0 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC From the Editor In tRoo Nariowat Geom ¢ Israel C. Russell returned from an expedition to Mount $t. Elia bearing rocks. They marked the begin ning of the Society's long fascination with ancient life-forms Alaska, with fos The Society's Committee for Research and Exploration has mammoth skelet in Madaguscar. In 1933 explo! n Of Natural Hist his discovery of dinosaur eggs in es, fre funded scores of paleontological stu in Wyoming to prehiste ic poll © Roy Ch y wrote a NATIONAL Geo. apman Andrews of the American Museur article recount GRar As contin desert ¢ Gohi onth’s article about dinosaur finds in Patagonia attests, We comn the magazine last year (above), and we support the w at the University of Chicago. Ser ar tradition ur embryo. sculptures by Brian Cooley for of Paul Sereno (bel 10 has received eight Society oned dines 3 paleontologi nts for his globe-spanning discoveries, which inchede the fossil remains of a nt 90-million-year-old Sahara carnivore called Curcharodontosaurus, I don't think there's anyone digging for dinosaurs who has n een Louched ric,” says Sereno, “They ma ave worked grantees, 01 ration lit in them by an 1, there is simply no way to reach the global with grantees, or simply had that spark of ing the magazine, And at the other blic that comp As for you Pa ticle in S10 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine. 11 Serenas of the future who are new findit s for you y inspiration in these pages: g. We're holdin afew pag tty Cli Laere elgg ilk an aire ld OU me ele alSua tment arte) dire a become a tender conveyance as Sil totes a cub to a new den,a constant Perce omer Cott remit CTeT Exe und ree ccs UCC LL Pertinrarar unncs ereri te Pram PEN eed DO hours or more. Sita is living at Arefoees Cir aces omtoee im Ont Moll Pe BRON Rahm a > 4 r¥ Environmental firebrand Samuel Pero caesarean aNTe aad el ACen emma , Brupac treo ont Corea tee Pen Clu M ECT ene prota ea lca tenet at) e olel (ecele) Be medicine, a practice that has declined there. Selling tiger partis illegal in the U.S. Yet a recent survey found dozens of products advertised as estates Mercere CenaertQuality time: With hor belly full, Sita nuzzlas one of her trio of six-manth-old cubs. Their home in Bandhavgarh’s 268 square miles was onee the royal hunt ing grounds of the maharajas of Rows, The park now shel- ters nearly 50 tigers and their prey, TIGERS. st saw the tigress called Sita in 1986 in Bandhaygarh National Park in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. She lay asleep on a hillside when the elephant | was sharing with the Indian natu- ralist Hashim Tyabji found her, full bellied after eating from the spotted deer that lay next to her. She was exhausted by the steady strain of having to feed and care for her first litter of three cubs, whose mewing [could just make out from still higher up the slope amid the expectant cawing of crows that teetered in the branches of the surrounding trees. We were just 30 feet or so from the tigress, close enough to hear her steady, sonorous breathing. Over the next half hour or so three more elephants bearing tourists came and went. Cameras clicked. One over- eager photographer dropped a canister of film, and the mahout loudly ordered his mount to pick it up with its trunk and return it to its owner. The tigress slept on, oblivious, Nothing seemed to faze her—nothing, until a rufous-and-white tree pie smaller than a North American magpie fluttered down onto her kill. She was up and fully awake in a millisecond, swatting at the ter- rifted bird with one enormous forepaw and roaring so loudly the sky seemed to split. Ttwas the first time I’d been so close to so much tiger anger. | was thrilled but frightened too, and looked to Hashim for an explanation. Why had she st? become so furiaus soFast food Spooked by an elephant carrying sightseers, chital, of spotted deer, scamper across the Bandhavgarh grassland. Sita crouches silent, still, and well camouflaged in the brush (right), ready to explode in pursuit of the park's most common tiger prey. A shrinking prey base may be an even greater threat te tigers than loss of habitat and poaching. He smiled. Tigers,” he told my, “do not like to share.” Last sprin rh start~ ing out again at dawn, riding the same elephant with the same mahout, and looking for the sume Ligress. Sita is nearly 16 now, unusually ald for a tigress in the wild, ancl she has given birth to 18 tigers over the 11 intervening years, Just seven, made it 1 adulthood, ‘The rest died or dis: appeared: One young male was killed by an adult male seeking to displace the cub’s father, and his sister drowned in 4 monsoon flood: a female cub struggled with physical deformities, then seemed to waste away, And all three offspring from Sita's fifth litter—born in March 1996—died two months later. Ne one knows for sure what happened to them. Still, less than ten days afer the loss of her fifth set of cubs, Sita was seen mating again, with the big, testy resident male, He is nick named Charger because of his enthusiasm for doing just that, once clawing his way up the was hack at Bandhav Crore € Wan a frequent contributor te Nertoxat Ghoceaniuc, i a biographer. historkan and writer af docamentary films. He spent part of his, hoyhood in India and often writes abjrut its wildlife back end of a tourist elephant when it got too close and, in the process traumatizing the visitors on board The forest was still dark as we set out, and our fleet of five elephants: moved along in most total silence. But around us there were already morning sounds: Peacocks called from their nighttime roosts and were answered hy the raucous craw- ing of jungle fowl. gaudy ances tors of the domestic chicke Gray langur monkeys gave out with the low self-satisfied hoot ing with which they greet the day and warn one another to be on alert. Ahead of us we could just make out a broad stretch of aw. where [hoped te sec Sita aga very Icky, catch a glimpse of the new litter of cubs said to be somewhere in the area as well. eventna aot long before | left for India, the former head of one of Amer: best known 700s appeared on televised talk show, clad in salar) clothes and holding a live cub in his arms. Tigers kill their prey by breaking its neck, he assured his host, then bury it overnight. Only 2,000 tigets remain in the wild and all of them will be gone by the year 2000, he suggest- ed. The only surviving tigers will be in 2008, His heart may have been in the right place hut everything he said was suspect. In fet, tigets throttle most of their prey—in the field the distinctive throat wounds left by their big canines alten provide the best evidence that they have been at work. And while they do con. ceal their kills ax best they can in brush or leaves or tall grass, they donot bury them. Nor has anyone any real idea how many tigers survive in the wild—the dearth of teliable numbers is one of the mast frustrating aspects of tiger conservation. There is no question that NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, DECEMBER 1997—— eae Afenanssran =o ‘No one knows hows many wild tigers exist today. The: ‘commonly cited estimate of 5,000 to 7,000 is n guess, since ‘coins nithodds can be faulty, soma goverminints. Inflate ‘number, and eat experts may understate numbers for fear ‘otfosing protectad status. What is curtain: Il tigers are to sureivein the wild, they neod massive human intervention. a Where can the tiger hunt—and survive? Like candies guttering In the wind, three of the world’s eight subspecies of tigers have been snuffed out. The Caspian, Bali, and Javan tigers are gone; the five surviving sub spacies—Bengal, South China, Indechinese, Sumatran, and Siberian (Amur!