Bananas have long been a phallic food, even if they've been surpassed by the eggplant in the emoji era as of late.
But that doesn't mean the Chinese government isn't still worried about them. So worried, in fact, that China recently banned live streams of people erotically eating bananas, according to the BBC.
The government is worried that erotic banana-eating is "inappropriate," also banning videos that show people dressed in stockings and suspenders.
It is up to live streaming sites—many of which are hugely popular in China—to enforce the ban, according to the BBC.
As one might expect, most of the people doing the eating are young women, while most of the people doing the viewing are men, apparently from a broad range of ages.
The state-controlled CCTVNewsalso claims that some of the most popular live streamers have begun to make quite a bit of money, including one woman who makes ¥1 million annually, or around $150,000 a year.
As some on Chinese social media have pointed out, the ban doesn't appear to cover other foods, like, say, the eggplant. Or a cucumber. Or a hot dog. Or ... nevermind.
Back to the banana for a moment: Is it possible (or legal) to eat one on camera in a non-erotic way? I think we can say it's definitely possible. Legal, though, in China? Perhaps no longer.
Male Phryganistria tamdaoensis from Tam Dao National Park, Vietnam. The newly-discovered world's largest insect is also a member of Phryganistria. (Photo: Joachim Bresseel and Jérôme Constant/CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Depending on how you feel about insects, an exciting—or deeply upsetting—announcement was made in China this week.
A previously-undiscovered species of stick insect has officially been denoted the longest insect in the world, measuring a whopping 62.4 centimeters (just over two feet) long.
The specimen, located at the Insect Museum of West China, was discovered in late 2014 by researcher Zhao Li. According to China’s Xinhua news agency, Zhao had been on the lookout for a large stick insect in the Guangxi region of China for 16 years, ever since locals shared sightings of a half-meter-long “huge insect.” Finally, on the night of August 16, Zhao spotted his quarry, telling Xinhua, “I was collecting insects on a 1,200-meter-tall mountain in Guangxi's Liuzhou City on the night of Aug. 16, 2014, when a dark shadow appeared in the distance, which looked like a tree twig.”
Looking like a tree twig is a stick insect’s primary means of camouflage; typically, stick insects stay motionless during the day to complete the illusion and avoid predators, and will even feign death or shed limbs to stop an attack. But not all stick insects are quite so large—the smallest species is only half an inch long—but any length that falls under the category of “believable stick size” is advantageous for the insects.
In fact, stick insects are generally among the largest insects in the world. The previous record-holder (out of 807,625 named insect species) was also a stick insect. Phobaeticus chani (Chan’s Megastick)—discovered by and named after an amateur naturalist in Borneo in 2008—measured 56 centimeters (about 22 inches), only slightly smaller than the new champion. Currently, there are over 3,000 known species of stick insects, and given the insects’ mastery of disguise, additional undiscovered species are likely.
Zhao’s find has been named Phryganistria chinensis, and a paper detailing the discovery is forthcoming. It will be up to eagle-eyed entomologists to determine if there are even larger stick insects hiding from us, and based on recent history, they could very well be out there, lurking among the trees. But before you begin entertaining nightmares of giant stick insect invasions, remember: all the stick insects known to us (so far) are herbivores.
Baby animals are unquestionably one of the greatest wonders of spring, and it’s always delightful to happen upon ducklings, lambs, kittens, or any other tiny, adorable version of your favorite animals. Every spring, the students at Glover Elementary School in Milton, Massachusetts get to experience this rite up-close via an annual duckling parade.
This year, we all get to enjoy the tradition—the video of the event has been shared online.
According to the description provided by Bill Driscoll—the school nurse’s nephew and parade videographer—Glover Elementary’s interior courtyard has been used as a nesting site by ducks for several years. After the ducklings hatch, the entire school helps guide the ducks to a nearby pond, with students, teachers, and parents sitting along hallways and outdoor paths to create a route for the migration. This year, the ducklings hatched on Tuesday and the annual parade took place on Thursday.
The video’s title references Make Way for Ducklings, a 1941 children’s book that holds a special place in many Boston-area residents’ hearts. The book—which recounts a mother duck’s efforts to lead her ducklings through the city to a pond in the Boston Public Garden—is still well-known due to a bronze statue of the Mallard family in the Public Garden created by sculptor Nancy Schön. In 2000, the book was named the official children’s book of the Massachusetts Commonwealth, thanks to the efforts of schoolchildren in nearby Canton. Basically, the good people of Massachusetts are extremely inclined to make way for any ducklings they encounter.
Indeed, Glover Elementary principal Sheila Kukstis explained to the Boston Globe that the school’s duckling parade has taken place for at least 10 years, making the mother duck is an experienced parade leader. “The mother knows where she’s going because she’s done it before,” Kukstis explained to the Globe. After the parade, students frequently spend the summer monitoring the ducklings’ growth, reporting back to their classmates in the fall.
Class of 2012 cadets from the United States Military Academy at West Point toss their hats. (Photo: US Army/CC BY-2.0)
This week, the New York Times reported that a group of black women about to graduate from the famed U.S. Military Academy at West Point are facing investigation from school officials over a group photo. The picture is one of many taken by students over the years as part of a tradition of “Old Corps” photographs staged to mimic historical cadet portraits. It would be an insignificant personal memento, according to the Times, but for“one key difference: The 16 women raised their clenched fists.”
The salute has set off controversy as the photo spread on social media, with some claiming the pose is an inappropriate political gesture—West Point prohibits public displays of politics from students and staff—and others arguing the pose simply reflected the women’s sense of accomplishment.
The raised fist gesture is associated with numerous political movements, and it can’t be tied to any one ideology or message. In a 2012 post on The Lede blog, the New York Times detailed some of the many movements that have adopted the gesture. Along with the civil rights groups many Americans most readily associate the imagery with, anti-Franco groups in Spain, leftists in Europe, and even white supremacists have used the salute; the Times itself was prompted to examine the salute’s history after Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, known for his extreme far-right views, used it during his trial. A 2006 post on the website for design association AIGA traces the salute’s origins back to revolutionary movements in 19th century France, particularly via Romantic paintings depicting revolution events.
The fist has also been repurposed for wholly apolitical purposes, with AIGA noting its use in an ad campaign for Howard Stern’s radio show. Most recently, pop superstar Beyoncé incorporated the raised fist into her 2016 Super Bowl halftime performance, triggering similar backlash.
The cadets’ supporters argue that the more apolitical use of the salute—supporter Mary Tobin described the fist to the Times as “a sign that means unity and pride and sisterhood”—was the motivation behind the photograph in question; if that’s the case, it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. military has mistakenly ascribed political motives to innocuous gestures. In 2014, artist and photographer LaMont Hill wrote for the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage about the history of “the dap,” a handshake developed by black GIs during the Vietnam War as an expression of solidarity. Hill explains that the gesture arose from the racial tensions within the military at the time, which included reports of white soldiers shooting black soldiers during combat, writing:
Such events, combined with the racism and segregation faced by black G.I.s, created a pressing need for an act and symbol of unity. The dap, an acronym for “dignity and pride” whose movements translate to “I’m not above you, you’re not above me, we’re side by side, we’re together,” provided just this symbol of solidarity and served as a substitute for the Black Power salute prohibited by the military.
As the dap’s popularity grew, white military officials mistakenly interpreted the gesture as “a coded language of potential black insurrection,” and promptly banned it at all levels, disciplining and even discharging black soldiers for dapping. A report produced by the Department of Defense’s Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice noted that “dapping has become a source of great friction both between the black serviceman and his white counterparts and between him and the military system.” At the same time, when black soldiers requested the banning of Confederate flags and punishment for those who displayed them, the requests fell on deaf ears, according to accounts in Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War. Confederate flags were ultimately banned, but the rule was rarely enforced, with the flag even being paraded in front of troops during a Christmas USO show.
While it remains to be seen what punishment the cadets will face, if any, it should be noted that they certainly have reason to be proud. The Times points out that the 16 photographed cadets represent nearly all of the black women graduating from West Point this year—out of a class of about 1000, 17 (1.7%) are black women. And as Mary Tobin pointed out to the Times, graduating from the highly-regarded military academy means that they have done “what only a few people, male or female, have ever done in this country.”
“The most wonderful of all living structures is the human brain.”
This was Alesha Sivartha’s philosophical and scientific proposition in a book he wrote and illustrated, called The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man. Published in 1898, the 152-page abridgment contains a collection of peculiar, hand-drawn brain maps that reveal Sivartha’s even more peculiar interpretation of the human brain’s anatomy. As an avid phrenologist, Sivartha sectioned the brain into a series of compartments, each responsible for certain traits and interests, like religion, intellect, and social status.
