Geo Magazine - Indian Edition - July 2010

G JuLY 2010 • Indian edition • Rs100

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Science Day 24 hours, 30 countries, one goal

k n o w l e d g e

how children learn to speak grammar: cracking the code

the mystery

of language Ocean Waves

Race through Africa

Amazonian Puzzle

Fruit Bats Zambia’s

Beauty meets physics

Pedal power in Eritrea

Among the Pirahã

phenomenal flyers

J uly co n ten ts

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Wave Power

Photographer Clark Little will go to almost any lengths to capture images of the breakers off the coast of Hawaii: right into the heart of the blue-green waves, a surfer�s paradise.

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A Day in the Life of Science

86 Day of the Bat

They darken the sky in countless numbers. The assembly of Strawcoloured fruit bats in Kasanka, Zambia is the largest gathering of mammals anywhere on earth.

24 hours, 38 places, 30 countries. GEO travels around the world—and even up into space—to —to to �nd out what researchers and scientists, like the robotics team in Tokyo (above), are working on.

70 Five Stages to Asmara Africa�s oldest cycle race, the Tour dell’Eritrea, is the sporting event of the year in a country that has little else to cheer about.

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Liquid Gold

In the Czech Republic, a quiet revolution is taking place. Small breweries are taking on the might of big international brands in the search for the perfect pint.

G GEOscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 COvEr sTOry The Art of Language . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Is there a common foundation for all of the world�s �ss languages?

The Discovery of Words . . . . . . . . 30 Are we hard-wired for speech?

The Pirahã Puzzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 A tribe that has no subordinate clauses.

FEATurEs Beer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

The Wonder of Language

What�s brewing in the Czech Republic.

GEO embarks on a fascinating expedition into the very heart of language—to discover the uniquely human gift of speech.

surf’s up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

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The physics, beauty and power of waves.

Tour of Eritrea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

At least 6,000 languages are spoken on earth (World Map of Linguistic Structures, right)— and the search for a universal Grammar seems to throws up more exceptions than rules.

The oldest cycle race in Africa.

Fruit Bats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 A parliament of bats in central Africa.

A Day in science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

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How can an infant understand the complexity of language in such a short span of time? Is language ‘taught�� or is it an innate ability? And why is it so difficult to learn new languages as we grow older?

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Deep in the Amazon lives a tribe of 350 people whose language might change our worldview. Passions run high among the expert linguistics who are intent on solving the mystery of the Pirahã.

24 hours, 30 countries, 1 space station.

Hatching Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 The first few moments of life.

rEGuLArs Letter from the editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 GEOlino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132 Lifeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Cover photo: Anne Ackermann

ED I TO RI AL

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Not talking heads: Daniel Everett (left) and Noam Chomsky.

hat do We talk about when we talk about language? Tere are many serious answers to such a question, and you will find some of them in our cover stories this month. But I can promise you that you’ll come away with even more questions. and that’s not a bad thing. For me, the tussle between the controversial missionary-turnedlinguist-iconoclast, daniel everett, and the presiding deity of modern linguistics (and much else), Noam Chomsky (p.44), has a resonance that transcends its apparent subject. Could an obscure amazonian language truly contradict both the grammar and the existential assumptions of the rest of the world, as everett maintains? to be honest, I’d like to think he’s right. Te dispute hinges on the concept of recursion—crudely, the issue of whether the construction of self-referential sentences is a universal and innate characteristic of human beings and their languages (Chomsky) or not (everett). It’s better explained in our story, of course. Tere’s an appealing recursiveness in the linguistic loop through which we are bringing you this arcane debate: conducted largely in the english language, reported by our author in German and then translated back into english for your ‘edu-tainment.’ (actually I hate that word, but I’m reliably informed that this is Geo’s niche.) But what I find most piquant about the Chomsky–everett debate is that Chomsky apparently refuses to discuss everett. So what does a linguist talk about when he refuses to talk? Quite a lot, as it happens. Read on, and pardon my schadenfreude. Now there’s a German word we need not translate.

Kai Friese Editor

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G g volume 4, issue 7 editor-in-chief Vinod Mehta president & publisher Maheshwer Peri editor Kai Jabir Friese associate editor Anita Roy assistant editor Anees Saigal senior designer Ashish Rozario designer Gulshan Sharma photo coordinator Shruti Singh library Alka Gupta

business office associate publisher Alok Srivastava advertisements general manager Shishir Saxena general manager (corp) Kabir Khattar delhi manager Megha Mishra deputy manager Tulika Sachdeva mumbai assistant general manager Santosh Nair kolkata general manager Moushumi Ghosh bangalore regional manager Anthony Joseph chennai senior manager Padmaja Rao hyderabad manager Sunil M. marketing circulation vice president Niraj Rawlley national head Himanshu Pandey

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general manager Arokia Raj assistant general manager Mukesh Lakhanpal Zonal sales managers Anindya Banerjee (West), G. Ramesh (South). Indranil Ganguly (East) production & systems general manager Rakesh Mishra senior managers Deshraj Jaswal, Shashank Dixit, Sanjay Narang accounts assistant general manager Chetan Budhiraja senior manager Kuldeep Kothari administration manager D.R. Wadhwa, Bobby Mathew

head office AB-10 Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi 110029, India For subscription enquiries, yourhelpline@outlookindia. com. Tel: 011-26191421 (Ext: 236, 237, 262), 26100723, 26100722, 26191091. Fax: 011-26191420, 26177416 advertisement & marketing offices Delhi: 011-26191421 Mumbai: 022-30612222 Chennai: 044-28582256 Bangalore: 080-40152000 Hyderabad: 040-23375676 Cochin: 0484-2354867 Printed and published by Maheshwer Peri on behalf of Outlook Publishing (India) Private Limited. Edited by Kai Jabir Friese. Printed at International Print-o-pac Limited, C4-C11, Phase II Noida, and published from AB-10 Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi 110029, INDIA.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Martin Meister SENIOR EDITOR: Fred Langer PRODUCTION EDITOR: Torsten Schäfer ART DIRECTION: Sandra Kaiser / Katja Wegener PICTURE EDITOR: Maike Köhler PRESIDENT G+J INTERNATIONAL: Dr. Torsten-Jörn Klein EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT: Pierre Riandet DIRECTOR GEO INTERNATIONAL: André Möllersmann ASSISTANT: Christiane Eitle MARKETING: Daniel Gesse / Karin Hunkeler GRAPHIC / WEBDESIGN: Alwin Lösche

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pagewise photo credits Layout position: l. = left, r. = right, u. = up, m. = middle, d. = down cover: Anne Ackermann/Getty Images (main photo); Thomas Ernsting: r. u.; ClarkLittle.com: l. d.; Chris Keulen: l. m. d.; Martin Schoeller/August: r. m. d.; Kieran Dodds: r. d. page 2: ClarkLittle.com: l. u.; Kieran Dodds: l. m.; Chris Keulen: l. d.; Andri Pol: r. u.; Frman Abdulrahman: r. m.; alamy/mauritius- images: r. d. page 4: Paula Lerner/Aurora: u.; Martin Schoeller/August: d. page 6: AFP: r. page 10: Ahtushi Deshpande geoscope: Qingsong Wang, Commercial War/Mit freundlicher Genehmigung von MEWO Kunsthalle Memmingen: 12/13; Lalla Essaydi, Converting Territories #9, 2003, Courtesy: Edwynn Houk Gallery: 14/15; Lourens Smak/Alamy: 16/17; NASA/JPL/ University of Arizona: 18; Caro Sorge: 19 l.; Illustration: ©2009 Frank O’Connell/The New York Times: 19 r. u., r. d.; Cinetext: 20 l.; João Zilhão/ddp: 20 r.; Paul S. Hamilton/RAEI.org: 21; AFP: 22 r.u., 22 r.d.; AP: 22 l.d.; Mas Subramanian: 23 l. u.; June 2009 nef (the new economics foundation): 23 l. d.; Eastnews/Imago: 23 r. u.; Marta Hodbod: 23 r. d. the incredible art of language Ronald Fromann/laif: 25; Illustration: Birte Wagner + Juliane Richter/illuteam43: 26/27 the discovery of words Paul Harizan/Jupiter Images: 30/31; Anne Rippy/Getty Images: 32; Bettmann/Corbis: 34; Paula Lerner/Aurora: 35; Juice Images/Corbis: 36 against the tide Martin Schoeller/August: 38/39, 43, 50 l. u.; Martin Schoeller: 40/41, 42, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50 r. u., 50 d., 53 the golden revolution Wuchner/F1online: 54; CTK Photo/Imago: 58 u.; Miquel Gonzales/laif: 58 d. at the heart of a wave ClarkLittle.com: 60- 67; Gregg Miller: 68; Illustration: Martin Künsting: 69 racing ahead Chris Keulen: 70-85 the record breaking bats of kansaka Kieran Dodds: 86-97 01.02.2010 Salminen Juha (3x); Paul Alan Putnam (2x), Bariş Özçetin (6x); Ricardo H. Alcará; Elena Palm (3x); Szabó- Jilek Ádám/Motorpresse Bp; Alexander Ashiminov; Beatrice Mancini/Posse Photo; Tomas Protiva (2x); Dorian Wagner: 100/101 John Beck/Integrated Ocean Drilling Program: 102 u.; University of Southern Pacific: 102 l. d.; Linda Schmidtobreick/ESO: 102/103; Andri Pol: 104/105; Anna Estes/Serengeti Elephant Project: 105 r. u.; Jayant Maini/IGIB: 105 m. d.; Tomas Protiva: 106 l.; Szabó- Jilek Ádám/Motorpresse Bp: 106 r.; Elena Palm: 107; Lýdia Korecká: 108 l.; Marc Steinmetz: 108/109; Bariş Özçetin: 110 l.; Olaf Eisen/Alfred- Wegener- Institut: 110 r. u.; Giederius Kuzmickas: 110 r. d.; Thomas Ernsting: 111; Alexander Ashiminov: 112 l.; Ivor Prickett: 113 u.; Dorian Wagner: 112/113; Beatrice Mancini/Posse Photo: 114 l.; Paul Alan Putnan: 114 r. u., 115 u.; Ricardo H. Alcará: 114 r. d.; AJIMAYA/INAH 2010: 115 d. happy hatching! the start of a new life Ingo Arndt: 116-131 geolino Jerry Redfern/Onasia: 132 u.; Doug Mills/The New York Times/REA/laif: 132 d.; Caters News Agency LTD/Bulls: 133 (2) vaclav havel... ...writing towards freedom Rex Features/action press: 134 u.; Rene Spalek/Bilderberg: 134 d. page 136: Brenda Ann Kenneally: l. u.; Yves Gellie: l. d.; Marc Steinmetz/Visum: r. u.; Oliver Meckes&Nicole Ottawa/eyeofscience.com: r. m.; Peter Ginter/Bilderberg; r. d. maps: Thomas Wachter: 4, 28; Stefanie Peters: 44, 132, 133; Rainer Droste: 79; Christian Kuhlmann:134

le t t e rs

I remember buyIng my fIrst issue of GEO about a year and a half ago. I loved the articles, but the pictures just stole my heart. So, I decided to subscribe. In the last few months, I’ve noticed a change in the type of articles; I must say that I enjoy reading GEO much more than I did initially. Te reason for this change is that there are at least one or two articles about India in each issue now, ones I haven’t come across before. For instance, I loved the article on Himachal and its temple architecture in the June 2010 edition. Te photographs were excellent, especially the ones of the temple tower in Chehni and the Maheshwara temple at Sungra. Te architectural drawings added flavour to the text, which was so descriptive and well written. As I read this article, I realised how I, like many other Indians, take the rich culture and history of our subcontinent for granted. Tere’s actually so much to discover. I’ve visited Himachal several times, yet never bothered to stop and admire its distinct architecture—but am sure to the next time around. Resham mukheRjee email

I am a bIg fan of geo and take it along whenever I travel. I was thrilled at the cover stories of both the May and June 2010 issues. Te style and the articles are very appealing, as are the

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hImachal temple archItecture, June 2010 photographs. Keep up the good work. madhumita moitRa kolkata

the photographs In the May 2010 issue were simply marvellous. I loved the article on the Karmapa of Tibet. I also enjoyed the article about dentistry. saRa singh email

When I receIved the June 2010 issue, I was wondering why it was so thick. Te mystery was quickly revealed afer reading the Editorial. Tank you for the wonderful issue! Te article about Himachal architecture in the June 2010 issue was great. I had never realised that there was so much engineering, culture and consideration of terrain and climate that went into their design. However, I do have a few observations to make. Te letters to the editor that you normally print are usually

full of praise: very few people have anything negative to say about the articles or challange the facts. So I appreciated the two letters that offered a different perspective. The binding of the magazine is still bad as it was in the first issue. Also, I wholeheartedly support the views of Savitha Rao—by sending out the magazine in plastic covers, you are certainly not helping reduce global warming. I also subscribe to time and national geographic, and they come wrapped in recycled paper. It would be great if you could follow their example. Te photos in Geoscope highlighted the contrast between wealth and poverty in South Africa—if only the country would spend some money on its own citizens. We can draw the same conclusion regarding New Delhi’s efforts towards the Commonwealth Games, where thousands of crores

are being spent on infrastructure alone. souRendRa kumaR nath email

I am a photographer from Goa, and I thought I’d write to say that GEO is a great magazine. From the design to the layout, the contents to the photography, everything is well presented. Chandan d. n. gaonkaR goa

‘What shapes humankInd’ (April 2010) was a very interesting article. As a mother of two children— now grown up—I never knew how the baby’s experience inside the womb affects its development. I am sure that would-be mothers will find this information very useful. Chhaya topRe email

Write to [email protected] or GEO, AB-17 Safdarjang Enclave, New Delhi 110029.

THe FA S CINATIN G WoRL D oF K NoWL e DGe

Geoscope Geoskop

Battle of the Brands The marketing and promotion of brands has reached such a feverish pitch in China that it is difficult for advertisers to even make their presence felt. This desperate struggle for advertising was dramatically portrayed here by photographer Wang Qingsong. A wall 14m tall and 40m wide was covered with 600 posters and slogans, and 20 volunteers were needed to continuously paste new advertisements over old ones.

Geoscope

Art of Calligraphy Morocco-born artist Laila essaydi consciously draws on the imagery of Islam in her work, choosing to combine, for instance, Arabic calligraphy with the female figure. Having spent several years in Saudi Arabia, she now has a successful career in the USA. As she explains, “I want my art to reflect my personality as a woman with a multicultural background: an artist, a Moroccan, a Saudi, a traditionalist, a liberal, a Muslim. In short, I don’t want my viewers to fall for stereotypes.”

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Geoscope

Graffiti of Love

The most popular message board in the world hangs on a wall in Via Cappelo in Verona, Italy, close to the balcony where Romeo and Juliet are said to have once sworn their eternal love. So many tourists write and stick love-notes on this board that it keeps changing appearance and has to be replaced at least once a year—the new one, naturally, does not look anything like the one here. In the midst of these artfully messy declarations of love, slot machines narrate the tragic tale of the original starcrossed lovers.

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GEOscope So Near and yet So Far Seldom does an image of the Red Planet capture as much drama as this one. The photograph, from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, displays the tracks left behind by a dust devil over a 500m-section of a crater basin. This minitornado has blown away the thin layer of red dust that usually covers Mars from pole to pole, to reveal a sea of dark-grey basalt sands beneath. No satisfactory explanation has yet been found for the band of white running through the middle of the image.

Melville’s Curve Sebastian Bernhardsson, a physicist at Umeå University in Sweden, has developed a formula for detecting the ‘literary fingerprints’ of authors. Why do you research novels? The subject of our study was the pattern of complex metabolic networks within a cell. We wanted to understand patterns: the ‘null model,’ the smallest unit of information needed to randomly generate a specific pattern. For this, we sought out simpler systems for which more data is available. Texts and books were one such system.

What have you discovered in reading? We wanted to find a link between two statistical patterns in written text: the number of different words (N) as a function

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of the total number of words (M) and the distribution of common words. The N(M) curves were different for each of the authors we plotted, and there were tremendous differences in the extent of vocabulary as well. For instance, Herman Melville used far more words in a typical text than did D. H. Lawrence. All books by a particular author, however, follow the same curve very precisely.

So every author can be identified? The statistical characteristics of a text are always the same for all extracts taken from

one book. Writing is a process in which the author takes pieces of text from a huge master book, the ‘meta-book,’ an abstract representation of his style of writing. The ‘meta-book’ is modelled on the N(M) curve for the entirety of an author’s work. It is like a person’s fingerprint.

Can he erase it? The pattern applies to an author who writes spontaneously and without inhibitions. But naturally authors can consciously change their word patterns—if he or she writes a book for children, for instance.

generator 1: produces the energy to convert argon gas to plasma

Stressful Exposure

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Excessive TV leads to high blood pressure. As every parent already knows, watching too much television is bad for children: the ‘idiot-box’ distracts the kids, makes them couch-potatoes, isolates them from friends—and keeps them from doing their homework. But now researchers from Michigan State University, USA, have discovered that excessive exposure to TV can

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generator 2: supplies the energy for electromagnetic waves and fields

The engine of a plasma rocket powered by an accelerated ‘brew of matter.’

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electric cable

Quick Trip to the Red Planet Plasma propulsion will get spaceships to Mars much quicker.

Body alert: watching too much TV has several negative side-effects. have other consequences as well: increased blood pressure in children, and not just among the obese and the sedentary. A 4-year study of 111 children between the ages of 3 and 8— which also included a study of fat-mass values—has convincingly demonstrated that TV viewing significantly raises both systolic as well as diastolic blood pressure. And this can happen with as little as 1.5 hours of viewing. The lowest values were seen in the cases of children who spent less than half an hour a day in front of the box. Now, parents have yet another reason to limit their youngsters’ TV-watching time.

NASA has faced technical problems with the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket for some time. But VASIMR should be ready for operation by 2013, when it will be mounted on the International Space Station, which will provide the necessary boost to stay in orbit. Thereafter, all spaceships to Mars will be equipped with it, potentially reducing their flight time from 10 months to 3. Instead of

plasma: preparatory phase Argon gas is used as the raw material for fuel. Plasma is a mix of negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions.

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argon atom

electrons

burning fuel, the new engine will draw on electrically-charged gas particles, obtained by converting argon gas to plasma, a hot ‘brew of matter’ consisting of ions and free electrons. The ions will be accelerated in electromagnetic fields and ejected from the rocket, giving the spaceship its forward thrust. The energy to heat and accelerate the gas will be generated by things like mininuclear reactors on board.

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magnetic field lines ion

argon ion

1. Electrons and atoms collide at high heat, and produce ions and other free electrons.

electron

2. Magnetic fields hold the particles in spiral orbits so that they don’t escape prematurely.

spiral movement

3. Special wave frequencies transfer energy to the ions, thereby accelerating them.

4. At the discharge funnel, the field lines expand, causing the ions to catapult out into the open.

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GEoscope Neanderthals were Artists too Our ancient relatives were probably more creative than we give them credit for.

Can tales of crime teach you how to protect yourself from acts of violence?

A Penchant for Crime Why women are more interested than men in stories of murder and rape. As men are considered more aggressive than women and more inclined towards physical violence, it is often presumed that they would be more attracted to crime, both in writing and in films. However, as psychologists from the University of Illinois, USA, recently discovered, the female interest in stories of true crime is far greater. Men, in contrast, like to live out their fantasies through action films that have no relation to real life—something that leaves most women cold. According to the research, women are not drawn to stories of crime merely for

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entertainment. Rather, they seek guidance from such tales for their own protection—tips on how to prevent and survive such situations, should they ever arise. “ We know women fear violence far more than men, although men are more likely to be victims of violent crime,” says Amanda Vicary, who conducted the study. The problem, however, is that this knowledge—at least in the USA—does not have a reassuring effect, for the more women read about true crime, the greater their fear and anxiety. This could easily lead to a vicious cycle.

João Zilhão is convinced that Neanderthals were not as primitive as is often believed; that they had a sense of art and an understanding of symbols. But as the archaeologist from Bristol University, UK, admits, the findings were not conclusive until now. Some etched bones were discovered in the La Ferrassie graves of France, which are about 70,000 years old, but the etchings could be purely accidental. Ornaments found at other sites are equally ambivalent evidence of artistry. For example, the pierced animal-tooth pendants from the Old Stone Age, 38,000 to 30,000 years ago, could indeed have been worn as a necklace, but such objects could also have been mere ‘imitations’—Neanderthal copies of the art of Homo sapiens. Now, however, Zilhão has solid evidence that man’s closest extinct relatives were capable of independent creations: coloured shell jewellery has been found in a cave in Spain, which dates back about 50,000 years to a time when Europe was inhabited solely by Neanderthals. Homo sapiens left Africa only about 40,000 years ago. Another site has been discovered about 60km away from the sea. It seems the Neanderthals carried the shells over these long distances, used a pigment to colour them and then perforated them to wear on a chain. They did not, however, give new forms to objects, nor did they produce figures. As such, there is no contesting the claim that Homo sapiens were far more talented in matters of art than their relatives.

Neanderthals made necklaces from coloured shells.