—are all endangered. Still, hope remains, A conser: tium of tiger experts has created a frame of faference for tiger: preservation efforts. Using satellite imagery, the World Wildlife Fund end the Wildlife Conservation Society have plotted tiger conservation units—forests where tigers may have a fighting chanco— in the Indian subcontinent, Indochina, and Indonesia, Yet, says mammalogist John Sei- dansticker of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C, “Some of the most marginal popula- tions will blink out in the next few yaars. And thickly forested areas seen from space may actually be empty of animals. We don't know yet. But this isa start.” Tigérs are Nonored in Asian lore and tell gion. Yet Asians living with tigers must regard them pragmatically, Farming villages on the NATIONAL GEOGRAPIIC, NECEMIER 1997JAPAN, yn mA ESTIMATED TIGER POPULATIONS ladesh 300.460 oi so-240 | mbodia 200 500-6 Nepo! 0-280 North Keres i —and human tiv village ars collecting tiger bon for traditional Chi body ine rodisiscs, Tiger t namin bone, tially phi anei phorus, calciu 1 no scientific proof of its bene! tigatic pre me bane ain ¢ y and arsenic, added s-of theit patency by produ Keeping track of the Siberian tiger Awalcome'sign attracts Dale Miquelle of the Hotnocker Wildlife Institute during a Siberian tiger census in Russia's Far East. The count pegged the population at 430 to 470—figures some researchers think too optimistic, Still, the Sibe- rian is back from the brink and now may have the brightest among dim tiper proapetts. Miquello helps: coordinate the Siberian Tiger Proj: ect, which developed habitat pro- tection plan (below). It classifies areas according ta their ability ta sustain tigers in the wild:Fatal beauty Working to end trophy killings, Viadimir Shetinin, leader of a Russia er skin. A young Siberian (right) isthe son of Olga. poaching squad, dispinys a confiscated ti a tigress equipped with a radio cola said to be so. full of tigers, that some conserva tionists worried about what woul! hapy all the surp The s animals, came the bad news. The assassination of Mes. Gandhi'in 1984 swept from the scene Indian wildlife’s most powerful defender lowly Afterward, a8 effective political power 5 shifted from the central government at New Delhi tw local politic individual states, enthusiasm for defending India’s jungles in the slackened under pressure from ever numbers of poor voters who saw them. pri matily as easy sources of fuel and fodder. The suthenticity of the gains Project Tiger had claimed came into question as well, No one doubts that the number of tigers really had risen. But in reaching their ever more ive tallies, forest officials F fying individual pugmarks, or paw prints—a system since shown to be inexact—and coneerned for their jobs if the number of an imals under their care didn't steadily pulation and if other vigorous males remain, two or nore fatal acciden R three s could still spell the nd for the ti 1 ask appen 1 from the park vught f the sighed, “they could call it the City of Peacocks, HE CONSERVATEC initially stunned by the poaching emer gency in In And there was soon evidence af poaching for the bone trade from Indochina and the Russian Far East as well Suddenly every gain seemed in danger o: wiped out. Articles began to appear in the press declaring Rather th na feeling from tiger sticker, in's Natior land,” re mann logical Park in Wa: at the § realized plain n crisis.” A bi sticker witnes the tiger was ance pokcn man, Seide ed the pass ing of the Javan tiger as a your carcherTiger as symbol An tian nawab posed in 1940 with trophies he collected on tiger hunts. purse way in Mangalore, where painted dancers prepare ti eagerly adopted by British colonials, The creature's grandeur is captured in a different escort an effigy of the goddess Durga fram her temple, A fierce slayer of demons, Durga is aften depicted riding a tiger, and hag never gotten over it, “It was like mourning a death j the family.” he says. “My first reaction was to lash out in anger. Sinc then I've learned that anger alone is a waste of time. We need to learn from these tragedies so they won't be repeated. Those lessons (ook time to learn: initially produced denials, quarrels over funds among conservation orga The crisis recriminations, ons, bickering betweett advocates of eap: tive breeding and those determined, against all dds, to save the species in the wild. And any number of rescue schemes were put forward, including a suggestion from an overzealous Briton, who sought funds with which to tran quilize and radio-collar every single tiger in the Project Tip keep track of them all from space Bat real progress was made too, Representa tives of most of the 14 tiger-range countries net at New Delhi in 1994 and promised for the first time to. cooperate in combating the tiger trade, The next year the Exxon Corpora- nizat reserves sa that a satellite could tion pledged more than a million dollars pnually for a fivesy worldwide “Save the campaign to be administered by National Fish and Wildlife Tiger Fx the U.S.-based Foundation. Pressure from foreign governments, includ- ing the U.S., helped persuade China and Taiwan to enforce their bans on the t je in tiger bones, and, perhaps in part as a result, the incidence of tiger aching in both India and Russia appears to have fallen off since 1995. Belinda Wright and Ashok Kumar q reassured, poi that the market for medicines that at fe are ir claim has comtain tiger rank, derivatives not They suggest that Indian trad ers have simply become more crafty in concealing their hloody work; certainly the ille: gal slaughter of sor wildlife in India ics. And so does the official lick of com- ligers as well as leopards and oth cant mitment that allows it to. go on Perhaps the most hopeful sign for the tiger is that serious science is at last being enlist in its conservation across much of its range 1 WAS HARLY MOMANG iti Nugarahole Ni tional Park in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, Two massive gaur bulls occu. pied a roadside clearing, Gaur are the largest wild cattle on earth, The elder hadn't yet risen from his night's sleep, but he weighed about a ton and looked, just lying there, like a dark brown mountain, In what seemed to me anun- wise effort to intimidate him, his young-rival began a slow-motion strut across the clearing on his white-stockinged hoofs, carefully keep: ing in profile so he'd seem still bigger than he alrendy was. He eame to a halt beside a sizable bush and slowly roiled its leaves with his horns, The alder