The pseudoscience of phrenology dates back to the late 1700s when German physician Franz Joseph Gall proposed that the mind was made up of 27 different mental regions or “brain organs.” Phrenologists would analyze the shape of the skull and measure the bumps and hollows, associating certain areas with behaviors and aptitudes, explains author Manuel Lima in his book Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information.
Phrenology can sometimes sound like palm reading. For example, Gall ascribed parts of the brain to how much a person loves his or her children, remembers words, is musically gifted, and is even prone to kill.
"Convolutions," illustrated by Alesha Sivartha. (Photo: Internet Archive/Public Domain) It wasn’t until a century after Gall that Sivartha came forward with his incredibly detailed (and often confusing) maps. He was fixated with the number 12. In each map he breaks down the brain into 12 different orifices. For instance, in the map “The Model of Society” Sivartha shows a dozen areas of the brain that determine a person's placement in society: culture and science is at the front of brain, religion near the crown, and childhood at the base or stem. He also believed that there were only 12 kinds of people—your personality was determined by the month in which you were born.
In addition to the brain, Sivartha illustrated maps of other parts of the body, such the hand and the nervous system. He believed that large hands belonged to those who are skilled in their work, while a person with small hands made colossal plans, but employed others to execute them. Long, slender hands indicated action, energy, and command, but short, thick, soft hands meant a person was selfish yet warm-hearted.
Like Gall, Sivartha sectioned off the brain into corresponding organs, but he also seemed to understand that the brain is comprised of much smaller units. In The Book of Life he called the human brain the “Tree of Life,” which had a central tube, branches, and cells:
“For the brain is a mass of microscopic fibres or tubules which terminate in cells… A fair estimate gives at least 1,200,000,000 of these cells in each hemisphere of the brain.”
Sivartha's estimation was a little off. We know today that there are approximately one hundred billion neurons in the brain that are responsible for neurological processes.
Sivartha’s personal life and title is a bit of a mystery. Some refer to him as a doctor, while others say he was a philosopher. A website hosted by his great-great grandson, Don Ross, states Sivartha was “a medical doctor, artist, lecturer, and a deeply spirited man.” Ross also says that Alesha Sivartha was a pen name for a man named Arthur E. Merton.
Chart of Symphonies, illustrated by Alesha Sivartha. (Photo: Internet Archive/Public Domain) At its height during the 1820s to the 1840s, phrenologists believed the pseudoscience was “the only true science of the mind,” although some scholars debate how much the public truly believed in these hypotheses and depictions of the brain. Modern-day science and neurology has discredited phrenology, yet the idea of demarcating the mind lives on through the left and right brain divide. While Sivartha’s brain maps are wild and bizarre, they remain ornate and beautiful pieces of scientific history.
Every spring, Butte, Montana experiences a special rite. The city once called the “Richest Hill on Earth” for its excess gold, silver and copper deposits is now home to hundreds of vertical mining shafts and thousands of miles of tunnels on which the city is built. They’re supposed to be safely filled in. But when the snow turns to rain as temperatures rise, during what Tom Malloy calls “shaft season,” a half dozen or more decide to make a reappearance.
“I’ve opened some of them that are easily hundreds of feet deep,” says Malloy, the reclamation manager of Butte-Silver Bow County and the person who receives the call when a mine shaft opens back up.
Like manmade sinkholes, the earth can open almost anywhere in Butte. Malloy has found tunnels underneath a girl’s swing set, in the middle of a school playground and underneath the back porch of people’s houses. Sometimes people have erected entire buildings over mine shafts: there’s one in the basement of the Acoma, a former hotel, and one in the basement of a bar of Uptown Butte.
Butte in the 1940s. (Photo: Public domain;LOC 1a35027)
Only a few places on the planet have been as heavily mined as this one. Mining here began in 1864, with prospectors looking for gold in the area’s creeks. Soon, though, it became clear that the real wealth was underground. By 1884, there were 300 operating mines in the area and thousands of claims. When the country started being wired from electricity, all of a sudden copper became an incredibly valuable commodity, and Butte was rich in copper, too. By the turn of the century, about a fifth of all copper in the country was coming out of Butte.
With those giant tunnels, sometimes, the earth beneath the town shifts—not dramatically, but enough that sidewalks crack, buildings tilt and windows don’t quite shut properly. But the most immediate problem, each spring, is the unregulated vertical shafts dug in the early days of exploring the area’s mineral resources.
“The ones that turn up were the ones that were dug in the 1880s, 1870s, back before they were well regulated,” says Malloy. “They’re not marked on a map, which would be really nice. But they weren’t required to do that. Those end up being a surprise when they open up. You don’t know if they go down 10 feet and stop, or 1,000 feet down.”
A mine shaft that reappeared. (Photo: Tom Malloy)
Every spring, Malloy ends up investigating 50 to 100 reports of possible shafts, called in by city residents worried about a bit of sinking earth on their backyard or street. First, he and his colleagues will check old maps to see if there’s any indication that a shaft was once dug in that spot. They’ll check whether the alleged shaft is in the historic mining district, and if there have been any other mine shafts found in the vicinity. If they think it’s possible they might be looking at mine shaft, they’ll get the backhoe and do a little test digging to open it up and see what it is. Mine shafts aren’t the only things hiding in Butte’s ground: outhouses sometimes begin to sink into the earth when the ground thaws in the spring.
“There’s no way of knowing until you dig a hole,” says Malloy. “The most recent one, I would have bet $50 that it was an outhouse, but I was proved wrong. I don’t guess anymore, because I’ve been wrong so many times.”
If the backhoe starts bringing up residential knickknacks and materials, that’s an outhouse. If it starts hitting big, structural timbers, Malloy says, that’s a mine shaft.
Timber re-emerging from the ground. (Photo: Tom Malloy)
Often, when miners closed up these shafts, they would cover them with a series of foot-thick wooden timbers, crisscrossed over the mouth of the hole, and pile dirt on top of them. One hundred years later, though, that wood rots out and all the dirt on top eventually gives way. All those years later, though, no one in the neighborhood remembers there was ever a mine shaft there at all.
“There are people who have been here 60 years, or born and raised in that house, and never knew there was a mine shaft in the backyard,” Malloy says. “There’s nobody left to remember it.”
Or, at this point, pay for the fix. The county agency that Malloy works for has a grant from the state to deal with the holes: they backfill them with mine waste, concrete and scrap steel. A small one might cost $1,000 to fix; a larger, deeper shaft can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 to remediate.
Mining continued through World War I and II, and in the 1950s, companies started pit mining in the area. The toxic Berkeley Pit, one of the largest Superfund sites in the country, is in this city. Now, though, those mines are shut down. When the business began to dry up, so did the town’s population; only about a third of the 100,000 people remain from its peak as the site of world-scale production. “We’re still living with the remnants from that,” says Malloy.
Welcome back to AO Jobs, the weekly column where we spotlight jobs and career opportunities that you can apply for right now, to bring some wonder and adventure into your working life. See any listings? Get in touch!
For anyone who grew up admiring Disney characters, wishing upon a star that they could live like a princess, or be a singing animal, why just dream about being one when you could go out and try to make it a career?
Disney parks and cruises all around the globe are constantly looking for performers to inhabit the costumed characters at their parks. If you’re looking for a job change, maybe you’ve got what it takes to step into the glass slippers of a Disney icon. Just know that it’s not all zip-a-dee-doo-dah at the Magic Kingdom.
The types of characters that Disney looks for include the cartoonier figures like Mickey Mouse or Baloo the Bear which require full body suits and heads, as well as the more human “face” characters like Cinderella, Ariel, or Gaston, which need the performers to fit a specific look. The decision of which character a hired performer gets to portray is often determined by their height, since many of the costumes need specific body sizes. (The Seven Dwarves, for example, need to be much shorter than Captain Hook.) No matter what character a performer gets, the job is to bring it to life as accurately as possible, meeting with park visitors and cruise guests and using movement to communicate the character's personality.
Working as a Disney character comes with all the stringent rules and regulations one might expect from a multinational corporation with rigid branding guidelines. According tomultipletestimonials that have popped up online over the years, working as a Disney character involves navigating a number of strict rules of conduct to protect the integrity of their characters. The rulebook says you cannot break character while out in costume, and there are even policies about not allowing certain characters to be seen together, keeping Disney’s universes from getting confused.
The rules and restrictions might seem like they’d strip the job of its magic, but for the right person, bringing Disney cartoons to life can be the perfect fantasy job. The Disney Auditions website lists dozens of available auditions for characters in all their parks around the world, and on their cruise ships. Here are five upcoming auditions that could land you in the role of your favorite Disney character.
Disney World is holding auditions for face characters including Aladdin, Elsa, Rapunzel, and Ariel. If you’re often compared to the Little Mermaid (and are between 5'4" and 5'7") or a diamond in the rough (and are between 5'10" and 6') this might be the opportunity for you. As performance positions, all the jobs require outgoing personalities, but really, the height is pretty important.
