ropes above Camp III, toward a section
known as the Shoulder, but as they navigated
their way up the seemingly endless snow slopes,
a maze of crevasses—human-swallowing cracks
in the glaciated terrain—blocked their way. Just After reaching K2’s
short of reaching the traditional spot for Camp IV, summit in winter, the
first all-Nepali team to
they encountered a huge crevasse, forcing them claim an 8,000-meter
to backtrack for hours to find a way around it. climbing record cele-
It was the type of exhausting, morale-breaking brates at Base Camp.
“We did it for Nepal,”
setback that often drives mountaineers to aban- Nims says. The climb-
don an expedition, but Mingma G. and the others ers whose names
pushed on. After finding a section of hardpack—a will be etched into
the mountaineering
snowbridge—across the crevasse field, they fixed record books are
lines all the way to the Shoulder. (top row, from left)
They returned to Camp III and joined the rest Pem Chhiri Sherpa,
Mingma David Sherpa,
of the team for a few hours of fitful rest. “It was Gelje Sherpa, Dawa
a different kind of cold,” Gelje remembers. “It Temba Sherpa, (middle
made you very thirsty. It was hard to digest the row, from left) Dawa
Tenjin Sherpa, Nirmal
food you ate.” “Nims” Purja, Mingma
Sometime after midnight on the 16th, the Gyalje Sherpa, Sona
team began to gear up to leave Camp III. For the Sherpa, Kilu Pemba
Sherpa, and (front)
first time on the mountain, each man donned Mingma Tenzi Sherpa.
an oxygen mask for the summit push, all except SANDRO GROMEN-HAYES
100 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
behind for the others to follow. As they worked planet, the climbers coalesced into a single group.
their way up, small rocks clattered down the Reaching the summit together had been Nims’s
couloir, occasionally striking someone’s helmet. idea, and when all 10 had gathered, they linked
There was little to do but carry on. arms and began trudging upward. Slowly, they
As the group neared the summit, neither found their voices, and as if in a dream, the words
Mingma G. nor Nims was in front. That job of the Nepali national anthem came to them:
had fallen to Mingma Tenzi, a 36-year-old rope- Woven from hundreds of flowers ...
fixing specialist with a cheerful smile and a gold A shawl of unending natural wealth ...
tooth. He led the team for the last few hours A land of knowledge and peace, the plains,
and could have reached the top ahead of the hills, and mountains tall ...
others, but he stopped just below the summit. Unscathed, this beloved land of ours,
One by one, the mountaineers steadily moved O motherland Nepal. j
up to join him. Nims labored heavily in the frozen
empty air, taking two or three breaths for every Author and mountain guide Freddie Wilkinson
wrote about the National Geographic and Rolex
step. As the sun twinkled on the gentle crest of Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition for the
snow draped over the second highest point on the July 2020 issue.
A C L I M B F O R H I STO RY 101
TEXT AND IMAGES BY ROBERT DASH
GROWING
A GREENER
FEAST
102
C A R ROT Excessive heat causes will also lose nutritional
stress to carrots that value. Researchers are
LEAF ultimately makes the crossbreeding carrots
roots bitter and woody. with wild varieties to
As temperatures and increase the plants’
300x m a g n i f i c at i o n ozone levels rise, carrots resilience to drought.
B LU E B E R RY Blueberries are increas- gated. Crops are also at
ingly threatened by risk from the spotted-
SEED unpredictable frosts wing drosophila, a fruit
and drought, though fly native to Asia that
researchers think the harms young berries and
300x m a g n i f i c at i o n problems can be miti- prefers warmer weather.
HOP
LEAF
240x m a g n i f i c at i o n
KALE
ANTHER
240x m a g n i f i c at i o n
106
OLIVE grow luscious olives. produced. Spanish
These perennial trees growers are also plant-
BUD are capable of long- ing cover crops to
term carbon sequestra- help surrounding soil
tion; the International capture carbon. But in
80x m a g n i f i c at i o n
Olive Council says they recent years, an inva-
absorb 10 kilograms sive bacterial disease
The flower buds of the of carbon dioxide has taken a toll on
arbequina olive tree per liter of olive oil Mediterranean groves.