bull seemed unimpressed, But he hums d to his feet. and, r wing at a yet more stately pace, approached a termite mound, lowered his hortis, and, us slowly and deliber ged it over. The younger hull waited until the dust cleared, then started ately as possible, nt NATIONAL GE He, DECEMWER 1997nice b lava k. Instead ind replace an alrea a to. see wha ve been eating—iunglamorous,” he admits. “But after providing protection, management's most important role should be to build up the prey base, With enough to eat, enough space, and enough pro- tection. tigers will take care of themselves.” THREE SUBSPRCIES that surwive clse- where in Asia—Indochinese, Sumatran, and Siberian, or Amur, tigers—face all manner of threats, But the most serious in every case is the potential loss of prey. Tigers remain in six Indochinese coun tries—Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Vietnam, and ‘Thailand. Bur all have suffered war or civil unrest in the past half century, and their interiors have largely been off-limits to scientists, While forest still covers: much of the region, no one knows how much wildlife survives beneath its cane George Schaller, the peripatetic director for science at the Wildlife Conservation Society ‘whose pioneering 1967 study, The Deer and the Tiger, set the standard for scientific research on the animal, is not optimistic. “I'm afraid there are very few tigers left in Indochina,” he says, “and there are Vey few researchers to study them, Forests look intact from the air, but many are alarmingly empty on the ground. In Laos you can walk for weeks in the rain forest and n poaching than because local people have snared and caten all but- few barking deer. ‘The remaining tigers are forced to wander for miles in-search of their next meal. When you ask villagers if there ate tigers nearby, they answer, Yes, ane came by here a year age,” Most populations are too small and scattered to sur vive much longer.” Schaller’s colleague Alan Rabinowitz, one of the few scientists to have worked extensively in the region, agrees. “Deer are disappearing, everywhere,” he says. Four of the six species that were staples of the tigers’ diet in Thailand have been virtually annihilated. Commerce in animal parts continues to flourish, All of the'six range countries except Laos have signed the crrEs agreement barring international trade in- endangered species. But tiger parts are still sold openly in the marketplace alongside bits and pieces of the animals they once fed upon; in one Burmese bazaar tiger skirt was recently being-sold for $3 per square inch; an inch of rib enst $4.50, TIGERS “If the tiger is to survive in Indochina, gow ernments will have to act fast,” Rabinowity, says, “Local people will not own, Why should they? There's nothing sv with long-term schemes aimed local communities in conservat we haven't time to wait for them to werk. We need first to find out where the remaining tigers are, ‘Then we need a triage system like the one used in battlefield hospitals, to separate those popu- lations large and strong enough to have some hope of survival from those probably too weak to make it. Finally, governments will have to designate protected areas for tigers, then commit the resources necessary to guard and manage them without compromise. Other- wise, we'll lose the Indochinese tiger” The news from Indonesia is more encour- aging. It was once home to the Bali, Javan, and Sumatran subspecies, Now only the tigers of Sumatra renin, and until recently many authorities believed they were about to dis. appeat as well. But findings by a mostly Indonesian team, headed by Ron Tilson, direc- tor of conservation at the Minnesota Zoo, stig gest that reports of the Sumatran tiger's imminent demise may have been: premature. The study area, Way Kambas National Park near the island’s southern end, seems art unlikely source of hape. More than half a mil lion people live along its border, and much of the forest has been logged itt the recent past, some parts of it more than once. It was thought until 1995 that no more than 24 tigers survived within the whole park, and during the Tilson team's initial 15 months of studying one 62- square-mile scetion, its members: glimpsed individual tigers just twice. But when they used modern. methods of counting, including camera traps tripped by passing animals, they discovered that their study area alone—just over one-eighth of the park—was home to 6 tigers and regularly visit ed by 12 more. They now believe Way Kambas may contain as many as 36 tigers and are train- ing “rapid assessment teams" to survey Suma- tra's other parks and unprotected forests to see if tigers are underreported there ay well. Indonesian authorities estimate that there could be as many as 50) tigers scattered in reserves alll across the jsland plus another 100 in unprotected areas, and Tilson and his re- searchers have helped the government draw up =Tiger as performer hirn re miles af degradec al Chitwan National that they remain pro: thi keer vie until ss. Arid last sur k and rach range country willHouse cats Botty Young worthwest Arka #8 with Butterball, o 62 tigers at her ter as. Young takes in tigers qj eeds them—even trai from an i up by owners unprepared s them to use a jumbo:size litter box. After she nur says Young, " $5, he took to sleeping in het bed. “He snc lost 49 animals in 1992 alone ertheless, Talukdar said, The rhin in the Ass psyche, Lord Krishna is su pe Assam to fight an evil king, ed to have brong! using it just like a tank. We arc termined ‘to protect it.” In 904 he and his. two equally league t tough-minded — ce Pankaj Sharma and haran af waging the day-to-day je required if {ni ave the Kaziranga has man same problems that ctuaties all over w distinctly it $ Survive, Protection requires strict ges and prac It always will ays Ullas Karanth. There is # criminal 1 sophisticated cities. We must deal with y fields mare hust acres the B led camp: fi right up to it uh sor Bangladeshi refugees, 1 fee tv ferry poacher: s finance strict than at are often in arrears; when | visited the park, the same wa from the pai Nowhere is policing mc rarga National Park in the eastern [ er the rangers nor the army-of some 40 ssam. “Only God can keep people guards whe wi peer paid for tigers in other parks,” said Bhu- weeks. The battered rifles the guards carry are he atttomatic weapons wielde harge of its antipoaching effort, He isa fierce, by intruders, Finally, the great river overflows pearcled man with bright silver rings on all his its banks every monsoon, drowning hund edo it of animals and driving lnundreds more—tigers ed, though tigers are only the and thi and elephants included—into the ficiaries of the officers’ pritr «horned anyone witha gu rdplain of the Yet, against all these odds, Kazirang, continue to hold the line: Poaehing within the P urply curtailed, “We are on a maputra River, Kazit 1 1,200 of these massiv vore than half of all the wild Indian r 0, “and we are fighting wholeheartet nes mat &x waditional Chinese’ medicine, and gerite. Guards as well a8 poachers have been horn can bring more than $8,000 on the black’ killed in the struggle to