In a World of Ghosts A disappearing treasure: glass frogs in Ecuador. The transparent amphibian has nothing to hide—other than itself. This specimen was spotted by members of a recent expedition to the Ecuadorian rainforest. Glass frogs (Centrolenidae) are found only in Latin America, and belong to just one family. As is feared with about a third of all amphibians today, these transparent creatures are also likely to vanish soon: the clearing of forests and the release of poisons in the search for crude oil are threatening an area that is among the richest in biodiversity in the world. Meanwhile, Japanese scientists, having discovered the advantage of transparent skin in cancer studies, have created see-through frogs by mutation—and are now breeding them in captivity. The frogs are also sold to private households for about 75 euros apiece. Another recent Japanese creation: transparent goldfish.

A red heart and white intestine within a transparent skin.

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Geoscope High Altitude Seedbank Indian insurance policy against natural disaster. In a world fraught with increasing natural disasters, the Indian government has recently opened its only high-altitude cold storage facility for plant germplasm in Chang La, Ladakh. Collection began in February. This facility will act as a safehouse for flora species in case they are wiped out in the open by a natural disaster. Located at a height of 5,360m, the seeds are stored at temperatures ranging from –4° to –20°C. Scientists from the Defence Institute of High Altitude Research claim that this is the world’s second such facility after the Global Seed Vault, which opened in Svalbard, Norway, in February 2008. Access to samples in a ‘post-apocaplyptic’ world is reserved only to those who bank with the facility.

Germinating new life from seeds stored at low temperatures.

For oil companies, the safe disposal of effluents has been long-standing problem.

Constructing with Sludge A technological breakthrough puts harmful waste to positive use. Oilfields across India—as elsewhere—are littered with sludge, whose disposal has long been a problem because it contains higher levels of hydrocarbons than are permitted in landfills. But scientists at the North East Institute of Science and Technology in Jorhat may finally have found a solution to this environmental problem. They have developed a process to convert the sludge, which contains

water, hydrocarbons and inorganic materials, into bricks for construction. While the inorganic materials are used to build the bricks, the other two substances are used in the process of their fabrication. The technology is doubly beneficial because it uses the hydrocarbons extracted from the sludge, reducing the demand for coal to fire the bricks.

Saras aircraft.

Flying High? Plans for a new fleet of civilian aircraft have yet to take off.

The US and the EU have it, and so do the Brazilians and the Chinese. Now, India wants one too. With the goal of developing a medium-sized indigenous civil aircraft, the Indian government has set up a high-powered committee led by former ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair. The committee plans to develop a 90–100seater civilian aircraft using locally available manpower and resources. But there’s already been a lot of turbulence to deal with. A prototype of Saras, the 14-seater Indian civilian aircraft, crashed while on a test flight in March last year, killing three crew members. Despite the government’s reassurances that this was not due to a technical flaw, there are few who will buy this argument entirely.

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True Blue Scientific experiments using metal oxides can still spring surprises—not least of all on scientists. Mas Subramanian of Oregon State University, USA, for example, created a new blue pigment from manganese, yttrium, indium and oxygen—quite by accident. The oxide has a tremendous potential in art, for its blue colour is more durable than other known blue materials—and unlike many of them, it is not poisonous. Unfortunately, the oxide is still quite expensive, so Subramanian is now trying to substitute indium, a rare ingredient, with more affordable aluminium.

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Finding Happiness In this ‘Happy Planet Index,’ the London-based British think-tank NEF has mapped life-satisfaction across the world. They have differentiated it into three values: satisfaction is high in the green zone, middling in the orange zone and very low in the red zone. Wherever people have a better standard of life, favourable weather conditions, higher life expectancy, a larger say in the country’s politics or better educational opportunities, they tend to be happier. The researchers found no correlation between an eco-friendly lifestyle and happiness. The map is based on data collected by the Gallup World Poll and the World Value Survey, where respondents were asked to rate their current satisfaction with life on a scale of 0 (dissatisfied) to 10 (satisfied).

A vital link in the chain of evolution: a fish-amphibian that ran on all fours.

Feet First Unbelievable: 397-millionyear-old evidence of a four-legged vertebrate.

The phantom left its footprints behind, though no trace of its torso has yet been found. The imprints have survived till today in the solidified mud of a rocky outcrop in the stone quarry of Zachelmie, Poland. The prints are so clear that even the toes of this primeval beast are identifiable. It was probably a fish-amphibian with palm-sized feet, a predecessor of the Ichthyostega. The find has roundly shaken the theory of the evolution of terrestrial vertebrates. So far, the early Middle Devonian Period has been regarded as a time of transition from fish with fins to four-legged beings, with the recently discovered Tiktaalik of the Elpistostegid group belonging to this intermediate phase. The footprints, discovered by Grzegorz Niedwiedzki and his team, clearly show that fourlegged vertebrates (tetrapods) already existed 18 million years before Tiktaalik. This in turn means that the elpistostegalians were not forefathers of the tetrapods, but, rather, were contemporaries with Polish researchers examine archaic features. the stones in Zachelmie.

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Te Incredible Art of Language To study linguistics is to set out on an adventure—one that makes us rethink the very basics of how human beings communicate. By Jürgen Broschart

diversity is a primary characteristic

there is a limit to how fascinating linguistic diversity can be to the of human language: this is the first thing that anyone linguist. Afer all, as researchers, they see it as their job to discover the learning a foreign language discovers. In German, the regular systems underlying all language phenomena. It is the aim of adjective precedes the noun (‘roter Ball’—red ball); the American linguist Noam Chomsky to be able to describe all the in French it goes afer the noun (‘ballon rouge’—ball languages of the world in terms of the same Universal Grammar. Tis red). Some languages don’t even have adjectives as a theory, propounded by the famous scholar and his followers, is based part of speech. In the Mayan language, Jacaltec, words on comparative linguistic studies, particularly of the Creole languages with the structural elements of a verb are used instead. spoken in Hawaii, the Caribbean and West Africa. Te sentence ‘Te horse is big’ is something like ‘Te Developed by the children of immigrants, these languages are horse bigs’ in Jacaltec. based on very different vocabularies: Jamaican Creole is based on an In the Iroquoi language, Cayuga, words that are English vocabulary, while that spoken on the Cape Verde islands is nouns in European languages based on Portuguese. are treated like verbs and linked Although the grammars of to an object. Te sentence ‘He these languages have largely is my grandfather’ is rendered arisen independently of each something like ‘He grandfathers other, they are nonetheless me.’ By contrast, verbs in the similar. Te similarities have Native American Navajo have Experts estimate that there are currently developed despite the great grammatical categories that distances between the different somewhere betwee 6,000 and 7,000 painstakingly identify the Creoles: an indication of an languages spoken in the world. We characteristics of their subjects: innate ‘Universal Grammar.’ don’t have an exact figure. Even today, literally translated, the word communities speaking undocumented For Chomsky, the core of ‘sélá’ means: ‘I, big and thin, lie languages continue to be discovered—for Universal Grammar is so-called like a rope on the floor.’ instance, contact with the Metyktire Indians ‘recursion’—the process by It was their thorough in Brazil was made as recently as 2007. which the same linguistic knowledge of Native American A census is also difficult because it isn’t structure can endlessly be languages that gave Benjamin always possible to determine whether embedded in another. An Whorf and Edward Sapir the language in question is a separate example is the relative clause: the impetus for their theory language entirely, or a variant of an existing ‘Te cat that caught the mouse of linguistic relativity. Tey one. Experts agree that up to half of the that ate the cheese.’ According believed that there was no limit languages spoken today could die out by to Chomsky, such reflexive to the extent to which languages the end of this century. structures are common to all can differ from one another. But languages; indeed, the ability to

How many languages are spoken in the world?

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Do all languages follow the same rules? construct them is an intrinsic not important: what matters No—at least not those marked by the Greek part of what makes us human. is the inclusion of the speaker and Latin rules of grammar. Non-Western However, Daniel Everett, and the importance given to languages are not as standardised. Even as a former Chomsky-scholar, the events. English manages a ‘basic’ a question as to whether or not all challenges precisely this point, similar distinction in its use of languages have nouns and verbs is disputed. and believes he has found the ‘-ing’ form in contrast to the The many languages of the world allow for evidence to support his theory base form of the verb: ‘While several ways in which to create a main clause in the language of the Pirahã, I was reading’ (background from the six ways of sequencing Subject (S), an indigenous people of South information), ‘the doorbell rang’ Predicate (P) and Object (O). The sequence America (see p.44). (important information). O-S-P is rare, however; it occurs in some Te jury is still out, but what Tat said, even though Amazonian languages—and seems to be the is certain is that there is scarcely every single grammatical or constructon favoured by the Jedi master from a grammatical rule learned in semantic category doesn’t exist the film, Star Wars: ‘This sequence of the in every single language, most one language that isn’t broken wise Yoda used.’ manifestations of language are by another language somewhere else in the world. based on rules such as: ‘If A is Are subjects always in the nominative while objects are accusative? the case, then B applies.’ For example, if a language possesses an indigenous base word for the colour blue, Tis doesn’t hold true in so-called ergative languages: in the Australian it will also have a word for red. Nonetheless, there are language Warrungu, the sentence ‘Te man killed the dog’ is literally also languages such as Berinmo in New Guinea that rendered as ‘By the man the dog was killed.’ As for tenses, in classical Arabic, the ordering of events according to past and future time is organise the colours of the spectrum in a completely Language courses help with integration: the essence of a country’s speech community is, after all, embedded in its grammar.

Spanish Portuguese

French Romanian

Catalan

Rhaetian

Gaelic

Breton

Italian

Cornish

Welsh Irish Gaelic Scots Gaelic

Brythonic

Manx Gaelic High German Yiddish Dutch

Sardinian

Leptonic Faliscan

Old Irish

Dalmatian

Gaulish

Goidelic

Illyrian

Middle High German Old High German

Afrikaans

Latin

Celtiberian

Thracian

LatinoFaliscan

Low German Continental Celtic

Modern English

Old Dutch Phrygian

Insular Celtic

Friesian

Middle English

Old English

West Germanic

Danish East Germanic

Swedish

North Germanic

Norwegian Old Nordic

Icelandic

Gothic

White Russian Macedonian

Russian

Ukrainian

Slovenian

ITALIAN

Serbo-Croatian

East Slavic

CELTIC

Bulgarian South Slavic

Old Church Slavonic

ANATOLIAN GERMANIC

Czeck

West Slavic

Slovakian Polish

INDO-IRANIAN

SLAVIC BALTO-SLAVIC

Latvian

Sorbian BALTIC Lithuanian

FAMILY TREE Old Prussian

Bantu

NIGERKORDOFAN

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Languages of Central Sudan etc.

Bushman languages

NILOSAHARAN

KHOISAN

of Indo-Germanic Languages

HamitoSemitic Arabic, Hebrew, Ethiopean

AFRO-ASIATC

Tamil

INDO-GERMANIC

ELAMODRAVIDIAN

Finno-Ugric Finnish, Hungarian

URALICYUKAGHIR

Like the members of a family, related languages can also be formed into family trees. The relations of Indo-Germanic languages have been particularly well researched. For instance, the Sanskrit word ‘pitar’ (father) corresponds to the Latin ‘pater’ and English ‘father.’ Finnish and Turkish use completely different words and belong to entirely different language families. Armenian

different way to what you might expect. Te difference between ‘nol’ and ‘wor’ lies somewhere between greenblue and orange-yellow. It is possible that this reflects the difference between fresh and withered leaves; the Bernimo do indeed have difficulty in distinguishing blue and green. ‘If–then’ rules also help linguists in predicting certain structural characteristics. Te following is another example, in this case to do with stress: nonFinnish speakers ofen pronounce the name of the Finnish capital with a stress on the second syllable— Helsinki—but in Finnish, the stress is on the first

Albanian Greek

Old Greek

What did the original human speech sound like?

Hittite

It probably didn’t sound like anything. Researchers assume that our first signs were primitive gestures, and that sounds developed much later. The theory that the clicks of the Khoisan (Bushmen) is a relic of early man is nonsense: a person would need considerable skill to combine clicks with sounds.

Hieroglyphic-Luwian

Palaic

Luwian Persian

Lydian Old Persian

Lycian

Pahlavi Pashto

Iranian

syllable—Helsinki. Even with no knowledge of Finnish, a language typologist wouldn’t make such a mistake, as long as they knew that Finnish is an agglutinative language. Agglutinative languages—of which Turkish is another—order grammatical elements in a chain afer the first significant unit. For this reason, it is essential to stress the beginning of each new word.

Balochi Kurdish Sinhalese

Sogdian Avestan

Punjabi Gujarati

Marathi Bengali

Sanskrit

Assamese

Indo-Aryan

Hindi-Urdu

Dardic

Latin, by contrast, is an inflected language:

Romani

the word ‘amo’ means ‘I love,’ and the references to the subject (I) and tense (the present) are indicated by a single element: the ‘o’ ending. Te subject and tense are not separately placed one behind the other

Sindhi

TOCHARIAN Tocharian B Tocharian A

Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese

Tibetan, Chinese

Inuit

Amerindian Maya, Sioux Na-Dené Chukchi, Kamchatkan

Thai, Khmer

MalayoPolynesian Malay, Hawaiian

Aboriginal languages

BASQUE

Papuan PYGMY LANGUAGES

ALTAIC

SINOTIBETAN

ESKIMOALEUTIAN

AMERINDIAN LANGUAGES

AUSTROASIATIC

AUSTRONESIAN

INDOPACIFIC

AUSTRALIAN

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Does language determine our thinking?

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as in agglutinative languages. course of its history, English has Isolating languages such as In his study of the Hopi Indians, the almost lost an entire inflection classical Chinese, on the other anthropologist Benjamin Lee Whorf found and has taken on isolating hand, have a separate word for features. For instance, English that their culture had a different concept of no longer really has a separate every such element. In contrast, time than that of the Europeans. The Hopi, polysynthetic languages such future verb form. Instead, according to Whorf, see time and chains of as West Greenlandic can events as cyclical rather than lateral. Since words such as ‘will’ and ‘going express an entire sentence in such concepts are expressed in language, to’ are used to imply the future: a single word block. Hence ‘it will/is going to rain.’ Tese Whorf believes it is impossible to understand ‘metaphors’ are coined all over the sentence, ‘You really can’t a foreign culture without learning its pretend you never hear anything,’ the world in a similar way. language. This is disputed. Nonetheless, is expressed as the word-block: experiments with colour indicate a close Differences between languages are usually slight ‘Tusaa-nngit-suusaar-tuaannarconnection between culture, language and sinnaa-nngi-vip-putit.’ rather than absolute. Tus, in thought: the Berinmo have different names Despite all the typological French, there are cases where for the colours of the spectrum, and view the adjective precedes the noun, differences between the colours differently than English-speakers. as in German: ‘La grande nation’ languages of the world, if you (the great nation). Similar consider the development of languages over a long period expressions are used to convey the plural. If the plural marker can be dispensed with, it inevitably of time, it seems that they invariably develop from happens in references to food. An Italian ordering two espressos will one type into another. Tus, Chinese is on the way to ask for ‘due espressi,’ where the ‘i’ is the plural marker. Germans, becoming an inflected language. Conversely, in the

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Adjective and noun sequences Adjective–noun: e.g. red ball

Noun–�djective: –�djective:: e.g. ball red

The World Map of Linguistic Structures lists the geographical distribution of typological language features. In Eurasia, adjectives usually precede nouns; in Africa they usually come after them. 28 g 7/10

O

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classic work of fantasy literature has sold 120 million however, tend to use a singular form for the same expression: ‘zwei Kaffee’ (without the plural marker ‘s,’ which would have resulted in copies worldwide. Te Japanese, Canadians and ‘Kaffees’). Te Chinese always indicate a plural by inserting a complete South Africans alike enjoy delving into the speech word such as ‘piece’ or ‘item’ to indicate this; hence, ‘two items of conventions of Elvish—a fictional language devised people’ corresponds to ‘two people.’ Tis is also true of some European entirely by the author. Animal communication simply doesn’t have this languages, though in reference to animals rather than people: such as in the German phrase, ‘zwei stück Vieh’ (two items of cattle). kind of freedom. Te dog’s bow-wow or cat’s meeow Why is it, then, that aren’t symbols but unavoidable ‘symptoms’—rather like the animal ‘languages’ don’t have grammar, and how is it that howl of pain we utter when we no other living creatures can hurt ourselves. Even the buzzing speak as humans do? Te most of bees is indissolubly linked with the need to determine the likely explanation for this is the unique characteristic of position of a foraging site: their Even languages are subject to the laws of human language, which both distinctive dance could not be evolution. This means that at any point used to predict the weather just distinguishes it from other there will be deviations from the norm— because a particularly popular forms of communication and similar to the deviations that arise through bee decided to do so and thus explains what constitutes biological mutation and adaptation. As language. made it fashionable. “long as there is enough contact between However, plants—or even As linguistic philosophers speakers, occasional diversions aren’t machines—that exchange recognised centuries ago, the significant. However, if a group of people signals can communicate. essence of language lies in the separates—for instance due to emigration— Molecules also transmit arbitrary connection between new language barriers will emerge, as information (hence the the ‘sign’ and the ‘signified,’ happened with Icelandic and Norwegian. metaphor ‘the genetic code’ although there is no expectable For example, in Hanseatic times, Norwegian for the nucleic acid molecule connection between a sign and took on features from Low German. DNA). But a language doesn’t the thing it signifies. Words Today, ‘global English’ has a sustained work like this, and it is even less are predominantly formed in influence on other languages. true of grammar. For grammar such a way that you cannot uses signs that refer to language immediately tell from the itself. Tis does not exist in any sound of the words what it is animal, plant or machine communication. Language they signify. is a uniquely human form of information transfer. Its Nonetheless, onomatopoeia, whereby words sound like the sound essence is the arbitrary, unnatural unity between sign or feeling they represent, is a feature of all human languages. But in and signified. Te creation of symbols has made it most cases, the sound of words has nothing to do with their natural possible for human beings to detach themselves from models. How does that work? How can you tell from their sounds ‘natural conditions’ and create the world anew. Further, what ‘foot’, ‘electrician’ and ‘happiness’ stand for? we have learned that it is possible to create common ground by using symbolic communications systems Humans are free to assign meanings to sounds as we choose and even where divisions seem to prevail. Tus, the massive to invent new ones. Tat’s what makes it so difficult, if not impossible, differences between Asiatic and European languages to understand people speaking languages we don’t know: anything are no particular obstacle for a good translator. can mean anything. Words are only symbols. Te unity of the sign Of course, languages can also be misused in order (or symbol) and the signified is a socially constructed convention. to create differences that don’t really exist. Anyone We learn the connection so seamlessly that we assume that a given who knows how to use the arbitrariness of language expression and its meaning belong together, even though this isn’t is also in a position to lie. But the phenomenon of true. We follow conventions of speech fluidly and willingly in all human language can only be understood if one is able areas of life—even in imagined worlds. Te Lord of the Rings by to disregard differences and overcome divisions. J. R. R. Tolkien provides a particularly impressive example of this. Tis

Why doesn’t everyone speak the same language?

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At 18 months, children begin to acquire language at an astonishing rate. On average, they learn nine new words a day, and by the age of 6 they already understand around 14,000 words.

Te Discovery of Words

Language is one of our most complex tools. Yet children need only a few years to learn the pronunciation and meaning of thousands of words, and to learn the connections between them. By Martin Paetsch

‘Not bus spit,’ wrote the linguist susan Curtiss. Next to this she noted what the abbreviated sentence might mean: ‘i didn’t spit in the bus.’ she jots down other phrases: ‘teacher is boss in school’ or ‘i will Curtiss play piano.’ Tese are simple word chains that might have come from any 2- or 3-year-old. but the speaker of these simple sentences was no child: she had already turned 17 when these notes were made. For ‘Genie’ (name changed to protect her identity) had only recently acquired language. At 13, she escaped a terrible ordeal: her parents had kept her locked in a room since she was a small child. by day she was tied to a toilet stool, and at night tied in a sleeping bag. No one spoke to her, and she was not exposed to radio or television. if she made the slightest sound, her father thrashed her with a wooden stick. When this feral child was found in Los Angeles in 1970, she barely resembled a human being. she weighed just 27kg and could hardly stand up or walk. 7/10 g 31

According to one study, children under the age of 3 use their fathers as the main models for speech. This may be because men demand less of their children and, unlike most mothers, do not overwhelm them with a great flow of speech and complicated sentences.

She couldn’t speak. Te only sound she produced was a high-pitched whimper. Susan Curtiss and other academics decided to look afer her. Tey hoped not only to help Genie, but also to gain some unique insights into one of the greatest wonders of childhood—the acquisition of language. It is extremely rare for a human being to have grown up in such total isolation and to have to learn so painstakingly a skill that seems to come to others so easily. All children brought up in normal circumstances learn their mother tongue as naturally as walking. Even deaf babies begin to ‘babble’ in gestures at the same developmental stage when hearing babies begin to babble vocally. Tey go on to discover hand signs and put them together in simple sentences even if their parents haven’t taught them sign language. By the time a person reaches adulthood, he or she has a vocabulary of somewhere between 20,000 and 80,000 words. Along with an understanding of grammatical rules, this enables us to form an infinite number of sentences. But how these tools are acquired 32 g 7/10

remains a puzzle. What are the mechanisms that allow a child to pick out individual words from a torrent of initially unfamiliar sounds? How does a child internalise the complex rules of grammar? Tese are questions that researchers and philosophers have long pondered and disputed. Language is, afer all, a deeply human characteristic. Although some animals show a considerable talent for understanding language— some apes have learned a sign or symbolic system and been able to answer simple questions—no other species has developed language like humans.