HEMP
LEAF
170x m a g n i f i c at i o n
Industrial hemp is an
incredibly versatile
crop. Hemp seeds are
a rich source of protein
and fiber. Insulation
made from hemp is
touted as a zero-carbon
building material
because it locks in CO2
captured by the plant.
Researchers are explor-
ing other possible
climate-friendly
uses, from fuel to
bioplastics.
108
L AV E N D E R
BUD
300x m a g n i f i c at i o n
Protective branching
hairs that hold aromatic
oil glands cover a lav-
ender bud. Lavender
is widely used to flavor
foods and add scents
to cosmetics. Perennial
plants, such as lav-
ender, hazelnut, and
Kernza grain, live for
many years; farming
perennials can help
build the soil, feed pol-
linators, and reduce the
need for yearly tilling.
YOUNG SU DANESE ARE DRAWING INSPIRATION FROM
110
T H E PA S T W H I L E D E M A N D I N G A B E T T E R F U T U R E .
SUDAN’S
BY KRISTIN ROMEY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
NICHOLE SOBECKI
RECKONING
PREVIOUS PHOTO
Ahmed Ibrahim Alkhair
(at far left), wrapped
in the first flag of inde-
pendent Sudan, and
Awab Osman Aliabdo,
with the current flag,
At the base of Jabal take in the view from
Barkal, a sacred Jabal Barkal. Sudan’s
mountain and World 2019 revolution ousted
Heritage site, workers its Islamist dictator
dig to uncover one and stirred hopes for
of Africa’s great civ- democratic rule. But
ilizations. Variously after a military coup
known as Kush or last fall, the nation
Nubia, the kingdom now teeters between
was long depicted as the possibility of
a mere appendage of peace and the threat
neighboring Egypt. of more violence.
Schoolchildren visit
the pyramid tombs
of Kushite kings
and queens at the
ancient capital of
Meroë. Under the
dictatorship of Omar al
Bashir, Sudan’s school
curriculum ignored
or suppressed the
country’s non-Muslim
heritage and its roots
in sub-Saharan Africa.
ON A MONDAY
MORNING IN
LATE OCTOBER
OF LAST YEAR,
SUDAN’S LATEST
REVOLUTION
WAS CRUMBLING.
It had been just two and a half years since the
30-year Islamist dictatorship of Omar al Bashir
fell in April 2019. The nation’s military-civilian
Sovereign Council was steering away from the
legacy of the accused war criminal and three dark Fans of Sudanese
decades of repression, genocide, international hip-hop artists attend
sanctions, and the secession of South Sudan. a music festival in
Khartoum after the
But around noon on October 25, 2021, just revolution loosened
weeks ahead of a planned transition to civilian Islamist restrictions
control, the future of the African nation took on pop culture and
dress, including mod-
another turn. The chair of the Sovereign Council, ern hairstyles now
Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al Burhan, dissolved the worn by many young
government and put the civilian prime minister people in Sudan.
under house arrest. The general called it a state
of emergency, but the Sudanese people recog-
The National nized it as a coup and turned out by the hun-
Geographic Society, dreds of thousands to protest in the country’s
committed to illuminat-
ing and protecting the capital, Khartoum, and beyond.
wonder of our world, As befits a 21st-century regime change, it all
supports Explorer and played out in real time on social media, and I
photographer Nichole
Sobecki’s work in Africa. watched raptly from my laptop half a world
ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY away. I had been following Sudan since before
the coup and the revolution, covering the work out, repeated endlessly in a series of cell phone
of National Geographic Society grantees who photos and video clips: A young woman dressed
were excavating archaeological sites in the coun- in traditional white Sudanese dress stood atop
try’s north. My first reporting trip was during the a car, her finger pointing to the dimming sky,
final paranoid months of Bashir’s rule, a time chanting with the crowd: “My grandfather is
marked by food and gas shortages, restricted Taharqa, my grandmother is a kandaka!”