save this extraordinary market—many the average annual in-place. There are some 120 permanent outpost come of the people who live around the park. within its borders. Within ten minutes of the nweent 1989 a 6 thines in India sound of a shot, armed units can be on the putchered for their horns. Kaziranga scene. An expert rhine poacher might be able NATIONAL G HC, DECEM MUR 199;t6 saw off the precious horn and nace outof the park again in that amount of time—though at least 20 intruders have lost their lives trying to do just that in the past four years. But tiger poaching in Kaziranga is virtually imposs “No one can’skin a tiger in so short.a time,” ukdar explains. “And they can’t bury it either. ‘The smell lasts fora month, It can't be hidden!” ‘The result is that Kariranga remains some- thing like « paradise for tigers.and their prey. Under Ullas Karanth’s direction, a team of young researchers working with camera traps in one small section of the pak has recently captured enough individual animals on film for him to guess that Kaziranga as a whole may be home to more than. 85 tigers, including cubs, Each cat's stripes are distinctive, Karanth explains, “a sortof bar ceide by which tigers can be identified.” Prey and tiger density here may be even greater than at Nagarabole. But Kaziranga also offers the most vivid pos sible reminder that the tiger is only the most charismatic actor on a crowded stage. Above the yellow ten-foat grass, against the Koda- chrome blue sky; shrieking flocks of green par- akeets fluttered in and aut of silk-cotton trees cavered with crimson flowers; the fleshy fallen blossoms, the size and shape of six-fingered ploves, patterned the path ahead of us, forming red carpet as we rolled forward in our jeep. A crested serpent eagle struggled to get off the ground a few yards ahead of us, a big. crow: pheasant pinioned in its talons, Wherever the dense walls of grass part to reveal a clearing, there are animals im over: whelming profusion—thundreds of wild boar and hog deer and swiamp deer, scores of sleek black buffalo with horns like scimitars, rhinos that look as large as fire trucks, On the edge of a shallow lake late one afictnoon two groups af elephants filed gravely past one another with- out a sideways glance; | counted 58 cows and calves and one magnificent lone tusker before they all glided into the grasé again and dis- appeared. The next evening a cow rhino concerned for her calf and agitated by the sound of the jeep in which Pankaj Sharma and 1 were riding sud- denly whirled, kicking up dust, and charged straight for us. Sharma is a big man with a big voice, but when he clapped his hands and shouted 1 warn her off, she kept coming, amazingly fast, her broad body seeming to float 4 above the ground, head high, cars straining to make out the source of the annoying sound— Mrs. Magoo at full tilt, We pulled away. She lost track of us, slowed, sniffed the air;and went back to grazing. As we beaded back to headquarters at dusk each evening, we passed antipoaching, squads on the move alang the winding forest tracks. ‘These are the authentic heroes of conservation, little bands of two and three men wearing tat- tered overcoats and armed with rifles, moving through the mist. Without them this magical world would long ago have vanished. That it has not already done 40 despite the odd: matic proof that with help from scienti support and understanding from the test of the world Asians ean save theit own forests; the tiger and its world still have a future. ACK ON THE TRACK of Sita in Bandhav- garh the ‘sun was up, and somewhere high above our beads 4 hive of bees, awakened by its warming rays, began to hum. The elephant continued to squelch his massive way through the swamp, leaving behind foot- prints as big around as wastebaskets. ‘There were signs-of tigers everywhere. Pug marks crisscrossed the inky mud. Deep within the grass laya clutch af whitened bones,all that remained of a chital kill. A sleek gray-brown jungle cat, the size of one of its domestic cousins, leaped soundlessly onto a fallen tree, the better to see down into the grass, Something small was mowing there, ‘The cat arced high into the air to maximize its pounce, disappeared for a moment, then returned to the log, a mouse wriggling in its mouth, and watched us pass before setiling down to eat. ‘The mahout nudged his elephant to the left, toward a little stream that twists along the base of the hills, The elephant began to rumble almost imperceptibly. A tiger was nearby. The mahout leaned through the undergrowth. Then, there was Sita, sprawled out in dump of grass overlooking the stream. The crimson rib cage of a half-caten chital rested just afew feet away. She gazed placidly at me, just as-she had 11 years before, The noisy, odd- looking burdens on the backs of elepharits forward, peering NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, BECEMBER 1907will to enforce thBANKA = SITA = CHARGER g d sat 1986: Born seen 1900; aly t223: | einary 1382; ne and wal presimed dead) slve and wal g é é 5 g Aliveand well; Lastsaen Blea at Lamsean Usitiean (led by Died tore wo laters, ABN! TO0t Feb 1990 Apri 106 tiger 1597 during ties cabs wach, ir sb and 1988 we Yartonen Fouche = eMat Died Sachi Alive Bre 1292 Jon 1063 thre ee 198 and wot ore joule marths ope tsar of poached tho cube. 1987 Dad bitin ay aid tine To Sita’s family tree shows her to be one of the mast productive breeders of the wild fomale tigers documented, The chart also 3 2 2 reveais pitfalis confronting tigars yor uring ariel Alive: andl wel AMIVERNG WN Ale ri old. Banka, father of Sita’s first two litters, sores ti mmc em has not been seen since he was injured in a fight over territory with Charger, who sired Sita’s next four litters. Of Sita ond Charger's first litter. two cubs survive. From their second litter, Bachhi went on.to produce: cubs herself, but her sibling strug. gled with paralyzed hind legs and blindness and soon died. Sita’s next litter died soon after birth—probably in the jaws of a leopard or a tran siont male tiger that was observed in the area during that time. A fourth litter survives and is learning mother’s hunting skills. As with most kills, Sita dispatched 8 chital by attacking from the rear, biting its throat, then dragging it Iright) to a hiding place. She con sumed it in a day. Felling a larger sambar deer (left) meant food for three to four days. With its bold trident pattern, Sita’s face bears unique asymmetrical markings, a8 distinetive for identification as fingerprints are amang humans. ayPe Me a eg Seg ee ee nea name for his unbridied aggression, charging other male tigers as well Dee ee en ene) Set me ee ar of leisure when it comes to hunting, often seizing prey killed by Sita and the other females he breeds with. He displays affection with his Cea ey Deane ee an cdsPR MMM TS Fock es Naa es ee IR a -begin to il tao young c af life, tually competingin thewild am fouching like a those. on page: combination. Langur one-day. The cou big cat, photog: 19 and 42-43 in this, = monkeys: broke a showed that th rapher Nichols tests issue. Nichols and beam to reveal monkeys broke the a