The ancient Nasca lines of Peru shed their secrets.

In the coastal desert of southern Peru, sprawling fi gures etched on the land— a spider, a monkey, a strange fl ying animal, and more—have inspired wonder in air travelers since fi rst spotted in the 1920s. Now scientists believe they know why ancient people created the designs, beginning more than 2,000 years ago.

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Likely a token of fertility, a severed head from Cahuachi hung from a rope of vegetable fi ber. The victim may have been a local man sacrifi ced at a time of drought. A skull from Carrizales (above) shows a typical form of deliberate shaping, per- haps a sign of elite social status. Many buried corpses, including that of a man found at Ullujaya (left), were mummifi ed naturally by the region’s arid climate.

SEVERED HEAD COMPOSED OF THREE IMAGES ����� �����  

For more stories like these, subscribe today. Click here to order. By Stephen S. Hall Photographs by Robert Clark

rom the air, the lines etched in the fl oor of the desert were hard to see, like drawings left in the sun too long. As our pilot cut tight turns over a desert plateau in southern Peru, north of the town of Nasca, I could just make out a succession of beautifully crafted fi gures. “Orca!” shouted F Johny Isla, a Peruvian archae- role in conserving the geoglyphs. But her own ologist, over the roar of the engine. He pointed preferred theory—that the lines represented down at the form of a killer whale. “Mono!” settings on an astronomical calendar—has he said moments later, when the famous also been largely discredited. Th e ferocity with Nasca monkey came into view. “Colibrí!” Th e which she protected the lines from outsiders has hummingbird. been adopted by their caretakers today, so that Since they became widely known in the late even scientists have a hard time gaining access 1920s, when commercial air travel was intro- to the most famous animal fi gures on the plain, duced between Lima and the southern Peruvian or pampa, immediately northwest of Nasca. city of Arequipa, the mysterious desert drawings Since 1997, however, a large Peruvian-German known as the Nasca lines have puzzled archae- research collaboration has been under way ologists, anthropologists, and anyone fascinated near the town of Palpa, farther to the north. by ancient cultures in the Americas. For just as Directed by Isla and Markus Reindel of the long, waves of scientists—and amateurs—have German Archaeological Institute, the Nasca- infl icted various interpretations on the lines, as Palpa Project has mounted a systematic, mul- if they were the world’s largest set of Rorschach tidisciplinary study of the ancient people of the inkblots. At one time or another, they have been region, starting with where and how the ca explained as Inca roads, irrigation plans, images lived, why they disappeared, and what was the to be appreciated from primitive hot-air bal- meaning of the strange designs they left behind loons, and, most laughably, landing strips for in the desert sand. alien spacecraft . As our plane banked into another turn, Isla, A ft er World War II a German-born teacher a native of the highlands who works at the An- named Maria Reiche made the fi rst formal sur- dean Institute of Archaeological Studies, kept veys of the lines and fi gures—called geoglyphs— his broad, high-cheeked face pressed to the outside Nasca and the nearby town of Palpa. For window. “Trapezoid!” he shouted, pointing out half a century, until her death in 1998, a huge geometrical clearing looming Reiche played a critically important into sight. “Platform!” he added, ges- turing with his fi nger. “Platform!” PERU SOUTH This depiction of a giant bird, with a AMERICA Platform? He was pointing at a NASCA long, pointed beak and wings spanning CULTURAL small heap of stones at one end of the 220 feet, may evoke tiny hummingbirds AREA trapezoid. If Isla and his colleagues are CHILE that fl itted through irrigated fi elds. right, such unprepossessing structures

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A 1,200-year-old CHIN shipwreck opens a A window on ancient global trade.

Crusted with sea life, this Tang dynasty stoneware jar was found off Indonesia’s Belitung island.