internet access, and multiplying military check- I was stunned. This wasn’t a chant support-
points. Our expedition team had quietly mapped ing a political group or social movement. The
out an escape route to the Egyptian border in protesters were declaring that they were the
case Sudan plunged into chaos. descendants of the ancient Kushite king Taharqa
When the Bashir government toppled in the and the Kushite queens and queen mothers
spring of 2019, the images unspooling across known collectively as kandakas. These royal
Twitter and Facebook were remarkable: A sea ancestors led a great empire that reigned from
of young men and women gathered in peaceful northern Sudan and once stretched from what
defiance of the regime, demanding a different is now Khartoum to the shores of the Mediter-
world for their generation. One scene stood ranean Sea.
le
7th century B.C.
Ni
ST
ER
TERN
SHAPING THE FUTURE
N
WES UPPER D
RT
DESE EGYPT ES
R
Arab nationalism and Islamism E
R
T
e
have molded much of Sudan’s Under Kushite rule d
political present, particularly (ca 750–656 B.C.)
in the country’s arid north.
But many Sudanese are Thebes
Major Egyptian Aswan
turning to three millennia and Kushite
of cultural history to build religious center ASWAN
Area of Egyptian HIGH DAM Boundary
a new identity— one that dominance Lake claimed
balances ancient African her- (ca 1550–770 B.C.) Nasser by Sudan
itage with recent centuries LOWER
of Arab influence. NUBIA
T Abu Simbel
Y P A
E G Wadi Halfa
RNUBIANSERT
D E
A
Y A Area of
L I B H UPPER
Egyptian
dominance
A NUBIA
le
Ni
Nuri
S ANCIENT RICHES
Dongola Karima
Jabal Barkal Kushite Atbara
Sudan is home to more El Kurru Heartland Atbara
pyramids than Egypt. Evi- Ed
Damer
dence of settlements, burials, Napata Meroë
and temples flanks the length Early Kushite capital and Major
of the Nile; some sites hold religious center at the base of Kushite
more than one monument. Jabal Barkal, late 7th century B.C. city
N
Archaeological sites A Omdurman
3000 B.C. to A.D. 1400 D Khartoum Blu
Before 3000 B.C.
S U e
N
ile
C H
hi
H M T S.
A Nyala
S H SU
D AN N
U T
Boundary claimed EI SO
by South Sudan ABY
SCALE VARIES IN THIS PERSPECTIVE. DISTANCE FROM
R AL KHARTOUM TO CAIRO IS APPROXIMATELY 1,000 MILES.
CENTICAN
AFRUBLIC CHRISTINE FELLENZ, MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, AND PATRICIA HEALY, NGM STAFF
REP SOURCES: ANCIENT NUBIA: AFRICAN KINGDOMS ON THE NILE, MARJORIE FISHER (EDITOR) AND THOMAS JAMES
(MAPS); MICHAEL IZADY, ATLAS OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD AND VICINITY; PETER LACOVARA, ANCIENT EGYPTIAN
HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY FUND; GEOFF EMBERLING, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN; DEREK WELSBY
EUROPE
BETWEEN
TWO WORLDS
IA
S A H A R A
S
A
SUDAN
A F R I C A
Arab
League Sudan has long been shaped by outside
member powers that have prized its rich resources
states
and strategic location at the intersection of
the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. Since
gaining independence from Britain and Egypt
Sudan is one of 10 African
in 1956, the country has faced two brutal
nations that are members civil wars and the secession of South Sudan.
of the Arab League.
2003
forces repel Armed groups in
more than 500 ethnic groups and Arab invaders the western Dar-
over 400 languages. Most ethnic and negotiate a fur region revolt,
Nubians are concentrated in small truce, known as claiming neglect
pockets and primarily speak Arabic; the Baqt, which from Khartoum.
there are efforts to revive the endures 600 years.
Nubian language. The nomadic Beja
speak their ancient language, Beja.