Some character jobs require more acting chops than others, especially if it’s for a face character that is going to need to perform without a mask on. Disneyland in Hong Kong is looking for female performers to play its various princesses and heroines. Among the characters they are looking for are figures from Beauty and The Beast and Sleeping Beauty, among others. In addition to having a resemblance to the character and some movement exercises, this audition also requires short line readings—oh and also that you be between 4'11" and 5'7".
Not all of the characters that perform at Disney parks are based on cartoon characters. For instance, the roving barbershop singers, The Dapper Dans, are a quartet of crooners that have been a performance fixture at Disney parks since 1959. If you’re more of a singer than an actor (and you are a male in your 20s to 30s), you could audition to wear the bright stripes of one of the Dans.
Elena is so new she hasn't started showing up in the parks just yet. (Photo: iO Trendz/YouTube)
Want to help establish an almost brand-new Disney character? The role of Disney’s new Latina princess, Elena, is up for grabs. She is described as “a bold, caring, funny and clever 16-year-old who is ascendant to the throne in the fairytale kingdom of Avalor.” This live-character position lets you literally be the new face of a Disney Princess, since she's never been portrayed live before. She is also a mezzo-soprano, so being able to sing is a plus.
Being of a certain height is one of the bare necessities of portraying Baloo. (Photo: Theme Park Tourist/CC BY 2.0)
If you’re not sure exactly which type of character you’d like to be, come to a broad casting call like this one in Dublin, Ireland (for Disneyland Paris) which accepts all heights, genders, and performance ranges. Maybe you’ll end up as Winnie the Pooh or Princess Tiana. If you get cast, Disney will decide for you.
There is a wide world of jobs for performers in the Disney parks, and if you’re an outgoing Disney fanatic, maybe you can turn your passion into a career.
Anybody in the market for a full-size aircraft carrier? The Royal Navy’s last working aircraft carrier, the HMS Illustrious, is going up for auction, though, as the BBC reports, only for scrap.
The Illustrious is the last fully-functioning ship in the Royal Navy that dates to the Falklands War. First commissioned back in 1982, the massive ship, which is capable of supporting over a thousand crew members and dozens of aircraft at a time, the ship ended up traveling almost a million miles during its operational career. It was rushed to completion to serve at the end of the Falklands War, and went on to provide support during the Iraqi conflicts of the 1990s and to maintain a no-fly zone during conflicts in Bosnia. The ship came to be known as “Lusty” among the crew. She was finally decommissioned in 2014, and has been moored in a Portsmouth Harbor ever since.
Ever since the ship was decommissioned, the Ministry of Defence has been hearing proposals from cities that wanted to turn the ship into a giant museum, but the prohibitive costs of upkeep and operation have shot down every one. Now the Illustrious is being auctioned off for recycling purposes, which will likely lead to the ship being broken down for scrap. One of the Illustrious’ sister ships, the HMS Invincible was similarly sold for scrap back in 2011 for £2 million. However, if a viable preservation option appears before the sale, the ship could still be saved.
As noted in story in the Telegraph, the HMS Illustrious Association, which has been looking after the ship in the interim, sees the sale as unfortunate but inevitable. Vice Chairman of the association, David Rogers, who once served on the ship said, “She was probably built to last 20 years and she lasted for 32. Keeping her would be an enormous cost.”
Whatever fate befalls the Illustrious, Britain will be without a fully-functioning aircraft carrier until the HMS Queen Elizabeth, which could be put into service as soon as next year.
Is there a secret network of caves under this golf course? (Photo: Bransonmo/CC BY-ND 2.0)
Johnny Morris has a thing for caves and the money to indulge his love. The founder of the Bass Pro Shop chain, Morris once discovered a previously unexplored cave on the property where he built a golf course in 2014. Last year, though, a sinkhole opened up in the golf course, the Associated Press reports.
To most people, a sinkhole would have been a problem to be solved, by filling it in. But to Morris, it meant something different: More potential caves.
There was one clue—water was pooling in the sinkhole, and at the same time, the cave Morris had previously discovered had a new flood of water coming from it, the AP says. Perhaps that meant the caves were connected?
Since then, Morris has had backhoes excavating the sinkhole. They’ve uncovered limestone formations—sort of like stalagmites that had been buried under the earth in the pit, which could be an indication of a cave system. If there are more caves here, they could be ordinary, nothing-special caves (to the extent that any cave can be nothing special). Or this could just be a sinkhole. Or there could be a magnificent cavern under the golf course. The only way to find out is to keep digging.
Every day, we highlight one newly found object, curiosity or wonder. Discover something amazing? Tell us about it! Send your finds to sarah.laskow@atlasobscura.com.
Visitors to Taipei City's Lungshan Temple pray for good luck in the New Year. (Photo: L. Chang/Public Domain)
Religious worship in Taiwan is a heady experience. The air in and around temples is wreathed with smoke, as visitors light incense and burn paper "ghost money." Festivals and pilgrimages merit barrages of fireworks. "The traditional belief is that the more firecrackers and incense used, the sincerer the faithful will appear," temple director Chiu Jainn-fuh told Agence France-Presserecently.
But as more and more studies link religious celebrations to air pollution, some temples are reconfiguring their celebrations to cut down on waste, AFP reports.
The Taoist Nan Yao, in Changhua, has replaced real pyrotechnics with prerecorded firework CDs, and encourages followers to amp up the sound by clapping. Dajia Jenn Lann Temple in Taichung has suggested worshippers bring compostable dedications, like fruit and flowers. Two temples have banned paper offerings outright, while others ship bushels of them to a central incinerator that filters the smoke.
This year, activists called on New Taipei City to slim down their annual Lantern Festival, and to replace the omnipresent giant, wire-framed flying lanterns with smaller, eco-friendly ones, Taipei Times reported.
Not everyone is sold on the new normal. Instead of sticking with clapping, many worshippers now just bring their own firecrackers. Facebook comments on the temples' pages point out that there are many other sources of pollution authorities might more productively focus on—industrial waste, and overspill from mainland China.
But those pushing for the changes believe their way will win out. "Sincerity matters the most and the gods will bless us," one visitor told AFP.
Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.
Around one-fifth of the homes in Fort McMurray, in the Canadian province of Alberta, have been destroyed by a massive wildfire, officials said Sunday. And, on Monday, the media was to get its first good look at the destruction wrought by the blaze, which broke out earlier this month.
But late last week, as some of the city still burned, teams of volunteers defied officials' orders and drove into the city, all to save residents' pets, according to the CBC. The group, a bunch of self-described truck enthusiasts, had been helping to deliver fuel for first responders.
That's when they "went rogue," posting to Facebook and asking if they could help rescue any pets. They eventually brought about a dozen animals to safety, the CBC said, before police shut the group down.
Some of the animals were clearly scared, like a 10-year-old chihuahua mix that was cowering under a couch until it was coaxed out, having heard its owner's voice on speakerphone.
At a different building, two trapped cats were scooped up in what one rescuer called a "total apocalypse area," according to the CBC.
The pets were taken to reception centers outside the city, to be reunited with their owners.
"I don't know who is going to be more excited, them or us," one pet owner told the network.
When it comes to courtship, persistence is key—but it doesn't guarantee results. Take it from this pair of jumping spiders.
The multicolored male—let's call him Simon—is dogged in his pursuit of the gray female, also of the habronattus pyrrithrix genus—let's call her Jeannette. While Simon raises his two front legs, wiggles his abdomen, and even lifts his hind legs à la fire hydrant, Jeannette scratches her legs, grooms her tarsi—tarsi being the tips of a spider's pedipalps, or small front appendages—and absentmindedly turns around.
All action, no talk. It's like he's not even trying to get to know her at all. (Photo: Daniel Zurek/Screen shot)
The camera pans around to give us this titillating courtship from all angles, a ritual that relies on strong visual elements and vibrations. Meanwhile, Simon is still tapping his tiny front legs in the air. At minute 4:55, he finally steps it up a notch, lifting two hind legs up in the style of a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon protagonist while his front legs go into a tapping frenzy.
For a moment, Jeannette is like "Whoa! I'm into it," but then Simon goes back to what he was doing before and she's like, "Eh." That is, until 5:45, when he returns to full throttle. The tapping gets out of control. Simon even tries to drum his front legs on Jeannette.
This is when Jeannette comes into play, raising her front legs into the air to meet Simon's—and it's not for a game of Patty Cake. For a moment, Simon does not pick up on the body language, maybe misinterpreting it as some reciprocal tapping action. But then Jeannette is back in control, staring down Simon until he stops twitching. Jeannette turns around and scratches her leg again. She half-contemplates Simon one last time with her many bright beady eyes, and then walks away, her delicate spinnerets quickly fading into the distance.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.