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he world economy in the ninth dishes and plates that held the meals of wealthy century had two powerful engines. Persian Gulf merchants arrived by sea in Arab, One was Tang dynasty China, an Persian, and Indian ships. empire stretching from the South It was a long and perilous journey. And some- China Sea to the borders of Persia, times a ship just vanished, like a plane off a Twith ports open to foreign traders from far and radar screen. wide. Th e Tang welcomed diverse people to its Since time immemorial, ships have come to capital, Changan, the site of modern-day Xian, grief in the Gelasa Strait, a funnel-shaped pas- and multiethnic groups lived side by side in a sage between the small Indonesian islands of city of a million—a population unmatched by Bangka and Belitung, where turquoise waters a Western city until London in the early 19th conceal a maze of submerged rocks and reefs. century. Th en, as today, China was an economic Despite the dangers, sea cucumber divers were powerhouse—and much of that power was built working the area a decade ago when, 51 feet on trade. down, they came across a coral block with The other economic engine was Baghdad, ceramics embedded in it. Th ey pulled several capital of the Abbasid dynasty from 762 onward. intact bowls from inside a large jar, took them That dynasty inherited the Muslim world in ashore, and sold them. the Middle East; by 750 it had spread as far as the Th e divers had stumbled upon the most impor- Indus River to the east and Spain to the west, tant marine archaeological discovery ever made bringing with it trade, commerce, and the reli- in Southeast Asia: a ninth-century Arab dhow gion of Islam (the Prophet Muhammad himself fi lled with more than 60,000 handmade pieces of had been a merchant). Tang dynasty gold, silver, and ceramics. Th e ship Linking the two economic powerhouses were and its cargo, now referred to as the Belitung the Silk Road and its watery counterpart, the wreck, were like a time capsule of proof that Maritime Silk Route. Th e overland road gets all Tang China, like China today, mass-produced the attention, but ships had likely been plying the trade goods and exported them by sea. Work- seas between China and the Persian Gulf since ing in shift s until the monsoon stopped them, a the time of Christ. In tune with the cycle of the team of divers retrieved the ancient artifacts. monsoon winds, this network of sea-lanes and Th e treasure—much of it, anyway—turned out harbors bound East and West in a continuous to be the Tang equivalent of Fiestaware: so-called exchange of goods and ideas. Changsha bowls, named after the Changsha Tang China was hungry for fine textiles, kilns in Hunan where they were produced. Tall pearls, coral, and aromatic woods from Persia, stoneware jars served as ninth-century shipping East Africa, and India. In return, China traded containers; each could hold more than a hun- paper, ink, and above all, silk. Silk, light and dred nested bowls that might originally have easily rolled up, could travel overland. But by been padded with rice straw, a sort of organic the ninth century, ceramics from China had bubble wrap. Scholars already knew that such grown popular as well, and camels were not simple, functional tea bowls had been exported well suited for transporting crockery (think of worldwide from the eighth to the tenth centu- those humps). So increasing quantities of the ries: Shards of them had been found at sites as RARE ARTISTRY Goods from the Belitung ship exemplify the creativity and craft that fl ourished far afi eld as Indonesia and Persia. But few of the in Tang dynasty China (clockwise from upper right): An intricately engraved gilt silver fl ask, an Simon Worrall has contributed to both National bowls had ever been found intact. Geographic and National Geographic Traveler. Th is Now the Java Sea had yielded up a shipload, ornate bronze mirror already antique when the ship sailed, a wine cup and bracelet shaped from is Tony Law’s fi rst assignment for this magazine. many perfectly preserved—protected in the pure gold, and the oldest intact cobalt-blue-and-white ceramic from China ever discovered.

 �������� ���������� • ����  ���� ���������    For more stories like these, subscribe today. Click here to order. WHEN HENRY HUDSON FIRST LOOKED ON MANHATTAN IN 1609, WHAT DID HE SEE? Before New York

Turning back the clock by four centuries, ecologists reveal how Manhattan Island appeared on the September aft ernoon Henry Hudson and his crew sailed into New York Harbor.

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For more stories like these, subscribe today. Click here to order. TIMES SQUARE Long before it became a symbol of Manhattan’s hectic pace, the intersection where Seventh Avenue crosses Broadway (right) was once a quieter place. Two creeks met here in a red maple swamp and fed a beaver pond.

ART: PHILIP STRAUB

For more stories like these, subscribe today. Click here to order. f all the visitors O to in recent years, one of the most surprising was a beaver named José. No one knows A detail from an 18th-century map of Manhattan Island shows orchards and a farm on Murray Hill (at right).