1504 Last Christian 2008 International Crim-
inal Court issues
GRAND Nubian kingdom
ETHIOPIAN an arrest warrant
RENAISSANCE Arabs falls; Muslim sul- for Bashir for war
DAM tans rule Sudan. crimes in Darfur.
1822
EGYPT
2011
Mohammed Ali South Sudan
conquers Sudan becomes an inde-
and rules on pendent nation.
A behalf of the
IOPI Ottoman Empire.
ETH
Nubians 2019 Pro-democracy
Be
a revolution
1881
j
Mahdi Moham-
Others med Ahmed
2021
S U DA N leads revolt and Top generals seize
establishes the power, derailing
Arabs first Sudanese the transition to
nationalist gov- democracy and
ernment, a strict sparking massive
Islamic state. protests.
The empire of Kush—known also as Nubia— name comes from the Arabic bilād al-sūdān, Shabaka, Shabataka, Taharqa, and T
was indeed once spectacular, but it was now or “land of the Black peoples.”) Since Sudan became Egypt’s 25th dynasty, often
mostly relegated to footnotes in books on achieved independence, it has been ruled by an as the Black pharaohs.
ancient Egyptian history. Even within Sudan, Arabic-speaking political elite. Following his victory over Egypt, Piy
few students growing up under the Bashir Before the 2019 revolution, an Islamist govern- to Jabal Barkal to expand the Amun
regime learned much of distant Kush. So why ment and membership in the Arab League made a scale never seen before, decorati
was the legacy of an ancient kingdom, little it advantageous for Bashir’s regime to present scenes of the Kushite conquest of its fo
known even among archaeologists, much less Kush not as a uniquely African phenomenon but nizers. Today the story of that conque
the average Sudanese, suddenly a rallying cry as a legacy of its powerful modern ally, Egypt, with depictions of Kushite chariotee
in the streets of Khartoum? and, by extension, a chapter in the history book down Egyptian troops—lies buried so
When I returned to Sudan in January 2020 to of the Near East. Kushite sites such as Jabal under the sand. What few scenes su
explore these questions, the postrevolutionary Barkal and El Kurru were marketed as quick, millennia were excavated and docum
capital felt energized. In Khartoum, where just exotic trips for Western tourists visiting the ruins archaeologists in the 1980s. Deeme
a year earlier women could be publicly flogged of Abu Simbel, just over the border in Egypt. ile for regular exposure to the elem
O
for wearing pants, young Sudanese were dancing were mostly reburied—a fitting metap
at music festivals and packing cafés. The city’s NCE THE SPIRITUAL center of the important ancient kingdom that has
thoroughfares and underpasses were embla- Kushite kingdom, Jabal Barkal is an cloaked in obscurity.
zoned with portraits of modern martyrs—some enormous 30-story sandstone mesa Why have so few people heard of
of the estimated 250 protesters killed during that erupts from the Sahara and starters, the earliest historical accou
and since the revolution—as well as murals of looms over the west bank of the Nile Kushites come from the Egyptians,
ancient Kushite kings and gods. near Karima, about 200 miles north to erase the humiliating conquest
Sudan’s unique location at the intersection of Khartoum. Some 2,700 years annals and presented Kush as just on
of Africa and the Middle East, and at the con- ago, King Taharqa inscribed his name atop this troublesome groups that disrupted the
fluence of three major tributaries of the Nile, sacred mountain, covering it in gold as a glitter- That narrative was left unquestio
made it an ideal locus for powerful ancient ing, triumphant rejoinder against his enemies. first European archaeologists to arriv
kingdoms—as well as a territory coveted by Today only traces of Taharqa’s inscription are in the 19th century. Poking around
more recent empires. In the modern era it fell visible to climbers. At the base of the mountain Kushite temples and pyramids, the
under Ottoman-Egyptian rule followed by are the ruins of the Great Temple of Amun, orig- the grand ruins to be mere imitation
British-Egyptian domination until 1956, when inally built by Egyptians who colonized Kush in tian monuments.