We don’t know when this important developmental step occurred in our evolutionary history. On the basis of skeletons, American researchers have established that Homo sapiens has possessed a particular anatomical characteristic for the last 50,000 years: our oral cavity and throat aren’t bow-shaped like those of our ancestors. Instead, they are more or less at right angles to each other, and the larynx or voice-box is positioned deep inside the pharynx (throat). Tis allowed the resonating area of the throat to develop and created more room for the tongue. It is this specially formed mouth and voice-box that enable us today to create the wide range of sounds needed for speech—something

even our closest relatives, apes, are unable to do. However, the vocal tract of newborn babies isn’t very different from that of other mammals: it’s what makes it possible for babies to breathe and breast-feed simultaneously. Only as babies grow do the tongue and voice-box sink deeper into the pharynx, until the age of 6–8, by which time the child can produce a similar range of vowel sounds to adults. Babies make their first attempts at language much earlier. At 2 months, babies coo with sounds such as ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’. At around 6 months they babble and put together syllables to produce sounds like ‘dada’ or ‘baba’. At about 1 year, they say their first words and 6 months later, they know about 20. With each passing day, they learn an average of 9 new words. At the same time, they begin to make two-word sentences such as ‘doll comes’ or ‘more milk.’ And by the time they turn 4, many children have a vocabulary of more than 6,000 words and can construct grammatically correct questions and complex sentences.

Exactly how this incredible learning

Stages of Language Acquisition Children learn how to speak at varying rates. On average, at 2 months, babies can produce sounds like ‘örre’ or ‘kraa’; the sounds in this first babbling phase are produced by involuntary muscular movements in the mouth, throat and larynx. From 6 months onwards, the second babbling phase begins with syllable chains (‘dadada, gaga, yaya’). These resemble rhythm and intonation of the mother tongue. At about 9 months, the baby is able to control the movements of its mouth so that it can form a single double syllable. If parents praise their children for this achievement, they gradually learn to distinguish meaningful words from meaningless sound chains. From about 12 months onwards, the rest of the socalled proto-words follow (for example, ‘bow-wow’). At first the words are only used in context—thus only a particular ball is ‘bally’: later, any man can become ‘papa.’ From one and a half years, a child’s vocabulary undergoes a veritable explosion. Soon after, children begin to form their first twoword sentences, and this coincides with the first ‘questions age’ (“door open?”). Children become more skilled at conjugating verbs and forming plurals, and their sentences get longer. At about 3 years old, they begin their second ‘questions age’ (“why?” “how?”). At about 4 years, most children have acquired the basics of grammar and their knowledge of words likewise steadily increases. The brain stores words along with additional associations in a mental lexicon, something along the lines of: frog = animal, croaks, slippery. At 6, children can rhyme and break up words syllabically—these are important skills they need in order to learn to read and write. The foundations of language have now been laid.

process takes place is still a matter of academic debate. In 1957, B. F. Skinner attempted to explain the process by suggesting that all behaviour, including speech, is acquired and consolidated by external reinforcement. Tus, a child would only be rewarded with a glass of juice if he or she could clearly and articulately say the words ‘want juice.’ According to Skinner, this is how correct pronunciation and grammatical sentences are retained while incomprehensible variants remain unrewarded and disappear. Insights from the practice of psychology support Skinner’s theory—therapies based on his theory of conditioned behaviour have helped disabled children with language development. However, conclusions based on these examples do not apply to the learning processes of healthy babies. Parents don’t usually systematically train their children to speak. Instead, children have to contend with a backdrop of confusing and disconnected sounds from different voices, as few people speak in complete sentences. However, researchers today do not consider it impossible that children manage to acquire a deep knowledge of a language from such fragmented stimuli. Te explanation must surely be that they are born equipped to deal with this difficult task. Research increasingly shows us that children have extraordinary and effective mechanisms at their disposal, which they use to make out sounds, words and even grammatical structures. Tese have little to do with Skinner’s ideas on conditioned behaviour. Rather, these

mechanisms are already present at birth and enable the infant bring order to the chaos of clicking, hissing and mumbling sounds they are subject to. And the multitude of human sounds is overwhelming. All in all, the languages of the world have a repertoire of about 600 consonants and 200 vowels. Put another way: at a rate of five sounds per word, there are 100 billion possible combinations. At first, young children are able to distinguish between all these sounds. Studies have shown that 6-month-old babies from an English-speaking background reacted to the tonal sounds typical of the Nlaka’pamux Native American people of Canada. English-speaking adults, by contrast, were barely able to register such nuances. Universally talented at first, babies soon get used 7/10 g 33

Is it damaging for a child to grow up speaking more than one language?

to the sounds of their mother to make out where one word tongue. Tey can also order ends and another begins. When the various different accents we speak, we rarely make clear of different speakers under a pauses between words that No. In Nigeria, for instance, over 400 single sound category. might act as clues, but rather different languages are spoken and most In the US, even 6-monthrun the words together in a people are polyglots. Scandinavians, like old babies tended to identify the continuous stream of syllables. most Indians, also often know several variations to an English vowel Children nonetheless languages. Multilingualism is not a problem as identical, while they seemed understand some words even for children. They may sometimes need to organise the variations to before they begin to say them more time if mother and father speak a Swedish vowel as the same themselves. Experiments show different languages, but they soon make much less ofen. In this way, that at 6 months, babies look up for this. What’s more, if children have our sense of hearing gradually at videos of their mothers for already learned a second language, it is specialises in about 40 sound a longer time if they are asked considerably easier for them to learn more, categories that are important in about ‘Mama’, and, similarly, compared to peers who have grown up our mother tongue. look at the corresponding image speaking only one. However, it’s not a Tus, although Japanese of their father for a longer time good idea to try and communicate with adults cannot produce tonal if asked about ‘Papa.’ your child in a language that you do not variants that correspond to the Another study shows how know yourself. Western consonants ‘r’ and ‘l’, infants are able to identify they mean and understand the individual words in the flow corresponding consonants of of speech. In an American their own language. Accordingly, experiment, 8-month-old babies 12-month-old Japanese babies find it difficult to were played a 2-minute long uninterrupted stream of syllables distinguish these differences. At the same time, at generated by a computer voice. Te chain of sounds, something like about this age, the babies will have become better at ‘bidakupadotigolabubidaku’ included random clusters resulting in clearly identifying these Japanese consonants as well made-up words such as ‘padoti’ and ‘golabu.’ as other typical Japanese sounds. Te babies were then made to hear these clusters again, but this Moreover, a baby also has to learn to recognise time they were positioned between other previously unheard sounds, whole words. In spoken language, it isn’t always easy and the babies still clearly signalled their recognition of the ‘known’ made-up words. Terefore the made-up words (or sound clusters) previously heard, such as ‘padoti,’ had become familiar to them. Te babies were apparently responding to frequency—they heard the syllabic combination ‘pa-do’ as part of the word ‘pa-do-ti’ relatively frequently, and ‘ti-go’ much less frequently—only as part of the pair of ‘padoti golabu’ clusters. Tis, in principle, holds true of real languages. In the sentences ‘have doll’ (‘Puppe haben’ in German) and ‘give doll’ (‘Puppe geben’ in German), the syllabic combination for the German word ‘doll’— ‘Puppe’—occurs more frequently than ‘pe-ha’ or ‘pe-ge.’ In normal speech events, the typical stress patterns of any given language help infants in language acquisition. For example, a stressed syllable can indicate the beginning of a word, making it easier to recognise. An infant also receives important hints from its parents— universally, parents speak in a particular way when talking to their

At the age of 13, Genie escaped her ordeal in California. Her parents had locked her up since she was a child and had never spoken to her. After she was discovered in 1970, researchers tried to teach her to speak. However, according to one academic, the “most-tested child in history” was already too old for this. 34 g 7/10

Contact with peers—such as at kindergarten—plays an important part in language acquisition. Parents should not worry about their children learning swear-words here, too—these words increase a child’s confidence.

Whispering and passing it on—language is an instrument of power. Even those who do not speak freely before others can sense its potency. For this reason, most schools encourage children to participate in shows and plays.

infants. Tey will ofen considerably exaggerate the intonation of a sentence and lengthen vowels; this overemphasised articulation makes it easier for babies to separate sounds and words.

What’s the point of children mugging up grammar? Learning the rules of grammar is about as popular as integral calculus. Nonetheless, an understanding of the structure of languages leads to a better understanding of how our brains divide the world into categories. It also helps to appreciate the wonder of human communication. It makes it possible to experience the fascination of understanding a complex system of rules that we have been using effortlessly without knowing how efficient it is.

Infants have to do much more than just grasp language—apart from words, they also have to learn grammatical relationships. How do they learn which words are nouns and which are verbs? How can they recognise, even in a made-up sentence such as ‘Dodi luggets Dada,’ that a ‘Dodi’ is doing something to a ‘Dada’ even when they don’t know what ‘to lugget’ means? Infants have a basis for understanding grammar at a surprisingly early stage. In one experiment, 18-month-old toddlers capable of producing only one-word sentences were shown two recordings on two screens simultaneously. Tese were films with characters from the TV series Sesame Street. On one screen, Big Bird was tickling the Cookie Monster, while Big Bird was the one being tickled on the other. Te children were then told, “Look! Big Bird is tickling Cookie Monster! Find Big Bird tickling Cookie Monster!” Te children clearly had an understanding of a sentence structure, including subject, verb and object, since they looked at the screen that showed Big Bird doing the tickling with more frequency. Even simple sentences only have meaning for children once they are able to produce a relationship between words that are positioned far apart from each other—in the example above, between the subject

(Big Bird) at the beginning of the sentence, and the object (Cookie Monster), at the end. Further, the child’s brain has to be able to regularise grammatical patterns. Tus, the structure of the example sentence does not only apply to Big Bird, Cookie Monster and the tickling. Te fact that children learn such general grammatical relationships extremely quickly suggests yet another possibility that merits investigation. Two researchers developed two artificial languages with the same vocabulary but with different grammars. They then played recordings of sentences—each about a minute long—based on the first grammar to a group of 12-month-old infants. The infants were then confronted with new sentences containing new words, some of which were based on the second grammar. The infants listened for longer to the sample sentences based on the first grammar. They could apparently distinguish between the two rule-patterns, and recognised the principles of the first grammar. Such experiments suggest that children are amazingly adept at analysing the flow of speech that surrounds them. Tey appear to extract information not only about word boundaries but also about grammatical rules—a result that that was considered unthinkable, particularly by proponents of the notion of Universal Grammar, the idea that basic grammatical principles, at least, are innate.

One way or another, this suggests that

Does my child speak normally? If a child’s language development is slow, simple aids can help in many ways. Those affected tend to come from all parts of society; less than half will have a specific language impairment. Those with impairments may have considerable problems with vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation or comprehension. The reasons for this are unclear—there is often little evidence of brain or hearing damage in these cases, and very rarely of emotional disturbance. Speech therapists specialise in treating speech and language disorders. Speech impediments, where children have difficulty forming sounds correctly, are comparatively easy to treat. If a child has problems in correctly producing a particular sound, speech therapists use certain tricks: for instance, if a child finds it difficult to say a ‘k’ sound, they should forcefully hit a ball as they articulate the sound. There are also exercises to help improve the motor functions of the mouth—for example, sucking sweets with a straw or licking jam off the lip of a jar. Stammering is also a speech disorder, and is usually due to an underlying emotional problem. Between the ages of 3 and 5, stammering is often part of normal language development, and parents shouldn’t put their children under any pressure. Playing with puppets can help— children slip into different roles and begin to stammer less or stop stammering altogether. Dyslexia is a common outcome of a language development disorder. This condition, which results in difficulties in reading and writing, is usually genetic but is often exacerbated by poor training and too much television. Therapy may be required if a 3-year-old only knows a few words.

learning to speak relies on a combination of genetic programming and external influences, including external conditions. Hearing occasional sentences through a loudspeaker is not enough—as illustrated by the case of an American boy, who could hear, born to deaf parents. Until the age of 3, he only heard his mother tongue through a television, and although he could express himself in English, his knowledge of grammar was seriously underdeveloped. For the same reason, the attempts by some parents to improve their offsprings’ knowledge of foreign languages by using audio courses when they are still babies make little sense. Along with human warmth, another factor plays an important role: time. It is likely that a language can be learned so effortlessly only in early childhood. During the first year of life, even children who have suffered an injury to the areas of their brains that control speech and language can still develop normal language skills; adults are less successful.

Research with Chinese and Korean immigrant children suggests that there is indeed such a thing as a critical time period for language acquisition. Children who came to the USA afer their seventh year did not master English fully, regardless of how long they spent learning the new language. Tragically, this is also illustrated by Genie’s story. Although she did learn to speak and, with intensive training, managed to acquire hundreds of words, her language skills never developed beyond those of a young child. It was clearly too late by the time she began her lessons, and she never succeeded in forming the passive or in formulating grammatically correct questions. 7/10 g 37

Dan Everett spent half his life in the tropical world of the Pirahã in Brazil. He can communicate with them like no other outsider.

Against the Tide In the Amazon live a people who apparently do not use subordinate or embedded clauses in their language. So what’s the big deal? Maybe these 350 people simply don’t need them. But for contemporary linguists, the Pirahã are at the eye of a raging academic storm. And stirring it up: Daniel Everett, the unconventional linguist. By Malte Henk (text) and Martin Schoeller (photos)

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Canoes, knives, fish-hooks, shorts and cloth: the Pirahã need very little from the outside world. For the most part, they live an independent existence in simple huts by the river, without electricity or walls.

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Different? Yes. Ignorant? No. The Pirahã face complex challenges daily—for instance, when hunting monkeys. However, they place no value on abstraction, and devote themselves fully to the here and now. �ccording to �verett, this also accounts for their language.

Anthropology. In 14 pages, he sketched an vision of a people whose archaic way of life is truncated with a the linguist Daniel Everett is sitting in an Indian similarly strange limitation of linguistic expression. village somewhere in the Amazon forest looking for Te daily life of the Pirahã seems to need no subordinate clauses. Te village consists of six huts numbers. Everett has never heard the villagers use covered in palm fronds and open fireplaces that smell words such as ‘every,’ ‘all’ or ‘more.’ Tey don’t appear of charred fish: an unlikely site for a major scientific to use numbers at all, even in gestures—by counting debate involving some of the top universities in the on their fingers, for example, how many fish they need world. But Dan Everett is here, in the Brazilian rainforest, having a to grill for their supper, how many days the meat from conversation with an Indian in green football shorts, for precisely the anteater will last or what they expect from the this reason. Portuguese-speaking trader in exchange for the six Everett is sure about one thing: the Indian won’t use any subordinate baskets of Brazil nuts. clauses. Te Pirahã people don’t formulate such sentences. Sometimes Nor do the Pirahã have words for colours, or Everett wonders to himself how he has ended up spending his entire for ‘today’ or ‘yesterday.’ Tey rarely think of their life proving that he is right on this point. ancestors. As described by Everett, they have no art. Dan Everett is a slightly paunchy, 58-year-old American in He knows of no folktales, no myths, no stories of a cowboy hat. About a dozen people surround him: children with creation. Te Pirahã are not stupid. Tey simply live bloated stomachs, women in linen dresses, half-naked men. A pair in the here-and-now—that is what matters to them, of quivering dogs are howling and Everett is sweating. He has a and anything beyond that leaves them speechless. microphone in his hand and, from a distance, the ethnolinguist from Tey don’t talk about things they do not or have Illinois State University looks like a gold-hunter. not seen themselves. Everett calls the manner in which Everett’s academic critics say it is impossible that there exists a the Pirahã organise their existence the ‘immediacypeople who simply string together main clauses one afer the other of-experience principle.’ like beads on a string. According to his detractors (and there are Anything that counters this principle is rejected— many), anyone making such a claim is either a braggart, or mad, or including the entire cosmos of the thoughts and life of both. Afer all, every one of the approximately 7,000 languages in the modern world. “No other people in the Amazon,” the world has embedded clauses. You could go as far as to say it is a says Everett, “have shown as little interest in progress fundamental part of being human. as the Pirahã.” So what, then, is language? Tis question follows Teir first contact with Europeans took place from the question of how Xoóopai tells Everett 200 years ago, and their relations with riverabout his most recent successful hunting traders functions well. Yet no Pirahã expedition. “Hiahoaáti topagaahai. Gíxai kaxaxái has learned more than the broken koabáipi xahoáo,” says Everett to Xoóopai— Portuguese necessary for this, “Tell the machine. In the night you kill on Amaz and none of them has an alligator.” felt drawn to the Xoóopai answers in the rough staccato territory of the Pirahã along arms of civilisation. of Pirahã: “I raise my voice: I haven’t killed the Maici River People from other one as yet. Ten I search upstream. I search BRAZIL tribes now drive cars upstream. I search upstream. No. Tere is none. 800 km Brasília and buy trainers, but the Ten my speech: Te alligator is probably afraid. 350 Pirahã simply exist by Afraid, the alligator. I search at the confluence of the Maici river as hunterthe waters. Ten my speech: Now! Tere is the alligator! gatherers, as if they were Ten my speech, my speech: Now. It is already killed. Ten living on a deserted island. I come back. Ten the moon is already moving upwards. No one else knows their language, Ten I am already back. No sun. Dan sleeps. He will see and their cultural arrogance knows it in the sun.” no limits. Te Pirahã word for ‘foreign An entire story without embedded clauses. Very nice, language’ is ‘crooked head.’ Te word for says Dan Everett, who has translated the speech. ‘Pirahã’ is ‘straight head.’ Te immediacy-of-experience principle further In the autumn of 2005, three decades afer his explains the mechanics and grammar of the Pirahã first trip into the forest with the Pirahã, Dan Everett language. Everett claims that the Pirahã don’t build published an article about them in the journal Current Ri

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The Pirahã reservation stretches for 240km along the Maici river. At the most, some two dozen people live in each village, and are, to a certain extent, nomadic. Depending on the current, they ‘wander’ with their huts to the best spots on the riverbank.

sentences with multiple clauses. Tey never join one thought (‘Te man is felling a tree’) with another (‘Te man has a canoe’). Along the Maici, you will not hear expressions such as, “Te man who has a canoe is felling a tree.” Te insertion isn’t part of immediate experience, for it refers to knowledge of an older event. No subordinate clause, no embedding—without this, the Pirahã have no recourse to what is known in linguistics as ‘recursion.’ Recursion is a process of thought that orders one piece of information below another. Either once, as in the example above, or more ofen: “I know that George knows, that Luke knows, that Amit knows, that Shashi loves Leila”—the same sentence structure can be repeated, theoretically without end.

Noam Chomsky is the most important linguist of our times. Back in 1957, in his first book, Synthetic Structures, he formulated the idea of a Universal Grammar—the innate ability of all peoples to structure their speech using certain grammatical rules. Chomsky believes our power of language is a biological given, similar to our ability to walk upright. Like legs for walking, we possess an organ for speech. It is a kind of superprocessor in our brains, with the same build for all mankind. All sentences spoken at any moment all over the world follow the rules of this processor in their structure; all languages are based on the same blueprint. In an article written in 2002 (‘Te Faculty of Language: What is it, Who Has it, and How Did it Evolve?’) along with Marc D. Hauser and W. Tecumseh Fitch, Chomsky distills two decades of research down

to this point: evolution has raised human beings above the animal world in giving humans the power to create, from limited resources, unlimited, long and complex utterances with words. Once you compare all the grammars of all languages, once you distill all the rules and abstract principles, recursion forms the deepest foundation of language For Chomsky, this is what makes people people. We are animals who are able to communicate recursively, and this form of communication is what we mean by the term ‘language.’ But the Pirahã don’t have recursion, says Dan Everett, attacking Chomsky like other behaviouralists and cognitive scientists before him. But Everett is a linguist, and for his discipline, Chomsky’s Universal Grammar has been the gold standard for the last 50 years—much as the theory of evolution has for biologists. Inspired by Chomsky, linguists have spent their lives researching the foundational rules of language. But now, Everett’s theories have created a stumbling block. Simply because they speak as they do, these 350 indigenous Indians from the Amazon have filled the international world of experts with concen. Te Pirahã have become the cause of conflict for an entire academic discipline. “Everett’s factual assertions about the Pirahã are false,” says Clience Rodriques, a linguist from Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. “A true description of the Pirahã language does not include facts that question the basis of modern linguistics.” “Everett has disproved the assumption that all languages are recursive,” says Michael Tomasello, an opponent of Chomsky and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Te project of Universal Grammar is dead. “Tere is no such thing as a unifying foundational language of man. Te complex sentence structures Chomsky describes have no function in some cultures. Te Pirahã don’t need them to do what they do.”