remotely operat assistant Roy Toft sometimes comical — beam mo S-mm camera in placed cameras i views of themselves 3 thousand times Bandhavgarh, His: isnlated'spots, using at a watering hole They arrived anytime head breaks an infra; ag many as five In a tree a scout between 9 red beam, trippin strobes to augment —_ watches fo 4 p.m. We called it the shutter. Behind natural light. One and other pre monkey him, Phulsinah, an camera caught 8 The monkeys tephant mahout tiger that had feden jumped around and shields his eves from a pare right) used.up whele rolls timer to activate at the flash that illu Quills in its mouth ef film. Roy and | s tiger time” —tate nates follage in the made hunting diffi the camera out, ther afternoon, when the background cult, and its left front Roy went back cats Would come The technique pro- paw had swelled weak liter to check duced these st fling with infection: Land found photographs and probably ¢ fatal film had run out inAUSTRALIA BY BIKEsomething told me you neéded to talk.” I'stared at him as though 1'd been addressed by a burning bush—then began to babble. The guy's name was Robert Parton (sounds like a road handle to me) of no fixed address, and for the next half hour he listened patiently while | unloaded 12 days’ worth of fears and frustrations. I didn’t have to impress this guy with grand objectives of self-discovery—I was miserable and confused and could say so. And somewhere in the telling I became a spectator instead of a participant and began to see some humor, chuckling about how unfit I'd been when I started this thing; imitating the comical horror on-my face the first time | hefted the bike with its 35, pounds of camping gear, clothes, tools, spares, camer notebooks and then tried steering this saddlebagged juggernaut through the Sunday crowds on Circular Quay; describing that middle aged harridan who'd nearly clipped me on Parramatta Road. My ten- sion dismounted and walked away, A few minutes later so did my listener, saying he had a feeling w meet again somewhere dawn the road. L hope so, | owe him. 1 have started pedaling in Sydney, but for me the heginning of this jour ney will always be the public bench on the high street in Grafton, New South Wales. Monday, August 12 Near Miriam Vale, Queensland on the edge of ‘a road, quiet through the guny trees. Happy, Since Grafton the road has opened up—and so have L. It's funny how hard it’s been to shake that Yankee work ethic. Even with an open road and an empty calendar in front of me—all the freedom in the world—t made those first days a nine-to- five treadmill, marking off distances on the map cach night, reckoning 4() miles a "good" day. John Calvin meets Easy Rider, i'm meeting people now (see what happens when you stop trying to jimmy open the doors of perception?). Mind and knee ligaments have suppled up together. | spent an afternoon with the guys in the back room of the fire station in Casino, New South Wales, watching the Aussies go down to the Dream Team in basketball at the Olympics. Ata tie-dye shop in Nimbin [ had a cup of coffee with a former drag queen named ‘Truly deVyne, who explained how 17 years in drag had ended his modeling career: "I was growing breasts, It just killed me for the nlight slanting men's swimwear market.” Yestenday, in the Queensland rum-and-sugar town of Bundaberg, | joined a local family at a charismatic church where a five-piece band belted out Bible roc! were slain in the spirit, and a jump-and-bawl preacher railed against w ft. V'm nearly in the tropics, Miles of sugarcane a lush counterpoint to the red volcanie soil, The farmers have been harvesting, burning off the cane. I've been cycling thraugh flurries of ash. Black snow, the Incals call it. Trucks loaded with charred cane sweeping by and leaving a fragrance of burned molasses in their wake. f'm almost embarrassed at how little roughing it I've dene lately. ‘Queensland hospitality, Last night | rede up to a farmhouse in Yandar, an and asked an elderly couple, Phil and Elva Halpin, if | could camp AUSTHALIA BY BIE Why leave the life I knew in Sydnay (opposite) for 10,000 miles of unknowes? | ‘was hungry for a change—which is what drove me to: Austratia in the first place. When I was 22 and working in Wya- ming, | dreamed of living overseas, My foreign language skills were nil, so it had to be an English- speaking country, I wanted to go far away, and Australia was the farthest out ‘there. Yet after 15 ‘years of living there, | realized | didn't really know the place. That too would change. suPudgy and unfit and grinding up Old Put- ty Road near Single- ton, | was carrying just the basic tools and supplies, plus a water purifier, | was bone-tired, Nota good sign: Darwin, the end of the first Jeg of my journey, was 3,900 miles away, and my knees were already seream: ing “Mutiny!” veranda, in their paddock. Half an hour later | was sitting on the howered, a tumbler of scotch in my hands, with a bed for stew and a glass of Cabsay (Australian for shaved and the night, Over a plate Cabernet Stuvignon), Elva told me a little local history: “There used to be a lot of habos around here back in the Depression, waiting to get a lift on the steam trains wh rade. My mother never lurtied one away if he was hungry. They'd put a tock on our gatepost to let others know we were friendly.” She laughed and added: "| suppose now you can do the same,” Consider it done. | wander if she knows how many people read Natrowat Grogra pric cy slowed down for the Wednesday, Auguet 14 Rockhampton, Queensland 1a few miles rein, cotineil nudged the ‘Tropic of Capric utside the tourism b enterprising tow th toa brightly painted monument ju {with one foot itt the temperal ne 50 You eat st rume and the other in the torrid, then trot in on hotel rates, | leaned my bike against the “Torrid Zone,” them sat beside the sundial with « map, a bottle of water, and 4 muesli bar. Now a thousand miles north of Sydney; Only one flat tire so far, a nthe id tea towels and check ide to buy posteards i thumbtack back in Buderim Sunshine Coast. Here'at the Trapic of Capricorn it’s time to take stock, Untill now I've been pretty much hugging the coast, riding in the ruts of thousands of ustralian: sunseekers and foreign tour: in scenery. I'll be ists. Time fora char riding the Capricorn Highway (1 love the sound of that), which fatlows the tropic more than 400 miles to the te of Longreach IFT have abad accident out there, say,a f the dozens of ros bounding across the highway 1] Flying, Doctor Service that scrapes me up. was out this way that big fackie Howe ely town collision with one at dusk, i'll be the Re This is the Australia of legend. sheared a reeord 321 sheep in seven hours and forty minutes using hand shears back in 1892—a record that stands today: where striking shearers founded the Australian Labor Party in 1891; where Banjo Paterson wandered the empty spaces and wrote“ Waltzing Matilda. Thuraday, August 22 Fairfield station, near Longreach, Queensland NATIONAL GEOGRAP 1, DECEM MER 1997TERRITORY of Longreach, The Capricorn was a hard ride. Daytime tet atures in the 90s, and sometimes for miles the air was filled