the Republic of the Sudan gained its indepen- the 16th century B.C. Over the five centuries that That view of the African kingdom
dence. Today its diverse citizenry includes more Egypt controlled Kush, the Amun temple was forced by the racism of most Western
than 500 ethnic groups speaking over 400 lan- rebuilt and refurbished by a who’s who of New “The native negroid race had never
guages and skews incredibly young: Roughly 40 Kingdom pharaohs: Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, either its trade or any industry worth
percent of the population is under 15. Ramses the Great. Assimilation was the order tion, and owed their cultural position t
Sudan is Africa’s third largest country; it’s of the day, and during that time Kushite elites tian immigrants and to the imported
also the world’s third largest Arab nation. (Its trained in Egyptian schools and temples. civilization,” remarked George Reisner
The remains of the Amun temple that visitors University archaeologist who underto
see today, however, come from a time after the liest scientific excavations of the royal
collapse of the New Kingdom and the retreat temples of Kush in the early 20th cen
of Egyptian power in Kush. By the eighth cen- To Sudanese archaeologist Sami Ela
tury B.C., Jabal Barkal had become the center of ner was as sloppy in method as he was
Napata, the Kushite capital from which a series in interpretation. In 2014, Elamin and
of local rulers consolidated power and turned archaeologists sifted a large mound of
KUSH’S HISTORY WAS the tables on their former colonizers. dirt from Reisner’s dig site at the ba
UNEARTHING
referred to He returned to Sudan and has been excavating
at Jabal Barkal and elsewhere for several years.
ye returned Now Elamin and a team of Sudanese and
THE KUSHITE
n temple to American archaeologists are searching for the
ing it with homes and workshops of ancient Kushites who
ormer colo- supported this spiritual capital for millennia.
WORLD
est—replete Jabal Barkal has long been a popular destina-
ers running tion for Sudanese who come during holidays to
ome 15 feet climb the mesa and picnic in the broad swaths
urvived the of shade it casts across the desert. In the past,
mented by Elamin says, visitors paid little attention to the
The pyramids of Kush command much attention, but
ed too frag- sprawl of ruins surrounding the magnificent
archaeologists rely on smaller discoveries—from
ments, they rock outcropping. But that’s changing.
figurines to ostrich-shell beads—to reveal the history
phor for an Elamin notes that he’s seen more locals visit-
and legacy of this long-overlooked African kingdom.
s long been ing Jabal Barkal and wandering its ruins. “Now
they ask a lot of questions about the antiquities
Kush? For and the history and the civilization,” he says.
unts of the Elamin and his colleagues are eager to engage
, who tried with their fellow citizens and present this dis-
from their tant chapter of history to a generation hungry
ne of many to learn. It’s an opportunity and responsibility
eir borders. as Sudanese archaeologists, he says, to bring
ned by the citizens together by showing them the efforts
ve in Sudan of even distant generations.
B
crumbling
y declared U I L T S H O R T L Y before the coun-
ns of Egyp- try gained independence in 1956
and inaugurated 15 years later, the
m was rein- Sudan National Museum is a cav-
n scholars. ernous, poorly lit space with no
developed climate control to protect artifacts
hy of men- from the relentless heat and dust
to the Egyp- of Khartoum. Most of the objects are housed
d Egyptian in old-fashioned wood-and-glass display cases
r, a Harvard alongside yellowing, typewritten labels.
ook the ear- But the museum is chock-full of treasures. A
l tombs and larger-than-life granite statue of Taharqa from
ntury. Jabal Barkal, broad-shouldered and expression-
amin, Reis- less, commands the museum’s entrance, and
s misguided massive statues of the Kushite rulers flank its
d a team of ground-floor gallery.
f excavated Tucked around the corner from Taharqa is
ase of Jabal one of the country’s most heralded artifacts:
lamin says. a glowering bronze head of Caesar Augustus.
s.” It’s believed to have been the war trophy of a
miles from one-eyed Kushite queen named Amanirenas,
e Piye and who battled the Romans in Egypt around 25 B.C.
ere buried. The museum label neglects to note, however,
randfather that the storied artifact is a copy. The original
ain that the was whisked off by colonial forces shortly after
athers.” The its discovery in 1910 and now resides in the
haeology in British Museum.