Two men, more or less the same age, squat

Bigó with the head of a bagged wild boar. In the close community of the Pirahã, even the young adults have to ‘function’ like adults— initiation ceremonies are unknown. 46 g 7/10

next to each other in the shade: Dan Everett and Kóhoi, his old language teacher, a gentle man with large ears, a stubbly beard and a baseball cap worn backwards. “You’ve got a few nasty new dogs, haven’t you?” “Dan, why did you get a new woman?” “Te other one was old, I threw her away, haha.” Small-talk with the most contentious Indian peoples of our times. No exotic stage: no painted bodies, no feather decorations, no excessive emphasis

on cultural difference. Everett says that it took him a long time to realise that this kind of paucity was exactly what made them special. In Kóhoi’s hut hang a few calabashes, ropes and bows. Behind it are some sparse fronds of manioc, and beyond, a vast expanse of untamed jungle. Kóhoi, of course, knows that we are here because we want to ‘mark paper.’ Everett wants to prove his theory right. Kóhoi has been offered fish bait or a packet of flour for participating in the experiment involving small plastic figures. “It’s their only motivation to take part in these experiments,” Everett explains. Kóhoi lifs up two figures and mutters something. He takes another figure and carries on muttering. “Aha!” Everett cries out: Kóhoi had used the same word—“hoí”—for both ‘two’ and ‘three.’ Te Pirahã make use of a trio of concepts—‘hói,’ ‘hoí’ and ‘baagiso’—that for years Everett thought were the basis of a counting system along the lines of 1, 2, many. According to some researchers, this is how some primitive peoples count. However, Everett now believes this represents something different: very few, a few, many. Two or three figures? Doesn’t matter. In both cases it’s “hoí”— a few. Noam Chomsky and his supporters believe counting can be ascribed to our biologically predetermined language faculty. Nonsense, says Everett: we don’t count intuitively, it’s a cultural invention, a kind of storing technology; and where you don’t need this, it doesn’t occur in speech. Te Pirahã can calculate numerically. Show them three nuts, and they’ll lay another three nuts next to them. But they won’t retain the exact number in their heads for long, because the abstract concept of ‘three’ doesn’t exist for them. It is with this realisation, Everett thinks, that he achieved a partial victory against Chomsky. (Western studies in developmental psychology could however stoke the debate further: babies a few days old can identify the difference between two and three objects, while babies just a little older already make use of a counting concept. Tese studies were limited to the numbers one, two and three, but even this small number is enough to prove that babies add and subtract instinctively.) Now the entire village is watching. A new participant is a shy teenager. “Give us hoí figures.”

According to the counting-theory, the boy should pick up two out of the ten figures. He hesitates, then picks up four, but Kóhoi calls out something and the teenager hands over two. Everett sighs. Research in the field can be chaotic: academics sitting in their universities have no inkling. It’s pointless if Kóhoi keeps intervening. We decide to move the experiment to our boat in order to get rid of Kóhoi. As we balance on the planks of wood, a guttural, howling, singing resounds. Te Pirahã women are describing what happened with the enthusiasm of sports commentators. On board, we are able to collect data without distracting interventions. The Pirahã participants sometimes choose two figures, sometimes four or six: no one appears to follow an exact pattern of counting. Ten Kóhoi suddenly reappears on the scene. Kóhoi is among those who know a bit of ‘crooked head,’ says Everett; enough to be able to converse with someone from the outside world. And indeed, earlier, Kóhoi did count the fingers of his hand one by one, but with great difficulty, in his broken Portuguese. “An old man who finds it hard to count to ten—the result, if you please, of decades of trying to teach him. And that is supposed to be something innate to humans,” says Everett. Ten he gets out his guitar and plays a song by Johnny Cash. Te Pirahã stand around, not knowing what to do, then disperse. Everett opens a can of beer. “Noise is just noise as far as they are concerned,” he says. “On the other hand, the clientele in the Blues Club, way back when, didn’t seem much interested in my music either.” If he hadn’t become a linguistic researcher says Everett, he would have been a rock star. “Or dead. Or a dead rock star.”

‘Tere is no unifying base language for mankind. Some sentence structures have no basis in some cultures. Te project of Universal Grammar is dead!’

Everett grew up in dusty Southern California. His father was a cowboy who drank 25 cans of beer a day. He later opened a bar where Dan made his first performance, aged 11. When he was 14, his father took him to Mexico, to visit prostitutes. His mother died early and his stepmother shot herself in the head. Young Dan grew up in a world where arguments were settled more ofen with a punch than with words. He met Keren in the summer of ’68, while he was dealing in LSD at a Jimi Hendrix concert. She wore her hair and skirts short and invited him into her church community. Why not? he thought. Standing in front of the church, he swallowed a pill. Half an hour later, he met God. Tat’s how Dan Everett became a believer: it was his first transformation. 7/10 g 47

The language of the Pirahã has a simple sound system—three vowels and seven consonants for the women; eight for the men.

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Living in the primeval forest: a playground, a treasure trove for piglets who are reared on mother’s milk to become providers of meat, a source of fish that are hunted with bow and arrow.

He and Keren married at 18, two idealistic teenagers with a dream. Tey wanted to lead a life full of adventure in the primeval forest, and to save souls. Keren’s father, a missionary himself, had talked of such a life. In 1976, Everett completed his studies in ‘Foreign Missions’ at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and they came a step closer to this goal. Te Everetts joined a bible-belt organisation that wanted to spread the word of God by translating the Bible into obscure languages. On 10 December 1977, Everett moved to the Maici; Keren and the children followed later. If you want to learn our language, the Pirahã had made it clear, start with Kóhoi! Te two men began the very next day. Everett pointed to things and noted the answers. He watched, learned by heart, and worked hard at it over the years, from nouns to verbs to sentences. Somewhat like Chinese, Pirahã is a tonal language: the tone of the vowels creates meaning. Everett had to learn that ‘xaohoí’ meant ‘palm-nut’ but ‘xáohoí’ meant ‘manioc’. Te difference between friend and foe lies in the word’s emphasis: ‘bagiái’ versus ‘bágiái’. Tones, accents and syllabic length are interplayed in such a complex manner that the Pirahã can also whistle, sing and hum their sentences; and they do so regularly. Everett struggled. But he also noticed he had a talent for languages. When the family needed a break from living in the forest, he studied linguistics at a Brazilian university. He began to publish factual essays about the structure of Pirahã and other Indian languages. Te world of specialists learned to value him. Everett even spent a year studying at the worldrenowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was given an office along the same corridor as Noam Chomsky’s. Tat was Everett’s second transformation. He became an academic, a Chomskyan. Te long goodbye from the world of God had begun. Everett travelled to Amsterdam, to the World Conference on Phonetics, and discovered the prostitutes of the red-light district. His feelings of guilt were immense, and back in the Amazon he confessed everything to Keren. Marriage crises; a relationship from hell in a hut overrun by tarantulas. His wife became even closer to God. While every morning she hung up messages that He had sent her in her dreams, Everett translated two gospels—Mark and Luke—into the foreign language. But like the songs of Johnny Cash, the Pirahã didn’t want to hear them. Who is this man, Jesus? they asked. What does

he look like, do you know him? At some point, says Everett, he realised that the Pirahã’s fixation with concrete experience lef no room for the spirit of the New Testament. His marriage to Keren broke down irredeemably in 2004. At this point, Everett sat down at his desk and tried to set down systematically all that struck him as strange about the Pirahã. He formulated the immediacy-of-experience principle, described the lack of recursion, and wrote the article that would make him famous. Facing the deepest crisis of his life, Everett directed all his energies in one direction: the fight against Chomsky. Tis marked his third transformation. Everett became the troublemaker of his brotherhood, the cowboy of linguistics. He married again, is now a professor; the children from his first marriage are doing fine. However, their mother, Keren, continues to fight to deliver the Pirahã into the arms of God. She still lives in a house near the reservation, and tries to convert them with Christian songs instead of holy scriptures.

Noam Chomsky sits in his corner office in MIT near Boston, an 81-year-old in a sweater and heavy glasses who gravely watches over the legacy of his revolution like a veteran Cuban socialist. His learned voice is quiet, as if he wants to keep the world at bay. Te great linguist is holding forth in a monologue. Everything began in 1957. At that time, scientists believed it was possible to train people in languages as if they were lab animals—with rewards for the right behaviour. Babies copy their mothers, schoolchildren their teachers; they copy words and sentence structure on to their children’s brains as if on to a blank slate. But as the young Chomsky began to write, such ideas broke down. He realised that speech was a creative act: humans are not lab rats, but gifed artists. Even children create new, unheard-of expressions. Tey do this, according to Chomsky, because the founding principles of language are in their genes. What the words mean, to what purpose we use them, is secondary. It’s all about the machine in the head—the grammar. At its heart runs the motor of recursion, the gif of unlimited combinations: a big idea. Politically, Chomsky considers himself a ‘libertarian socialist sympathetic to anarcho-syndicalism.’ Te main aim of anarchosyndicalism is the revolutionary overcoming of the state and capitalist society through the immediate possession of the means of production into unionised self-organisation. Chomsky’s theory of language also rides on a utopian ideal. It is as if he wants to give something to people that no one can take away from

Te troubled teenager, the idealistic young missionary and the infamous linguist: the three lives of Dan Everett.

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them; what is part of nature makes us all equal and thereby makes possible free thought, creativity and autonomy. Chomsky is highly regarded—one could say revered—by his supporters, a circle that once included Everett. Indeed, some describe the ferocity of the Pirahã debate as a heretic getting his just deserts. Professor Chomsky, what do you think of Everett’s thesis? “Totally irrelevant. Let us assume that his observations are correct: the Pirahãs don’t have recursion. It would be like me finding a people who only crawl; does that say anything about the ability of people to walk upright? Bring up a Pirahã child in Berlin: she or he will, of course, use embedded clauses.” “Everett wants to be famous,” he goes on. “Famous men need ideas. But surely not such unserious ones! You begin to speak as a child! All language processes are acquired culturally? But what does a 3-year-old know of culture?” Chomsky spits out the word: “Nothing!” But for Chomsky, the Pirahã crisis is just one among many. For such is the diversity of speech: there are innumerable ways of attacking a Universal Teory. Some languages, such as Pirahã, have only 11 different sounds, others 144. Some idioms wipe away the difference between noun and verb, others know no subject, and in Bininj Gunwok, an Aboriginal language, ‘I’ve cooked the wrong meat for you again’ is ‘Abanyawoihwarrgahmarneganjginjeng.’ Te ‘big machine’ chokes on such a word. Difficult to create universal order here. It is increasingly complicated for the old revolutionary in his office. An academic empire is on shaky ground, careers are at stake, and all of this is entwined in the fight about the Pirahã. But the Chomskyans won’t give up so easily. Tey hope for better news from the forest.

Everett believes that the time when researchers headed into the forest in search of unknown tribes has come to an end.

In early 2009, linguists from the Berlin Centre for General Linguistics came to the Maici for 8 days of field research. Tey trained two Pirahã to perform in a play of sorts. One of them placed a nut under a banana leaf, while another, Toí, watched. Tey then covered Toí’s eyes with a blindfold and placed the nut in a basket. Ten, they asked an observer: “What does Toí say? Where is the nut?” Te Pirahã’s answers showed evidence of subordinated sentence structures, pointing to the possibility of recursion, said the Berliners. Te Pirahã’s answers prove nothing, retorted a very angry Dan Everett. Te sentence in the Berliner’s heads was: “Toí thinks the nut is under the banana leaf.” Te sentence, according to Dan Everett was: “Toí’s speech: the nut is under the banana leaf.” No embedding. No recursion. 52 g 7/10

At any rate, not in their grammar. Of course the Pirahã are always talking about what they or other Pirahã have said. Tey talk all the time, they love telling stories. But the sentence-creating machine, the fantasy product of the oldest anarchist of MIT is untouched by it. Tey have grammar, but no recursion—which is not to say that the Pirahã are primitive. Tey have between 12 and 20 rules to connect their words, and around 90 verbs. But each verb has up to 16 addons, allowing the Pirahã to convey whether what they are talking about is conjectural, based on personal observation, deduction and so on. One of these markers, ‘-sai’, is a problem word. No other researcher apart from Dan Everett speaks Pirahã. Te Berliners used translators such as Kóhoi but claim to have found out that ‘-sai’ introduces subordinate clauses in the same way as ‘that’ or ‘which’ in English. Using tonal analysis, they also found that there are no pauses afer ‘-sai.’ Tey also refer to Everett’s own work—as a Chomskyan he asserted that this ‘-sai’ marks subordinate clauses. A youthful error, says Everett today. “Toí hi gáí-sai”—“Toí says, thinks, speaks…” But is this phrase followed by a comma and subordinate clause? Or is it a colon and main clause? Can the latter even be termed ‘recursion’, since the language does not in any case have written conventions? Te important question is, regardless of content, whether one sentence simply follows another, or whether they are related to each other. Te answer would decide whether or not all humans share a proto-language. “You can’t come here for a week, do your research and prove me wrong: I’ve been here for 30 years!” Everett exclaims. Sometimes he sounds like an artist who wants to protect his life’s work from imitators and doubters. Tere is a video on YouTube showing Everett doing experiments with the Pirahã. In the comments box, a Harvard University professor writing under the pseudonym ‘honestyplease’ warns of a better translation of the foreign language. A user called ‘Paóxaisi’ objects, a debate ensues and there in the to-ing fro-ing on the Internet it becomes clear that the fight about the Pirahã will never be settled until other researchers learn to speak this language. Paóxaisi is the name by which the Pirahã know Dan Everett.

At night, when he can’t sleep, Dan Everett sometimes imagines himself flying over the Maici,

free as a bird. We, however, paddle from village to village making our visits. We dance for hours arm-in-arm in a circle with the Pirahã, while the women sing the same sentence over and over again, stating that photos were earlier taken of everyone. We spur the children on as they drive tarantulas through the village. We watch as they wash peccary intestines in the river. We allow ourselves to be immersed in their world as far as possible. We laugh with them when they imitate us. Tey scribble in our notebooks and claim they can write: ‘make seen with the hand.’ Tey laugh at us as we stagger, sweating, through their forest while they stroll along unencumbered by ‘foot leather.’ Dan Everett looks more and more exhausted with each passing day: perhaps this is due to the intellectual battle still raging, but it is also to do with Kóhoi. He used to ask for fish-hooks or medicines, but there are no longer enough of these. Now he wants radios, television sets, new clothes, better huts. Sometimes we see motorboats go by on the river. Kóhoi would like one, too. Something is changing. For FUNAI, Brazil’s ‘National Foundation of the Indian,’ the Pirahã are firstly a scandal and secondly a development project. Upstream, their officials have built a clinic complete with a shower block. It isn’t just the Indians who are profiting from the money flowing into the reservation. Te researchers from Berlin lef behind a motorboat for FUNAI in return for their support of the research trip. Even Everett will soon have to choose whether to give in to the wishes of the Brazilians, thereby accelerating the changes he abhors. He ofen lies in his hammock, drinking beer, blocking out his thoughts with his iPod. Perhaps he can sense that this is the end of an epoch. Te immediacy-of-experience principle hasn’t as yet been vanquished by its opponents, but it could crumble in the flicker of a TV set. Te Portuguese language would move in, and with it, recursion. FUNAI is talking about building a school. We are seeing the last days of a happy culture, Everett says once. As visitors, we remain undecided to the last—are the Pirahã really that unbridgeably different? I ask Everett to organise an interview with Xigábaí, a young hunter, who radiates clear, calm intelligence. Everett’s ‘haven’t-you-got-it-yet?’ look is unforgiving, but he calls Xigábaí anyway. We sit on the top deck on plastic chairs.

“Xigábaí, who created the primeval forest?” we ask. He thinks, and then says, “Te Pirahã came to the forest before a great time.” He does not elaborate. “Questions about origin,” interjects Everett, “contradict their culture.” “When you die, Xigábaí, what will happen to you?” “A jaguar kills me. All the people will look for the jaguar. Te burial follows. I go in another forest. I stay there.” Do you mean, in another world? “Bullshit!” cries Everett. “He pointed to the river! Tat’s where they bury their dead. Tat’s all. No paradise, no hell. Nothing. You have to ask concrete questions! Tey don’t understand otherwise.” Our boat has a satellite antenna; the TV runs all day. We ask Xigábaí where the talk-show host is at this moment, but he looks at us uncomprehending and Everett smiles, a tired triumph over this inability for abstract thought. “My opponents accuse me of racism,” he says, “but I’m only saying that all peoples don’t live in the same century. And that is just how it is.”

For the portraits in this article, photographer Martin Schoeller invited dozens of Pirahã men, women and children into his mobile studio, in which famous people such as US President Barack Obama, the Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie and the German soccer coach Jürgen Klinsmann have also sat. Schoeller, who lives in New York, is one of the most important portrait photographers of our time. Daniel Everett sees himself differently: he is the only outsider who can understand and speak the language of the Pirahã. In order to learn it, he explains, he had to first begin with nouns: “For example, you find out what the word for ‘stick’ is. Then you try to figure out the expression for ‘two sticks,’ for ‘one stick falls on the floor,’ for ‘two sticks fall on the floor,’ and so on. You have to demonstrate everything in gestures in order to get a basic understanding of how the sentence structure functions— where the subject, verb and object belong.” This is how Everett acquired a knowledge of the Piraha’s language. “You can never become one of them, but you have to do everything to feel the language, to absorb it.” GEO editor, Malte Henk (in the yellow T-shirt), seized this principle willingly for his 3-week research trip to Brazil and the USA, not only to understand the Pirahã but also to understand the linguists themselves.

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The golden

RevoluTion The Czech Republic is known for the quality of its beer, and its inhabitants annually consume more of it than any other European nation. Even so, a sense of discontent is spreading through Czech beer-lovers, for large foreign breweries have been usurping one famous local brand after another. To combat these changes, the Czechs are utilising their talent for improvisation—and their love of pleasure. By Kilian Kirchgessner

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his story about Bohemian beer begins with a export, it is praised all over the world and thousands of visitors woman called Ludmila. Afer her death, a note make pilgrimages to the brewery cellars in the city of Pilsen, was discovered by her grandson, Svatopluk Strava, where the success story began. Many of them only know one among her bequests. In the old woman’s small word in the local language: “pivo.” handwriting, the note was titled “Recept na pivo”— However, the pride of the Czechs no longer belongs only to recipe for beer—and below it followed a daintily and neatly the Czechs: following the collapse of socialism, foreign breweries scribbled list of ingredients and the method. began buying up the major Czech brands. Te capital invested “If I hadn’t found this piece of paper,” says Strava, “I would in Pilsner Urquell, Krušovice, Gambrinus, Staropramen and many other famous traditional enterprises has still be drinking Pilsner Urquell today.” Te recipe changed his life. Strava has rebuilt his long been streaming in from countries like South Africa, Belgium and Brazil. Budweiser house, a small farmstead in the hills behind Brno. Pipes and tubes now run through is the only beer that is still Czech-Bohemian; the entire building. A stainless steel vat Beer is an ancient it comes from a state-owned brewery whose gleams in the feeble light of the former cross-cultural drink that privatisation is also under discussion. enjoyed even utility room. Strava has even installed a was Naturally, the Czechs are annoyed. cold store in the old barn in the garden, in Mesopotamia. The “What we get to drink over here,” complain where the temperature is maintained at Egyptians used to ferment purists on online forums, “is the same semi-baked bread with standard swill as all over the world.” 8°C throughout the year. As a result, they are determined to Svatopluk Strava, 38, has an water to create a protoangular build, broad shoulders and a beer. The ancient Romans regain the lost sovereignty over their confident manner. His handshake is called beer ‘Cervisia’ and national pride. Tey buy the products as firm as his intention of brewing the considered it to be barbaric. from tiny local breweries, operating from ‘beer of all beers.’ He finds it amusing In the Middle Ages, beer utility rooms, sheds and garages all over that the unparalleled beer for which was also consumed by the country—or, like Strava, they brew children. Because it was their lager themselves. At the forefront the Bohemians in Pilsen, Budweis boiled during the of this new beer movement is Jan Kočka, and Prague are so famous is actually brewing process, it was a pioneer among Czech private brewers produced at his place in Moravia. “Just largely free of germs, who created his first beer in 1992. imagine!” he shouts. “I almost poisoned unlike the drinking He is now busy organising these lone myself during my first attempts at brewing!” water of the times... fighters into a vibrant collective. Te meeting He had placed a large pot on four hobs, and point for Kočka’s followers is his internet poured in 20 litres of water with a lot of malt, site, which is called ‘svět piva,’ the world of and heated, stirred and filtered it for 8 hours— beer. More and more readers log onto the site exactly as his grandmother had instructed. “It every month. Here, they find new beer recipes, was really disgusting,” says Strava. exchange information about the subtleties of At the time, he was tempted to chuck out the malting, or criticise the large breweries. “Almost all pot with its burnt remains and forget all about the my free time goes into it,” says Kočka. He also has a recipe. But fortunately, “circumstances did not permit long list of forthcoming events planned: a beer tasting it,” for he had impulsively invited several friends over in a cellar bar in Prague; a beer festival in the USA that for his first round of brewing. Tey got drunk on regular he will personally attend; the visit of a Japanese master bottled beer while the decoction Strava had placed on the brewer who wants to create a new beer; a brewery course. hob simmered away. When the failure of the experiment And since the Czech Republic has now turned into a nation became evident late at night among the stinking fumes of of beer connoisseurs, not just beer drinkers, Kočka also malt, his friends mocked Strava, saying that he should stick hopes to create a magazine devoted to the brew. to his transport company and stay away from beer. Once just a consumer, Kočka turned into a beer-evangelist To prove them wrong, Strava started exploring all afer the end of socialism. Working as an airline steward the literature available on beer. He learned the difference with the national carrier, he travelled quite extensively. One between top-fermented and bottom-fermented beer; evening, he went out with some British colleagues to a pub devoted his attention to amino acids, amylase and maltose somewhere in England. Te Englishmen first ordered for entire evenings; learned the procedures of mashing; and stout, then lager, and then the rest of the beers on offer, became acquainted with original wort, spent beer grains one afer the other, and each time they took and germination. And his hopes blossomed. notes and discussed the taste. Czech beer is a phenomenon. As an 7/10 g 55