exactly where he came from. Speculation is he found José’s lodge right where Sautner had said he said. “I wanted to show how great nature can Sanderson conceived the Mannahatta Project swam down the Bronx River from suburban it was. When they returned a couple of weeks be when it’s working, with all its parts, in a place one evening in 1999, aft er buying a coff ee-table Westchester County to the north. He just showed later, they ran into José himself. that people normally don’t think of as having book of historical maps of the city. A recent trans- up one wintry morning in 2007 on a riverbank “It was just getting dark,” Sanderson said. any nature at all.” plant to New York from northern California, he in the Bronx Zoo, where he gnawed down a few “We were standing on the riverbank shooting Long before its hills were bulldozed and its was curious about how the city had evolved. “Th e willow trees and built a lodge. the breeze, when all of a sudden we saw the wetlands paved over, Manhattan was an extraor - landscape in Manhattan is so transformed, it “If you’d asked me at the time what the chances beaver. He swam right up to us, then he started dinary wilderness of towering chestnut, oak, makes you wonder what was here before,” he said. were that there was a beaver in the Bronx, I’d doing circles in the river. We backed up a little, and hickory trees, of salt marshes and grasslands “Th ere are views in this city where you cannot have said zero,” said Eric Sanderson, an ecol- and he did that beaver alarm call with his tail, with turkey, elk, and black bear—“as pleasant a see, except for a person or maybe a dog, another ogist at the Wildlife Conservation Society slap, slap against the water. So we decided we’d land as one can tread upon,” Hudson reported. living thing. Not a tree or a plant. How did a (WCS), headquartered at the Bronx Zoo. “Th ere better take off .” Sandy beaches ran along stretches of both coasts place become like that?” hasn’t been a beaver in New York City in more The beaver’s return to the Big Apple was on the narrow, 13-mile-long island, where the One map in particular caught his eye: a than 200 years.” hailed as a victory by conservationists and vol- Lenape feasted on clams and oysters. More than beautifully colored print from 1782 or 1783 During the early 17th century, when the city unteers who’d spent more than three decades 66 miles of streams fl owed through Manhattan, that showed the hills, streams, and swamps as was the Dutch village of New Amsterdam, bea- restoring the health of the Bronx River, once a and most of them sheltered a beaver or two— well as roads, orchards, and farms on the entire vers were widely hunted for their pelts, then dumping ground for abandoned cars and trash. making José’s appearance, in Sanderson’s eyes, a island—something no other contemporary map fashionable in Europe. Th e fur trade grew into José was named in honor of José E. Serrano, rare glimpse of the way things used to be. had done. More than ten feet long and three such a lucrative business that a pair of beavers the congressman from the Bronx who’d pushed “You might fi nd it diffi cult to imagine today, feet wide, the map had been created by British earned a place on the city’s offi cial seal, where through more than $15 million in federal funds but 400 years ago there was a red maple swamp military cartographers during the eight-year they remain today. Th e real animals vanished. over the years to support the river cleanup. right here in Times Square,” he said one day occupation of New York during the American That’s why Sanderson was skeptical when For Sanderson, José’s story meant something not long ago, as he waited for the light to cross Revolution. Later called the “British Headquar- Stephen Sautner, a fellow employee at WCS, more. For almost a decade he has led a project Seventh Avenue. Dressed in black jeans and ters Map,” it showed the island’s topography in told him he’d seen evidence of a beaver during a at WCS to envision as precisely as possible what a Windbreaker, he didn’t look much diff erent unusual detail because British offi cers needed walk along the river. It’s probably just a muskrat, the island of Manhattan might have looked like from the tourists beside him on the curb. But that information to plan their defense of Man- Sanderson thought. Muskrats are more tolerant before the city took root. Th e Mannahatta Proj- unlike them, in his mind he was following a hattan. To Sanderson the map presented a of stressful city life. But when Sautner and he ect, as it’s called (aft er the Lenape people’s name trail along a swampy creek that disappeared unique opportunity to strip away the city’s sky- climbed around a chain-link fence separating for “island of many hills”), is an eff ort to turn beneath the entrance to the Marriott Marquis scrapers and asphalt and look at least partway the river from one of the zoo’s parking lots, they back the clock to the aft ernoon of September Hotel at the corner of Broadway and West 46th back to the island’s original landscape. 12, 1609, just before Henry Hudson and his Street. “Just over there was a beaver pond,” he What would happen, he wondered, if he crew sailed into New York Harbor and spotted said, as a bus rumbled by. “It would have been laid a street grid of today’s city over this 18th- BY PETER MILLER the island. If people today could picture what a good place for deer, wood ducks, and all the century rendering? Would anything line up? To PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT CLARK a natural wonder Hudson had looked upon, other animals associated with streams. Brook fi nd out, Sanderson enlisted family and friends, Sanderson fi gured, maybe they’d fi ght harder trout probably, as well as eels, pickerel, and starting with his wife, Han-Yu Hung, and ART BY MARKLEY BOYER to preserve other wild places. “I wanted people to sunfi sh. It would have been much quieter, of their young son, Everett, to join him on week- AND PHILIP STRAUB fall in love with New York’s original landscape,” course, although today’s not so bad.” end expeditions to (Continued on page 136)

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Icon of Khmer civilization, in endures as a revered religious shrine.  