In September of 1996, Zeki Müren—singer, movie star, fashion icon—took the stage for the first time in years. No one knew it would also be his last. As he stood in front of the television cameras at the Turkish Radio and Television Studios in the city of Izmir, resplendent in one of his trademark rhinestone-spangled shirts, the show's host handed him a microphone. It was the same one he had used for his first radio performance, 45 years earlier. "I don't know whether to laugh or cry," Murën said, blinking slowly and revealing shiny, purple-glossed eyelids. Minutes later, he collapsed.
Twenty years after his death, Turkey still mourns. Need proof? Just dial the Zeki Müren Hotline. Set up earlier this year by filmmaker Beyza Boyacioglu as a repository for Zeki stories, the hotline has garnered hundreds of thoughts, tales, and homages from fans of all ages, small recordings to memorialize the man known as "Pasha" and "the sun of Turkish music."
For his gender-bending fashion sense and long-lasted appeal, Müren has been called the Turkish Liberace, the precursor to David Bowie, and the "first Turkish rock star." But comparing him to others obscures the very particular role he played, and still plays, in his own country. "Different audiences can find different things in him and relate to him," says Boyacioglu. "For people from so many different backgrounds, he's the common denominator."
Born in 1931, Müren breathed new life into Turkish classical songs—long, emotional tales of love and loss that hang lyrical metaphors over swooping melodic lines. Unlike many singers of his time, he gained inspiration not from a single mentor, but from his heritage and his surroundings. Asked early in his career who taught him to sing, he replied, "My father, my grandfather, the radio, the singers at the tent theater, [and] records."
In 1951, at age 20, Müren auditioned for Turkish Radio; legend holds that he sang for hours, drawing from an endless well of memorized standards. He got the job, and soon his voice was a fixture in living rooms across the country—according to one joke, when people shopped for radios, they'd first ask "does this one play Zeki Müren?" He made over 600 recordings and 18 films, most of which told, essentially, the same story, that of a young musician named Zeki Müren, overcoming obstacles to find love and fame (while, of course, repeatedly breaking into song).
His real life was slightly different. Müren's films usually feature him in understated suits and a subtle pompadour. In person, though, he preferred flamboyant, multicolored apparel: feathered capes, shiny miniskirts, and platform heels, many of his own design. He gave his outfits names ("Purple Nights;" "Prince from Outer Space;" "The Lover of Dr. Zhivago"). In this garb, he lit up the nightclub circuit. Despite the era's strict gender roles—it was the '50s, after all—he drew millions of fans to Istanbul's gazinos, where he would wring emotion from the microphone while sweeping up and down a T-shaped stage. "He was a revolutionary, in every meaning of the word," music historian Murat Meric told the BBC. "He was always 10 years ahead of his time."
A video posted by Nazli Kayaaslan♈️ (@nazli_kayaaslan) on
Müren reigned over stage, screen, and radio dial for three decades. When he died, his state-sponsored funeral drew tens of thousands of mourners. "We were just so upset," one fan told Boyacioglu. "There was a line in front of every liquor store." This January, a museum retrospective in Istanbul had about 50,000 visitors, which the BBC called "an unprecedented number in Istanbul."
Boyacioglu, who was not even a teenager when Müren died, first became interested in his story after running into him in very disparate contexts. His face peered out of her grandmother's record collection, but it also shone from signs at Istanbul pride parades. Although Müren never came out as gay, "he started becoming a resistance icon in Turkey," she says. "At the same time, he's my traditional Turkish grandma's favorite artist. So I thought, what's going on there?"
Although documentaries about Müren exist, they're all very straightforward—"right after his death, his public persona was immediately claimed by the state," says Boyacioglu. So when she began working on her film, she wanted to to solicit stories from his audiences, namely people who hadn't been given a chance to speak before. They responded instantly. "People spent around 400 minutes on the line in just a couple of days," she says, listening to each other's messages and leaving their own.
Callers are greeted by a chipper sound clip from one of his films: "Hello, Zeki Müren speaking." Then it's their turn. Some offer renditions of Müren's best-loved songs, in homage. Older people reminisce about his performances, while younger people speak about his posthumous status as a queer icon. One woman recalls her early wish to bring Müren himself into her family: "I used to cry and cry," she says, "because I wished my mother was Zeki Müren… today, I sometimes cry listening to your songs. I love you very much."
So far, Boyacioglu says, over 700 people have left messages for Müren. Press coverage inspired an early rush, but now, months later, the hotline still gets about one caller per day—not bad for a campaign running only on word of mouth, she says. She hopes her upcoming film sparks even more interest (and she encourages new fans to call in, too—the number is 0212 988 02 08.)
These days, as the news cycle rolls from event to event without pausing for breath, it can be difficult to predict exactly what or who will make a lasting impression. When David Bowie exited Earth's orbit in January, social media was overrun with tributes. Last month, after Prince's death, the world lit up purple for a night. The immediacy of such tributes, though extremely affecting, doesn't tell the whole story. As Zeki Müren Hotline shows, the most complex revolutionaries linger on, speaking to us long after they leave this world.
It doesn’t seem like much of a place to visit. Granted, I’ve never actually been there, but I think I can imagine it: the vastness of ocean, overcast skies, a heavy humidity in the air. No land in sight, with the only distinguishing feature being a lonely buoy, bobbing up and down in the water. It almost seems like a “non-place,” but it may surprise you to learn that this site is far from anonymous. This spot is a hive of activity in the world of geographic information systems (GIS).
As far as digital geospatial data is concerned, it may be one of the most visited places on Earth! This is Null Island.
Artistic fantasy map of Null Island. Graphic by Ian Cairns on GitHub 2013.
Null Island is an imaginary island located at 0°N 0°E (hence “Null”) in the South Atlantic Ocean. This point is where the equator meets the prime meridian. The exact origins of “Null Island” are a bit murky, but it did reach a wide audience no later than in 2011 when it was drawn into Natural Earth, a public domain map dataset developed by volunteer cartographers and GIS analysts. In creating a one-square meter plot of land at 0°N 0°E in the digital dataset, Null Island was intended to help analysts flag errors in a process known as “geocoding.”
Geocoding is a function performed in a GIS that involves taking data containing addresses and converting them into geographic coordinates, which can then be easily mapped. For example, a data table of buildings in Washington, DC could include the Madison Building of the Library of Congress (where I’m reporting from) as a feature and include its address: 101 Independence Avenue SE, Washington, DC, 20540. This address typically makes sense to the layperson, but to put the address on a map using a GIS, the computer needs a translation. A “geocoder” converts this address into its location as set of coordinates in latitude and longitude, a format that a GIS understands. In this case, the Madison Building’s geographic location becomes 38° 53′ 12″N, 77° 0′ 18″W (38.886667, -77.005 in decimal degree format). Anyone who has ever typed in an address on Google Maps or looked up driving directions on Mapquest has been a beneficiary of this tool: type in an address, get a pin on a map.
Unfortunately, due to human typos, messy data, or even glitches in the geocoder itself, the geocoding process doesn’t always run so smoothly. Misspelled street names, non-existent building numbers, and other quirks can create invalid addresses that can confuse a geocoder so that the output becomes “0,0”. While this output indicates that an error occurred, since “0,0” is in fact a location on the Earth’s surface according to the coordinate system, the feature will be mapped there, as nonsensical as the location may be. We end up with an island of misfit data.
The zero latitude, zero longitude location of “Null Island”-fame is based on the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84), a commonly-used global reference system for modeling the Earth that is the standard for the Department of Defense and the Global Positioning System (GPS). Technically, if you were geocoding in another coordinate system or map projection (which are essentially different frameworks for adapting the Earth onto a sphere, ellipsoid, plane, or other shape for measurement and mapping), the position of “0,0” could be in one of thousands of locations around the world (A fun mapping experiment by Kenneth Field, Craig Williams, and David Burrows goes further down this rabbit hole). But for most standard geocoding, chances are, if you’ve ever geocoded less-than-perfect data and didn’t check your results, some of your data points have probably visited this one peculiar spot in the Gulf of Guinea.
Sending geospatial data points off to Null Island, so to speak, is a recognizable sight among GIS professionals the world over. As a cartographer in the Geography and Map Division with quite a bit of geocoding experience under my belt, this phenomenon is certainly familiar to me. This shared experience among geographers has fed the mystique of Null Island, with GIS enthusiasts creating fantasy maps, a “national” flag, and articles detailing Null Island’s rich (and fake) history online. The mystique, of course, is all just in good fun, although plenty of maps in the Geography and Map Division are just that: fantasy maps originating from one’s own imagination and communicating interesting perspectives on art, culture, and technology.