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“What I am doing here,” explains Buriánek, “is basically an Kočka was shocked. “It was different in the Czech Republic: in our country, you go into a smoky pub, what I have studied.” He is a chemical lab technician who, order the cheapest beer, drink your ten glasses and even at home, precisely notes the minutes of his experiments. leave.” Even the language accounts for this style “10:15am: Adding the malt to the water, 40°C,” he writes down. of drinking: “We use the word ‘chlast’ for this,” His T-shirt is already soaked with sweat: he has spent the last says Kočka. Tere is no exact equivalent for the word in hour and a half grinding 5kg of malt. Over the years, the roller English; the dictionary suggests “boozing,” but chlast resonates of his grinder has become blunt. Spare parts? Not available. with something like pride. It almost sounds poetic. Everything here, he has made himself. “10:30am: Gradual temperature increase For years, the large breweries fulfilled to 68°C.” Te starch transforms into maltose. the Czech demand for beer. Even when Buriánek only needs to stir it with a wooden the queues for bread extended all the way spoon every now and then. He takes a beer down the street as a result of socialism’s controlled economy, there was always ...And, of course, its from the refrigerator. With his eyes closed, he enough beer. And it was affordable alcohol content was sniffs at the neck of the bottle. “Tis comes even in unlimited quantities. But much lower in those from Belgium and tastes of cherries.” 11:45am: he lets it cool down. “12pm: even in freedom and democracy, the days. Adults drank it Czechs remained loyal to their beer. because of its high calorie Mashing completed, iodine test negative.” Teir thirst, the chlast, is immense: content, and it was an He pours it from the cauldron into a plastic supplement vat. Another hand-made contraption: they consume 159 litres per person important per year, and if one subtracts children to their often meagre Buriánek drilled hundreds of extremely and the very old, one can easily diet, since beer could fine holes in the base of a laundry basket. imagine how much a sturdy Czech also be brewed from low- Tey are covered with a layer of crushed guzzles every day. Te Germans and quality grains. And what malt through which the liquid now flows. Austrians are about 50 litres under has become of the cultural 1:20pm: the brew is mixed with hops and asset now? Companies heated to 100°C. Buriánek opens the next the Czechs’ record. water it down to make bottle, this time an English stout. Compared with such sales figures, fashionable cocktails! “2:30pm: Second addition of hops.” the capacities of private brewers are 2:50pm: the cooling process starts; the 20infinitesimal: Kočka harbours no litre pot is in the refrigerator. “4pm: Yeast delusions. Yes, there are pubs in each added.” Afer stirring it, he puts the pot back large city that serve locally produced beer; in the refrigerator. It will now ferment. in some cases, dozens of them. But the A week later, Buriánek will sample his new domination of the large concerns that provide beer. If it’s any good, he will enter a bottle in an pub owners with free beer glasses, sunshades amateur brewers’ competition. He might even win and neon signs has, so far, gone unchallenged. an award for his home-grown concoction. Tis is a difficult subject for Kočka. Discussing Perhaps he will then feel like Strava, the man whose it, he immediately becomes agitated. But he is grandmother’s recipe turned him into a private brewer— not interested in a large-scale rebellion against the and whose house busloads of beer-tourists now visit. uniform beer: he is looking at a revolution on a small Strava also supplies to a number of pubs. Te bestseller scale. He thinks about it for a moment. “You could put in his range is called Xavier, a strong, full-bodied beer. It is it like this,” he finally says. “We are connoisseurs.” People named afer the pub once owned by Strava’s father, while his who passionately extol the flavour of a non-pasteurised other beers are named afer the men of his family. Grandpa beer, who are enraptured by a slight hint of ginger in the František has been immortalised in a beer to which vanilla beer foam: people like Petr Buriánek. beans are added during brewing. Te memory of his second Buriánek brews his own beer once a month, 20 litres at grandfather, Oldřich, is preserved in a dark, dry beer brewed a time: the old meat cauldron that serves as a brewing vat at from four kinds of malt and with a flavour of cardamom. And his home simply cannot hold any more than that. the beer named afer his father-in-law, Vladimír, has such a His apartment, in a high-rise in Prague, has three high alcohol content that it almost qualifies as a spirit. rooms and a tiny kitchen. Te 38-year-old has a ritual for Incidentally, this was how Svatopluk Strava restored his his beer-brewing days: first, his wife and three children reputation and regained his honour: the friends who must clear the field and move to the playground. Ten, ridiculed his first attempt at brewing have since he dons an old T-shirt, unties his long hair, and puts on his favourite music. become his regular patrons. 56 g 7/10

T h e va r i o u s T yp e s o f b e e r

A Brief Account of Beer Beer is defined as an alcoholic beverage containing acid that is extracted through the process of fermentation. But how is it made? Cereal grains are germinated by adding water, which leads to the formation of enzymes necessary for the breakdown of starch. The malt then created is heated and dried. This, along with the type of grain used, the duration of germination, the temperature and the water content, determines the taste of the beer. The germinated grains are crushed so that the substances contained in them will later easily dissolve in the water. The intermediate product is brewed along with hops. The greater the quantity of hops, the longer the shelf-life and the drier the taste. After a clarification process, the ‘clear wort’ is cooled and mixed with yeast, which triggers the process of fermentation. The sugar ferments to alcohol in large tanks. The beer matures and acquires its final flavour during storage. According to the type of yeast used, experts can distinguish between top-fermented beers, in which the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae forms colonies and floats up after fermentation; and bottom-fermented beers, in which Saccharomyces uvarum or carlsbergensis is used. After fermentation, the yeast sinks to the bottom. Most of the world’s beer is produced in Europe. In Europe, the Czechs are the most avid beerdrinkers; Germany and Austria tie for second place, followed by Ireland and the UK. There are about 1,300 private breweries in Germany alone; about 900 of them are classified as small breweries, and they sell less than 5,000 hectolitres per year. Just a small portion of the wide spectrum of varities gives us a sense of the great diversity of beer: Barley wine: top-fermented beer with a lot of alcohol (10–13 per cent) and a very strong flavour. Black beer: due to the kind of brewing malt used, it is mostly a deep-black, bottom-fermented beer with the character of a Pils. Bock: served dark or light, as double bock, May bock and ice bock; bottom-fermented; really strong. Brown ale: top-fermented English beer, seasoned with roasted and caramelised malt. Brown beer: this Belgian speciality tastes sweetsour, reminiscent of spices and raisins. Also used for desserts. Chilli beer: a lager to which chilli pods are added during maturation. The chilli beer from Garcia

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This Czech family establishment still uses copper vats for brewing. Brewing in New Mexico is very sharp. Dry beer: very popular, especially in Japan and the USA. Usually has a brief and intense flavour and a dry, spicy aroma. Export: light, bottom-fermented beer that tastes heavier and less dry than a Pilsner. Traditionally known as ‘export beer’ as it could be transported over long distances. Ice beer: the protein molecules are separated and removed through powerful cooling that leads to a smoother flavour, such as in the Canadian beer Labatt ICE. Lager: all bottom-fermented beers are lagers; they are light and have a small proportion of hops. Lambic: a self-fermenting variety from Belgium. Before the effects of yeast were discovered, all beers used to self-ferment from the natural yeasts in the air. Lambic beers are practically noncarbonated. A large number of microorganisms and yeasts contribute towards their complex character. Oatmeal stout: brewed with oatmeal, which provides a pleasantly smooth body and a complex roasted coffee and chocolate flavour. Old ale: as the name implies, this is brewed according to old traditions; hops-bitter to maltsweet, as per the recipe. Often medium-strong, in some cases matured for a long time. Pilsner, Pils: not just a variety of beer but also a brewing method. The ingredients are light malt, soft water, bottom-fermented yeast and very

aromatic hops. Pils is usually light and golden. Red beer: top-fermented beer with a burgundyred colour that matures over a very long time in wooden barrels. Sour and dry. Smoked beer: the malt is dried on a wood fire, lending the beer a smoky flavour. Stone beer: natural stones are heated over an open fire and immersed in the mash. The unique feature of this beer is its smoky flavour, similar to that of smoked beer. Stout: very dark, top-fermented beer. Roasted character with a hint of chocolate or caramel. The most famous stout is the Irish brand, Guinness. Wheat beer; white beer: created by the partial use of wheat malt in place of barley malt. The filtered, hence clear, variety is known as crystal wheat beer; the unfiltered version in which yeast particles are left in the beer is known as yeast-clouded beer. Wheat beer is often bottled immediately after the main fermentation. The bar at U Medvídků, the only hotel in Prague with its own brewery.

THE mAgicAl mOmEnT When a powerful wave runs into shallow waters at high speed or dashes against a reef, it rolls over and forms a tunnel known as a tube. This magical formation only lasts a few seconds. As it collapses, the compressed air shoots out of the wave’s open end with tremendous pressure. Riding this tunnel, which is nicknamed the ‘green room,’ is considered an art form by surfers. Here, photographer Clark Little goes all the way into this surfers’ paradise with his camera.

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WA VE FA

EA RT O

E H T T A

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The surging billows on the northern shore of the Hawaiian island of Oahu are among the biggest and most magnificent waves in the world. They appeal to the eye— and challenge the body and mind. Riding the waves is a complex physical act that comes with incredible twists and turns.

Oceanic energy

The waves near some of Hawaii’s coastal regions can be over 20m high—and even larger out at sea, when several giant waves overlap after heavy storms. Such ‘freak waves’ can reach heights of 35m and pose a risk to shipping. In contrast, tsunamis, which result from undersea tremors and plate-slips, are harmless on the open sea, since they largely move along underwater. Upon impact with the coast, though, their energy has the potential to unleash destruction on a mammoth scale, since they travel at speeds of up to 800km/h. Another kind of wave is extremely slow: the tidal wave, which surges and abates according to a planetary rhythm of 12 hours along most coasts.

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Dirty launDry

Some surging billows mixed with silt, sand and stones are dreaded by swimmers, surfers and sailors alike. Once stirred, the seabed increases the force of water many times over. Along the coastline, this material does not just come from the seabed—the momentum of a wave also strips it from the beach. In fact, the fine sand of gentle bays is generated by this endless process of orbiting and grinding. Dangerous surges, also known as shore breaks, are created when the sea abruptly becomes shallower at the shoreline. They can hurl surfers to the ground and even cause bone fractures.

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When the sea changes colour In the rainy season, tropical showers sometimes fall on Oahu for several days in a row. Since the island has a steep relief, the forest rivers swell rapidly and sweep their red laterite soil into the sea. At times like these, the otherwise turquoise Pacific takes on a brownish-orange hue at night. Clark Little swam out as soon as the sky was blue again to photograph these waves, albeit with some cause for caution: animals are also swept away by the floodwaters, and their cadavers out at sea can attract sharks into the muddy tides.

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Janni Tewelde prepares for his first international cycle race. Recently, foreign teams such as those from Sudan or Libya have also been competing in the Giro dell’Eritrea (also known as the Tour of Eritrea).

cycl� RAcIng

Racing Ahead Africa�� a�� ��de�� c�c�e race�in �ri�rea�i� �i� i� a far cr� fr�� �he �e�e�i�ed ���r�ing ex�ra�aganza� �ha� we�re u�ed �� �eeing �n TV. S��n��r�? Tere are n�ne. D��ing? On�� �n �he ��un�ain air. And a� f�r a �i�e �e�eca��, i��� �� �u�� n�� nece��ar���he �he ��ec�a��r� are a�� ��anding b� �he r�ad�ide. I��� a ���en� �f ce�ebra�i�n in a c�un�r� wh��e re�re��i�e regi�e gi�e� i�� �e���e �i���e �� cheer ab�u�. By Ines Possemeyer (text) and Chris Keulen (photos)

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Seven countries,47 cyclists and crowds of spectators line the whole route. About one-third of the country’s entire population follows the race—a world record!

Te road becomes a stadium

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At the opening ceremony, the Eritrean team sings the national anthem. Their country has been independent since 1993.

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stage 1 Keren—Mendefera, 14km.

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he Giro d’Eritrea. 16 December 2009, 12pm. Te Egyptians, Moroccans, Kenyans and Saudi Arabians wait at the start line while the Libyans and Sudanese cycle up and down. Te Eritreans are greasing their bicycle chains, pumping up tyres and filling water bottles. Ahead of them lies the most important race in their history: the first international race in Eritrea. 12:13pm. Te starting whistle. As the cyclists push off, the brass band is drowned out by the applause, drumbeats, trills and whistles of the spectators. Forty-seven racing cyclists from seven nations set off with 20,000 people lining the streets to cheer them on: Bedouins in turbans, Christian women with white shawls, Muslim women with colourful veils, old men in elegant three-piece suits. Schoolchildren wave branches and flags, their uniforms turning the provincial capital of Keren into a riot of colour. Te scene is repeated in each place that we pass through over the next 5 days. By the time we reach the

finishing line, 1.3 million people will have seen this race. Cycling is to Eritrea as football is to Brazil. Every weekend, thousands of amateurs zoom along isolated roads through the desert and over mountain passes. Tis small country, one of the poorest in the world, has 4.8 million inhabitants—and 500,000 bicycles. Te first bicycle was brought to this erstwhile colony by the Italians in 1910. Te first Giro dell’Eritrea—the first road race in Africa—was organised in 1946. Te 2009 tour also has a special place in cycling history. It has been included in the calendar of the International Cycling Union: the beginning of a new era, perhaps. A foreign coach—another first—was engaged for this race: 46-year-old Radek Valenta, a Czech with an Australian passport and formerly coach to the national team of the United Arab Emirates. He is driving the first of the Eritreans’ escort vehicles in a T-shirt that proclaims “Impossible is nothing.” I am sitting in the second car, next to his assistant, Yonas Zekarias, the Eritrean ex-national champion. Te entire country is watching these two men and their three teams

of 16 cyclists. Te road stretches east in a grey ribbon: smooth, unmarked asphalt at first, then pitted. Te cyclists swerve past the potholes at lightning speed, like a shoal of fish swerving to avoid predators. Te midday sun blazes high above the terraced hills that are lined with stone walls. A camel caravan winds through a dry riverbed. Tere are huge stacks of hay piled up in the gnarled branches of the baobab trees. Te straw roofs of the traditional round huts jut out steeply from the villages. Te sepia landscape rolls by like a silent film, suddenly interrupted by the battling cyclists who burst on to the scene—loud, colourful and fast. Tree motorcycles surround the figures hunched low over their handlebars. A helicopter circles overhead. Te cyclists rush past at 40km/hr, their slim figures belying their strength. Twenty vehicles follow in their wake. Te teams’ jerseys blaze their national colours, the Eritreans’ in red, blue, green and yellow. Te origins of some of the teams are also obvious from their bicycles: the Saudi Arabians have the most expensive equipment, the Sudanese the cheapest. Te Eritreans have invested in Trek, Lance Armstrong’s make. With his cellphone glued to his ear, Yonas makes an emergency stop. Number 3 is standing by the roadside removing his front wheel. He is none other than Daniel Teklehaymanot, Yonas’s pupil and a favourite in the race: lean and well-toned, standing 6’2’’ tall with a shock of tousled hair. Daniel is from Adi Bana, a village in the southern highlands that is also home to Zersenay Tadese, one of the world’s greatest long-distance runners. Te youngest of 11 siblings,

Daniel got his first bicycle at the age of 13. At 19, he became the Africa’s leading contestant at the Tour de la Paix on the Ivory Coast. When he was 20, he was discovered by the International Cycling Union in Morocco and invited to undergo training in Switzerland. It was there that doctors found a serious cardiac defect. Tis was followed by cardiac surgery, successful racing, and then impaired circulation in his leg. Daniel returned from Europe 5 weeks ago. Yonas grabs a spare wheel from the trunk. Daniel holds the frame; the mechanic inserts the wheel, centres it, and tightens the quick release lever all in under 10 seconds. He sends Daniel off: “Avanti!”—“Go!” Te car’s rear seat has become a mobile workshop for the mechanic: he removes the tyre’s outer casing and changes the inner tube. Cellphone still in hand, Yonas secures the valve and checks

the tyre pressure, his movements as precise as a surgeon’s, his fine features as relaxed as if he were sitting in a café. For the next 14km, the road winds past tree-sized Euphorbia canariensis—a type of succulent plant—up to Asmara, the capital city at an altitude of 2,350m. Te foreigners fall back, pulse rate 220. Te Eritreans race away, pulse rate 180. Almost all of them live in Asmara and thrive on the mountain air. Yonas’s phone conversations are increasingly beginning with “Bella!”—“Lovely!” 3pm. Yonas makes the sign of the cross as we drive past the orthodox Church of St. Mary into a city which doesn’t seem to belong in Africa, with its Mediterranean palm-lined boulevards, pastelcoloured buildings, Bauhaus villas and Art Deco cinema halls. Italian architects dreamt up a bold urban utopia here in the late 1930s. Te heart of Mussolini’s new

‘Roman Empire’ in Africa, Asmara became the most modern city on the continent. Its beauty has been preserved, albeit for tragic reasons: war, poverty and isolation. Yonas calls out to me in broken English: “Only Italians here.” And then: “Apartheid.” Asmarinos could only enter the city centre to work. Tey were not allowed to compete in the first cycle race organised by the Italians in 1936. However, a local man won in 1942, one year afer the Fascists had been defeated by the British. Later, the Eritreans also competed in the Olympic Games, albeit under a foreign flag. In 1952, the United Nations sanctioned Eritrea’s federation with its southern neighbour, Ethiopia. Ten years later the autonomous region of Eritrea was annexed by its neighbouring country. Te Eritreans’ struggle for independence began in 1961—and bicycles played a new role in the

School is cancelled when the tour passes through a village—and young fans besiege their idols.

A race against time— and through history Bedouin camel-herders are used to the sight of lycra shirts and shorts whizzing by: thousands of amateurs and about 100 professionals train on the deserted roads of Eritrea.

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The people cheer their champions on, but are also wellbehaved: pushin� or runnin� alon�side the cyclists is frowned upon.

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resistance. Cycling was banned for years, afer a series of assassination attempts by cyclists. “Forza, forza!” the fans shout in Italian. Tere are tens of thousands of them. Tey call Yonas Zekarias “Halabay”—“the milkman”—in reference to his simple, rural upbringing. Even afer becoming a competitive cyclist, he continued milking cows on his family’s farm. As a youngster, he used to race his father’s cycle around Asmara, for a trophy made from a upside-down detergent bottle, cut in half and silver-coated with aluminium foil from old cigarette packs. “Maybe that is why I chose cycling,” reminisces Yonas. “Good memories.” However, the decision to pursue a sporting career was a calculated one. Since 1984, the Ethiopian regime has been drafing young Eritreans into the army—with the exception of top athletes. Yonas started training in order to avoid

military service. During the tour, we come across several legacies of the Ethiopian army: rusted lorry shells, halfburied by the roadside, and tank wreckage on the fields. Ethiopia had one of the most modern armies in Africa, armed first by the USA and later by the Soviet Union. In contrast, the Eritrean guerrillas wore sandals made of car tyres and fought with stolen weapons. Tis unequal war became the most protracted on the continent. It was only afer 30 years that the seemingly impossible happened: the rebels won. In 1993, 99.81 per cent of Eritreans voted for independence—and Yonas Zekarias rose to become the country’s most successful cyclist ever. In those golden years, he seemed to personify the young nation: diligent, friendly, confident—and invincible. The exiled Eritreans returned,

and Eritrea’s economic growth was among the best in Africa. President and former rebel leader Isayas Afewerki rejected all Western intervention. The Eritreans would not repeat the mistakes made by other African nations. Instead, they would build up the country on their own: democratically, socialistically, independently. All of them believed in this dream. Afer crossing Asmara, we follow the race further south through harvested fields and across a flat high plateau. Piles of hay dot the landscape like gigantic, halfsubmerged billiard balls. Farmers lead teams of oxen in circles, their hooves threshing the maize. Afer years of severe drought, the harvest has finally been good. “Who wants water, mango juice, chocolate—bananas?” Te mechanic offers one from a large bunch on the rear seat. “African energy bars,” the drivers laugh.