the stench of rotting kangaroos killed by the doy ass rontd trains that hammer down this lonely highway in the ao Most of these triple-trailer rigs weigh 140 tons and are more th half the length of a foothall field, They keep alive towns with) names like Dingo and Comet and Emerald. Tr was luck and Queensland hospitality that led me to Fairfield, Vd come across the United Graicrs’ Association when | was look ing fora Laundromat in town, and, just on spec, I stepped inte sev if there was anything doing at any of the nearby sheep stations. ‘They told me they were shearing lambs at F: Robert Macintosh, the owner, gave me direction: taburra road out of town and keep going until you cross five carte: grids. The house is-a mile off the road on your right. shed is four miles further back. You go-down the airstrip. . was the Australia Vd ridden 1,300 miles to see. It's.coal and dim here in the shearing shed, a. contrast to the glare outside, Robert's working the woolpress; his wife, Margot, and her sister, Alison, are rouseabouts, gathering the shorn wool and running in the sheep to keep the three contract shearers ba ‘work like demons, Ron “Folly” Bowden, a lean, saturnine man the leader of the shearing team, has just thrown me oni he smirks, “you're not getting out of here until you shear! folly supervised, and the others grinned while | wrestled with hands piece and sheep. "No, dig in! You're robbing the farmer!” he bawled when I started giving the sheep more of « haircut than ewe kicked, I grasped and fumbled, my thighs burned, | knew sl AUSTRALIA BY BIKE :Redford was hauled back to Queensland for trial. But his daring captured the public's imagination, and a jury of his outback peers returned a quixotic verdict: Not guilty, but he’s gotta give the cattle back. A furious judge ordered them to reconsider. They did: Not guilty, and he can keep the bloody cattle! “That's the simple secret ti success in this country, Rofl,” Robert says with a wink and a grin. “You've just got to be a good bloke.” Tpon'r sow if vycling 1,500 miles has made me a good bloke, hut it’s certainly making mea fitter one, | tipped the seales at a too comfort- able 198 when I left Sydney. Today, Sunday, we went to the horse races in. town, and I stepped on the jockey's scales. Qne-eighty-five without my necktie. As for the better bloke part, Robert has taken me in hand. Vve been helping put up a new yard. “Know how to use an angle grinder? Na? Well, you're going to learn," I've been pounding in fence Posts, have learned how to haggle a badly placed one out of the hard Queensland carth with a front loader, and have acquired a fine set of blisters. Robert's a good teacher. He's not trying to impress me with how taugh the work is—he doesn't need to-do that—he wants me to share his enthusiasm and love of the land. He's succeeding beyond his expectations certainly beyond mine. We mustered sheep yesterday. The sun flaring overhead and thousands of claven feet kicking up choking clouds of dust. Dogs racing around, barking, bring: ing in the sheep. loved it It's odd, I've heen here six days, and in that time nothing extraordi- nary has happened—kind of an average week on a station, really—but somewhere along the line my whole relationship with this countey has changed. There’s one image I'll carry with me the rest of my life. It was the morning Robert took me up in his father's Cessna for a look around the property. Rumbling down the dirt strip in front of the homestead, trailing « cloud of dust. Then the ground fell away, and the empty Queensland outhuack spread out, rust red, horizon to horizon, The kids waved to-their daddy, Margot looked up from hanging out the washing, a couple of lambs played in the vegetable garden, At that instant, for the first time in many years, I felt excited to be in Australia, Wednesday, September 11 Ravenshoe, Queensland Ar ed here mid-morning a couple of days ago, thighs burning after almost miles of winding switchbacks. I'd had to cross the hard-green, rain forested mountains that form an amphitheater around the tropical port of Cairns. Just below Kuranda | stopped for a last glimpse of the Coral Sea, hazy and still as an old postcard. The next bady of water I'll see will be the Gulf of Carpentaria. Right now I'm sitting on the loading dock at Northlind Agencies, farm-supply store, surrounded by bales of hay and sacks of grain. ing to load a truck in a few minutes. A minor breakdiwn has sidelined me—the bolt anchoring the derailleur cables to the frame snapped, and I'm waiting for a replacement to be shipped from Brisbane. I'm staying with Grahame West and his family, putting in my days. AUSTMALIA BY DIKE Rumbling down the back roads of Australia, the road trains whoosh by like locomotives. They deliver all sorts of supplies —livestock, dry goods, petrol, you name it—to small towns in the out- back. And while the bigger rigs have 62 wheels and weigh 140 tons, | never had a problem with them. Drivers would always honk their horns as they approached. then give me a generous berth when they passed. Real gen- tlemen they were.cit store. Grahame is a former art director of an Adelaide advertising fitm wha fled the button-down corporate scene in 1973 to grow arganic produce and sell hay in this corner of the world. These days he spends a lot of his time malting deliveries and, like all 1g an eye out for local helping at truckers, keep! officials—the “scalies"—who fine overloaded truckers. I've gone with hint on his raunds. I met an eccentric Luxembourger who came to Rave shoe two years age ina Gypsy wag from Fremantle in Western Australia; an artist named Sherry Vincent, who'd grown up on the Nullarbor Pla the far south, er attended school, but painted spectacular murals; and the former Lady MacDonald from the Island of Skye, who'd discarded her title in favor of running a shark boat in the waters off Cairns, One afternoon we took tea with Dr. Harry Bromley, a stout old-school British Army officer in his 804, who'd been stationed all over the Far East back in empire days, escaped on foot int India ahead of the invading Japa nese Army, and won an MBE. in “51 or his work with lepers in the Se chelles Islands, Sitting in his neat t I had the notion that if Dr Bromley didn't exist, Agatha Christie would have invented him. The phone's just rung. The part has arrived in Cairns and will be here ical garde tomorrow. But first I've got half'a ton of grain sacks to load onto Gra- They live on their hame's truck. sheep station in the middle of Queens- Saturday, September 14 fand, yet the Mac: intosh family never seemed lonely to me. In fact Robert, Mar got. and their four Camped in the far north of Queensland in ispk and pr a5¢ ese fo kids—ineluding Hugh dinner tonight. Seasoned with ‘Tabasco sauce. A dried fruit course; fol: and Emily (facing lowed by peanuts and some muesli bars, Maybe a toothpick fordessert. page}—relish this Typical. My radio plays sofily, tun dto ABC Radio National, the only remote life, Marnings Lean pick up this far out. One of the first thi ryane seems Emily and her dad to ask is how do I sleep at night. The short answer to that is | sleep very troop te the