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rom the air, the centuries-old temple appears and vanishes like a hallucination. At fi rst it is no more than an umber smudge in the forest canopy of northern Cambodia. Beneath us sprawls the lost city of Angkor, now in ruins and populat- Fed mostly by peasant rice farmers. Clusters of Khmer homes, perched on spindly stilts to cope with fl ooding during the summer monsoon,

dot the landscape from the Tonle Sap, the “great capital of the empire was in its death throes. lake” of Southeast Asia, some 20 miles to the Scholars have come up with a long list of sus- south, to the Kulen Hills, a ridge jutting from pected causes, including rapacious invaders, a the fl oodplain a roughly equal distance to the religious change of heart, and a shift to mari- north. Th en, as Donald Cooney guides the ul- time trade that condemned an inland city. It’s tralight plane over the treetops, the magnifi cent mostly guesswork: Roughly 1,300 inscriptions temple comes into view. survive on temple doorjambs and freestanding Restored in the 1940s, the 12th-century Ban- stelae, but the people of Angkor left not a single teay Samre, devoted to the Hindu god , word explaining their kingdom’s collapse. recalls the medieval at its height. Recent excavations, not of the temples but of Th e temple is cloistered inside two sets of con- the infrastructure that made the vast city pos- centric square walls. Th ese may once have been sible, are converging on a new answer. Angkor, Lotus fl owers and Hindu deities surrounded by a moat symbolizing the oceans it appears, was doomed by the very ingenuity carved in stone mark the holy site of encircling Mount Meru, mythical home of Hin- that transformed a collection of minor fi efdoms Angkor’s daily rhythms also come to life in in the Kulen Hills, the du gods. Banteay Samre is just one of more than into an empire. Th e civilization learned how to sculptures that have survived centuries of de- source of two rivers that nourish a thousand shrines the Khmer erected in the tame Southeast Asia’s seasonal deluges, then cay and, more recently, war. Bas-reliefs on tem- the Angkor fl oodplain. city of Angkor during a building spree whose faded as its control of water, the most vital of ple facades depict everyday scenes—two men scale and ambition rivals the pyramids of Egypt. resources, slipped away. hunched over a board game, for instance, and a Aft er we pass, I crane my neck for a last look. woman giving birth under a shaded pavilion— Th e temple has disappeared into the forest. AN INTRIGUING FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT brings the city and pay homage to the spiritual world inhabited the west. Khmer kings had several wives, which Angkor is the scene of one of the greatest to life at its zenith. Zhou Daguan, a Chinese by creatures such as apsaras, alluring celestial blurred the line of succession and resulted in vanishing acts of all time. The Khmer king- diplomat, spent nearly a year in the capital at dancers who served as messengers between hu- constant intrigue as princes vied for power. “For dom lasted from the ninth to the 15th centu- the end of the 13th century. He lived mod- mans and the gods. centuries, it was like the Wars of the Roses. Th e ries, and at its height dominated a wide swath estly as a guest of a middle-class family who Th e bas-reliefs also reveal trouble in paradise. Khmer state was oft en unstable,” says Roland of Southeast Asia, from Myanmar (Burma) ate rice using coconut-husk spoons and drank Interspersed with visions of earthly harmony Fletcher, an archaeologist at the University of in the west to in the east. As many wine made from honey, leaves, or rice. He de- and sublime enlightenment are scenes of war. In Sydney and co-director of a research effort as 750,000 people lived in Angkor, its capi- scribed a gruesome practice, abandoned not one bas-relief, spear-bearing warriors from the called the Greater Angkor Project. tal, which sprawled across an area the size of long before his visit, that involved collecting neighboring kingdom of Champa are packed Some scholars believe that Angkor died the New York City’s fi ve boroughs, making it the human gall from living donors as a tonic for stem to stern in a boat crossing the Tonle Sap. way it lived: by the sword. Th e annals of Ayut- most extensive urban complex of the prein- courage. Religious festivals featured fi reworks Th e scene is immortalized in stone, of course, thaya state that warriors from that kingdom dustrial world. By the late 16th century, when and boar fi ghting. Th e greatest spectacles oc- because the Khmer were successful in battle. “took” Angkor in 1431. No doubt the prosper- Portuguese missionaries came upon the lotus- curred when the king ventured out among his Although Angkor won that clash, the city ous Khmer city would have been a rich prize: shaped towers of Angkor Wat—the most elabo- subjects. Royal processions included elephants was riven by rivalry, which heightened its vul- Inscriptions boast that its temple towers were rate of the city’s temples and the world’s largest and horses decorated with gold, and hun- nerability to attacks from Champa to the east clad in gold, as Zhou’s breathless account con- religious monument—the once resplendent dreds of palace women bedecked in flowers. and the formidable kingdom of Ayutthaya to fi rms. To reconcile tales of Angkor’s wealth with