That said, you may still be thinking that the significance of the location of Null Island is little more than a geographer’s inside joke. But remember that lone buoy? That’s Station 13010 (also known as “Soul”), a NOAA weather observation buoy. Permanently anchored at 0°N 0°E, Soul collects data on air temperature, water temperature, wind speed, wind direction and other variables as part of the Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Atlantic (PIRATA) program. Observations collected by Soul and other buoys in the PIRATA network support research into climatic conditions and weather forecasting in the Tropical Atlantic and beyond.
An ATLAS buoy from the PIRATA program, similar to the one at the “Null Island” site. Photo by National Data Buoy Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Null Island is a curious blend of real and imaginary geography, of mathematical certainty and pure fantasy. Or it’s just the site of a weather observation buoy. However you see it, we have the GIS world to thank for putting Null Island on the map…in its own, strange way.
A 1789 print by an anonymous artist depicting The Man in the Iron Mask. (Photo: Anonymous/Public Domain)
The legend of the Man in the Iron Mask goes something like this: until his death in 1703, a prisoner was held for over three decades across France, including at the Bastille, all while wearing an iron mask, obscuring his identity.
The legend has inspired books, movies, and theories, but even after centuries of research and speculation—Voltaire thought the man was an unacknowledged brother of King Louis XIV—the identity of the man or why he wore the mask has never been explained.
But now an American college professor says he's cracked the case, identifying the man as Eustache Dauger. Paul Sonnino, author of the new book, The Search for the Man in the Iron Mask, says it wasn't an iron mask, but a velvet one, and Dauger did not always wear it. Dauger's identity has previously been known by historians, as has his occupation (he was a valet), but Sonnino says he's the first to outline why Dauger ended up in prison.
Sonnino says Dauger was the valet to a cardinal, who had gotten rich in part by stealing money from English royalty. He was arrested around the same time that Louis XIV was trying to convince the English to join France's side in the Franco-Dutch War, likely to protect the secret of the theft.
"Dauger must have blabbed at the wrong time," Sonnino says. "He was informed when arrested that if he revealed his identity to anyone he would immediately be killed.”
So, The Man in the Iron Mask was not Leonardo DiCaprio. He was a valet with a secret, and, in all likelihood, a plan to stay alive.
Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi and her vagina are on a mission in Japan, where phalluses and other representations of male genitalia can at times be ubiquitous, but where similar representations of the vagina are still mostly taboo.
In response, Igarashi has made art modeled on her own vagina, which she had scanned, later sending data to over two dozen people that would enable them to use 3D printing to create a replica.
Igarashi, who goes by the name Rokudenashiko, which roughly translates to "good-for-nothing girl," also made a kayak based on her vagina:
And she made some figurines, which you can see above. All of this was enough to get Igarashi arrested nearly two years ago in Japan, on obscenity charges. She was also briefly jailed then, but vowed to fight the charges, winning a partial victory on Monday after a court there ruled that the figurines were "pop art," according to Reuters.
But the 3D-printing data, the court ruled, did count as obscene. Igarashi was fined 400,000 yen, or around $3,700.
Igarashi declared herself "20-percent happy" with the verdict, according to Reuters, though her lawyers said that the figurine victory could be historic—the first step in getting rid of a sexist taboo.
"This verdict is extremely rare," one lawyer said.
For her part, Igarashi said that, nonetheless, she was "indignant" and would appeal, telling reporters that she was "completely innocent."
These islands lost to the sea range in size from one to five hectares. They supported dense tropical vegetation that was at least 300 years old. Nuatambu Island, home to 25 families, has lost more than half of its habitable area, with 11 houses washed into the sea since 2011.
This is the first scientific evidence, published in Environmental Research Letters, that confirms the numerous anecdotal accounts from across the Pacific of the dramatic impacts of climate change on coastlines and people.
However, these studies have been conducted in areas of the Pacific with rates of sea level rise of 3-5 mm per year – broadly in line with the global average of 3 mm per year.
For the past 20 years, the Solomon Islands have been a hotspot for sea-level rise. Here the sea has risen at almost three times the global average, around 7-10 mm per year since 1993. This higher local rate is partly the result of natural climate variability.
These higher rates are in line with what we can expect across much of the Pacific in the second half of this century as a result of human-induced sea-level rise. Many areas will experience long-term rates of sea-level rise similar to that already experienced in Solomon Islands in all but the very lowest-emission scenarios.
Natural variations and geological movements will be superimposed on these higher rates of global average sea level rise, resulting in periods when local rates of rise will be substantially larger than that recently observed in Solomon Islands. We can therefore see the current conditions in Solomon Islands as an insight into the future impacts of accelerated sea-level rise.
We studied the coastlines of 33 reef islands using aerial and satellite imagery from 1947-2015. This information was integrated with local traditional knowledge, radiocarbon dating of trees, sea-level records, and wave models.
Waves add to damage
Wave energy appears to play an important role in the dramatic coastal erosion observed in Solomon Islands. Islands exposed to higher wave energy in addition to sea-level rise experienced greatly accelerated loss compared with more sheltered islands.
Twelve islands we studied in a low wave energy area of Solomon Islands experienced little noticeable change in shorelines despite being exposed to similar sea-level rise. However, of the 21 islands exposed to higher wave energy, five completely disappeared and a further six islands eroded substantially.
The human story
These rapid changes to shorelines observed in Solomon Islands have led to the relocation of several coastal communities that have inhabited these areas for generations. These are not planned relocations led by governments or supported by international climate funds, but are ad hoc relocations using their own limited resources.
Many homes are close to sea level on the Solomons. (Photo: Simon Albert)
The customary land tenure (native title) system in Solomon Islands has provided a safety net for these displaced communities. In fact, in some cases entire communities have left coastal villages that were established in the early 1900s by missionaries, and retraced their ancestral movements to resettle old inland village sites used by their forefathers.
In other cases, relocations have been more ad hoc, with indivdual families resettling small inland hamlets over which they have customary ownership.
In these cases, communities of 100-200 people have fragmented into handfuls of tiny family hamlets. Sirilo Sutaroti, the 94-year-old chief of the Paurata tribe, recently abandoned his village. “The sea has started to come inland, it forced us to move up to the hilltop and rebuild our village there away from the sea,” he told us.
In addition to these village relocations, Taro, the capital of Choiseul Province, is set to become the first provincial capital in the world to relocate residents and services in response to the impact of sea-level rise.
The global effort
Interactions between sea-level rise, waves, and the large range of responses observed in Solomon Islands – from total island loss to relative stability – shows the importance of integrating local assessments with traditional knowledge when planning for sea-level rise and climate change.
Linking this rich knowledge and inherent resilience in the people with technical assessments and climate funding is critical to guiding adaptation efforts.
Melchior Mataki who chairs the Solomon Islands' National Disaster Council, said: “This ultimately calls for support from development partners and international financial mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund. This support should include nationally driven scientific studies to inform adaptation planning to address the impacts of climate change in Solomon Islands.”
Last month, the Solomon Islands government joined 11 other small Pacific Island nations in signing the Paris climate agreement in New York. There is a sense of optimism among these nations that this signifies a turning point in global efforts.
However, it remains to be seen how the hundreds of billions of dollars promised through global funding models such as the Green Climate Fund can support those most at need in remote communities, like those in Solomon Islands.
The paranoia over an "international homosexual conspiracy" rivaled the McCarthy communist witch hunts of the 1950s. (Photo: US Senate/Public Domain)
The idea of a “gay mafia” may seem like a bad oxymoron.
But there was a time in American history when there was a real fear that a gay mafia—known collectively as “hominterns”—existed, wielding control across Hollywood and throughout the arts and entertainment industries.
In his new book Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World, English academic Gregory Woods chronicles the rise of the “homintern,” exploring how the longstanding fear of homosexual men spurred a century-long paranoia about an alleged gay mafia controlling areas of government, the arts and academia.
The cover of Gregory Woods' Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World. (Photo: Courtesy Yale University Press)
Woods traces the origins of this paranoia first to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two well-known social theorists who espoused the idea of a communist society. In the mid-19th century the pair corresponded about the threat of “pederasts”—an antiquated term referring to men who had sex with younger men, since “homosexual” did not yet exist as a label—to their goal of establishing non-sexual comradeship between other men. As their aim was to establish a united front between men committed to dismantling class hierarchies, Marx and Engels feared that “pederasts” would threaten this bond, confusing fraternizing if a sexual desire was thrown into the mix.
Friedrich Engels (left) and Karl Marx. (Photos: Public Domain)
Yet the concerns of Marx and Engels were somewhat indicative of the times. The mid- to late-nineteenth-century saw a growing interest in studying male same-sex attraction, harnessing an understanding of it through pathologization and categorization. Woods writes that it was this obsession to categorize so-called “unsaid” male sexual impulses and behaviors that actually encouraged the fear of the homosexual figure in larger society. Since there was no term to refer to this same-sex attraction, the “pederast” proved an ominous and threatening figure because there was no medical understanding to the identity.