milking Well, thank you, Who wouldn't after a hundred miles in the saddle? But sheds (top), Later that’s net what they mean, | camp in the bush a couple of hut Margot homeschools yards off the road. No tent, ju her kids, with teach- fit looks like rain, Except f ers helping out a bit Capricorn Highway, I've via two-way radio, My gear is low stk ati can rig i noon on ark purple by choice, and when I set AUSTRALIAMy home is New Hampshire, but I've worked as a journal ist in Australia so Jong Lfeel as if ve got afoot in both camps. A German guy once told me the only way te live hap- pily overseas is to forget your past. But who am | without my memory? called the Anima the scrub, I'm invisible from the road. Australia’s not a scary place. although it has its share of sordid crimes. Only six-wecks ago in Sydney a serial-killer outdoorsman named Ivan Milat was jailed for life for murdering seven backpackers, But Pm okay. Back in Murwillumbah, in northern New South Wales, an elderly gentleman came up to me on the street and put me at ease; "Don't worry, f'll remember you. After you're murdered, I'll remember 1 saw you here and tell the police.” I'm well and truly in the outback new, a speck in a dusty immensity of savanna grass. The air is still, dry, and very hot. The road isa nine ibbon of bitumen that disappears into-a shimmering hor zon. Usually have it to myself for hours ata time. 1 wake before dawn, get my camp rolled away in about ten minutes, and have breakfast dried fruit, and my first ‘k—th gle tc, scout out a bit of shade in a dry creek wits’ kip. Then it’s back in the saddle until just before dusk, when I nose my bike through the scrub in seatch of a bed for the night, The hope is for a flat patch with as few crawling bed. ile. foot-wi down the mad—a couple of muesti bars, some and last coal water bottle bout eleven o' reliance stretches to guessing the time by the the sun—when the sun is really starting to bed and scttle in for a few h mates as pos: Tuesday, September 17 Karumba, Queensland 1ese line ribb: rm hast in t e m of lah fish-and i hor The guys are lashing the dinghies to the roofs of the Land Cruisers; in few minutes we're going bush. It began yesterday, in the finest outhack tradition, with the offer of a cold beer on a stinking hot fternoon. | manton when a pair of old, heavily laden Land Cruisers slowed beside me and someone called out in a broad Que Til bet you'd lve a cold stubby along about now!" I grinned. “Geez, I'll bet you're right!" We all pulled over, It turned out that Mick Jones, a police constable, was getting married. He, his best-man-torb “Thommoy" Terry, and Paul ping fishing Tell you what,” Mick said, after a couple of g beers ont was heading tc natand drawk “Geer, mate it two of his uncles— 1-10-know- yout roadside. tralia? Why don't you pu want to see Aw come with us? We're going ¢ really wild country along the Gilbert River. You can leave the bike at my in-laws" plac So we spent last night at Ash's place and this morning pok around the town, picking up supplies a hot chili con carn and a couple of Karumba isa raw-edged fishing port on the Gulf taria, where the old flying boats com to dock back exp arpen ng down from Asia used 1 the thirties. From its place om the map I'd ted lush rain forests, nota heat-warped dust bowl, It's as tough asit looks. The local watering hole is a concrete arcade Bar, where the tables and chairs are bolted to the floor, and bronzed, long-haired, tattooed regulars can eutdrink, out and outfight any three city-bred stevedores; the men look even rougher, as 1 found out when [ plucked my Nikon out to play at being swear NATIONAL GEOGHAM DECEMBER 199;If spotted this pet tarantula, would it be ng a tiny collar? ty crawl no joke out h tralia is home to the world’s ten most ven omous snakes, includ: ing intand taipans, which are more pai. sonous than cobras. Luckily, they all left me alone.“Thommo,” Mick, Paul, and Terry stopped to offer me a beer, and | ended up spending ten days with them. We fished and laughed and at Dorunda Sta. tion enjoyed Mick's bachelor party. We were mates. Days later, looking as if he was on a divine mis- sion, Mick got ready to tie the knot.1 for Weeks, Months, in the had old spit-and-chaw day t home out here in a way | never would have when Left shaw me than shout mea beer and hey've opened the door to old Aussic mateship, that uniquely Australian brand mM camaracde tralian: can't quite put i fing defies easy translation, Even Au ronit ing outhack settings (or the trenche World War 1), it's a blokey, watch-each-other’s with laconic wit Traditionally expressed in chi 1 gentle digs at each other's foibles. (Such as sapar unblokey preference SavuRDayY—THE mG pax Mick and Kerriann were married this aftet noon in the Catholic church in Mount Isa. We hit this wide-apen zinc mining town a couple of days ago, rented che 1 park, and got haircuts. The wedding coineided with Grand Final Day for Aussie Rutles Football. N Aussie blokes, we alte surselves up, parlor, North 4 ourne playing Sydney. Typical ed hetween watehir hile Kerriann and her ente the ne and sprucing ze were off at the beauty ad irned off the TV aightened our ties one last time, and walked down to the church, It was a nice wedding. The reception was at the golf club, Sunday, September 29 0 A stony hillside 30 miles west of Mount Isa today after a re ee me off, M telling me not to forget | had a farnily in Queensland now. A etting.on my bike, Mick ha Those moments etch this place nd empty miles to travel betw L wat d me back and gave me a big hi pretty sharp relief, I've gen here and Darwin, and the r vas tales abuut gr pon the tics Queensland, or Thommoe's acid wit itute for wrong side of the tracks in af Terry's drawled observations, lazy as tropical sim. Hh their t aling card games in the laundry room behind Ash Colahar el in Karu ymoon in Tasmania; an idle bit; the day we pooled our money—and trebled gon the horses at the frish Club in Mount Isa. Now [sit in an of spinifex, spiny mut nature's b. ned wire. | miss my new mates. 1 miss 1 » them on the phone today. Laur het tricycle around the house being daddy, Ethan's ta Ethin, especially after speaking Thu: sday, October 10 mped near Larrimah, Northern TerritoryA steaming asphalt treadmill—that’s the road a few hundred miles south of Dar- win, where you buck head winds and sweat for hours but the scenery never seems to change, lonce heard that the cyclists who enjoy the greatest success riding this circuit approach the journey as a test of stamina and logistics. My test feels more like an essay ques- tion: “On the road loss traveled, what really matters most?” merican Gls.and Aussie soldiers paved a stretch of the road from it Isa to the port city of Darwin in a frantic hundred days. yne much with it since, at least not on the bull. Thirsty work in that heat, I was packing 12 liters of water and rationing the border. Cycling was like riding w rod it pret nes pulle a welcome offer to: refill my les. When I remarke: there was out here, their leader, a man named Maurice, lau ‘d half a dozen reliable pools, not too far off the highway Once some Abori; water be on how little