A

l o u d v o l l e y of applause precedes the five cyclists coming over the horizon, their jerseys ablaze with the Eritrean colours, one of them a lean figure in the Number 3 jersey. Daniel crosses the finishing line first. Tears run down his cheeks as his trainers hug him. His return from Switzerland had brought with it high expectations—and now he has met them all, right here in his home province. As he ascends the victory podium, women in festive white shower him with popcorn and stick currency notes on his jersey. Te race commissioner from the International Cycling Union, Dutchman Erwin Kistemaker, stands at the finishing line. It was he who blew the whistle to start the race, and who keeps an eye on the rules. He has been waiting there for quite a while: more than 20 cyclists are still missing. Two Sudanese competitors are the last to cross the finish line, with a deficit of 1 hour and 46 minutes. stAge 2 Mendefera—Dekemhare, 15km. Te grass blazes golden in the morning light. Te eucalyptus groves exude a sharp fragrance. A couple of donkeys try to keep pace with the race. Te cyclists are now arranged in a long queue. Te Sudanese are sitting in the bus. Suddenly someone falls in the peloton. Two cyclists fall to the ground with torn jerseys, cuts and bruises. Two Moroccans race past them, followed by five Eritreans. A warning sign at the entrance to the small town of Adi Quala shows a foot stepping on an exploding landmine. “25km to the Ethiopian border,” says Yonas. Te very border that had been the

pride of the young, hopeful state of Eritrea in 1993—and, just 5 years later, the reason for the costliest war of the late 20th century, with the highest number of casualties. A border dispute had erupted at the Eritrean village of Badme. 500,000 soldiers stood facing each other, Yonas among them. “It was a difficult time. Sad memories,” he says. “Many friends died.” 19,000 Eritreans died in just 2 years. Unlike the first war with Ethiopia, Eritrea did not win this time. Eventually, an international arbitration committee marked a boundary line—which Ethiopia still does not recognise. Afer a year at the front, Yonas came back to Asmara. He started training again. In 2001, he made a comeback into cycling. However, he stopped 3 years later. Since then he has been working as a regional coach and also, occasionally, as coach to the national team. “Sport is good. Sport is clean,” he says. “No politics.” Does he really mean it? He laughs and breaks off the conversation: “Not enough English.” I do not question him any further. I do not discuss politics with him or with the other cyclists. Since the border war, Eritrea has turned into one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world. Even before the race began, I experienced how quickly my presence could land people in trouble. Since it is practically impossible to have access to either international roaming or SIM cards in Eritrea, I had privately borrowed a card. Te three or four calls that I received from Europe drew immediate attention: the owner of the card was arrested the same evening. He was only released afer spending 2 days in prison and paying a fine.

Spying, arbitrary arrests and house searches have become part of a comprehensive policy of control and surveillance. Afer the border war, critical voices were raised against the Eritrean regime. Shortly afer September 11, 2001, President Isayas banned the free press entirely and many journalists and politicians disappeared into prisons. Te Oslo Centre for Peace and Human Rights Up claims that up to 30,000 people have been incarcerated in Eritrea, without a trial, for political or religious reasons. Yet again, an African freedom fighter turned into a dictator— just like Mengistu in Ethiopia or Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

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f you are young, be patient”—this slogan is written outside a school in Adi Quala. At a narrow turn in the city centre, the racing cyclists veer around to the other side of the road and head back north. Te Saudi Arabian team is the last one at this point. At the roadside, 200 soldiers cheer on the teams. Barracks made of rusty corrugated iron

Africa

The five sta�es of the tour traverse plateaus, deserts and mountains over 71km. The capital, Asmara, is situated at a hei�ht of 2,350m—makin� it the perfect trainin� �round.

Red Sea

E R I TR E A Keren

4. Massawa–Asmara Massawa

Akordat 1. Keren–Mendefera

Asmara

3. Dekemhare–Massawa

5. Asmara criterium

Dekemhare Mendefera 2. Mendefera–Dekemhare

Badme Adi Quala

Adigrat

ET H I O P I A 50 km

Aksum

Radek Valenta was once a member of the Czech national team. Now he tries to inculcate a team spirit in his cyclists.

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sheets stand behind them, with sand-coloured tents half hidden by haystacks a little further on. Tese are the men of the National Service on harvest duty. Some are carrying machine guns, others brooms. Following 6 months of military training, all Eritreans are put on fatigue duty, which can send them anywhere in the country: mostly to the army—the largest in the world per head of population—or to work as miners, road builders or teachers. Tere are hardly any jobs lef that are not covered by National Service. Te standard monthly wage is 22 euros (the price of 1kg of flour is 2 euros). Te duration of service is flexible—some of the men have already been in service for 15 years. Yonas Zekarias and most of the Eritrean team are also on National Service. Promising talents like Daniel are drafed later. “Tere are no exceptions,” reinforces Sports Minister General Ramadan Osman Awliyay. All the same, top cyclists enjoy several privileges: they can postpone their service afer 2 months of military training, or do

it part-time, mostly in the highly coveted city of Asmara. Tey also get an extra 70 euros as part of their salary. Te sports ministry decides the fate of the racing cyclists in consultation with the National Service: who remains a soldier, who goes to an office, who gets sent to the city, who heads to the desert. We follow the second group: eight Eritreans, two Moroccans. Daniel is right in front, struggling against the strong wind. Nobody relieves him. He pulls clear of the others, rides alone for a bit, then falls back again. Six minutes separate him from the summit. He seems more and more anxious as he looks around for his teammates. Te last man in the chase group is known as ‘Bin Laden’: Meron Russom, a 22-year-old with curly hair and a mischievous face. He specialises in remaining hidden and then launching a dangerous attack—hence the nickname. Yonas calls out to him through the front passenger window: “Bin Laden! Pull up, Daniel needs you!” Meron catches up a few bicycle lengths, but soon falls back again. It is just not his day.

Coach Radek Valenta wants the Eritreans to work as a team, as they should in road races: with domestiques, attacking players and sprinters. Tey should collectively support the best cyclist in winning the yellow jersey, for he achieves victory for all of them, as well as for his helpers. “Daniel knows this principle from competing in Europe,” explains Yonas. “But here, everyone is used to racing and fighting alone.” Te cyclists of the national team are chosen anew for each race in several qualifying rounds. Te trainer also keeps changing. Te president of the Eritrean Cycling Federation, formerly a freedom fighter and now a police spokesman, explains: “Tis way we ensure that we always have the best.” A Darwinian principle that produces lone wolves—but no team spirit.

e

nough is enough. I am going to quit this race,” Daniel informs me as soon as we leave the hotel for a walk in the afternoon. He sounds bitter. “Yesterday I had gone along with everybody and today nobody helped me.” We walk down the freshly swept main street of Dekemhare. Te white finish line is still there. Te Eritreans were once again the first ones to reach it. Daniel is now at sixth place, with a deficit of 2.42 minutes. He is placed third in the overall ranking. Clouds gather above the mountains; the wind pulls at the palms. We are shivering. “Cold like in Switzerland,” remarks Daniel and changes the topic. “Being alone in Europe was difficult,” he says. He was homesick, and took solace in the emails from his Eritrean fans. One of them

wrote, “If you don’t come back soon, I will never cycle again.” Now he is back, but he has not yet arrived. He has only slept twice at his parents’ place. He is afraid that his teammates are jealous of his stay in Switzerland. Music and whistles echo from the hotel’s party hall. Te losers are celebrating. Te winners have a tougher time. Coach Radek calls the Eritreans for a crisis meeting. Te cyclists sink into sofas in a corner of the darkened hall. Daniel twirls his curls and hardly looks up. “Tis is a sad day,” says the trainer, in opening. He chooses his words carefully, his Czech accent making his English hard to understand. “If Daniel goes, all of us lose. What can we do to save the team?” Te trainer as crisis therapist addresses each of them personally: “What do you think, Meron?”, “How do you feel, Daniel?”

Tis democratic style is highly unusual for these men, and they struggle to frame their answers Tree sports officials standing behind the sofas hijack the conversation, talking about pride, homeland and discipline. Finally, the president of the Cycling Federation gives them an order: “You must obey your coach!” Team spirit on command. Te meeting seems to mirror the very fabric of contemporary Eritrean society. The former freedom fighters, who now keep the country together by sheer military strength, are called yikealo, the almighty. Te people of the postwar generation, like Daniel, are warsay, heirs, minions—although many people reject this hierarchy. Eritrea has the second-highest number of refugees in the world. Even racing cyclists have defected during competitions abroad, just like the last two presidents of the Cycling Federation. Tose who

remain in the country withdraw into their shells. Radek is trying to initiate a real conversation, but the cyclists answer like obedient schoolchildren. Yes, we are proud of what we have achieved. Yes, we are a team. Yes, says Daniel, I will continue with the race. stage 3 Dekemhare—Massawa, 151km. For 40km, the team sticks to their agreement and conserve their energy. Ten Daniel and Dawit Haile, the previous day’s winner, suddenly pull clear of the others. Radek is perplexed: “He’s so pigheaded! First Daniel talks about teamwork, and now he bolts.” Te road plunges over steep bends, revealing a breathtaking panorama of terraced cone-shaped mountains as the road snakes east down to the Red Sea. For a few moments we see the two cyclists a few

Rusted tanks bear witness to the 30year-long war of liberation against Ethiopia. Post Independence, Eritrea has been under a dictatorship.

slopes below �s� ��� ��e� ��e� �is�ppe�r m���e�i�gl� f�s�. R��ek �cceler��es� ��e� br�kes s���e�l� o� � ��irpi� be��. A lorr� is perc�e� prec�rio�sl� �bove ��e precipice �� ��e �ex� be��. Tere �re �o cr�s� b�rriers� j�s� rocks ��� s�cc�le�� pl���s. “Te� �o�’� ���ers���� � ��i�g �bo�� ��c�ics�” gr�mbles R��ek. “Te� ��ve w�� �oo li��le r�ci�g experie�ce.” Te Eri�re�� �e�m compe�e� o�l� �wice �� compe�i�io�s �bro��� i� 2009. Some�imes R��ek �esp�irs. He sees �ow ��le��e� ��e �e�m is� w��� ��e� co�l� �c�ieve give� ��e c���ce ��� ��e rig�� �r�i�i�g. “I� o�e �e�r we co�l� be bes� i� Afric�; i� � few �e�rs we co�l� be wi��i�g �g�i�s� E�rope�� �e�ms. A�� ��e� A happy finale: ��e Ol�mpics.” Daniel TeklehayNo�e of ��e offici�ls �sk manot is the runner- R��ek for ��vice. I��erfere�ce up. Only one from ��e o��si�e is �s ��welcome foreigner has made i� ��e Spor�s Mi�is�r� �s i� is i� it into the top 14. ��e res� of ��e co���r�. W�e�

R��ek� � foreig�er� w�lks ��ro�g� ��e corri�ors of ��e mi�is�r�� ��e ��mosp�ere remi��s �im of �is e�rlier life. “M� �e�r� goes ���mp� ���mp� ���mp ��� ��e ol� Comm��is� feeli�g is b�ck.” R��ek V�le��� w�s � member of ��e Czec� ���io��l �e�m for 15 �e�rs� ���il �e �efec�e� i� 1987. Afer 30km� we c��c� �p wi�� D��iel ��� D�wi�. Nei��er of ��em w���s w��er� ��o�g� ��e �emper���re ��s rise� �o 30°C. Te� �re i� � fre�z�. How close �re ��eir followers? R��ek presses ��e s�opw��c� ��� w�i�s. Te� �rrive 2 mi���es l��er. B�� i�’s � Troj�� �orse: ��ree Morocc��s �re c�cli�g �lo�g i� ��e w�ke of � gro�p of Eri�re��s. Te� comes �� SOS o� ��e w�lkie-��lkie: “D�wi�’s i� �ro�ble!” We fi�� �im si��i�g b� ��e ro��si�e wi�� � fl�� ��re. D��iel is o� �is ow�. He ��s re�c�e� ��e �eser�: ��o��er 50km �o ��e se�. His prese�� le�� is �o� e�o�g� �o m�ke

�p for ��e previo�s ���’s �efici�. His �e�mm��es r�s� off �fer �im—��� ��ke ��e riv�ls �lo�g. “S�op worki�g for ��e o��ers�” s�o��s R��ek. “We �o �o� w��� �o see ��� Morocc��s o� ��e wi��er’s po�i�m!” U�like ��e To�r �e Fr��ce� ��ere is �o r��io co���c� be�wee� ��e co�c� ��� �is �e�m �ere� ��� o�l� sc���� i�form��io� �bo�� ��e res� of ��e p�ck. R��ek �o�es ��e �ime over ��� over �g�i�: 2 mi���es; 1:30 mi���es. As ��e g�p �o D��iel closes� �e becomes i�cre�si�gl� f�rio�s. “S�op worki�g so ��r�!” �e �ells �� ��em. “T��’s �� or�er!” A colo�rf�l crow� of people comes i��o view o� ��e o��skir�s of ��e por� ci�� of M�ss�w�. Wi�� j�s� 500m �o ��e fi�is�� D��iel ��s � le�� of o�l� 35 seco��s—�o� �e�rl� e�o�g� for ��e �ellow jerse� ����’s �w�r�e� �o ��e over�ll �o�r le��er. R��ek sl�ms o� ��e br�kes. “T��’s i�. I’m �o� goi�g ���w�ere.” Te� �e si�s i� ��e c�r� �is mo��� s��� �ig��.

Mountain stretches up to 65km long are the forte of Eritrean cyclists like Amanuel Kibraad, wearer of the yellow jersey for 2 days. He is accustomed to recuperating in modest lodgings.

stage 4 Massawa—Asmara, 115km. Te cyclists now face the toughest stretch: 50km of desert, then 65km uphill to Asmara—almost three times longer than the longest climb in the Tour de France. Te battle begins. Daniel pursues the Eritrean breakaways. He can see them on the opposite mountain, the last ascent before the finish. He has lost the race. He removes his helmet afer the home stretch, his face blank and exhausted. He shrugs when Radek congratulates him. “A lousy race,” he says. “What a divine race!” Erwin Kistemaker, the Dutch race commissioner, has followed Daniel in his car. “He was the best cyclist today. He just waited too long at the start.” Te new wearer of the yellow jersey is 22-year-old Bereket Yemane, a cyclist from the breakaway group who had lost to Daniel in the 2008 National Championship. Tis time he had a 2:09 minute advantage. 5th and final stage Asmara criterium, 140km. A policeman brandishes his stick at the spectators. Another one is positioned barely 50m away. 100,000 people are clustered on the pavements, walls, roofs and balconies. Every 7 minutes, the peloton whooshes past them: 39 cyclists, one green and one red jersey in the lead: Libya and Morocco. Te eternal runners-up finally get their chance on the flat stretch. It makes no difference now to the overall ranking. Te Eritreans remain in the middle of the field and watch over each other. Te frontrunner, Bereket, crosses the finish line—along with Daniel.

Jubilant fans carry Daniel off in their arms. Many people from his home village are present. All the 50 buses of his province have been on special duty. Daniel, ‘the milkman,’ is happy. He has finally come home, even if he is the runner-up in the overall ranking. spring 2010 Manly Peninsula, Australia Radek Valenta goes for a walk on the beach every day. He has written papers about a future course of action for cycling in Eritrea. He has not heard from the Sports Ministry again.

Aigle, Switzerland Daniel Teklehaymanot continues his training at the International Cycling Union. Asmara, Eritrea Yonas Zekarias is once again training the regional team of Mendefera; the cyclists of the Giro dell’Eritrea have gone back home to the cycling clubs in their towns and villages. Incidentally, the country no longer has a national team. Afer an international meet, all the competitors decided to stay back in Kenya.

Bicycle wheels are more popular here than footballs. The first bicycle was brought here 100 years ago by Italian colonialists.

While the state journalists sat in the press car, GEO editor Ines Possemeyer travelled with the trainers of the Eritrean national team, Radek Valenta (fourth from right) and Yonas Zekarias (fifth from left). She and the Dutch photographer Chris Keulen were the only foreign reporters to accompany the tour. Keulen, who had already been there once in 2004, has published a book about African cycle racing.

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fruit bats

Te Record-breaking Bats of Kansaka By day, they festoon the branches like large bunches of grapes; at night, they set the skies aflutter. Te annual gathering of millions of fruit bats at Zambia’s Kasanka National Park is a world record-breaker—it is the largest congregation of mammals in such a small area. And it has a beneficial ecological side-effect: their excreta helps regenerate the rainforests of central Africa. By Michael Stührenberg (text) and Kieran Dodds (photos)

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Every year, from late October on, huge swarms of Straw-coloured fruit bats (Eidolon helvum) converge on a forest in Zambia’s Kasanka National Park. The park also offers sanctuary to many rare species of birds.

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With a wingspan of up to 80cm, the fruit bats flutter and fly around quite wildly, occasionally colliding— unlike other bats, they do not possess echolocation.

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The AfricAn bush cAn be quite frightening up close. “Just look!” whispers Jill, gesturing towards the sky, where the last patch of blue is disappearing behind a curtain of black. “And there!” cries Lee-Ann, whose wide-open eyes reflect the twin bolts of lightning that flash simultaneously across the horizon. I keep absolutely quiet, knowing that things could get worse—for instance, the dark clouds overhead could suddenly open up and pour down on us. A moment later, that is exactly what happens. Jill and Lee-Ann’s synchronised exclamation—“Oh, my God!”—succinctly sums up our predicament. Here we are, stunned by a thunderstorm and drenched from head to toe, standing in a marshy meadow in Zambia’s Kasanka National Park, 100km east of the country’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. We try to look on the bright side, and steel out nerves as a host of dark objects bears down on us. Hundreds of thousands of them— perhaps even millions! Tey’re flying a good 10m above our heads, yet we instinctively duck. For a split second, a flash of lightning illuminates the creatures: dog-like snouts, bulging eyes, spindly but muscular arms with tentacle-like phalanges at the tips. “How wonderful!” exclaims

Intimate body contact is no problem for fruit bats—they even mate, hanging upsidedown, in the midst of the pack. These loud, social and often quarrelsome mammals are found all over sub-Saharan Africa. During the day, they hang in clusters. Protected by their large wings, they have no problem braving the wind and sun.

Lee-Ann. And Jill suddenly pipes up, “How about a glass of wine?” The two have come well prepared for this evening’s outing: Jill Derderian, who works at the American Embassy in Lusaka, has brought along a bottle of Sauvignon; Lee-Anne Singh has kitted-out her SUV for the 6hour drive from Zambia’s capital. Leslie, our safari guide, fishes out the bottle from the icebox in the boot of the car. Drink up fast, he instructs us, or soon there’ll be more rain than wine in the glasses. We raise a toast the skies. “To the Straw-coloured fruit bats!”

thunderstorm soaks us to the skin. A better explanation might be that these fruit bats are recordholders—they undertake what is probably the longest migration in Africa by any mammal. Compared to the distance the fruit bats have just covered—2,000km at the very least—the seasonal wandering of the wildebeests in the Serengeti seems like a mere hop, skip and jump. The winged animals have thus made this hitherto rather neglected park of Zambia famous. A few details, however, are still unclear. For example, how many

Their hallmarks: straw-yellow collars, and an insatiable appetite for the fruits of the forest As Their nAme implies, The Straw-coloured fruit bats—known to science as Eidolon helvum— have a yellowish collar around their necks. And they do, in fact, feed on fruits. Together with bats, fruit bats belong to the order Chiroptera. Te shape of their heads is similar to that of dogs or foxes, though they are not directly related to either. Adult fruit bats can have a wing span of up to 80cm and can weigh about 300gms. Like the incorrigible nature enthusiast he is, Leslie reads aloud: “Attracted by the variety and abundance of wild fruits with names like musuku and mupundu, fruit bats visit our park in their millions every year… And around Christmas time, when fruitpicking is over, the animals leave us once again.” Tat may be interesting, but not reason enough for four people to be standing in the marshes while a

million fruit bats congregate in Kasanka? A report by the University of Florida puts the figure at 5 million, but ‘Bwana’ David Lloyd, the British expatriate who has been privately running the 420km² park since 1985, believes it is over 10 million. in order To geT A reAl sense of these figures, early the next morning we follow Leslie, our guide, to a tree hideout that has been constructed by the park administration, close to the bats’ daytime roosting spot. It is still dark, but Jill and Lee-Anne are already bursting with energy. Jill is a passionate birdwatcher—not a flutter escapes her attention, and certainly not those of the fruit bats. A wellknown writer of travel guides, Lee-Anne is constantly in search of superlatives. All her books extol Zambia’s ‘cloudscapes,’ for the 7/10 g 93

ground. From our high vantage point, we observe an eagle snap up a fruit bat in mid-flight. Sometimes, the raptors even pluck their prey directly from the trees. At least the Eidolon helvum in Kasanka do not have to fear us twolegged creatures. “Fruit bats hate the noise and smell of humans,” says Leslie. “So we don’t allow visitors to come any closer than 150m to them.” Just then, a huge hot-air balloon floats by, hissing and buzzing its way through Fibwe Forest like something out of Jules Verne novel. Te sounds comes from the helium cloudscapes: the return of the on an already-overcrowded branch, flames that keep the balloon afloat. fruit bats from their nocturnal clings to it determinedly, and then Under the flames sit a pilot and slides down, head-first, on to the a cameraman, the latter filming forage for food. Lee-Anne quotes from her next large heap of winged creatures the animals hanging from the Zambia guide: “Scattered across nestling there. Once settled, the branches at close range. But aren’t BBC reporters also the sky like ash from an exploding newcomer grooms itself, licking volcano, the Eidolon helvum its fur clean and using a claw to Homo sapiens? Leslie gives a me fill the horizon of yellow and pick out the bits of fruit stuck in sheepish smile. I understand: VIPs are granted special privileges— orange that heralds the sun rising the gaps between its teeth. So there they hang, our record- even here. And as world recordin the east.” “How many are they?” asks Jill. holders—like overripe fruits holders, the fruit bats of Kansaka “Millions,” replies Leslie, about to fall to the ground. And cannot escape the media. On the other hand, not all fruit some of them actually do! When simply. Each of these well-fed but a branch breaks under the weight bats are disturbed by people, at tired animals is now looking for of the clusters and crashes down, least not in some countries. I know a place to rest—and they all seek a flock of vultures in the crown this from personal experience. Tirty years ago, I was a out this particular spot in Fibwe of a neighbouring tree is ready Forest; that too, on just a few of and waiting for just such an teacher in the bush country the trees within this tiny patch of opportunity. Tey quickly swoop of the Ivory Coast, and would down to grab up the creatures that travel every 2 months to Abidjan, the larger jungle. “Why don’t they spread out have tumbled to their death. Any the second-largest metropolis uniformly across the entire forest?” fruit bats that manage to survive of western Africa, to enjoy an the fall but can no longer fly also aperitif on the terrace of the asks Lee-Ann. “Tey seem to prefer specific make an easy meal for crocodiles trees,” remarks Leslie, without and pythons. At dusk, the animals set off to really elucidating the matter. forage among the fruit trees. It is difficult to even identify Fibwe Forest is like an what these species of trees are, for African restaurant à la Darwin, These vegetarian creatures are only their trunks can be seen— a sumptuous site of eating and totally harmless and can easily they have almost no leaves or bark. being eaten. Even if no branches be plucked off the trees, which It looks as though the clumps break and fall, the fruit bats are makes the scientists’ task of of fruit bats have suffocated and not entirely safe from predators. attaching satellite transmitters A number of raptors—Fish eagles stunted them. to them that much easier. The Leslie can explain this: “Tese and Martial eagles, for instance— transmitters help track the flight millions of animals altogether have made this forest their hunting path of these marathon fliers. cloud formations here manage to overshadow, literally, the magnificence of the countryside. We have barely taken our positions in the high crown of a mahogany tree when a truly heavenly performance begins, against a backdrop of the sofest

weigh as much as 500 elephants!” Can this figure possibly be correct? It’s impossible to imagine elephants hanging from trees, says Jill. Lee-Anne lends me her binoculars, and I watch a fruit bat locating its ideal roost. With a vigorous flutter of its wings, it lands

When a branch breaks under their weight, the cluster of fruit bats crashes to the ground— easy prey for ��thons and ra�tors

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Researchers fix feather-light collars containing transmitters and solar panels on some robust males. Six months later, one of the test animals has managed to cover a distance of about 2,000km.