There is some irony to this history, as the term homosexual was first coined in 1868 before the word “heterosexual” even existed. Homosexual was set in opposition to the idea of a “normalsexual,” a word which was later discarded for “heterosexual.” This desire to study and define sexual behavior further pushed researchers to “un-closet” the homosexual, all in an effort to demystify a sexual identity that had long been ostracized and stigmatized but never really pinned down through scientific inquiry.
Soon enough, the idea of the “homintern” came along.
The term was allegedly first coined as a joke, taking its inspiration from the communist term “Cominterm,” an abbreviation of the Communist International Organization founded in the 1910s. Woods says it was most likely invented as a word play, referring to a disorganized and informal network of gay men who fraternized in the 1930s, including the likes of poet W. H. Auden and critic Cyril Connolly.
The English language version of The Communist International. (Photo: Public Domain)
Decades later,“homintern” entered Cold War discourse, being reappropriated by conspiracy theorists that exploited its communist association and claimed it referred to a longstanding “international homosexual conspiracy” across the country, whose one goal was to penetrate positions in the American government and usurp traditional American values of family and heterosexuality.
In the heat of the infamous McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s, which saw U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy gain national attention after claiming the American government was overrun with communist sympathizers, the homintern conspiracy theory soon engulfed America. With Americans fearful of the detonation of an atomic bomb and in a frenzy about politics being overtaken by communist defectors, the elusive figure of the homosexual—known but never seen in public; closeted but apparently everywhere—was ripe to exploit to inspire fear.
A telegram from McCarthy to President Truman warning of a "nest of communists" in government. (Photo: NARA/Public Domain)
Woods says that the anxieties around homosexuals in Cold War America take some of their origin in the social “cleansing” campaigns enacted in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, campaigns launched to eradicate homosexual men (and other “unwanted” individuals) from society. What proved most unnerving to many was that homosexual men were simultaneously “invisible”—apparently surreptitiously taking over branches of U.S. government, recruiting other men for their own “perverse cause”—and very visible in public life, known in the entertainment and film industries all at the same time.
This paranoia completely took over political life, lead to a report being commissioned in 1950 called “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government.” The report claimed the “infiltration” of homosexuals to American political life meant that homosexuals would “inenvitabl[y] … attempt to place other homosexuals in Government jobs.”
The backlash against homosexuals was only compounded by the growing visibility of gay men in public life, especially in the arts and entertainment industries, which only compounded the idea of an underground conspiracy of a “gay mafia.” Some of the most prominent playwrights of the 1950s were gay men, including Tennessee Williams, Arthur Laurents, and Edward Albee. Many critics were wary of the representations of American life offered by these “homosexual men.” In 1966, one New York Times critic mentioned the widespread perception that because these men were homosexuals their plays “present[ed] a badly distorted picture of American women, marriage and society.”
Similar claims were made about the number of “gay” men (closeted but commonly known to be gay) in Hollywood, including George Cukor, Montgomery Clift, Cary Grant, and Rock Hudson. Although these men were not “out,” rumors of their sexuality circulated widely in Hollywood and galvanized an image of Hollywood being overrun by gay men, many who allegedly wielded power and autonomy.
This kind of paranoia only extended to gay men. Unlike lesbians, gay men were seen as the more subversive threat because they had most public profiles as well as more likely to occupy positions of power in the entertainment industries.
But some two decades later, with the groundswell campaigns for freedoms and visibility that eventually became the gay liberation movement, the homintern lost all currency in American life. The homintern was mostly an elusive figure, one that existed more in metaphor and the public imagination than in reality, since its origins were grounded in fear.
Thanks to the unparalleled recognition gay men enjoyed in the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, the homintern faded into myth. Today the homintern seems to be emblematic of another epoch from the 20th century’s closeted gay history.
All the same, the homintern's awakening of fear in public life in 1950s America demonstrates an important narrative, reminding us there was a time when the idea of a “gay mafia” ruling Hollywood was a legitimate concern. If only they were still recruiting.
A bird flies out of a Lalish temple that features a stone black snake on its wall. (Photo: Erin Trieb)
Thirty-five miles north of Mosul, Iraq, about an hour’s drive from Islamic State territory, was the Garden of Eden. I stood with my interpreter, Salar, a local Iraqi journalist. “See that smoke between the mountains,” Salar said, pointing in the distance. “It’s an oil fire.” The thick plume of smoke marked the entrance to the site. Flames burst from a pipe stuck deep in the earth beneath which lay 25 billion barrels of crude oil worth more than $1 trillion. “These oil explorers think about holy places,” he said. “The more oil, the holier the land.”
But this isn’t the only Garden of Eden. It’s not even the only Garden of Eden in Iraq’s Nineveh plains, the war-torn province through which I was traveling. According to coordinates rather confusingly supplied by the Book of Genesis, the garden was at the spot where one river split into four. Here’s Genesis 2.8-2.14:
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed...A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
The thinking was, if you can pinpoint the four rivers—Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates—you can pinpoint paradise. The Tigris and Euphrates run from northern Iraq the length of the country before meeting in the south. No one knows for sure the location of the Pishon or Gihon rivers, except that they are in Havilah, and no one knows where Havilah is either. These are the two unknown rivers of paradise. Genesis refers to the land of Cush, thought to be Ethiopia, but the known rivers are not near Ethiopia. Others believe the rivers are in Azerbaijan, or point out that Jerusalem is home to the ancient Gihon Spring.
But the exact spot is contested. Believers have alternately placed the garden in Armenia, in the Zagros Mountains of Iran, and in Bahrain, where a lonely tree known as theTree of Life grows by itself in a waterless desert. A Boston University president named William F. Warren claimed the location for Eden was at the North Pole. Christopher Columbus believed he had found it in Venezuela. In the book The Garden of Eden and the Flood, from 1900, J. C. Keener attempted to prove that the garden was situated in Charleston, South Carolina. Others contended it was in Somaliland near the Horn of Africa. Some thought it was submerged beneath the waters of the Persian Gulf. Dante believed Eden to have been a mountain on an island, without telling us which or where, except that it’s the place where he reunited with his love Beatrice.
The seekers of Pishon and Gihon date back at least as far as the Jewish historian Josephus, who in the 1st century A.D., when Christianity was first taking root in Iraq, associated the Garden of Eden with South Asia, writing, “a river runs toward India and falls into the sea, called by the Greeks the Ganges.” Josephus thought the Pishon the Ganges and the Gihon the Nile. Saint Augustine, the Church Father and bishop of Hippo, spent a great deal of time before his death considering the imaginary nature of Eden. In the Middle Ages, Eden was cherished as a real place on Earth, if only it could be found. The idea was abandoned once explorers made their way around the globe. There was no place for Eden on the modern map.
A photograph of one of the alleged locations of the Garden of Eden, over the Euphrates River. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-92656)
Even those who concede the mythological nature of the Garden of Eden still have the desire to locate it, as I did last May while driving to the frontline in northern Iraq. The mythologies of Christianity, Yazidism, and Islam crisscross the landscape, and I passed through two purported Edens in northern Iraq while a much larger Eden was being resurrected in the south, near Basra, at the meeting point of the Tigris and Euphrates. With one Eden, I learned of another. The stories of Eden multiplied endlessly. Each site wanted to own the Biblical narrative and the few tourists that managed to make their way there.
According to the Bible, God placed a flaming sword at the east side of the Garden so that no human could return to the earthly paradise from which he had cast out Adam and Eve. On the drive that day with Salar, the oil fire visible between two mountains, marked the Garden as designated by the Yazidis, a religious and ethnic minority little known outside the region until its persecution at the hands of the Islamic State.
A map of Iraqi sites claiming to be the Garden of Eden. (Design: Blake Olmstead)
Refugee Eden
The Yazidis’ Garden was at Lalish, a sprawling sanctuary in a lush valley. The valley runs east to west, as does the temple. Lalish is thought to be the place where Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, the man who established the main rules of Yazidism, retired with his disciples. After his death in 1162, the sanctuary grew up around his tomb and became a center of worship.
Here, Salar and I met our Garden of Eden tour guide, Luqman Mahood, who had a black mustache and wore a small turban high on his head like the shell of a hermit crab. He had gathered us from the scorching parking lot, escorted us past the armed guard in a wood shack, and brought us under the shade of a tree. He said he wouldn’t let us wander alone without his services but he was free of charge. “I’m a Muslim,” he said. “I speak every language, don’t worry about me, Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, English.” He was barefoot and wore a brown jumpsuit tied tight around the waist. His mustache curled on the ends. He worked for a website run by the Lalish Media Network, a news site which also has a tourism component.