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IMPERIAL K U L E N H I L L Banteay Phnom S Srei Dei Nokor iem Reap Pheas S N FOREST SPILLWAY ANGKOR RICE FIELDS DAM ITS VAST WATER SYSTEM WAS A MARVEL SACRED SOURCE OF ENGINEERING�AND A CAUTIONARY TALE Puok The Kulen Hills sheltered the headwaters of the River and were quarried for rock to build OF TECHNOLOGICAL OVERREACH. Angkor’s temples. The hills were logged for timber Angkor Neak East and fi rewood and to clear land for farming; deforestation At its height in the 13th century (depicted in Thom Pean Mebon may have caused fl oods that choked some of Angkor’s Thnal Toteung canals with sand and silt. this reconstruction), the capital of the Khmer Preah (modern) Khan Empire was the most extensive urban complex North Baray in the world. Using imaging radar and other tools, researchers have learned that Greater Chau Srei Angkor covered almost 400 square miles, Vibol roughly the area of the fi ve boroughs of New Ta Ta Phnom Keo Prohm Srah Pre Banteay York City, with as many as 750,000 inhabitants. Bakheng Srang s Rup Samre o u l Most were rice farmers and laborers who worked Prasat o Angkor Kravan R the giant jigsaw of fi elds. In the city center, Wat perhaps 40,000 people—elites and farmers alike—lived within the walls of , a 3.5-square-mile enclosure with temples and a royal palace. Though the rainy season usually Baray brought ample water, the ability to store water in Siem Roluos great reservoirs called barays and control its Wat Reap Group Chedei Wat (modern) fl ow gave Angkor an edge in times of drought or Athvea fl ood. But this engineered landscape required constant maintenance. When the water system faltered, so did Angkor’s power.

R I C E F I E L D S

F L O O D E D R I C E F I E L D S LIFE IN A SEA OF RICE On raised ground between fi elds, Angkor residents built timber houses on stilts. They planted palms and other trees to provide shade, fruit, and fronds for annual ASIA roof replacement. Ponds collected water during the wet CHINA season; during dry months water from the main canals TAIWAN fed the fi elds. Each community had a shrine (at bottom CAMBODIA EQ 0 mi 400 left), where priests may have helped mediate water use. UATOR 0km 400 F AUSTRALIA L O O D E D F O R E S T S L o Mekong A u ANGKOR’S COMPLEX PLUMBING O t MYANMAR h S C In Southeast Asia, months of monsoon rains are followed (BURMA) h M i by months of near drought. To ensure a steady water n Angkor A a N supply, stabilize rice production, and control fl ooding, S CAMBODIA T E e I a Khmer engineers built a network of canals, moats, ponds, Phnom V Penh and reservoirs. Massive earthworks slowed the wet-season ART BY STEVE COWDEN. INSET ART BY TOM CHANDLER AND MICHAEL LIM, MONASH UNIVERSITY M. BRODY DITTEMORE AND LISA R. RITTER, NG STAFF. BASE MAP DATA BY DAMIAN EVANS, UNIVERSITY deluge fl owing from the Kulen Hills, directing it into canals OF SYDNEY, AND CHRISTOPHE POTTIER, FRENCH SCHOOL OF ASIAN STUDIES �EFEO� Tonle Sap Greatest extent CONSULTANT: ROLAND FLETCHER, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY of Khmer Empire, that fed the barays and temple moats. Spreading across Kompong Phluk SOURCES: EFEO; GREATER ANGKOR PROJECT, A COLLABORATION OF APSARA, EFEO, (modern) ca 1210 the gently sloping land, the water drained fi nally into the AND UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. SCALE VARIES IN THIS PERSPECTIVE. LENGTH OF EAST BARAY IS 4.5 MI �7.2 KM�.

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