Calao. In those days, that bistro in the heart of the city seemed like the epitome of civilisation to me. Very close to the restaurant were trees in which bunches of fruit bats would roost during the day. As dusk approached, the animals would awaken, fly a few rounds over the overcrowded streets, and then head out of the city to seek food. “Interesting,” says Leslie. “And what did you drink?” I explain that I drank pastis, but that there was another piece of information he might find more interesting: I understand that the animals still return, even today, to that city of many millions—and some land up on the menus of its restaurants. Uganda’s capital, Kampala, also has a permanent colony of 250,000 fruit bats.

at the end of October. Years later, she returned to Kasanka National Park as a biology student from the University of Florida, with limited research funds. Despite that, she managed to discover many interesting facts. For example, when the fruit bats leave Fibwe Forest at dusk, they forage for food in a radius of about 60km, a far greater distance than was previously believed. It is estimated that through the dispersal of seeds that they take along, the animals are responsible for the regeneration of up to 60 per cent of the trees across central Africa—thus contributing tremendously to the preservation and growth of the rainforest. Heidi also established that fruit bats consume up to 2.5 times their own weight in fruit each night, and that the process of digestion and excretion takes about 20 minutes. It seems that we stIll Given that 5 million fruit bats have much to learn about fruit bats. spend 10 weeks in Kasanka each One scientist who has studiedthem year, this means that about 262 in depth is Heidi Richter. She first million kilos of fruit are polished came to Zambia years ago as a Peace off during this period. Corps volunteer, and her attention However, while fruit bats may was drawn quite by chance to the physically ‘eat’ this amount of fruit, swarms of fruit bats that arrive here they do not necessarily actually

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consume it. “With their broad elastic jaws, fruit bats pick up large chunks of fruit,” wrote Gerhard Neuweiler in his book, Te Biology of Bats. “Te fruit pulp is pressed by the tongue against the hard ridges at the back of the palate and squeezed out. Te juice of the fruit is ingested and the fibrous remains spat out. Fruit bats thus do not eat fruit, but merely drink the juice.” Teir food pipe is so narrow that fruit pieces simply cannot be swallowed. In December 2005, Heidi attached satellite transmitters to four male fruit bats, transmitters that were powered by solar panels via rechargeable mini-batteries. Everything was ultra-light, but it must still have been a heavy load for the animals to carry around, which prompted her to name the strongest of the four ‘Hercules.’ Once these pioneers lef the park around Christmas, the satellite tracked their flight deep into the jungles of the Congo. Then, the signal disappeared. Perhaps the batteries had been discharged as the solar panels could no longer receive sunlight

Time for the big exodus. The swarms of fruit bats fly out from Zambia into the Congolese forests, acquiring another record along the way: the longest migration of any group of mammals in Africa.

Te annual spectacle of the fruit bats has turned this small African sanctuary into an international star attraction through the dense tree cover. Or perhaps the animals had finally managed to rid themselves of the cumbersome device. Or maybe the bats themselves were eaten by eagles, crocodiles or pythons. Nevertheless, the results of the experiment were spectacular. Just before it disappeared off Heidi’s radar screen, one of the fruit bats was located 1,200km away—and this was within just a month of its departure from Kasanka. No one had previously believed that fruit bats could cover such huge distances. Te last to keep transmitting a signal was Hercules: 6 months afer he lef Kasanka, he had covered about 2,000km. If he Is stIll alIve, he wIll certainly be one of the many millions presently congregating at Fibwe Forest. We descend from

the mahogany tree in a euphoric daze, and walk across the meadow in which we had been drenched the previous evening. We reach a green plain that, in Jill’s opinion, “symbolises the Kasanka idyll.” Just then, we come across a herd of antelopes. Tey are called ‘puku’ here, a name that suits these gentle-eyed animals much better than their scientific moniker, Kobus vardonii. Tey are lying indolently between grey termite hills that look like tombstones. “A cemetery on a day of resurgence,” notes Lee-Anne, enraptured. Her next Zambia guidebook is sure to be a bestseller. Only Jill is still not satisfied. “So, how many fruit bats are there, then?” she insists stubbornly. I take the words out of LeeAnne’s mouth: “A record number, either way!” As they once again fill the skies

above Fibwe Forest and the swamp, framed against the wonderful cloudscapes of Kasanka, the fruit bats are truly unique, absolutely unsurpassable. Perhaps we ought to cool another bottle of wine for the evening.

Photographer and zoologist Kieran Dodds (right) won First Prize (Nature) at the World Press Photo Contest with his shot of this spectacle. GEO writer and Africa connoisseur Michael Stührenberg was surprised how sanguine he felt surrounded by fruit bats. Much more worrying were the staff ’s repeated warnings to look out for Black mambas, the deadliest of all poisonous snakes in the Zambian bush.

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1.2. 2010 A DAY IN THE LIFE OF SCIENCE

Millions of people around the world—professors, scientists, researchers in companies and institutes, undergrads and Ph.D. students—are driven by the desire to understand the world a little better. They are united by their search for new insights and new knowledge—a search that can, at times, turn them into competitors as well. Some hope to reap large profits; others want to highlight the tremendous costs involved in tackling, for example, world hunger, climate change or wildlife protection. GEO documents 24 hours in the life of that global superpower, science, across the planet— in 38 places, 30 countries, and even in space. 100 g 7/10

00:02

Central European Time , (CET) 10:02 on-board time 333km off the Antarctic coast

The drill ship Joides Resolution battles its way through the waves. Ursula Röhl, a marine geologist from the University of Bremen, Germany, and her colleagues pore over the data, gathered overnight from a core 4,000m below the surface. They discuss the porosity and magnetic properties of the sediment and agree that more data is needed before any conclusions can be drawn. But should they lower more drill strings in this weather? With another 2 months to reconstruct the glacial history of the Antarctic, the researchers of Wilkes Land Expedition No. 318—a part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme— decide to wait out the storm.

02:05

14:05 local time Qilai Village, Fiji

William Camargo and his colleagues from the University of South Pacific set up floating cages and stock them with Tiger prawns, which are raised on a special diet optimised by the researchers. This experiment in aquaculture will provide the locals with a new source of income. 102 g 7/10

00:20

31.1.10, 20:20 local time Cerr Paranal, Chile

The Atacama Desert is bathed in twilight. From the control room of the European Southern Observatory, Linda Schmidtobreick adjusts the Melipal Telescope for the night. The 8m-long optical telescope, one of the four units of the Very Large Telescope here, will focus on the quasars.

03:00

worldwide

Around 22,000 scientific papers are published across the world in the course of a day—and around 800,000 scientific journals are published every year. Although the majority of these are

in the USA and Europe, other regions are fast catching up. The number of publications in India and Brazil has increased tremendously, but the rise has been most dramatic in China. The country of 1.3 billion inhabitants is gradually becoming a superpower in science as well. In 1997, Chinese

researchers published 12,200 of the world’s scientific articles; 10 years later, the number had already increased to 56,800—overtaking Japan, the UK and Germany. Should this trend continue, China could well outstrip the USA by 2020, and become the nation with the largest number of research papers.

03:08

����� ����� ���� ����� ����� ���� T�ky�, J�p�n

Masayuki Inaba and other students assist in positioning a robot called Kojiro on a bicycle. This humanoid, developed in the Robotics Lab of Tokyo University, possesses more than 50 microprocessors, 109 mechanical ‘muscles’ and an artificial backbone, which help it move almost as smoothly as a human. The scientists are still working on the final adjustments to achieve perfect coordination between the individual parts.

04:30

���3� ����� ���� Y�gy�k�r��, Ind�n�s��

Though Merapi has been more active this week than during the previous one, there is no cause for concern, says Subandriyo, as he studies the computer printouts of the seismic waves of Indonesia’s most active volcano. This is part of his everyday routine as head of the Centre for �olcanological Research and Technology Development. Half an hour later, he sends off his report to the Geological Department of the Ministry of Energy in Jakarta.

Pasteur: chance favours the prepared mind. He discusses upcoming work with his Ph.D. students. In December 2009, in collaboration with �inod Scaria, he succeeded in fully mapping the genome of an Indian—for the first time in India. Now, the researchers want to determine whether the genome shows a pattern that is unique, and therefore typical, to Indians. “Such a discovery could have repercussions on the future healthcare system of our country,” says Sivasubbu.

06:00

w�r�dw�d�

The day is just 6 hours old and 729.12 million dollars have already been spent on research globally: this will rise to about 1,156.5 billion by the end of the year. A recent study compared the world’s 100 most research-intensive firms to find out how much was being spent on R&D despite the recession. Although 65 per cent recorded a clear slowdown and 32 per cent even booked losses, their spending on research increased by more than two-thirds.

06:02

���32 ����� ���� N�w D��h�, Ind��

At Sridhar Sivasubbu’s lab at the Institute for Genomics and Integrative Biology, Mondays are set aside for brainstorming. This molecular biologist at India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) shares the view of Louis

06:08

����� ����� ���� S�r�ng���, T�nz�n��

Anna Estes is on her way to a small tin-shed hangar in the compound of Serengeti Wildlife Research Centre. The satellite transmitters on some of ‘her’ six elephants out in the jungle have fallen off. So she now has to use radio-tracking to locate the animals from the air, from the Cessna that belongs to the Frankfurt Zoological Society. Pilot Felix Borner helps her to fix a receiver antenna on the aircraft, and they are soon flying over the western part of the Serengeti. Estes is lucky: a chirp on her headphones helps her track down ‘Unit 36,’ a female elephant she has been after for more than a year. Later, she will try to find the elephant on the ground so that she can replace the radio transmitter collar. 7/10 g 105

07:36

0�:3� local time 0�:3� local time Tel Aviv, Israel

Mel Rosenberg is out for his early morning jog, a brisk 5.5km from his apartment to the sea and back. Then the microbiologist, a specialist in the study of halitosis, drives to Tel Aviv University, where he and co-author Nir Sterer have been working on a manuscript on the use of coffee extracts to eliminate bad breath. They were to have submitted an article the previous day to the Journal of Breath Research.

08:15

CET Prague, Czech Republic

Under Jan Petráek’s confocal microscope are cross sections of thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana). The researcher at the Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences is studying the role of phytohormones in the plant’s growth. This instrument, costing 500,000 euros, works with a laser light that stimulates a florescence from dyes applied to the specimen and identifies the location of the desired hormones and the molecules that carry them.

08:35

09:35 local time Bloemfontein, South Africa

Good preparatory work makes all the difference: blue tape on the sterile containers for biological specimens,

106 g 7/10

green on the ones for geochemical samples. At the University of the Free State, Esta van Heerden, Elsabe Botes and Ruddy Banyini are getting things together for their expedition to the Beatrix Goldmine. The scientists will tunnel down 2,150m to look for for new ‘extremophiles’: microorganisms that live under extreme conditions. Once the gear is all packed up, van Heerden helps a Ph.D. student analyse the culture of a recently discovered heat-loving protozoan under the microscope.

08:45

CET Budapest, Hungary

In 2 weeks, Gábor Csorba will be in Cambodia searching for unknown species of bats—but today, he is hard at work at the Hungarian Natural Science Museum examining the results of an earlier expedition. Under the microscope, he looks for details such as the shape of teeth that could identify a particular species. Csorba had already identified 14 new species, each one strengthening the case for more reserved forests.

09:17

11:17 local time St. Petersburg, Russia

Woolly mammoths were able to survive the harsh cold not only because they had three layers of fur, but because of their sebaceous glands. This is why Alexei Tikhonov peers into his microscope this morning, gazing at a specimen sample from a baby mammoth discovered in Jamal (in the Siberian peninsula) in May 2007. Tikhonov and his colleagues at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences first established the existence of the sebaceous glands in 2008, though these glands could not be demonstrated in older specimens like baby Dima (photo), excavated in 1977. But if the sebum from the glands had not been present, the mammoths would not have been able to survive in the moist, warmer climate that followed the Ice Age.

09:21

CET Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

How can justice be ensured during a period of transition? This is the topic of discussion this morning between Nandor Knust, Anna Petrig and JanMichael Simon. These jurists at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law are trying to identify the best mechanisms for punishing the large-scale injustices that are often perpetuated after a conflict, like the genocide in Rwanda.

10:03

CET Cologne, Germany

A series of fine ‘peaks’ of different heights appear on Mario Thevis’ monitor—chemical ‘fingerprints’ of a new kind of doping drug detected in a urine sample by biochemists at the German Sport University in

Cologne. Known as Andarine, it is still undergoing clinical trials as a therapeutic drug for muscular atrophy, but is already available on the black market as a performance enhancer.

10:30

11:30 local time Helsinki, Finland

Krister Wennerberg, of the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), is working on a machine for high throughput screening—an automated method of testing several chemical samples simultaneously. Wennerberg and his team have developed a process for analysing up to 1,536 samples on one plate measuring just 13x8.5cm. On this, they can screen more than 100,000 samples a day, which they hope will enable them to find kinesin—a protein that could be the foundation for a new generation of cancer drugs that will target only the sick cells in the body. n, 7/10 g 107

11:01



10:01 local time Bamako, Mali

In his office at the International Livestock Research Institute, Augustine Ayantunde adds the finishing touches to a report on the protection and use of indigenous ruminants in West Africa. N’dama cattle, Djallonke sheep and West African Dwarf goats are resistant to sleeping sickness, a disease that affects animal husbandry in humid regions. However, grazing pastures for these species are fast disappearing as people convert grasslands and forests into fields. Ayantunde is looking for ways and means to preserve the habitat of these animals in Gambia, Guinea, Mali and Senegal.

11:25



CET Bratislava, Slovakia

Peter Fedor studies sections of a thrip, a pest whose subspecies cause considerable damage to harvests across the world. Fedor and his colleagues at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, are developing a computer programme that can quickly— and ‘intelligently’—identify these insects. The basis for the first stage of the programme is taxonomic data from thousands of thrips, data that has to be gathered with great precision. The scientists hope to use their new process to find ways of combating the bugs without destroying other species of animals or plants. 108 g 7/10

11:43



CET Hamburg, Germany

At the test centre of the Technical University of Hamburg–Harburg’s Institute for Aircraft Systems Engineering, Dennis Doberstein manually unlatches the nose landing gear of an Airbus. Within 15 seconds, it descends all the way down through its own weight. The engineer replaces the conventional hydraulic actuation of the landing gear with an electrical one, hoping to demonstrate that the new construction will function even in an emergency, when electrical circuits fail.

11:58



worldwide

It’s only noon, but MBA students at Harvard Business School, Boston, have already spent 100 dollars in fees today. The university topped Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities. Of the top 20 universities in the world, only three are non-American. The British universities of Cambridge and Oxford rank four and ten respectively.

12:15 12:00

�3��� lo��l �i�e Is��nbul, Turkey

Ümüt Cirit has just returned from the slaughter house. His colleagues at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Istanbul University, open the container he has brought along and remove the sheep and cattle ovaries inside. They work quickly: Professor Sema Birler and her assistant get the sheep ovaries; Cirit and Professor Serhat Pabuccuolu get the cows’. They plan to extract the egg cells in order to clone a cow. The ovaries are cut open and a sterile, pH-neutral fluid is injected. The scientists then pick out healthy egg cells under the microscope; a few mother cells from these are selected for cloning. The aim is to preserve and develop Turkish livestock species. The scientists already have several such successful operations behind them; their first cloned animal was Efe—a male Anatolian Grey calf (a variant of domestic cattle of the Bos primigenius taurus species). 110 g 7/10



����� lo��l �i�e Queen M�ud L�nd, An��r��i�� 7�° ��’ S/6° ��’ E

There is a snowdrift at gale force 9, so working outside is not possible. Olaf Eisen from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and his four colleagues sit inside their portacabin, using the break to analyse data they have collected over the last few days. They are on their way from Neumayer Station to the Halfvarryggen ice dome, a candidate for a drilling-point of future ice cores. The ice sheet in the region needs to be checked out in advance. One part of this procedure requires the researchers to measure seismic waves generated with small explosions on the ice dome. Once the storm dies down, it takes the scientists many hours to extract their pistenbully—an —an an all-terrain vehicle— from the snow.

12:20

worldwide

About 7 million people are employed in science globally. This means one in every 1,000 people is a scientist—at a university, a private institute or a public one, employed by a large company or part of a scientific society.

12:25

�3�2� lo��l �i�e Vilnius, Li�hu�ni�

Ph.D. student Domas Paipulas readies the laser machine at the Laser Research Centre of Vilnius University. He will use a hair-thin beam of bundled light to cut grooves in a steel plate. The work is part of an international project—with —with with researchers from Lithuania, Denmark, the UK and Spain—to —to to develop a method of identifying the microscopic cracks that develop in steel, for instance during metal fatigue. Scientists from another institute will fill the grooves with electrically conductive ceramic, creating a net. If the steel then develops cracks (not visible to the naked eye), the sites can be located by passing an electrical impulse through the net. A break in the current indicates the presence of a crack.

13:04

����� ����� lo��l �i�e lo��l �i�e G�d�n, Ir�q

13:31



�2�3� lo��l �i�e �2�3� lo��l �i�e In orbi� �round �he e�r�h

A 20km-drive takes geologists Polla Astronaut Timothy Creamer is floating Khanaqa and Khalid Sharbazheri in Columbus Laboratory on board the from their institute in Kurdish International Space Station, 350km Sulaimania to the bare hills around above Siberia. He can see cubes and cylinders on the inbuilt mini-monitors the village of Gadan. Here, they look for a suitable site to examine 65- of his headset: his task is to estimate million-year-old rock layers. Calcium the size and distance of these objects. The European Space Agency is using deposits from the shells of marine animals and geochemical analyses this experiment to determine how zero gravity affects spatial perceptions, for will help them to reconstruct the any error in judgement by astronauts environmental conditions that existed in the region at the end of while performing tasks outside the the Cretaceous Period—the era when station could have grave consequences. “It seems that in space a cube is dinosaurs became extinct.

perceived to be longer but less broad,” explains Claudio Sollazo, who observes the experiment live from the control room in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

13:40

worldwide



The canteens of universities are packed— the numbers of students have been steadily increasing. About 500,000 people graduated in 1900; and just 100 years later, there were more than 100 million students enrolled in 20,000 universities around the world. In the following 7 years, the number of graduates increased by another 50 per cent to 152.5 million, with more women graduates than men.

7/10 g 111

13:47



�4:47 local time Barkley Canyon, 1��km off Vancouver Island

Wally’s instruments record a pressure of 91 bar, a temperature of 2.81°C, and methane concentration of 0.02 milligrams per litre. The deep-sea crawler, part of the Neptune Seafloor Observatory, is 871m below sea level in a canyon. ‘Wally’ is connected to a relay station via a cable 70m long and sits on a field of methane hydrate, an ice-like mixture of methane and water that occurs in large quantities on the seabed and is a promising source of energy.

14:02

CET Zagreb, Croatia

Suzana Marjani and Maja Pasari sit in the library of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore in Zagreb and prepare for a lecture. Their team is working on a project on ‘Cultural Zoology’, with in-depth research being conducted on the role animals have played in Croatian culture. The project involves scientists from Belgium and Slavonia and has already resulted in three books, the most important of which is called Kulturni bestijarij (A Cultural Bestiary). ‚

14:29

13:29 local time Exeter, UK

Gillian Kay has just completed her postlunch walk and returned to her office at the Hadley Centre Met Office, the

14:00

1�:�� local time 1�:�� local time Sofia, Bulgaria

At the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, ornithologist Tanyo Michev is compiling a list of all sightings of Dalmatian pelicans in Bulgaria since the late 19th century. These statistics will form the base of a conservation plan commissioned by the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment. Just one nesting colony of Dalmatian pelicans is left in Bulgaria, in the nature reserve of Srebarna, on the Danube.. Srebarna has around 100 breeding pairs and is one of the last of its kind in Europe. Michev, an expert on the habitat of the birds, says that to ensure its survival, extensive wetlands on both sides of the Danube would need to be set aside as nature reserves, and nesting platforms would need to be constructed on the island of Belene and in the Bay of Burgas.. 112 g 7/10

UK’s largest climate research institute. A quick glance at her computer shows that climate model calculations are still being processed. She will use this data to predict the effect of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases on the vegetation of South America 150 years from now. For the moment, however, Kay has to be patient—according to the status display, the simulation will take another 2.5 days to complete.