He told us the rules: You cannot wear shoes in the Garden of Eden and you cannot step in the places where the gods sit. You may eat chips from the snack shack but you cannot throw the bags on the ground. Use the designated wastebaskets. You may not venture deep into the secret tunnels beneath the earth but you may visit the public tunnels. We handed our shoes over to the owner of the snack shop. It was crowded with children and the ground strewn with trash. We stepped barefoot into the garden.
Lalish is a sprawling complex of shrines and mausoleums with no center. Vegetation curled around massive stone structures, and spring water pooled in underground caves. The Yazidis burned oil wicks around conical shrines that rose from the earth like stalagmites. Once a year, they light 365 candles, fueled by olive oil, to bring peace to the world. The flames had scorched the temple walls and black marks were everywhere. There was a room for religious men, a room for pilgrims, and the room of the holy bread.
In the hills, red poppies grew, Mahood said, from the blood of martyrs. The Yazidis set the poppies in the water they used to wash their hands and faces so that gods would recognize them.
We entered a cobblestone courtyard filled with mulberry trees believed to cure diseases. A tree flowered from the tomb of a saint. At the far end of the courtyard, we passed through a semicircular archway. The doorsteps were sprinkled with paper bank notes, Iraqi dinars for the fallen angel. Above it was a carving of two peacocks, and at their feet, two small lions.
The Yazidis kissed and touched a stone that spouted holy water. They believed the stone was a physical manifestation of the peacock angel. “And this,” he said, pointing to a symbol carved in the stone. “This represents the sun that becomes like a ring that covers four sides of the world, and this is Iraq and we believe angels are living here.”
“The Earth was all Yazidi in the beginning,” Mahood told us.
Baba, a Yazidi high priest, sits in his living room in Lalish. (Photo: Erin Trieb)
The Yazidi faith is neither Christian nor Muslim, but contains elements familiar to both. Thousands of years ago God told one of his seven angels to visit Earth and stop its shaking. It was God’s fault. He’d been playing with a white pearl and when he tossed it into space, it broke, and shattered to form the planets and stars. The angel he chose was named Taus Melek, and on his way down to Earth he disguised himself as a giant peacock. The Earth he found was terribly ugly and filled with dreadful things like volcanoes and earthquakes. He began his work in in Iraq, letting his feathers color the world with plants and animals. But the peacock took advantage of his powers and tried to create his own kingdom at Lalish. God banished him to hell. But he cried for so long–so many thousands of years–that God forgave him.
Melek wandered until he met Adam, the first human. Adam didn’t have a soul. Melek breathed life into him. Eve came into being. Before Adam and Eve reproduced, they attempted to bear children alone. They incubated their seeds in jars and when it was time to look, Eve’s jar was full of insects and rodents, but in Adam’s jar was a beautiful boy. This boy, called Shehid bin Jer or Son of Jar, grew up in the Garden of Eden and his descendants became the Yazidis.
The Yazidis believe Melek will come back to Earth as a peacock during a time of conflict. In spite of the rise of the Islamic State, the Yazidis hadn’t seen Melek yet.
Since Melek is a fallen angel, Iraqi Muslims often call Yazidis devil worshippers, an insult that contributes to their isolation and persecution.
“Do you raise peacocks in Lalish?” I asked.
“Not literal ones,” Mahood said.
To the right of the archway, a black snake crawled up the wall. This was the portal of Deriye Kapi, translated as the “door of the door.” The vertical serpent was as tall as a man and thick as an arm. It’s not the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve, Mahood said, but a serpent that helped Noah. The Yazidis believe Noah’s ark was lifted and carried by the waters of the deluge to the top of Mount Sinjar where a rock burst a hole in the hull of the ark. The serpent curled up and plugged the leak.
Mahood said it was possible to imagine that the courtyard of the Sanctuary of Sheikh Adi symbolized paradise, in which the peacock and serpent stand next to the mulberry and vine, representing the tree of life.
The “door of the door” led to an assembly hall hung with chandeliers. A clump of rags marked the sarcophagus of Sheikh Adi, and down the hall was his mausoleum. Here, a narrow stairway led pilgrims to the spring of Zemzem. It rose from the middle of the room, flowed for several feet, and disappeared again underground. The water of the Zemzem, Mahood said, is magic. It assured eternal life.
Hundreds of refugees slept in the garden. In August 2014 , the Islamic State swept through Sinjar and slaughtered thousands of Yazidis, and displaced thousands more. The refugees were mostly women and children whose husbands had been killed by militants.
While I was there, several teenage girls fainted over and over again, perhaps symptoms of trauma. Beneath Lalish broken-hearted women made wishes for their massacred sons on colorful silk rags. To make a wish, you tie a knot, and when someone undoes the knot, the wish will come true. But the rags were knotted over and over as if diseased. Deeper inside the caves the Yazidis tossed the same silk rags on the remnants of a statue, trying to hit what might have been its head, another attempt at a wish. Above ground Prince Tahseen Said, world leader of the Yazidis, sat in a carpeted room alongside five tribal leaders from Sinjar. They were waiting for the ambassador from Canada to discuss the Yazidi genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State.
On the way out the tour guide gave us his contact details and hoped that anybody who was interested could arrange a tour. “Tell your friends in America,” he said, “to encourage them to visit one day.”
It was morning, already 80 degrees, and road signs pointed toward the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul. A car stacked with plastic bags and tarps sped past us, perhaps a family returning to a ruined village to start life over again. Car parts, street signs, the clothes of refugees clotted the ditches in a moonscape of red dirt that broke into fields of wheat. This was the road to Mosul, on our way out of Lalish to our next piece of paradise, the possible location of the Assyrian Garden of Eden.
On the way we came upon a small city, drowning in sunlight, and next to it, the silhouette of a Ferris wheel. “That means there are Christians nearby,” Salar said. Salar, a Sunni Muslim, had his ideas about Christians. You knew you were approaching Christians, he said, if the road turned from dry and cracked to pristine and well tended. You knew you were approaching Christians if the meridians emptied of garbage. You knew you were approaching Christians if you saw well-dressed people who smelled nice.
For centuries the Christians of Northern Iraq have suffered persecution, and in June 2014 the Islamic State took Mosul and traveled east, conquering small Christian villages in the Nineveh plains. Saint Elijah's, the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, was destroyed by ISIS in late 2014, after 1,400 years on a nearby hillside, joining more than 100 razed religious sites across Iraq.
In the Koran, the Garden of Eden is both a beginning and an end. It is the location of the fall of man, and a garden in the afterlife. Eden looks back to paradise and forward to heaven. For groups like ISIS the past is a place of contentment. To get back there, to the beginning, they have tried to destroy monuments and ruins, and they’ve tried to erase the narratives they loathe.
In her documentary on the Assyrians, Mourning in the Garden of Eden, Gwendolyn Cates interviewed Shmael Nano, a member of the Assyrian Democratic Movement. “Under the ground we are in Assyria,” he said, “but on the ground in Kurdistan we are the indigenous people of this land and we are the remains of the people who lived here in the Garden of Eden.”
Nineveh is considered a sanctuary for Christians in Iraq and their numbers swell during times of persecution. The area was relatively peaceful until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when extremists moved in and Assyrians became targets because they were seen, due to their Christian religion, as American allies.
When ISIS arrived, Nineveh was emptied of Christians. But Kurdish pesh merga forces, with the help of the Americans, took back Christian villages, including Bakufa, 18 miles north of Mosul, and here a small group of fighters formed a militia called Dwekh Nawsha. It was established by the National Party of Assyrians on the 11th of August 2014. They made an outpost in the deserted village at a building that once belonged to a family of Christians now living in a caravan near the city of Dohuk.
One of the commanders was a deacon named Yusef. He preached at the Free Methodist church. “We are always having debates and arguments about Jesus Christ,” he said. The deacon had a gray mustache and dark hair, aviator glasses with a brown tint. We sat on ornate couches in a room with tiled floors. I told him about our visit to Lalish and asked whether he believed it to be the ancient location of the Garden of Eden. He told me the Garden absolutely was not at Lalish. “The Garden of Eden is here,” he told me. He pointed to the ground beneath our feet. “It's everywhere but Lalish.”
A Dwekh Nawsha soldier in Bakufa shows his Christian tattoo. (Photo: Erin Trieb)
“And the tree of life?” I asked.
“It’s here,” he said. He lifted his arms. “The tree of life. We don’t know where it is exactly but it’s very near here.”
For miles, there was nothing but desert and villages sacked by the Islamic State. For now, the Assyrian Eden remained very much in the mind of its dwindling believers without need for show. They had a border but it did not matter where it ended as long as it erased the borders of the Yazidis’ Lalish.