11
10
3
5 6 14
15
9
1. (Overleaf) Shabtis— 2. Amputated leg 4. Iron arrowheads, 6. Ceramic bowl, 8. Spindles for 10. Quartzite statue of 12. Archers’
statuettes crafted to bones of adult male, 7th-4th centuries B.C. 6th-4th centuries B.C. manufacturing textiles, Egyptian pharaoh Amen- rings, 6th-4
perform menial tasks in 7th-4th centuries B.C. 6th-4th centuries B.C. hotep II, 15th century B.C. centuries B.
the afterlife—from burial 5. Christian inscription 7. Arrowhead,
of Kushite king Nastasen, 3. Inscribed ceramic jar, in Greek, 10th-13th 6th-4th centuries B.C. 9. Gold leaf from tomb of 11. Storage jar, 7th cen- 13. Necklac
ca 315 B.C. 6th-4th centuries B.C. centuries A.D. King Nastasen, ca 215 B.C. tury B.C.-4th century A.D. 6th-4th cen
18
12 17
13
19 20
21
23
16 22
’ thumb 14. Burial finds, including 16. Beads from Kushite 18. Ostrich-shell beads, 20. Decorated drinking 22. Fine redware bowl,
4th beads and animal teeth, burial, 4th century 2nd-7th century A.D. cup, 4th century B.C.-4th ca 1st-4th centuries A.D.
.C. 7th-4th centuries B.C. B.C.-4th century A.D. century A.D.
19. Prehistoric 23. Bronze alloy falcon from
e, 15. Ceramic plate, 17. Ceramic jar, stone hand axes, 21. Skull from Kushite burial, tomb of King Nastasen,
nturies B.C. 6th-4th centuries B.C. 6th-4th centuries B.C. 9000-3000 B.C. 4th century B.C.-4th century A.D. ca 315 B.C.
BELOW
Adherents of Sufism,
a mystical dimension
of Islam, perform the
dhikr, a ritual that can
involve drumming and
dance, at the tomb of
Sheikh Hamed al Nil,
in Omdurman. Sudan
is home to one of the
world’s largest Sufi
communities. Its lead-
ers wield powerful
influence, and some
Sufi orders supported
the popular uprising
that toppled Bashir.
126 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
know their history, they can protect it.”
Then I pose a delicate question: How do ethnic
groups living in areas of Sudan that never were
part of the Kushite Empire—tribes from the
Nuba mountains or Darfur, for example—react
when asked to rally around an ancient history
they don’t feel is theirs? Bashir’s regime was
notorious for exploiting ethnic and religious
differences to prevent the richly diverse coun-
try from uniting against the Arabized political
elite in Khartoum. Jahin furrows his brow and
pauses. “This is a good point. We need a lot of
work, really.”
Like many young Sudanese, Jahin rejects the
idea that “Arab” is a Sudanese identity. “If some-
one says, ‘My roots come from Saudi Arabia,’ or
something like that, I don’t believe it,” he says
firmly. “I believe that our roots are the same or
close together … In general, we are Sudanese.
That’s enough.”
T
H E I M A G E O F T H E R E VO L U T I O N A RY
kandaka, white-robed among the
protesters, raising her finger in the
sky as she invokes Kushite kings
and queens, has been memorialized
in street art across Khartoum and
around the globe. But when I meet
Alaa Salah during my second trip to Sudan in
early 2020, she’s unrecognizable in a burgundy
headscarf and dark clothes, sitting across from
me at a crowded open-air café on the bank of the
Blue Nile in the fading evening light.