water dand over the now nearly emp next 50 miles, How far are you going?” he asked. “Darwin, at thie moment)’ I replied. He shook his head, then said slowly and without a trace of ire: ny, “I'm sorry. I'm afraid {don't know al und Darwin. You'd better ask other Abori Wednesday, October 16 Near Hayes Creek, Northern Territory NATIONAL GEOGEAPELC, DEhe Barkly ‘Tablelan toning te the patter ike a broken spin: yut of Mount Isa, Bu hundred m i flies have quit for the day, 1 down the highway ara 8 on the nex rad. Sitting ar in the night, I feel a pounds. Other t! inwe: leg, along the si, the weather _ the hills 125 7 hanPera & | Piece tae ee On acai co ena ac KENNETH GARR! TT Geua es iienssw ears Bun Nir aan 2A WORLD ORDER CARVED IN STONE The jaguar Godt of the at reling his turnal control of the un at first light, Reckers ture unt s fo express theie view of th Copan’s final ruler Yax Pasah, or First Dawn—ereeted a man Altar is.theen tire line of 16 hereditary Kings. in the crucial cene Yax Pasah (left, at right) symbolically receives a baton from the dynasty’s founder, K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo Sun-eyed Green Quetzal Macaw. Depicted with foreign trapping Kjnrich Yax K'uk’ Mo’ eld on his thane hit arm rash left, likely an identi fying personal detailThe towering Acropolis, Gar eee en eee 20,000 people, tovk shape during four centuries of a ates ca) Pee WOM cree toredown purté of earlier ree oar Pr Leet Pre uun eee bei rome ee acc Pes anes gaa Peer ae beat Ma Ls Pee eo Been Bat House, the Howse Bane ans) Cea ree eect De per Se renter) ay fragt eet a) 125Bat House errs De ont Bree tenn Ee Pee et rt a Rot eteeid BOUT Coed aes Cn LOOKING AT THE PUZZLE IN DEPTH i | gery—maximum gain eet tae uelle. Starting in the Dee Od ea ret the Acropolis, ex followed floors on ed mile and a half of tunnels Oe era Ce mead patio, turned left, found a building, and followed Dee rag Oe ety Sed Pema e cet Mare than 28 feat Ser S Coen LogALL CLUES LEAD TO SUS t BPD dr Nem a eL UNI) a.8 Omer Se ment, the mortal remains of Se a a cleaning from Robert Sharer of Fae Rogge once Re ea Pa ae ate eed ee ead Done ea a bottom of the very center of the Pe ue eer ees eee eer identical to shat worn by the founder on Altar Q. Also, the Bee en a horribly crippled—possibly Ce Ce ey Altar Q. ferret ae ed effigy pot (top) as well as a variety of other vessels ee ee irs er eae Cee ML ed in two of the man’s teeth rea Ue ese eeNORTH AMERICA i heartland and beyond Expert nature of its foreign con SOUTH AMERICA F Palenque — vecxco peice GUATEMALA 4% noncounas ‘CopanAVISH SENAcropolis. Samie valley households evidently prospered by means of cottage industries that produced special corn grinders, obsidian cut- ting blades, and shell ornaments. Rituals such as the ceremonial ball gare, a soccer-like contest that held cosmic significance, took place in the ball court, while more private royal cerenionies of vision quest and ancestor worship—accompunied by blood-letting or hallucinogens—went on in the security of secret courtyards and rooms atop the Acropa- lis. Depending upon the times, neighboring kingdoms:might be raided for captives for public humiliation rites or sought as partners in diplornacy or coyal marriages of advantage. ‘The Copan Acropolis rises to a height of about a hundred fect above the adjacent river botiomlands. Roughly rectangular and oriented approximately north-south, the construction mass contains roughly 80 million cubic feet of fill. 1 was once even larger. After the Maya abandoned this site to the forest and the river, probably by A.p. 900, its stone butidings gradually tell ints ruin, Lintels callapsed and vaults crashed, bringing down walls and entire buildings, many of which slid inte oblivion as the path of the river gradually undercut the castern edge of the Acropolis, When John Loyd Stephens, pioneer explorer of the lind of the Maya, and his artist companion Frederick Catherwood approached Copan in theautumm of 1839, the first thing they saw was the great heap of the Acrop “We came to the bank of a river." Stephens later wrote, “and saw directly opposite a stone wall, perhaps a hundred fect high, with farce growing oul of the top, canning north and south along the river” ‘What Stephens and Catherwood had glimpsed that morning was not a wall—they would figure this out later—but what we now know as the greal corte, or cut, a sheer cliff iced hy river action. The corte made it clear that the Acropolis was not a natural bill but the accumulated mass of centuries ef can- struction. As William L. Fast, Jr, the Harvard University archaeologist who directs the Copin Acropolis Archaeological Project, puts it, “Each king literally built upon the works of his predecessors.” first saw the Acropolis some 25 years ago. ‘There were no archaeological probes under way at the time. The place rested in silence: Bo under a lofty canopy of aged treés, 1 remember most vividly the color green, ft was every- where—in the filtered sunlight on the stones, in the bright moss that covered much of the rubble and sculpture alike. In my roamings that first time, | recall a1 mound, about 20 feet high, near the northwest base of the Actopolis. It rose like a glowing green heap in the shade of some of the largest trees on the site, Searching its slopes, I came upon a number of life-size carved stone skulls, evidently parts.of some wall or stairway dec- oration. I'm not sure why, but that: mound had a profound effect on me. | decided then that [ would return to Copan someday, if not to explore its haunting rains then to have my ashes scattered there after | begin my own journey to whatever green afterlife awaits, ILL FASH HAS SPENT most of his career at Copan, beginning in 1977 as a graduate student helping to map the thousands of mounds that fill the valley. From 1975 on, with the assistance of the Hondunin Institute of Anthropology and History, a series of projects under differ- ent scholars has focused on various aspects of ancient life at Copan, ranging from the exca- vation of sampling of the humblest valley houscholds to the uncovering of the magnifi- cent Rosalila building within the Acropolis. For ease of discussion the excavators have given nicknames to the various structures. Rosalila was excavated and named by Ricardo: Agurcia Fasquelle, the Honduran co-director of the Copan project.* The discovery af Rosalila, probably the best preserved building ever found in the Maya area, confirmed Fash's and Agureia’s belief in the special nature of that area of the Acropo- lis. They had heen drawn there by the pres- ence of Altar Q, arguably the most important Monument at Copan, which lay nearby at the ba Structure 16, where Stephens and Catherweod had seen it in 1839. Stephens had immediately guessed the true nature of its imagery as depictions of 16 noble personages. ‘We now know these men as the 16 kings of the Copan dynasty founded by K'inich Yax K'uk’ Mo’ in 426, Altar Q was dedicated in the late *Sce "Maya Attistry Uncatthed "by Ricardo Agut cia Fasquelle and Willan L. Fash, Ie, Sattowan Geoonavttics September 1991, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, DECEMAER 1997