The Islamic State had dug trenches a mile away. We watched them with binoculars. When the crops burned it was hard to know if the smoke rose from rockets or brush. There had been mortars the night before.
The commander gave us a tour of the ruined village of Bakufa. “Just let me tell you a story,” he said. “Yesterday I spoke to a Yazidi who escaped ISIS and he told me they took 800 women and girls and separated them from the men. There was a husband who refused to leave wife and they started to kill this man. If any of the women cried the militants forced them to wear a suicide vest. If they cried, the vest would detonate.”
A soldier named Marcus said ISIS was a sign of the apocalypse coming. “Yeah, it’s near,” he said, “I don't know when. People are hungry. People are at war. People hate each other. It’s not a normal life. The people. Just look at the people. Nobody loves one another. The Arabs will destroy Israel. All the world will atone for Israel. It’s in the Bible–the last book in the Bible–what’s the name in English? Revolution? Revelation?”
We followed Marcus to the nuns’ corridors and stepped into the church library. It was in ruins. The torn pages of Bibles and images of Jesus covered the floor. A bird had desecrated an image of Pope Francis’s face. Marcus picked up a Bible. He stood in front of a painting of Christ. The heart of Christ glowed like a light bulb.
“This is my paradise now,” he said.
"A blinding light descends on Eden in the creation of man and the animals": an etching of the Garden of Eden from J.E. Ridinger, c. 1750. (Photo: Wellcome Images, London/CC BY 4.0)
Marsh Eden
The tree of knowledge, at least the one in the southern Iraqi village of Qurna, is leafless with long twisted branches and its trunk is encased in a shrine. Next to it, a sign reads: “On this holy spot where Tigris meet Euphrates this Holy Tree of our Father Adam grew symbolising the Garden of Eden on Earth. Abraham prayed here 2000 years BC.”
In 1914, the British tried to seize control of the city of Basra, and Qurna was one of the first conquered villages. British military commanders called it the “Garden of Hell.” According to Brook Wilensky-Lanford’s book Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, British riverboat captains, perhaps under the influence of alcohol, climbed Qurna’s tree of knowledge in 1919, but ended up cracking it in half. It had been dead for so long that it could not support their weight. Locals were furious, and nearly lynched them, but it later came out that the revered tree had only been planted a century or two before. By 1946, the Times of Londonreported that local authorities had planted a new one.
Archaeologist Juris Zarins, a Garden of Eden expert, places the location of Eden not in Qurna, but 200 miles south of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Sumer, an area now under the waters of the Persian Gulf. In his theory, the biblical Gihon River corresponds with the Iran’s Karun River, and the mysterious Pishon is the Wadi Batin river system, in Saudi Arabia. As for the story of Adam and Eve, Zarins sees it as an allegory about the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture.
Perhaps the best-known Garden of Eden in Iraq is also the most broken. It’s just southeast of Qurna, in Iraq’s ancient marshlands. The area itself was destroyed by Saddam in 1991, in an act of revenge against the native Ma’dan people, who participated in a Shiite rebellion against his regime. Reeds were burned with napalm. Canals drained the marsh water into the Persian Gulf. Where any water remained, it was poisoned with cyanide. Almost half a million marsh dwellers were displaced or killed.
Since 2001, an Iraqi-American named Azaam Alwash, alongside a number of scientists and engineers, has been attempting to resurrect the marshes, a project called “Eden Again.” Alwash grew up in Iraq but left in 1978 to study civil engineering in America. He married, had children, became a U.S. citizen. Months after the American invasion, the 45-year-old father of two returned to Iraq to visit the marshlands. He learned of their destruction at the hands of Saddam but wanted to see for himself. It was impossible to imagine: in one of the largest ecosystems on the planet, miles of fresh water had turned to desert.
For months, Alwash lived in a hotel in Basra, conjuring up ways to use his skills as an engineer to rebuild this lost Eden. It was a place he’d visited as a child and he longed to see the area restored. The war was still going on and machine gunfire let loose outside his window.
As the marshes evaporated, they left huge salt deposits. As a first step, Eden Again participants reconnected the land to the rivers so that just enough water would seep through to flush out the salt deposits. This took many years. As the riverbanks overflowed, nutrient rich sediments deposited in the marshlands and created the basis for new growth.
In 2015, Alwash flew over the marshes in a helicopter with the Illinois National Guard's 106th Aviation Wing. The canals dug by Saddam’s troops twisted below. For a while, there was nothing but desert, but this broke to blue water blooming with reeds. That day Alwash entered the marsh by boat. The reeds grew high over his head, and when the stalks parted, he discovered that a family of Ma’dan had returned, building an island of reeds, living as they always had.
A room in a Yazidi refugee home in Dohuk. (Photo: Erin Trieb)
Leaving Eden
I took a flight home out of Erbil, and on the ascent the plane started a controlled spiral, making big looping circles, gaining elevation until we were too high to target. It’s what the pilots do when they’re worried about missiles. There was no announcement; there was only Mosul, thousands of feet below, silent and the color of clay. We leveled and headed north, flying over Mt. Sinjar where ISIS massacred Yazidis.
Across the Turkish border, mountains piled atop each other, some barely powdered with snow. These were the Zagros Mountains, with their hidden blue lakes. In the distance I saw Mount Ararat, where the ark is said to have found rest when the floodwaters receded on the 17th day of the 17th month. These mountains are home to the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates, and some of the Assyrians believed their paradise spread this far.
This Islamic State, though, believes Noah's Ark rested on Mt. Judi, a smaller mountain at the crossroads of Turkey, Iraq and Syria, and not on Mt. Ararat. Whichever mountaintop it was, the place where the ark rested is referred to as “the place of descent,” and “descent” is a word that makes a lot of sense when thinking about Eden. Mythology is far more urgent for individuals in a time of war--when society sinks to chaos, it so happens that Eden is often found.
We aren't supposed to go back to Eden, but we keep trying. ISIS has named the desert town of Dabiq, in Syria, as the staging ground for the apocalypse and the location of the final battle, as laid out in the Quran, that will usher jihadists into their own Eden.
The island of Tristan da Cunha as seen from the International Space Station. (Photo: NASA/Public Domain)
Socks often get short shrift as presents, lumped in with other hastily-grabbed items like gift cards and gas station flowers.
But there's no mistaking the effort required when you buy socks from Tristan da Cunha, made-to-order and artisanal, knitted by people living on an active volcano in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Tristan da Cunha, home of said active volcano, is the world’s most remote island, accessible via a six-day sea voyage from South Africa. Its 267 residents are mostly farmers, dwelling at the base of a volcano. Supply ships come once a month and the island's isolation is further punctuated by the occasional arrival of a fishing vessel from Cape Town or a cruise ship from Antarctica.
Inhabited since 1810, Tristan has developed some solid traditions. There's the annual Ratting Day, a public holiday with a "carnival atmosphere" during which islanders divide into teams, head into the potato fields and kill as many rodents as possible. (The dead rats' tails are severed from their bodies, allowing them to be counted and an overall Ratting Day winner declared.)
A less violent, more heart-warming tradition is that of the island's "love socks," which are knitted to express endearment. "In the old days, islanders were quite shy people, people of few words," says Dawn Repetto, who lives on Tristan. "To demonstrate love and affection, they would more do it by gesture rather than words.”
For young people courting, this meant knitting one another woolen garments with hidden messages. Stripes came to be used as code—more stripes meant greater depth of feeling. "If you gave something like five stripes? Wow. That was almost like a proposal of marriage,” says Repetto.
The famous socks. (Photo: Courtesy of Dawn Repetto)
Socks were the garment of choice for young lovers. Traditionally, a woman would knit a pair for her intended paramour, adding as many stripes as she saw fit. If the target of her affection felt good about the stripe situation, he would signal his acceptance by knitting a pair of moccasins for the young lady. According to official love socks lore, "The young lady would then offer to wash his clothes and this was a sign that they were formally engaged and a marriage would follow shortly."
Tristan's knitters still make love socks, both for themselves and as souvenirs. Beyond the occasional cruise ship, the island doesn't get a lot of visitors—the supply ships that run from Cape Town every month or so have scant space available for sightseers. Anyone seeking a pair of love socks, however, can buy them online. Once an order is placed, Repetto says, “we will get someone in the village to knit that pair of love socks to your specifications.” Then it's just a matter of putting the finished foot-warmers on the next vessel to Cape Town.
There is no two-day shipping option—regardless of the buyer's location, it takes a few months for a pair of love socks to arrive. But if you ever want to impress someone with a thoughtful, unexpected gift, it's hard to go past a pair of custom socks hand-knitted by residents of the world's most remote island.
Object of Intrigue is a weekly column in which we investigate the story behind a curious item. Is there an object you want to see covered? Email ella@atlasobscura.com