At 23, Salah became a face of the Sudanese rev-
Outside the museum I meet Nazar Jahin, a olution, a role that would propel her from engi-
tour guide and member of Artina (“Our Art”), neering student to international figure invited
a student group organized during the 2019 pro- to speak before the UN Security Council on the
tests to support Sudan’s struggling cultural insti- role of women in the new Sudan. Through an
tutions. “The last government, really, they don’t interpreter, Salah tells me that growing up she
care about history,” Jahin tells me. Much of that was taught little in school about the history of
disinterest was the result of the former govern- ancient Kush and that she had to discover it on
ment’s hard-line interpretation of Islam. “We had her own. It was only a few years earlier that she
a minister of tourism who said that statues were traveled to see the fabled pyramids at Meroë. She
forbidden,” Jahin recalls, shaking his head. was astonished by what she saw: “We have a lot
But there are bright spots on the horizon, he of pyramids, even more than Egypt!”
says. The Italian Embassy and UNESCO pledged When the protesters on the streets of Khar-
funds in 2018 to refurbish the museum (a proj- toum began the chant “My grandfather is
ect now delayed by the pandemic), and since Taharqa, my grandmother is a kandaka,” Salah
the revolution more Sudanese are visiting the explains, they were expressing their pride in the
museum and sites like Jabal Barkal and the defiance and bravery of the ancient kings and
ancient capital of Meroë. queens. It made them feel as if they too belonged
“This is most important,” Jahin says. “Suda- to this ancient civilization of strong and coura-
nese have to know their history first. If they geous leaders, particularly for the women who
A Sudanese family
from Karima tours the
nearby tombs of El
Kurru, where some of
the earliest Kushite
leaders were buried in
the eighth century B.C.
BELOW
130 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
O
in Khartoum,
N M Y L A S T F R I D AY
I cross the White Nile to the city
of Omdurman, where the tomb of
19th-century Sufi sheikh Hamed al
Nil lies in a cemetery bounded by
busy streets. Some 70 percent of
Sudanese consider themselves fol-
lowers of Sufism, a mystical expression of Islam.
The country’s Sufi orders often play an influen-
tial role in internal politics, and the Sufis who
marched from Omdurman to army headquarters
to join the 2019 protests helped oust the regime.
Each Friday at sundown, hundreds of follow-
ers of the Qadiriyya order gather at the cemetery
to perform the dhikr, a ritual that often involves
chanting and dance. As men in green and red
robes slowly slap their tambours in rhythm, the
crowd looks on and sways. The drumming picks
up pace, and the dancing and chanting begin. La
ilaha illa Allah. “There is no God but God,” the
crowd repeats, as clouds of frankincense and
dust rise in the air. The dhikr ends with a kinetic,
exultant release, and people disperse, some fol-
lowing the call to prayer to the mosque, others
wending their way through the cemetery.
Several graves are fresh and decorated in the
colors of the Sudanese flag. These belong to
some of the protesters killed during the revolu-
tion, students who announced in the streets that
they too were kings and kandakas, inheritors of
the complex legacy of a land where some of the
earliest empires intersected.
Watching students pay their respects at one of
the graves, I was struck by how fragile the new
Sudan felt, like a precious ancient vessel being
carefully excavated from the earth. Now the
coup has injected even more uncertainty into
played a pivotal role in the protests. “Whenever a nation and generation hungry for democracy
people see a young woman in the street fight- and stability.
ing for Sudan, going into the streets for Sudan, Most of the grand palaces and temples of
that means she’s brave, she’s very defiant,” she Kush disappeared long ago, looted for parts
explains. “She’s strong and a warrior, just like and swallowed by sand. But many monuments
the kandakas.” to the dead remain: the pyramids of kings and
In the nearly three years since the fall of Bashir, kandakas standing sentinel in the desert, the
however, the role of women has been increasingly tombs of sheikhs, and the tombstones of stu-
shunted aside. That was Salah’s main concern as dent protesters crowding urban cemeteries.
we spoke, to ensure that Sudan’s modern kanda- These monuments persist as regimes collapse
kas are safe and would have proper representa- and rebuild, telling anyone willing to listen: We
tion in any transitional government. Since our fought for this. We were once here too. j
interview, the coup—which, with the threat of
a return to a repressive regime, feels more like a Kristin Romey is the archaeology editor for
National Geographic. Photographer Nichole
counterrevolution—has made the situation for Sobecki covered cheetah trafficking for the
Sudanese women even more perilous. September 2021 issue.
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