14:30

worldwide

Afternoons at universities are usually devoted to the reading and writing of scientific papers. However, only a small portion of reference material is actually referred to and cited. A mere one in 200 papers is cited more than 200 times by peers, thus qualifying it as ‘important’ research.

15:00

1�:�� 1�:�� local time local time Allaan, Jordan

Darweesh Foudeh, a radio frequency engineer, switches on the injector in the huge hall of the SESAME synchrotron and meticulously checks that all systems are functioning properly. Electrons shoot into a particle accelerator. The particles travel at almost light-speed, and emit an intense electromagnetic beam once in orbit.. �esearchers use this special ‘light’ to study biomolecules and archaeological finds. SESAME is a joint project of nine Middle Eastern countries that include Egypt, Pakistan, Iran, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. For the first time ever, under the aegis of UNESCO, researchers from different Arab states are working together with Israeli scientists, making SESAME an international showpiece for research that promotes peace. However, the project fulfils another important function as well—generating employment for about 1,000 scientists from the region and from many different specialisations. 7/10 g 113

15:44

CET �������� ������� �������� �������

Heavy snow has brought traffic to a halt, so Gerald Bieber of the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research is unable to go to work today. Instead, he uses his time to write an email to a clinic for obese children on Usedom Island. Rostock scientists are working with this centre to develop a mobile phone sensor that, like a tachograph, will display the movement patterns of its users. It is also used to record what they eat, so that energy input and energy consumption can both be analysed.

16:00

CET P����� ����� P����� �����

Cinzia Di Dio sets up her Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system for an experiment. The neuroscientist from the University of Parma wants to establish how the brain reacts when a person looks at classical sculptures— and then determine exactly where these ‘cerebral signs of beauty’ register in the brain.. As a contrast, she also shows volunteers deformed versions of the artworks. After all, the experiment is also meant to answer the question: is our sense of aesthetics purely subjective? Or does it have an objective biological basis? 114 g 7/10

17:30

����� ����� ����� ���� ����� ���� H�v���� Cub�

Dr Gustavo Kouri stands in the midst of anatomical specimens in the museum of the Pedro Kouri Institute, which was founded by his father. He is surrounded by medical students from Argentina, Brazil and El Salvador, and answers their questions on tropical diseases— particularly about dengue fever, his area of specialisation.. He is currently working on a vaccine for this mosquitotransmitted viral infection, as well as writing a book on the subject.

17:35



CET ������� ������� ����� �����

Juan Luis Arsuaga classifies the jawbone of a deer that was killed, likely by Neanderthals, in the Atapuerca Mountains of northern Spain during the last Ice Age of the Pleistocene Period. The prehistoric fossil was found in the Mayor Cave of Atapuerca—together with bones of wild horses and badgers, and some Neanderthal stone tools. The finds that Arsuaga and his team are studying at the Centre for Human Evolution, a joint research institute of the University of Complutense and the Carlos III University in Madrid, are between 40,000 and 50,000 years old. The biologists want to learn more about the animals that coexisted with the Neanderthals in Pleistocene Cantabria, and on which the latter must have depended.

18:00

�7��� ����� ���� N������-K�b� N������� P���� ����g��

A family of warthogs dashes through a clearing in the savannah—a boon for Tabitha Price. The biologist from the German Primate Centre quickly presses the recording button of her recorder: how will the group of Velvet monkeys, the subjects of her research, react to this intrusion on their peace? Price turns the microphone towards a male

monkey emitting a series of short calls from the branches above her. Warning or showing off? Price hopes to gain new insights by comparing the call repertoire of the Velvet monkeys with that of related species.

18:30

����� ����� ����� ���� ����� ���� �ã� P�u��� B��z��

Paulo Lee Ho’s task today is to clone the gene of the Brown recluse spider (Loxosceles reclusa), whose bite on a human arm or leg can, in rare cases, cause a slow atrophy of the limb, ultimately leading to amputation. The spider is commonly found all over the Brazilian state of Paraná. The biologist from Butanan Institute’s Centre for Biotechnology in São Paulo wants

‘glückschmerz’—unhappiness at another’s good luck. This emotion is closely related to ‘schadenfreude’ (pleasure at the suffering of others). Smith discusses with his students how the feeling of glückschmerz can be induced in an unsuspecting test subject. “We believe that people experience this feeling as often as they do schadenfreude,” says Smith, “but it has never been empirically tested.” Even the word to describe this feeling was created by Smith himself: he had to use the German expression since, like schadenfreude, no English equivalent exists.

23:20 to manipulate genes to develop an antiserum for the poison. If successful, the antidote would be another feather in the cap of this institute, which specialises in biopharmaceutical products. Scientists here have developed a vaccine against Hepatitis B, which, once mass-produced, costs just 27 cents (US), US),, as compared to the 100-dollar tag it carries under the American healthcare system.

19:00

����� ����� ���� �������� U�A

In the Mass Spectrometer Laboratory of the Institute for Systems Biology, Ulrike Kusebauch is using an HPLC chip to identify proteins from a breast tumour. She pipettes the proteins into the 96 tubes of the tester. The biochemist hopes to find signal proteins that will allow early detection of breast cancer.

20:00

glyphs on a digital tablet—which he had photographed on his last excavation in southeastern Mexico. Some of these signs are first transformed into electronic images. Before Pallán’s eyes appears the name of a hitherto unknown ruler of an unknown city: ‘Saktal Ajaw,’ or King of Saktal.

21:30

�5��� ����� ���� L�x��g���� U�A

Psychologist Richard Smith of the University of Kentucky has set his sights on a new emotion today:

CET B����� �w��z������

Andreas Schmidt lies down to sleep. The volunteer has just finished 2 hours of office work in Basel University’s blue-lit chronobiology laboratory. Sleep scientist Christian Cajochen rechecks the electrodes on Schmidt’s head. They will monitor the waves of the brain during the night. The Basel researcher believes that being exposed to light with a high proportion of blue leads to smaller concentrations of the ‘dark hormone’ melatonin in the blood and to shorter REM sleep. It’s an interesting theory, but is it correct? Cajochen will know more about it, only he’ll have to wait... until tomorrow.

����� ���� ����� ���� ����� ���� ��x��� C���

Carlos Pallán’s window looks out directly at the sunny remains of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. The archaeologist, however, is busy at his work table, tracing 7/10 g 115

Welcome to the world, dear little Marginated tortoise! For 3 months, this Testudo marginata hatchling grew in the dark. Then it scraped a hole in the shell with its ‘egg tooth’—a callosity on its upper jaw— — in order to take its first breath.

116 g 7/10

Happy Hatching! Te of a

START NEW LIFE A crack, a peck, a thrust, a scrape, and then—a new creature is born from an egg. Or if it’s a larva or pupa, a sexually mature imago emerges, again and again, in constant metamorphosis. Photographer Ingo Arndt witnessed the miraculous moments when young animals are born.

7/10 g 117

118 g 7/10

The eternal drama of youth: exposed to the world and defenceless—but not always helpless. The females of this scorpion family (Buthidae) carry their offspring for a few weeks after birth and protect them from predators. A nutritious liquid secretion, food and security: all supplied by the mother’s own body.

The eggs of the mosquito (Culicidae) are laid in ‘egg rafts’. They float like filigreed boats on the surface of the water. Later, the larvae (in mask’’ or Latin, larva means ‘mask’ ‘ghost’ ghost’’ ) will hatch in the water, where there is food for them, and breathe through a snorkel-like system.

120 g 7/10

This Four-spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) is one step ahead. It has already climbed up to its new habitat: a plant-stalk rising out of the water. Now, it casts off its larval shell. Soon it will unfurl its four wings and fly away into its short, second life.

A born swimmer! The Smallspotted catshark embryo (Scyliorhinus canicula) moves its tiny tailfin every once in a while so that fresh water can flow through the porous walls of its egg shell. The eyes of this future predator are clearly visible� as is the yolk sac� which it will carry around for a while after hatching.

Shortly before hatching� all the bodily organs of this Common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) are fully functional. This is essential because when the time comes� things will happen very fast: using enzymes from a hatching organ� it partly dissolves the shell of the olive-sized egg before piercing through it.

7/10 g 123

“Work is worship”—or so the� sa�. Certainl�, most animals start their life with some form of ‘la�our’. How else could this worker Hone��ee (Apis mellifera) ever emerge from its incu�ation cell if not through hard work?

124 g 7/10

Sometime in spring, countless small European garden spiders (Araneus diadematus) cast off the cocoon made for the eggs �� their mother shortl� �efore her death the previous autumn. This is followed �� an adolescent phase, a time of collective living in the gossamer, �efore each spider leaves to spin a we� of its own.

126 g 7/10

The eggs of the slug (Deroceras reticulatum) look like hailstones— and are about as long-lived. However, egg-based reproduction is one of evolution�s longest-running success stories. Hundreds of millions of years ago, as creatures moved from water to land, so did their ability to lay eggs—and —and and that too independently, among insects, vertebrates and, later, molluscs.

Green lacewings (Chrysopidae) construct a narrow, stalked incubation structure with secretions produced naturally in their bodies. The larva— shown here crawling out of the egg—is —is is ravenous� in the coming weeks, it will devour 500 greenflies and 12,000 mite eggs with its suction claws .

Eighty-five per cent of all insects radically transform their bodies through the process of pupation. As a pupa, this Blowfly (Calliphora sp.) dismantled and reconstructed its organs, built new cells and tissues, and eventually emerged from the pupa shell as a new being.

7/10 g 129

The moments when life develops: a Sea trout (Salmo trutta trutta) hatches from an egg, discarding the egg shell, but retaining the nutrientproviding yolk sac.

R

eproduction as piece-work? Some animal species seem to deal with procreation over a long period of time—the search for a partner, the act of procreation, carrying the offspring to term, its birth and, finally, looking afer it. Among several species, it takes years for the offspring to mature. Among other species, one partner simply deposits a few dozen shells filled with yolk. Te other adds his semen to it, and that’s it. What is the reason behind this fundamental difference? Tere is no simple answer to this question. Procreation is a topic that eludes most straightforward rules. Are all mammals viviparous? By no means: the duck-billed platypus and spiny anteater suckle their offspring like all other mammals, but they enter the

naked and helpless

Some creatures are when they start their existence: others are prepared for flight and defence from their very first breath. world contained in eggs. Is it always the female partner who gives birth to the offspring? Even this is not so: among sea horses, the male carries the babies. Moreover, fertilisation does not necessarily precede the creation of new life: female greenflies have been giving birth to their own clones for several generations without ever having mated. Biologists call this type of asexual reproduction parthogensis. Even the moment of birth has countless variants. Te offspring could squeeze through a narrow birth 130 g 7/10

canal. It could peck or slash through the surrounding shell with an egg tooth. It could turn into a pupa afer the larval stage or crawl—smaller than the tip of a matchstick—on emergence from the womb into a pouch where it latches on to a teat. A creature can be born naked, blind and helpless, like a mouse. Or like a rattlesnake, it may be capable of flight and defence right from the beginning. Tere is no uniform sequence of events in the animal kingdom as far as reproduction is concerned. And there is ofen a world of difference between one birth and another—or at least a difference of an entire order of magnitude. African bush elephant cows are pregnant for nearly 2 years, longer than all other mammals (the longest pregnancy recorded: 760 days). In contrast, an opossum needs 12 days to carry its offspring to term. Te females of the Ling (Molva molva) fish species, which is a member of the cod family, lay 20 to 60 million eggs in one spawning season. Te biggest fish egg ever found was that of a Whale shark, measuring 30cm in height. A female of this viviparous shark species had lost the egg prematurely. Te babies of some bat varieties occasionally weigh almost half as much as the mother animal, whereas big Red kangaroos ‘invest’ only 0.0003 per cent of their own body weight in the next generation. And a newborn mouse doubles its weight in just 5 days—a human baby, in contrast, does so in 4 months. Tus, the of-cited diversity of life has its roots in the beginnings of life. Te phenomenon of reproduction can best be understood by taking ‘how many?’ as a benchmark, rather than ‘how?’ Each living organism has a limited amount of energy at its disposal. It can use this to create numerous

Deaf, naked, blind: it seems incredible that these 1-gram creatures will become sexually mature in just 6 to 7 weeks. However, the house mouse (Mus musculus) is among those species who rely on a short succession of generations. In other words: live fast, die young.

offspring, such as the female Lings, in which case the energy does not suffice for the care of the young ones. Or the energy can be lavishly invested in defending and caring for the babies—but is will only be enough for a few of them. Tese reproductive tactics are known as ‘K strategy’ and ‘r strategy’, although the term ‘strategy’ is a little misleading as it suggests that an individual’s behaviour is determined by a plan, possibly that of the preservation of its own species. Rather, it is a genetically determined programme that is beyond the individual’s control. In fact, an individual behaves in the same way as its ancestors did, since they were successful with one or another of these accidentally determined methods. For typical r-strategists, like a mouse or a fruit fly, the plan is this: reach sexual maturity fast, beget numerous offspring, and die young. On the other hand, the rule followed by typical K-strategists, such as elephants or primates, is: take your time with procreation, become big and strong, produce only a few offspring but look afer them intensively for a long time, and live to an old age yourself. Te r-strategists rely on the fact that a large number of offspring and short succession of generations imply a high growth rate (the ‘r’ is derived from this word) of mutations. In other words, a variety of genetic options, of which the most suitable are selected. Tis strategy pays off when it is a question of capturing niches and adapting to new conditions quickly. In contrast, the K-strategists focus on increased competitive ability in the tough rivalry over limited resources. Tis equation is the most successful in a stable environment where the niches have long been occupied and where the population figures

range at the limit of the carrying capacity (K) of the local environmental setting. Biologists grant the r-strategists better future prospects in light of a world that is rapidly altering due to climate change.

near future

Te belongs to mice and cockroaches: those who produce numerous offspring adapt better to change. Tus, mice, cockroaches and ‘weeds’ could sustain biodiversity in the coming centuries, whereas we—the K-humans—should probably be worrying about our continued existence. Anke Sparmann

“Come quick, it’s time!” Nature photographer Ingo Arndt spent 2 years waiting for such phone calls from private breeders, neighbours and research labs. He was right there to follow the life cycle of mosquitoes in a rainwater tank in his garden. Unfortunately, the tank was right under the bedroom window—and he got bitten!

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geo l i no

cambodia

Toad in the Hole?

Anything down there? Hunting for frogs needs a lot of patience—usually the pipe only turns up pebbles and sand. Finding a frog is a rare treat!

Small stones, a few ants and a lump of mud—is that it? Are you sure there’s nothing else inside? Ream shuts one eye and peers through the pipe once again. Ah yes, there it is, right at the bottom: a frog. The 10-year-old shakes the creature out of the pipe and yells to his brother, Preak: “I got one!” The two boys are thrilled, for grilled frogs are a favourite snack in the Kampong Speo region of southwestern Cambodia. They are tasty and rich in protein. But best of all, the frogs don’t need to be bought—because they are usually caught by the people themselves. There is only one drawback: like mushrooms, some of these little croakers are inedible. Just recently, an entire family fell ill after eating a poisonous frog.

USa

Spelling Bee Stage fright? No chance! Nicholas looks cool and confident as he faces the audience from the dais. This 11-year-old has come a long way: he is in the penultimate round of America’s largest spelling competition, the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington. With each successive round, the words the children have to spell become increasingly difficult. Until now, this fifth-grader has been spot on with every word. Much of the credit for this goes to his mother, Michelle, who goes through dictionaries searching out new words for him while Nicholas is at school. Then he practises them—sometimes for up to 30 hours a week! He can already spell about 10,000 words correctly. This is a lot— but not quite enough. The word ‘hebdomadally’ (which means ‘weekly’) comes up, and Nicholas has to let it pass. He has made it to 17th place—but not to the finals. Never one to give up easily, Nicholas is soon busy with his dictionary, looking s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g it right onstage. The words given to the contestants up the correct spelling. to spell get tougher with each round.

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Ki ds’ world

india

Kid with a Kick If you ever come across this little girl on the beach of Alappuzha, Kerala, don’t even think about messing with her. For Varsha knows how to protect herself: with lightning kicks, sharp karate chops, nimble movements and quick grips—just like the true karate professional that she is. And when Varsha does it, she makes it look so very simple: the 5-year-old girl kicks her feet up with breathtaking ease, turns herself around, ducks and blocks the blow of an unseen opponent and finally throws a punch. A perfectly executed sequence of moves, just

as the karate masters teach. Which is why Varsha has now been accepted in their hallowed circle: she is the youngest athlete ever to pass the tremendously tough test for the black belt! “Varsha quickly mastered all the techniques that others take over 8 years of training to learn,” says her father, Vishwas Vinod, who is a karate instructor himself. Intense discipline and daily training sessions are the prerequisites for success. Varsha practises for twoand-a-half hours every day. And what do her friends have to say about her skills? Varsha flashes back the answer: “I don’t think they are frightened of me. I think they’re proud!”

At the tender age of 5, Varsha has already won a black belt. Her moves are aweinspiring—but she says no one should be scared of her.

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lif el i n e

Václav Havel… …writing towards freedom Ostracised and targeted by the Communists in his youth, as a poet and playwright in later life, he fought back—and ultimately defeated them as a politician.

career 5.10.1936 • Born in Prague (CSSR)

1951–54 • Lab technician, evening grammar school 1955–66 • University: economics at the faculty of public transport and dramaturgy 1963 • Opening of his first stage play 1968 • ‘Prague Spring’; ban on his publications 1977 • Initiates the civil rights group, Charter 77 1979–83 • Imprisonment 1989–1992 • President of Czechoslovakia 1993–2003 • President of the Czech Republic

Václav Havel’s parents could afford an entire retinue of servants: tutors, cooks, gardeners, chauffeurs. They owned several properties: a restaurant, a house in Prague and a country estate. But this wealth and opulence oppressed Václav, who escaped early into the world of books. As a 10-year-old, he devoured thousands of pages of Czech history. “I was ashamed of my privileged status and yearned for equality,” he was later to write. Havel’s family was ostracised by the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia. In 1948, in a move to deprive the bourgeoisie of power, the government confiscated private property and the Havels lost of most of their possessions—except for their house. So while most of the rich had to move to the countryside, Václav’s family managed to stay on in Prague. This was fortunate, since it was only in the city that he could

Havel discovered the Prague literary scene at the legendary Café Slavia. pursue his passion for literature, and he befriended a group of fellow poets critical of the system. The Communists denied the youngsters their heart’s desire: as children of the bourgeoisie, they were barred from

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Renaissance man: lab technician, stagehand, student, playwright, president. entering university. This was a right reserved for the working classes. Havel found a way around it: from 1951, he worked as a chemistry lab technician, which gave him leave to attend evening classes at a grammar school. Perhaps the numerical values of the periodic table influenced his early typographic poems: in one, the word ‘life’ appears 54 times, arranged on the page such that the text resembles a cross on a grave. Once his evening classes were over, Havel was allowed to study further— but not the subject of his dreams, dramaturgy. As a potential dissident, he was allowed only technical, nonpolitical specialisations. So Havel studied economics at the faculty of public transport—and found entry into the world of theatre as a stagehand. He built backdrops and props and was eventually permitted to study drama. His early plays were all written at night. He knew precisely the medium

through which he would expose the Communists: comedy, the theatre of the absurd. His first play debuted in 1963. With that, he had fulfilled a dream. It was his first victory against a system he would continue to fight: as a leading intellectual of the Prague Spring of 1968, the first revolution of Czechoslovakia, and as head of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, which ultimately made him the poet–president of the country. GeRMAnY

POlAnD

Prague

CZeCH RePUBliC SlOVAKiA AUSTRiA

150 km

Havel’s family lived in Prague, the city in which he finally realised his dreams.

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Highlights from the next issue

American Beauty? In the once-proud industrial cities of America like Troy, unemployment is rife. Award-winning photographer Brenda Anne Kenneally returns to her hometown to document the lives of impoverished families there.

The Forgotten Kingdom The rulers of Qatna, Syria, were mighty figures of the ancient world. They built palaces, worked gold and bred thoroughbred horses. Modern archeologists are reconstructing an amazing lost empire.

The Undead They live in the sea, in fresh water and on damp moss. But ‘live’ may be a misnomer, for tardigrades (also known as water bears or moss piglets) can survive for months in a state of rigor mortis.

An Icy Harvest

Machines Like Us Granted, many prototypes of Robo sapiens seem rather awkward and technoid today. But in the near future, robots will be part of our everyday lives—as companions, servants, therapists and soldiers.

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The long fronds of kelp are like leathery whips. The �uilliche people of Chile heave it out from the cold surf of the Pacific Ocean in slippery armfuls.. �ere, the seaweed is not only an important source of nutrition but is also valued for its medicinal properties.